Tag: InternationalNews

{While Turkey has blamed the Gulen network for the assassination, Moscow has warned against “rushing to conclusions”.
}

President Vladimir Putin bade farewell to Andrey Karlov at a packed memorial ceremony in Moscow for the diplomat who was assassinated in Turkey by an off-duty policeman.

Dozens of colleagues and relatives attended the ceremony on Thursday for Karlov, the ambassador to Turkey whose death was labelled by Moscow as an “act of terror”, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the perpetrator was a member of Fethullah Gulen’s group behind the aborted July coup.

Putin laid red roses at the foot of Karlov’s coffin and spoke with his relatives, but left the ceremony without making a statement.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praised the deceased envoy, who was 62, and paid his respects to his mother Maria, widow Marina and son Gennady, also a diplomat, as the ambassador’s body lay in state in a flower-decked coffin.

“We are saying goodbye to our friend Andrey Karlov who became a victim of a malicious, vile terrorist attack while in the line of duty,” Lavrov said at the ceremony held in the foreign ministry headquarters.

“We will never forget Andrey.”

A religious service was later held at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour led by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill before the ambassador was laid to rest at a cemetery.

In terrifying scenes captured on photo and video, 22-year-old policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas shot the ambassador nine times in the back on Monday while he was delivering a speech at an exhibition of photographs of Russia in Ankara.

The ambassador fell to the ground and later died in hospital.

The assailant, who was off-duty and managed to circumvent the metal detectors by flashing his police credentials, shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) and “Don’t forget Aleppo” after targeting Karlov and was himself killed in a subsequent shootout with Turkish guards.

Killer’s relatives released

Altintas had no prior criminal record but Turkish authorities have moved to link the murder with Gulen, a former Erdogan ally now living in self-imposed exile in the United States, whom Ankara previously blamed for orchestrating the July coup.

Pro-government press had reported that police discovered pro-Gulen literature belonging to Altintas.

Erdogan went as far as to say the killer “was a member of the FETO [Fethullah Terror Organisation]”.

Gulen has denied involvement in both the coup and the envoy’s assassination, and Moscow has also refrained from assigning blame. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned against “rushing to conclusions” before the investigation is complete.

A group of Russian investigators has been working on the probe in Turkey since Tuesday.

Turkish prosecutors on Thursday said they have released six relatives of Altintas who were detained for questioning in the wake of the attack.

Thirteen people were arrested in the murder probe and police were looking for 120 people, authorities said.

Russia has bestowed a prestigious Hero of Russia honour on Karlov posthumously.

{Turkish military announces loss of 14 soldiers in clashes around Al-Bab town where fighting has intensified.}

Clashes between Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and ISIL fighters have intensified around the northern Syrian town of Al-Bab, resulting in the deaths of 14 Turkish soldiers, the military’s highest single-day toll of its four-month campaign inside the country.

Wednesday’s battles, in which another 33 Turkish soldiers were wounded and 138 ISIL members were also killed, were some of the deadliest yet in Turkey’s Euphrates Shield operation in northern Syria, according to the army.

“The operation to control Al-Bab, which is being besieged under the Euphrates Shield Operation, is ongoing,” the army said in a statement.

The military had said earlier that rebel forces, which have been launching attacks on ISIL fighters in Al-Bab for weeks, had largely established control over the strategic area around the town’s hospital.

“Once this area has been seized, Daesh’s dominance of Al-Bab will to a large extent be broken,” it said in an earlier statement on Wednesday, using an Arabic acronym for the group.

{{Aleppo victory}}

ISIL was using suicide bombers and vehicle-borne explosives intensively, the Turkish military said.

Turkey’s military was pressing on with the operation after its foreign minister and his Russian and Iranian counterparts said in Moscow on Tuesday that they were ready to help broker a deal to end Syria’s almost six-year-old war.

The talks came as Syrian government forces neared their biggest victory in the conflict, closing in on the last rebel enclave in the city of Aleppo.

About 30 Turkish soldiers have been killed in the course of Euphrates Shield, which was launched to push ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, and a Kurdish militia away from Syria’s border with Turkey.

Turkish air strikes on Wednesday destroyed 67 ISIL targets, the military said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, reported fierce clashes at the southwestern edges of Al-Bab, with some rebel advances there.

