Tag: InternationalNews

{US says it is unsure whether Russia’s use of the base has definitively stopped.}

Iran has said Russia is no longer using one of its air bases to launch strikes on targets in Syria, but the US said it is unclear whether Russia’s use of the base has actually stopped.

“It was a specific, authorised mission and it’s over for now,” Bahram Ghasemi, spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, told reporters in Tehran on Monday.

Ghasemi left open the possibility of Russia utilising the Hamedan base in the future, saying it would depend on “the situation in the region, and according to our permission”.

Levan Dzhagaryan, Russia’s ambassador to Tehran, said that all Russian planes had left Hamedan, but added that Russia might use the base again in the future.

“There are no reasons to worry. If the leaders of our two countries consider it necessary and reach the relevant agreements, what sort of problems can there be?” Dzhagaryan told Russia’s Interfax news agency on Monday.

“For the time being, there are no [Russians] remaining in Hamedan” airbase, he added.
Iran and Russia are key backers of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said signs of the deal souring emerged late on Sunday when Hossein Dehghan, Iran’s defence minister, said that Russia should have kept things quieter and criticised Moscow of “showing off” in making the operation public.

Challands also said a “political split in Iranian leadership” could be the real reason behind the end of the operations.

“There were certainly voices in Tehran that were saying that this might be anti-constitutional; that Iran should never have allowed a foreign power to use its airbases.”

Later on Monday, US officials said it was not clear whether Russia had actually stopped using the base.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner reporters that Washington was closely monitoring the cooperation between Russia and Iran and that “it’s not clear … whether their (Moscow’s) use of this air base has definitively stopped”.

Shorter flight times

The flights from Iranian territory started on August 16, significantly shortening flight-times for Russian warplanes and allowing them to carry increased firepower.

Russia said it had struck targets linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Nusra Front rebel group, in Aleppo, Deir Az Zor and Idlib.

Tehran oversees thousands of troops fighting for Assad on the ground, while Russia provides air power.

Activists in Syria, however, accuse Russia and Iran of aiding the Assad regime in targeting civilian neighbourhoods and infrastructure.

The two countries oppose calls for Assad to step down as a way of resolving the conflict, which began as a mostly unarmed uprising against Assad in March 2011, but quickly escalated into a full-blown civil war involving opposition groups and the regime as well as several foreign governments backing opposite sides.

Monitoring groups estimate that more than 280,000 Syrians have been killed and millions having been displaced.

{Decision follows prime minister’s recent vow to expedite execution of convicts sentenced to death in terrorism cases.}

Iraq has hanged 36 men convicted over the 2014 massacre of hundreds of military recruits, government officials say.

They had been found guilty of involvement in the “Speicher” massacre, named after a base near Tikrit where up to 1,700 recruits were kidnapped before being executed in a massacre claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

“The executions of 36 convicted over the Speicher crime were carried out this morning in Nasiriyah prison,” a spokesman for the governor’s office in Dhiqar, the province of which Nasiriyah is the capital, told AFP.

“The governor of Dhiqar, Yahya al-Nasseri, and Justice Minister Haidar al-Zamili were present to oversee the executions,” Abdelhassan Dawood said.

“They were transferred to Nasiriyah last week after the president approved the executions.”

Dawood was referring to the necessary green light from Iraqi President Fuad Masum.

Following the death of more than 300 people in the worst ever single bomb attack to strike Baghdad last month, Haider al-Abadi, Iraqi prime minister, had said he wanted to expedite the execution of inmates sentenced to death in terrorism cases.

Nasseri confirmed to AFP news agency that the executions were carried out by hanging.

His spokesman said that about 400 of the Speicher massacre victims were from Dhiqar, which is predominantly Shia and located in Iraq’s south.

{Tropical storm Mindulle on course for a direct hit on Japan’s capital, prompting nearly 400 flights to be grounded.}

A powerful typhoon is on course for a direct hit on Tokyo, with nearly 400 flights grounded due to heavy rain and strong winds.

