Tag: InternationalNews

{US, Russia hail breakthrough to put peace process back on track, including nationwide ceasefire effective from Monday.}

The United States and Russia hailed a breakthrough deal on Saturday to put Syria’s peace process back on track, including a nationwide ceasefire effective from sundown on Monday.

“Today, Sergei Lavrov and I, on behalf of our president and our countries call on every Syrian stakeholder to support the plan that the United States and Russia have reached, to … bring this catastrophic conflict to the quickest possible end through a political process,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that despite continuing mistrust, the two sides had developed five documents that would enable coordination of the fight against armed groups and a revival of Syria’s failed truce in an enhanced form.

“This all creates the necessary conditions for resumption of the political process which has been stalling for a long time,” Lavrov told a news conference.

The two powers back opposite sides of the conflict, with Moscow supporting the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the US behind a coalition of rebel groups.

If Russia is able to pressure Assad to respect the ceasefire for a week, Moscow and Washington will set up a joint coordination unit and begin air strikes against agreed targets.

“We will jointly agree on strikes against terrorists to be carried out by the Russian and American air forces. We have agreed on the zones in which these strikes will be carried out,” said Lavrov.

{{Marathon talks}}

The much anticipated – if tentative – breakthrough came at the end of marathon talks between Lavrov and Kerry in Geneva, as the pair push for an end of the five-year civil war.

“Today, the United States and Russia are announcing a plan which we hope will reduce violence, ease suffering and resume movement towards a negotiated peace and a political transition in Syria,” Kerry said.

The vexed question of Assad’s fate remains, with Western powers calling for his removal and Russia backing him.

But both Kerry and Lavrov said the complex plan represents the best available chance to end the fighting between the government and the mainstream opposition rebels, while still targeting Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (the group formerly known as the Al Nusra Front) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Key to the deal is the withdrawal of Syrian government forces around rebel-held Aleppo, allowing desperately needed humanitarian access to besieged communities.

The High Negotiations Committee, an umbrella group of the Syrian opposition, on Saturday welcomed the deal, saying it hoped it would bring relief to hundreds of thousands civilians.

“We hope this will be the beginning of the end of the civilians’ ordeal,” HNC spokeswoman Bassma Kodmani said. “We welcome the deal if it is going to be enforced.”

Russia also needs to persuade the Syrian air force to stop strikes on anti-government positions, which have also killed large numbers of civilians.

In turn, Washington has to get the opposition groups it backs to separate themselves from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, which has allied itself with a range of rebels at different points in the fluid conflict.

Only if commitments by Moscow and the Assad government to cease violence for seven days are “fully met” will the US and Russia start cooperating with joint strikes, the Pentagon said in a statement following the announcement.

Lavrov cautioned that Moscow could not “100 percent guarantee” that all the parties would obey the ceasefire.

“The Syrian Government has been informed by us about these arrangements, and it is ready to fulfil them,” he added.

‘Window of opportunity’

A truce agreed in February and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council has been repeatedly broken by both sides.

The final hours of the talks dragged out as Kerry contacted US President Barack Obama’s office to get approval for the plan, but the top diplomat said both governments stand behind it.

“The United States is going the extra mile here because we believe that Russia and my colleague have the capability to press the Assad regime to stop this conflict and come to the table and make peace,” Kerry said.

The UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura described the deal as a “window of opportunity”, and said he would discuss with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon when stalled political negotiations can restart.

Pro-government forces have taken back a strategically important district on Aleppo’s southern outskirts, rolling back nearly every gain from a month-long rebel offensive there.

The government advance further sealed off Aleppo’s opposition-held eastern districts, and government troops backed by the Russian air force have completely encircled opposition-held neighbourhoods, leaving the civilian population completely cut off.

In another major blow to the rebels, the military commander of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the largest rebel alliance, was killed in an air strike, rebel sources said on Thursday.

“Rebels are now back to square one, under an even more ruthless siege,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP news agency.

In Aleppo, once Syria’s economic powerhouse that has been ravaged by the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011, desperate civilians described a battle for survival.

The conflict has so far claimed an estimated 400,000 lives, according to the UN special envoy for the Syria crisis Staffan de Mistura. Millions of others have been displaced.

