Tag: InternationalNews

{Attacker “appeared to be mentally disturbed” and has no links with organised groups, according to Ankara officials.}

Police have shot and detained a knife-carrying Turkish man who tried to force his way into the Israeli embassy in Turkey’s capital Ankara.

The man, armed with a 30cm knife, ran towards the embassy shouting slogans and was shot in the leg, the governor’s office in Ankara said in a statement on Wednesday.

Officials said initial investigations showed that the man, identified as 41-year-old Osman Nuri Caliskan from the central Anatolian city of Konya, “appeared to be mentally disturbed” and had no record of links with any organised group.

“A man approached the embassy with a knife and was shot by a local guard. Everyone on our side is safe,” Emmanuel Nahshon, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said in a statement.

“The assailant was wounded in the foot. We don’t know if he was attacking police officers or the embassy itself.”

He added that the assailant only managed to reach the “outer perimeter” of the building, but said the incident was still being investigated.

Israel’s embassy in Ankara said in a statement that the suspect “tried to stab a Turkish police officer” in front of the mission.

“The embassy trusts the Turkish forces to control and investigate the incident,” it added.

Turkey’s NTV television said employees of the embassy took refuge in a shelter during the incident.

Caliskan was taken to Ankara’s Numune Training and Research Hospital, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency.

Roads around the embassy were closed after the incident and specialist police officers were sent to the scene.

The Hurriyet daily reported that the attacker told police officers interrogating him at the hospital that he “did this to stop the bloodshed in the Middle East”.

Foreign missions in Turkey have been on a state of high alert following a spate of attacks across the country this year blamed on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Kurdish separatist groups.

The British embassy in Ankara was closed on Friday over security concerns.

Three months ago, Turkey and Israel signed a deal to restore their ties which hit an all-time low after the 2010 raid by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound Turkish aid ship that left 10 Turks dead.

Under the deal, the two countries are to begin the process of exchanging ambassadors to fully restore their diplomatic ties, although this has yet to formally take place.

{Iraq’s military advances near the centre of Shirqat as it moves to secure supply lines before the battle for Mosul.}

The Iraqi army has closed in on the centre of Shirqat, a northern town held by ISIL seen as a stepping stone in a military campaign to recapture the armed group’s stronghold of Mosul.

The army, backed by local police and tribal fighters, took 12 nearby villages since launching the operation on Tuesday morning, Ali Dawdah, the mayor of Shirqat currently based in Erbil, said on Wednesday.

With air support from a US-led coalition, the troops are now less than 3km from the town centre, according to Dawdah, who said he expected the campaign to be concluded within 48 hours.

Five security personnel and one civilian were killed in the battle for Shirqat, said the mayor.

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

“We are making good progress,” Yahya Rasool, Joint Operations Command spokesman, told AFP news agency earlier on Wednesday.

“Shirqat is important,” he said. “We can’t move on Mosul and have terrorists control Sherqat.”

Tens of thousands of civilians are thought to be trapped in Shirqat and surrounding villages, which have been under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) since the group seized a third of Iraqi territory in 2014.

Officials have warned for months of a humanitarian disaster inside the town, with residents facing food shortages.

There has not been a large-scale displacement of civilians so far.

Residents of Shukran and Houri villages told Reuters news agency by phone that they had begun waving white flags above their houses on Tuesday evening as the military advanced, but ISIL punished them with 50 lashes each.

{{‘Mosul push in October’}}

Meanwhile, a top US official said on Wednesday that the push on Mosul could begin as early as 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.

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

Though the Pentagon does not plan on directly sending US troops into combat, it has thousands of soldiers in Iraq who are training and arming Iraqi partners.

“We will be in a position to provide whatever support, whatever reinforcement, those forces need in order to be successful,” Dunford said.

ISIL seized Mosul in a lightning offensive through the north and west of the country, in 2014.

Mosul had an estimated population of around two million before ISIL took it over.

