Tag: InternationalNews

{New volunteer military unit formed by Syrian army as troops battle their way into rebel-held eastern Aleppo.}

Syria’s military announced it is forming a new commando force, calling on volunteers interested in “achieving the final victory against terrorism” to apply.

The announcement on Tuesday, which named the new force the Fifth Corps, didn’t specify where it would be deployed.

After nearly six years of combat, the Syrian conscription-based armed forces has become overstretched and has increasingly relied on its regional allies that have boosted its numbers and capabilities.

Iran announced on Tuesday its 1,000th troop fatality in Syria since the war started in 2011.

Syria’s army said it formed a new corps of volunteers to fight alongside its soldiers and allies against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

An army statement said the move came “in response to the rapid development of events, to support the successes of armed forces, and to meet people’s wishes to put an end to terrorist acts in the Syrian Arab Republic”.

The Fifth Attack Troops Corps of Volunteers will be made up of recruits over age 18 from across the country “not already eligible for military service or deserters”, it said. It was not immediately clear how many people would be involved.

Syria already conscripts its men at age 18 into the army. Before the war, service would last for two years but now many conscripts say they have served for several years, with no sign of being discharged.

Military analysts say the Syrian army’s pre-war numbers were about 300,000 personnel, but its current size after almost six years of conflict is not known.

Young men are known to desert the army, leave the country, or pay bribes to avoid being drafted.

Syria’s forces are bolstered by Iranian troops, Iran-backed militias, and fighters from Lebanon’s Shia-Muslim Hezbollah group, as well as Russian air power.

They are fighting against anti-Assad rebels and ISIL.

Also on Tuesday, the Syrian military urged rebels to pull out of east Aleppo and allow civilians to also leave, as it pressed an offensive to recapture the city’s opposition-held sector.

The army, which has besieged the east for months, also demanded that rebels distribute food to civilians, while calling on residents to cooperate with its advancing troops.

The military air-dropped leaflets with a picture of a green bus like those used in the past to transport civilians and rebels from areas retaken by the government.

“To those involved in carrying weapons, we stretch out our hand to you. Reserve your place before it is too late,” the leaflets read.

The picture showed the bus on a road marked “the path of salvation”.

At least 141 civilians, including 18 children, have been killed in a week of renewed bombardment on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo, which has devastated its hospitals, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

The Britain-based war monitor said it had documented hundreds of injuries as a result of Russian and Syrian air strikes and shelling by government forces.

The assault began last Tuesday after a weeks-long pause in air strikes and shelling inside east Aleppo, although battles and air strikes did continue along the city’s frontlines and in the surrounding countryside.

The Syrian Observatory said there were another 87 deaths of rebel fighters and people of unknown identity in the eastern sector.

It also documented 16 civilian deaths, including 10 children, and dozens of injuries as a result of rebel shelling of government-held west Aleppo.

{Two Qatari sisters attacked and robbed of $5.3m worth of goods in highway north of the French capital Paris.}

Two Qatari women were held up on a Paris highway and robbed of valuables worth more than five million euro ($5.3m) north of Paris, according to French police.

The women, in their 60s, had just left Le Bourget airport northeast of the capital on Monday when their chauffeur-driven Bentley was held up by masked men who sprayed them with tear gas, a police source told AFP news agency on Tuesday.

The robbers stole “everything in the vehicle: jewels, clothes, luggage”, the source said.

The French driver, who works for the women on a regular basis, reported the incident to police.

A police official told the Associated Press news agency the robbers were in a car which forced the Bentley off the highway and then to stop in an emergency zone.

The sisters’ names were not released.

Earlier this month, Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat and partner Cyrille Auxenfans were the targets of a robbery attempt, also involving tear gas, in their home in a wealthy area of Paris. The robbers fled empty-handed.

In 2014, a Saudi prince’s diplomatic convoy was ambushed in a heist similar to Monday’s one, as it headed to Le Bourget Airport, commonly used for private jets.

The attack on the Qatari women took place on a section of motorway leading north from Paris to the Charles de Gaulle and Le Bourget airports which is often the scene of hold-ups targeting wealthy foreigners in luxury cars, some of whom carry large amounts of cash.

The robbers often take advantage of traffic jams near the Landy tunnel, which is some 1.3km long, to pounce.

