Tag: InternationalNews

{At least seven dead as fiercest Caribbean storm in a decade hits Cuba after slamming Haiti on its way toward the US.}

Hurricane Matthew has lashed eastern Cuba after the deadly storm ploughed through Haiti and the Dominican Republic, triggering mass floods and leaving at least seven dead, a US-based monitor said Tuesday.

“Northern eyewall of extremely dangerous Hurricane Matthew already pounding the eastern tip of Cuba,” read the latest bulletin from the National Hurricane Center issued at 2100 GMT.

The Category 4 storm, the strongest in the Caribbean in nearly a decade, cut across the southwestern tip of Haiti earlier on Tuesday, uprooting trees and tearing roofs from homes in a largely rural corner of the impoverished country.

At least one fisherman reportedly drowned off the Haitian coast as the storm closed in, and four deaths were recorded in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, bringing the hurricane’s death toll in the Caribbean to at least seven.

Matthew inflicted major damage across Haiti, though the extent was not immediately clear, said Marie Alta Jean-Baptiste, director of the country’s Civil Protection Agency.

“It’s much too early to know how bad things are, but we do know there are a lot of houses that have been destroyed or damaged in the south,” Jean-Baptiste said.

Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Haitian-Dominican Republic border, said the situation was very serious especially in the southern part of Haiti.

“The hurricane has wrecked homes and hit transport and communication in the western hemisphere’s poorest country, which is still recovering from the 2010 earthquake.

“A crucial bridge connecting the southern part of the country to the capital Port Au-Prince has collapsed,” Bo said, adding that it is likely to hamper aid delivery to the affected areas.

Many streets were flooded or blocked with fallen trees throughout the southwestern peninsula. Rivers surged with muddy water as heavy rain fell. Local radio reported that the water was shoulder-high in parts of Les Cayes, close to where the storm hit shore.

Haitian authorities had tried to evacuate people from the most vulnerable areas ahead of the storm, but many were reluctant to leave their homes. Some sought shelter only after the worst was already upon them, making their way through debris-strewn streets amid pounding rain.

“Many people are now asking for help, but it’s too late because there is no way to evacuate them,” said Fonie Pierre, director of Catholic Relief Services for the Les Cayes area, who was huddled in her office with about 20 people.

The UN dubbed the Category Four hurricane the worst humanitarian crisis to hit Haiti since the devastating 2010 earthquake which killed more than 200,000 people.

“Haiti is facing the largest humanitarian event witnessed since the earthquake six years ago,” Mourad Wahba, the UN Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Haiti, said.

Late on Tuesday, the storm moved along the Windward Passage between Haiti and Jamaica, where it dumped heavy rain that caused flooding.

The centre of the storm is projected to pass about 80km northeast of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Forecasters say Matthew could hit the US state of Florida toward the end of the week before pushing its way up the east coast over the weekend.

Cuba’s government declared a hurricane alert for six eastern provinces, and workers removed traffic lights from poles in the city of Santiago to keep them from falling.

In the US, Florida Governor Rick Scott urged residents along the state’s Atlantic coast to prepare for the possibility of a direct hit, and the Red Cross put out a call for volunteers in South Carolina.

{Pro-Kurdish IMC TV becomes the latest media outlet to be closed down under the government’s state of emergency powers.}

Turkey has shut down a television station for allegedly “spreading terrorist propaganda” after the country extended the state of emergency declared following a failed coup d’etat in the summer.

IMC TV, known for its pro-Kurdish and liberal content, became the latest Turkish media organisation to be closed down on Tuesday after police raided the building and cut the broadcast live on air.

The channel was among several outlets ordered shut down since last week.

Banu Guven, a veteran journalist with the IMC TV, told Al Jazeera that the channel was switched off because it had touched on sensitive issues in Turkey.

“We reported on the Kurdish issue because it is probably the most challenging problem Turkey has been facing. As journalists, of course, we will have stories on this issue. But IMC TV is not only about this. We also reported on human rights, women’s rights, other minorities and the bans imposed on the society,” Guven said.

“There is no rule of law in Turkey under the state of emergency, so there are no tools to use against such unlawful accusations.”

Turkey’s state of emergency allows the government to adopt “executive orders”, which act as laws, without parliament approval.

