Author: IGIHE

{Authorities move people out from low-lying areas as Cyclone Mora lashes southeastern coast with heavy rains and winds.}

Bangladesh has evacuated at least 350,000 people as Cyclone Mora lashed coastal areas on Tuesday, packing heavy rains and winds that destroyed hundreds of homes on several islands in the Bay of Bengal.

The severe storm made landfall between Cox’s Bazar and the main port city of Chittagong early on Tuesday morning, the Bangladesh Meteorological Department said.

No casualties have been reported yet.

Golam Mostafa, a government official coordinating the evacuation, said people were moved from low-lying coastal areas to “at least 400 cyclone shelters, schools and government offices”.

The cyclone also caused havoc in refugee camps set up for some 200,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled violence in neighbouring Myanmar.

Shamsul Alam, a Rohingya community leader, told Reuters news agency that damage in different camps was severe with almost all the 10,000 thatched huts in the Balukhali and Kutupalong camps destroyed.

“Most of the temporary houses in the camps have been flattened,” Alam said.

Omar Farukh, a community leader in Kutapalong camp, said conditions were dire: “Now we’re in the open air.”

About 10 million of Bangladesh’s population of 160 million live in coastal areas.

Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said the greatest danger lay to fishermen who do not abide by government requests to call in their vessels.

“Many fishing trawlers are still out in the bay. Many of them usually get lost in storms and they are hard to account for. This is where a lot of the casualties happen.”

He added: “Lots of houses have been damaged. Trees have fallen… A lot of the houses along the coastline are barely tin sheds and mud huts, which cannot withstand this kind of storm.

The cyclone was expected to weaken in Bangladesh by late morning as it moved inland towards India where authorities have warned of heavy rain in the northeastern states of Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

It formed after monsoon rains triggered floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, off India’s southern tip, which have killed at least 180 people in recent days, authorities said.

In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, 24 people have been killed in recent days, either by lightning or in collapsed dwellings.

Bangladesh is routinely hit by bad storms between April and December that cause deaths and widespread property damage.

In May last year, Cyclone Roanu hit the southern coast of Bangladesh leaving 20 people dead and forcing half a million to flee their homes.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Former ruler of Panama was held in medically induced coma after brain surgery in March.}

Manuel Noriega, Panama’s former ruler, has died aged 83, Panama’s President Juan Carlos Varela announced on Twitter.

Noriega was the country’s military ruler from 1983 to 1989, when he was removed from power by the United States during the invasion of Panama.

“The death of Manuel Antonio Noriega closes a chapter in our history; his daughters and their families deserve a burial in peace,” Varela said.

During his rule, Noriega initially positioned Panama as a US asset in a region that was becoming increasingly hostile to Washington’s interests.

He was commissioned into the Panama National Guard in 1967, and in 1968 promoted to lieutenant.

Noriega rose swiftly in the armed forces, becoming a key ally of General Omar Torrijos during a military coup in 1968. As the de-facto leader from 1968 to 1981, Torrijos relied heavily on Noriega’s network of loyal soldiers.

CIA informant

Noriega was soon promoted to head of the Panama’s secret police, a role which brought him into close contact with the CIA.

The US intelligence agency had a vested interest in protecting the strategic trade route of the Panama Canal, which was under US administration until 1977.

Noriega soon became a regular informant for the Americans and was rewarded with an estimated $320,000, although he claimed at his trial in 1990 he was a prize asset that cost the CIA millions.

Throughout the 1970s, he shook off accusations that he was orchestrating the disappearances of Panamanian opposition figures.

After Torrijos’s mysterious death in a plane crash in 1981, the new military ruler, Ruben Dario Paredes del Rio, consolidated Noreiga’s power-base by promoting him as the head of the security services.

Within a short time, power had effectively concentrated in Noriega’s hands. In 1983, he succeeded Paredes as the de-facto military ruler.

During the Reagan presidency in the 1980s, the US began relying heavily on Noreiga as an ally against Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

1989 surrender

In 1987, a former chief-of-staff who had worked under Noriega, accused his former boss of corruption and electoral fraud, as well as being behind the plane crash in which Torrijos died.

The accusations triggered huge demonstrations in Panama.

Noriega defiantly stayed in power, with critics maintaining that the country had become a hub for Latin America’s drug trade, particularly in helping Colombia’s powerful Medellin cartel in laundering drug money.

In December 1989, US President George Bush ordered a US marine invasion to topple Noriega, who had become a liability and an embarrassment to US interests.

Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City.