The incidents have done little to help efforts by the government to coax tourists back to France in the wake of the November 2015 attacks in which 130 people died, followed by the Bastille Day lorry massacre in southern city Nice that killed 86.

In the Paris area alone, tourism revenue is expected to plunge by $1.6bn this year.

Security has been stepped up around tourist magnets in Paris in response to the high-profile robberies.

{Government troops and Houthi rebels suffer casualties in heavy fighting near Taiz and Midi a day after truce expires.}

At least 19 people have been killed in renewed battles between Yemeni government and Houthi rebels, a day after a 48-hour ceasefire expired without halting the violence.

The news came as the International Committee of the Red Cross warned civilians in the city of Taiz were pinnned down by shelling and sniper fire with bodies rotting in the streets.

Eleven rebels and five government soldiers were killed on Tuesday on the outskirts of Taiz, officials said, when forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi repelled an attack by Houthis and their allies.

The attack that began late on Monday targeted the al-Dhabab area, which provides pro-Hadi forces with their only access to Taiz, which is surrounded by the rebels.

Warplanes from the Saudi-led Arab coalition took part in defensive operations and repelling the attack, officials said.

Three more soldiers were killed and four wounded by rebel sniper fire near the northwestern coastal town of Midi, a military official said.

The Houthis have been trying to advance on Midi’s harbour, which is controlled by pro-Hadi forces, the official said.

On Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sounded an alarm about civilians trapped by intense fighting in Taiz.

“Sniper fire and indiscriminate shelling has trapped civilians. Dead bodies are in the streets and people are unable to attend to their most basic needs. The situation is desperate,” said Alexandre Faite, the head of the ICRC in Yemen.

20-month conflict

The city, one of the most populous in Yemen, has been besieged by the Houthis for more than a year.

Locals accuse the rebels of indiscriminately shelling residential areas throughout that period.

Fighters aligned with Yemen’s Saudi-backed government have slowly pushed the rebels back from positions inside the city, but have been unable to break the siege, although some difficult mountain routes reportedly provide a lifeline.

More than 7,000 people have been killed and nearly 37,000 have been wounded in the 20-month conflict, according to the United Nations.

The Houthis overran the capital Sanaa and other parts of the impoverished country in September 2014, prompting the coalition to intervene six months later in support of Hadi.

{Egyptian Abu Afghan al-Masri, described as a “senior al-Qaeda leader”, was killed in Idlib province, Pentagon says.}

A “senior al-Qaeda leader” in Syria was killed last week by a US air strike, according to the Pentagon.

The killing of Egyptian Abu Afghan al-Masri took place near Sarmada, located in Syria’s Idlib province, on November 18, Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook told reporters on Tuesday.

Cook said that Masri had originally joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and later moved to its Syrian affiliate.

“He had ties to terrorist groups operating throughout southwest Asia including groups responsible for attacking US and coalition forces in Afghanistan and those plotting to attack the West,” Cook said.

A handful of Arabic-language news agencies had reported Masri’s death at the time.

Masri was a religious judge in Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, an armed group formerly known as the al-Nusra Front until its formal break with al-Qaeda earlier this year.

The air strike was the latest in the US programme of targeted killings in Syria and Iraq. Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced that on October 17 it had killed Haydar Kirkan, who it said was a member of al-Qaeda and had been close to the late Osama bin Laden.

In October, the Pentagon said a US air strike near Idlib had targeted a Nusra senior leader, Ahmed Salama Mabrouk, an Egyptian also known by his nom de guerre Abu Faraj.

The Syrian conflict started as a largely unarmed rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but it quickly escalated into a full-on civil war. Throughout the last five years, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed during the fighting, though estimates vary widely.

The conflict has drawn the intervention of US, Turkey and Arab countries, each supporting rebel groups to varying degrees, as well as Russian and Iranian forces backing the Syrian government.
Elsewhere in Syria, fighting has intensified between government forces and rebels in the divided city of Aleppo.

At least 141 civilians, including 18 children, have been killed in a week of renewed bombardment on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo, which has devastated its hospitals, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

The Britain-based war monitor said it had documented hundreds of injuries as a result of Russian and Syrian air strikes and shelling by government forces.

