Tag: InternationalNews

{After breaking government siege on rebel-held districts, Army of Conquest pushes to take second biggest city.}

A Syrian rebel alliance has announced the start of a battle to recapture the whole of Aleppo, a day after it broke a government siege on the rebel-held half of the city.

The Army of Conquest, a coalition of rebel groups including Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly the al-Nusra Front), said in a statement on Sunday that it would “double the number of fighters for this next battle”.

“We announce the start of a new phase to liberate all of Aleppo,” the group said. “We will not rest until we raise the flag of the conquest over Aleppo’s citadel.”

Footage obtained by Al Jazeera showed rebel fighters at government checkpoints on Saturday after breaking the month-long siege on the rebel-held eastern neighbourhoods of the city in a major setback for the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

A convoy of rebel pick-up trucks entered the city’s opposition areas through a newly opened route on Sunday, bringing food aid for some of the 300,000 residents who had been trapped inside.

The breaking of the siege triggered celebrations in Aleppo’s eastern districts, but fierce fighting and continuous Russian and Syrian air strikes in and around the Ramosa district prevented safe passage for residents.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said it was one of the most significant defeats for the government since the conflict erupted in March 2011.

Fears grew on Sunday in the government-controlled western half of the city of food and fuel shortages as rebels attempted to surround it.

Large rebel operation

Rebels on Saturday pushed northeast into Ramosa where they linked up with fighters who had been inside the city.

“After a large-scale military operation carried out in six stages, the Conquest Army managed to put an end to the siege,” Al Jazeera’s Amro Halabi, reporting from the rebel-held half of the city, said.

Ramosa is home to a large military complex, which contains a number of military colleges.

Jabhat Fatah al-Sham posted pictures on social media of rows of armoured vehicles, munitions, howitzer tanks, rockets and trucks now in rebel hands.

The rebel frontline was pushing northwest into western, government-held Aleppo, on the the edges of the Hamdaniya neighborhood and a housing project called the 3,000 project, according to rebels and the SOHR, which relies on a network of contacts in Syria to track the war.

The Assad Military Engineering Academy, another large government army complex, is located just north of Hamadiya.

“The battle for Aleppo is decisive. Whoever wins the battle could perhaps win the war. For the rebels, keeping hold of Aleppo is leverage – it’s a bargaining chip that they could use to perhaps force the Syrian government back to the negotiating table in Geneva,” Al Jazeera’s Reza Sayah, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, said.

“At the same time, if the government is able to take over Aleppo, they take away that bargaining chip. If they have control of the city, there’s no longer incentive for them to go back to Geneva.”

{{‘Government areas besieged’}}

The rebel advance puts an estimated 1.2 million people in government-held districts under opposition siege, Rahman of the SOHR told the AFP news agency.

“The western districts of Aleppo are now besieged. There are no safe routes for civilians in government-held districts to use to get into or out of the city,” he said.

In rebel-held areas, the lack of a safe route out meant conditions for residents were unchanged.

Three vans of vegetables crossed into east Aleppo, Rahman said, but this was a symbolic gesture and the corridor was too dangerous for civilians or significant supplies to pass.

The United Nations and aid groups said conditions in rebel-held districts were a cause for concern.

“Most recently I’m hearing that the markets are closed and it’s next to impossible to purchase food. The UN estimates that collectively all aid supplies in east Aleppo will only last about two more weeks,” Christy Delafield, senior communications officer for Mercy Corps, which runs the largest non-governmental aid operation inside Syria, told the Reuters news agency.

The battle for Aleppo, Syria’s second biggest city, has raged since mid-2012 and is among the fiercest in the multi-front war that has killed nearly 400,000 people, according to an estimate by the UN’s chief mediator.

{At least 30 people killed in blast and several injured as suicide bomber targets gathering of lawyers in emergency room.}

A blast at the accident and emergency department of a hospital in Pakistan’s Quetta, where a group of mourning lawyers were gathered to accompany the body of a murdered colleague, has killed and wounded several.

At least 30 people were killed in the suicide blast on Monday, Quetta police chief Zahoor Afridi told Al Jazeera.

At least 30 others were wounded, 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 the president of the Balochistan Bar Association in a separate shooting incident early this morning,” said Bugti.