One allows ministers to order the closure of media organisations, provided they are “threats to national security”. Dozens of outlets have been closed down since July.

The Cabinet of Ministers has extended the state of emergency for an additional 90 days, government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said on Tuesday.

Emergency measures were imposed in July in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt that killed almost 300 people.

Turkey’s more than 30-year-old conflict with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) reignited in the summer of 2015, after a ceasefire declared a year-and-a-half ago faltered and peace talks between the two sides collapsed.

PKK attacks on security forces have been frequent since then with the government launching military operations against the group in the southeast of the country.

PKK is considered a “terrorist” organisation by the United States and the European Union.

Turkey has also been hit by repeated bomb attacks blamed on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in recent months.

‘Necessary measures’

Talip Kucukcan, an academic and ruling AK Party MP, said Turkey was going through a rough period and moves made under the state of emergency were necessary for the country to normalise.

“Turkey is facing the aftermath of a coup attempt, and frequent terror attacks by ISIL and the PKK. A country, that has lost more than 500 soldiers and hundreds of its citizens in a short time cannot tolerate individuals, organisations, and media outlets praising the culprits of these crimes,” Kucukcan told Al Jazeera.

“France is also going through a state of emergency. The loss that country suffered from terrorism is in no comparison to Turkey. However, after being the victim of two attacks, it has declared its own state of emergency.”

Rights groups and some of Ankara’s Western allies have expressed concerns about the crackdown on opposition groups and media in the country, despite their denunciation of the coup attempt.

{{But Kucukcan rejected the criticism.}}

“[The] AK party is a political movement that has been increasing its votes since it came to power in 2002. Therefore, it is irrational to think that the party is silencing the opposition in Turkey,” he said.

Separately, Ankara suspended 12,801 police officers in its latest effort to remove alleged coup supporters from state institutions.

Tens of thousands of people in the military, civil service, police, judiciary and universities have been sacked, suspended, or arrested for alleged links to the failed putsch.

{Decision denounced by Russia comes as more air raids hit Aleppo, biggest hospital hit for third time in a week.}

The United States has suspended talks with Russia over the war in Syria and accused Moscow of not living up to its commitments under a ceasefire agreement.

Moscow and Washington had brokered a previous ceasefire but it collapsed last month after several days of relative calm.

After weeks of intense air raids on Aleppo carried out by the Syrian and Russian armies, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the US was “on the verge” of ending talks on Syria with Russia.

The US government released a statement on Monday confirming the suspension of talks.

“The United States is suspending its participation in bilateral channels with Russia that were established to sustain the cessation of hostilities,” US State Department spokesperson John Kirby said in the statement.

“This is not a decision that was taken lightly.

The announcement came hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to suspend an agreement with the US on disposing of weapons-grade plutonium, citing “unfriendly acts” by the US.

Russia’s foreign ministry said it regretted the US decision to suspend the talks, saying Washington was trying to shift responsibility for a failure to stop the violence onto Moscow.

“Washington simply did not fulfil the key condition of the agreement to improve the humanitarian condition around Aleppo,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

“After failing to fulfil the agreements that they themselves worked out, they are trying to shift responsibility on to someone else”.

Zakharova insisted that “in the past few days” Russia had “taken efforts aimed at fulfiling” the ceasefire deal, after it unravelled in acrimony.

“It all essentially came down to a simple question – who are Jabhat al-Nusra, who is behind them, and why can’t Washington fulfil its promise to divide the terrorists from the so-called moderate opposition,” she said, referring to the group now calling itself Jabhat Fateh al-Sham.

Confirmation that the US-Russian talks on Syria have collapsed suggests there is little hope, if any, of a diplomatic solution to end the five-and-a-half-year-old civil war emerging anytime soon.

News of the suspending of talks, however, came as diplomats said the United Nations Security Council would begin to negotiate on Monday a draft resolution that urges Russia and the US to ensure an immediate truce in Aleppo.

{{Hospital hit again}}

On the ground in war-torn Syria, at least seven people in Aleppo were killed when the biggest hospital in the rebel-held east was hit by the third air strike in a week.

The medical facility, known as M10, is “completely destroyed … It is gone”, said Adham Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society on Monday, adding that three maintenance workers had been killed.

