Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{US official says President Trump’s invitation to Rodrigo Duterte to the White House is mostly about North Korea.}

A top aide on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s invitation to his Philippine counterpart to visit Washington, saying the need to rally Asian allies over North Korea overshadowed concerns about President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.

Duterte had in the past regularly hit out at the United States, the Philippines’ one-time colonial ruler, for perceived hypocrisy over human rights. Last year he branded then-US President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” for criticising his war on drugs.

On Saturday, the White House said in a statement that Trump had invited Duterte during a “friendly” call in which the leaders discussed the Philippine president’s fight against drugs and the two countries’ alliance.

The statement touched only lightly on Duterte’s controversial crackdown on crime, which has claimed thousands of lives and drawn international condemnation.

But when White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was asked on Sunday why Trump was “honouring” Duterte with the White House invitation, he told ABC News network, “I’m not so sure it’s a matter of honouring this president.

“The issues facing us, developing out of North Korea, are so serious that we need cooperation at some level with as many partners in the area as we can get,” Priebus said.

That way, he added, “if something does happen in North Korea, we have everyone in line backing up a plan of action that may need to be put together with our partners in the area”.

Later on Sunday, Trump also invited the prime ministers of Thailand and Singapore for official visits.

Deadly drug war

Duterte has spoken of loosening the long-standing alliance with the US as he looked to court China, whose push to control most of the disputed South China Sea has alarmed neighbours.

At one point Duterte suggested he may even move to abrogate a 2014 defence agreement that allows US access to five Philippine military camps.

He has walked back most of those threats but has proceeded with his efforts to align more closely with China.

The White House said Saturday the two leaders, both elected to office last year, had helped orient the US-Philippine relationship “in a very positive direction”.

The White House said Trump “enjoyed the conversation” with Duterte, and looked forward to attending the key US-ASEAN and East Asia summits in the Philippines in November.

Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella confirmed Trump’s invitation, although he gave no indication of when the visit would take place.

“The discussion that transpired between the presidents was warm, with President Trump expressing his understanding and appreciation of the challenges facing the Philippine president, especially on the matter of dangerous drugs,” Abella said in a statement.

Duterte has not been shy about his brutal campaign against drugs.

Philippines police have reported killing 2,724 people as part of the anti-drug campaign; authorities insist the shootings have been in self-defence.

Many thousands of others have been killed by shadowy vigilantes, according to rights groups.

A Philippine lawyer last week filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court accusing Duterte of mass murder, alleging his war on drugs had led to about 8,000 deaths.

Source:Al Jazeera

{The group of 36 Yazidi survivors was saved by Iraqi forces fighting to retake Mosul from ISIL.}

A group of 36 Yazidi survivors has been rescued in Iraq after three years of “slavery” under ISIL’s rule in northern Iraq, the United Nations said on Sunday.

The group of men, women, and children from the persecuted religious sect was freed by Iraqi forces fighting to retake Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, according to local media.

The women and girls have received lodging, clothing and medical and psychological assistance in Duhok – a Kurdish city north of Mosul, since Friday, Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said.

“What these women and girls have endured is unimaginable,” Grande said in a statement.

ISIL systematically killed, captured, and enslaved thousands of Yazidis in the summer of 2014 as they overran the Sinjar area, where many of the minority group lived. UN investigators have said that constitutes genocide.

The Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements from several Middle Eastern religions, were the most persecuted community under ISIL, which considers them devil-worshippers. As many as 1,500 Yazidi women and girls remain in captivity, the UN estimates.

After months of fighting to retake western Mosul, a senior Iraqi commander said on Sunday that he expects to dislodge ISIL from its de facto capital in the country some time next month.

The battle should be completed “in a maximum of three weeks”, the army’s chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Othman al-Ghanimi, was quoted as saying by state-run newspaper al-Sabah on Sunday.

A US-led international coalition is providing air-and-ground support for the offensive in Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, which fell to the hardcore fighters in June 2014.

ISIL has lost most of the city’s districts since the offensive began in October and is now surrounded in the northwestern districts.

Civilians have paid a heavy price, however.

The Pentagon said on Sunday that investigations conducted during the month of March revealed coalition air strikes killed 45 civilians, mostly in and around Mosul.

In a statement, the Pentagon called the deaths “unintentional”.

At least 362 civilians have been killed by coalition raids in Iraq and Syria since the start of the air campaign in 2014, according to the US defence department.

Activists and monitor groups put the number much higher, saying coalition air strikes have killed more than 3,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria since then.

The number of people displaced from Mosul since October is close to 400,000, about a fifth of Mosul’s population before its capture by ISIL.

