Tag: InternationalNews

{Police say gunman is at large after four people shot dead and one critically wounded in shopping mall rampage.}

A gunman opened fire in a crowded mall north of Seattle, killing four people and critically wounding another before fleeing, authorities in the US state of Washington said.

The Washington State Patrol said the five were shot on Friday at the Cascade Mall in Burlington, about 105km north of Seattle.

Sergeant Mark Francis said authorities were searching for a “Hispanic male wearing grey” who was last seen walking towards a highway from the mall.

“We are still actively looking for the shooter. Stay indoors, stay secure,” Francis said at a news conference.

Francis said four females were killed, and one male suffered life-threatening injuries.

“One lone shooter” remained on the loose, he said. The victims were shot in the makeup department of the Macy’s store. No motive was immediately known.

Tari Caswell told the Skagit Valley Herald newspaper she was in the Macy’s women’s dressing room when she heard “what sounded like four balloons popping”.

“Then I heard seven or eight more, and I just stayed quiet in the dressing room because it just didn’t feel right. And it got very quiet. And then I heard a lady yelling for help, and a man came and got me and another lady, and we ran out of the store,” Caswell said.

An employee at a restaurant near the mall said they “immediately locked the doors” when they heard of the mayhem on Friday night.

Stephanie Bose, an assistant general manager at Johnny Carino’s Italian restaurant in Burlington, told the Associated Press news agency the shooting happened inside Macy’s department store. Her restaurant is just outside Macy’s.

“He was trying to go to the mall and people were screaming,” she said. “It was frantic.”

It was not clear how many people were hurt in the attack. Medical workers entered the mall to treat the wounded.

Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement the state patrol and local law enforcement were on the scene to locate the shooter and clear the area.

“We urge residents to heed all safety and detour warnings. Stay close to your friends and loved ones as we await more information and, hopefully, news of the suspect’s capture,” Inslee said.

Francis said survivors would be transported by bus to a nearby church.

{Leftist group declares end to more than five decades of civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people.}

Colombia’s FARC rebel group has voted unanimously to approve a peace deal with the government, declaring an end to the five-decade war as it prepares to transition into a new political party.

After four years of negotiations in Havana, the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia reached a final peace accord last month that will end a war that has left a quarter of a million people dead.

“Peace is the most beautiful of victories,” rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, who uses the nom de guerre Timochenko, told a crowd of hundreds of FARC fighters on Friday at the close of the guerrillas’ congress on the southern Yari Plains.

“We yearn that no Colombians will ever again have to take up arms to make their voices heard and their demands felt, as has been required of us,” Timochenko said to cheers and applause.

As part of the agreement, FARC will continue to push for social change as a political party, receiving 10 unelected seats in congress until 2026. FARC’s leaders have been coy on policy details but are expected to morph the group into a party rooted in Marxist ideals.

Another congress to officially found the party will be held no later than May 2017, FARC commander Ivan Marquez said at the ceremony.

Two-hundred delegates from FARC units around the country gathered at the Yari site, five hours by rutted road from the nearest provincial town, to review the accord and discuss re-organisation in peacetime.

“We inform the country and the government and the governments and people of the world that the rebel delegates of the congress have given unanimous backing to the final accord,” Marquez said.

The peace accord is due to be signed on Monday by President Juan Manuel Santos and Timochenko. Colombians will vote on the deal in an October 2 plebiscite, the final go-ahead for rebels to demobilise. Polls show the accord will easily pass.

But Arlene Tickner from the University Del Rosario told Al Jazeera the first question is whether Colombians will vote in favour of the deal.

“The expectation is that it will pass, but there is huge opposition being led by two ex-presidents… It is quite a profound agreement in terms of the types social, economic, and political changes it proposes, and I think there are certain sectors of the population – mostly conservative sectors – who are fearful of what this means for their interests.”

The congress, the first ever open to media, marks the group’s final meeting as a guerrilla army.

Previous congresses, to decide battle strategy, were sometimes held via internet because of military offensives that prevented leaders from meeting.

Although both leadership and rank-and-file fighters say they will prioritise political activism as civilians, the group has so far not provided examples of specific policies.

“Our initial platform is the implementation of the Havana accords,” Pastor Alape, a member of the FARC’s secretariat, told Reuters news agency at the congress. “Our political proposals will have to come from the suggestions of our base.

