Tag: InternationalNews

{Attacks kill eight people in southeastern Turkey as 17 are arrested in Istanbul “anti-terror” raids.}

A bomb-laden car was used in the attack in Diyarbakir, according to a statement by the provincial governor [Al Jazeera].

Eight people, including police officers, were killed and several others wounded in two separate bomb attacks in southeastern Turkey.

At least three people, including one police officer, were killed and 30 others, including five police officers, wounded when a handmade explosive was detonated by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as a police vehicle was passing in the Kiziltepe district of the southeastern Mardin province on Wednesday, according to Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan.

The PKK, also on Wednesday, carried out a separate attack in the Sur district of the southeastern Diyarbakir province targeting another police vehicle, the government said.

In Diyarbakir, five civilians were killed and 12 people, including five police officers, were wounded, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency.

A bomb-packed car was used in the attack, according to a statement by the provincial governor.

Earlier, officials said four soldiers had been killed and nine wounded when PKK fighters opened fire with rockets and long-range weapons from across the Iraqi border into Turkey’s Sirnak province.

{{HDP offices raided}}

In a separate development, Turkish police said they arrested 17 people after “anti-terror raids” in at least 10 districts of Istanbul early on Thursday.

The suspects, accused of having links to the PKK or other pro-Kurdish groups, were charged with “being a member of a terrorist organisation, recruiting members for a terrorist organisation and organising illegal demonstrations,” the state-funded Anadolu Agency reported.

The headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in Istanbul’s central Beyoglu district, was also raided as part of the police operation, according to Turkish media reports.

Several “organisational documents”, one walkie-talkie and a jammer device were confiscated during the raid, Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK party have previously called for members of the HDP to be prosecuted, accusing them of being the PKK’s political wing.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union call the PKK, an armed group that has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy since 1984, a “terrorist organisation”.

The HDP, parliament’s third-biggest party, denies direct links with the PKK and advocates for a negotiated end to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed hundreds of lives since a peace process, once led by Erdogan and the AK party, collapsed in 2015.

{Rebel fighters tell Al Jazeera that they still cling on to territories taken from government forces recently.}

Syrian rebels have rejected claims that government forces and allies, including fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, have taken back parts of Aleppo recently captured by rebels.

Hassan al-Eshra, a fighter in the Jaysh al-Islam armed group, said that it and other rebel groups were still in control of the flashpoint neighbourhood of Ramosa on Tuesday evening, despite government attempts to recapture it.

“We haven’t fallen back from any of the sites … we took from the regime three days ago,” Eshra told Al Jazeera by telephone from the frontline. “Yesterday the regime tried [to recapture Ramosa] three times, but it is strategically incapable.”

Syrian rebel groups have said that they are fighting to hang on to key areas in the northern city as government forces and allies escalated attacks.

Eshra told Al Jazeera that rebels were still in control of the Telat al-Snobarat area on the southwestern edge of the city.

“This area is still under our control,” he said, adding that rebels targeted an industrial area and gas field north of the city with several missiles.

Fatah Halab, a coalition of national and local rebel groups, broke the government-imposed siege on the city over the weekend along with Jaish al-Fatah, or the Army of Conquest.

The Army of Conquest is a coalition of rebel groups that includes Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the al-Nusra Front).

The Syrian government has sent thousands of reinforcements to the city in recent days as part of an attempt to reverse gains made by rebel groups.

Hezbollah’s Al Manar television channel and Al Mayadeen, a news channel close to the Syrian government, reported earlier on Tuesday that pro-government fighters, supported by heavy air strikes, had recaptured Telat al-Snobarat.

{{Air strikes }}

Earlier on Tuesday, the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least nine people were killed in government strikes on eastern, rebel-controlled Aleppo.

Injuries were also reported in the government-held part of the city as rebel groups fired shells into the area.

Baraa al-Tello, a rebel fighter from the Harakat Fajer Shahba faction of the Nour Al-Din Al-Zenki armed group, recalled the offensive that broke a government siege on the city three days earlier.

“I was part of the the latest attack when we broke the siege,” he told Al Jazeera. “War planes, helicopters and every kind of weapon that exists were used by the regime to hit us.”

Although claiming rebels still controlled Telal al-Snobarat, Tello said: “The fighting is still very furious, but all of our men are doing their best to advance there and in other areas.”

