Tag: InternationalNews

{Projectiles land in industrial area of Najran city, killing four Saudi citizens and three expatriate workers.}

Projectiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have killed seven civilians in the southern Saudi city of Najran, Saudi state television has reported.

The Houthis targeted a crowd on Tuesday at an industrial area of Najran, close to the Yemeni border, Ekhbariya television channel said.

Four Saudi citizens and three expatriate workers were among the dead, it said.

An Arab military coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, has been conducting air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen since March 2015 in support of the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The coalition stepped up the raids this month after UN-mediated peace talks between the rebels and the internationally backed government were suspended.

On Tuesday, the coalition launched an investigation after international condemnation of an air raid that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said killed 14 people at a hospital in Yemen.

Another 24 people were wounded in the strike that hit the hospital on Monday in Abs in the rebel-held northern province of Hajja, the Paris-based aid agency said.

An MSF staffer was among the dead, it said, naming him as Abdul Kareem al-Hakeemi.

A team from coalition “has seen the UN Secretary General’s call for an investigation” into MSF’s claim and is initiating a probe, said the group known as the Joint Incidents Assessment Team.

“This investigation will be independent and will follow international standards. The JIAT will make the results of its investigation public,” it said.

{Authorities quickly deny southern separatist involvement in move some analysts see an attempt to protect booming trade.}

Bangkok – A series of bomb blasts that killed four people and wounded dozens in tourist towns across Thailand last week shattered the country’s carefully crafted image of laid back beaches and gilded Buddhist temples.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but authorities have been quick to deny any involvement by separatists waging a violent campaign in the country’s far southern provinces.

For some analysts, however, the official rejection of separatist involvement is more about protecting Thailand’s booming tourism sector, which accounts for more than a fifth of the country’s GDP, than adopting a considered approach to the investigation.

“The evidence and the rhetoric are completely disconnected,” Anders Engvall, a research fellow at the Stockholm School of Economics, told Al Jazeera.

Engvall, who has conducted research on the Southern Thailand rebellion for more than a decade, said that regardless of evidence, Thai authorities were likely to deny any link with the violence that has plagued the south of the country for more than a decade.

“Even if you have Thai courts sentencing southern separatists for doing something, [the military] will still say they are not involved,” he said.

The southern region, which the country annexed more than a century ago and which borders neighbouring Malaysia, has been battered by 12 years of violence as Malay Muslim rebels seek greater autonomy in a Buddhist-majority country.

Near daily shootings and roadside bombs in the area have killed more than 6,500 people since 2004, most of them civilians.

Yet, police officials say the bombings and arson attacks that hit some of the country’s best known tourist resorts on Thursday and Friday, including Hua Hin, Phuket, Phang Nga and Surat Thani, were orchestrated by a single perpetrator.

“I can assure you that these current attacks aren’t linked to incidents that have occurred in the Deep South of Thailand,” Pongsapat Pongcharoen, a deputy national police chief, told reporters days after the attacks.

On Monday, assistant national police chief Suchart Theerasawat said that, while the bombs used in the attacks “were related and similar to those found in insurgent attacks in the Deep South”, it was too early to conclude there was any link.

A reflexive exclusion of southern separatist groups from the investigation was also motivated by efforts to contain perceptions of the deadly, yet localised, southern conflict, Engvall said.

“The Thai authorities have been very eager to avoid any type of international involvement in the conflict so they do everything possible to prevent UN or Western nations from getting involved in any way,” he said.

{{Bloody conflict }}

In 2004, tension in the so-called Deep South between the majority Malay, Muslim population and their Buddhist countrymen, erupted into bloody conflict.

Bombings, shootings and arson attacks are regular events in the three-most affected provinces of Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, as well as parts of Songkhla province.

The violence has mostly been confined to the three provinces, and no attack outside the region of the scale and complexity of August 11-12 has ever been linked to armed groups.

Engvall, however, said a recent vote for a new military-drafted constitution, within the context of floundering peace talks with the separatists in the south, could have acted as a catalyst for more audacious attacks.

“They [the separatists] have gone on for 12 years in isolation with little success. In the first 10 days of August, they did 50 of exactly the same type of attacks in the Deep South and no one cared,” Engvall said.

“They have a motive to go outside and aim further north to achieve their political aims.”

The potential push north comes after military statements that the referendum on the constitution, which gives the army more power in how the country is governed, had passed peacefully.

Other Deep South watchers said similarities in the modus operandi of last week’s attacks with those of the fighters were another reason to consider separatist groups.

Of particular interest to analysts was the use of so-called “double tap” explosions, where two bombs in close proximity explode one after another to target emergency workers responding to the first – an established tactic of Deep South separatists.

Instead, officials are laying blame for the attacks on a vaguely defined network conspiring to commit “local sabotage” – phrasing which seems to focus on enemies of the military government who are likely to be aggrieved by the referendum results.

It also indirectly focuses attention on the country’s “Red Shirt” political movement, and those loyal to popular former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra.

Thaksin was removed by a military coup in 2006 and his sister, Yingluck, Thailand’s first female prime minister, was removed by the Constitutional Court of Thailand in 2014. The military launched a coup soon after.

While not explicitly named, the Red Shirts have rebuffed the implicit accusations, one leader even threatening defamation lawsuits to anyone trying to link them to last week’s attacks.

Addressing the nation on Friday night, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the army commander who now rules Thailand, asked for patience and calm in the investigation.

He discouraged speculation about the possible identity of the attackers before speaking of “bad people” who had been taking action against his government since before the August 7 referendum.