“We started our political efforts clandestinely and now we aspire, legally, to open our initiatives, together with all sectors of society, to concretely cultivate the political space we are given,” Alape said.

The five-point peace accord covers agricultural reform, an end to the illegal drugs trade, victims’ reparations, FARC political participation and demobilization.

One mid-level rebel fighter said the group wants to decentralise Colombia’s government, including halving the size of Congress, in a bid to combat corruption and ensure communities have control over distribution of royalties from oil and mining projects.

{Al Jazeera speaks to a man who used an extreme tactic to survive a war on drugs that has killed more than 1,500 people.}

Manila, Philippines – He was left for dead for an hour, his bullet ridden body slumped face down in a dimly lit corner near Manila Bay, soaked in his own pool of blood dripping onto the concrete pavement.

Police said that Francisco Santiago Jr and another man, George Huggins, were shot dead during an anti-drug operation in the early hours of September 13.

But, as reporters arrived at the scene of the police shooting, Santiago, who had been shot multiple times, started showing signs of life.

Stunned onlookers watched as his legs began twitching. Moments later, the 28-year-old sat upright, propping himself against a car and holding his bloodied arms in the air.

Police officers at the scene surrounded Santiago – pistols ready – before putting him in a car and taking him to the hospital.

Speaking from his hospital bed last weekend, Santiago told Al Jazeera that his rise from the dead was not a miracle, but a tactic to stay alive.

He alleged police had shot him multiple times and tried to kill him.

Breathing with the assistance of an oxygen tank and his bullet wounds bandaged, Santiago said he played dead “for about an hour” after being shot by a plain-clothes police officer.

Lying on the street, he hoped he would not succumb to his wounds as he waited for anyone but the police to find out he was still alive.

He denied the official police account he had sold methamphetamine, locally known as shabu, to an undercover anti-narcotics agent in the early hours of that morning. He also was not armed, he said, denying a police report that he had pointed a .22 Black Widow revolver at the undercover officer.

The driver of a motorised rickshaw, Santiago claimed that he was the victim of a police buy-and-bust “set up”, and that he had been picked up by police for questioning about 12 hours before being shot.

Santiago also said that the officer who shot him that night was the same plain-clothes policeman who had boarded his rickshaw earlier that day and took him to the station for questioning.

Twelve hours later, he was shot in the chest, upper abdomen and both arms.The second man shot at the scene, Huggins, died of his wounds.

3,541 drug-related killings

Santiago is a rare survivor of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s all-out war on drugs, his mother and a human-rights worker said.

Since June 30, when President Duterte took power and launched his war against drug traffickers and users, the police have reported over 3,100 drug-related killings, including 1,506 people killed in police operations up to September 16. Police revised that number down from 3,541.

Despite mounting international condemnation as the death toll spirals upwards, Duterte told a gathering of troops near his home city of Davao on Tuesday that he had ordered authorities who are taking part in anti-drug operations, to “stick to your mandate and do no wrong”.

The drug problem in the Philippines was more serious than he expected, Duterte said, before offering some of his familiar advice: “If a suspect draws out a gun, kill him. If he doesn’t, kill him anyway”.

“Duterte’s frequent exhortations for extrajudicial violence against suspected drug users and drug dealers have effectively given Philippine police a ‘license to kill’ without any fear of accountability for their actions,” said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

The case also underscores the “dire need for an urgent, impartial investigation into the circumstances of the alarming surge in killings by police” since Duterte came to power, he said.

Santiago was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday and is now detained at a Manila police station, his mother said.

During his brief detention at the police station prior to being shot, Santiago was coerced into admitting he was a “tulak” – slang in the Philippines for a drug dealer – and was forced, though he refused, to “try out and hold” a pistol, his mother, Ligaya Santiago, told Al Jazeera.

She also said police had pressured her son to fabricate a story to the media about the events on the night of shooting.

Between his detention and the shooting, Santiago and Huggins were ordered to board the rickshaw and drive around the area near the station, before they were shot.

Roy Candelario, the police investigator who first reported the double shooting to his station, insisted that the shooting of Santiago and Huggins was a legitimate police operation. If police had wanted to execute the men, both would have died, he assured.

“If it was a summary execution, then the shooter would have already done the ‘finishing’ on the suspect,” Candelario told Al Jazeera.

“Do you know what ‘finishing’ is? It’s shooting someone in the head.”

Manila district police chief Joel Coronel was quoted in a newspaper as saying that Santiago was the “main target and was on the drug watch list”.