The attack killed another four people outside the hospital, Dr Abu al-Izz said.

The repeated attacks on hospitals in rebel-held Aleppo have drawn condemnation from the UN – and accusations of war crimes.

Al-Izz and Ibrahim al-Hajj of the White Helmets rescue organisation in eastern Aleppo said the hospital had been hit by a “bunker-buster” bomb – designed to demolish below-ground facilities – which, they said, are dropped by Russian planes.

Russia intervened in Syria a year ago to prop up President Bashar al-Assad’s stumbling army.

READ MORE: Syria’s war – ‘Russian air raids kill 9,400 in one year’

Its air campaign has allowed government forces to reclaim territory from rebels and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), most notably imposing a siege on eastern Aleppo where some 250,000 to 300,000 civilians are now trapped.

Meanwhile, a relief group and Syrian opposition monitors said air strikes put out of service one of the country’s most secure hospitals, which had been dug into a mountain.

The International Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM) said on Monday the Dr Hasan Al-Araj Hospital in Hama province was struck twice on Sunday.

The Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday that Russian fighter jets carried out the attacks, which hit the hospital near the central village of Kfar Zeita.

UOSSM said there were minor injuries from the attack. Syrian and Russia jets have been blamed for a series of attacks that have damaged hospitals and clinics in rebel-held parts of Syria, mostly in Aleppo.

{World’s wealthiest nations accused by Amnesty of leaving poorer countries bearing the brunt of global refugee crisis.}

Ten countries – which account for just 2.5 percent of the global economy – are hosting more than half the world’s refugees, a rights group has said, accusing wealthy countries of leaving poorer nations to bear the brunt of a worsening crisis.

In a report published on Tuesday, Amnesty International said the unequal share was exacerbating the global refugee problem, as inadequate conditions in the main countries of shelter pushed many to embark on dangerous journeys to Europe and Australia.

The London-based group said 56 percent of the world’s 21 million refugees are being hosted by just 10 countries – all in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Jordan, which has taken in more than 2.7 million people, was named as the top refugee hosting country, followed by Turkey, over 2.5 million; Pakistan, 1.6 million; and Lebanon, more than 1.5 million.

The other top six nations were Iran, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Chad.

“A small number of countries have been left to do far too much just because they are neighbours to a crisis,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s secretary-general.

“That situation is inherently unsustainable, exposing the millions fleeing war and persecution in countries like Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq to intolerable misery and suffering.”

Amnesty said many of the world’s wealthiest nations “host the fewest and do the least”, highlighting a stark contrast in the number of refugees taken in by countries near crisis-hit areas and by wealthier nations with similar populations elsewhere.

Dangerous routes

Britain, for example, has taken in fewer than 8,000 Syrians since 2011, while Jordan – with a population almost 10 times smaller than Britain and just 1.2 percent of its GDP – hosts more than 655,000 refugees from its war-torn neighbour, Amnesty said.

Europe faces worsening refugee crisis in 2016
“It is not simply a matter of sending aid money. Rich countries cannot pay to keep people ‘over there’,” it said.

Amnesty proposed a solution, whereby the world’s richest countries would find a home for 10 percent of the planet’s refugees every year, and singled out Canada, which has resettled some 30,000 Syrian refugees in the past year, as a wealthy country doing its part.

“It is time for leaders to enter into a serious, constructive debate about how our societies are going to help people forced to leave their homes by war and persecution,” Shetty said.

“They need to explain why the world can bail out banks, develop new technologies and fight wars, but cannot find safe homes for 21 million refugees, just 0.3 percent of the world’s population.”

Kathleen Newland, cofounder of the Migration Policy Institute, said unless more countries step up their response, the refugees will continue to flee using dangerous routes

“I think we’ll see more people trying to move through clandestine channels using smugglers, putting themselves in great danger to try to reach a place where they can restart their lives,” she told Al Jazeera.

“The more governments try to close off those routes, the more dangerous the alternatives become.”

{Fresh blow for US Republican presidential candidate as attorney general says his charity engaged in illegal fundraising.}

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump suffered a punishing new setback on Monday as authorities clamped down on his charitable foundation, while his opponent Hillary Clinton seized the opportunity to brand the property tycoon an unscrupulous businessman.

