Tag: InternationalNews

{Rebels take full control of strategic border town in massive operation backed by Turkish and US air strikes.}

Turkish tanks and hundreds of opposition fighters thrust deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday in a lightning operation that within hours pushed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters out of a key Syrian border town.

The air and ground offensive – the most ambitious launched by Ankara in the Syria conflict – made rapid progress towards Jarablus throughout the day, as rebel fighters captured ISIL-held villages surrounding the strategic border town.

“Jarablus can now be considered fully liberated,” Ahmed Othman, a commander in the Free Syrian Army, told Al Jazeera from the scene, while another rebel spokesman said ISIL fighters had fled towards al-Bab to the southwest.

“The attack started in the morning and we were able to take control of a number of villages near the town. After a few hours and after controlling the hills surrounding the town, ISIL felt the danger. A large number of ISIL fighters withdrew south towards al-Bab, which is still under [ISIL, also known as ISIS] control.”

Jarablus, a strategic town on the border with Turkey, had been controlled by ISIL fighters for two years. The group is now left with only one stronghold in Syria’s northeast – al-Bab.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the operation was also targeting Kurdish militia fighters – strongly opposed by Ankara but backed by the US as a key ally in the war against ISIL – who had also been closing in on Jarablus.

“We have said ‘enough is enough’ … This now needs to be resolved,” Erdogan said.

Joe Biden, the US vice president who met Erdogan in Ankara on Wednesday, reassured Turkey that Washington had instructed the Kurdish YPG that crossing west of the Euphrates River could mean the total loss of American support.

“They cannot, will not and under no circumstances get American support if they do not keep that commitment. Period,” he said.

The Turkish government has accused the YPG of being an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). The Turkish state has waged war against the separatist group for more than 20 years.

“The YPG has been the US-led coalition’s strongest ground partner in the war against ISIL, but Turkish leadership wants the US to sever ties with the Kurdish faction,” said Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border.

{{Rapid advance}}

Wednesday’s operation – named “Euphrates Shield” – began at around 4am (01:00 GMT) with Turkish artillery pounding dozens of ISIL targets around Jarablus.

Turkish F-16 fighter jets, backed by US-led coalition planes, also hit targets inside Syria.

A dozen Turkish tanks then rolled into Syria in support of Syrian opposition fighters who had also crossed, with as many as 5,000 rebel fighters – including groups such as the Turkmen Sultan Murat Brigade, Sukur al-Jebel, Sham Front and Feylek al-Sham.

The rapidity of the advance was in complete contrast to the long-grinding battles where Kurdish forces had taken towns in northern Syria such as Kobane and Manbij from ISIL.

As well as tanks, an AFP photographer in the area of Karkamis, opposite Jarablus, saw several smaller military vehicles believed to be carrying the pro-Ankara Syrian rebels.

Security sources quoted by Turkish television said a small contingent of special forces had travelled into Syria to secure the area before the larger ground operation.

Turkey wants to show it is serious about taking on ISIL, which has been blamed for a string of attacks inside the country, including a recent attack on a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep that left 54 people dead, many of them children.

Ankara was long been accused of turning a blind eye to the rise of ISIL in Syria and even aiding its movements across the border, claims the government had always vehemently denied.

Earlier this month, a coalition of primarily Kurdish fighters led by the YPG pushed ISIL fighters out of Manbij, a strategic city that lies west of the Euphrates river.

Saleh Muslim, head of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the YPG’s political wing, tweeted that Turkey was now in the “Syrian quagmire” and would be “defeated” like ISIL.

But a senior US administration official told AFP that Washington had already been “syncing up” with Turkey for Wednesday’s operation and US advisers had been involved in a planning cell.

The Turkish air strikes were the first since a November crisis with Russia sparked when the Turkish air force downed one of Moscow’s warplanes.

A dozen ISIL targets were destroyed in Wednesday’s air strikes. Turkish artillery meanwhile destroyed at least 70 ISIL targets, according to Turkish television.

The movements come at a critical juncture for Turkey in Syria’s five-and-a-half-year war, and there are growing signs that Ankara is on the verge of a landmark policy shift.

Turkey has continuously called for the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, putting Turkey at odds with the embattled leader’s main supporters – Iran and Russia.

But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim acknowledged for the first time over the weekend that Assad was one of the “actors” in Syria and may need to stay on as part of a transition.

In a note of discord after news broke of the Turkish-backed operation on Wednesday, Russia said it was “deeply concerned” by the situation on the border and warned of a “further degeneration of the situation”.

