Tag: InternationalNews

{Ceasefire to come into force at sundown after more than 100 people killed in an upswing of violence over weekend.}

A ceasefire in Syria brokered by Russia and the US is set to begin at sundown after a weekend of government raids killed scores of civilians, but there are concerns about whether it will hold.

The tentative truce , announced after marathon talks by the Russian and US foreign ministers last week, has cautiously reawakened hopes of ending a five-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions from the country.

The Free Syrian Army group, a leading rebel alliance, said it would observe it from sundown on Monday as agreed but with major reservations.

The alliance wrote to Washington on Sunday, saying that while it would “cooperate positively” with the ceasefire, it was concerned it would benefit the government.

Another leading rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, which is seen as a “terrorist group” both by the US and Russia, rejected the deal, saying it would strengthen the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

{{‘Most on board’}}

State news agency SANA reported on Saturday that Assad’s government had “approved the agreement” for a truce.

Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, which has intervened militarily in the war on behalf of Assad, announced its support.

Key Assad and Hezbollah backer Iran also welcomed the deal, though foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi cautioned its success would rely on creating “a comprehensive monitoring mechanism, in particular the control of borders in order to stop the dispatch of fresh terrorists” to Syria.

Al Jazeera’s Stephanie Dekker, reporting from the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which borders Syria, said the situation highlighted the complicated web of allegiances among the country’s armed groups, many of whom are backed by foreign nations.

“Most of the countries seem to be on board, but this deal really depends of the cooperation of many different armed groups on the ground,” she said.

President Bashar al-Assad is backed by Russia’s air force, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Shia fighters from Iraq and Lebanon, while the rebels are supported by the US, other Western countries, Turkey and Gulf Arab states.

Assad prayed on Monday at a mosque in a Damascus suburb that was evacuated by rebels and surrendered to the government last month, state media reported, in what analysts saw as a symbolic show of strength aimed squarely at his opponents.

Assad visited Daraya, which had once been a major symbol of the uprising against him, on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival.

{{Raging violence}}

Ahead of the ceasefire, many people were killed in several parts of the country, particularly in government air raids, as the sides appeared to be trying to strengthen their positions before the truce came into effect.

More than 100 people were killed in a series of bombing raids, including on rebel-held parts of Aleppo province in the north of the country, and in Idlib in the northwest, Al Jazeera correspondents reported from the country.

The worst strikes were in Idlib city, the capital of the province of the same name, where they hit a market, killing 55 civilians.

Graeme Bannerman, an academic and former Middle East Analyst at the US State Department, told Al Jazeera that all sides wanted the ceasefire to work, but none were confident it would.

“It is such a tentative first step that we have to see how it evolves. The US is committed to using its influence on the people it talks to hold the ceasefire and work for a settlement and Russia is doing the same thing,” he said.

“If the argument is that Russia has stronger relationships with its allies, such as the Syrian government, that may be true. But in the end all the sides should try to work this out [to end the war].”

Several previous ceasefire agreements crumbled within weeks . The United Nations envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura has estimated that more than 400,000 have been killed during the war, though that it was not an official UN figure.

{Doctor’s announcement comes as presidential candidate’s departure from 9/11 memorial raises questions about her health.}

Hillary Clinton has been diagnosed with pneumonia, her personal doctor announced, after the US Democratic presidential candidate fell ill at a 9/11 memorial.

The episode has renewed focus on her health less than two months before an election.

She was diagnosed on Friday, the doctor said, but her condition was not made public until Sunday afternoon. Hours earlier, a video was posted on social media, apparently showing Clinton stumbling and her knees buckling, before being helped by aides into a black van leaving the site of the September 11, 2001 attack in New York.

She was taken to her daughter Chelsea’s home in the city and appeared on her own about two hours later, wearing sunglasses and telling reporters that she was “feeling great.”

The temperature in New York was about 27 degrees Celsius, combined with high humidity.

Clinton wore a high-collared shirt and a dark suit during the memorial honouring the nearly 3,000 people killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley told reporters that it was “stiflingly hot”, and he himself had to leave the ceremony.

Clinton’s doctor, Lisa Bardack, said in a statement that the veteran politician has been experiencing a cough related to allergies and that an examination on Friday showed it was pneumonia.

“She was put on antibiotics and advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at this morning’s event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely,” Bardack said.

It was not yet clear whether Clinton would travel to California as planned on Monday to attend campaign and fundraising events.

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington DC, said Clinton’s health would now become a “major issue” in the lead-up to the election, “elevated from the ranks of conspiracies to a legitimate campaign issue”.

