Tag: InternationalNews

{More than 20 people injured and several detained in nationwide protests calling for the Venezuelan president’s ouster.}

A Venezuelan policeman was shot dead and at least 120 people wounded as clashes broke out when hundreds of thousands of opposition protesters took to the streets to protest against the president.

At least 39 people were detained, and at least two other police officers were shot.

The wounded included three people who were shot in the northwestern city of Maracaibo on Wednesday, human rights lawyer Alfredo Romero said on social media, on a day of nationwide protests amid calls for a general strike and a march on the presidential palace in the capital Caracas.

Enraged by last week’s suspension of a push for a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s opposition has ramped up its tactics in recent days.

On Wednesday, opposition leaders called a 12-hour, nationwide general strike to be held on Friday, as an economic crisis continued to deepen food and medicine shortages.

They vowed to use their legislative majority to issue a declaration holding Maduro to account for his handling of the country.

“We are going to notify Nicolas Maduro that the Venezuelan people declare he has abandoned his post,” the speaker of the National Assembly, Henry Ramos Allup, said to cheering protesters in Caracas.

He said his side would deliver that ruling in a march on November 3 to the presidential palace.

Maduro, the 53-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez, accuses the opposition of seeking a coup with support from the US.

“They are desperate, they have received the order from the north to destroy the Venezuelan revolution,” he told a counter-march of red-shirted government loyalists.

In return, his opponents also accuse him of a “coup” after authorities last week halted their bid for a referendum on removing him from power.

{{Economic crisis}}

Venezuela is home to the world’s largest oil reserves but has plunged into economic crisis due to falling crude prices – leading to ever louder calls for Maduro to go.

Analysts have warned of a risk of violent unrest in the country.

Clashes at anti-government protests in 2014 left 43 people dead.

The opposition’s vow to march on the presidential palace next week raised the tone in the power struggle.

The palace was the scene of a short-lived opposition coup attempt in 2002 against Maduro’s late predecessor and ally, Hugo Chavez.

The head of the armed forces, Vladimir Padrino, who is also Maduro’s defence minister, declared “unconditional loyalty” to the president on Tuesday.

Maduro held a meeting of his National Defense Council on Wednesday.

In televised comments at the gathering, he called for “political dialogue and peace in Venezuela”.

The council comprises top officials including the defence and security ministers.

Maduro’s term ends in 2019.

On Tuesday, lawmakers voted to stage a “political and criminal trial” against Maduro.

But the Supreme Court has overruled the National Assembly’s decisions ever since the opposition majority took control in January.

{Refugees set Calais camp on fire in protest against its dismantling and their eviction by the French government.}

Syrian refugees in France’s ‘jungle’ refugee camp have said they fear long-term separation from their family members who have reached the UK as authorities continue to dismantle the settlement.

About 40 Syrians are holding out in Calais, once home to around 10,000 people from the Middle East, Africa and southern Asia.

Several refugees told Al Jazeera they were weighing up their options but their primary objective remained joining immediate family across the English channel.

“We haven’t changed our plans,” said Yamin who is from the Syrian capital Damascus.

“We have families in England. My wife is in England too. The French government is giving us just one month in the refugee centres and after that we don’t know what it’ll do. We still have the same issues, we have to go to England but how, we don’t know.”

Mohamed Khalid, in his 40s and from the city of Aleppo, was similarly intent on reuniting with his wife and four children who were now in England.

“I don’t want to stay in France because I have no one here,” Khalid said. “The French government is giving me a month to think about claiming asylum in France but I only want to go to my family.”

France began its eviction of the ‘jungle’ on Monday and has transferred thousands of its inhabitants to reception centres across the country.

Refugees protested the dismantling of the makeshift camp by setting it on fire.

Al Jazeera’s David Chater, reporting from Calais, said the refugees were forced to fend for themselves as “blazes were lit inside the Jungle Camp in a dangerous display of defiance”.

“There were scenes of anarchy and chaos. French fire crews and police tried their best to tackle the flames but the narrow lanes of the shanty town meant there were some place they couldn’t reach.”

‘The refugees are confused’

Independent aid worker Naeem Akhtar said many of the refugees he had spoken to had little idea of what to do next.