It said that Turkish air strikes in the area had killed seven people in Al-Bab and that 15 Turkish-backed rebels had been killed in fighting on Wednesday.

The Euphrates Shield operation is largely focused on combating ISIL, but Turkey is also determined to prevent the Kurdish YPG fighters, which it sees as a hostile force, from linking cantons it controls along the border.

{General Assembly adopts resolution to establish team that will collect and preserve evidence of rights abuses in Syria.}

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to establish a special team to “collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence” as well as to prepare cases on war crimes and human rights abuses committed during the conflict in Syria.

The General Assembly adopted a Liechtenstein-drafted resolution to establish the independent team with 105 in favour, 15 against and 52 abstentions. The team will work in coordination with the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry.

Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador Christian Wenaweser told the General Assembly ahead of the vote: “We have postponed any meaningful action on accountability too often and for too long.”

He said inaction has sent “the signal that committing war crimes and crimes against humanity is a strategy that is condoned and has no consequences”.

The special team will “prepare files in order to facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings in accordance with international law standards, in national, regional or international courts or tribunals that have or may in the future have jurisdiction over these crimes”.

The UN resolution calls on all states, parties to the conflict, and civil society groups to provide any information and documentation to the team.

“The establishment of such a mechanism is a flagrant interference in the internal affairs of a UN member state,” Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari told the General Assembly before the vote.

Earlier this month, Ja’afari was found to have used a photo from Fallujah, Iraq, to support his claim that Syrian government troops were helping civilians in Aleppo.

Syrian allies Russia and Iran also spoke against the resolution.

The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria was established by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council in 2011 to investigate possible war crimes.

The Commission of Inquiry, which says it has a confidential list of suspects on all sides who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity, has repeatedly called for the UN Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.

Russia and China vetoed a bid by western powers to refer the conflict in Syria to The Hague-based court in 2014.

A crackdown by Assad on pro-democracy protesters in 2011 led to civil war and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) fighters have used the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq.

Half of Syria’s 22 million people have been uprooted and more than 400,000 killed.

{Police in Jakarta kill three allegedly planning a suicide attack over the Christmas and new year period.}

Indonesian police say three suspects who were planning a suicide bombing on Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve were killed when a gun battle erupted during a raid on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta.

It was the second imminent attack to be foiled in less than two weeks.

After Wednesday’s raid, police said the suspects – supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – had planned to stab officers at a traffic post and then detonate a “large, homemade” bomb as crowds gathered.

“The intention was for a suicide bomb,” national police spokesman Rikwanto, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, told a news conference.

“Every year, Christmas and new year events are the target of terrorists to carry out amaliyah,” Rikwanto said, using an Arabic term to describe suicide bombings in armed group circles.

Police said a total of five bombs were found at the house in the South Tangerang suburb.

Television footage showed a bomb squad officer wearing a blast-resistant suit entering the house as locals watched from behind a police line.

Rikwanto said one suspect was captured alive after the firefight.

The raid was the latest in a series over recent weeks that police say have disrupted bomb plots, raising concerns that homegrown attackers in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation are getting bolder in their attempts to engage in violence.

Police said earlier this week at least 14 people were being interrogated over suicide-bomb plots targeting the presidential palace in Jakarta and an undisclosed location on Java island.

Both involved a female suicide bomber.

President Joko Widodo commended security forces for preventing attacks and called on the public to be vigilant against the spread of “radicalism”.

Indonesia has suffered several major strikes over the years, the worst of which was the 2002 bombing on the holiday island of Bali that killed 202 people, many of them foreigners.

That attack led to Western help and funding for Indonesia to develop an elite counterterrorism unit, which has been effective in stamping out armed-group cells.

Authorities, however, now worry about a resurgence in violence inspired in part by the ISIL group.

A gun-and-bomb assault in the heart of Jakarta in January killed four people and was the first attack in Southeast Asia claimed by ISIL.

{Kremlin official says Andrey Karlov’s assassination a serious blow as Turkey focuses on possible links to Gulen network.}

Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has described the murder of Russia’s ambassador in Turkey as a serious blow to Turkey, according to Russian news media.

Dmitry Peskov, the Russian president’s spokesperson, has been further quoted as saying that Turkish authorities should not rush with any theories on who is behind the assassination of Andrey Karlov before the investigation produces results.