She noted that Sunday’s event was Clinton’s second health-related incident in a week.

‘Fit to serve’

Clinton’s speech at a campaign rally on Labour Day in Cleveland was interrupted by a coughing spell. During the speech, she quipped, “Every time I think about Trump I get allergic.” She then resumed her speech.

Republican rival Donald Trump and his supporters have been hinting at potential health issues for months, questioning Clinton’s stamina when she takes routine days off the campaign trail and reviving questions about a concussion she sustained in December 2012 after fainting. Her doctor attributed that episode to a stomach virus and dehydration.

Clinton’s doctor reported she is fully recovered from the concussion, which led to temporary double vision and discovery of a blood clot in a vein in the space between her brain and skull.

Clinton also has experienced deep vein thrombosis, a clot usually in the leg, and takes the blood thinner Coumadin to prevent new clots.

Trump attended the same event marking the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Asked by a reporter about Clinton’s health incident, Trump said, “I don’t know anything”.

Past presidential candidates have released much more detailed information about their health than either Trump, 70, or Clinton, 68.

For example, John McCain, the failed 2008 Republican presidential nominee, allowed reporters to see 1,173 pages of medical records after concerns were raised about a cancer scare.

In a letter released by her doctor in July 2015, Clinton was described as being in “excellent health” and “fit to serve” in the White House. It noted that her current medical conditions include hyperthyroidism and seasonal pollen allergies.

Trump has also been under pressure to release detailed information on his health and medical history.

Instead, in December, Trump’s doctor wrote in a short letter that was made public that his blood pressure and laboratory results “were astonishingly excellent” and that he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency”.

{South Korea says North is set to conduct an additional nuclear test, days after it drew ire by testing powerful device.}

North Korea is ready to carry out another nuclear test at any time, South Korea’s defence ministry said, three days after the North’s fifth such test drew widespread condemnation.

Pyongyang set off its most powerful nuclear blast to date on Friday, saying it had mastered the ability to mount a warhead on a ballistic missile and ratcheting up a threat that its rivals and the United Nations have been powerless to contain.

“Assessment by South Korean and US intelligence is that the North is always ready for an additional nuclear test in the Punggye-ri area,” South Korean defence ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told a news briefing.

Punggye-ri, near the northeastern coast, is the site of all five of the North’s nuclear explosions.

“North Korea has a tunnel where it can conduct an additional nuclear test,” Moon said.

South Korea’s state news agency, Yonhap, reported earlier that North Korea had completed preparations for another nuclear test, citing South Korean government sources who said the North may use a previously unused tunnel at its mountainous test site.

It did not elaborate on what activities had been detected at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said it was already unprecedented that the North would carry out two tests in one year.

“There are some significant dates coming up: the 10th anniversary of the first test in October, the fifth anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il in December,” Fawcett said.

“And North Korea is undergoing a real acceleration of both its missile and nuclear programmes under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, and so this is the assessment as things stand of South Korea.”

The US special envoy for the isolated state, Sung Kim, will travel to Seoul on Monday after discussing cooperation among neighbouring countries in Tokyo in the wake of the North’s latest nuclear test.

Kim met with Japanese officials on Sunday and said the United States may launch unilateral sanctions against North Korea, echoing comments by US President Barack Obama on Friday in the wake of the test.

A push for further sanctions was “laughable”, North Korea said on Sunday, vowing to continue to strengthen its nuclear power.

The US military delayed a planned B-1B bomber flight to the Korean peninsula, a show of strength and solidarity with ally Seoul, scheduled for Monday, Yonhap reported.

The delay of at least 24 hours was due to bad weather conditions in Guam, Yonhap said, citing an unidentified US Forces Korea official.

South Korea’s military put the force of Friday’s blast at 10 kilotonnes, but a US expert said the highest estimates of seismic magnitude suggested a yield of 20 to 30 kilotonnes.

The test showed North Korea’s nuclear capability was expanding fast and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was unwilling to alter course, South Korea said on Saturday.

The UN Security Council denounced the test and said it would begin work immediately on a resolution. The United States, Britain and France pushed for the 15-member body to impose new sanctions.

It was not clear if the Security Council can quickly come to a consensus on fresh sanctions, given the ambivalence by China and Russia on adopting another resolution.

Both countries did join sanctions in March after the North’s January nuclear test.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday a “creative” response was needed.

The Global Times, run by the Chinese Communist Party, rejected the suggestion by the US that Beijing was responsible for the North’s pursuit of nuclear arms.

It said the US was “the root cause” of the issue.