The assault began last Tuesday after a weeks-long pause in air strikes and shelling inside east Aleppo, although battles and air strikes did continue along the city’s frontlines and in the surrounding countryside.

The Observatory said there were another 87 deaths of rebel fighters and people of unknown identity in the eastern sector.

It also documented 16 civilian deaths, including 10 children, and dozens of injuries as a result of rebel shelling of government-held west Aleppo.

{Tehran deploys its troops, as well as Afghan and Pakistani recruits, to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.}

More than 1,000 soldiers deployed by Iran to Syria to back government forces in the civil war have been killed, an Iranian official said on Tuesday.

The death toll was a major increase from one reported just four months ago when Iran announced 400 of its soldiers had died on Syria’s battlefields.

Iran has been sending fighters to Syria since the early stages of the more than five-year-old war to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against armed groups trying to topple him.

Although many of the soldiers Iran sends are its own nationals, it is casting its recruitment net wide, training and deploying predominantly Shia-Muslim fighters from neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Afghan citizens represented half the death toll reported in August.

“Now the number of Iran’s martyrs as defenders of the shrine has exceeded 1,000,” Mohammadali Shahidi Mahallati, head of Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs, which offers financial support to relatives of those killed fighting for Iran, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Iran alludes to its fighters in Syria as “defenders of the shrine”, a reference to the Sayeda Zeinab mosque near Damascus, which is where a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammad is said to be buried, as well as other shrines revered by Shia.

Many Iranians initially opposed involvement in Syria’s war, harbouring little sympathy for Assad. But now they are warming to the mission, believing ISIL’s threat to the existence of their country is best fought outside Iran’s borders.

The Syrian civil war started as a largely unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly escalated into a full-on armed conflict.

The UN estimates more than 400,000 people have been killed, and 11 million Syrians – half the country’s pre-war population – have been displaced from their homes.

{Shia fighters push to control road between Mosul and Tal Afar, effectively surrounding ISIL’s last stronghold in Iraq.}

Iraqi Shia militias massed fighters to sever remaining ISIL supply routes to Mosul, closing in on the road that links the Syrian and Iraqi parts of the group’s self-declared caliphate.

Five weeks into the US-backed offensive on Mosul, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group is fighting in the area of Tal Afar, 60km to the west, against the Popular Mobilisation Forces – a coalition of mostly Iranian-backed Shia armed groups sanctioned by Baghdad.

Cutting the western road to Tal Afar would seal off Mosul as the city is already surrounded to the north, south and east by Iraqi government and Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

The government’s US-trained Counter Terrorism Service unit breached ISIL’s defences in east Mosul at the end of October and is fighting to expand a foothold it gained there.

The road to Tal Afar is no longer safe, said a lorry driver who used it two days ago to bring in fruit and vegetables from Raqqa, ISIL’s Syrian stronghold.

He said that he saw three trucks burning on the road while fighting raged in the vicinity.

“This is the last time I drive on this road, it will be cut,” he told Reuters news agency by telephone, asking not to be identified as ISIL punishes by death those caught communicating with the outside world.

The Shia militias’ involvement around Sunni-majority Mosul and their targeting of Tal Afar have proved deeply divisive.

Alleged executions and abuses carried out by fighters in territory taken from ISIL elsewhere have stoked local fears and, given close ties to Iran, their advance has sparked warnings of a possible intervention from Tehran’s regional rival Turkey.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Ankara will respond if the militias “cause terror” in Tal Afar.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi tried to allay fears of ethnic and sectarian killings in Tal Afar, saying that any force sent to recapture it would reflect the city’s diversity.

{{Civilian casualties }}

A Mosul resident said air strikes had intensified on the western part of the city, which is divided by the Tigris river running through its centre. The strikes seemed to be targeting an industrial area.

ISIL has dug in among more than a million civilians as a defence tactic to hamper the air strikes. They are moving around the city through tunnels, driving suicide car bombs into advancing troops, and hitting them with sniper and mortar fire.

Nearly 69,000 people have been displaced because of the fighting, moving from villages and towns around the city to government-held areas, according to United Nations estimates.

The figure does not include the thousands of people rounded up in villages around Mosul and forced to accompany ISIL fighters as human shields as they retreat towards the city’s centre.