‘Police poseur buyer’

The official police report into the double shooting identified Huggins as a gang member, who previously surrendered to authorities after being linked to the illegal drugs trade.

According to the report, an undercover police officer acted as a “police poseur buyer” and bought one sachet of shabu in the amount of P500 ($10.64)” from Santiago.

“However, after having received the marked money”, Santiago reportedly noticed “that their client was an undercover law enforcer who eventually pushed him hard outside” the motorised rickshaw.

Huggins then “pulled out a caliber .38 revolver and fired successive shots” towards the undercover police officer “but missed”.

“Sensing that his life is in jeopardy” the undercover officer, Orlando Gonzales, “traded shots” with Huggins, “who sustained gunshot wounds and met his untimely death”.

Around the same time, Santiago also reportedly pulled out a .22 revolver “and level the same towards the police poseur buyer”.

Santiago “sustained gunshot wounds in the body and collapsed to the ground”. He was later taken to a nearby hospital after “seeing sign of life”, the report added.

Santiago admitted to Al Jazeera that he had used drugs, but was adamant: “I am not a drug dealer”.

On the night of the shooting, a man wearing a light-coloured shirt and dark jacket was in the area, according to a witness who could not see if Santiago and Huggins were armed or not because it was dark.

“After the shooting, I saw police officers kick the bodies of the two suspects, as if to check if they were still alive or not,” the witness said.

“The police couldn’t do anything because the reporters were already there. So, they just rushed the man to the hospital, while the reporters chased after them.”

Santiago is facing four charges, including violation of the Philippine drug law, assault on a police officer, illegal possession of firearms and ammunition, and frustrated murder, according to the Manila Police District report.

His mother also said that he was being denied a lawyer.

An organisation of lawyers in the Philippines, the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), has offered Santiago its assistance, and condemned Duterte’s war on drugs as “an assault on the fundamental constitutional rights to life, due process and presumption of innocence”.

“By undertaking tactics … such as killing rather than arresting suspects and bringing them before the bar of justice, law enforcement officials are betraying public trust,” FLAG Secretary-General Maria Socorro I Diokno said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.

Law enforcement officials, Diokno said, must remember to perform their duties “with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice”.

{Crowds demand release of police footage showing moment Keith Lamont Scott was killed, and ignore calls to go home.}

Protesters massed on Charlotte’s streets for a third night as pressure mounted on authorities to release a video that could resolve different accounts of the latest police killing of a black man in the United States.

Demonstrators on Thursday chanted “release the tape” and “we want the tape” while briefly blocking an intersection near Bank of America headquarters and later climbing the steps in front of the city government centre to vent their anger over the shooting dead of 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott.

Later, several dozen demonstrators gathered on a highway, but they were pushed back by police in riot gear.

The protests were calmer than previous nights. A midnight until 6am curfew imposed by the mayor aimed to add a stopping point for the demonstrations but many marched on past 12am, with police saying they would not enforce the curfew as long as the demonstrations remained peaceful.

One protester Al Jazeera spoke with, when asked why they were marching after midnight, simply said: “Because black lives matter”.

On Wednesday, a night in which at least 44 people were arrested, one protester who was shot was taken to hospital.

That protester, 26-year-old Justin Carr, has now died of his wounds, officials said. City officials said police did not shoot the man and no arrests have been made over his death, but protesters say police fired the shot that killed him. A murder investigation is under way.

A state of emergency was imposed after Carr was shot.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Charlotte, said: “The street is packed with people who have decided that the curfew means nothing to them, and they are going to continue protest.”

{{Family shown footage}}

So far, police have resisted releasing police dashcam and body camera footage of Scott’s death on Tuesday.

His family was shown the footage on Thursday and demanded that police release it to the public. The family’s lawyer said he couldn’t tell whether Scott was holding a gun, referring to a claim made by police and denied by witnesses.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said earlier that the video would only be made public when he believed there was a “compelling reason” to do so.

“You shouldn’t expect it to be released,” Putney said. “I’m not going to jeopardise the investigation.”

Charlotte is the latest US city to be shaken by protests and recriminations over the death of a black man at the hands of police, a list that includes Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago, New York and Ferguson, Missouri.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Thursday, prosecutors charged a white officer with manslaughter for killing an unarmed black man on a city street last week.