Assad’s government – which has has little control of country’s northeast since 2012 – condemned the incursion as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.

{At least 16 people dead as 6.2 magnitude quake hits Umbria, causing heavy damage and trapping residents under rubble.}

At least 16 people are believed to have died after a powerful earthquake struck central Italy, destroying dozens of villages, according to local media reports.

The first confirmed victims of Wednesday’s earthquake were an elderly couple whose home collapsed at Pescara del Tronto in the Marche region to the east of the epicentre, national broadcaster Rai and other media outlets reported.

Another person died and a family of four, including two young children, were trapped, feared dead, in their collapsed house in Accumoli, close to the epicentre, the village mayor said.

The US Geological Survey said it was a 6.2 magnitude quake that hit near the town of Norcia, in the region of Umbria, at 3.36am local time (01:36 GMT).

Luca Cari, fire department spokesman, said “there have been reports of victims” in the quake zone, but he did not have any precise details.

Besides Amatrice, the worst hit towns were believed to be Accumoli, Posta and Arquata del Tronto, Cari told Reuters news agency, adding that helicopters would be sent up at first light to assess the damage.

“That particular area has a long history of very important, very energetic seismicity – it’s not surprising to have had an important earthquake there,” Gilberto Saccorotti, a geologist at Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, told Al Jazeera.

“From my knowledge of the area, the roads are very narrow – so if one road fails, the connection may become very difficult … The depth was quite shallow, about 4-kilometre, usually the typical depth is in the order of 10 kilometres.”

He said that it was difficult to predict whether there would be another earthquake or severe aftershocks.

{{‘It was so strong’}}

“It was so strong. It seemed the bed was walking across the room by itself with us on it,” Lina Mercantini of Ceselli, Umbria, told Reuters.

Olga Urbani, in the nearby town of Scheggino, said: “Dear God! It was awful. The walls creaked and all the books fell off the shelves.”

Residents of Rome, about 170km from the registered epicentre, were woken by the quake, which rattled furniture and swayed lights in most of central Italy.

A hostel on the Gran Sasso mountain, a popular area for hikers and climbers, said on its Facebook page that a large piece of rock had collapsed as a result of the tremor.

The spokesperson for Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, said on Twitter the government was in touch with the country’s civil protection agency and following the situation closely.

The last major earthquake to hit Italy struck the central city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

{Special forces and US-led coalition launch joint operation to clear fighters from northern Syrian town of Jarablus.}

Turkish fighter jets have struck ISIL targets in the northern Syrian border town of Jarablus, according to Turkish news media.

Wednesday’s operation is a part of a joint campaign by Turkish special forces and the US-led coalition to clear fighters belonging to ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, from the Syria-Turkey border.

“The operation, which began at around 4am local time (01:00 GMT), is aimed at clearing the Turkish borders of terrorist groups, helping to enhance border security and supporting the territorial integrity of Syria,” the state-run Anadolu Agency quoted Turkish officials as saying.

Turkey’s CNN Turk television said the operation involved artillery and rocket shelling as well as warplanes.

It also said Turkish forces were waiting for a possible ground operation at the border.

Security sources quoted by the Turkish television said a small contingent of special forces travelled a few kilometres into Syria to secure the area before a possible operation.

Footage from CNN Turk broadcasting live from the Turkish border town of Karkamis showed white plumes of smoke coming from atop hills from Jarablus across the border.

Turkey had pledged on Monday to “completely cleanse” ISIL fighters from its border region after a suicide bomber suspected of links to the group killed 54 people at a Kurdish wedding in the southeastern city of Gaziantep.

Turkey is also concerned about the growing influence of Syrian Kurdish groups along its border, where they have captured large expanses of territory since the start of the Syrian war in 2011.

Turkey sees them as tied to the PKK, which has been waging an armed campaign mainly in the country’s southeast.

The military operation against ISIL comes as Syrian rebels backed by Turkey also say they are in the final stages of preparing an assault from Turkish territory on Jarablus, aiming to pre-empt a potential attempt by Syrian Kurdish YPG forces to take it.

The YPG, a critical part of the US-backed campaign against ISIL, took near complete control of Hasaka city on Tuesday.

The group already controls chunks of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have established de facto autonomy since the start of the Syria war – a development that has alarmed Turkey.

{Two bombs target pub and karaoke bar in troubled southern province, killing one person and injuring 30 others.}

One person has been killed and 30 others injured after two bombs exploded in a busy nightlife district in Thailand’s troubled southern province of Pattani, according to local news media.

