Tag: InternationalNews

{Relatives of victims say they will not drop cases against Israeli officers despite $20m deal between Israel and Turkey.}

The families of Turkish citizens killed in a 2010 Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship have vowed to pursue criminal cases against those accused despite a deal between Turkey and the Jewish state.

“We have no intention to drop the lawsuits,” Cigdem Topcuoglu, whose husband was killed as the couple embarked on the ship, told the AFP news agency on Friday. “We are certainly not accepting the compensation.”

Nine Turks died when Israeli marines stormed the Mavi Marmara vessel, which was part of a six-ship aid flotilla trying to break an Israeli navy blockade of the Gaza Strip. A tenth Turk died in hospital in 2014.

“They will come and kill your husband next to you and say ‘take this money, keep your mouth shut and give up on the case’. Would you accept that?” Topcuoglu, an academic, said.

Bulent Yildirim, head of the Turkish Islamic charity that organised the flotilla, IHH, said the case would never end.

“Those who believe the case would drop will be disappointed,” he said.

Ties between Israel and Turkey crumbled after the raid, but in June this year, they announced a deal after months of secret talks.

Under the deal, Israel agreed to apologise for the raid, grant permission for Turkish aid to reach the Palestinian territory through Israeli ports, and make a payment of $20 million to the families of those killed.

Both sides agreed that individual Israeli citizens, or those acting on behalf of the government, would not be held liable.

Turkish officials confirmed the money was transferred to the justice ministry account last month.

But relatives of the victims insist they will continue their fight until the alleged perpetrators are brought to justice. Some say they were not informed of the deal with Israel and they have not received any money.

{{‘Case must continue’}}

Ismail Songur, whose father was killed in the raid, said: “Nobody from the Turkish government asked our opinion before they struck a deal. Unfortunately, the Turkish government is becoming a part of the lawlessness carried out by Israel.”

Human rights lawyer Rodney Dixon said the criminal case against the accused must go on “at all costs”.

“We are strongly supporting the case here in Turkey and our very firm plea to the court has been that they must continue with the case,” he said.

“The so-called agreement between Israel and Turkey is not a treaty that is enforceable. It is unlawful under international law, under the convention on human rights and Turkish law.”

After the deal with Israel was agreed, an Istanbul court on October 19 held another hearing in the trial in absentia of four former Israeli military commanders, though it was later adjourned to December 2.

Turkish prosecutors are seeking life sentences for former military chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former navy chief Eliezer Marom, former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin and former air force intelligence chief Avishai Levy, who went on trial in absentia in 2012.

“Even if families of the victims accept the money, that would not affect the case,” said Gulden Sonmez, one of the lawyers in the trial and also a passenger on the ship.

“That is a criminal suit, not a suit for compensation. The $20m is an ex gratia payment. It’s a donation and cannot be accepted as compensation.”

{Killings meant “to terrorise” as fighters accused of surrounding themselves with civilians in Hamam al-Alil village.}

The Iraqi army was trying on Thursday to reach a town south of Mosul where ISIL has reportedly executed dozens of civilians to deter any support for the military offensive to recapture the group’s stronghold.

Eleven days into the biggest ground operation in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion, army and federal police units were fighting off sniper fire and suicide car bombs south of Hamam al-Alil – the site of the reported executions.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighters shot dead dozens of prisoners there, most of them former members of the Iraqi police and army, taken from villages the group has been forced to abandon as troops advanced.

A Reuters news agency correspondent met relatives of hostages south of Mosul. One was a police officer who returned to see the family he left behind when his village fell under ISIL control two years ago.

“I’m afraid they will keep pulling them back from village to village until they get to Mosul. And then they will disappear,” he said, asking not be identified to protect family members still in the hands of the fighters.

The executions were meant “to terrorise the others, those who are in Mosul in particular”, and also to get rid of the prisoners, said Abdul Rahman al-Waggaa, a member of the Nineveh provincial council. Some of the families of those executed are also held in Hamam al-Alil, he said.

UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said on Tuesday that ISIL had reportedly killed scores of people around Mosul in the last week.

Reuters also spoke to a woman and an elderly man who were among a group of families forced to march two to three days to reach Mosul from the villages of Safiya and Ellezaga, about 30km and 50km, respectively, to the south.