The remarks, again, firmly placed last week’s attack in the context of domestic politics and not the southern insurgency.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist and director at the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said there was a need to wait for more substantial evidence before making any conclusions about the tourist town attacks.

But, he conceded, that “there’s a built-in bias to put it to a domestic political problem”.

“Either way we are likely to see more violence, not less,” he said.

{Hospital supported by MSF in northwestern Yemen hit by air strike, killing at least 11 and wounding 19, aid group says.}

At least 11 people have been killed and 19 wounded in an air strike on a hospital in northwestern Yemen, according to the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) aid group, which helps run the facility.

Monday’s attack on Abs hospital, located in Hajjah province, which is held by Houthi rebels, immediately killed nine people, including an MSF staff member, the Paris-based organisation said in a statement.

Two other patients died while being transferred to another hospital in Yemen, while five of the patients remained hospitalised, according to MSF.

MSF said the Arab coalition, which has been conducting air strikes in its battle against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, was responsible for the hit, and asked “all parties … to guarantee that such attacks do not happen again”.

There was no immediate comment from the coalition.

Teresa Sancristobal, MSF emergency programme manager for Yemen, said this was the fourth attack against a facility run by the group in less than a year.

“Once again, today we witness the tragic consequences of the bombing of a hospital,” she said.

“Once again, a fully functional hospital full of patients and MSF national and international staff members was bombed in a war that has shown no respect for medical facilities or patients.”

At the time of the strike, there were “23 patients in surgery, 25 in the maternity ward, 13 newborns and 12 in pediatrics”, MSF said.

The attack on the hospital came two days after an air strike on a school in Haydan, in Yemen’s northwestern Saada province, killed at least 10 children and wounded about 30, according to MSF.

The victims were aged between aged between eight and 15 years, the group said.

Yemen has been torn apart by conflict since 2014, when Houthi rebels, allied with ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh loyalists, captured large swaths of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

The Arab coalition, assembled by Saudi Arabia, launched an air campaign against the rebels in March 2015.

Since then, more than 9,000 people have been killed and 2.8 million driven from their homes in fighting across the country.

{Operator of New York’s international airport says no bullet shells found but action taken out of “abundance of caution”.}

A preliminary investigation at New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport has found no evidence of gunfire inside one of its terminals despite earlier reports of shots being heard, according to the airport’s operator.

No gun casings were found after a search of Terminal 8, where reports of shooting in the departures area on Sunday led to an evacuation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a Twitter message.

“The preliminary investigation does not indicate shots were fired at JFK. There are no injuries. At this time, no gun shells or other evidence of shots fired has been found,” the Port Authority said.

Hundreds of people were evacuated “out of an abundance of caution”, according to the Port Authority.

Video and photos posted on social media showed hundreds of people streaming out of Terminal 8, used by Air Berlin, Alaska Airlines, American Eagle, American Airlines, Finnair and other carriers for departures.

Panic spread quickly through the crowd as police ordered people to lie on the ground, then evacuated them outside on the tarmac before making them pass through a corridor.

“Get down on the ground!” police officers yelled. “Move, move move!”

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from New York, said there was a general sense of panic and chaos at the “immensely” busy airport.

“You had a situation that there was a disruption in place. There is general sense of panic that is going on at the moment, and delays that the authorities say were due to an abundance of caution.

“JFK is still at high alert.”

Amelia Mularz, a stranded passenger, was on a plane travelling to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil when her flight was disrupted.

“The flight attendant came and announced that there was an active shooter so that’s why we were not moving. So we’ve been sitting here since then. It’s been three hours now,” she told Al Jazeera.

‘Huge sighs’

Sherwin Bryce-Pease, a correspondent for the South African Broadcasting Corp based in New York, was on a Norwegian Airlines flight from Paris that landed at JFK shortly before 10pm EDT (02:00 GMT).

“They told us nothing from the flight deck. Only that the earliest the gate available will be in an hour and 15 minutes from when we landed – an announcement [that was] greeted by huge sighs on our Norwegian Airlines flight from Paris,” he said.

On Saturday, reports of gunfire sent a crowded mall in Raleigh, North Carolina, into chaos.

The Crabtree Valley Mall was placed on lockdown during early afternoon after several shoppers reported hearing gunfire, but a search turned up no suspects or bullet casings.

{At least five people dead and more than 20,000 rescued in US state amid predictions of more rain from storm system.}

US President Barack Obama has issued a disaster declaration for the state of Louisiana, where at least five people have died and emergency crews have rescued more than 20,000 people stranded by unprecedented flooding.

Obama’s announcement on Sunday came as John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s governor, said residents had been pulled from swamped cars, flooded homes and threatened hospitals across the southern part of the state.

The already soaked region is expected to get more rain from a storm system stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley.

While the brunt of the storm that brought torrential rains was moving west towards Texas, Louisiana residents are told to remain cautious.

“Even with the sunshine out today intermittently, the waters are going to continue to rise in many areas, so this is no time to let the guard down,” Edwards said.

The initial declaration makes federal aid available in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St. Helena and Tangipahoa.

About 5,000 people had been forced to sleep in shelters overnight around the state on Saturday.

Colonel Michael Edmonson of Louisiana State Police said helicopters were transporting food and water to those still trapped by floods.

About 1,700 members of the Louisiana National Guard have been deployed for rescue efforts.

Even as the state grappled with high waters, the National Weather Service forecast heavy rain from the Gulf Coast as far north as the Ohio Valley through Monday, with a threat of flash flooding.

A flash flood watch was in place until Monday morning for Houston, where rains killed at least eight people in late April.