With just five weeks to go before the November 8 election, the billionaire Trump is struggling to regain his footing against a surging Clinton and climb out of one of the darkest periods of his campaign.

Already weakened by damaging revelations about his taxes, Trump was hit with an order by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that the Donald J Trump foundation must “cease and desist from soliciting contributions” in New York.

The notice informed the charity that it had engaged in fundraising activities that were not legal because it had not been registered with state authorities.

With Team Trump on the defensive after leaked documents suggested that he may have paid no income tax for two decades, Democratic party candidate Clinton rounded on him as a bully who cares little for his fellow countrymen.

“While millions of American families, including mine and yours, were working hard paying our fair share, it seems he was contributing nothing to our nation. Imagine that,” a fired up Clinton said in Toledo, Ohio.

“He has been ‘dissing’ America in this whole campaign,” she charged, riding high on a surge in polling after a bruising first presidential debate.

The pair face off in their second showdown on Sunday.

Vice presidential nominees Mike Pence, the Republican governor of Indiana, and Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia take the stage on Tuesday for their only debate of the campaign cycle.

{{Personal attacks}}

Trump used an appearance before military veterans in Virginia to pound former Secretary of State Clinton again for handling classified information via a “basement” private email server.

But he appeared to stumble when he addressed mental health issues facing army personnel and suggested some were returning from battle ill-equipped to cope with debilitating conditions.

“When you talk about the mental health problems, when people come back from war and combat and they see things that maybe a lot of the folks in this room have seen many times over, and you’re strong and you can handle it, but a lot of people can’t handle it,” Trump said.

Retired Lieutenant-General Michael Flynn, a Trump adviser, said the candidate was merely “highlighting the challenges veterans face when returning home after serving their country.”

In recent days, Trump’s strongest line of attack has been seen as personal, and of a rare brutality even for this bare-knuckles campaign: he mocked Clinton over the weekend for coming down with pneumonia and even questioned her fidelity to her husband.

“Hillary Clinton’s only loyalty is to her financial contributors and to herself,” he said.

“I don’t even think she’s loyal to Bill, if you want to know the truth. And really, folks, really, why should she be, right?” he said, having already revived talk of former President Bill Clinton’s past infidelities after a lacklustre debate performance.

A defiant Trump meanwhile dodged the swirling questions about his tax record.

Trump’s top allies praised their candidate’s business acumen following the bombshell revelation by The New York Times that he declared a loss of $916m on his 1995 tax return, enabling him to legally avoid paying taxes for up to 18 years.

If true, the report based on documents leaked to the Times is proof of the tycoon’s “absolute genius,” said former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Trump adviser.

{Afghan forces say Taliban pushed from city centre but fighting continues for city that briefly fell to group last year.}

Afghan forces say they have regained control of Kunduz city centre from the Taliban, but heavy fighting continued in and around the provincial capital for a second day.

Mohammad Qasim Jangalbagh, Kunduz’s police chief, told the AFP news agency on Tuesday that hundreds of Taliban fighters were killed in the clashes and that the group was “cleared” from the centre of the city.

The ambitious assault on Kunduz came almost exactly a year after the Taliban briefly captured the city in one of its biggest successes in 15 years of fighting.

The attack in Kunduz, as well as Taliban gains in areas of Helmand and Uruzgan where they also threaten provincial capitals, has underlined the group’s growing strength and exposed weaknesses in the government, which is meeting foreign donors in Brussels this week to try to secure billions of dollars in extra aid.

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said one major problem facing Afghan forces was that Taliban fighters had infiltrated “residential areas and in many cases homes, making it difficult to distinguish between civilians and the Taliban”.

“Witnesses say gunfire can still be heard around the city, that battles are going on from street to street as the Afghan special forces try to get the Taliban out,” Glasse said.

“They have largely put themselves in civilian areas. The Taliban do have some civilian sympathisers in Kunduz, which made their move into the city a little bit easier.”

NATO, which is backing Afghan forces in with air raids, implied in a tweet that they had the upper hand in the battles, saying the government “controls Kunduz city”.

US Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis, though, described the situation as “fluid”.