Children and the elderly were released when they arrived in Mosul on Tuesday and told to stay with relatives, they said, speaking on the phone from the city’s edges.

A resident of Mosul, Rayyan, said he saw the families when they arrived in the city, “their bare feet bleeding and covered with dust as if coming from under the rubble.

“We cried when we saw them,” he said.

Local officials, activists, and a resident of Qayyara district told human rights group Amnesty International that civilians were kept in schools, homes, and other locations near ISIL fighters in Hamam al-Alil after being forced to move from their homes.

ISIL deliberately prevented them from fleeing areas of conflict and fighters embedded themselves within the civilian population.

“Using civilians to shield yourself from attack is a war crime. But even in cases when IS fighters are holding civilians as human shields, this does not absolve Iraqi and coalition forces from the obligation to take their presence into account, take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians, and avoid launching attacks that could cause disproportionate harm to civilians,” said Amnesty’s Lynn Maalouf in a statement.

Iraqi and Kurdish forces are recapturing territory as part of the offensive to retake Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which is known by its opponents in Arabic as Daesh.

On Thursday, Kurdish Peshmerga forces – fighting alongside Iraqi soldiers and militiamen – seized the northern Iraqi village of Fadiliya, which lies about 4km away from Mosul.

Residents had hung up white flags on their homes, hoping to avoid being targeted by air strikes.

Children joyfully ran through the streets singing songs and chanting “Peshmerga”, “Peshmerga”, “Peshmerga”.

One fighter named Ahmed arrived at his home to see his loved ones for the first time in two years.

His sister stood in the doorway and wept and screamed while looking up to the sky. “Daesh ruined our lives. Look what they have done to us,” she said.

As more and more people came out of their homes to taste freedom that had been unthinkable for so long, Khalid Abdel Hafiz tried to hold back tears as he recalled a knock on his door one week ago. ISIL fighters took away his 19-year-old son, Ihsan, along with 14 other young men.

“They just showed up and said ‘We have security orders from high up’,” he said. “I have no information about Ihsan. I am resigned to the fact I will never see him again.”

{Moscow says it had no role in air strikes that killed dozens, including 22 children, in rebel-held Idlib province.}

Russia has denied carrying out air strikes on a school in Syria’s rebel-held Idlib province that killed 36 people, including 22 children.

“The Russian Federation has nothing to do with this terrible tragedy, with this attack,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, adding Moscow demanded an immediate investigation.

Zakharova said claims that Russian and Syrian warplanes had conducted the deadly air strikes in Idlib on Wednesday were “a lie”.

The raids hit a school and the surrounding area, killing 22 children and six teachers, the United Nations children’s agency said.

The incident prompted outrage from UNICEF director Anthony Lake.

“This is a tragedy. It is an outrage and – if deliberate – it is a war crime,” he said, adding the school complex had been hit repeatedly.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor group said “warplanes – either Russian or Syrian – carried out six strikes” in the village of Hass, including on a school complex.

The White House also said on Thursday that either the Syrian government or Russia was responsible for a deadly air strike in Syria that hit the school.

“We don’t know yet that it was the Assad regime or the Russians that carried out the air strike, but we know it was one of the two,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

“Even if it was the Assad regime that carried it out, the Assad regime is only in a position to carry out those kind of attacks because they are supported by the Russian government.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Thursday for an immediate investigation of the attack.

Ban said in a statement that the attack, carried out against rebel-held territory, may amount to a war crime if found to be deliberate.

“If such horrific acts persist despite global outrage, it is largely because their authors, whether in corridors of power or in insurgent redoubts, do not fear justice. They must be proved wrong,” he said.

READ MORE: Aleppo – Russia under fire at Human Rights Council

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no other option but to clear out what he called “a nest of terrorists” from Aleppo, despite the fact that civilians were also present in the city.

Putin said civilian casualties in conflicts should be mourned everywhere, not just in Aleppo, pointing to what he said were civilians killed around Mosul in Iraq.

“Bells should toll for all innocent victims. Not just in Aleppo,” said Putin.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that Syrian and Russian warplanes had not bombed Aleppo in the past nine days.

Meanwhile, the Syrian state media reported that at least six children were killed and 15 others wounded in the government-held west of Aleppo city by two rebel rocket attacks on Thursday.