“China is not capable of persuading North Korea to give up nuclear development, because China’s efforts are not supported by the others,” it said in an editorial on Monday.

“Washington has been refusing to sign a peace treaty with Pyongyang.”

{Manuel Valls warns of new attacks in France, but says Sarkozy’s proposal to systematically detain all suspects is wrong.}

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned that there would be “new attacks” in France, but said that proposals by former president Nicolas Sarkozy to boost security were not the right way to deal with the threats.

Paris was put on high alert last week after French officials said they dismantled a “terrorist cell” that planned to attack a Paris railway station under the direction of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

French police also arrested a 15-year-old boy suspected of planning a separate attack, investigators said Sunday.

The teenager was detained in eastern Paris on Saturday after having been under house arrest since April for suspected links to ISIL members.

“This week at least two attacks were foiled,” Manuel Valls said in an interview with Europe 1 radio and Itele television on Sunday.

“There will be new attacks, there will be innocent victims…this is also my role to tell this truth to the French people,” Valls said.

Valls also warned that the country faced a threat from 15,000 others in the country who were on the radar of police and intelligent services.

In an interview newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD), Sarkozy proposed to systematically place French citizens suspected of having links to fighters in special detention facilities.

“And don’t tell me it would be Guantanamo,” Sarkozy said in the interview. “In France, any administrative confinement is subject to subsequent control by a judge.”

Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, opened by former United States President George W. Bush, was used to hold prisoners rounded up overseas after the US became embroiled in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that French police had arrested 293 people this year for “links to terrorist networks.”

Investigators believe an ISIL operative had been in contact with one of the women arrested last week in connection to a car found abandoned a week ago near Notre Dame cathedral, a major tourist draw in central Paris.

The car contained five gas cylinders, three bottles of diesel and a lit cigarette.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the women were acting on orders coming from Syria.

One woman named as Ornella G. was remanded in custody on Saturday on terrorism charges, after her fingerprints were found on the vehicle.

She told police she and an accomplice had tried to set the vehicle alight but fled when they saw a man they believed to be a plain-clothes policeman.

Three other women, alleged members of the same cell, have also been detained. Police sources believe the three were planning another attack.

One of the women has been linked to one of the attackers who killed a French priest in Normandy in July, and to an assailant who stabbed a police couple to death at their home in a Paris suburb in June.

France is on heightened alert after a series of attacks since January 2015 that have killed 238 people and made security a hot topic in campaigning for next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people and also claimed that the truck driver who crushed 86 people to death in Nice in July was one of the group’s “soldiers”.

{Turkey appoints trustee mayors to 24 municipalities on grounds that previous mayors provided support to “terrorists”.}

Turkey has removed 24 mayors accused of links to Kurdish separatist fighters, replacing them with state-appointed trustees in a major shake-up under emergency powers enacted after a failed coup attempt.

The mayors were suspended from their posts over the past month on suspicion of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group that has been waging a deadly insurgency in the southeast since 1984, an interior ministry statement said.

Another four mayors were removed on suspicion of links to the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who is now blamed for the July 15 failed coup attempt.

All 28 mayors were replaced on Sunday with state-appointed trustees.

While most of the removed mayors belonged to pro-Kurdish parties, three of them were from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and one was from the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Mayors from the AKP and MHP are accused of having links to Gulen movement, according to Turkish media.

The move is the most largest step yet taken by new Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu since he took over from Efkan Ala in a surprise reshuffle earlier this month.

Soylu said the move meant that local municipalities would no longer be controlled by “terrorists or those under instructions from Qandil”, referring to the PKK’s mountain base in northern Iraq.

The move was made within the three-month state of emergency imposed after July’s coup attempt. The incumbents had all been elected in 2014 local polls.

The municipalities affected, mainly in the southeast, include important, predominantly Kurdish urban areas such as Sur and Silvan in the province of Diyarbakir and Nusaybin in the province of Mardin.

The mayors of the cities of Batman and Hakkari in the southeast have also been replaced. The interior ministry said 12 of the mayors suspended are already under arrest.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose regional politicians were the among the chief targets of the move, denounced the reshuffle as a “coup”.

In a statement, the HDP said the move was reminiscent of the military takeover in 1980 and “ignored the will of the voters”.

“The government should immediately abandon this perilous step,” it said, “they should quit trying to take advantage of the recent coup attempt on July 15th.”

But Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag denied the authorities had ridden roughshod over democracy, accusing the suspended mayors of funnelling revenues to “terror” groups.

“Being elected does not grant a right to commit a crime,” he wrote on Twitter.