People across the city set tyres ablaze and burned other items to create a de facto no-fly zone and impair the ability of government fighter jets and helicopters to hit their targets.

{{‘Grave risk’}}

The United Nations on Tuesday called for humanitarian access to the city amid fears that trapped civilians would go short of food and water.

“These cuts are coming amid a heatwave, putting children at a grave risk of waterborne diseases,” Hanaa Singer, UNICEF’s representative in Syria, said in a statement.

The statement said Aleppo’s civilians, particularly children, could face a “humanitarian catastrophe” if fighting intensified.

Fayez Sandeh, a resident of Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, said very little food or medicine had come into the city in recent days as fighting continued.

“Fuel hasn’t entered yet and the electricity isn’t regularly [there],” he told Al Jazeera. “We haven’t had water for more than 10 days. We use well water, but it’s not healthy for humans. We don’t have any other options.”

The Syrian conflict started with peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but it quickly evolved into a full-on civil war that has raged for more than five years.

The Syrian Observatory estimates that more than 280,000 people have been killed, while efforts to negotiate a resolution have repeatedly failed.

{Thousands of abuse cases outlined in documents leaked to the Guardian paint a grim picture of life in Nauru.}

More than 2,000 incidents, including sexual abuse, assault and attempted self-harm, were reported over two years at an Australian prison for asylum seekers in Nauru, more than half involving children, the Guardian has reported.

Leaked documents published by the Guardian Australia on Wednesday detailed the level of abuse at the prison on tiny Nauru, one of two run by Australia on neighbouring South Pacific islands, and showed that children bore the brunt of the trauma.

The closely protected prisons, and Australia’s tough immigration policy against irregular boat arrivals, have been widely criticised by the United Nations and human rights groups.

Under the policy, asylum seekers intercepted at sea are sent to Nauru and another prison on Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea, and told they will never be settled in Australia.

READ MORE: Refugee sets herself on fire at Australia’s Nauru camp

The number of refugees and asylum seekers trying to reach Australia is tiny compared with Europe, but immigration has long been an emotive issue in the country and the policy has bipartisan political support.

Australia said it was seeking to confirm that all reports had been dealt with by Nauru police.

Refugees considering suicide

“It’s important to note many of these incident reports reflect unconfirmed allegations,” a spokeswoman for Australia’s Department of Immigration said.

The more than 2,000 leaked incident reports published by the Guardian covered the period between August 2013 and October 2015.

Children account for less than 20 percent of the roughly 500 detainees held on Nauru. There were 59 reports of assaults on children in the period, and seven reports of sexual assaults. Some of the reports alleged abuse by guards against children, and there were other reports of sexual advances by unknown men.

The reports showed there were 30 incidents of self-harm by children and 159 of threatened self-harm involving minors.

Govt has known for years of child abuse & sexual assault on Nauru. They have down played & covered it up. We now need a Royal Commission.

The remaining reports involving children covered a variety of issues, ranging from accidents to misbehaviour.

One of the leaked incident reports said that a child had “written in her book that she was tired, doesn’t like the camp and wants to die.” The child wrote: “I want death, I need death”.

Human rights groups said the leaked reports highlighted an urgent need to end Australia’s offshore detention policy and that asylum seekers must be given medical and psychological support.

“It is clear from these documents, and our own research, that many have been driven to the brink of physical or mental breakdown by their treatment on Nauru,” said Anna Neistat, senior director for research at Amnesty International.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty investigated abuse at Nauru earlier in August. Their findings are available online.

{A fire in Baghdad’s Yarmouk maternity hospital has left at least 11 premature babies dead, Iraqi health ministry says.}

At least 11 prematurely born babies have been killed in a fire at a maternity hospital in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, authorities have said.

Seven other children and 29 women were rescued from the Yarmouk maternity hospital in the capital early on Wednesday and transferred to another hospital, the Iraqi health ministry said in a statement.

It is not yet known what caused the blaze, but the ministry said it may have been due to an electrical fault.

{Illegal stops, searches and arrests disproportionately affect city’s black residents, investigation says.}

The Baltimore Police Department has routinely violated the constitutional rights of residents, according to a US Justice Department investigation stemming from the death of black detainee Freddie Gray last year.