Accurate numbers for the population remaining in the city are hard to come by but the United Nations and other officials have said up to one million civilians may still be living under ISIL rule in the Mosul area.

The Pentagon estimates 3,000 to 4,500 ISIL fighters are in Mosul.

{Killing in North Carolina of 43-year-old said to be unarmed and disabled follows fatal shooting of black man in Tulsa.}

A US police officer has shot a black man at a housing complex in Charlotte, authorities in North Carolina say, prompting street protests late into the night.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) said on Twitter on Tuesday that demonstrators were destroying marked police vehicles and that approximately 12 officers had been injured.

Witnesses contradicted police reports that the man killed was armed, saying that he was unarmed and disabled, according to reports.

The man “has been named as Keith Lamont Scott”, said Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Greensboro, North Carolina.

He said at least one protester was also injured in the protests.

The police officer was named as Brentley Vinson. Associated Press news agency said Vinson is black.

Tense situation

Television coverage showed police firing tear gas to break up the crowd protesting against police brutality.

“It is tense. There are still people on the streets,” our correspondent said.

Police killings of black men over the past few months have seen anger swell as many fear civil rights are being eroded.

According to a tally being kept by the Guardian newspaper, police have killed at least 193 black men so far this year. In all of 2015, police killed at least 306 black men.

The protests came only hours after another demonstration in Tulsa, Oklahoma, over the shooting there of an unarmed black man by police.

Charlotte police went to the complex about 4pm looking for a suspect with an outstanding warrant when they saw the man – not the suspect they were looking for – inside a car, police said.

Officers saw the man get out of the car with a gun and then get back in, police said. When officers approached, the man exited the car with the gun again.

At that point, officers deemed the man a threat and at least one fired a weapon.

Scott, the victim, was taken to Carolinas Medical Center and pronounced dead.

Officer Vinson, who shot Scott, has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure in such cases. Vinson has been with the department for two years.

{{‘Stop killing us’}}

Detectives recovered a firearm at the scene and were interviewing witnesses.

Police blocked access to the area, which is about a mile from the campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, as protesters gathered after the shooting.

Video from WCCB-TV in Charlotte showed police in riot gear stretched across a two-lane road confronting protesters at the apartment complex later in the night.

Some of the officers flanked the main line on one side of the road.

Some protesters were heard yelling “Black lives matter,” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!” One person held up a sign saying “Stop Killing Us.”

In Tulsa, hundreds of people rallied outside police headquarters calling for the firing of police officer Betty Shelby, who shot Terence Crutcher, 40, on Friday in a confrontation that was captured on police dashboard camera and helicopter video.

Shelby’s lawyer has said that Crutcher was not following the officers’ commands and that Shelby was concerned because he kept reaching for his pocket as if he was carrying a weapon.

A lawyer representing Crutcher’s family says Crutcher committed no crime and gave officers no reason to shoot him.

{UN halts all aid deliveries after attack destroys 18 trucks in rebel-held northern Aleppo and kills at least 20 people.}

Neither Russian nor Syrian aircraft bombed an aid convoy in Syria’s Aleppo, Moscow said on Tuesday, as outrage mounted over an attack that some called a war crime.

The Red Cross said at least 20 people were killed in the attack on trucks carrying desperately needed humanitarian relief to thousands of Syrians.

“The air forces of Russia and Syria did not conduct any strikes against the UN aid convoy in the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo,” defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Konashenkov said the attack the previous night doesn’t appear to have been from an air strike.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a volunteer rescue group known as the White Helmets that operates in rebel-held areas, posted images of several vehicles on fire. A video of the attack showed huge balls of fire against the night sky as ambulances arrived on the scene.

The Russian military “carefully studied the video recordings of the so-called activists from the scene and found no signs that any munitions hit the convoy”, Konashenkov said.

“Everything shown on the video is the direct consequence of the cargo catching fire, and this began in a strange way simultaneously with militants carrying out a massive offensive in Aleppo.”

