Tag: InternationalNews

{More than 4,000 fighters converge on ancient city, forcing government troops to retreat south in reversal of fortunes.}

ISIL has recaptured the Syrian city of Palmyra after thousands of its fighters launched a multi-pronged assault on the ancient city, according to reports.

The Russian Monitoring Centre in Syria said on Sunday that ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, had drawn on “significant forces” from its strongholds in nearby Raqqa and Deir Az-zor, with more than 4,000 fighters, backed by tanks, attacking the city.

Russia, Syria’s ally, had launched a flurry of air strikes overnight that reportedly killed 300 ISIL fighters and forced the group to retreat.

However, later on Sunday, ISIL, also known as ISIS, claimed to be in full control of Palmyra via Amaq, a news agency that supports the group, with government troops forced to retreat to the south of the city.

Talal al-Barazi, the governor of Homs, confirmed to Syrian state TV that ISIL had captured Palmyra, adding that the army was using all of its means to regain control.

ISIL captured Palmyra, also known as Tadmur, in May last year, before losing the city 10 months later to much international fanfare.

During that time, it destroyed some ancient sites and artefacts while using others to stage mass executions.

{{String of defeats}}

ISIL also destroyed the infamous Tadmur prison, where thousands of government opponents were reported to have been tortured.

ISIL has suffered a string of defeats in both Syria and Iraq in recent months, losing several towns and cities it had captured in 2014.

According to defence analysts at the think tank IHS Jane, ISIL lost about 12 percent of its territory in 2016, and about 14 percent in 2015.

{US State Department confirms Kerry and Lavrov met but no agreement on ceasefire or civilian evacuation was reached.}

Russia and the United States will continue talks on Aleppo and evacuation of civilians after the US secretary of state and his Russian counterpart discussed the situation in the war-torn Syrian city.

Aleppo has been divided between government-controlled neighbourhoods in the city’s west and rebel-held areas in the east since 2012.

The Syrian government and its allied forces now control at least three-quarters of the east because of a massive military assault on the besieged area.

Earlier on Thursday, Russian media quoted Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying the Syrian army had halted its attacks on Aleppo to allow for the evacuation of civilians, but there was no confirmation from the UN or the Syrian government.

John Kerry and Lavrov held brief meetings on Wednesday and Thursday on the sidelines of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference in Hamburg.

“They [John Kerry and Lavrov] agreed to continue discussions about establishing a framework for a ceasefire that will allow the delivery of aid, desperately needed humanitarian aid, as well as the safe departure of those who wish to leave the city,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told a briefing.

On Wednesday, government forces scored an important victory when the rebels retreated from the Old City, the historic heart of Aleppo.

They extended their advances later in the day, seizing the Bab al-Nayrab, Al-Maadi and Salhin neighbourhoods, according to Syrian state media.

“It’s true that Aleppo will be a win for us, but let’s be realistic – it won’t mean the end of the war in Syria,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the al-Watan newspaper. “But it will be a huge step towards this end.”

While rebels have vowed to continue fighting, the battle is complicated by tens of thousands of fearful civilians trapped in the remaining portions of the rebel-held east.

And as winter sets in, siege conditions are increasingly desperate, exacerbated by increasing numbers of displaced residents and food and water shortages.

Brita Haji Hassan, president of the Aleppo local council, said on Thursday more than 800 people have been killed and 3,000-3,500 wounded in war-devastated eastern Aleppo in the past 26 days.

“Today 150,000 people are threatened with extermination. We are calling for a halt to the bombing and guarantees of safe passage of all,” Hassan said during a trip to Geneva.

Nearly 150 civilians, most disabled or in need of medical care, were evacuated overnight from a hospital in Aleppo’s Old City, the first major evacuation from the eastern sector, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

Among those evacuated from Dar al-Safaa hospital in the Old City – taken over by Syrian government forces on Tuesday – 118 patients were taken to three hospitals in the west of Aleppo and 30 people were taken to shelters, also in the west of the city, the ICRC said in a statement.

The evacuation was conducted jointly with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, it added.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek said: “The people were basically trapped there [in recent days].”

“The fighting kind of slowed down starting from yesterday afternoon,” he continued, adding “it was too dangerous” to carry out an evacuation earlier.

“It’s first and utmost about the safety of those people [being evacuated] and our priority is to ensure that they will be helped … and safely transported to a safer place.”