{Tens of thousands of Bedouin Palestinians live in “unrecognised” villages across Israel’s Negev region.}

The Israeli government has announced plans to demolish Umm al-Hiran, a Bedouin village in the country’s southern Negev region that is home to Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The Israel Lands Administration (ILA), a governmental body that administers public land, said it will begin razing the village on Tuesday. At least 30 residents will be displaced.

At time of publication, the ILA had not replied to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

The Israeli government plans to build a Jewish village for families linked to illegal settlement movement in the occupied West Bank in the place of Umm al-Hiran, while forcibly transferring Palestinian villagers to planned townships in the Negev desert.

A petition was filed on Monday in a court by Adalah, a Haifa-based advocacy group for the rights of the estimated 1.7 million Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship and live in cities, towns and villages within the country’s borders.

“The case of Umm al-Hiran encapsulates Israel’s land policy – whether it’s on the Israeli side of the Green Line or the occupied territories,” Amjad Iraqi, Adalah’s international advocacy coordinator, told Al Jazeera, referring to the line demarcating present-day Israel from the occupied West Bank.

{{‘Many demolitions’ }}

“This village is one example of dozens of unrecognised villages in the Negev which are slated for destruction,” Iraqi added.

“It comes at a time when there are many demolitions occurring in both unrecognised and newly recognised Bedouin villages.”

Including Umm al-Hiran, some 40 “unrecognised” Bedouin villages in the Negev region are slated for demolition despite being home to tens of thousands of residents.

Most of these communities were put on the land in question by the Israeli military after being displaced from their ancestral villages during the 1948 establishment of Israel.

Because Israel does not recognise the villages, many are denied access to electricity, water, and other municipal services.

Earlier this month, Israeli bulldozers destroyed al-Araqib, a southern Negev village that has been demolished more than 100 times since 2010.

Knesset member Yousef Jabareen, who is a member of the predominantly Arab Joint List electoral coalition, condemned the move to demolish Umm al-Hiran as a “dangerous escalation” targeting Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

“It proves the government continues its policy to target the Arab community and treat them as enemies at the expense of their basic right to housing,” Jabareen told Al Jazeera, noting the move comes at a time when Israeli lawmakers are attempting to legalise Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.

“This is a government that targets its Palestinian citizens, while oppressing the Palestinian people [and] denying both Palestinian groups their basic rights for dignity and freedom.”

According to Adalah’s online database, Palestinian citizens of Israel suffer from dozens of discriminatory laws that limit their access to state resources – including land – and stifle their political freedoms.

Last week, a ministerial committee in the Israeli government approved a bill banning mosques from using loudspeakers to broadcast the call to prayer. The bill has not yet been passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

{The lack of water has sparked protests in Bolivia and forced President Evo Morales to declare a national emergency.}

Bolivian President Evo Morales has declared a national emergency over a lack of water caused by a severe and prolonged drought.

Morales said on Monday, that national and local governments are authorised to use state resources to attack the problem.

Much of the high-altitude capital already receives water for just three hours every three days, because reservoirs serving the city are nearly dry.

Morales said Bolivians “have to be prepared for the worst”.

The El Nino weather phenomenon in the Pacific has caused or exacerbated the drought, which has battered farms and cattle ranches.

The country’s weather service says no rain is expected until early December.

On Sunday, authorities declared water rationing in La Paz to be a permanent measure as the drought in Bolivia worsens.

The three main dams that supply water to the city are almost dry.

The main Ajuan Khota dam is at one percent of capacity, while the other two dams are averaging eight percent capacity.

This has led to water cuts in some neighbourhoods for the first time. The Corque municipality has been hit particularly hard, according to a report from the Pan American Health Organisation, and 70 percent of the population lacks drinking water.

{{Protests}}

Across La Paz, residents have seen their taps dry up for 60 hours at a time, followed by 12-hour periods to replenish their supplies.

Morales sacked his top state water authorities and apologised for extended water rationing in the capital.

The neighbouring city of El Alto is also concerned about the lack of water. A week of protests by frustrated residents has escalated tensions.

On Thursday, leaders of the Federation of Town Councils, known as Fejuve, held officials and water authorities hostage after the minister of environment and water, Alexandra Moreira, failed to turn up for a meeting to report on a water supply project in the city of El Alto.

Police were eventually called to release the hostages, including Ruben Mendez, Bolivia’s deputy water minister.