Mindulle was expected to make landfall at about Monday noon, moving upwards from the Japanese capital to the northern Tohoku region, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.

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

“In Tokyo .. please exercise caution for landslides, flooding in low lying areas, surging rivers, violent wind and high waves,” the weather agency said.

The storm caused airlines across the country to cancel a total of 387 flights, mostly to and from Tokyo’s Haneda airport, national broadcaster NHK said.

Japan Airlines said it 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 no immediate reports of casualties or significant damage on Miyake, an island of around 2,600 residents which is known for fishing, tourism and farming.

Major train services in Tokyo and its surrounding region operated normally during the morning commuting hours, including super fast bullet trains, according to East Japan Railway, the region’s biggest railway operator.

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

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

Heavy rains since Saturday caused high waves and rivers to flood in Hokkaido, but caused only three minor injuries.

{Demonstrators gather in Turkish city of Istanbul to protest over the brutal murder of iconic LGBTI activist Hande Kader.}

Hundreds of people have protested peacefully in Istanbul calling for justice after the brutal murder of a transgender woman earlier this month in Turkey.

The body of Hande Kader, an LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, intersex) rights activist and a sex worker, was found in a forest in Istanbul’s high-end Zekeriyakoy neighbourhood on August 8.

The murdered sex worker, whose last name means “destiny” in Turkish, became an iconic figure in the LGBTI community after she sat in front of water cannons and anti-riot police officers in June last year as authorities tried to ban a gay pride parade in Istanbul.

Kader was last seen getting into a car with a client in the city’s Harbiye district in late July, according to Turkish daily Sabah.

The 22-year-old’s body was believed to have been heavily mutilated before her corpse was set on fire, possibly to avoid identification of the perpetrator or perpetrators.

No arrests have yet been made in Kader’s case.

‘Let’s fight for our survival’

More than 200 demonstrators carried banners saying “justice for Hande Kader” and “let’s fight for our survival” under the supervision of anti-riot police close to the famous Istiklal Avenue near Taksim Square on Sunday.

“We will not stop until we find those responsible for Hande Kader’s murder,” Ebru Kiranci, spokeswoman for Istanbul’s LGBTI Solidarity Association, said.

Demonstrators also asked the Turkish public to condemn Kader’s brutal murder just as they had condemned the murder of another young woman, Ozgecan Aslan, last year.

“Life of a trans woman should be as valuable as the life of a cisgender woman,” protesters carrying Kader’s photographs chanted. Cisgender refers to a gender identity that matches a person’s assigned sex.

Aslan, a cisgender student, was mutilated and burned in southern Turkey after a rape attempt.

After Aslan’s death, tens of thousands of protesters, mostly women, poured into the streets of cities across the country to protest against rising violence against women and the government’s failure to respond.

Kader’s murder did not cause similar, large scale protests.

Highest rate of trans murders in Europe

In a report published in March this year, the rights group Transgender Europe said Turkey had the highest rate of trans murders in Europe.

Between January 2008 and December 2015, 41 trans and gender diverse individuals were killed in Turkey compared with the second highest in Italy of 33, the group said.

Kader was the second murder to shock the LGBTI community in recent weeks after Syrian refugee Muhammed Wisam Sankari was found mutilated and decapitated on July 25 in Istanbul, his friends said.

Homosexuality has been legal in Turkey throughout the period of the modern republic and was also legalised in the Ottoman Empire from the mid-19th century.

But LGBTI individuals in Turkey regularly complain of harassment and abuse in a largely conservative Muslim society where open displays of same-sex love are strongly frowned upon.

Authorities in Istanbul banned Gay Pride in June this year over security concerns, sparking anger from gay rights activists. In previous years, Istanbul Pride had been the biggest LGBTI gathering in a Muslim country in the region.

{Aleppo faces intensified aerial bombardment after Syrian regime and loyalists lose strategic ground, activists say.}

More than 500 Syrian civilians have been killed in a single week, mostly in government and Russian air raids and shelling, across several cities in the war-torn country.