“The refugees are confused. Some say they want to go back to Syria while some say they are going to take asylum in France,” Akhtar said.

“A young Syrian, who couldn’t make it [to the UK], said he would rather go back to Syria than take asylum anywhere else but England.”

At its peak, the Calais camp housed between 500 and 1,000 Syrians. Many of them have now reached the UK, moved to other unofficial settlements, or have claimed asylum in France.

The men Al Jazeera spoke to were excluded from recent British efforts to take in children and other vulnerable refugees due to their age.

The refugees fear that by claiming asylum in France, they would have to undergo a lengthy asylum process that would prevent them from permanently settling with their families in the UK.

In a survey conducted by the Refugee Rights Data Project before the eviction, 59 percent of respondents in the camp said they would stay in the Calais area once the clearance took place.

{Officials blame ISIL for civilians’ kidnapping and killing in Firoz Koh district of the isolated province.}

Fighters have killed at least 30 civilians after abducting them in the remote Afghan province of Ghor, according to an Afghan police official.

Suspected ISIL fighters killed dozens of civilians on Tuesday in the Firoz Koh district in revenge for the death of one of their commanders, a provincial official told Reuters news agency on Wednesday.

“Afghan police killed a Daesh commander in Ghor province during an operation yesterday but Daesh fighters abducted some 30 civilians from near the provincial capital and shot them all dead in revenge,” Abdul Hai Khatibi, a spokesman for the governor, said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, also known as ISIS.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

However, Abdul Hai Khateby, spokesman for Ghor’s governor, told the Associated Press news agency that the fighters behind the attacks and abductions were a renegade Taliban group that swore allegiance last year to Afghanistan’s ISIL group.

Ghor is one of the largest and most isolated provinces in the country. Its mountainous terrain and harsh winters have effectively sheltered it from the worst of the conflict with the Taliban.

{US-led group meets in Paris to discuss ongoing operation to free key ISIL-held Iraqi city as fighting intensifies.}

Iraqi forces inched to within striking distance of eastern Mosul on Tuesday as defence chiefs from the US-led coalition met in Paris to review the offensive on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group’s bastion.

Forces from the elite counter-terrorism service (CTS) retook areas close to the eastern outskirts of Mosul, the last major urban stronghold of ISIL, also known as ISIS, in Iraq.

“On our front, we have advanced to within five or six kilometres (three to four miles) of Mosul,” their commander, General Abdelghani al-Assadi, told the AFP news agency.

“We must now coordinate with forces on other fronts to launch a coordinated” attack on Mosul, he said, speaking from the Christian town of Bartalla.

With the Mosul battle in its second week, French President Francois Hollande called for the coalition against ISIL to prepare for the aftermath and the next stages of the war against the hardline group.

Mosul is where ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the cross-border “caliphate” in June 2014, and its loss could spell the end of the group’s days as a land-holding force in the Iraqi part.

Hollande said the Paris meeting aims at preparing Mosul’s future, and stressed that coalition members must help ensure the city’s future authorities represent all ethnic and religious groups so that the “long-awaited peace will come”.

{{Coalition eyes Raqqa}}

US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, also in Paris, said the meeting discussed, among other issues, “how we can protect our homelands even as we decimate ISIL in Iraq and Syria”.

“I am encouraged by the results of our campaign so far, it has been proceeding as planned,” said Carter. “The Iraqis are fighting with skill and commitment and courage, enabled by the coalition.”

He added that the coalition was preparing to fight next Raqqa. While ISIL fighters in Mosul are outnumbered about one to 10, there are insufficient forces currently available to take on the estimated 3,000-4,000 ISIL fighters in Raqqa.

“We resolve to follow through with that same sense of urgency and focus in enveloping and collapsing ISIL’s control over Raqqa as well,” said Carter. “In fact, we’ve already begun laying the groundwork with our partners to commence the isolation of Raqqa.”

Meanwhile, Kurdish Peshmerga forces are making gains on Mosul’s northeastern front, but federal forces advancing from the south have some way to go before reaching the outskirts.

At the same time, thousands of men from the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary umbrella group dominated by Tehran-backed Shia militias were preparing for a push to the west of Mosul.

Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians have opposed the Hashed’s participation in the operation, as has Turkey, which has a military presence east of Mosul despite repeated demands by Baghdad to withdraw its forces.

{{ISIL distraction tactics}}

Tensions have risen between Baghdad and Ankara, whose foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, warned on Tuesday that if there is a threat to Turkey, “we are ready to use all our resources including a ground operation”.

Seeking to draw attention away from the Mosul campaign, ISIL has staged attacks in the northern city of Kirkuk and western town of Rutba in recent days.

ISIL fighters seized two neighbourhoods in Rutba, but officials said that as of Tuesday it was fully back in government hands – a claim which Al Jazeera was unable to independently verify.

Senior Iraqi and US military officials have reported that ISIL leaders are already trying to leave Mosul to reach the Syrian side of their “caliphate”.

Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Erbil, said: “Wherever ISIL are facing defeat, they are now popping up in other areas. We saw it in Kirkuk, we saw it in Rutba. There is still a lot of fighting to do. Everybody here in the military and Peshmerga are pleased with the way the operation is going.”

{Pakistani general says phone intercepts show three Lashkar-e-Jhangvi attackers received instructions from Afghanistan.}

Funerals have been held for those who died in the overnight assault of a police training college in Quetta that left at least 61 people dead and 170 others wounded.

Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, arrived in the provincial capital of Balochistan on Tuesday to pay tribute to the victims of the attack, which was claimed by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) armed group.

Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid, reporting from Quetta, said survivors recalled hiding under their beds and jumping off windows to escape the attack.

“We heard harrowing tales of how the trainees escaped when multiple attackers scaled the wall, came into the academy, and lobbed grenades into the various barracks where these trainees were sleeping, and then two of them set off their suicide jackets,” he said.

He said an offshoot of LeJ called the Al Alami group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and has specifically targeted the training college because “it was a soft target”.

“This is a group that has been involved in sectarian attacks in the city of Quetta. It’s considered to be very strong here,” he said.

General Sher Afgun, a senior military commander in Balochistan, confirmed the report, saying calls were intercepted between the attackers and their handlers, suggesting they were from the Al Alami wing of LeJ, a sectarian Sunni armed group.

“We came to know from the communication intercepts that there were three militants who were getting instructions from Afghanistan,” Afgun said.

Hundreds of trainees were stationed at the college in the city outskirts of Quetta when masked gunmen carried out the raid late on Monday, and lasted for nearly five hours.

“They just barged in and started firing point-blank. We started screaming and running around in the barracks,” one police cadet who survived told media.

LeJ, whose roots are in the heartland Punjab province, has a history of carrying out sectarian attacks in Balochistan, particularly against the minority Hazara Shias.

Pakistan has previously accused LeJ of colluding with al-Qaeda.

Authorities launched a crackdown against LeJ last year, particularly in Punjab province.

In a blow to the organisation, Malik Ishaq, the group’s leader, was killed in July 2015 with 13 members of the central leadership in what police say was a failed escape attempt.

“Two, three days ago we had intelligence reports of a possible attack in Quetta city, that is why security was beefed up in Quetta, but they struck at the police training college,” Sanaullah Zehri, chief minister of Baluchistan, told the Geo TV channel.

Monday night’s assault on the police college was the deadliest in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed 70 people in an attack on mourners gathered at a Quetta hospital in August.

Pakistan has improved its security situation in recent years, but armed groups continue to pose a threat and stage attacks in the mainly Muslim nation of 190 million.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), which established a self-proclaimed Muslim caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, has also sought to make inroads in Pakistan over the past year, hoping to exploit the country’s sectarian divisions.

{Philippine president calls the US a “bully” for hinting at cutting aid to Manila over human rights concerns.}

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has arrived in Japan for three-day of talks, but the first day of his visit was overshadowed by his rants against the United States, calling Americans “foolish” while threatening to cut off a 2014 defence pact with Washington DC.

“The Americans are really a bully,” for chastising him over his deadly war on drugs, Duterte told a crowd of Filipinos in Tokyo.

He called it “demeaning” for the US to hint at cutting aid and assistance to the Philippines on human rights grounds, saying, “You can have it. It’s all yours. We will survive.”