“This is certainly a blow to the country’s prestige,” Peskov was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the RIA news agency.

Karlov was killed on Monday evening at a photography exhibition in Ankara by Mevlut Mert Altintas of the Turkish capital’s riot-police squad. He was then killed in a police operation.

Peskov said Russia did not believe Altintas acted alone, but refused to explain the reasons for the suspicion.

“We should not rush with any theories before the investigators establish who were behind the assassination of our ambassador,” he said.

Officials from both Russia and Turkey had said after the murder that they would work for mutual relations not to be affected.

Russia has flown a team of 18 investigators and foreign ministry officials to Turkey to take part in the inquiry. Karlov’s body and his family have been returned to Russia.

A senior Turkish government official told Al Jazeera on Monday that Turkey was focusing on possible links to what officials call the Fethullah Terror Organisation (FETO).

{{Possible Gulen links}}

The network, led by self-exiled Turkish Muslim leader Fethullah Gulen, is accused by Turkey of orchestrating the July 22 failed coup, and is seen by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a terrorist organisation.

Gulen has denied the accusations.

A Turkish official said on Tuesday evening that Mevlet Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, spoke to John Kerry, US secretary of state, by phone and provided information on the assailant.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Kerry was told that both Turkey and Russia “know” that the network led by Gulen was behind the attack.

Turkey is pressing the US to extradite Gulen to Turkey to stand trial for his alleged role in the coup attempt.

During the phone call, Kerry raised concerns about “some of the rhetoric coming out of Turkey with respect to American involvement or support, tacit or otherwise, for this unspeakable assassination”, John Kirby, Kerry’s spokesperson, said.

“It is a ludicrous claim, absolutely false,” Kirby said.

Much of Turkey’s media, both broadcast and print, has reported claims that the assassin had links to the Gulen network, including reports of Gulen literature being found in his home, and of him having studied at a Gulen-run school.

For his part, Erdogan, speaking in Ankara on Wednesday, said: “There is no need to make a secret out of the fact [Altintas] was a member of FETO.”

He said the assassination showed Gulen supporters were still present within the security forces.

“I have to say this very clearly – this dirty organisation is still within the military, still within the police,” Erdogan said.

“We of course are continuing and will continue to carry out purges. We will do this with sensitivity.”

{About 70 injured in the huge explosion – the third in a decade to hit the popular San Pablito marketplace in Tultepec.}

A massive explosion decimated a fireworks market outside the Mexican capital, leaving it a charred wasteland and killing at least 31 people with dozens more injured.

Television images showed a flurry of pyrotechnics exploding on Tuesday into the early afternoon sky as a giant plume of smoke rose above the market. Fireworks detonated in a peal of clattering bursts reminiscent of a war zone.

The technicolour blast was the third such explosion in just over a decade to hit the popular San Pablito marketplace in Tultepec, about 32km north of Mexico City. The detonations struck in the run-up to the busy Christmas holiday when many Mexicans stock up on fireworks.

“People were crying everywhere and desperately running in all directions,” said 20-year-old witness Cesar Carmona.

Some 13 children suffered burns to more than 90 percent of their bodies and were being sent to the US city of Galveston in Texas for treatment, said Eruviel Avila, the governor of the State of Mexico, where Tultepec is located.

The state’s top prosecutor raised the death toll late on Tuesday to 31, most of whom died at the market.

Avila also vowed to find and punish those responsible for the blast and provide economic assistance to those who had lost their livelihoods.

Isidro Sanchez, the head of Tultepec emergency services, said a lack of sufficient safety measures was the likely cause of the blast.

The federal police said it had sent a forensic team to investigate the incident, adding at least 70 people had been injured.

Videos from the scene showed people frantically fleeing, while aerial footage revealed blackened stalls and a flattened tangle of metal and wood.

More than 80 percent of the 300 stalls at the market were destroyed by the explosion, said state official Jose Manzur. Local media reported there were 300 tonnes of fireworks at the market at the time of the explosion.

Federico Juarez was present when the first explosion rocked the market. “Everyone started running to escape as bricks and pieces of concrete fell everywhere,” he said.

The blast is the latest in a long-running series of fatal explosions and industrial accidents that have roiled Mexico’s oil, gas and petrochemical industries.

Al Jazeera’s Monica Villamizar, reporting from Mexico City, said the market was packed with families doing their fireworks shopping ahead of the holiday period.