The Justice Department probe, the results of which will be officially released at a news conference in Baltimore on Wednesday morning, was launched shortly after Gray’s death in April 2015.

Police had arrested Gray, 25, for fleeing unprovoked in a high-crime area. He suffered a neck injury in a police wagon while shackled and handcuffed, and died a week later.

Gray’s death triggered rioting and protests in Baltimore, a majority-black city of about 620,000 people. It fuelled a national debate on

The Justice Department’s 163-page report found that the Baltimore Police Department has routinely made unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests, and these illegal practices have disproportionately affected the city’s black residents.

Police have also engaged in a pattern of using excessive force and retaliated against people engaging in constitutionally protected expression, the investigation found.

“This pattern or practice is driven by systemic deficiencies in BPD’s policies, training, supervision, and accountability structures that fail to equip officers with the tools they need to police effectively and within the bounds of the federal law,” the report said.

A spokesman for the Baltimore Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment, the Reuters news agency said.

Six officers were charged in Gray’s death, but four trials ended without a conviction. Prosecutors dropped the remaining charges last month.

{Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to meet his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in St Petersburg.}

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan flies into Russia on Tuesday for his first meeting with counterpart Vladimir Putin since the two began healing a bitter rift over Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet.

Erdogan’s visit to Putin’s hometown of St Petersburg on Tuesday is also his first foreign trip since a failed coup attempt last month that sparked a purge of alleged coup supporters in the military, judiciary, civil service and education sector, and cast a shadow over Turkey’s relations with the West.

“This visit seems to me a new milestone in bilateral relations, beginning with a clean slate, and I personally, with all my heart and on behalf of the Turkish nation salute President Putin and all Russians,” Erdogan said in an interview with Russian state media before the visit.

The shooting down of the Russian jet by a Turkish F-16 over the Syrian border last November saw a furious Putin slap economic sanctions on Turkey and launch a blistering war of words with Erdogan that seemed to irrevocably damage burgeoning ties.

“When the Turkish military shot down a Russian fighter jet that it said strayed from Syrian into Turkish airspace last November, Moscow’s retaliation was swift,” Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Istanbul, said.

“Tourist charter flights to Turkey stopped, Russian visitor numbers fell by 87 percent. Turkey’s exports to Russia, including food, fell by more than half to $730m in the first six months of this year.”

But, in a reversal in late June, Putin accepted a personal expression of regret over the incident from Erdogan as an apology, immediately rolled back a ban on the sale of package holidays to Turkey and signalled Moscow would end measures against food imports and construction firms from the country.

Now, following the failed coup attempt, analysts say ties between the two could deepen – with Erdogan publicly making it clear he feels let down by the United States and the European Union.

“The Russian President was much quicker in his condemnation of the attempted coup than many of Turkey’s Western allies and they’ve [the Western allies] also expressed alarm at the extent of the post-coup crackdown,” said Al Jazeera’s Smith. “Vladimir Putin hasn’t got involved.”

Syria is expected to be high on the agenda during the visit. Moscow’s military support for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has been credited for helping to keep him in power.

Turkey, though, wants him gone.

“Currently Turkey cannot enter Syria, it cannot do anything in Syria because the Russian forces are there,” Erhan Ersan, a Russian affairs specialist at Istanbul’s Marmara University, told Al Jazeera.

“In order to solve that, they need to bring their positions closer to Russia. If you hear the messages coming from President Erdogan he’s actually open to that. He wants to build a new framework of relations based on Syria with Russia as well.”

The head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition welcomed the meeting.

Speaking at a press conference in Istanbul on Monday, Anas al-Abda said Erdogan’s visit could be a “positive step” for finding a solution to a ruinous war that has killed hundreds of thousands.

“We consider the Turkish president as a key ally of the Syrian people,” al-Abda told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency. “He has a chance to propose ideas and initiatives to Russians and to explain them the current situation in Syria.”

{Both groups claim responsibility for killing 70, including lawyers and journalists at the Civil Hospital emergency room.}

A Pakistani Taliban faction and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have both claimed responsibility for a suicide attack at a hospital in Pakistan’s Quetta that killed at least 70 people.

Monday’s attack targeted a group of mourning lawyers, who had gathered at the emergency department of the hospital to accompany the body of a murdered colleague.