Before leaving for the four-hour flight to Tokyo, Duterte also delivered a speech at the Manila airport, calling Americans “foolish,” adding that their land is stricken with “pure bigotry and discrimination.”

“These Americans are really foolish,” Duterte said, adding Americans travel to the Philippines “like somebody, without visas, these sillies.”

He also made a veiled threat to revoke a defence pact allowing large numbers of US troops, warships and planes to enter the Philippines for combat drills.

Referring to the pact, Duterte said, “Forget it,” adding that in the future, “I do not want to see any military man of any other nation except the Philippine soldier.”

Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from Manila, said Duterte was in a “characteristically uncompromising mood” before his departure.

“This was meant to be a three quick questions before he got on a flight to Tokyo. It quickly deteriorated into a 15-20 minute rant against all things American,” our correspondent said.

{{Meeting with Abe}}

Later in his speech in Tokyo, Duterte said he is willing to be imprisoned in the future over his campaign of extrajudicial killings targeting alleged drug dealers and users.

“If you have the evidence, go ahead and file the case,” he said. “I can rot in prison for my country.”

Duterte’s crackdown on drugs could have already resulted more than 3,000 deaths, Philippine police have said.

Duterte argued progressive countries in the West had no right to “chastise” and “reprimand” him for just doing his job to protect future generations of Filipinos.

On Wednesday Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected to ask Duterte to mend soured ties with Washington when the two meet.

A planned statement would express Japan’s concern over the strained relationship between the US and the Philippines, caused by a string of anti-US remarks made by Duterte, the Kyodo News agency reported, citing unnamed Japanese government sources.

Duterte’s first visit to Japan since he took office in June follows a four-day trip to China last week, during which he announced a “separation from the United States” in a speech to Filipino and Chinese businessmen.

Duterte had said he was looking forward to the visit, noting, “I go to Japan with full trust that we can understand each other and Japan will understand my position vis-a-vis the foreign policy I want to implement, a policy that is truly Filipino.”

The president is also scheduled to meet Emperor Akihito.

{Outlawed group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claims responsibility for raid on facility in Quetta where 200 cadets were stationed.}

At least 60 people have been killed in an attack on a police training centre in the city of Quetta, Pakistani officials say.

The announcement on Tuesday came at the end of a military counter-operation.

About 200 trainees were stationed at the facility when the attack occurred late on Monday, officials said, and some were taken hostage during the attack, which lasted five hours.

Most of the dead were police cadets.

Mir Sarfraz Ahmed Bugti, home minister of Balochistan province, said early on Tuesday that five to six armed men attacked a dormitory inside the training facility while cadets rested and slept.

More than a hundred people were injured, he said. The death toll could rise as many cadets were seriously injured.

The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, which has been outlawed by the government, has been involved in past attacks on security forces.

“Over the past few years LeJ has been targeted by the military, especially in Punjab province where its leadership was eliminated. And this attack surprised many that it still survives in some form,” writer and columnist Raza Rumi said.

An emergency was declared in all government hospitals of the provincial capital of Balochistan, with the injured shifted to the Civil Hospital Quetta and the Bolan Medical Complex.

Witnesses reported hearing at least three explosions leading up to the raid. Sources told Al Jazeera that it took at least 30 minutes before Pakistani authorities responded to the assault.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Kamal Hyder noted that the facility has come under attack in the past, with rockets fired towards it in 2006 and 2008.

The attack came just hours after gunmen shot and killed two customs officers and wounded a third near the town of Surab, about 145km south of Quetta.

The customs officers were targeted by gunmen riding on a motorcycle, said Zainullah Baloch, a spokesman for the local police. Baloch said two officers died on the spot and the injured one was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Earlier on Monday, two gunmen on a motorcycle killed a police intelligence officer in the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said Khalid Khan, a local police officer.

The Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack. The group’s spokesman, Muhammad Khurasani, said in a statement that the shooters returned to their hideout after the attack.

Pakistan has carried out military operations against armed groups in tribal areas near Afghanistan and in cities across Pakistan, but the fighters are still capable of staging regular attacks.

{Offensive to reclaim ISIL’s last major urban bastion in Iraq enters second week, with fighting east and south of Mosul.}

Iraqi forces have fought their way into two villages near Mosul as the offensive to retake city enters its second week.