Since it began in March 2011, the war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless, and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

Assad has ruled out the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire with rebel forces.

{Joint List promises to sue PM over “incitement” against Palestinians during fires, but lawyers say plan is not feasible.}

Members of the Joint List, a predominantly Arab electoral coalition in the Israeli parliament, have vowed to sue Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “incitement” against Palestinian citizens of Israel during the recent large-scale fires that engulfed Israel and the occupied West Bank.

“They [Israeli officials] called it a wave of Palestinian terror while they were quiet about the thousands of Israelis inciting against Arabs and calling for their death,” Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, told Al Jazeera.

Last week, Netanyahu suggested that the fires were started deliberately and promised to punish any person guilty of arson in a string of threats made publicly. He said those responsible would be treated as “terrorists” – a term usually reserved by Israeli officials to refer to Palestinian attackers – and said he would revoke their citizenship.

Among several other officials who fuelled suspicions, Education Minister Naftali Bennett said: “There is no ‘wave of accidental fires’. There is a wave of nationalistic terror …” in a Hebrew-language tweet. “Only those to whom the country does not belong are capable of burning it,” he said in another tweet.

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s public security minister, also chimed in, calling for the demolition of the home of any person found guilty of arson – a frequent sanction used by Israel against Palestinians.

“This incitement is very dangerous. It could cause Israelis to go out and attack Arabs [Palestinians] as acts of revenge,” Odeh continued.

The more than 1,700 fires began ripping through the country close to two weeks ago, with dozens taking place in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank. Palestinian firefighters were sent to help Israeli crews put out the flames in Haifa and Jerusalem.

Forty Palestinians – both citizens of Israel and others in the occupied West Bank – were detained and investigated following the fires, Israeli police told Al Jazeera. “Of the 40, 24 are still being questioned,” said Micky Rosenfeld, Israeli police spokesman.

While three Palestinians in Israel have reportedly been arrested over some of the smaller fires, the cause of the major fires in Haifa’s Carmel forests has not been determined.

“The Palestinians who were arrested were only burning the garbage in their towns to get rid of its smell. But no one has been charged with starting the big fires in Carmel,” Odeh said.

“Even if they find one or two or three people that were guilty of arson, we declare that we are against such acts. We even ask that they be punished. But my question is how can Israeli officials turn this into collective accusations against all Palestinians in Israel?”

Approximately 1.7 million Palestinians – Muslims, Christians, and Druze – live inside Israel and carry Israeli citizenship. They face institutionalised racism and discrimination in a state that prizes Jews over non-Jews by law.

The Joint List has appealed to the Attorney General of Israel, Avichai Mandelblit, to open a criminal investigation in to Netanyahu’s statements. Israel has a law against incitement to violence, but Mandelblit is required to review such matters on a case-by-case basis.

Odeh says that if the attorney general decides against opening an investigation, they will take him [Mandelblit] to the High Court of Israel. If all efforts to put Netanyahu on trial inside Israel prove ineffective, they will appeal to the international community, he said. “Netanyahu is someone who systematically incites against us. We have two goals: To officially classify him as an inciter, and for us to gain more legitimacy here in Israel.”

“While he constantly makes such comments, we want to make him think twice about saying the things he does in the future.”

But the options to charge Netanyahu both in Israel and internationally, are limited and grim, legal academics and lawyers say. They believe the Joint Lists’s threats are empty, designed to pacify the anger of Palestinians in Israel.

“There is no chance that Mandelblit will open an investigation against Netanyahu because, if he did, that would mean that we [Palestinian citizens of Israel] could be filing lawsuits against every aspect of the Zionist foundation of the country,” Haifa-based lawyer, Jehad Abu Raya, told Al Jazeera.

“It is not just incitement we are facing – there are plenty of other racist crimes that the state carries out against us, but we are not able to seek justice through their courts, since they are built on Zionist thinking.”

Abu Raya says the Joint List “knows it will not be able to achieve anything locally”, and believes it would be wiser to prosecute Israel and Netanyahu in international courts.

Munir Nuseibah, a professor of law at al-Quds University, says the plot is not feasible – even on the international level. “None of the international courts have jurisdiction over Israel.

The International Criminal Court for example only has jurisdiction over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza, and it can only prosecute individuals who are accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide,” Nuseibah told Al Jazeera.