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

At least 20 people have been killed and 50 injured after a fire engulfed a packaging factory north of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

The Dhaka Tribune newspaper reported on Saturday that the fire erupted due to a boiler explosion at the Tampako Packaging Factory in the industrial town of Tongi, 20km north of the capital.

Citing hospital officials, the paper said the bodies of 17 people were taken to a nearby hospital while three others succumbed to their injuries while undergoing treatment.

Michael Shipper, the Secretary of Labour and Employment Ministry told Al Jazeera that the death toll stood at 22.

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.

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.

{Social media giant reverses decision to censor iconic Vietnam War image in face of mounting public criticism.}

Facebook Inc has reversed its decision to remove an iconic Vietnam War photograph after an attack from the Norwegian prime minister, who said the photo “shaped world history”.

The social media giant on Friday erased the photograph, which shows a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack, from the Facebook pages of several Norwegian authors and media outlets, but later reversed its decision after mounting public criticism.

While the company initially said the picture violated it’s community standards against nudity, in a short statement released late on Friday, it recognized “the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time”.

Captured in 1972 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nick Ut of the Associated Press, the image of screaming children running from a napalm attack shows a naked nine-year-old girl, Kim Phúc, at its centre.

The controversy started when Facebook deleted a post by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland that featured Nick Ut’s Pulitzer-winning photograph on Monday on the grounds of “nudity”.

Egeland’s post discussed seven photographs that changed the history of warfare. He was subsequently suspended from the social media site.

In protest, many Norwegians posted the photo on their own Facebook pages.

On the same day, Norway’s flagship national daily, Aftenposten, reported on Egeland’s suspension using the same photograph and shared the article on its Facebook page.

The newspaper immediately received a message from Facebook asking it to “either remove or pixelate” the photograph.

In response, Aftenposten splashed the photograph across the front page of its newspaper and website on Friday next to a large Facebook logo, and wrote a front-page editorial headlined “Dear Mark Zuckerberg”, arguing that the network was undermining democracy.
{{
‘Facebook gets it wrong’}}

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg then posted the photograph on her own Facebook profile, writing that it had contributed to change the course of world history.

“Facebook gets it wrong when they censor such pictures. It limits the freedom of speech,” Solberg wrote. “I say yes to healthy, open and free debate – online and wherever else we go. But I say no to this form of censorship.”

Solberg, in her post, also praised Facebook for combating pictures of child abuse. Aftenposten, in its editorial, said Facebook should be able to tell the difference between child pornography and famous war photography.

The image and the accompanying post later disappeared from the prime minister’s Facebook page.

Solberg responded to Facebook’s decision to erase her post by sharing a censored version of the “napalm girl” photo and a series of other iconic news photographs.

“While I was on a plane from Oslo to Trondheim, Facebook deleted a post from my Facebook page,” she said.

“What Facebook does by removing images of this kind, good as the intentions may be, is to edit our common history.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Norway, Solberg said that this sort of censorship was unacceptable.

“I have praised Facebook on the fact that they are very firm on the stance that pornography, child abuse and violence shouldn’t be shown on the platform. But you can’t let machines run everything. You can’t let machines run your morality or distort your history,” the prime minister said.

“That means that Facebook needs to have a system that recognises that there are iconic pictures, or situations in which machines cannot decide to just take the images away,” Solberg added.

Facebook said in a statement earlier in the day on Friday that its rules were more blunt than the company itself would prefer, adding that restrictions on nudity were necessary on a global platform.

“While we recognise that this photo is iconic, it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others,” a company spokesperson wrote.

“We try to find the right balance between enabling people to express themselves while maintaining a safe and respectful experience for our global community. Our solutions won’t always be perfect, but we will continue to try to improve our policies and the ways in which we apply them.”

{Turkish army says three of its soldiers were killed in an attack by ISIL near the town of Tel el-Hawa in northern Syria.}

Three Turkish soldiers have been killed and one wounded during clashes with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in northern Syria, according to Turkey’s armed forces.

In a statement on Friday, the Turkish military said one of its tanks was hit by ISIL fighters around 12:20pm local time, near the Syrian town of Tel el-Hawa.