The United Nations has suspended all aid convoys to Syria following the attack on aid trucks, which could amount to a “war crime”, according to UN official Jens Laerke.

Air raids rocked northern Syria’s Aleppo province on Tuesday, hours after 18 lorries in the UN convoy were hit in the Uram al-Kubra district west of Aleppo city.

A rescue worker who witnessed the convoy attack said more than 20 missiles pounded the area for hours, even hitting his team as they searched the debris for survivors. Hussein Badawi, who leads the White Helmets in Uram al-Kubra, accused Syrian and Russian aircraft of taking part.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general , speaking at the General Assembly in New York, called those who attacked the convoy “cowards”.

“Powerful patrons that keep feeding the war machine also have blood on their hands,” Ban said.

‘Blaming the Russians’

The US said it was unclear if it was a Russian or Syrian plane that hit the 31-truck UN aid convoy late on Monday, but officials placed the blame on Moscow, the key ally of embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Americans are firmly blaming the Russians, saying they’re not reining in Damascus,” Al Jazeera’s Stephanie Dekker reported from Gaziantep, on the Syrian border.

The convoy was part of a routine inter-agency dispatch operated by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

Following Monday’s aid convoy strike, the UN said it was suspending all convoy movement in Syria, and Peter Maurer, the International Committee of the Red Cross president, said the attack could have “serious repercussions” on humanitarian work in the country.

The new wave of bloodshed came after the Syrian army unilaterally declared the end of a week-long truce brokered by the US and Moscow.

The government and the rebels traded blame over the collapse, each accusing the other side of hundreds of breaches.

“If this callous attack is found to be a deliberate targeting of humanitarians, it would amount to a war crime,” said Stephen O’Brien, the top UN humanitarian official, adding the warring parties had been told about the aid convoy.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent was also hit during Monday’s strike, as was a warehouse run by the group.

SARC volunteers were among at least 28 civilians killed in the Aleppo area in the first hours after violence resumed following the formal end of the truce, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The rebel-held area east of Aleppo city, home to some 300,000 people, has been cut off from aid deliveries since July despite the ceasefire.

{{Ceasefire collapse}}

Ground battles between pro-government forces and rebel fighters raged on Tuesday on the southwestern outskirts of Aleppo city near the strategic Ramosa military complex, according to the Syrian Observatory, as air raids pounded the northern province.

The ceasefire came into effect on September 12. Under terms of the agreement, the successful completion of seven days of calm and humanitarian aid deliveries would be followed by an ambitious second-stage plan to set up a joint US-Russian coordination centre to plan military strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front.

But from the start, the truce was beset by difficulties and mutual accusations of violations.

{At his last UN General Assembly, US president calls on member states to step up commitment to accept and help refugees.}

New York – Calling the refugee crisis “one of the urgent tests of our time” and “a test of our common humanity”, US President Barack Obama kicked off his Leaders’ Summit on Refugees.

The meeting came a day after member states at the UN General Assembly adopted the New York Declaration on Refugees , which ultimately gives them two more years to negotiate their strategies and obligations on the refugee crisis.

Some 50 world leaders took part in Obama’s summit on Tuesday. Their participation was conditional on making new commitments to address the global crisis.

The detailed list of who pledged what has not been released, but a White House statement issued early in the evening said that the cumulative commitments amounted to a $4.5bn increase over 2015 levels and participating countries “doubled the number of refugees they resettled or afforded other legal channels of admission”. It also said that access to education and legal work for refugees was improved.

“I do think there’s a general feeling that things have hit some sort of a tipping point – the combination of events around the wold, and the fact that Syria keeps getting unbelievably worse” said Kate Phillips-Barrosso, senior director for policy and advocacy at the International Rescue Committee.

As world leaders took the podium to speak, each defended his or her own country’s track record in dealing with the 65 million people who have fled their homes around the world.