“Since the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Israel, then it cannot look into cases therein without a United Nations Security Council referral – which will never happen to Israel,” due to its political impunity on the international level.

The crime of “incitement” says Nuseibah, is too minor for international courts to consider. “Should the Palestinians want to take Netanyahu to ICC, they should really choose the case carefully.”

{Desmond fought racial segregation in the 1940s after refusing to give up a seat in a “whites only” section of a cinema.}

Toronto, Canada – A black civil rights leader who led a struggle against anti-black segregation and racism in Canada in the 1940s will be the first Canadian woman to figure on a banknote.

Viola Desmond will appear on the Canadian $10 bill – replacing the nation’s first prime minister John A Macdonald who will be moved to a higher bill – when new banknotes go into circulation in 2018, Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced on Thursday morning.

A successful businesswoman from a middle-class family, Desmond is best known for refusing to give up her seat in the “whites only” section of a cinema in Canada’s eastern province of Nova Scotia in 1946.

She was eventually dragged out of the segregated cinema by police, arrested, held in prison overnight, and forced to pay a fine, all for refusing to move to the upstairs balcony reserved for black people.

She was criminally charged with not paying a small tax that would normally apply on a downstairs ticket. But instead of letting the matter rest, Desmond decided to fight her conviction in court.

“Viola inspires us … today as she inspired people years ago,” said her sister Wanda Robson, who attended the announcement. “I’m so proud, I’m almost in tears.”

Her case was the first known legal challenge by a black woman against segregation laws in Canada.

Desmond, who died in 1965, had the support of local black community leaders and the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, among others.

In 2010, she received a posthumous pardon from the province of Nova Scotia.

“I just think this is great. It’s very inspiring. I am inspired, as a black Canadian woman,” said Afua Cooper, the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, told Al Jazeera.

“I think it’s about time Canada recognises its black citizens, people who have suffered,” added Cooper, who is also the founder and chair of the Black Canadian Studies Association.

While she is often compared to Rosa Parks – the civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat at the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 – Cooper said Desmond’s case should be viewed within its Canadian context.

“Canada has its own homegrown racism, anti-black racism, and anti-African racism that it has to deal with without comparing it to the US. We live here. We don’t live in America. Desmond lived in Canada,” she said.

Earlier this year, the Bank of Canada launched an open call to nominate iconic Canadian women to appear on the new banknote. After receiving 26,000 submissions, the bank narrowed the list down to 461 women, and five eventually made the shortlist.

OPINION: Justice for Canada’s indigenous women

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Desmond as a ” businesswoman, community leader, and courageous fighter against racism”, and said putting her on the new bill was “a fantastic choice”.

By and large, most Canadians still do not know much about Desmond’s story. However, having Desmond on the new note is an important step to acknowledging what happened, Cooper said.

“It’s a recognition, it’s an acknowledgement and she deserves it so much because she was such a fantastic woman, and such a hard worker, and for her to be dealt that hand was so unfair.”

{Police say civilian was killed by a stray live round in Arwani village during protests that followed a gun battle.}

At least one civilian was killed and dozens of others wounded during protests in Indian-administered Kashmir that erupted after a gun battle between fighters and security forces.

Police said the firefight on Thursday started after Indian soldiers and police cordoned off the southern Arwani village, and gunmen hiding there opened fire in an attempt to break through the siege.

As the shootout raged, thousands of people from neighbouring villages ignored government orders to stay away and marched to Arwani in an attempt to help the trapped fighters escape.

A police officer said protesters tried to storm the site of the gun battle, leading to fierce clashes at several places around the village.

Witnesses said security forces fired live rounds, shotgun pellets, and tear gas to disperse the rock-throwing protesters, killing a young man and wounding at least 40 others.

A police statement said the man died after being hit by a stray bullet. One injured civilian was in critical condition.

Clashes were also reported in several other areas of southern Kashmir in a show of solidarity with rebels who have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989.

Earlier on Thursday, authorities blocked mobile and internet services in some areas of southern Kashmir to stop activists from organising anti-India protests.

The Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947, but is claimed in full by both.

Attacks against Indian security forces have increased in recent months, although raids in the Hindu-majority Jammu area of the state are less common.

Indian and Pakistani cross-border firing along the heavily militarised Line of Control has intensified as tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours has risen.

{{Rise in tension}}

Kashmir has been gripped by protests since security forces killed a popular separatist leader in July. A crackdown in response to the protests has paralysed much of the region.