The first bomb targeted a pub and karaoke bar late on Tuesday causing no casualties, before a second blast struck the same area 20 minutes later in an apparent “double-tap attack”, the Bangkok Post newspaper said.

The second bomb was designed “to maximise casualties”, Yutthanam Petchmuang, a spokesman for Internal Security Operations Command, told local broadcaster Spring News.

“The second explosion came from a truck parked at the hotel entrance … resulting in one death and 30 injuries.”

Earlier this month a series of bombings across central and southern Thailand left four people dead and more than 30 injured.

No group has claimed responsibility for the August 11-12 bombings but some security experts have blamed southern secessionist groups.

Since 2004, more than 6,200 have been killed and 11,000 injured as rebel groups fight for the creation of an independent state for Thailand’s three southern Muslim-majority provinces: Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat.

Most embassies warn nationals against all travel to Pattani – an area bordering Malaysia – that Thailand annexed over a century ago.

{Latest test, which was reportedly carried out off North Korea’s east coast, comes amid escalating cross-border tensions.}

North Korea has fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile off its east coast, according to South Korea’s military, the latest in a string of missile launches by Pyongyang in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

The missile was test-fired at around 530am (08:30 GMT) on Wednesday near the coastal city of Sinpo, where satellite imagery shows a submarine base is located, an official at South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, said the projectile reached Japan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) – an area of control designated by countries to help maintain air security.

The launch comes two days after South Korea and the US began annual military exercises that North Korea condemned as a preparation for invasion, and has threatened retaliation.

China’s Xinhua news agency said the launch could be seen as a response to the drills, calling the exercises “a dangerous game.”

North Korea has become further isolated after a January nuclear test, its fourth, and the launch of a long-range rocket in February brought tightened UN sanctions.

It has launched numerous missiles of various types this year, including one this month that landed in or near Japanese-controlled waters.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula were exacerbated by the recent defectionof North Korea’s deputy ambassador in London to South Korea, an embarrassing setback to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

{Operation results in 207 criminal cases against suspected web distributors of child sexual abuse images in 28 countries.}

A major operation against distributors of child sexual abuse images online has resulted in the arrests of 75 suspects across 28 European countries.

Code-named “Operation Daylight”, the investigation has resulted in 207 criminal cases, Europe’s policing agency Europol said on Tuesday.

“We know that individuals are abusing online platforms and networks to distribute child sexual abuse material and we are determined to target them and bring them to justice,” Steven Wilson, head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre, said in a statement.

Operation Daylight was launched last year after Swiss police notified Europol after uncovering a vast network of criminals involved in the sexual exploitation of minors online.

“Europol received the information in June 2015 from the Swiss authorities and disseminated intelligence packages in July 2015. Based on that intelligence, separate investigations were initiated in the concerned countries,” Tine Hollevoet, a spokesman for Europol, told Al Jazeera.

So far, some of the 75 arrested suspects have been prosecuted, and the investigation was still ongoing, Europol said.

Separately, an Italian police statement on Tuesday said that five people were arrested as part of the operation and 16 were reported to magistrates for producing and sharing child sex abuse images.

All the suspects had previously been “above suspicion”, with no previous criminal activity, the police statement said, according to the DPA news agency. All of the suspects were aged 50 or above.

“The operation has uncovered a vast paedophile network,” the Italian police statement said, adding that access to the online network where images were shared was “rigidly” regulated and required patient work to be infiltrated by police.

“Those networks continue to be a primary source for persons with a sexual interest in children who are seeking child sexual abuse and exploitation material online,” Europol said in the statement.

{Turkish army shells ISIL targets in Syria’s Jarablus and Kurdish YPG positions north of Manbij.}

Turkey has launched separate artillery strikes on Kurdish and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) positions in northern Syria.

The Turkish army shelled on Monday ISIL targets near the border town of Jarablus, as well as Kurdish YPG positions north of the nearby city of Manbij.

The YPG targets were hit 20 times, while the cross-border attack on ISIL was still ongoing, a Turkish official told the Reuters news agency.

The attacks inside Syria followed Ankara’s vow to push ISIL, also known as ISIS, from its border with Syria.

Ankara has also spoken out against the advance of US-backed Syrian-Kurdish YPG fighters, seeing them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy in southeastern Turkey since the 1980s.

The YPG, or the People’s Protection Units, currently controls swaths of territory along the northeastern border with Turkey – from the towns of Hasaka to Afrin – while its political wing, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), claims an autonomous region now called Rojava.

The Kurdish group makes up a significant portion of the US-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish and Arab alliance fighting ISIL in Syria. The US and EU considers the YPG as one of their most effective allies in the fight against ISIL.