Casualty figures released on Saturday by the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), a grassroots network of activists in Syria, recorded 508 civilians killed between August 13 and August 19, including 96 children and 73 women.

Most of the deaths occurred in Russian and Syrian aerial bombardment across Aleppo, Idlib, Damascus, and Hama, according to the LCC.

In the northern Syrian city of Aleppo and its suburbs, at least 205 of the total 508 were killed in shelling of the city’s previously-besieged eastern neighbourhoods, and in clashes with Assad forces in the battle to break the siege. Deaths were also reported from landmines left by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group around the town of Manbij.

Moataz Hamouda, an Aleppo-based activist with the LCC, said civilian deaths have increased as the Assad regime has lost ground.

“Russia is responding to its military defeats on Aleppo’s fronts after the strong blow that the rebels dealt to government loyalists,” Hamouda told Al Jazeera, referring to the breaking of the Aleppo siege.

“The breaking of the city’s siege and the takeover of military forts by rebels has also frustrated Syria and Russia,” he said.

“They have also frantically increased their use of banned weapons – from cluster missiles to white phosphorous and napalm.”

Numerous reports have emerged in recent days of Syrian government forces using cluster munitions, which are banned by more than 100 countries due to the weapon’s indiscriminate targeting and risks posed to civilians.

Once Syria’s largest city, Aleppo has been divided between opposition control in the eastern half, and government control in the west since mid-2012. Government forces launched an offensive to retake the rebel-held half of the city, imposing a month-long siege that was eventually broken.

{{“Civilians fear the warplanes”}}

The LCC also recorded the killing of 93 civilians in Idlib, 52 in Homs, 51 in Damascus, 38 in Deir Ezzor, and 34 in Hama, with the majority being killed in air raids and fighting involving forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian and Iranian forces.

Residential areas, mosques and markets are being increasingly hit, said Zouhir al-Shimale, a local journalist and resident of Aleppo.

“Apart from the daily targeting of Aleppo’s neighbourhoods with cluster bombs in an unprecedented way, tens of activists and civilians have been killed and injured in recent days,” Shimale told Al Jazeera.

“This is causing a large exodus from the city, from Aleppo’s liberated neighbourhoods in the eastern half, to the suburbs, and to Turkey as well, in spite of the availability of food supplies,” he said.

“Civilians fear the warplanes that are always in the sky.”

Shimale said that close to half of the city’s residents are estimated to have left the city amid the ongoing aerial bombardment of main roads and residential areas.

Staffan de Mistura, United Nations special envoy to Syria, called for a 48-hour truce around Aleppo last week, to allow for aid deliveries and medical evacuations.

Ibrahim al-Hajj, media centre director in Aleppo for the Syrian Civil Defence, a volunteer rescue group also known as the White Helmets, said the Syrian government’s recent loss of strategic areas in the besieged city, particularly al-Ramosa and the artillery school, had prompted the escalation in attacks.

“Russia and the Syrian regime have been targeting civilians and residential areas the most,” Hajj said.

“They want to free the area of civilians and coerce them into leaving so that they can bomb their targets freely.”

A coalition of rebels calling themselves the Army of Conquest claimed to have captured a strategic military base as well as an armament school and an artillery school in the al-Ramosa quarter of Aleppo earlier this month. The rebels reportedly then used the captured base to launch their offensive to break the regime’s siege of Aleppo.

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

Monitoring groups estimate that more than 280,000 Syrians have been killed throughout the five years of bloodshed and millions displaced.

{Turkey’s Erdogan blames ISIL for attack in the Gaziantep province that has left at least 51 killed and scores wounded.}

More than 50 people have been killed and scores more wounded in a suicide attack at a wedding ceremony in Turkey’s southeastern province of Gaziantep, near the Syria border.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that “Daesh is the likely perpetrator of the attack”, using the Arabic name for ISIL, also known as ISIS.