The area is west of Jarablus near the Turkish border, which was taken from ISIL by the Ankara-backed Free Syrian Army at the start of the operation.

Friday’s attack marked the seventh Turkish casualty so far in Turkey’s two-pronged, cross-border operation against ISIL and Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria.

Turkey first sent tanks across the border on August 24 as part of the operation dubbed “Euphrates Shield”

Four days later, the Turkish army suffered its first fatality in northern Syria, in a rocket attack blamed on Kurdish militia.

Late on Sept. 6, three more Turkish soldiers were killed and four others were wounded in an ISIL attack on two tanks near the town of al-Rai in northern Syria.

Last week, ISIL fighters were expelled from their last positions along the Turkish-Syrian border, depriving the group of a key crossing point for recruits and supplies.

Turkey wants to establish a safe zone in the 91km area stretching from Jarablus to Azaz to the west and says it will continue with the cross-border operation until “all terrorist elements are eliminated” from the region.

Turkey’s operation, which involves tanks, fighter jets and special forces, is targeting both ISIL but also Syrian Kurdish forces that have been key to driving ISIL fighters out of other parts of the Syrian-Turkish border.

The Kurdish YPG militia is a key partner of the US-led coalition against ISIL, and has recaptured large swaths of territory in Syria from the group.

Yet, Ankara considers the YPG a “terrorist” group and has been alarmed by its expansion along the border, fearing the creation of a contiguous, semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria.

Last month, The US defence secretary has called on Turkey and Kurdish forces in northern Syria to stay focused on fighting ISIL and not to target each other.

Turkey, in response, said it would continue to target the Kurdish militia if it failed to retreat east of the Euphrates River.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday that he welcomed Turkey’s efforts against ISIL in northern Syria without mentioning its clashes with Kurdish fighters in the same region.

“We welcome Turkey’s increasing efforts to fight against Daesh,” Stoltenberg told Turkish broadcaster NTV, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

“Turkey has a right to defend itself,” he said. “There have been many terrorist attacks coming from the Syrian side.”

{French prosecutor says the three women arrested for planning an attack in Paris were being directed by ISIL in Syria.}

French authorities have said that three women arrested for planning an attack in Paris were being directed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday that the three suspects were determined to carry out ISIL’s “deadly ideology”, and had been given direction by ISIL members in Syria.

The women, aged 39, 23 and 19, were arrested on Thursday night as part of a probe into a car, loaded with six gas cylinders and three cans of diesel, that was found on Sunday parked near the renowned Notre Dame cathedral.

During the arrest one of the women, identified as Sarah H., 23, stabbed a policeman in the shoulder who had been keeping watch on them from an unmarked car near the apartment, the investigator said.

Teams of police then swooped on the women and in the struggle, the 19-year-old Ines Madani was shot in the thigh and the ankle.

According to Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the women were preparing “new violent … and imminent actions”.

Four other suspects linked to the alleged attack plot – including two brothers and their girlfriends who are aged between 26 and 34 – were arrested separately on Tuesday on Wednesday.

Plots foiled

A bar employee working near Notre Dame had first raised the alert on Sunday after noticing a gas cylinder on the back seat of the parked car, police said.

The car had no number plates and its hazard lights were flashing.

Although the cylinder on the back seat was empty, five full cylinders were discovered in the boot. Three bottles of diesel fuel were also discovered in the vehicle, but police found no detonators.

“If it was an attack plot, the method was very strange,” a police source said on Thursday.

France is on high alert following a string of attacks claimed by ISIL, including last November’s coordinated attacks in which assailants killed 130 people in Paris.

Speaking on Thursday, President Francois Hollande referred to attack plots that have been foiled “in recent days”, without elaborating.

Cazeneuve on Friday told French daily La Presse that 260 people have been arrested in connection with terrorist networks or operations since the beginning of the year.

{Pyongyang says it carried out “nuclear warhead explosion”, in latest test roundly condemned by its opponents.}

North Korea said it has carried out a successful “nuclear warhead explosion” test to counter what it called US hostility, North Korean state TV reported, angering neighbours and the United States.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 was detected in the country’s north on Friday morning, South Korea’s meteorological agency said, in what officials said was the biggest ever such blast.