Earlier this month, YPG forces backed by air raids from a US-led anti-ISIL coalition, ousted ISIL fighters from Manbij.

But Turkey views the Kurdish presence in northern Syria as an unacceptable “red line” and wants the Free Syrian Army (FSA), another opposition group, to take over areas once controlled by ISIL in the border regions.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep, on the Turkish side of Syria-Turkey border, said advances by the Kurds “raised concerns within the political and military establishment within Turkey”.

“They are concerned about the growing territorial gains of Kurdish factions.”
On Sunday, it was reported that the FSA was planning to attack the ISIL-controlled region of Jarablus from inside Turkey to prevent any Kurdish efforts to control the area.

A rebel official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters that hundreds of FSA and opposition fighters were expected to launch an assault on Jarablus from inside Turkey in the next few days.

On Monday, a Turkish official also told Reuters that “the fundamental aim in the latest operation [of the strikes on Jarablus and Manbij] is to open a corridor for moderate rebels”.

Al Jazeera’s Ahelbarra said the FSA has not been as successful as the YPG forces in taking over territory from ISIL up to now, but this may soon change.

“Particularly in Jarablus and Manbij they [FSA fighters] were outgunned and out-numbered by Kurdish factions,” he said.

“But it seems Turkey is now willing to put an end to the growing influence of Kurdish factions in Syria and at least have their own allies, particularly the FSA, take over” he said.

“It remains to be seen whether this is going to be a period of an aggressive Turkish role in northern Syria or just going to pave the way for the FSA to be able to advance.”

Turkey also shelled YPG positions in northern Syria in February, demanding that the group withdrew from areas it had captured.

{Two members of China’s Uighur minority appear in military court over last year’s blast that killed 20 people in Bangkok.}

Two Chinese nationals are going on trial for their alleged roles in a deadly bombing at a Bangkok shrine one year ago, but more than a dozen suspects allegedly involved in the incident remain at large.

The trial, which has started on Tuesday, is being held at a military court in Bangkok and is expected to last more than a year.

It is taking place just days after a wave of unexplained explosions hit Thailand’s resort areas, killing at least four people and wounding 35 others, including tourists.

The August 2015 bombing – the worst assault of its kind in Thailand’s recent history – killed 20 people and wounded more than 100 others. The motive of the attack remains unclear.

The attack, which was carried out with small but powerful bomb packed with ball bearings, targeted the Erawan shrine in the heart of Bangkok’s shopping district.

The Hindu shrine is popular among ethnic Chinese visitors, who made up a majority of the dead with five from Malaysia, five from China and two from Hong Kong.

Members of China’s Muslim minority Uighur population, Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed have been charged with involvement.

“The suspects appearing at the court are alleged to have acted as foot soldiers in the attack,” said Al Jazeera’s Scott Heidler, reporting from just outside the court in Bangkok.

“However, more than a dozen suspects officials are trying to get hold of are still at large.”

He said analysts and officials believe the Erawan shrine blast and the recent bombings around the country were not related on the basis of available evidence, including the differences in the type of ammunition used.

{{‘Uighur connection’}}

Analysts have largely coalesced around the theory that the shrine bombing was in revenge for the Thai military government’s forcible return of 109 Uighurs to China weeks earlier.

Thai authorities insist the bombing was carried out by a people-smuggling gang angered by policing successes against human trafficking.

The Uighur minority say they face cultural and religious repression in their homeland of Xinjiang in northwest China, and many are believed to have fled the region in recent years.

The military government’s deportations led to international condemnation and violent protests outside Thailand’s diplomatic missions in Turkey, which has given refuge to many of the Turkic-speaking group.

{Tropical storm Mindulle hits Greater Tokyo leaving one dead, while Typhoon Kompasu causes one man to drown in Hokkaido.}

A powerful typhoon has battered the Greater Tokyo area in Japan, leaving at least one person dead and dozens injured, according to media reports.

Typhoon Mindulle made landfall at noon on Monday, moving upwards from the Japanese capital to the northern Tohoku region, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Bringing winds of up to 180km an hour, the storm was heading north at a speed of 25km an hour from Miyake Island in early morning, the agency said.

In Kanagawa prefecture, a 58-year-old police was swept away by flood waters and later died in hospital, according to Kyodo.

Dozens of people were injured, many of them in falls caused by the strong wind, the DPA news agency said.

Hundreds of thousands were urged to leave their homes in the Greater Tokyo area and the north-east, broadcaster NHK reported.