Elsewhere, Turkish media reported that the police dispersed crowds that had gathered to protest the new mayoral assignments in southeastern provinces, and short clashes erupted in several areas.

Security forces in Hakkari prevented HDP co-mayors Fatma Yildiz and Saban Alkan from entering the municipality building following Sunday’s assignments, which led to protests outside the municipality building.

Police dispersed the crowd after they refused to leave the scene, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.

Four people, including Deputy Mayor Mikayil Erdal and HDP district organisation head Asim Ozcan, were detained but released shortly after, newspaper said.

In Batman, another group from the HDP gathered to protest the assignments to four municipalities in the province. Police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse the crowd.

In addition, around 200 people also protested the assignments in the Suruc district of the southeastern province of Sanliurfa.

The US Embassy in Ankara said on Sunday that it was concerned by reports of clashes in southeastern Turkey.

“We are concerned by reports of clashes in Turkey’s southeast following the government’s decision to remove some elected local officials from office on charges of supporting terrorism, and appoint local trustees in their place,” the embassy said in a statement posted on Twitter.

It said it supported Turkey’s right to defend itself against terrorism but noted the importance of respect for due process and the right to peaceful protest.

“We hope that any appointment of trustees will be temporary and that local citizens will soon be permitted to choose new local officials in accordance with Turkish law,” it said.

The Turkish military said on Wednesday that 186 PKK members had been killed in the operations conducted in the southeastern district of Cukurca over the past few days.

A total of 11,285 personnel “linked to a separatist-terrorist organisation have been suspended,” Turkey’s education ministry said on its official Twitter account on Thursday.

Turkey, the US and the EU have branded the PKK a “terrorist organisation”.

The autonomy-seeking group abandoned a two-year ceasefire in July, reigniting a conflict that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

The government has accused the PKK of a series of attacks in the southeast of Turkey in recent weeks.

{Israeli PM says Palestinian opposition to Israeli settlements in West Bank is “ethnic cleansing”.}

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced growing criticism after he attributed the Palestinian opposition to Israeli settlements in their territory with “ethnic cleansing”.

In a video released on Friday, Netanyahu rejected the notion that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law, were “an obstacle to peace”, drawing a rebuke from Washington.

Netanyahu noted “Israel’s diversity” which manifests in “the nearly two million Arabs living” in the Jewish state and reflects its “openness and readiness for peace”.

“Yet the Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one pre-condition: No Jews,” he said.

“There’s a phrase for that: It’s called ethnic cleansing.”

The US State Department called the video “unhelpful” and “inappropriate”.

“We obviously strongly disagree with the characterisation that those who oppose settlement activity or view it as an obstacle to peace are somehow calling for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank,” spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said on Friday.

“We believe that using that type of terminology is inappropriate and unhelpful,” she said.

“Settlements are a final status issue that must be resolved in negotiations between the parties.”

Israeli opposition member Tzipi Livni of the Zionist Union party accused Netanyahu of “trying to make political gains while creating diplomatic damage”.

She said the video had caused the US position to change from accepting settlement blocs to rejecting the entire West Bank enterprise.

“After Netanyahu’s video, the US is saying that all the settlements, including the blocs, are an obstacle, whereas in the past they were recognised,” she said in remarks relayed by a spokesman.

{{‘Imaginary reality’}}

Ayman Odeh, who heads the Joint List that groups the main Arab parties in parliament, accused Netanyahu of creating “an imaginary reality” and rejected the comparison between Israeli Arabs and Jewish West Bank settlers, who he said implement a policy of “ethnic cleansing”.

“Netanyahu doesn’t care that it is the settlements that were established precisely in order to cruelly expel Palestinian populaces from the West Bank to limited territories around the major cities,” he wrote on Facebook.

Peace efforts have been at a standstill since a US-led initiative collapsed in April 2014, with both Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas saying on Tuesday they were ready to meet to relaunch peace efforts.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been seeking to arrange a meeting between the two in Moscow.

International criticism of Israeli settlement building, including from the United States, has intensified in recent months.

Netanyahu’s government has nonetheless continued with the policy.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law and major obstacles to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.

{Man who tried to kill US president in 1981 released from psychiatric hospital in Washington following court order.}

John Hinckley, the man who attempted to assassinate US President Ronald Reagan 35 years ago, has been freed from a psychiatric hospital in the US capital Washington DC, according to national media reports.

A spokeswoman for the District of Columbia’s Department of Mental Health said early on Saturday that all patients scheduled to leave St. Elizabeths Hospital had been discharged.

Sixty-one-year-old Hinckley was among those scheduled for discharge, reports said.