Iraqi special forces began shelling ISIL positions before dawn on Monday near Bartella, a historically Christian town to the east of Mosul that they had retaken last week.

With patriotic music blaring from loudspeakers on their Humvees, they then pushed into the village of Tob Zawa, about 9km from Mosul, amid heavy clashes.

After entering the village, they allowed more than 30 people who had been sheltering in a school to escape the fighting.

Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, fell in 2014 under the control of ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, also known as ISIS.

Several countries are involved in the battle to reclaim the city, including Turkey which on Sunday confirmed its first attempted shelling of ISIL positions near Bashiqa, a key town near Mosul, at the request of Peshmerga forces.

Turkey’s moves on Sunday raised tensions between Ankara and Baghdad. Relations have been strained after Turkey sent hundreds of troops to the Bashiqa region to train anti-ISIL fighters.

Baghdad labels the move a violation of its sovereignty and demands Turkish withdrawal, a call which Ankara ignores.

Elsewhere, the Iraqi Federal Police, a military-style force, pushed into a small village in the Shura district south of Mosul, where they fired a large anti-aircraft gun and rocket-propelled grenades as they battled ISIL fighters.

They later appeared to have secured the village, a cluster of squat homes on a desert plain, and handed out water and other aid to civilians.

The US-led coalition said it had carried out six air strikes near Mosul on Sunday, destroying 19 fighting positions and 17 vehicles, as well as rocket and mortar launchers, artillery and tunnels.

{{Daquq attack}}

Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into last Friday’s purported air strike in northern Iraq that struck the women’s section of a Shia mosque in the town of Daquq.

The strike happened amid a large ISIL assault on the nearby city of Kirkuk that was meant to distract the Iraqi forces and their allies from the massive operation around Mosul.

The ISIL attack on Kirkuk, some 170km southeast of Mosul, lasted for two days and killed at least 80 people, mainly members of the Kurdish security forces, who assumed control of the city in 2014 as Iraqi forces crumbled before an ISIL advance.

Fears grow for citizens as Iraqi forces advance on Mosul
HRW said Daquq’s residents believe the attack was an air strike because of the extent of the destruction and because planes could be heard flying overhead. The New York-based watchdog said at least 13 people were reported killed.

The US-led coalition and the Iraqi military, which are waging the offensive to drive ISIL from Mosul, are the only parties known to be flying military aircraft over Iraq.

The US denied conducting the deadly strike.

Iraqi Brigadier-General Yahya Rasool, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, confirmed the Iraqi government was investigating the attack. He declined to say whether Iraqi or coalition planes were flying in the area at the time of the explosion.

The campaign to retake Mosul comes after months of planning and involves more than 25,000 Iraqi troops, Kurdish forces, Sunni tribal fighters and state-sanctioned Shia militias. It is expected to take weeks, if not months, to drive ISIL out of Iraq’s second largest city, which is still home to more than a million people.

ISIL has suffered a series of setbacks over the past year, and Mosul is its last major urban bastion in Iraq.

“What allowed ISIL to gain large traction in Iraq was the breakdown of the political order in Baghdad,” former Iraqi ambassador to the UN Feisal Istrabadi told Al Jazeera.

“Leaderships throughout the country will have to make the necessary compromises and political bargains to dry out the swamp that allows ISIL to thrive.”

{Black churches continue to play a role in the US state’s civil rights movement, marching together to voting centres.}

Charlotte, United States – Nestled in between glimmering, high-rise buildings belonging to America’s banking industry sits First United Presbyterian Church, a historically African-American church adorned with jewel-toned stained glass.

For the last month, in the run-up to the US elections, it has joined forces with another local church to offer an adult Sunday school class on racial reconciliation. And not just with any other church.

The visitors come from First Presbyterian Church, a predominantly white congregation whose original members sent their slaves to worship in the church basement – slaves who, after emancipation, went on to found the 150-year-old church now hosting the Sunday school.

“We are not here to be comfortable,” said African-American Sunday school teacher Donna Fair. “Jesus was never comfortable.”

Police shootings, riots, battles over discriminatory voting measures and poverty were all part of the Sunday discussions, and more so this weekend as early voting began in the state, North Carolina.