Charlotte police have said that Scott was shot to death on Tuesday by a black officer after he disregarded loud, repeated warnings to drop a gun. Neighbours, though, have said he was holding only a book, and that the officer who killed him was white. The police chief said a gun was found next to the dead man, and there was no book.

Putney said that he has seen the video and it does not contain “absolute, definitive evidence that would confirm that a person was pointing a gun.” But he added: “When taken in the totality of all the other evidence, it supports what we said.”

‘Irresponsible not to release video’

Justin Bamberg, a lawyer for Scott’s family, watched the video with the dead man’s relatives. He said Scott got out of his vehicle calmly.

“While police did give him several commands, he did not aggressively approach them or raise his hands at members of law enforcement at any time. It is impossible to discern from the videos what, if anything, Mr Scott is holding in his hands,” Bamberg said in a statement.

Scott was shot as he walked slowly backward with his hands by his side, Bamberg said.

The lawyer said at a news conference earlier in the day that Scott’s wife witnessed his killing, “and that’s something she will never, ever forget.”

That is the first time anyone connected with the case has said Scott’s wife witnessed the shooting. Bamberg gave no further details on what she saw.

Experts who track shootings by police noted that the release of videos can often quell protest violence, and that the footage sometimes shows that events unfolded differently than the official account.

“What we’ve seen in too many situations now is that the videos tell the truth and the police who were involved in the shooting tell lies,” said Randolph McLaughlin, a professor at Pace University School of Law. He said it is “irresponsible” of police not to release the video immediately.

According to a tally being kept by The Guardian media organisation, police have killed at least 194 black Americans so far this year. In all of 2015, police killed at least 306 black men.

The figures from 2016 suggest that while black Americans make up around 13 percent of the population, they make up about 25 percent of those killed by police.

{Syrian forces tell residents to stay away from rebel positions, as US and Russia fail to agree on how to revive truce.}

The Syrian army has announced the start of an offensive to retake rebel-held districts of Aleppo city, just as international powers with a stake in Syria’s civil war failed to revive a collapsed ceasefire during diplomatic talks in New York.

The announcement by the Syrian defence ministry late on Thursday followed several hours of intense air strikes that left parts of Aleppo in flames, according to a monitor and opposition activists.

In a statement on its official website, the ministry “called on residents to stay away from the positions of terrorist groups”.

It said there would be “no punishment or arrest for any citizen who reaches the checkpoints of the Syrian Arab army”, and that it had “taken all measures to receive civilians and secure their shelter”.

Earlier on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “the most intense strikes in months” had triggered “massive fires” in rebel-held Aleppo neighbourhoods, killing at least seven people.

Pro-government forces have surrounded the rebel-held eastern half of the city since July, in an attempt to take full control of the strongest opposition bastion in the country’s north. An estimated 250,000 civilians live in Aleppo’s eastern quarters.

‘Long, painful and disappointing’

Minutes after the announcement of the Syrian army offensive, the US and Russia failed to agree on how to revive a collapsed truce.

The two countries had negotiated the latest ceasefire plan, but Syria ended the week-long truce on Monday following a US-led coalition strike on a Syrian army post.

Shortly after the ceasefire ended, a UN aid convoy was hit in an air strike that US officials have blamed on Russia, the key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow has rejected the allegations that Russian or Syrian warplanes carried out the attack, which killed 20 people and triggered the suspension of much-needed relief operations.

Speaking on Thursday after a meeting of the 23-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG) in New York, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington and Moscow “cannot continue on the same path any longer”.

“We can’t go out to the world and say we have an agreement, when we don’t. Nor can we tell our partners that there is a cessation, when there isn’t,” Kerry told reporters.

“The simple reality is that we can’t resolve a crisis if one side is unwilling to do what is necessary to avoid escalation. And we won’t get anywhere if we begin by ignoring facts and plain common sense, or denying the truth,” he said.

“If the Russians come back to us with constructive proposals we will listen,” Kerry told reporters.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, described the New York meeting as “long, painful and disappointing”, but added that he wanted to believe that Russia and the US were serious about brokering peace.

“What we got was an intense discussion with no conclusion,” he told reporters. “Time is short and eastern Aleppo is under attack. The next few hours, days maximum, are crucial.”

{{Humanitarian deliveries}}

Despite the escalation of violence, the UN said on Thursday that it had resumed aid deliveries, in its first operation since the attack on the Aleppo-bound humanitarian convoy.

“Today we are sending an inter-agency, cross-line convoy with urgently needed aid to people in a besieged area of rural Damascus,” Jens Laerke, the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) spokesman, said.