OPINION: Russia overplays its hand in Syria

One of the attacks struck a school in Shahba neighbourhood, leaving three children dead and 14 others injured, SANA said. The second rocket attack hit a house in the Hamdaniyeh neighbourhood, killing three brothers and injuring a fourth.

Rebel groups have not responded to the reports.

Syrian forces backed by Russia, Iran, and the Lebanese group Hezbollah have waged an aerial and ground assault since late September to recapture eastern Aleppo, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying infrastructure, including hospitals.

Also on Thursday, at least eight people were killed in government shelling on the rebel-held district of Douma in Damascus province, the Syrian Observatory said.

Douma is regularly targeted by government fire, and in recent months regime forces have waged an offensive in the area, which has also been under siege since 2013.

{Around 100 refugees spend night in unused part of Calais Jungle while some take shelter on the streets of Paris.}

Refugees left behind after the demolition of France’s notorious Calais Jungle faced a day of reckoning after spending the night in an unused part of the camp.

Around 100 refugees, including minors, ended up being allowed under police escort on Friday to sleep in shelters that remained standing in the former southern section of the slum that was mostly razed in March, a prelude to this week’s clearance operation.

After thousands were taken away on buses over the past two days, the camp next to the northern port of Calais was virtually deserted on Thursday.

Aid workers, scrambling to find a solution, were given permission to take about 100 minors and adults to a small makeshift school in what was once the camp’s southern sector, which was razed by the state in March.

Al Jazeera’s David Chater, reporting from Paris, said other refugees had made their way to the France capital and that tents around Stalingrad Square in the northeast of the capital are spreading rapidly.

“The police have tried to destroy the camp more than 20 times but it still keeps growing, and the word is the refugees from Calais are on their way here,” he said, adding that families with babies and young children were seen living on the pavements in Paris.

Meanwhile, scores were still looking for shelter or refusing to leave the squalid settlement in Calais that has become one of the most visible symbols of Europe’s migrant crisis.

“You can’t say the operation is over when there are people left,” said Anne-Louise Coury, the Doctors Without Borders coordinator in Calais. “The state still has a serious obligation towards migrants who are minors.”

The response

Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart said claims of the Jungle’s demise were “premature” and demanded “guarantees” that it would not spring up again, once the police had left.

Calais has been a magnet for migrants hoping to sneak across the Channel for more than a decade, and many locals fear new settlements will simply spring up in the area after the Jungle is razed.

La Vie Active, a government-linked charity, said about a third of the camp had been razed by the end of Thursday, and top local official Fabienne Buccio said demolition operations would end on Monday.

Steve Barbet, spokesman for the prefecture, said refugees were seen getting out of cars in front of the registration centre or arriving at the Calais train station.

They joined Calais camp refugees who chose not to be relocated to other parts of France, some clinging to their dream of reaching Britain by hopping on freight trucks crossing the English Channel by ferry or the Eurotunnel train.

Many refugees waited until Wednesday, the last day of the three-day evacuation, to decide whether to take a bus to one of the 450 special centres around France, increasing the chaos.

{Leaders of a 41-day siege of a US wildlife reserve over land ownership cleared of conspiracy and gun charges.}

A federal court jury has acquitted a group of armed protesters who led a takeover of a US wildlife refuge in Oregon earlier this year.

The seven anti-government protesters, including brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, were charged with conspiring to impede federal employees at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge through intimidation or force.

The six men and one woman each faced up to six years in prison on the conspiracy charge. Several also faced gun charges in the high-profile trial that last five weeks.

The 41-day siege that began on January 2 at the remote reserve put the spotlight on a long-running dispute over millions of acres of public land in the US West.

It was led by the Bundy brothers, whose father Cliven Bundy had been involved in a similar confrontation in 2014 with federal officials over cattle grazing on public land in Nevada.

The takeover in Oregon ended with the dramatic surrender of four holdouts, including one who threatened to commit suicide in a phone call with mediators that was streamed live.

The group’s spokesman, LaVoy Finicum, had earlier been shot and killed by police during a traffic stop as he, the Bundys and several others were headed to a community meeting to plead their cause.