The United States itself has been accused of being slow to step up its efforts in taking in Syrian refugees, but has been making strides – in the 2016 fiscal year it took in 10,000 Syrians , a significant increase from 2015, when it took in 1,862.

Like governments in many other countries, the Obama administration is dealing with domestic political resistance – more than half of US state governors said in 2015 that they did not want Syrian refugees settled there.

Some Eastern European states have sealed borders, asking their neighbouring states to do the same. There is a push in France to empty the Calais “Jungle” – the encampment holding at least 7,000 migrants and refugees, including 900 unaccompanied minors – into the UK, which, in turn, has expressed an interest in walling off the port to keep migrants out.

Australia wants the refugees and migrants detained and resettled off its shores. Most of Europe wants Turkey to keep the 2.5 million refugees it is hosting there, and is willing to give financial incentives to make it happen.

According to the UN’s refugee agency , after Syria, most refugees come from Afghanistan (2.4 million) – with the majority ending up in Iran and Pakistan, where they are vulnerable to abuse , exploitation and deportation .

{{Pledges, and then …?}}

It is too soon to say whether Obama’s summit will mean the international community has met the challenge of the refugee issue, said Josephine Liebl, who leads Oxfam’s UK policy and advocacy on humanitarian crisis.

“The UN Summit gave us [the] NY Declaration – these were nice words but what we actually need is concrete action,” she told Al Jazeera.

“The next two years will be key … We would have wanted this to be the start of a more sane and humane approach to the crisis. But we need to wait to see whether governments will actually go back home and practise what they signed up for,” said Liebl.

Employing the same pay-to-play strategy he used at last year’s UN General Assembly, when he called member states to the mat for peacekeeping pledges, Obama drew 52 nations and organisations into the room on Tuesday.

Although the 2015 peacekeeping summit seemed to yield significant pledges for peacekeeping troops, equipment and other support, fulfilment has been an issue.

The bulk of the 47 countries making pledges in 2015 have failed thus far to meet those obligations.

The possibility of member states not honouring their pledges is “an important question,” said Brooke Lauten, humanitarian policy and protection adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council.

There are mechanisms to monitor and pressure states to follow through with their pledges. But real consequences are few, she said.

“Will the wrath of the world community come down on them? No,” said Lauten.

The likelihood of member states throwing money at the refugee issue rather than committing to accepting and resettling refugees is “a huge, huge concern”, she said.

“The EU-Turkey deal is essentially the commodification of refugees,” said Lauten.

“They have become a commodity that you can buy and sell on the market … it’s about the externalisation of borders,” she added.

{US officials charge 28-year-old Afghan-American with detonating and planting bombs in attack that wounded at least 31.}

US federal prosecutors have charged an Afghan-American with detonating and planting bombs in New York and New Jersey that left at least 31 people wounded.

US prosecutors said on Tuesday that Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, carried out twin bombings on Saturday in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood and along the route of a US Marine Corps run in the New Jersey town of Seaside Park.

A criminal complaint was unsealed in Newark, New Jersey, shortly after a virtually identical filing was unsealed in New York.

The Afghanistan-born American restaurant worker, who lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey, was critically wounded in a police shootout on Monday.

Two officers were shot in the encounter, but suffered non-life threatening injuries.

“Mr Rahami also sustained shots and an ambulance has taken him away,” Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage said. He underwent surgery on his wounds and remains hospitalised.

The 13-page indictment slapped him with four charges, including use of weapons of mass destruction, bombing a place of public use and destruction of property by means of fire or explosives.

He will be transported to Manhattan to face the charges, said federal prosecutors in New York.

If convicted, he risks spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Prosecutors said 31 people were wounded in the Chelsea attack on Saturday.

The bomb was a pressure-cooker device, packed with ball bearings and steel nuts, placed in a dumpster and detonated by a timed device, similar to a second pressure cooker bomb discovered four blocks away.

Five pipe bombs found in Elizabeth and the second device safely defused in Chelsea were covered in the suspect’s fingerprints, the indictment alleged.

