Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{Around 460 detained in nationwide operations, according to state media, in Turkey’s biggest roundup targeting the group.}

Turkish police have detained hundreds of suspected ISIL members in nationwide raids, according to state media, in the largest operations in the country to target the armed group.

Around 460 suspects, most of them foreign nationals, were arrested in at least 18 provinces, state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Sunday.

At least 60 people were held in the capital, Ankara, while 150 were arrested in Sanliurfa in the southeast and a further 47 in the nearby city of Gaziantep close to the Syrian border.

In the Aegean province of Izmir, security forces held at least nine suspected ISIL members who were allegedly preparing for an attack.

Another 18 people were arrested in Istanbul and the neighbouring province of Kocaeli on suspicion of planning attacks. Fourteen foreigners, including 10 children, were due to be deported.

“This is the largest coordinated and simultaneous raids that Turkey has taken out on what it says are ‘suspected members of ISIL’ across the country,” Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Gaziantep, said.

“From what we understand, all of these raids took place around the same time at dawn on Sunday,” she continued, adding that the operation signalled Turkey’s clear intentions to give a “message that it is clamping down” on the armed group.

“Turkey has suffered multiple attacks either claimed by ISIL or inspired by it,” Dekker said.

The Turkish government holds ISIL, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and is also known as ISIS, responsible for several attacks in Turkey.

Most recently, ISIL claimed responsibility for a New Year’s Eve attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul in which 39 people were killed.

Police arrested the suspected attacker, Abdulgadir Masharipov, an Uzbek national, on January 16 and authorities say he has confessed to the massacre.

Turkish troops are also engaged in battles against ISIL fighters in the Syrian town of al-Bab, in the fiercest fighting yet of Ankara’s military’s campaign inside Syria that started in August.

At least 48 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the incursion so far, according to an AFP news agency tally.

{Houses collapse and roads close as massive avalanches hit eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.}

Scores of people have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by heavy snow and avalanches that hit mountainous areas in the region, officials said.

More than 100 people have been killed across Afghanistan, including 50 in Nuristan province, officials said Sunday, warning the death toll could rise still further.

At least 54 people were killed in northern and central Afghan provinces, officials told AFP news agency, with massive avalanches destroying 168 houses and killing hundreds of cattle.

Dozens more remain missing, the provincial governor, Hafiz Abdul Qayum, told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

“Most affected are women and children,” he said, adding that many houses collapsed, killing at least five people and leaving many families without shelter.

“The area is completely blocked because of snow so it is very difficult for us to send support, but we are trying our best.”

Qayum said local rescue operations continued at the site, adding the death toll might increase.

The government declared Sunday, a normal working day in Afghanistan, to be a public holiday to deter non-essential travel and ensure schools were closed.

Avalanches in Pakistan’s Chitral

In neighbouring Pakistan, at least 13 people, including three children, were killed early on Sunday morning when an avalanche in the northwestern Chitral district destroyed 22 houses, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said in a statement.

“Rescue operations at the site have finished for now,” Gul Hammad Farooqi, a local journalist in Chitral, told Al Jazeera.

“They were carried out by the local population, because no one was able to reach the site, even by helicopter.”

Roads to the remote Shershal village, where the avalanche occurred, remained blocked due to the snowfall, and rescue crews were forced to rush to the surrounding areas by helicopter, the NDMA said.

In a separate incident in the Chitral region, a paramilitary soldier was killed and six others were injured when their post collapsed under an avalanche in the Pisotan area, Pakistan’s military said in a statement.

The surviving soldiers had been rescued, it added.

Parts of the Chitral valley received more than five feet of snow in the previous 24 hours, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said in a statement on Sunday, with scattered snowfall forecast for Monday.

{{Transport networks affected}}

The snow also wreaked havoc on major roads in Afghanistan, including the main Kabul-Kandahar highway, where police and soldiers rescued passengers in about 250 vehicles trapped by the storm, said Jawed Salangi, a spokesman for Ghazni province.

The Salang pass, north of Kabul, was also closed under as much as two and a half metres of snow, officials said.

In Pakistan, all inter-district roads in Chitral were closed, while a major highway linking Chitral to the Dir district and another linking parts of the upper Swat valley were only open to traffic under restrictions, NDMA said.

{President’s office slams criticism by Catholic Church, which says killing people is not the answer to drug trafficking.}

The Philippines’ Catholic Church has blasted President Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs” for creating a “reign of terror”.

In its most strongly worded attack yet on the crackdown on drug pushers and users, the powerful Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said killing people was not the answer to trafficking of illegal drugs.

The Church said, in a pastoral letter that will be read out in sermons on Sunday, it was disturbing that many did not care about the bloodshed, or even approved of it.

“An even greater cause of concern is the indifference of many to this kind of wrong. It is considered as normal, and, even worse, something that [according to them] needs to be done,” the bishops said in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Reuters news agency.

“An additional cause of concern is the reign of terror in many places of the poor. Many are killed not because of drugs. Those who kill them are not brought to account,” they said.

{{Duterte’s office strikes back}}

The presidential palace on Sunday lashed back at the Church for the letter, blaming it for being “apparently out of touch” with the wishes of those who back the changes introduced by Duterte.

“The efforts of these church leaders might be put to better use in practical catechetics that build strong moral character among the faithful, and so contribute more to the reign of peace felt by ordinary citizens everywhere, especially those who are innocent of illegal activities,” Ernesto Abella, presidential spokesman, was quoted as saying by Philippine media.

The Catholic Church, to which more than 80 percent of Filipinos belong, has earned the ire of Duterte after bishops criticised the spate of killings linked to the president’s narcotics crackdown.

More than 7,600 people have been killed since Duterte launched his anti-drugs campaign seven months ago, more than 2,500 in what police say were armed clashes during raids and sting operations.

Both the government and police have strenuously denied that extrajudicial killings have taken place.