“The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat-ur-Ahrar takes responsibility for this attack, and pledges to continue carrying out such attacks. We will release a video report on this soon,” the group’s spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said in an email.

ISIL, which is also known as ISIS, also claimed responsibility for the attack.

“A martyr from the Islamic State [of Iraq and the Levant] detonated his explosive belt at a gathering of justice ministry employees and Pakistani policemen in the city of Quetta,” the armed group’s Amaq website said.

The blast happened at the gate of the emergency room in the morning.

The lawyers were at the unit because earlier in the day armed men, who are still unidentified, had shot Bilal Anwar Kasi, reports said.

Kasi, who later died from his injuries, was the former president of the Balochistan Bar Association. He had been on his way to work when he was attacked.

Many of the dead appeared to be lawyers, wearing black suits and ties.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti said: “The blast occurred after a number of lawyers and some journalists had gathered at the hospital following the death of Bilal Anwar Kasi, the president of the Balochistan Bar Association, in a separate shooting incident early this morning.”

Several people were wounded as they rushed to leave the hospital.

Pakistani media said that journalists were among the victims, with at least two cameramen killed. One cameraman was named by local media as Aaj TV’s Shehzad Khan.

The other was Mehmood Khan of Dawn News, who had in the past worked for Al Jazeera. His colleague Sumaira Jajja wrote on Twitter that Khan, a father of seven children, started out as a security guard before joining Dawn as an officer worker to then become a cameraman. He had planned to do a master’s degree in journalism.

Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has oil and gas resources and is afflicted by fighting, violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and a separatist rebellion.

“The attack took place at the main gate to the emergency area,” said Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad.

“Importantly, this happened after the president of the Quetta bar was gunned down,” he said. “There are big questions after this security lapse. There is a very heavy death toll and most killed today are people belonging to the legal fraternity.”

Hyder said an attack took place at the same hospital in 2010.

{The two professors from the American University were kidnapped at gunpoint by four men wearing police uniforms.}

Gunmen wearing police uniforms have kidnapped an American and an Australian in the heart of Kabul, the latest in a series of abductions of foreigners in Afghanistan.

The two professors at the American University of Afghanistan were seized from their vehicle on Sunday evening, officials said on Monday, as the kidnappers smashed the passenger window and hauled them away at gunpoint.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the abductions, which came three days after a group of foreign tourists were ambushed by the Taliban in western Herat province, underscoring growing insecurity in Afghanistan.

“Two foreign professors, one American and the other Australian, were abducted at gunpoint from Dar-ul-Aman road in the centre of Kabul city,” Sediq Sediqqi, interior ministry spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

“Indications are that they were kidnapped by a criminal group.”

The driver and a guard inside the vehicle, both unharmed, have been held for questioning, another security official told AFP.

Four gunmen wearing police uniforms were involved in the abduction, according to a Western official in Kabul.

The Afghan capital is inundated with organised criminal gangs who stage kidnappings for ransom, often targeting foreigners and wealthy Afghans, and sometimes handing them over to armed groups.

“[There is] very high concern here about the security situation, and not just for foreigners … Afghans too are suffering from kidnapping, and it’s really because the economy is so bad … there are not enough jobs and so people have turned to crime,” Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul, said.

“It’s a real concern for people in Kabul and around the country because kidnapping has become a lucrative business.”

The US State Department said that it was aware of reports of the kidnapping of an American but declined to comment further.

The Australian government confirmed the “apparent kidnapping” of one of its citizens, citing its embassy in Kabul, but also refused to elaborate due to security considerations.

“We continue to advise Australians not to travel to Afghanistan because of the extremely dangerous security situation, including the serious threat of kidnapping,” the government said in a statement.

{{Growing insecurity}}

The abductions, the fourth this year, highlight the growing dangers faced by foreigners in Afghanistan.

Foreign tourists, including British, American and German nationals, came under Taliban fire last week in a volatile district of Herat, leaving some of them wounded. They were safely evacuated to Kabul and were flown out of the country.

Aid workers in particular have increasingly been casualties of a surge in militant violence in recent years.

Judith D’Souza, a 40-year-old Indian employee of the Aga Khan Foundation, a prominent NGO that has long worked in Afghanistan, was rescued last month after she was abducted near her residence in the heart of Kabul on the night of June 9.