Surveillance footage also put him in Chelsea, and Rahami bought the ingredients for the bombs from eBay over the summer, prosecutors said.

The indictment says video recovered from the mobile phone of a relative of Rahami shows him lighting incendiary material in a cylindrical container two days before the bombings.

The charges come after the FBI admitted that they investigated Rahami for terrorism in 2014 following a complaint from his father, but found no link despite alleged acts of violence.

{Fighting rages with more than 30 civilians killed as US and Russia seek to salvage beleaguered truce.}

Syrian or Russian warplanes bombed aid trucks near Aleppo after a fragile week-long ceasefire ended and it appeared that the bloody five-year war was fully back on late on Monday.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 32 people were killed in dozens of air strikes launched in and around Aleppo after the truce officially came to an end at 1600 GMT.

The war monitor said that the aid lorries made a routine delivery to an area west of Aleppo city and were hit near the town of Urm al-Kubra, killing 12 people.

An official with the Syrian Red Crescent confirmed aid vehicles operated by the group had been targeted by air strikes as warplanes resumed bombings in Aleppo province.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, denounced the air raid. “Our outrage at this attack is enormous … The convoy was the outcome of a long process of permission and preparations to assist isolated civilians,” he said.

Syria’s military on Monday declared that the seven-day, US-Russian brokered ceasefire was over as the government and opposition traded accusations over mounting violations.

An AFP news agency correspondent in Aleppo reported that the northern city was being pummelled.

Sirens wailed as ambulances zipped through the eastern rebel-held half of the divided city, the correspondent said, describing the bombardment as “non-stop”.

The Russian military said rebels launched a major attack on a government position on Aleppo’s southwestern outskirts, forcing Syrian troops to respond.

“The attack by the terrorists was proceeded by a massive artillery bombardment … from tanks and rocket systems,” it said.

The US said it was prepared to extend the fractured truce, and Russia – after blaming rebels for the violations – suggested it could still be salvaged.

Following the Syrian military declaration, US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed annoyance at Damascus and Moscow’s handling of the ceasefire.

“It would be good if they didn’t talk first to the press but if they talked to the people who are actually negotiating this,” Kerry said. “As I said yesterday, [it’s] time to end the grandstanding and time to do the real work of delivering on the humanitarian goods that are necessary for access.”

But Kerry also acknowledged that the first stage of the truce – which called for a week of calm and the delivery of humanitarian aid to several besieged communities – had never really come to fruition.

From the start, the truce had been beset by difficulties and mutual accusations of violations.

Aid deliveries to the besieged eastern districts of Aleppo have not reached their destination. The UN accused the government of obstructing the delivery, while Russian officials said rebels opened fire at the delivery roads.

At least 22 civilians were killed in government bombings over the past week, according to the Syrian Observatory, which uses a network of sources on the ground to compile its reports.

Earlier on Monday, Russia’s Lieutenant-General Sergei Rudskoi said in a briefing that Damascus had fulfilled its obligations.

“With the rebels failing to fulfil conditions [of] the ceasefire agreement, we consider its unilateral observance by the Syrian government forces meaningless,” Rudskoi said.

He said that the rebels violated the truce 302 times since it took effect a week ago, killing 63 civilians and 153 Syrian soldiers. The opposition reported on Monday 254 violations by government forces and their allies.

The current tensions come on the heels of the weekend air strikes by the US-led coalition on Syrian army positions near Deir Az Zor.

Russia’s military said at least 62 Syrian soldiers were killed and more than 100 wounded.

The US military said it would not intentionally hit Syrian troops, and it came as it was conducting a raid on positions occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

{Correspondence obtained by Al Jazeera and The Intercept paints a bleak picture of life in ISIL-held parts of Iraq.}

Written correspondence from individuals living in territories held by ISIL in Iraq, obtained by Al Jazeera and the Intercept, paints a bleak picture of life for both ISIL members and civilians still living under the group’s control.

