Tag: InternationalNews

{Post-coup crackdown continues as government fires thousands of employees and closes down 15 pro-Kurdish media groups.}

Turkey has dismissed another 10,000 civil servants and closed 15 more media outlets over suspected links with “terrorist organisations” and US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating a failed coup.

More than 100,000 people have already been sacked or suspended and 37,000 arrested since the July coup attempt, in an unprecedented crackdown the government says is necessary to root out all coup supporters from the state apparatus.

Thousands more academics, teachers, health workers, prison guards and forensics experts were among the latest to be removed from their posts through two new executive decrees issued late on Saturday.

Opposition parties denounced the continued crackdown, which has also raised concerns over the functioning of the state.

“What the government and [President Tayyip] Erdogan are doing right now is a direct coup against the rule of law and democracy,” Sezgin Tanrikulu, an MP from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said in a Periscope broadcast posted on Twitter.

Fifteen more newspapers, wires, and magazines that report from the largely Kurdish southeast were shuttered, bringing the total number of media organisations closed to nearly 160.

In another move, the ability of universities to elect their own rectors was also abolished. President Erdogan will now directly appoint nominees.

The extent of the crackdown has worried rights groups and many of Turkey’s Western allies, who fear Erdogan is using emergency rule to eradicate dissent. The government said its actions are justified following the coup attempt on July 15, when more than 240 people died.

Erdogan has said authorities need more time to wipe out the threat posed by the coup plotters, as well as Kurdish armed groups that have waged a 32-year insurgency that has killed about 40,000 people.

Ankara wants the United States to detain and extradite Gulen so that he can be prosecuted in Turkey on a charge that he masterminded the attempt to overthrow the government. Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies any involvement.

Speaking to reporters at a reception marking Republic Day on Saturday, Erdogan said he wants the reinstatement of the death penalty, a debate that emerged following the coup attempt.

“I believe this issue will come to the parliament,” he said, repeating he would approve it – a move that would sink Turkey’s hopes of European Union membership. Erdogan shrugged off such concerns, saying much of the world had capital punishment.

The Council of Europe warned Turkey against re-establishing the death penalty on Sunday.

“Executing the death penalty is incompatible with membership of the Council of Europe,” the 47-member organisation, which includes Turkey, tweeted.

Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004 as the nation sought accession to the EU.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz added to the council’s warning, denouncing Turkey for considering a move that would “slam the door shut to the European Union”.

“The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane form of punishment, which has to be abolished worldwide and stands in clear contradiction to the European values,” Kurz told the Austrian Press Agency.

{At least 60 people killed when prison facility bombed by Arab coalition in port city of Hodeidah.}

Arab coalition fighter jets have hit a prison facility run by Houthi rebels in western Yemen’s Hodeidah city, killing at least 60 people, including inmates, officials and medics said on Sunday.

“Sixty people in total were killed and dozens were wounded,” a local health official told AFP.

The rebel-controlled sabanews.net also gave a toll of 60 killed and 38 wounded, adding that “dead bodies are still being retrieved” from under the rubble.

Abdel-Rahman al-Mansab, a security chief of the district of al-Zaydia, said most of the dead were prisoners. They were among a total of 115 inmates serving jail terms for misdemeanor crimes or who were still in pretrial detention.

Al-Mansab also said that the complex has two prisons, one for women and one for men, but there were no female inmates at the time of the attack. “When I went there, I saw a pile up of charred bodies beyond recognition. They were burned to death,” he said.

The Saudi-led alliance that conducted the raid said it struck a “central security building” used as a military command centre by the Houthi rebels it is fighting. Local officials said the prison lies within a security complex but that only prison guards were present during the air strike.

“This building is used by Houthi militia and the forces of the deposed president as a command and control centre for their military operations,” a statement by the coalition said, referring to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Houthi ally.

“The coalition forces’ leadership stresses that targeting protocols and procedures were followed fully,” the statement said.

Abdel-Rahman Jarallah, director of Hodeidah health office, told DPA news agency that all the people killed were civilians. He said a search operation was ongoing for more victims trapped in the rubble.

Hodeidah, a port city on the Red Sea, was captured along with vast majority of the country, including the capital Sanaa, by Houthi rebels and their allies in late 2014.