“Hearing all of you has really helped me to enunciate and clarify my own beliefs, you know, stuff you just kind of take for granted being a person of white privilege,” Barbara Williamson, a white woman, told the group.

Fair urged her students to think about everything on their ballots and vote not according to party affiliation but to the moral framework they built together during the six-week Sunday school class.

It began in September after Charlotte became one of the cities at the centre of a national outcry over police shootings of African-American men. The killing of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott led to days of violent protests.

Fair then asked her students to think beyond the polls to their daily lives: who do they know in city council, in the school system, in their families?

“What are we doing with the influence that we have?” she asked. “Look how many people you come into contact with. You may not be sitting in the room where the decisions are being made, but you have the ability to influence those decisions.”

The class coincides with a larger electoral tradition known as Souls to the Polls. It aims to get African-American churchgoers out to vote, usually during early voting on Sundays when they march together or share rides.

“In the African-American community we consider the vote a sacred right,” said Reverend Frederick Robinson, a civil rights activist and executive board member of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice. “Because in our history there was a time when we were not able to vote.”

This weekend, voting rights advocates celebrated their success in overturning a North Carolina state law that an appeals court ruled targeted African-American voters with almost “surgical precision”.

The controversial law would have limited the state’s early voting hours and the number of polling stations in areas that are predominantly African-American and tend to vote Democrat.

North Carolina is one of the crucial battleground states in this year’s election, Both presidential candidates – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – have campaigned here in the last week.

As non-profit organisations, churches cannot endorse candidates, but they can help people register to vote, educate them about their voting rights and ballot issues, and even open their doors to candidates who want to visit, provided they welcome candidates of all political affiliations.

Jonette Harper, an elder at First United Presbyterian and a Souls to the Polls consultant with Democracy North Carolina, is helping religious leaders throughout Charlotte to do just that.

“It is our duty to remind people that this is how and where the civil rights movement started,” she said, remembering that religious groups historically played a role in organising for social justice, focusing on giving voice to their people.

“Religious organisations give you a foundation for your beliefs. Out of your beliefs, policies are made. The way policies are made are through voting, bills, through people we send to Congress,” she added.

Around the city, Christian as well as Muslim, Jewish, Unitarian, Buddhist, civic and youth groups have joined Souls to the Polls, educating voters about their rights and responsibilities, the latest ballot initiatives, registering people to vote and busing them to voting centres.

Back at First United Presbyterian Church, a high-ranking pastor from the Presbyterian Church USA’s General Assembly gave a sermon so emotive and reminiscent of the 1960s civil rights leader Martin Luther King that congregants raised their hands and even stood up in the pews.

“Be careful not to be a church that closes its doors to the violence, the rioters, the downtown that is changing, the struggling communities that you find yourself in from time to time,” J Herbert Nelson II preached in a booming voice from the pulpit, referencing the recent riots.

Nelson reminded the congregation that the unrest was a culmination of community frustration not just about the disproportionate number of killings of black people at the hands of police, but about unemployment, low wages, educational disparities, and gentrification of urban areas.

Recent studies by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill suggests African-Americans and Hispanics in Charlotte are nearly three times as likely to live in poverty than whites.

“Set up a church that truly is able to contend with the contextual realities of this present age,” Nelson bellowed as attendants raised their hands and declared “Yes, yes, yes”.

The service was supposed to be followed by a relaxed Sunday brunch, complete with tuna salad, couscous, and cupcakes.

But just as attendants began to sip their pink lemonade, they were called to action again, this time by about a hundred members of other predominantly black churches marching in the street outside towards a voting centre two blocks away.

Harper and several others dropped their meals and ran out to join.

Marchers arrived in the parking lot of the polling station just as another church was helping elderly and disabled people off its bus. Then the crowd broke into a call-and-repeat chant.

“Fired up!” shouted the march’s leaders. “Ready to vote!” the rest responded, a play on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan Fired Up! Ready to go!

“It feels good. It’s the first time I’ve ever done something like this,” said Marcus Jones, an 18-year-old African-American who helped carry a Souls to the Polls banner. “I’ll do it every election year from now on.”