The AP news agency said that a rental car pulled into the driveway of the Hinckley home in Williamsburg in Virginia at about 2:30pm.

The Washington Post reported that Hinckley was officially released from St. Elizabeth’s, when he had been scheduled to be freed.

A federal judge ruled in late July that Hinckley is not a danger to himself or the public and can live full-time at his mother’s home in Williamsburg.

Hinckley had already been visiting Williamsburg for long stretches at a time and preparing for the full-time transition.

{{Release conditions}}

Hinckley’s release has dozens of conditions attached, including a requirement that he works or volunteers at least three days a week, limit his travel, allow law enforcement to track his movements and continue meeting with a psychiatrist.

However, his longtime lawyer Barry Levine said he believed Hinckley will be a “citizen about whom we can all be proud”.

As a 25-year-old college dropout, Hinckley had grown fixated upon actress Jodie Foster and the Martin Scorsese film “Taxi Driver,” in which she played a teenage prostitute.

Inspired by the film’s main character, who plots to kill a presidential candidate, Hinckley opened fire on Reagan outside a Washington DC hotel on March 30, 1981, in a misguided effort to win Foster’s affections.

The shooting, which disabled James Brady, the White House Press Secretary of the time, left its mark in a number of ways. The shooting helped launch the modern gun control movement, and a 1993 bill named after him imposed background checks and a waiting period.

The Reagan family issued a statement in July strongly opposing Hinckley’s release. Foster has declined to comment on Hinckley since 1981.

{Bombing raids on rebel-held parts of Aleppo and Idlib come after US and Russia agree ceasefire deal.}

Ruinous violence has raged in several parts of Syria, shortly after the US and Russia sealed an ambitious agreement aimed at breathing life back into a stuttering UN-sponsored peace process.

More than 100 people were reported killed in a series of bombing raids on rebel-held parts of Aleppo province in the north of the country, and in Idlib in the north-west.

The worst strikes were in Idlib city, the capital of the province of the same name, where they hit a market, killing 55 civilians.

“A Russian fighter jet targeted a residential area and a market in Idlib,” Al Jazeera’s Adham Abu al-Husam, reporting from the city, as civil defence forces, firefighters and paramedics worked to pull survivors from the rubble.

“The marketplace was full of civilians shopping for the upcoming Eid holiday.”

In Aleppo, at least 46 civilians, including nine children, were killed in a bombardment of opposition-held areas, an Al Jazeera correspondent in the city reported.

The raids on Idlib and Aleppo were believed to have been carried out by Syrian army fighter jets, or those of its main ally Russia.

Aleppo, a major battleground in the conflict, has seen intensified fighting between government forces and the opposition in recent months, worsening the humanitarian situation there.

The surge in violence came hours after the US and Russia’s top diplomats announced the ceasefire agreement after 13 hours of talks in the Swiss city of Geneva.

The accord included a truce to start across Syria at sunset Monday, the first day of the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. The agreement also paved the way for joint US-Russian raids against armed groups in Syria, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, emerging late on Friday in Geneva from talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said the deal could provide a “turning point” in the conflict if the parties implemented it “in good faith.”

Russia is a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, while the US is supporting opposition forces fighting to oust him.

Syria’s state news agency, SANA, said that the Geneva agreement had been reached “with full knowledge” of the Syrian government, which has approved it.

The Syrian opposition reacted with caution to the pact. The High Negotiations Committee (HNC), an opposition umbrella coalition, welcomed the agreement but called on Russia to pressure Assad’s government to comply with the deal.

“We hope this will be the beginning of the end of the civilians’ ordeal,” HNC member Bassma Kodmani said.

“We welcome the deal if it is going to be enforced. What if Russia doesn’t pressure the regime, because that is the only way to get the regime to comply? We are waiting with a lot of anxiety.”

A previous ceasefire, brokered by the US and Russia in February, collapsed.

{At least 50 people were also injured when fierce fire engulfed packaging factory north of the capital Dhaka.}

About 100 people are believed to have been working at the building when flames tore through the four-storey factory.

A series of deadly incidents have raised concern over safety standards in the South Asian country’s factories.

“What I have seen here is an industry with bad safety provisions,” Shaidul Haq, the inspector general of Bangladesh police told reporters gathered in the capital.

“We have to look into whether the factory had proper permission or proper documents.”

Working conditions have been described as notoriously poor, with little enforcement of safety laws, while overcrowding and locked fire doors are common.

A fire at a plastics factory last year killed 13, and in 2013 more than 1,100 people died in the Rana Plaza factory collapse, Bangladesh’s worst industrial accident.