Tag: InternationalNews

{Almost all on board heavily-guarded convoy were families who had escaped ISIL-held territory.}

Two roadside bombs struck a convoy carrying Iraqi families fleeing an ISIL-controlled town in the north of the country late on Friday, killing at least 18 people, a police officer said.

The bombs targeted a truck carrying people from Hawija, about 120kms south of ISIL’s stronghold in Mosul, as they were being taken to the town of Al Alam, next to the River Tigris.

Seventeen of the dead were from the displaced families, regional police Colonel Nemaa al-Jabouri told the Reuters news agency. One policeman in an accompanying patrol car was also killed.

Pictures published on social media by a group linked to Iraq’s defence ministry showed several blackened corpses next to the twisted wreckage of the lorry.

“The victims were being transported there by Iraqi armed services, so even though they felt they were safe in this convoy, they were still attacked,” said Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Khazir, north of Mosul, at a camp site for people fleeing the fighting.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISIL group, also known as ISIS, took control of Mosul in 2014.

Last month, two years later, Iraqi troops and special forces, Shia militias, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by US-led air raids launched a campaign to retake the city.

The attack on the convoy came as Iraqi special forces cleared buildings on Saturday in neighborhoods they entered in eastern Mosul a day before, after pushing out ISIL fighters.

Fighting continued in the morning, with both sides firing mortars and automatic weapons at each other’s positions, while Iraqi troops also responded with artillery.

Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighbourhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

“[ISIL] is in the city centre and we must be very careful as our forces advance,” said Major General Sami al-Aridi of the Iraqi special forces.

With more densely packed neighbourhoods ahead, his forces will be challenged to avoid both higher military and civilian casualties.

As he spoke, dozens of civilians in the Tahrir and Zahara districts emerged from their homes, some of them carrying white flags, and headed towards the troops to be evacuated from the battlefield.

{At least two children killed and four wounded in an explosion officials blame on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.}

A bomb blast in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak killed at least two children, local officials said on Saturday.

Four more children were also wounded in the attack, the governor’s office said in a statement, which blamed the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) for the explosion.

Earlier on Saturday, authorities appointed a new mayor to the Sirnak municipality.

Turkish authorities have been replacing municipal officials in the mainly Kurdish southeast, accusing them of supporting the PKK.

The government has also stepped up a military campaign in the troubled southeast to eradicate PKK fighters, who have launched repeated attacks since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire last year.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984, with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

{Iraqi forces say they recaptured six districts from ISIL in city’s east and open new front as fighting spikes.}

Iraqi special forces stepped up attacks against ISIL in Mosul on Friday, seeking to expand the army’s foothold in the east of the city after the leader of the armed group told his men there could be no retreat.

In a military statement, troops from the Counter Terrorism Service said that they had taken over the six neighbourhoods of Malayeen, Samah, Khadra, Karkukli, Quds and Karama. They raised the Iraqi flag over buildings in those neighbourhoods, and inflicted heavy losses on the fighters with ISIL, or ISIS, the statement said.

Columns of armored vehicles wound through open desert on Friday to open a new front, pushing through dirt berms, drawing heavy fire and calling in airstrikes to enter the middle-class neighbourhoods of Tahrir and Zahara – an area once named after former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Iraqi television footage from the east of the city showed heavy plumes of grey smoke rising into the sky.

Iraqi regular troops and special forces, Shia militias, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by US-led air raids launched a campaign two weeks ago to retake Mosul, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq.

Winning it back would crush the Iraqi half of a crossborder caliphate declared by ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago.

ISIL also holds large parts of neighbouring Syria, but Mosul is by far the largest city under its control in either country, and the campaign to retake it is the most complex in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein and unleashed a decade of turmoil.

Baghdadi: No retreat from total war

In a rare audio message released on Thursday, Baghdadi – whose whereabouts are unknown – said there could be no retreat in a “total war” against the forces arrayed against ISIL, telling fighters they must stay loyal to their commanders.

The city is still home to nearly 1.5 million people, who risk being caught up in brutal urban warfare. The United Nations has warned of a potential humanitarian crisis and a refugee exodus, although Iraqi officials say ISIL fighters are holding the civilian population as human shields.

“A lot of people here are telling us that they’re happy that they’re no longer under ISIL, that their lives were so difficult. But some are very frustrated, particularly one man who was waiting for a tent and sleeping out in the open. He said ‘life for us has been stopped’,” said Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from a campsite for internally displaced people in Khazir, north of Mosul.

Mosul residents, speaking to the Reuters news agency by telephone, said ISIL fighters were deploying artillery and rocket launchers inside and near residential areas.

Some were hidden in trees near the Wahda district in the south, while others were deployed on the rooftops of houses taken over by the militants in the Ghizlani district close to Mosul’s airport, they said.

“We saw [ISIL] fighters installing a heavy anti-aircraft machinegun alongside a rocket launchpad, and mortars as well,” one Mosul resident said.