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said aid had been sent to Moadamiyeh, a besieged suburb of Damascus.

“The UN is hoping to reach four besieged towns, two of those are close to Damascus – Foua and Kefraya – and the other two are close to the border with Lebanon – Madaya and Zabadani,” our correspondent said.

The Syrian civil war started as a largely unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly escalated into a full-blown armed conflict.

Five years on, more than 400,000 Syrians are estimated to have been killed, and almost 11 million Syrians – half the country’s prewar population – have been displaced from their homes.

{Iraq’s army says it has”completely liberated” Shirqat from ISIL, ahead of a military campaign to recapture Mosul.}

The Iraqi army says its forces have taken control of the strategic northern town of Shirqat from ISIL, in a military operation launched ahead of a push to recapture the armed group’s stronghold of Mosul.

Security forces began the operation to oust ISIL (also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS) on Tuesday, backed by both Iraqi and US-led coalition aircraft.

Iraqi forces “completely liberated the Shirqat district and raised the Iraqi flag over the government headquarters” in the town, the country’s Joint Operations Command said in a statement on Thursday.

The town lies on the west bank of the Tigris river in Salaheddin province, 260km northwest of Baghdad and around 80km south of Mosul.

ISIL overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014, but Iraqi forces backed by US-led air strikes and training have since retaken significant ground, including the cities of Tikrit , Ramadi and Fallujah .

The recapturing of Shirqat came a day after a top US military officer said that the final push for Mosul could begin next month.

“We assess today that the Iraqis will have in early October all the forces marshalled, trained, fielded, equipped that are necessary for operations in Mosul,” US General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a military event in Washington on Wednesday.

“Timing of that operation now is really just a function of a political decision by Prime Minister [Haider al-]Abadi.”

But there are still significant military, political and humanitarian obstacles between the launch of the operation and entering and retaking the city.

Once the push is launched, a coalition of heterogenous forces will have to fight through ISIL defences, in some cases over distances of dozens of kilometres from their current positions, to reach the city.

Then, if the strategy for Mosul follows that used in previous operations, the security forces will seek to surround and seal off the city prior to an assault, which will involve street-by-street fighting against ISIL fighters.

The Mosul operation also poses major humanitarian challenges, with the United Nations warning that up to one million people may be displaced by the fighting.

“Humanitarian agencies are racing against the clock to prepare for the humanitarian impact of the military campaign,” the UN said.

{Agreement allows Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, once called the “butcher of Kabul”, to make a comeback despite alleged war crimes.}

Afghanistan has signed a peace agreement with Hezb-i-Islami, paving the way for the armed group’s commander, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to make a political comeback despite allegations of war crimes during the 1990s.

Government officials praised Thursday’s agreement in the capital Kabul as a step towards peace, while critics said it opened the door to one of the most infamous figures in Afghanistan’s civil war to play a role in the country’s already divisive politics.

“I hope that this is the beginning of a permanent peace in our country,” said Sayed Ahmad Gilani, head of the government’s High Peace Council and one of the signatories of the agreement, according to Reuters news agency.

The deal with the largely dormant Hezb-i-Islami marks a symbolic victory for President Ashraf Ghani who has struggled to revive peace talks with the more powerful Taliban fighters while, at the same time, attempting to reintegrate other controversial military figures into society by granting immunity for past crimes.

Thursday’s agreement grants Hekmatyar amnesty for his offences and the release of certain Hezb-i-Islami prisoners.

The government also agreed to press for the lifting of international sanctions on Hekmatyar, who was designated a “global terrorist” by the US for his suspected ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Once branded the “butcher of Kabul”, Hekmatyar was a prominent anti-Soviet commander in the 1980s who stands accused of killing thousands of people when his fighters fired on civilian areas of the capital city during the 1992-1996 civil war.

Neither Hekmatyar nor Ghani were present at the signing ceremony on Thursday.

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said the government hopes the peace deal “paves the way for future peace with the Taliban”.

“That it will be a template for future peace with the Taliban. Afghans will be watching very closely in the coming weeks and months how this deal is implemented,” Glasse said.

“This is not just a peace deal between Hezb-i-Islami and the government of Afghanistan,” Mohammad Amin Karim, head of the group’s delegation, said at the ceremony.

“It is a beginning of a new era of peace all around the country,” he said, according to the AFP news agency.