Indian security forces have also been accused of blocking medical treatment for wounded protesters in the disputed region by holding up ambulances and harassing hospitalised patients.

Physicians for Human Rights said not only did police and paramilitary forces use excessive force during months of unrest, they also hindered people from seeking medical attention, increasing the likelihood of permanent injuries and deaths.

“Such delays in care are violations of the long-standing protections afforded to medical workers and facilities in times of conflict and civil unrest,” said Widney Brown from the New York-headquartered advocacy group.

“What’s more, the doctors we interviewed said police were present in their hospitals, intimidating patients, and monitoring those being admitted.”

{Syrian president rejects opposition ceasefire offer as his army tightens the noose on rebel-held part of the key city.}

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said a victory for his army in the second city of Aleppo would be a “huge step” towards ending the country’s devastating five-year civil war.

Defeating rebels in Aleppo, however, would not put an end to Syria’s conflict, Assad said in an interview with Syrian daily Al-Watan to be published on Thursday, an early copy of which was seen by AFP news agency.

“It’s true that Aleppo will be a win for us, but let’s be realistic – it won’t mean the end of the war in Syria,” Assad said. “But it will be a huge step towards this end.”

Since it began in March 2011, the war in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless, and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

Government forces scored an important victory on Wednesday when the rebels retreated from the Old City, the historic heart of Aleppo.

They extended their advances later in the day, seizing the Bab al-Nayrab, Al-Maadi and Salhin neighbourhoods, according to state media.

More neighbourhoods were expected to fall soon, but rebels were fighting ferociously.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a first responder group also known as the White Helmets, said air strikes and shelling on Wednesday killed 61 people in what’s left of the rebel-held east of the city.

Syria state television reported late on Wednesday that rebel shelling killed 14 civilians and wounded 70 others, some critically, targeting government-held districts in west Aleppo.

Rebels ‘fiercely resisting’ in Aleppo as army closes in

In a blistering, three-week offensive, Syrian forces have seized about 80 percent of east Aleppo, a stronghold for rebel groups since 2012.

Increasingly cornered in a pocket of territory in the city’s southeast, opposition factions on Wednesday called for an “immediate five-day humanitarian ceasefire”.

When asked about the possibility of a truce in Aleppo, Assad said: “It’s practically non-existent, of course.”

Assad told Al-Watan: “The Americans, in particular, are insisting on demanding a truce, because their terrorist agents are now in a difficult situation.”

He said a rebel loss in Aleppo “will mean the transformation of the course of the war across Syria”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Hamburg late on Wednesday. An American official said they probably discussed safe passage for rebels out of Aleppo.

“The Russians want the fighters out and they [the Americans] are ready to coordinate over that,” an official with an Aleppo rebel group, who declined to be named, told Reuters news agency.

While rebels say they could fend off the offensive for some time to come, the fighting is complicated by tens of thousands of fearful civilians trapped in the rebel-held east, many related to the fighters, the official said.

“The civilian burden is very heavy, in a small area.”

As winter sets in, siege conditions are increasingly desperate, exacerbated by increasing numbers of displaced residents and food and water shortages.

A UN official said about 31,500 people from east Aleppo have been displaced around the entire city over the past week, with hundreds more seen on the move on Wednesday.

With hospitals, clinics, water and food cut off, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called the situation was “heart-breaking”.

Sonia Khush, Save the Children Syria director, said tens of thousands of children in Aleppo have become “sitting targets”.

“It defies belief that after nearly six years of suffering through this war, the international community is still willing to stand by as civilians are bombed with seeming impunity,” she added.

{Yunus’ family and micro-credit bank investigated for tax irregularities in case some see as politically motivated.}

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Authorities have launched a new investigation into the financial affairs of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus, his family, and the micro-credit agency Grameen Bank that he founded.

Last week, the Central Investigation Cell of the National Bureau of Revenue sent notices to banks in Bangladesh requiring them to provide information within seven days about any accounts, loans, or other financial instruments held in the last seven years either by Yunus, his wife, the Yunus family trust, or Grameen Bank.

The notices, seen by Al Jazeera, were sent out a week after a tax commissioner had written to Yunus informing him the NBR had also decided to audit the Nobel laureate’s personal tax return for the current financial year, and asking for documentation to “verify” his income and expenditure.