A state TV presenter said: “Scientists [from] … the DPRK carried out a nuclear explosion test for the judgment of the power of a nuclear warhead newly studied and manufactured by them at the northern nuclear test ground.”

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the North’s official name.

“The Central Committee of the [ruling] Workers’ Party of Korea sent warm congratulations to nuclear scientists … of the northern nuclear test ground on the successful nuclear warhead explosion test,” the presenter said.

The test would also enable the North to produce “as many as it wants [of] a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power”, she said.

The tremor, detected by the US Geological Survey and Japan’s Meteorological Agency’s earthquake and tsunami observations division, happened near a known nuclear test site.

In January, North Korea detonated its fourth nuclear device at the same site.

The USGS said the explosion was detected at 9:30am local time at the surface. Its epicentre was 18km northeast of Sungjibaegam, the USGS said.

Tariq Rauf, head of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s disarmament programme, told Al Jazeera: “North Korea is the only country carrying our nuclear tests in the 21st century. That in and of itself is a problem issue.

“On the other hand, there are also provocations from North Korea’s point of view. US and South Korean military exercises are becoming larger and more aggressive.”

{{‘Fanatic recklessness’}}

South Korean President Park Geun-hye called the test an act of “fanatic recklessness” in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

US President Barack Obama and Park spoke by telephone about the event, South Korea’s presidential office said. The 15-minute conversation took place as the US leader was on Air Force One returning to the US from a regional summit in Laos, according to the South Korean presidential office.

Obama said any provocative actions by North Korea would have “serious consequences”, reiterating a US commitment to the security of its allies in Asia and around the world.

Japan’s chief government spokesman said that Tokyo would consider further unilateral sanctions against North Korea.

“North Korea’s nuclear development is a grave threat to Japan’s safety,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.

China “firmly opposes” the test, the foreign ministry of Pyongyang’s main diplomatic ally said.

“Today, the DPRK again conducted a nuclear test despite widespread international opposition – the Chinese government firmly opposes this,” the ministry in Beijing said in a statement on its website, using the North’s official name.

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said: “[The test is] a reminder of Beijing’s impotence to try and bring North Korea to heel. Nothing China has so far said has had any effect on the North.”

{{ {Analysis from Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul.} }}

“In the wake of this test, there have been very strong words from South Korea but those kinds of strong words from the South or the UN Security Council or anyone else have so far done nothing to slow down what has been going on under the leadership of Kim Jong-un.

Here in Seoul, we’ve heard from defence sources who say this was likely to have been a 10 kiloton-test.

But two tests in the same year tells us this is an accelerated programme under the leadership of Kim Jong-un. He has written into the constitution of the country this dual pronged economic development and the pursuit of a viable nuclear deterrent – that is clearly what he wants to do.

There has been a great deal of long range rocket and missile testing – just this year we have seen the Musudan missile tested for the first time. At the end of August, we saw a submarine-launched ballistic missile.

Kim is getting to the point where he has what he wants, which is a diversified means of carrying a nuclear warhead.

That would be a major deterrent, in the North Korean leadership’s view, of any kind of forced regime change upon them. Obviously, the North Koreans think this is critical to the survival of the regime, and they have upped the stakes and increased the pace of their nuclear development.

{Abu Hajer al Homsi, a founding member of Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, is killed in suspected US strike, rebel source says.}

A senior military commander and founding member of the Syrian rebel group Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, formerly known as the Nusra Front, has been killed by a US air strike that hit a meeting of the group’s leaders, rebels said.

Abu Hajer al-Homsi, whose real name was Abu Omar Saraqeb, was killed in a raid on a rural part of Aleppo province on Thursday, which was most likely carried out by a US fighter jet, a rebel source told the Reuters news agency.

Another source told Reuters that the rebels were at a hideout in the village of Kafr Naha when the strike hit them.

The AFP news agency also reported Saraqeb’s death, citing rebels.

Few other details emerged, but a photo of another top leader known as Abu Muslim al-Shami was circulated on social media showing him alive to refute reports he had also been killed.

The leader of the group, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, was not believed to be at the meeting.