Riots over water have broken out in Bolivia in the past. In 2004, riots resulted in the control of water being handed over from private companies to the state.

In recent decades, Bolivian glaciers have shrunk drastically and affected the lives of millions who depend on glacier melt for water.

{ISIL claims suicide attack inside Baqir-ul-uloom mosque as Shia Muslims mark Arbaeen period.}

A suicide bomber has blown himself up inside a Shia mosque in the Afghan capital Kabul, killing at least 27 people and wounding dozens of others.

The explosion happened at the Baqer-ul-uloom mosque in the Darul Aman area as people gathered to mark the end of an important religious period.

Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told Al Jazeera 27 people were killed and many others wounded, and the death toll was likely to rise.

Fraidoon Obaidi, chief of the Kabul police Criminal Investigation Department, said the bomber mingled among the crowd on the first floor of the two-story mosque where he detonated his explosives.

“I heard a blast and dust covered the whole mosque,” worshipper Nadir Ali told AFP news agency.

“When the dust settled down, I saw the mosque was full of flesh and blood. I was injured in my waist and had to crawl out of the mosque.”

The United Nations said in a statement at least 32 had been killed and more than 50 wounded, including many children. It described the attack as “an atrocity”.

President Ashraf Ghani in a statement condemned the “barbaric” attack.

Several police vehicles raced from the scene and ferried the wounded to hospital.

READ MORE: Iran ‘foreign legion’ leans on Afghan Shia in Syria war

Worshippers were gathering to mark the Shia ceremony of Arbaeen, which comes 40 days after the major festival of Ashura.

Ashura commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad who was killed in in battle in 680 AD. His fate laid the foundation for the faith practised by the Shia community, a minority in mainly Sunni-Muslim Afghanistan.

Arbaeen marks the end of the mourning period over his death.

The ISIL group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement via its affiliated Amaq website, after the Taliban said it was not involved.

Earlier this year a powerful blast targeting Shiaworshippers during Ashura killed 14 people in northern Afghanistan.

In July, ISIL group claimed responsibility for twin explosions that ripped through crowds of Shia Hazaras in Kabul, killing at least 85 people and wounding more than 400 others.

The bombings marked the deadliest single attack in the capital since the Taliban were ousted from power in the US-led invasion of 2001.

Shia Muslims in Afghanistan make up an estimated 15 percent of the country’s population of about 30 million.

Their public celebrations and commemorations were largely banned during the years when the Taliban controlled the country. But Afghanistan’s Shia community has become more public since the Taliban was ousted.

Critics said the government needs to do more to protect places of worship.

“Given the level of Shia-Sunni polarisation in the region, more tragic attacks of this sort are expected, while the Afghan government resorts only to verbal condemnation of such acts,” Al Jazeera’s Afghanistan analyst Hashmat Moslih said.

Amnesty International also took the government to task.

“[Afghan authorities] have a duty to take effective measures to protect Shia Muslims from attacks,” said Champa Patel, Amnesty’s South Asia director.

{Cross-border fighting between nuclear-armed neighbours continues in Himalayan region with claims of Indian troop losses.}

Four people, including two children, have been killed and 10 others wounded in cross-border fire in disputed Kashmir, the latest casualties in ongoing skirmishes between Pakistan and India.

“At the Line of Control [LoC] four civilians embraced [martyrdom] and 10 were injured,” Pakistan’s military said in a brief statement on Monday.

“There are reports of heavy casualties of Indian soldiers due to effective retaliatory fire by Pakistani troops,” it added, claiming at least six Indian troops had been killed.

No immediate response to the allegation came from Indian officials.

Pakistani officials said two children and a woman were among those killed on Monday, in heavy shelling by Indian forces, in three separate sectors along the LoC – the de facto border – in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Tensions across the long-disputed Himalayan border reached dangerous levels in September after India blamed Pakistani fighters for a raid on an army base that killed 19 soldiers.

India said it responded by carrying out “surgical strikes” across the heavily militarised border, sparking a furious reaction from Islamabad, which denied any attacks took place.

There have since been repeated outbreaks of cross-border firing, with both sides reporting deaths and injuries, including of civilians.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Both nuclear-armed rivals claim the territory in full and have fought two of three wars over the mountainous region.