One US tactic to flush him out was to play deafening music non-stop outside the building. Noriega finally surrendered on January 3, 1990.

Prison terms

Noriega was flown to the US, with prisoner-of-war status, to face charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering.

In 2007, Noriega completed his 17 years of confinement in a Miami federal jail, but he was not a free man.

After completing his 17-year sentence, Noriega was extradited to France and received a seven-year sentence for money laundering.

But Panama wanted Noriega to return to face in-absentia convictions and two prison terms of 20 years for embezzlement, corruption and murder of opponents, including military commander Moises Giroldi, who led a failed rebellion on October 3, 1989, and Hugo Spadafora, whose decapitated body was found in a mailbag on the border with Costa Rica in 1985.

In mid-2011, France approved his extradition to Panama.

Despite amassing great wealth, Noriega had worked hard to cultivate an image of a man of the people. He lived in a modest, two-story home in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood in Panama City that stood in stark contrast with the opulent mansions customary among Latin American dictators.

“He would only say ‘hello’ very respectfully,” said German Sanchez, who lived next door for 16 years. “You may think what you like of Noriega, but we can’t say he was anything but respectful toward his neighbours.”

“The humble, the poor, the blacks, they are the utmost authority,” Noriega said in one speech.

{{Asking for forgiveness
}}

While some resentment lingers over the US invasion, Noriega has so few supporters in modern-day Panama that attempts to auction off his old home attracted no bidders and the government decided to demolish decaying building down.

Late in life, the ex-leader essentially had zero influence over his country from behind bars.

“He is not a figure with political possibilities,” University of Panama sociologist Raul Leis said in 2008. “Even though there’s a small sector that yearns for the Noriega era, it is not a representative figure in the country.”

Noriega broke a long silence in June 2015 when he made a statement from prison on Panamanian television in which he asked forgiveness of those harmed by his rule.

“I feel like as Christians we all have to forgive,” he said, reading from a handwritten statement. “The Panamanian people have already overcome this period of dictatorship.”

But for the most part Noriega stayed mum about elite military and civilian associates who thrived on the corruption that he helped instill and which still plagues the Central American nation of some 3.9 million people, a favoured transshipment point for drugs and a haven for money laundering.

“He kept his mouth shut and died for the sins of others,” Koster, the biographer, said in a 2014 interview. “Nobody else ever went to prison.”

Meanwhile, families of more than 100 who were killed or disappeared during his rule are still seeking justice.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Kim Jong-un supervised new ballistic missile test and promises to develop more powerful weapons for defence.}

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has promised bigger “gift packages” following Pyongyang’s latest missile test, a statement that ratchets up already high tensions.

Kim supervised a new ballistic missile test on Monday, controlled by a precision guidance system, and ordered the development of more powerful strategic weapons to defend the country against the US, state media reported.

Kim said the reclusive state would develop more powerful weapons in multiple phases.

“He expressed the conviction that it would make a greater leap forward in this spirit to send a bigger ‘gift package’ to the Yankees” in retaliation for American military provocation, KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

The missile launched was equipped with an advanced automated pre-launch sequence compared with previous versions of the “Hwasong” rockets, North Korea’s name for its Scud-class missiles, KCNA news agency said on Tuesday.

That indicated the North had launched a modified Scud-class missile, as South Korea’s military has said.

The North’s test launch of a short-range ballistic missile landed in the sea off its east coast and was the latest in a fast-paced series of missile tests defying international pressure and threats of more sanctions.

South Korea said it had conducted a joint drill with a US supersonic B-1B Lancer bomber on Monday. North Korea’s state media earlier accused the US of staging a drill to practice dropping nuclear bombs on the Korean Peninsula.

{{Drills planned}}

The US Navy said its aircraft carrier strike group, led by the USS Carl Vinson, also planned a drill with another US nuclear carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, in waters near the Korean Peninsula.

A US Navy spokesman in South Korea did not give specific timing for the attack group’s planned drill.

Florence Looi, reporting from Seoul, said North Korea accused the US and South Korea of military provocation and said this would bring the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war.

“South Korean media are also reporting that the [drill] took place just hours after North Korea conducted its missile launch, and reports have said that South Korean fighter jets have also been involved in the exercise. North Korea is not too happy about this,” said Looi.

Monday’s launch followed two successful tests of medium-to-long-range missiles in as many weeks by the North, which has been conducting such tests at an unprecedented pace in an effort to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the mainland US.