“It looks completely devastated. People are going through the debris, hoping to find people who survived, but obviously there is very little hope at this point,” she said.

Villamizar noted Mexico’s Institute of Polytechnics had declared San Pablito’s fireworks market the safest in Latin America. “There’s a lot of explaining from authorities as to what exactly went on,” she said.

A blast struck the Tultepec fireworks market in September 2005 just before independence day celebrations, injuring many people. Almost a year later, another detonation gutted the area again.

“I offer my condolences to the relatives of those who lost their lives in this accident and my wishes for a speedy recovery for the injured,” President Enrique Pena Nieto said in a tweet.

Pena Nieto is the former governor of the State of Mexico, the country’s largest which surrounds the capital.

{Russian and Turkish ministers expect operation to be complete by the week’s end as Syria agrees to sending UN observers.}

The evacuation of Aleppo should take no more than two days, Russian and Turkish foreign ministers say, following a rare breakthrough and show of unity by world powers over Syria that allows UN monitors to observe the operation.

A total 37,500 evacuees have so far left the war-torn Syrian city and the goal is to complete all evacuations by Wednesday, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish foreign minister, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

The evacuation of of Aleppo would be complete in a maximum of two days, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said.

Lavrov said that Russia, Iran and Turkey had used their influence to make the evacuation happen and that the 19-member International Syria Support Group including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the US had not been able to enforce its decisions.

Cavusoglu travelled to Moscow after holding talks with his Russian and Iranian counterparts to discuss the future of Syria.

At a meeting on Tuesday in the Russian capital, Turkey, Iran and Russia agreed to guarantee the Syria peace talks and backed expanding a ceasefire in the country, laying down their claim as the main power brokers in the conflict.

“Iran, Russia and Turkey are ready to assist in preparing the agreement in the making between the Syrian government and the opposition and to become its guarantor,” Lavrov said, citing a joint statement.

“The ministers agree with the importance of widening the ceasefire, of free access for humanitarian aid and movement of civilians on Syrian territory.”

Cavusoglu said in comments translated into Russian that the ceasefire should cover the entire Syrian territory but exclude the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly known as al-Nusra Front, which was linked to al-Qaeda).

{{UN observers}}

For its part, the Syrian government has authorised the UN to send an additional 20 expatriate staff to east Aleppo, where they will monitor the ongoing evacuation of thousands of people, according to a UN spokesperson.

Jens Laerke, speaking in Geneva, said: “This will almost triple the number of international staff currently deployed to Aleppod.

“The task is to monitor and observe the evacuations.”

The UN Security Council on Monday unanimously called for UN officials and others to observe the evacuation and monitor the safety of civilians.

The UN staff, already in its Damascus office, will travel to Aleppo “as soon as possible”, Laerke said.

Aleppo, Syria’s second city, was once a cultural and economic hub before being split between government and rebel control in late 2012.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Reyhanli in neighbouring Turkey, said there were concerns about “the kind of access” UN monitors would be granted once they are in Syria.

“There are reports of harassment by some of the Iranian-backed militias in that area,” he said.

“And of course … there are concerns about how rebel forces may cooperate.”

{{Arrivals in Idlib}}

According to UN aid partners, the number of people who had arrived in Idlib – where Aleppo evacuees are being taken – was around 19,000, the UN’s Laerke said.

“We do not have independent UN access to the buses, so we are not able to enter and access people; that does not take away from the protection concerns that we do have and continue to have,” he said.

About 43 unwell people were medically evacuated from east Aleppo on Monday, bringing the total to 301 since last Thursday, according to Tarik Jasarevic, World Health Organization’s spokesman.

“Out of those 301, 93 patients were referred to hospitals in Turkey, others are in hospitals in [opposition-held] Idlib and western rural Aleppo.”

The vast majority have trauma injuries. The sick and wounded include 67 children, Jasarevic said.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said there was no sign of a heavy influx of people fleeing Aleppo into neighbouring Turkey.

“All the borders of Syria are very tightly managed at present. People, we understand, are being allowed to cross into Turkey when they come. But I think this is speculative as we are not yet seeing people move across in relation to Aleppo,” Adrian Edwards, UNHCR spokesperson, said.

Laerke said some 750 people have been evacuated from Foua and Kefraya, two Shia-majority villages besieged for months by rebel groups.