The correspondence was sent to a religious scholar living in Jordan who has been associated with several other groups in the past but is critical of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, also known as ISIS) .

The messages reproduced here, some from a member of the group and others from a civilian, are seeking his advice. Seeking such counsel from religious figures is common in the Muslim world, but the recipient of these messages is particularly respected by many Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

The religious figure is not named here in order to protect his legal status in Jordan.

The advice seekers are unrelated: one is an ISIL fighter in Fallujah, and the other is a Sunni Muslim civilian living in Mosul.

The correspondence took place from early June to mid August, and coincided with major events in those cities reported by international media – including the Iraqi government’s offensive to retake Fallujah and the increasing pressure on the inhabitants of Mosul in preparation for the operation.

“The battle for Fallujah was a success in that it ended with ISIS driven out and a government established that had representation from the local Sunni community,” says Nathaniel Rabkin, managing editor of the political risk publication Inside Iraq Politics.

“Having said that, there was a lot of ugliness associated with the campaign, including damage to infrastructure and allegations of abuses by Shia militia groups.”

The messages from these cities offer a glimpse into the effect of military pressure on ISIL fighters in Iraq, as well as the fears of some Sunni Muslims that they would be the target of reprisals when their cities were recaptured by the government.

On June 26, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that Iraqi forces had successfully liberated the city of Fallujah from ISIL. The announcement marked the fourth time that Fallujah had violently changed hands since the American invasion Iraq in 2003. In this case, the city, once known as a centre of Sufi Islam, was retaken only after months of US air raids and besiegement by Iraqi ground troops.

Before heavy fighting in the city began this June, an ISIL fighter reached out to the Jordanian religious scholar for advice, saying that members of ISIL had committed “mistakes” in Fallujah, including acts of murder, and had mistreated the local population.

{“There is no time to indulge in details. However, if I survive this ordeal I might get into details. But let’s suppose that the mistakes had to do with murder, what should I do? And if it had to do with violations of Islamic law, what should I do so I face God with clean conscience? Would my repentance for these actions be enough for God to forgive me if I am a member of this group?”
}

During the run-up to the battle, the fighter said that ISIL members debated whether to allow their own family members and other civilians to flee Fallujah. He estimated that the group had only around 800 members prepared to defend Fallujah from the Iraqi Army, whose numbers were known to be far greater.

“We in Fallujah are under siege by the Shia, the [hostile Sunni tribes], and the apostates. We have decided that we should fight to death. Our morale is high, but the city is under siege and no supplies can come in. The enemy – the Iraqi army – is over 30,000 while the Mujahedeen are only 800 and are shrinking as a result of the air strikes. The American air force bombs us even if someone fires a bullet.”

After the battle commenced, American air strikes on the city apparently took a significant toll on the ISIL defenders.

“In just one day, American bombings killed 75 fighters, and on another day they killed and injured over 40,” the man wrote.

Following the Iraqi army’s reclamation of the city in late June, the man lost contact with the religious figure. But he reached out to him again in July, saying that he and other surviving ISIL fighters had fled Fallujah into the surrounding desert:

{“The reason I stopped this communication was because our internet service was cut off after the attack on Fallujah. We were fighting for weeks, many people were killed and injured. The battle was won by the Shia. We fled the city towards the desert which was disastrous due to the conditions we faced afterwards. The US bombing took its toll on us, and killed about 200 more of us. We fled into the desert and I am not sure if God was testing us or punishing us. I am now in the Al Bukamal area and the internet service here is not consistent.”
}

He recounted to the religious scholar the suffering that he and other surviving ISIL members had experienced while fleeing Fallujah:

{“First, we suffered great fear because of the American bombings, and thus there was no safe place for us and no place to hide. This took its toll on us. Then we suffered disorientation and confusion, we were lost in this huge desert. Making things worse was the fact that our guide was killed by the air strikes. We stayed 10 days in the desert not knowing where we were going as we were chased by the bombers from the air. We suffered terribly as result of extreme thirst. Many of us died of thirst and I myself almost died of it, if it was not for God’s mercy. It was the most horrific 10 days that I have ever experienced.”}

The man told the scholar that many of the other fighters who had managed to flee Fallujah had instructed their families to leave ISIL territory altogether and move to territories controlled by local Sunni tribes, for fear of what would happen if they were captured by Shia militia groups. Meanwhile, in his new location, still under ISIL control, he claims to have witnessed the same abuses that the group had inflicted in Fallujah.

{“Some of us reached Mosul, others did not. But the same mistakes that were made in Fallujah are being made here all over again. In that I mean the mistreatment of population, disregard to proper strategies and the spread of injustice. If ever want our situation to change, we should start rethinking of our actions and mistakes and revision should be considered at the highest levels.”}

The man’s messages cut off some time after that, with his fate unclear. In one of his last messages he again lamented that the group had lost Fallujah, “because of the injustices we have committed against the people”.

Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, and has been under the control of ISIL fighters since 2014. The ISIL force that routed the Iraqi Army is believed to have consisted of little more than a thousand fighters, yet it managed to defeat a much larger force over the course of a six-day battle. The unlikely initial success of ISIL in Mosul is believed to be a product of the widespread unpopularity of the Iraqi Army forces that had been stationed in the city. These forces were predominantly Shia, and were alleged to have carried out sectarian abuses against the city’s mostly Sunni local population.

In a series of messages delivered over the course of the summer, a man currently living in Mosul who reached out to the Jordanian religious scholar described his despair over the future of the city – trapped under the harsh governance of ISIL fighters and facing an assault by potentially vengeful Iraqi government forces.

“I am writing this account because I see our end is near. I live in Mosul, I am a devout Muslim, but not a member of ISIL and I don’t intend to join them anytime soon. I am writing this account to explain our dire situation in this city. Although like many residents of Mosul, we saw the Shia government of Baghdad as a bigger danger and a threat to our lives than ISIL. But as our life conditions deteriorate rather rapidly from bad to worse, some have started thinking of what was unthinkable few years ago: preferring Shia Baghdad’s dangerous rule to ISIL.”

While the man had once welcomed ISIL as possible liberators from the oppressive central government, the brutal treatment meted out by ISIL members to the local population had changed his perception.

“While Mosul is under siege and a war against it is looming in the horizon, the people there have lost trust in everything that comes from ISIL. They even are reluctant to pick up arms to defend the city because of mistreatment and harassment they have been subjected to. We even started hearing those who are saying: it does not matter any more who comes and take over Mosul. [ISIL’s] behaviour and aggression against the residents of Mosul and their capturing and enslaving women from others faiths has turned people away from them….

…People’s morale is down, and I saw that coming, and expected even worse because of how they treated the population and created enemies throughout the region. The situation here is very difficult. I am very confused about the future and often ask myself if we should stay home and await the knives of the Shias when they eventually come to kill us. Should we flee to the desert with our women and children, or keep our families at home and carry arms to defend ourselves?”

In the autumn of 2015, the Iraqi government stopped paying the salaries of public sector workers living in Mosul. While the decision to starve ISIL-controlled areas of funds made tactical sense, it financially left the city’s residents impoverished.

“People are exhausted by poverty; they desperately need money especially after the Shia rulers of Baghdad cut off the salaries more than a year ago,” the man wrote. “Eighty percent of the people here are government employees, so they are directly impacted by cutting their salaries off and face severe problems of trying to feed and take care of their families.”

The callous response by ISIL leaders to this apparent suffering had further embittered the man and other Mosul residents.