The Arab coalition has been fighting the rebels since March 2015 to try to restore to office internationally-recognised President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was ousted by the group.

International efforts to agree to a ceasefire has so far been unsuccessful, amid a mounting humanitarian crisis.

On Saturday, the exiled Hadi rejected a UN peace proposal to end the turmoil saying the deal would “reward the rebels and penalise the Yemeni people and legitimacy”.

The attacks come two days after the coalition said they had intercepted and destroyed a ballistic missile allegedly fired by the Houthis at the Saudi city of Mecca, one of Islam’s holiest places. The Houthis have denied that.

More than 100 people gathered in the capital Sanaa for a funeral were killed earlier this month in a coalition air raid. The Arab-led alliance blamed that bombing on “wrong information” from its Yemeni allies.

Elsewhere on Saturday, strikes on residential buildings killed 17 people and wounded seven in the battleground town of Salo, southeast of Yemen’s third city Taez, said rebel-controlled media.

The conflict has killed nearly 7,000 people, mostly civilians, according to the United Nations which had been struggling to convince the warring parties to implement a ceasefire and revive a stalled political process.

{US state department orders family members of consulate staff in Istanbul to leave country, citing security threats.}

Family members of US consulate staff in Istanbul have been asked to leave the country, the US state department said, citing threats against US citizens.

“The Department of State made this decision based on security information indicating extremist groups are continuing aggressive efforts to attack US citizens in areas of Istanbul where they reside or frequent,” the department said in a statement on Sunday.

The US Consulate General in Istanbul will stay open, the state department said, adding that the order does not apply to any other US diplomatic posts in Turkey.

Saturday’s warning updates previous State Department advisories of “increased threats from terrorist groups throughout Turkey”.

The department also advised its citizens to avoid travel to southeast Turkey and cautioned on the risks of traveling anywhere in the country.

France temporarily shut down its embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara and its consulate in Istanbul nearly two weeks after Istanbul’s main airport was attacked in an assault that killed 47 people.

Some of the violence in neighbouring Syria has spilled over to Turkey, which has seen a rise in attacks this year. The security situation has further deteriorated in the wake of a a failed coup attempt in July.

{Militia coalition, known as the Popular Mobilisation Units, had not yet played a heavy role in the fighting.}

Shia militias say they have launched an assault to the west of Mosul, opening up a new front in the battle to drive ISIL from the country’s second city and the group’s last major bastion in the country.

The coalition of militias, know as the Popular Mobilisation Units, had not played a heavy part in the fighting, but the offensive on Saturday indicates a bigger role than many observers had anticipated.

A spokesman for the coalition, Ahmed al-Asadi, told a news conference that seven hours into the operation 10 villages had been “liberated” from ISIL.

“This corridor is considered the main artery of the ISIL terrorist organisation between Mosul on one end and Raqqa in Syria on the other,” said Asadi.

Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Iraq, said although many towns and villages on the road to Mosul had been taken by the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the city itself – and ISIL’s position there – remained as formidable as it was before the operation to take the city began 12 days ago.

“The idea behind this … is that the western part of Mosul has been uncontested so far,” El Shayyal said. “And that’s probably the most important frontier because it’s the one that leads to Syria.”

The militia forces leading the attack plan to cut off the route between Mosul and Syria and help besiege ISIL-held Mosul from all sides, he said.

Some had hoped the Popular Mobilisation Units would not play a large role in the battle for Mosul, particularly as “Sunni Muslims view them to be just as criminal as ISIL,” El Shayyal said.

“That’s why in the beginning [of the offensive] it was stressed by [the government] that the operation would be lead by the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces,” he said.

“Now that they have announced an entire frontier led by them, this will cause a lot of concern, especially as there are reports that they are targeting Sunni civilians.”

Michael Pregent, Middle East analyst and a former US intelligence officer who served in Iraq, told Al Jazeera the Shia militias’ move was not sanctioned by Iraq’s government.

He said the hope by Baghdad and Washington was that ISIL would use the western route to flee Mosul for a “final battle” later in its Syrian bastion of Raqqa.

“The Shia militias are operating outside the control of the Iraqi government. They’re not responsive to US requests not to participate,” said Pregent.