The agreement will come into force when it is formally signed by Ghani and Hekmatyar, the government said, though no date has been set.

The current security situation in Afghanistan is unlikely to see much change as a result of the deal, said Timor Sharan, a Kabul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group.

“The deal will have little impact on the dynamics of conflict,” Sharan told Reuters.

“The government’s rationale is that by luring Hekmatyar on board, other insurgent groups might be encouraged to consider peace too.”

{US calls for the grounding of aircraft in key areas of Syria as air strikes pound the Aleppo region killing 13 medics.}

The UN says it is ready to resume the delivery of life-saving aid to Syria, days after an attack on a humanitarian convoy killed 20 people and triggered the suspension of much-needed relief operations.

“The preparation for these convoys has now resumed and we are ready to deliver aid to besieged and hard-to-reach areas as soon as possible,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The United Nations continues to call for safe, unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to all Syrians in need, wherever they are,” it said.

Jens Laerke, the spokesman for OCHA, said that “several” convoys were expected as early as Thursday, but did not specify where. He said the convoys would not go to the besieged city of Aleppo in northern Syria.

The announcement came shortly after the US and Russia faced off over the conflict in Syria at a UN crisis meeting discussing the situation in the country following the collapse of a nationwide ceasefire.

Russia and the US negotiated the latest truce plan, but Syria ended the week-long ceasefire on Monday following a US-led coalition strike on a Syrian army post.

Shortly after the truce ended, a UN aid convoy was hit in an air strike that US officials have blamed on Russia, the key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow has rejected the allegations that Russian or Syrian warplanes carried out the attack.

Addressing the UN Security Council on Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry called for the creation of no-go areas for aircraft in northern Syria to facilitate the delivery of aid, and demanded that Russia forced the Syrian government to ground its warplanes.

Kerry said the attack on the aid convoy “raised profound doubt” as to whether Russia or Syria would live up to ceasefire obligations.

“How can people go sit at a table with a regime that bombs hospitals, drops chlorine gas again and again and again and again, and acts with impunity? What kind of credibility do you have?” Kerry told the council.

“Supposedly we all want the same goal … a secular united Syria … but we are all proving to be woefully inadequate to come to the table and have that discussion.”

Kerry said that listening to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made him feel like he was living in a “parallel universe”.

{{‘Make or break moment’}}

Lavrov, for his part, called for a “very thorough and impartial investigation” into the convoy attack to determine what had happened.

“Many have said it could have been a rocket or an artillery shelling,” he told the Security Council meeting.

“I think we need to refrain from emotional reactions and instead investigate and be very professional.”

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from UN headquarters in New York, said it looked like after years of negotiations with Lavrov, Kerry had finally “cracked”.

“Ever since he’s been secretary of state, Kerry’s felt his personal cooperation with Lavrov, a man he’s known for a long time, was the way forward. They’d come up with repeated deals in Munich earlier this year and even 10 days ago.

“He’s placed his trust in Lavrov despite many, including those in the US administration, questioning that trust and feeling that Kerry has been humiliated repeatedly.

“Now it seems that Kerry has finally cracked,” our correspondent said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the meeting this was a “make or break moment” for Syria, urging world powers to use their influence to help re-start political talks so Syrians can “negotiate a way out of the hell in which they are trapped”.

Russia and the US co-sponsored the fragile ceasefire plan, with Kerry warning it could be the “last chance” to try to end Syria’s civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people in five years.

Despite the tensions, Kerry insisted that efforts to salvage the truce were “not dead”, after a short meeting of the 23-nation International Syria Support Group in New York, where world leaders have gathered for the UN General Assembly.

Kerry’s spokesman John Kirby said it had been agreed that “despite continued violence”, diplomats would use the agreement between the US and Russia as a basis for more talks.

The deal foresaw an end to fighting between Assad’s forces and moderate rebels, aid deliveries to besieged areas and, if the ceasefire was held for seven days, cooperation between Moscow and Washington in battling Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and other groups.

{{Air strikes pound Aleppo}}

On the ground, meanwhile, heavy bombardment pummeled the city of Aleppo and other areas in the province on Wednesday.

At least 13 medics were killed in a series of air strikes in Khan Tuman, a village south of Aleppo city, on Wednesday, according to the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations.

The group said air strikes killed four of its staff, two nurses and two ambulance drivers, as they were evacuating victims from an earlier raid, which had killed nine other medical personnel.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks daily developments in the Syrian conflict, said seven civilians, including three children, were also killed in separate air raids in the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhun.