As Mindulle was heading off to the northeast and the island of Hokkaido, weather authorities were warning of mudslides, flooding, swollen rivers and high waves in those regions and eastern Japan.

The storm forced airlines across the country to cancel more than 500 flights, while runways of the Narita International Airport were temporarily closed.

Japan Airlines said it had cancelled 145 domestic flights through mid-afternoon, affecting 26,910 customers, while All Nippon Airways cancelled 96 domestic flights, affecting 21,300 passengers.

There were reported delays and cancellation of train services, including the super-fast bullet trains.

Rainfall of up to 200mm was predicted for Hokkaido by Tuesday evening, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Separately, Typhoon Kompasu, which hit Japan’s northern main island of Hokkaido on Sunday, had been downgraded to a temperate depression by early on Monday and moved away into the Sea of Okhotsk, according to the weather agency.

A man was found dead on Monday on an inundated street in the city of Kitami on Hokkaido, where Kompasu caused flooding the previous day, DPA reported.

A third tropical storm called Lionrock was south of the island of Shikoku, but is not expected to hit Japan directly.

{Former leader may step down from helm of Republicans to focus on 2017 re-election bid at “turbulent moment in history”.}

Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a bid to win back the French presidency, announcing he would seek his party’s nomination to run in next year’s election.

The 61-year-old conservative’s plan became apparent on Monday.

“I have decided to be a candidate in the 2017 presidential election,” Sarkozy wrote in a new book, Tout pour la France (All for France), due out this week.

“France demands that you give her your all. I feel I have the strength to lead the fight at such a turbulent moment in our history,” he wrote in an extract seen by AFP news agency, alluding to the attacks that have rocked the country since January 2015

“The next five years will be filled with danger but also with hope.”

In 2012, Sarkozy ended a five-year term mired in unpopularity, had made no secret of his ambition to reconquer the top office.

Major challenges

Sarkozy’s aides told AFP he was expected to step down as the leader of the centre-right Republicans to focus on his bid.

Party primaries take place on November 20 and 27.

Sarkozy’s first campaign stop will be on Thursday at Chateaurenard, near the southern French city of Avignon.

Sarkozy itemised major challenges in the years ahead, including strengthening respect for “French identity,” restoring lost competitiveness and enforcing state authority.

On the economic front, he pledged to reduce payroll charges, scale back unemployment payments for those who are jobless for more than one year and slash income tax by 10 percent.

On immigration, he proposed “suspending” the right of family members to join a migrating relative in France.

“The big problem with our immigration policy is firstly that of numbers,” he said.

{{‘Minority blackmail’}}

Sarkozy’s announcement coincides with a resurgent debate on the place of Islam in French society, encapsulated in the row over the Islamic “burkini” swimsuit.

He said France’s “principal battle” was over how “to defend our lifestyle without being tempted to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world”.

The opposition leader, who has repeatedly dismissed Socialist President Francois Hollande as weak, said he would also restore authority in neighbourhoods where he said “minorities are successfully blackmailing the current authorities”.

Sarkozy was defeated in his bid for re-election in 2012 after conducting a campaign seen by many in his own camp as too rightwing.

Sarkozy becomes the 13th person to put their name forward for the French presidency, a job that has sweeping powers.

He faces several challengers within conservative ranks.

His chief rival, Alain Juppe, the former premier and Bordeaux mayor, is seen as a moderate and is the favourite to win the party’s nod.

But Juppe’s lead in opinion polls has shrunk in recent weeks as Sarkozy steps up his rhetoric on conservative Muslims and immigration following the July 14 lorry attack in Nice.

{{‘Best candidate’}}

Sarkozy has already won the support of a Republicans heavyweight, Christian Estrosi, who is president of the southern region that includes Marseille.

“He is the best candidate,” Estrosi told the Journal de Dimanche.

If Sarkozy wins, he could face a rematch against Hollande, who has said he too has the “desire” for a second term.

But opinion polls overwhelmingly show the French wanting neither man as their leader.

Hollande has even surpassed Sarkozy to become the most unpopular president in post-war France.

Sarkozy would also face far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who is tipped to make it to a second round of voting.

His reputation remains tainted by two major inquiries, into alleged influence peddling and into suspected illegal funding of his 2012 election campaign.

But true to his famous self-belief, these scandals have failed to dent his ambition of returning to the Elysee Palace.

Hollande, on a trip to southern Italy for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Matteo Renzi, Italian prime minister, declined to comment on Sarkozy’s bid, or on another challenge for the presidency launched by leftwing Socialist Arnaud Montebourg.