The UN estimates that as many as 500,000 people remain in the area controlled by the fighters, 400,000 of whom are in the historic Old City centre with little food and water and no access to hospitals.

Fighters have dug in among the civilians, often launching deadly counterattacks to repel forces closing in on the Old City’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque, from where ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Iraqi forces estimate the number of ISIL members still in Mosul at 200 to 300, mostly foreigners, down from nearly 6,000 when the offensive started.

The number of fighters aligned against ISIL in Mosul exceeds 100,000.

Even if defeated in Mosul, ISIL will remain in control of vast swaths of land in the border area with Syria, where Baghdadi is believed to be hiding, according to Iraqi military sources.

Source:Al Jazeera

{USS Carl Vinson strike group carries out exercises with South Korean navy as North’s media warns ‘stop running wild’.}

South Korea and the United States wrapped up their annual large-scale military drills on Sunday but continued a separate joint naval exercise that has triggered the threat of nuclear war from North Korea.

The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group arrived in waters near the Korean Peninsula and began exercises with the South Korean navy late on Saturday. The South Korean navy declined to say when the exercises would be completed.

North Korea has threatened to sink the US armada.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been running sky-high for weeks, with signs the North might be preparing a sixth nuclear weapon test – and with Washington refusing to rule out a military strike in response.

The massive Foal Eagle military exercises – which the defence ministry in Seoul said ended as scheduled on Sunday – involved about 20,000 South Korean and 10,000 US troops. Another annual joint manoeuvre known as Key Resolve ended last month.

Both play out scenarios for a conflict with North Korea, but Seoul and Washington insist they are purely defensive in nature. Pyongyang says the drills are provocative plans for an invasion or a “decapitation strike” against the North Korean leadership.

A North Korean state-run newspaper on Sunday warned of “catastrophic consequences”, accusing the USS Carl Vinson strike force of rehearsing a “pre-emptive attack on the North” in a “special operation”.

“This has pushed the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula to an unpredictable dangerous phase,” said the state-run North Korean newspaper Minju Choson in a commentary.

“The enemies have to know that military threat and blackmail with the mobilisation of nuclear carriers and nuclear submarines cannot work on the DPRK,” it said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The US and the puppet group of traitors have to ponder over the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by their foolish military provocation – and stop running wild.”

US President Donald Trump has warned of a possible “major conflict” after Pyongyang carried out a series of failed missile tests, including one on Saturday.

North Korean ballistic missile tests are banned by the United Nations because they are seen as part of Pyongyang’s push for a nuclear-tipped weapon that can hit the US mainland.

Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will eventually develop better missiles, and “we can’t allow it to happen”.

In a taped interview broadcast on Sunday on the US network CBS, the president would not discuss the possibility of military action, saying: “It is a chess game. I just don’t want people to know what my thinking is.”

Trump will speak with the leaders of Singapore and Thailand on Sunday over the “potential for nuclear and massive destruction in Asia”, because of the situation with North Korea, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said.

“There is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what is happening in North Korea,” he said.

The US and South Korea started installing a missile defence system that is supposed to be partially operational within days.

The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system, or THAAD, is controversial in South Korea. Residents in the village of Seongj, where the missile system is being deployed, scuffled with police on Sunday.

Trump raised eyebrows in South Korea last week when he said would make Seoul pay $1bn for the missile system. His national security adviser, HR McMaster, said on Sunday the matter is subject to negotiation.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Attacks took place in July during final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing four security officers.}

Saudi Arabia has arrested 46 people suspected of belonging to a cell responsible for an attack in Medina outside of one of Islam’s holiest sites last year.

“Investigations revealed they were directly involved in the crime of targeting worshippers in the Prophet’s sacred mosque,” Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Mansour al-Turki told reporters on Sunday.

Turki said the group was also behind a suicide bombing near the US consulate in Jeddah in 2016. Both attacks took place in July during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The bombing outside Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in the western Saudi city of Medina killed four security officers, while two policemen were wounded in the attack in Jeddah.

Turki said 32 of those arrested were Saudis, while the 14 others were from Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan and Jordan.

The ministry previously identified the Medina bomber as a Saudi national and the Jeddah bomber as a Pakistani.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks, nor did the Interior Ministry blame a specific group.

In recent months, Saudi authorities have stepped up a nationwide clampdown on suspected attackers.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), based in Iraq and Syria, has carried out a series of bombings and shootings in Saudi Arabia since mid-2014 killing scores of people, mostly members of the Shia-Muslim minority and security services.

Source:Al Jazeera