{{Trump: North’s ‘great disrespect’ for China}}

Such launches, and two nuclear tests since January 2016, have been conducted in defiance of US pressure, UN resolutions and the threat of more sanctions.

They also pose one of the greatest security challenges for US President Donald Trump, who portrayed the latest missile test as an affront to China.

“North Korea has shown great disrespect for their neighbour, China, by shooting off yet another ballistic missile … but China is trying hard!” Trump said on Twitter.

North Korea has claimed major advances with its rapid series of launches, claims that outside experts and officials believe may be at least partially true but are difficult to verify independently.

A South Korean military official said the North fired one missile on Monday, clarifying an earlier assessment that there may have been more than one launch.

The test was aimed at verifying a new type of precision guidance system and the reliability of a new mobile launch vehicle under different operational conditions, KCNA said.

However, South Korea’s military and experts questioned the claim because the North had technical constraints, such as a lack of satellites, to operate a terminal-stage missile guidance system properly.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Malaysians, Indonesian, and possibly Arabs killed after fierce fight for the southern city of Marawi.}

The Philippine military chief says three Malaysians, an Indonesian, and possibly Arab fighters have been killed in a southern city that armed groups planned to burn entirely in an audacious plot to project the lethal influence of ISIL.

General Eduardo Ano told The Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday the military has made advances in containing the week-long siege of Marawi city. He said a top Filipino fighters is believed to have been killed and the leader of the attack was wounded.

Ano said the group plotted to set Marawi ablaze and kill as many Christians in nearby Iligan city on Ramadan to mimic the violence seen by the world in Syria and Iraq.

The army insists the drawn-out fight is not a true sign of the group’s strength, and the military has held back to spare civilians’ lives.

“They are weak,” Ano said of the gunmen, speaking at a hospital where wounded soldiers were being treated. “It’s just a matter of time for us to clear them from all their hiding places.”

As of Tuesday morning, he said the military working house-by-house had cleared 70 percent of the city and the remaining fighters were isolated.

Still, the fighters have turned out to be remarkably well-armed and resilient.

Attack helicopters were streaking low over Marawi on Monday, firing rockets at hideouts, as heavily armed soldiers went house to house.

The gunmen have held the Philippine army at bay, burning buildings, taking at least a dozen hostages and sending tens of thousands of residents fleeing.

Ano said Tuesday that the commander, Isnilon Hapilon, is still hiding somewhere in the city. Authorities were working to confirm that another leader had been killed.

President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in the south through mid-July after the fighters went on a deadly rampage in Marawi last week following an unsuccessful military raid to capture Hapilon.

In recent years, small armed groups in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia have begun unifying under the banner of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Jose Calida, the top Philippine prosecutor, said last week that the violence on the large southern island of Mindanao “is no longer a rebellion of Filipino citizens”.

Rohan Gunaratna, a security expert at Singapore’s S Rarajatnam School of International Studies, said ISIL and the smaller regional groups are working together to show their strength and declare a Philippine province part of the caliphate that ISIL says it created in the Middle East.

He said the fighting in Marawi, along with smaller battles elsewhere in the southern Philippines, may be precursors to declaring a province, which would be “a huge success for the terrorists”.

Last week, two suicide bombings in Jakarta, Indonesia, killed three police officers, an attack claimed by ISIL. While Indonesia has been battling local fighters since 2002, the rise of ISIL has breathed new life into those networks and raised concern about the risk of Indonesian fighters returning home from the Middle East.

Analysts have warned that as ISIL is weakened in Syria and Iraq, battered by years of American-led attacks, Mindanao could become a focal point for regional fighters.

Southeast Asian fighters fleeing the Middle East “could look to Mindanao to provide temporary refuge as they work their way home”, said a report late last year by the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, predicting a high risk of regional violence.

Marawi is regarded as the heartland of the Islamic faith on Mindanao island.

Muslim rebels have been waging a separatist rebellion in the south of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation for decades. The largest armed group dropped its secessionist demands in 1996, when it signed an autonomy deal with the Philippine government. Amid continuing poverty and other social ills, restiveness among minority Muslims has continued.

Hapilon is an Islamic preacher and former commander of the Abu Sayyaf group who pledged allegiance to ISIL in 2014. He now heads an alliance of at least 10 smaller groups, including the Maute.

Acmad Aliponto, a 56-year-old court sheriff who decided not to flee the city, said while the fighters were well-armed, he believes they have little local support, and that the recent violence could turn more people against them.

“In the end their relatives and everyday people may be the ones who will kill them,” he said. “Look at what they did. So many were affected.”

Source:Al Jazeera