“Remarkably, while all this is taking place, ISIS couldn’t care less about the people or how they feel or what they are going through. Every Friday during the prayer sermon, their preachers insult the local population and attack them for not going off to Jihad with them and accuse them of being cowards and hypocrites. Their [morality police] is manned by young men and teenagers who insult and attack older and grown men. These young teenagers often issue tickets and fines to elderly men because they for example shaved some of their beards off, even though people barely have money to eat let alone have any to pay imposed fines. They also often yell at women because they slightly showed their faces or eyes from under their veils.”

In the run-up to the government offensive against Mosul, many Iraqis have reportedly made plans to flee the city by paying local smugglers. In his letters, the man says that ISIL refuses to let people flee the city through normal channels, claiming that those who flee territory under its control are apostates from Islam itself. The man said that he had tried to reason with local ISIL officials on behalf of the women, children and foreigners present in Mosul, to no avail.

“I advised some of ISIL men who I knew in the city to let the women and children out of Mosul before the war starts, especially western women – French, Swedish, Danish, British and others because they have no place else to go. Unlike what happened in Fallujah where Iraqi women fled to other Sunni areas in advance of the battle and found shelter in tribal areas. Western women and their children have no such option. I told them they should give them back their passports and have them go to Syria or elsewhere before the war starts, because the Kurds and the Shia are coming for revenge and they will murder and rape those women. But they mocked and threatened me and refused to listen.

What makes me more confused is that Raqqa is part of House of Islam, [under the control of ISIL] so why can’t they allow people to escape there? Furthermore, ISIL allows Syrians to come from Syria to shop and engage in trade in Mosul, but does not allow Iraqis to go to Syria and do the same thing. I, like many other residents of Mosul, find this very troubling.”

In his last messages, the man said that he initially hoped that ISIL would govern Mosul in accordance with his own understanding of Islamic law. But now, he lamented, “what we see here today is everything else but God’s conditions and instructions. We see injustice rule us, we see aggression and murder take place everywhere around us.”

“Under these conditions we live in, I don’t think any of us would have the power or the motivation to fight the Shias when they eventually come to destroy us,” the man wrote. “Our situation is dire and is much bigger than us, we can only ask God for his help and his forgiveness.”

{Ahmad Khan Rahami was arrested in New Jersey hours after he was publicly identified as the suspect.}

The suspect wanted in connection with bombings in New York City has been taken into custody after a firefight with police.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was arrested in New Jersey on Monday hours after he was publicly identified as the suspect in connection with explosives planted in New York City and New Jersey state.

A bomb went off on Saturday in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, injuring 29 people. All of the wounded have since been released from the hospital.

“We have every reason to believe this was an act of terror,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said after the arrest.

Rahami – an Afghan immigrant who lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey – was taken into custody after firing on police officers, Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage said.

Two officers were shot in the encounter, but suffered non-life threatening injuries.

“Mr Rahami also sustained shots and an ambulance has taken him away,” Bollwage said. He underwent surgery on his wounds.

Officials said they had no indication there were more bombs or suspects to find, though they cautioned that they were continuing to work to understand Rahami’s connections.

FBI official William Sweeney Jr said in a news briefing “there is no indication that there’s a [terrorist] cell” in the area.

The suspect’s motive remains unclear, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.

{{Shootout}}

Derek Armstead – mayor of Linden, New Jersey, where Rahami was captured – said the owner of a bar found him sleeping in his hallway on Monday morning.

He told the AP news agency the man was initially presumed to be a vagrant, but police officers who responded quickly realised it was Rahami.

Armstead said the man pulled out a handgun and fired at the officers, hitting one in a bulletproof vest and grazing the other.

He then began firing as he ran down the street and police shot him in the leg. He was conscious when he was taken away in an ambulance.

A homeland security official told Reuters that five devices found in New Jersey early on Sunday were connected to Saturday’s blast in Manhattan. The five explosive devices were found in a backpack near a New Jersey train station.

One of the devices exploded early on Monday as authorities worked to disarm it.

“There are still a lot of unanswered questions: Number one, what are the motives for this? And was anyone else helping the plotter?” reported Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo in New York City.