Charles Cleveland, a spokesman for the NATO-led mission in Kabul, said in a statement: “Our Afghan partners are responding to the increased Taliban activity within the area, and US forces have multiple assets and enablers in the area to provide support.”

Taliban in empty streets

According to local officials, clashes continued on Tuesday in areas near the police headquarters, the governor’s compound, and the National Directorate.

Zar Gul Alimi, a provincial council member from Kunduz, said: “there is fighting going on in district 1 and district 3 of Kunduz city.”

She also said that overnight on Monday the Taliban had managed to move fighters into the compounds of the Afghan Red Crescent Society and the counter-narcotics police and that they were currently involved in gun battles with Afghan forces.

Footage posted by the Taliban on social media appeared to show fighters in Kunduz walking around empty streets, describing how they had captured army strongholds and taken prisoners.

The authenticity of the footage has not been verified.

The fighters appeared to have slipped through a defensive security line set up around Kunduz, entering the city from four directions before fighting broke out, witnesses said.

As the clashes spread, senior officials, including the provincial governor and the police chief, abandoned the city for the airport.

On Monday, Taliban fighters also stepped up attacks in different parts of Afghanistan, including in Helmand, where they are threatening the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.

Positioned just across the Helmand river from the city centre, they took control of Nawa district to the south, killing a district police chief, officials said.

Heavy fighting also continued along the main road to Tarin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan, also in the south, where a Taliban raid on September 8 sparked fears of another collapse.

{Armed group announces death of Ahmed Salama Mabrouk in Syria, shortly after Pentagon says it targeted him near Idlib.}

A US-led coalition air strike has killed a senior leader of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, the group has announced, shortly after the Pentagon said it targeted him near Idlib.

Ahmed Salama Mabrouk, an Egyptian also known as Abu Faraj, “was martyred after a coalition air strike in the west of Idlib province”, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham said in a statement on Monday on the Telegram app.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook confirmed that a US strike near Idlib had targeted Mabrouk, describing him as “one of al-Qaeda in Syria’s most senior leaders and a legacy al-Qaeda terrorist who previously had ties to Osama bin Laden”.

However, officials are “still assessing the results” to determine whether he had in fact been killed in the air raid, Cook said in a statement.

Born in 1956 in the suburbs of Cairo, Mabrouk was known as a veteran al-Qaeda leader, and a commander of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the group formerly known as al-Nusra Front that changed its name after cutting ties with al-Qaeda in July.

The Pentagon spokesman said that Mabrouk’s “death, if confirmed, would disrupt and degrade coordination among senior AQ leaders and extremists”.

“The United States military will continue to target al-Qaeda leaders to disrupt their operations and counter the threat posed by this terrorist group,” he said.

Jabhat Fateh al-Sham split in July from al-Qaeda, a move analysts said was aimed at easing pressure from both Russia and the United States.

However, US military officials do not consider the group to have truly broken with the Osama bin Laden-founded group.

“We are aware of al-Nusra’s announced name change. The individuals that are there are still Nusra to us,” Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said.

“There’s obviously close affiliations” to al-Qaeda, he added.

{Fighters engaged in battles with government forces in city that was briefly taken by the armed group a year ago.}

The Taliban has launched a coordinated assault on the city of Kunduz in Afghanistan, attacking from four directions and entering the city itself, a senior city police official told the Reuters news agency.

Sheer Ali Kamal, commander of the 808 Tandar police zone in Kunduz, said on Monday that the attack began at around midnight (1930 GMT Sunday) and fighting was still going on in and around the city.

“We are putting all our efforts together to push them back,” he said.

Military helicopters were flying overhead and gunfire could be heard in the city.

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from the capital, Kabul, said “it will be difficult to dislodge them as we understand that the Taliban have taken position inside civilian homes”.

“Police and security forces are having difficulty distinguishing where exactly the fire is coming from.

READ MORE: The Taliban and obstacles to Afghanistan peace talks

“We are hearing from government officials that Taliban actually said they entered Kunduz city because they were unhappy with Afghan Special Forces activities in two different districts in Kunduz, where the Afghan forces have been fighting with the armed group,” our correspondent said.

Kunduz, which fell briefly to the Taliban a year ago, has seen repeated bouts of heavy fighting and was previously seriously threatened in April, July and August.