In a climax to the trial in the US District Court in Portland on Thursday, Ammon Bundy’s lawyer, Marcus Mumford, was tackled to the floor by US marshals as he became involved in a heated verbal exchange with the judge over the terms of his client’s release.

The verdict came hours after a newly reconstituted jury, with an alternate seated to replace one panelist dismissed over questions of bias on Tuesday, renewed deliberations in the case. Jurors previously had deliberated over three days.

For decades, land rights has been a thorny issue in western US states, where the federal government owns most of the land.

Many conservative politicians and ranchers like the Bundys argue that the land has been mismanaged and should be handed over to states or turned into private property.

{Russia accused as air raids hit civilian buildings in village of Hass, including a school complex, killing at least 26.}

At least 26 civilians, including children, were killed when air raids hit a school and the surrounding area in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Wednesday that the bombing was believed to be carried out by Russian planes and targeted the village of Hass, including the school complex.

“The dead children are students and the planes are believed to be Russian,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based SOHR, which relies on a network of informants in Syria to track the war.

Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said: “It’s horrible, I hope we were not involved. It’s the easiest thing for me to say no, but I’m a responsible person, so I need to see what my Ministry of Defence is going to say.”

A report on Syrian state TV quoted a military source as saying several rebel fighters had been killed when their positions were targeted in Hass, but made no mention of a school.

The raids hit the village around 11:30am (08:30 GMT), an opposition activist with the Idlib Media Centre, told the AFP news agency.

“One rocket hit the entrance of the school as students were leaving to go home, after the school administration decided to end classes for the day because of the raids,” the activist said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The SOHR initially reported two schools had been hit but later clarified that it was a school complex made up of multiple buildings.

{{‘Death toll likely to rise’}}

There were fears the death toll could rise as some of the wounded were reported to be in critical condition, opposition activists said.

Idlib province is controlled by the Army of Conquest, an alliance of rebel groups including Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which changed its name from al-Nusra Front earlier this year after cutting ties with al-Qaeda.

The province has come under increasing bombardment in recent weeks, according to SOHR.

Syrian government forces and their Russian allies have been criticised by rights groups for what they say are indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure.

The Syrians and Russians say they are targetting rebels.

On Monday, more than 80 human rights and aid organisations, including Human Rights Watch, CARE International and Refugees International, urged UN member states to drop Russia from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council over its military campaign in Syria.

More than 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed since the war started in March 2011, and millions have been forced to flee the country.

{No deaths reported after twin earthquakes cause severe damage in the area that was hit two months ago.}

A series of strong earthquakes rocked a wide area of central Italy, striking fear among residents rattled by a deadly tremor in August, but there were no reports of casualties and few serious injuries.

The earthquakes toppled buildings and injured dozens, according to initial reports, hitting the same region that saw nearly 300 people killed in August this year.

The first 5.5-magnitude quake sent people running out of their houses on Wednesday, before the second, a more destructive 6.1-magnitude one, struck two hours later.

Rescuers working through the night and in the rain were struggling to assess the full extent of the disaster.

About five hours after the first quake, Civil Protection department chief Fabrizio Curcio said “tens” of people were reported hurt but only four suffered serious, non-life threatening injuries.

“The reports are not as catastrophic as we feared,” he said.

The quakes were felt in the capital Rome, sending residents running out of their houses and into the streets.

The second was felt as far away as Venice in the far north, and Naples, south of the capital.

“Many houses have collapsed. Our town is finished,” Marco Rinaldi, mayor of the mountain town of Ussita, told Sky Italy television by telephone.

“The second quake was a long, terrible one,” he said.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) registered a first 5.5-magnitude quake at 19:10 local time (17:10 GMT).

The mayor of Serravalle del Chienti, Gabriele Santamarianova, said the quake felt “like bombs were falling”.

“We saw a cloud of dust, we don’t yet know what has fallen down. We’ll see once the sun comes up.”

Castel Sant’Angelo mayor Mauro Falcucci told Sky: “There is no electricity. There are bound to be house collapses. On top of this there are torrential rains.”

In August, a 6.0-6.2 magnitude quake flattened the mountain town of Amatrice – 70km from Visso – killing 297 people and injuring hundreds of others.

The area is also not far from L’Aquila where a powerful earthquake killed more than 300 in 2009.

After the second quake, Italian television channels broadcast images of collapsed buildings and people standing dazed in front of their toppled houses.