Syria’s conflict started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule in March 2011, but it quickly turned into a full-scale civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands.

Attempts to negotiate a lasting ceasefire have failed time and again.

{Obama made the move under an obscure provision of a 1953 law with no way for future presidents to roll it back.}

The United States and Canada will freeze future oil and gas drilling in their Arctic waters, a move applauded by environmentalists, but denounced by the energy industry.

The White House said on Tuesday that US President Barack Obama is making most of the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea, bordering Alaska, off limits to offshore oil and gas leasing.

Canada, meanwhile, will make all Canadian Arctic waters no-go zones for energy drilling, but will review the decision every five years.

“These actions, and Canada’s parallel actions, protect a sensitive and unique ecosystem that is unlike any other region on Earth,” Obama said in a statement.

He noted, even with high safety standards, the risks of an oil spill in the fragile and remote environment were too high.

Obama made the move under a provision of a 1953 law that allows the president to remove areas from offshore drilling, and there is no provision for future presidents to roll it back, US officials said.

{{‘Unique and vibrant ecosystems’}}

The move aims to protect the “incredibly unique and vibrant ecosystems,” the interests of indigenous people, and to minimise oil spill risks.

Obama will also ban new oil and gas leases along the US Atlantic coast from New England to Virginia.

Sally Jewell, interior secretary, said the move would help support fishing and protect the marine resources of Alaska native communities.

She said it recognised the vulnerable marine environments in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, their irreplaceable ecological value, and “the unique role that commercial fishing and subsistence use plays in the regions’ economies and cultures”.

Greenpeace praised Obama and said he should do more to stop any new fossil fuel infrastructure that would lock in the worst effects of climate change.

“We know now, more clearly than ever, that a Trump presidency will mean more fossil fuel corruption and less governmental protection for people and the planet, so decisions like these are crucial,” spokesman Travis Nichols said.

{{‘Significant steps’ }}

David Miller, president and chief executive of World Wildlife Fund – Canada, called the actions “significant steps toward the protection of the Arctic’s unique ecosystems”.

He named ice-dependent wildlife – including polar bears, narwhal, seals, walrus, and beluga and bowhead whales – as some of the animals that will benefit.

The moves do not affect existing leases, and exclude one area near shore in the Beaufort Sea that is adjacent to existing leases, a senior US official said.

The decision should have minimal impact on US industry because little drilling is going on in the region and development is expensive and would take years, the official said.

But the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said the move was short-sighted and endangered national security.

He claimed there is “no such thing as a permanent ban” and said the industry would work with the new administration to reverse it.

The move seems designed to tie the hands of Obama’s right-wing successor Donald Trump, who has named several officials close to the oil industry to his cabinet.

Trump picked a renowned climate change denier and fossil fuel industry defender last week as his top environmental official.

{Christian leftist author Nahed Hattar was killed in September outside an Amman court as he went on trial for blasphemy.}

A Jordanian judge has sentenced to death by hanging the man accused of killing Nahed Hattar, a Christian writer, on the steps of a court earlier this year.

Riyad Ismail was handed the death penalty on Tuesday, state news agency Petra said.

Ismail shot Hattar at close range on September 25 as the writer was about to to enter a court in the Jordanian capital Amman. He was hit by three bullets.

Hattar, 56, had been on trial for blasphemy for sharing a cartoon on social media that was deemed offensive to Islam by many Jordanian Muslims.

Ismail, a 49-year-old computer engineer, worked for the education ministry.

He was arrested at the scene and charged with premeditated murder, terrorism and possession of an illegal firearm.

Ismail appeared on Tuesday before the military court bearded, handcuffed and wearing a brown prison uniform.

Judge Ziad al-Edwan said Ismail was sentenced “for having carried out deadly terrorist act”.

The court also sentenced the man who sold Ismail the gun and the man who introduced him to the weapons merchant, each to one year in jail.

Hattar, a leftist, had been arrested on August 13 after posting a cartoon on Facebook under the title “God of Daesh”, which uses the Arabic abbreviation for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

He was later released on bail.

He explained on Facebook that the cartoon made fun of “terrorists and how they imagine God and heaven, and does not insult God in anyway”.

His murder, which King Abdullah II branded a “heinous crime”, prompted protests in Jordan, with demonstrators calling on the government to resign.