Shia militias attacked

People in the southern and eastern neighbourhoods reported on Thursday night that barrages of artillery shells and rockets being launched from their districts towards the advancing troops had shaken their houses.

As well as the ISIL resistance in Mosul itself, the fighters have launched a series of diversionary attacks across the country since the start of the offensive.

In the town of Shirqat, about 100km south of Mosul, fighters stormed a mosque and several houses early on Friday, a local police officer said, killing seven soldiers and fighters from the Shia Popular Mobilisation Forces, or Hashid Shaabi.

The fighters crossed from the eastern side of the Tigris river into the town at 3am, taking over al-Baaja mosque and spreading out into alleyways. Security forces declared a curfew and said reinforcements from the Popular Mobilisation Forces were being sent to the town.

Iraqi troops and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have closed in on it for two weeks from the north, from the eastern Nineveh plains and up the Tigris from the south.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces of mainly Shia militia groups joined the campaign on Saturday, launching an offensive to cut off any supply or escape to the west.

A spokesman said that they had made progress but had not completely closed off the western flank, and their fighters had seen from a distance some cars leaving Mosul on Thursday.

{President breaks recent pledge not to use profanity with a torrent of invective towards the United States.}

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said his war on drugs had cut back the supply to “very low” levels and thanked China for supporting his crackdown, but swore repeatedly at ally the United States for criticising it.

Duterte said on Friday his bloody campaign against drugs had successfully reduced the narcotics flow, but conceded there were signs that criminals had now turned to kidnapping, another problem he planned to tackle.

“There is a very low supply of drugs now. But there is a shift to kidnapping by these idiots,” he said during a televised speech. “This is a new game, so be careful. Give me time to talk to God.”

The crime-busting former mayor of the once lawless Davao City said last week he had spoken to God and promised him he would no longer use bad language.

But his vow has not held long. On Friday, he got angry again at former colonial power the United States for its concerns about alleged summary killings, and contrasted its stance with that of China, which has funded a huge drug rehabilitation centre.

“Now who helped? China,” he said. “America, what did they say? ‘Duterte, stop the extrajudicial killings. We hold you responsible’,” he said.

“I said: ‘You can go to hell. You’re all shit. You look at us Filipinos like dogs… You’re all really sons of bitches because you violated our dignity.’”

As a provincial outsider in May’s presidential election, Duterte used his brashness and profanity to enhance his public appeal. Dubbed “the punisher” and “Duterte Harry”, he was elected by a big margin.

That was aided by the promise of a drugs war, which has killed more than 2,300 people in four months.

Duterte’s relentless assaults on Washington have baffled the country’s biggest ally, but do not appear to have resonated among Filipinos and the local business community, which has expressed concern.

A recent opinion poll of 1,200 Filipinos showed they had far greater trust in the United States than they did in China, which Duterte has been praising and courting strongly.

Duterte invited his countrymen to protest if they disagreed with him.

“If you think America will be good for you, if you want to be a [US] territory … if it is to your personal interest, go ahead and join the demonstration,” he said.

“And maybe you can convince me to leave the presidency. But at least I leave without being treated like a pig by the Americans.”

{Facebook says it hasn’t violated German law and is working on fighting hate speech online.}

German prosecutors are investigating Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives following a complaint alleging the company broke national laws against hate speech and sedition by failing to remove racist postings.

A spokesman for the Munich prosecutor’s office declined on Friday to provide further details. German attorney Chan-jo Jun had filed a complaint with prosecutors in the Bavarian city in September and demanded that Facebook executives be compelled to comply with anti-hate speech laws by deleting racist or violent postings from its site.

Facebook’s rules forbid bullying, harassment, and threatening language, but critics say it does not do enough to enforce them and has failed to staunch a tide of racist and threatening posts on the social network during an influx of refugees into Europe.

Prosecutors in Hamburg earlier this year rejected a similar complaint by Jun on the grounds that the regional court lacked jurisdiction because Facebook’s European operations are based in Ireland.

“There is a different view in Bavaria,” his firm Jun Lawyers of Wuerzburg in Bavaria said in a statement.

“Upon Jun’s request, Bavarian Justice Minister Winfried Bausback said that Hamburg’s view was wrong and German law does indeed apply to some of the offences,” it said.

Jun’s complaint named Facebook founder and chief executive Zuckerberg and nine other managers at the company, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Facebook said it had not violated German law and was working on fighting hate speech online.

“We are not commenting on the status of a possible investigation, but we can say that the allegations lack merit and there has been no violation of German law by Facebook or its employees,” a company spokesman said.

Jun has compiled a list of 438 postings that were flagged as inappropriate but not deleted over the past year. They include what some might consider merely angry political rants, but also clear examples of racist hate speech and calls to violence laced with references to Nazi-era genocide.