Sabbir Osmani, media spokesperson of the Yunus Centre, said Yunus was “not in a position to comment” on the NBR notices sent to the banks.

In relation to the information sought about Yunus’s own tax return, Osmani said at the time Yunus had lodged it he provided all the information now requested by tax authorities.

“Professor Yunus has always provided all information related to his taxes in a timely manner,” Osmani said.

It was not the first time the NBR has shown an interest in Yunus’ financial affairs.

In 2015, NBR filed a court case against Yunus for allegedly failing to pay $1.5m in tax – an allegation the Nobel Peace Prize winner called “baseless”. The case was subsequently stayed by the High Court.

The latest inquiry is seen by some observers as a possible new step in the ruling Awami League party’s ongoing feud with Yunus, which was initially triggered by his attempt in 2007 to establish a rival political party.

“The NBR has jurisdiction to make these kind of inquiries and if they are done to see if there is any tax evasion or irregularity, that is a good practice,” said Dr Iftekharuzzaman, head of the Bangladesh chapter of Transparency International.

Bangladesh Grameen Bank customers fear government takeover
“But if it is politically motivated, to victimise a person, then it is a cause of concern. In the case of Yunus, his taxes have reportedly already been scrutinised in earlier years, including investigations into his accounts and those of Grameen bank. And if this new inquiry is related to anything other than tax, then it is a matter of apprehension.”

The campaign against the lauded economist started six years ago in November 2010, when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, claimed Yunus was “sucking blood from the poor in the name of poverty alleviation”.

In the following years, government authorities removed Yunus as managing director of Grameen Bank, filed a criminal case against him for food adulteration, and initiated investigations into the bank and its sister companies.

The prime minister has also accused him of lobbying the World Bank to stop its $3b financing of the Padma bridge, and this year said “the conspirators” seeking to block the grant “will be prosecuted”.

READ MORE: Bangladesh accused of ‘kneecapping opposition members’

The prime minister’s media adviser, Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, denied the new NBR inquiries involved any kind of harassment.

“These letters are just a question of a financial institution getting financial information which can happen to any citizen, including ministers and businessman,” Chowdhury said.

“I do not think that this should be treated as new form of harassment. Yunus is a respected person and the government has not filed any case against him, and there is no question of harassment by the government.”

The NBR letters were sent a couple of weeks after US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a strong supporter of Yunus when she was secretary of state, lost the US election.

In a letter to president-elect Donald Trump, the Bangladeshi prime minister said he had shown “extraordinary leadership [in] serving the American people and also the global humanity”.

{Seven locations raided after Al Jazeera documentary on alleged slavery at car washes prompted police action.}

British police have arrested three people in pre-dawn raids as part of an operation against a suspected organised slavery ring in the southern county of Kent.

Wednesday’s raids were carried out simultaneously at seven different properties in Canterbury and Maidstone after an investigation prompted by an Al Jazeera documentary Britain’s Modern Slave Trade.

The operation targeted car washes and residential addresses and resulted in the arrests of two men, aged 32 and 36, and a 21-year-old woman.

The documentary, broadcast earlier this year, contained undercover footage spread over several months of conditions at a car wash.

In a statement published after the raid, Kent Police said they were working on identifying potential victims and what crimes may have been committed.

Police were “speaking to around 15 potential victims to identify if offences of trafficking, modern slavery or money laundering have been committed”, the statement read.

Superintendent Eddie Fox from Kent Police said the operation was the culmination of months of investigative work.

“We have worked closely with our partners at the NCA (National Crime Agency) and Immigration Enforcement as part of this operation and would ask anyone who may have information that may prove useful to this investigation, to come forward,” Fox said.

Fox confirmed to local news website Kent Online that the Al Jazeera documentary had prompted the police’s investigation.

“We hadn’t known about this before the documentary – that started the investigation,” he told the outlet.

More than 80 officers were involved in the raids, Kent Online reported.

Al Jazeera’s Director of Investigative Journalism Clayton Swisher said around 20 people were freed from captivity in the UK following the airing of the documentary.

“Beyond the headlines this film created, possibly 20 slaves have now been freed from their captivity in Britain and are in safe custody,” he said.

“As journalists, we feel incredibly gratified, and we wish to thank British law-enforcement officials for treating these allegations with the utmost seriousness. It seems that we only scratched the surface on the scale of what was taking place.”