The suicide bomber who attacked the wedding party was a child between the ages of 12 and 14, Erdogan said.

The president added that it is not yet clear whether the teenager detonated a suicide vest, or the vest was detonated remotely by someone else.

“Turkish authorities are now going to look for further proof about the identity of the suicide bomber,” said Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Gaziantep.

“They will try to find out whether this was someone used by adults who strapped explosives around his body and remotely detonated the explosive.”

This is the first instance ISIL used a child in a suicide bombing attack in Turkey, Ahelbarra said.

In comments shown live by broadcaster NTV, Erdogan also confirmed that 51 people had died in the blast, and 69 were wounded. Seventeen of the injured were “heavily” wounded, Erdogan said.

“Our country and our nation have again only one message to those who attack us: You will not succeed!” he said.

{{Hub for Syria refugees}}

The blast, which occurred at around 11pm local time on Saturday in the Akdere neighbourhood of Sahinbey district, was a “terror attack”, according to Ali Yerlikaya, the governor of Gaziantep.

A major city lying just 60km north of the Syrian border, Gaziantep has become a hub for Syrians fleeing the civil war in their country.

As well as refugees and opposition activists, there have long been fears it is home to a significant presence of sympathisers of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Separately, Samil Tayyar, a member of parliament from the governing Justice and Development Party, pointed the finger at ISIL in remarks on Twitter.

{{Strong Kurdish presence}}

Sahinbey district is said to have a large number of Kurdish residents and reports indicate the wedding too had a strong Kurdish presence, raising speculation of ISIL involvement.

The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said the wedding party was for one of its members. The groom was among those injured, but the bride was not hurt.

According to a report by Turkey’s Dogan news agency, the couple had moved to Gaziantep from another predominantly Kurdish town, Siirt, to escape from fighting between Kurdish rebels and Turkish security forces.

The bomb went off as guests spilled out into the streets of the city close to the Syrian border after the traditional henna night party, when guests have their hands and feet painted.

Women and children, including a three-month-old baby, were among the dead, witnesses said.

“The celebrations were coming to an end and there was a big explosion among people dancing,” said 25-year-old Veli Can. “There was blood and body parts everywhere.”

“We want to end these massacres,” witness Ibrahim Ozdemir told Reuters news agency. “We are in pain, especially the women
Purely civilian celebration

Metin Gurcan, a former Turkish military officer and columnist, told Al Jazeera the attack deliberately targeted HDP sympathisers attending a purely civilian celebration.

“This is the first of its kind in Turkey. And we know very well from the Afghanistan experience to what extent attacks on weddings can disrupt order in a society,” he said.

“I think ISIL is trying to exacerbate already tense ethnic and sectarian cleavages in the southeast of Turkey.”

Southeastern Turkey has been hit by several deadly blasts over the past year, linked either to ISIL or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group outlawed in Turkey.

Three suspected ISIL suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main airport, Ataturk, in July, the deadliest in a string of attacks in Turkey this year.

Almost 40 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Ankara in March that was claimed by a Kurdish separatist group.

Violence flared up in the largely Kurdish southeast in the past week, with bomb attacks leaving 10 people dead in separate attacks, mostly police and soldiers, in an escalation that officials blamed on the PKK.

Failed coup fallout

Saturday’s attack comes a month after a group of Turkish soldiers attempted to overthrow the government, commandeering tanks, helicopters and warplanes in an attempted coup that killed 240 people.

The government has accused followers of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based exiled Turkish religious leader, of being behind the plot, a charge rejected by the cleric.

Hakan Yavuz, a professor in the department of political science at the University of Utah, says Turkey is more vulnerable now because of the purge in security forces after the coup.

“The coup attempt destroyed the military institutions,” Yavuz told Al Jazeera.

“There is also a rapprochement between Russia, Iran and Turkey over their Syria policies. Ankara is much more moderate now in allowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stay in government, at least during the transition period,” he said.

“ISIL poses a greater threat to Turkey as a result of this shift in the country’s foreign policy.”