“It is not very easy to make assessments in the dark and the weather is bad in the whole region. We will have to see more precisely in the light of day,” said Curcio.

Amateur video footage on television showed clouds of dust rising as parts of buildings collapsed in some towns, including Camerino in the Marche region, where a bell tower fell on a building.

Massive boulders, some the size of cars, fell on the main north-south road of the Nera River valley that links mountain communities.

The historic late 15th-century rural church of San Salvatore in Campo, near Norcia in the Umbria region, which had been weakened by the August quake, collapsed.

For people unable to return home immediately, civil protection arranged accommodation in gyms and prepared to reopen some of the tent camps which were set up after the August earthquake.

Many residents prepared to spend the night in their cars.

{Iraqi forces move at least 1,000 civilians from dangerous areas, but up to one million remain trapped in ISIL-held city.}

Iraqi special forces have moved more than 1,000 people out of villages near the frontlines of the battle to retake the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant-held city of Mosul and surrounding areas, where the UN says fighters have committed a number of abuses in recent days, officials said on Wednesday.

Haider Fadhil, special forces major-general, said residents of Tob Zawa and other villages were taken to a camp in the nearby Khazer region for their safety.

The International Organization for Migration says around 9,000 people have been displaced since the operation to retake Mosul began on October 17.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Erbil, said: “Up to one million civilians, if not more, are believed to be stuck inside Mosul. Ensuring their safety is as much of a challenge as defeating ISIL.”

ISIL, also known as ISIS, took control of the city in 2014. Mosul is now the group’s last, major urban bastion in Iraq.

The special forces were undertaking cleanup operations in areas retaken from the fighters to the east of the city, where troops uncovered a vast tunnel network used by ISIL to shuttle fighters and supplies by motorcycle, Major Salam al-Obeidi said.

To the south of Mosul, another Iraqi commander said ISIL has been withdrawing from the town of Shura toward the city, taking civilians with them to use as human shields and leaving behind explosive booby-traps to slow the troops’ advance.

“These small villages are secondary to them, Mosul is much more important,” said Brigadier-General Alaa Mehsin, of the Iraqi army’s 15th Division. “They don’t want to waste their energy.” He said a small number of fighters and civilians were still inside the town.

Also on Wednesday, the Kurdish Peshmerga took control of villages west of Bashiqa – a key town north of Mosul – after two days of clashes with ISIL.

Peshmerga General Bahram Yassin said ISIL was using car bombs, explosives and tunnels, as well as drones equipped with small bombs to strike his troops’ positions.

Meanwhile, sources told Al Jazeera that seven ISIL fighters and three civilians were killed in a US air strike north of Mosul.

{{Widescale offensive}}

Iraqi forces have been pushing toward Mosul from several directions since the launch of the widescale offensive, which involves more than 25,000 Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shia militias. It is expected to take weeks, if not months, to drive ISIL out.

The fighters have had months to prepare for the long-awaited operation.

“They’ve really dug in, literally, and started putting up the berms, the trenches, the tunnelling systems,” said a US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And they’re quite extensive tunnelling systems, some of them stretching upward of two kilometers [over a mile].”

He said Iraqi forces have found homes near Mosul where the lights are wired with explosives that detonate if you flip the switch. Inside Mosul, ISIL has set up large concrete barriers known as T-walls, blocking off several streets.

ISIL is also believed to have grown increasingly brutal as it seeks to eliminate any potential threats from among the local population, killing alleged spies as well as former members of the Iraqi security forces.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Tuesday that ISIL appears to have carried out a number of abuses in recent days in and around Mosul, including killing 50 former Iraqi police officers they had been holding in a building near the city.

Spokesman Rupert Colville said Iraqi forces found the bodies of 70 civilians who had been shot dead in the Tuloul Nasser village, some 35 kilometers south of Mosul. He said it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the killings, and cautioned that it was hard to immediately verify the reports.

He told reporters in Geneva that the UN rights body also had reports that the fighters gunned down 15 villagers south of the city and threw their bodies in a river. In the same village, ISIL tied six people to vehicles by their hands and dragged them around because they were related to a tribal leader battling the fighters, he said.

“We very much fear that these will not be the last such reports we receive of such barbaric acts,” Colville said.