“The military operation wasn’t to encircle Mosul, it was to force ISIL out into Syria. The Shia militias are blocking that now. It sounds like a good military tactic but it’s not synced, it’s not coordinated. And the Shia militias remain a wildcard, based on what they’ve done in Ramadi and Fallujah.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi Shia militia announced it plans to cross the border into Syria to fight alongside President Bashar al-Assad after “clearing” ISIL fighters from Iraq.

The announcement by the coalition, also known as Hashid Shaabi, would formalise its involvement in Syria.

“After clearing all our land from these terrorist gangs, we are fully ready to go to any place that contains a threat to Iraqi national security,” Asadi, the coalition spokesman, told a news conference in Baghdad.

The Mosul offensive involves tens of thousands of soldiers, federal police, Kurdish fighters, Sunni tribesmen and Shia militias.

Many of the militias – considered to be backed by Iran – were originally formed after the 2003 United States-led invasion to fight US forces as well as Sunni fighters. They were mobilised again, and endorsed by the government, when ISIL swept through northern and central Iraq in 2014, capturing Mosul and other key towns and cities.

Also on Saturday, Iraqi troops approaching the city from the south advanced into Shura, after a wave of US-led air raids and artillery shelling against ISIL positions inside the town.

Commanders said most ISIL fighters withdrew earlier this week, allegedly with kidnapped civilians, but that US air raids had disrupted the forced march, allowing some civilians to escape.

Marching towards Mosul with the Peshmerga

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from near the northeastern frontline, said Kurdish Peshmerga forces had now surrounded the town of Bashiqa.

“They aren’t going in. They’re waiting to [do that] in the next couple of days,” Dekker said. “It’s been slow because of the tactics ISIL is using – lots of booby traps, IEDs, and car bombs.”

Reporting the forces were “happy with the progress being made”, Dekker added that all fronts – the Iraqi army and counter-terrorism units in the south, the Kurdish Peshmerga in the northeast, and now the Shia militias in the west – will have to consolidate their positions before moving into Mosul city, which is not expected to happen soon.

“The southern front still has a long way to go,” she said.

{Pervaiz Rashid has been suspended over explosive story alleging the military is secretly supporting armed groups.}

Pakistan’s Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid has been removed from office over a newspaper leak that sparked a rift between the army and government earlier this month.

“Evidence available so far points to a lapse on part of the information minister, who has been directed to step down from office to enable holding of an independent and detailed inquiry,” a statement by the prime minister’s office said on Saturday.

Sources from the Information Ministry said Rashid stepped down until the inquiry confirms whether he was the source for an explosive story detailing a top-level meeting at which security services were accused of assisting armed groups in Pakistan.

The inquiry is seeking to identify the source of an article by the English-language Dawn newspaper, published on October 6. It gave an account of a tense meeting between military and civilian officials on tackling militancy.

The article, written by investigative journalist Cyril Almeida, reported some people in the government had complained at the meeting that they were being asked to do more to crack down on armed groups – yet whenever law-enforcement agencies took action, “the security establishment … worked behind the scenes to set the arrested free”.

Government and diplomatic sources say the article soured relations between Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s ruling PML-N party and the military, with army officials blaming PML-N for the leak and demanding the source be punished.

Relations between the civilian government and military have often been strained in a country where several prime ministers, including Sharif himself, have been ousted in coups.

Quoting anonymous sources, the Dawn story said civilian officials called for the military not to interfere if authorities tried to arrest members of anti-India groups, such as Jaish-e Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India has long accused Pakistan’s military of sponsoring these groups to foment unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir and elsewhere, a charge that Pakistan denies.

The prime minister’s office has repeatedly rejected the article as inaccurate and the journalist who wrote it was at one point temporarily barred from leaving the country.

On Saturday, the prime minister’s office said the article was “planted” and termed it a “breach of national security”.

Dawn newspaper editors have stood by the story and its author.

The committee being set up to investigate the leak includes senior officers from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the most powerful intelligence agency in Pakistan.

The military on Friday said top PML-N leaders – including the finance minister, interior minister, and Sharif’s brother – met army chief Raheel Sharif, unrelated to the prime minister, to discuss the newspaper leak. The head of ISI was also present.

{Thousands rally in capital Seoul calling for president Park Geun-hye to resign over alleged leaked documents scandal.}

Thousands of South Koreans have taken to the streets of the capital Seoul calling for President Park Geun-hye to step down over a leaked documents scandal.