“A massive operation started on Kunduz capital from four directions early this morning,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in his official Twitter account.

He said the Nawabad area with four checkpoints had been captured and a number of soldiers had been killed. It was not immediately possible to verify the claim.

A Reuters journalist saw at least five Taliban fighters armed with AK-47 assault rifles, machinesguns and rocket-propelled grenades in the city.

The attack comes as the Taliban have stepped up operations in different parts of Afghanistan, including the strategic southern province of Helmand, where they have been threatening the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah.

Our correspondent said that Taliban has also attacked Nawa district in Helmand province in the south, killing its police chief.

“This does seem like a show of force by the Taliban,” she said.

The fall of Kunduz last year was one of the most serious blows suffered by the western-backed government in Kabul since the withdrawal of most international troops at the end of 2014.

A Taliban raid on Tarin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan in the south, on September 8 also sparked fears of another collapse like that in Kunduz last year.

Monday’s attack, a day before the start of a major donor conference in Brussels, underlines the precarious security situation in Afghanistan, where government forces are estimated to have control over no more than two thirds of the country.

Afghanistan’s foreign donor countries are expected to approve at the conference maintaining billions of dollars in funding for the government over the next four years.

{President Santos says ceasefire to remain in place as rebels also vow commitment to peace talks after shock vote result.}

Voters in Colombia’s referendum have narrowly rejected a peace accord between the government and the Marxist group, FARC.

The outcome of Sunday’s vote endangers a deal expected to end 52 years of war and allow FARC fighters to re-enter society and form a political party.

With more than 99 percent of polling stations reporting, 50.2 percent of ballots opposed the accord while 49.8 percent favoured it – a difference of less than 60,000 votes out of a total of 13 million.

Al Jazeera’s Latin America Editor Lucia Newman, reporting from Bogota, called the vote result “very surprising” as every poll before the referendum had given the “yes” camp a lead.

President Juan Manuel Santos, who had promoted the “yes” campaign, said after results were announced that the bilateral ceasefire with FARC “is still in effect and should continue to be in effect”.

He said he would reach out to the country’s opposition leaders and had ordered government negotiators to return to Cuba on Monday to consult FARC leaders.

“I won’t give up. I’ll continue to search for peace until the last moment of my mandate,” he said.

FARC leader Rodrigo Londono said the group maintained its desire for peace despite the outcome of the referendum.

“The FARC reiterates its disposition to use only words as a weapon to build towards the future,” Londono, known by his nom de guerre, Timochenko, said. “To the Colombian people who dream of peace, count on us, peace will triumph.”

At the headquarters of the “yes” campaign, people were angry and in shock as results came in. Some were in tears while others chanted “we want peace”.

The vote asked for a simple “yes” or “no” on whether Colombians support the accord signed last Monday by Santos, who has staked his legacy on peace, and Timochenko.

The peace accord, that took four years to negotiate, was applauded around the world.

“We must end a 52-year war and open the way to peace, a peace that will take us to a better future … peace is the way to ensure our children and grandchildren have a better country,” Santos said after voting.

Turnout in the referendum was low, less than the 40 percent seen in recent congressional elections and sign to some analysts that Colombians’ enthusiasm for implementing the accord is lacking.

The FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, whose numbers were halved to about 7,000 in recent years because of a US-backed military offensive, has agreed to turn in weapons and fight for power at the ballot box instead of with bullets.

Influential former President Alvaro Uribe led the “no” camp, arguing that rebels should pay for crimes in jail and never be given congressional seats.

Angelika Rettberg, a political science professor at the University of Los Andes in Bogota, said the referendum outcome was consequence of “a profound dislike for President Santos” and of the impact years of human rights violations have had on public opinion.

She added that increasing security gains over the past 15 years have also made it hard for many to accept the concessions to the FARC that the peace agreement implies.

Voter Alejandro Jaramillo, 35, said he was angered that the rebels will not serve jail time.

“I voted no. I don’t want to teach my children that everything can be forgiven,” he said.

“The accord gives a lot of concessions to the guerrillas. They changed their strategy from arms to politics but the goal is still socialism,” said Javier Milanes, 34, a restaurant owner who also voted “no”.

The conflict has left an estimated 220,000 people dead and eight million displaced.