Since a US-led coalition began launching raids on groups in Syria and Iraq in September 2014, bombing raids have frequently targeted Nusra Front figures in Syria, also resulting in the deaths of scores of civilians. But Thursday’s attack marked the first time a key figure had been targeted since the group changed its name.

The Nusra Front announced in July that it was ending a relationship with al-Qaeda and changing its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham in an attempt to appeal to those Syrians who had misgivings about its links with al-Qaeda, and the presence of foreign fighters in its ranks.

The move was dismissed by Washington, which said it would continue to consider the group “terrorists”.

{{Battle for Aleppo}}

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been trying to reach a deal on deeper cooperation on Syria, particularly in their raids on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

The two were expected to meet in the Swiss capital Geneva on Friday for face-to-face talks.

The talks “will focus on reducing violence, expanding humanitarian assistance for the Syrian people, and moving toward a political solution needed to end the civil war,” US State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

The meeting comes as government forces make major gains on the outskirts of the divided city of Aleppo.

Taking Aleppo would be the biggest victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in five years of fighting, and would demonstrate a dramatic shift of fortunes in his favour since Russia joined the war on his side last year.

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

More than 280,000 Syrians have been killed during the war, 4.8 million have fled the country, and 6.6 million have become internally displaced by the violence, according to the UN.

The UN special envoy to the country, Staffan de Mistura, has estimated that more than four million people may have been killed, but that is not an official figure.

{At least 186 PKK fighters killed, military says, as thousands of teachers with alleged links to the group are suspended.}

Turkey is conducting the largest military operations in its history against Kurdish fighters in the southeast of the country, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said.

His statement on Thursday came as the government suspended thousands of teachers over suspected links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the army reportedly killed scores of PKK fighters.

Erdogan said in a speech to provincial governors in Ankara that the operations targeting civil servants with links to the PKK was a key element of the fight against the armed group.

“We will be removing civil servants with links to the PKK,” he said.

The Turkish military said on Wednesday that 186 PKK members have been killed in the operations conducted in the southeastern district of Cukurca over the last 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.

The teachers suspended for their alleged links to the PKK will be able to receive two thirds of their salaries until the end of a formal investigation, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

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.

The teachers’ suspensions came as Ankara pushes ahead with a purge against tens of thousands of supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused by Turkey of orchestrating an attempted coup in July.

{Abbas and Netanyahu likely to meet in Moscow, Russian foreign ministry says, but the date is yet to be decided.}

Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed “in principle” to meet in Moscow in what Russia hopes will relaunch Middle East peace talks after more than two years’ break, according to the Russian foreign ministry.

While it is not clear when the meeting will take place, Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Thursday Moscow had heard from the offices of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the two agreed to meet in the Russian capital.

“The leaders of Palestine and Israel have given their general consent to meet in Russia,” Zakharova told reporters.

“The most important thing is to pick the right timing,” she added. “Intensive contacts on this are ongoing.”

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Jamjoom, reporting from Moscow, said the Russian statement “hardly sounded like a sure thing at this point”, highlighting a comment by a Kremlin spokesperson on Wednesday saying that a meeting between the two sides was “not on the schedule and not on the agenda”.

Earlier this week, Abbas said a scheduled meeting in Moscow had been postponed at Israel’s request.

Abbas has said that he would only meet Netanyahu if Israel freezes settlement construction on occupied lands and carries out a previously agreed-on release of Palestinian prisoners.

“Palestinian sources are saying they are not asking for pre-conditions,” Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan, reporting from Jerusalem, said.

“They are asking for obligations the Israelis should have done anyway,” Khan said, adding that according to a source from the Israeli prime minister’s office “Netanyahu is willing to meet Abbas anywhere, [but] without preconditions for the talks”.

Although neither side has yet confirmed the meeting, “it seems they are willing to meet, but there is some fine tuning to be done,” said Khan.

The last round of peace talks facilitated by the United States broke down two and a half years ago, with no progress.

“There is a hope that the Russians might be better peace brokers than the US, who are often accused of being too lenient on Israel,” said Khan.

Both Egypt and France have attempted to restart peace talks this year, to no avail.

If the meeting between the two leaders does take place, it would represent a breakthrough of sorts.