{Officials suspect suicide bomber detonated explosives, killing at least 30 people and wounding nearly 94 in Gaziantep.}

At least 30 people have been killed and 94 more wounded in an explosion at a wedding ceremony in Turkey’s southeastern province of Gaziantep, near the Syria border.

The blast, which occurred at around 11pm local time on Saturday in the Akdere neighbourhood of Sahin Bey district at a Kurdish family wedding, was a “terror attack”, according to Ali Yerlikaya, the governor of Gaziantep.

He said ambulances were dispatched to the scene, and dead and wounded people were taken to hospitals.

Mehmet Simsek, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, told broadcaster NTV that the explosion appeared to have been caused by a suicide bomber.

Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) group are believed to be behind the attack, Samil Tayyar, an MP with the governing Justice and Development Party, said on Twitter.

Southeastern Turkey has been hit by several deadly blasts over the past year, linked either to ISIL [also known as ISIS] or the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group outlawed in Turkey.

Three suspected ISIL suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main airport, Ataturk, in July, the deadliest in a string of attacks in Turkey this year.

Almost 40 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Ankara in March that was claimed by a Kurdish separatist group.

Violence flared up in the largely Kurdish southeast in the past week, with bomb attacks leaving 10 people dead in separate attacks, mostly police and soldiers, in an escalation that officials blamed on the PKK.

Turkey’s southeast has been hit by a wave of violence since the collapse of a ceasefire with the PKK in July last year.

The PKK has since carried out dozens of attacks on police and military posts in the southeast of the country.

{{Failed coup fallout}}

A group of Turkish soldiers last month attempted to overthrow the government, commandeering tanks, helicopters and warplanes in an attempted coup that killed 240 people.

The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused followers of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based exiled Turkish religious leader, of being behind the coup, a charge rejected by them.

Hakan Yavuz, a professor in the department of political science at the University of Utah, says Turkey is more vulnerable now because of the purge in security forces after the failed coup.

“The coup attempt destroyed the military institutions,” he told Al Jazeera.

“There is also a rapprochement between Russia, Iran and Turkey over their Syria policies. Ankara is much more moderate now in allowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to stay in government, at least during the transition period.

“ISIL poses a greater threat to Turkey as a result of this shift in the country’s foreign policy.”

{The truce paves the way for resumption of peace talks, which will take place in Norway between August 22 and 27.}

The Philippine government and communist rebels have reached a truce, ahead of the resumption of peace talks in Norway, and just a week after President Rodrigo Duterte abruptly called off a unilateral ceasefire.

The restoration of the government’s ceasefire would take effect on Sunday and last “for as long as necessary to bring peace in the land,” Jess Dureza, a top government negotiator, said on Saturday.

“The enabling environment brought about by this silencing of the guns will hopefully go a long way in bringing about an expeditious and early resolution to our differences and aspirations that have long divided us as a people,” he said.

Duterte first declared a unilateral ceasefire with the communist rebels on July 25 but withdrew it six days later, after the rebels killed a member of a government militia.

Meanwhile, the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, the political arm of the communist rebels New People’s Army, declared that their ceasefire would begin on Sunday and last for the duration of the Oslo talks between August 22 and 27.

The communist rebels said the government’s reciprocation of their declaration was “a show of all-out determination to move forward with peace negotiations.”

Dureza assured the rebels that the Duterte administration was willing to “walk the extra mile for peace.”

“Our citizens deserve no less. They wish to live peaceful lives bereft of the costs and tragic consequences of conflict and violence,” he said before leaving for Oslo.

On Friday, two senior communist leaders were released on bail so they could travel to Oslo for the talks.

The peace negotiations had been suspended in 2012 after former president Benigno Aquino rejected rebel demands to free political prisoners.

The rebels have been waging an armed rebellion to seize power since 1969 and tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict

The military estimates the current strength of the rebel fighters at about 4,000, significantly down from more than 26,000 at its peak in the late 1980s.