The Saturday evening protest came after Park ordered 10 of her senior secretaries to resign over the scandal, which is likely to deepen the president’s lame duck status ahead of next year’s election.

The increasingly unpopular president has been accused of letting her old friend, the daughter of a religious cult leader, interfere in important state affairs.

Holding candles and signs reading “Who’s the real president?” and “Park Geun-hye step down,” the protesters marched through downtown Seoul after holding a candlelight vigil near City Hall.

Police estimated about 9,000 people turned out for the biggest anti-government demonstration in Seoul in months.

“Park has lost her authority as president and showed she doesn’t have the basic qualities to govern a country,” Jae-myung Lee, from the opposition Minjoo Party and the mayor of the city of Seongnam, told the protesters from a stage.

Park has been facing calls to reshuffle her office and cabinet after acknowledging on Tuesday she provided long-time friend Choi Soon-sil drafts of her speeches for editing.

Her televised apology sparked intense criticism about her mismanagement of national information and a heavy-handed leadership style that many see as lacking in transparency.

There’s also media speculation that Choi, who holds no government job, meddled in government decisions on personnel and policy and exploited her ties with Park to misappropriate funds from nonprofit organisations.

Prosecutors on Saturday widened their investigation by searching the homes of presidential officials suspected of interacting with Choi and receiving their office files from the Blue House – the presidential office and residence.

Prosecutors had previously summoned some of Choi’s key associates and raided their homes and workplaces, as well as the offices of two nonprofit foundations Choi supposedly controlled.

The saga, triggered by weeks of media reports, has sent Park’s approval ratings to record lows, and the minority opposition Justice Party has called for her to resign.

Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said the scandal has taken South Koreans by complete surprise.

“The sheer extent of this scandal is one they really haven’t come across before. Certainly there have been a number of scandals involving presidents in the past, often to do with corruption in terms of money. This one is to do with the influence apparently being wielded over President Park Geun-hye by a long-time friend and associate.”

Choi reportedly masterminded the creation of the two non-profits, which managed to gather about $70m in corporate donations over a short period of time, and is suspected of misappropriating some of the funds for personal use.

Choi’s lawyer Lee Gyeong-jae said she was currently in Germany, but would return to South Korea if prosecutors summon her.

In an interview with a South Korean newspaper earlier in the week, Choi acknowledged receiving presidential documents in advance, but denied intervening in state affairs or pressuring companies into donating to the foundations.

Choi and Park reportedly became friends in the 1970s, when Choi’s late father, Choi Tae-min, a shadowy religious figure who was a Buddhist monk, cult leader, and Christian pastor at different points of his life, emerged as Park’s mentor.

{Militia coalition, known as the Popular Mobilisation Units, had not yet played a heavy role in the fighting.}

Shia militias say they have launched an assault to the west of Mosul, opening up a new front in the battle to drive ISIL from the country’s second city and the group’s last major bastion in the country.

The coalition of militias, know as the Popular Mobilisation Units, had not played a heavy part in the fighting but the offensive on Saturday indicates a bigger role than many observers had anticipated.

Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal, reporting from Iraq, said that though many towns and villages on the road to Mosul had been taken by the Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, the city itself – and ISIL’s position there – remained as formidable as it was before the operation to take the city began 12 days ago.

“The idea behind this … is that the western part of Mosul has been uncontested so far,” El Shayyal said. “And that’s probably the most important frontier because it’s the one that leads to Syria.”

The militia forces leading the attack plan to cut off the route between Mosul and Syria and help besiege ISIL-held Mosul from all sides, he said.

Some had hoped the Popular Mobilisation Units would not play a large role in the battle for Mosul, particularly as “Sunni Muslims view them to be just as criminal as ISIL,” El Shayyal said.

“That’s why in the beginning [of the offensive] it was stressed by [the government] that the operation would be lead by the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces,” he said.

“Now that they have announced an entire frontier led by them, this will cause a lot of concern, especially as there are reports that they are targeting Sunni civilians.”

The Mosul offensive involves tens of thousands of soldiers, federal police, Kurdish fighters, Sunni tribesmen and Shia militias.