Following a public outcry and pressure from German politicians, Facebook this year hired Arvato, a business services unit of Bertelsmann, to monitor and delete racist posts.

A rash of online abuse and violent attacks against newcomers to Germany accompanied the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees last year, which led to a rise in the popularity of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and has put pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel.

{The US military confirmed Friday it had killed Al-Qaeda’s emir for northeastern Afghanistan during an air strike last month, in a major blow to the group as it seeks to re-establish safe havens in the country.}

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook described the assault that killed Farouq al-Qahtani as a “precision strike” and said it took place on October 23 in Kunar, Afghanistan.

“This successful strike is another example of US operations to degrade international terrorist networks and target terrorist leaders who seek to attack the US homeland, our interests and our allies abroad,” Cook said in a statement.

He said another Al-Qaeda leader in the country, Bilal al-Utabi, was targeted in a separate strike, though the results of that attack were not yet known.

Last month, US official said multiple Hellfire missiles had leveled two compounds in Kunar where the men were believed to be hiding.

One US official said the attack represented the most significant strike against the Al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan in years.

The Pentagon has been actively hunting for Qahtani for four years. He had longstanding ties with Osama bin Laden before his death in the 2011 US raid on his Pakistan compound.

Qahtani has operated in Afghanistan since at least 2009 and led an Al-Qaeda battalion since at least mid-2010.

His deputy Utabi was seen as the second- or third-most senior Al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

{Explosion went off near police headquarters in city of Diyarbakir in mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey.}

Several people were killed and dozens wounded in a large explosion in central Diyarbakir, a city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, the country’s justice minister said.

We have both police and civilian martyrs in Diyarbakir, Bekiz Bozdag said after Friday morning’s blast.

The Diyarbakir governor’s office said that it was a car bomb attack that took place at about 8am local time (5:00 GMT), blaming Kurdish fighters. Many ambulances were sent to the scene in the Baglar district.

Al Jazeera’s Kadir Konuksever, reporting from Diyarbakir, said that an annex to the police headquarters had been targeted.

“Four other civilian buildings are heavily damaged,” he said, adding that at least 30 people were wounded in the incident and there were fears the number of casualties could increase.

Media reports said the explosion could be heard from several parts of the city and caused damage to nearby buildings.

The explosion happened just hours after police arrested 11 MPs from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party.

The government has stepped up its military campaign in the restive southeast to eradicate outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters, who have launched almost daily attacks since the rupture of a fragile ceasefire last year.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since the PKK first took up arms in 1984, with the aim of carving out an independent state for Turkey’s Kurdish minority.

{Co-leaders of HDP party among 11 MPs detained for not appearing at court over terror-related charges.}

Turkey has detained two co-leaders and nine other MPs of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), according to the country’s interior ministry.

The ministry said on Friday detention orders for 13 MPs were issued, but only 11 were detained as two were abroad.

The HDP is the third largest party in the 550-seat Turkish parliament with 59 seats and the main political representative of the Kurdish minority.

HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtas was detained at his home in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, while Figen Yuksekdag was held in the capital Ankara, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

Anadolu reported the MPs were detained for not appearing in court to testify for ongoing terrorism-related investigations.

The security operations took place after midnight, with Demirtas tweeting at 1:30am local time (22:30 GMT) that police had arrived at his home and he was about to be detained.

Police also raided and searched the party’s head office in central Ankara. Television images showed party officials arguing with police during the raid.

Hundreds of detentions have been made in recent months since the government acquired state of emergency powers after a failed coup on July 15.

Authorities say they have been going after anyone suspected of links to Fethullah Gulen, a US-based religious leader accused of orchestrating the coup attempt, as well as the outlawed armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Critics, though, say the government is using the coup as a pretext to muzzle all dissent.

The Turkish government accuses the HDP of having links to the PKK which is deemed a terrorist organisation by the US, the EU and Turkey. The HDP denies that.

Immunity lifted

Demirtas and Yuksekdag had been targeted by several separate investigations in recent months but this is the first time that either has been detained. Their detentions follow a resolution by parliament earlier in the year alllowing the immunity of MPs to be lifted.

“HDP call international community to react against Erdogan Regime’s coup,” the party said on Twitter, referring to President Tayyip Erdogan.

Access to social media, including Twitter and messaging services, such as WhatsApp, was jammed during and aftermath of the raids, with some in Turkey saying they used VPNs to bypass the blocks.

Earlier this week Gultan Kisanak, the HDP mayor of the country’s biggest Kurdish majority city, Diyarbakir, along with co-mayor Firat Anli, was arrested over alleged membership in the PKK. The government appointed a local Ankara district administrator to take over Kisanak’s duties.

In September, the government similarly removed 28 mayors and other administrators, mostly from the HDP, and appointed trustees in their place.

Scores of opposition media organisations have been shut down since July, including pro-Kurdish ones such as IMC TV, the Dicle news agency and the Ozgur Gundem newspaper.