The monitoring group said dozens of raids hit the city’s east overnight, as Syrian government troops advanced on rebels in Aleppo’s southwestern outskirts.

{Governor calls emergency measure as rallies against police killing of Keith Lamont Scott intensify, with a person shot.}

Racial tensions in the US have reached boiling point after protests in Charlotte against police killings of black men turned increasingly violent, forcing the North Carolina governor to declare a state of emergency in the city.

The protests began on Tuesday after a police officer killed Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man.

His death followed another police killing of a black man in Tulsa on Friday, Terence Crutcher. Protests are also ongoing in the Oklahoma city.

The protests in Charlotte late on Wednesday saw one person critically injured after being shot. Police said that victim, who they did not identify, was shot by a civilian.

Authorities have been attempting to quell public anger after Scott’s death, with police in riot gear firing tear gas at protesters, and arresting those they accuse of violence.

Mark Thompson, a radio host of Make it Plain, a show focusing on human rights, told Al Jazeera: “This is tragic. It’s a very sad night for the people of Charlotte. As Dr [Martin Luther] King said, so-called riots are the language of the unheard. It’s an extension and direct result of the modern-day lynching of Keith Lamont Scott.”

With officials refusing to release any video of Scott, anger built as two very different versions emerged.

Conflicting accounts

Police say Scott disregarded repeated demands to drop his gun, while neighbourhood residents say he was holding a book, not a weapon, as he waited for his son to get off the school bus.

“You have to wonder what is the real rioting going on?” Thompson told Al Jazeera.

“Is this a good old-fashioned police riot, with all the violence being carried out against African Americans? We [African Americans] have to ponder every day whether we are going to make it home safely or whether we are going to be victims of the police.”

While a police video of the fatal shooting of Scott has not been released, a video showing the moment Crutcher died in the Tulsa shooting was made available for public viewing.

“We know [from that video] without a doubt Terence Crutcher had his hands in the air,” said Thompson.

The protests in Charlotte included shutting down the eight-lane Interstate 85 and burning the contents of a tractor-trailer.

Along with the man critically injured, paramedics said two other people and six police officers suffered minor injuries.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Charlotte, said: “They [protesters] want to make the point that what happened [Tuesday’s police shooting] is unacceptable.”

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North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory announced late on Wednesday he was accepting a request from Charlotte’s police chief, declaring a state of emergency and calling in the National Guard and state troopers to help restore order and protect downtown.

Protesters have been chanting “black lives matter” and “hands up; don’t shoot”. But some clashes between protesters and police saw officers fire flash grenades and marchers throw fireworks in return.

Video of a solidarity protest in New York showed protesters chanting slogans and carrying placards reading: “Black lives matter” and “Stop the war on black America”.

John Barnett, who runs a civil rights group called True Healing Under God, or THUG, warned that the video might be the only way for the police to regain the community’s trust.

“Just telling us this is still under investigation is not good enough for the windows of the Wal-Mart.”

On Wednesday morning, Kerr Putney, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief, said: “It’s time to change the narrative, because I can tell you from the facts that the story’s a little bit different as to how it’s been portrayed so far, especially through social media.”

Putney said officers were serving arrest warrants on another person when they saw Scott get out of a vehicle with a handgun.

A black officer – named as Brentley Vinson – shot Scott after the officer and other uniformed members of the force made “loud, clear” demands that he drop the gun, the chief said.

Putney said Scott posed a threat even if he did not point his weapon at officers, and said a gun was found next to the dead man.

“I can tell you we did not find a book,” the chief said.

Neighbours, though, said that the officer who fired was white and that Scott had his hands in the air.

The three uniformed officers had body cameras; the plainclothes officer did not, police said.

But Putney said he cannot release the video because the investigation is still under way. No mobile-phone video has emerged on social media, as happened in other cases around the country.

Standard procedure

Vinson, a two-year member of the department, has been placed on leave, standard procedure in such cases.

“It is so essential to know what actually took place,” Andrew Jerell Jones, a political writer, told Al Jazeera.

“Right now, we have the family standing firm on their story, and the local police standing firm on their story.”

He said the protests were “a result of what took place not just on Tuesday evening, but throughout many years throughout the history of Charlotte”.

According to a tally being kept by the Guardian newspaper, police have killed at least 194 black men so far this year. In all of 2015, police killed at least 306 black men.