D’Souza’s abduction came after Katherine Jane Wilson, a well-known Australian NGO worker, was kidnapped on April 28 in the city of Jalalabad, close to the border with Pakistan.

Wilson, said to be aged 60, ran an organisation known as Zardozi, which promotes the work of Afghan artisans, particularly women.

The United States in May warned its citizens in Afghanistan of a “very high” kidnapping risk after an American narrowly escaped abduction in the heart of Kabul.

In April last year the bullet-riddled bodies of five Afghan workers for Save the Children were found after they were abducted by gunmen in the strife-torn southern province of Uruzgan.

{{Roadside bombs}}

Meanwhile, two separate roadside mine blasts killed eight civilians in Afghanistan on Monday, officials said.

One mine detonated as a rickshaw carrying a family in Gilan district of southern Ghazni province passed by, killing six members of one family, said Fahim Amiri, spokesman for Ghazni’s governor.

“Three women, two children and a man were among the killed.”

The area is under Taliban control, although Afghan security forces are trying to push the group out.

“That is why the Taliban are planting mines on the roads. They are targeting vehicles of the security forces,” Amiri said.

Another mine hit an Afghan National Army (ANA) vehicle in the Bagrami district of Kabul, “killing two civilians and wounding another two, including a ANA solder,” said Basir Mujahid, Kabul police spokesman.

Bagrami district in eastern Kabul is known as one of the most insecure districts of the capital.

The United Nations regularly criticises the Taliban for the use of IEDs planted by roadsides as they are indiscriminately killing hundreds of civilians every year.

{Indian forces arrest more than a thousand protesters as part of a security lockdown to stem anti-India demonstrations.}

Government forces have arrested more than a thousand protesters in Indian-controlled Kashmir over the past two weeks in an attempt to stem anti-India demonstrations in the Himalayan region, a top policeman has said.

Inspector-General Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani said on Monday that the arrests were made in a bid to end a month of protests in which more than 55 civilians had been killed and thousands of others injured.

Kashmir has been under a security lockdown and curfew since the killing of a popular rebel commander on July 8 sparked some of the largest protests against Indian rule in recent years.

Tens of thousands of people have defied the curfew and participated in street protests, often leading to clashes between rock-throwing residents and government forces firing live ammunition, shotgun pellets and tear gas.

On Monday, tens of thousands of troops patrolled streets ringed with barbed wire and enforced a curfew in most parts of Kashmir. Shops and schools were closed because of the security crackdown and a separatist-sponsored protest strike.

However, protests demanding the end of Indian rule over the region continued in several places, with reports of clashes between protesters and government forces in at least five locations. Seven civilians were reported injured.

Separatist politicians, who challenge India’s sovereignty over Kashmir, have called on residents to resist the crackdown and stage protests when troops raid neighborhoods to arrest young people.

Kashmir is divided between archrivals India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars over control of the region since British colonialists left the subcontinent in 1947.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmiri rebels who have been fighting for independence or for a merger with Pakistan since 1989. Pakistan denies the charge, saying it only provides moral and political support to Kashmiris.

More than 68,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since rebel groups began fighting Indian forces in 1989 and in a subsequent Indian military crackdown.

Meanwhile, in New Delhi, opposition politicians on Monday questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence over the situation in Kashmir and demanded that the government take political steps to defuse the crisis.

Politicians attacked the government over the firing of shotguns by soldiers at unarmed protesters. Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Congress Party leader in the upper house of Parliament, urged Modi to hold a meeting in which leaders of all political parties could discuss and offer ways to reach out to the people of Kashmir.

Troops have continued firing shotguns to disperse angry crowds despite warnings from India’s home ministry to minimise their use, and requests for a ban from local and international rights groups. The pellets have killed at least two men and left hundreds of civilians with serious eye injuries.

Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) denounced the use of shotguns and said people want to know the prime minister’s views on the Kashmir crisis. “The prime minister’s silence is sending a message that this government does not care,” Yechury said.

Meanwhile, an Indian army spokesman said that three border guards and a suspected rebel were killed on Monday in a gunbattle near the highly militarised Line of Control dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Nitin N Joshi, a senior army officer, said it was not immediately clear if the suspected rebel had entered the Indian side of Kashmir from the Pakistani-controlled portion.