Many of the militias – considered to be backed by Iran – were originally formed after the 2003 United States-led invasion to fight US forces as well as Sunni fighters. They were mobilised again, and endorsed by the government, when ISIL swept through northern and central Iraq in 2014, capturing Mosul and other key towns and cities.

Also on Saturday, Iraqi troops approaching the city from the south advanced into Shura, a town to the south of Mosul, after a wave of US-led air raids and artillery shelling against ISIL positions inside the town.

Commanders said most ISIL fighters withdrew earlier this week, allegedly with kidnapped civilians, but that US air raids had disrupted the forced march, allowing some civilians to escape.

Separately, Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from near the northeastern front line, said that Kurdish Peshmerga forces had now surrounded the town of Bashiqa.

“They aren’t going in. They’re waiting to [do that] in the next couple of days,” Dekker said. “It’s been slow because of the tactics ISIL is using – lots of booby traps, IEDs, and car bombs.”

Reporting that the forces were “happy with the progress being made”, Dekker added that all fronts – the Iraqi army and counterterrorism units in the south, the Kurdish Peshmerga in the northeast and now the Shia militias in the west – will have to consolidate their positions before moving into Mosul city, which is not expected to happen soon.

“The southern front still has a long way to go,” she said.

{The Russian president told his military to hold the ceasefire over rebel-held eastern Aleppo for the time being.}

Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected a request by his military to resume air raids over Syria’s rebel-held eastern Aleppo.

The Russian army said on Friday that it had asked the president for authorisation to resume its bombing campaign, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin “considers it inappropriate at the current moment,” adding the president thought it necessary to “continue the humanitarian pause” in the war-battered city.

The request was made after Syrian opposition fighters launched an assault against the government-held western part of the city, firing rockets and detonating car bombs in a counter assault.

Opposition activists say 15 civilians, including children, were killed in those attacks on government-held western Aleppo. Rebels also targeted a military airbase.

The rebel assault comes more than three months into a government siege of eastern Aleppo, where more than 250,000 people live, and several weeks after the Syrian army began an operation to retake it.

{{Meeting in Moscow}}

Separately, the Iranian and Syrian foreign ministers were meeting in Moscow with their Russian counterpart to discuss the war.

Though the three parties have been held responsible for the bombing of eastern Aleppo by other several other nations, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said that “the diplomats didn’t want to give the impression that Aleppo’s recent humanitarian pauses are finished for good”.

“We are still ready to resume this truce, but on the assumption that we will receive a message from those who are the patrons of terrorism with the guarantees that the civilians will have an opportunity to take advantage of this truce,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said.

Moscow says it has not bombed Aleppo since October 18, when it implemented a three-day “humanitarian truce” intended to allow civilians and surrendering rebels to leave the east.

But few did so, and a UN plan to evacuate the wounded failed because security could not be guaranteed.

Despite this apparent extension of the halt in Russian raids, “many people think it’s only a matter of time before Russia and its allies launch the final assault on Aleppo,” Challands said.

Some analysts think the period between now and January, when a new United States president will take office, is a time when raids on east Aleppo may intensify, believing US President Barack Obama will be reluctant to confront Russia militarily before he steps down.

On Friday, though, the US rejected the idea that the pause in the air assault on eastern Aleppo has provided much relief to civilians, accusing the Syrian government of using starvation as a weapon of war.

The AFP news agency, quoting a US official, said that “the [Syrian] regime has rejected UN requests to deliver aid to eastern Aleppo – using starvation as a weapon of war”.

{{Close shave for Russian and US jets}}

A Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a US fighter jet over eastern Syria, US defence officials said on Friday, highlighting the risks of a serious mishap in the increasingly crowded airspace.

The “near miss” occurred late on October 17, when a Russian jet that was escorting a larger spy plane manoeuvred near an American plane, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeff Harrigian said.

The Russian jet came to “inside of half a mile” of the US jet, he added.

Another US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the American pilot was buffeted by the turbulence from the Russian jet’s engines.

It appeared the Russian pilot had simply not seen the US jet, either on radar or visually. It was dark and the planes were flying without lights.

“I would attribute it to not having the necessary situational awareness given all those [planes] operating together,” Harrigian said.

The incident raises serious questions about the extent to which pilots can track the complex airspace they operate in.