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

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 succumbed to his injuries, was the former president of the Balochistan Bar Association. He had been on his way to work when gunmen attacked him.

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

Pakistani media said that journalists were among those wounded, with at least one cameraman killed. That cameraman was named by social media users as Aaj TV’s Shehzad Khan.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for either attack.

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

{Tens of thousands have left Cuba in the past two years, taking perilous routes to reach the US.}

Cuba has blamed the United States for encouraging illegal and unsafe immigration by tens of thousands of Cubans who have left the country in the past two years.

Havana released a statement on Sunday saying Cubans leaving the country illegally were the “victims of the politicisation of the migration issue by the US government which stimulates illegal and unsafe immigration”, Reuters news agency reported.

The US policy of welcoming Cubans without visas contradicted normalisation efforts between Havana and Washington, the statement added.

More than 46,500 Cubans arrived and were admitted to the US without visas during the first 10 months of the US government’s fiscal year 2016, according to the Pew Research Center. That figure compares with more than 43,000 Cubans in 2015 and just over 24,000 in 2014.

Unlike citizens of other countries, Cubans who make it to US borders have special entry privileges under the Cold War-era Cuban Adjustment Act, which gives Cuban citizens special welfare benefits and allows them to apply for permanent residency after 366 days in the country.

Under the act, Cubans who set foot on US territory are treated as legal immigrants, while people from any other country are considered illegal.

The large increase in the number of Cubans attempting to reach the US, particularly by overland routes through South and Central America, coincides with the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana.

There are fears among ordinary Cubans that diplomatic normalisation between Havana and Washington will mean they lose their privilieged entry status to the US.

Regional governments have also responded to the increase in Cubans travelling overland to the US by closing down border routes.

Nicaragua was the first country to close its borders in November to Cubans travelling overland to Mexico and on to the US. Though initially facilitating the transit of several thousand Cubans through its territory, Costa Rica also closed its borders in April as numbers grew.

Nearly 1,300 Cubans are currently stranded in miserable conditions on the Colombia-Panama border after that route was closed.

Migrants heading to US stranded in Colombia
“We only know they are going to be deported, but we don’t know how or in what form,” William Gonzalez, a regional Colombian government ombudsman, said last week.

Of the 1,297 Cubans who arrived in the Colombian border town of Turbo three months ago, about 300 are children aged 14 or under, as well as 11 pregnant women.

“What worries us most at this moment is the health and welfare situation of the 300 children,” he said, explaining that the Cubans have been living amid insects and rodents in a makeshift shelter with inadequate sanitary facilities.

‘Without any pressure or force’

Havana released its statement criticising the US on Sunday to coincide with the arrival of 14 Cubans deported by Colombia.

Colombia said last week that stranded Cubans requesting voluntary deportation would be granted safe passage to their home countries or to the last country they were in before entering Colombia.

For many of them that is Cuba or Ecuador.

“We wanted to handle this,” Colombian Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin said of the stranded Cubans.

The US Coast Guard on Saturday reported that since October, at least 5,786 Cubans have been intercepted at sea trying to reach the southeastern US coast.

{Massive crowd joins president and opposition leaders in Istanbul rally, denouncing last month’s failed coup.}

More than a million people have attended a pro-democracy rally held in Istanbul in response to Turkey’s failed coup attempt last month.

The massive rally on Sunday united the country’s president, the prime minister and two opposition party leaders around a single issue for the first time in years.

“The world is looking at you now,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the rally as he began his speech. “You should be proud of yourselves. Each and everyone of you fought for freedom and democracy. All of you are heroes.”

Erdogan said that on the night of the coup, the Turkish people had proved that “we are mighty enough to foil any coup”, condemning the group behind the plot to topple his government as a “terrorist organisation”.

The president also said that, had the coup attempt succeeded, “we would have lost our homeland, and offered it to our enemy in a silver platter”.

Al Jazeera’s Ayse Karabat, reporting from Istanbul, described the event as “the biggest, most crowded, political meeting in Turkish political history”.

As part of its anti-coup campaign, the government has been encouraging nightly rallies throughout the country, culminating in Sunday’s grand finale.

The “Democracy and Martyrs’ Rally” was designed to represent the unity of the country, and Erdogan had urged attendees to bring only the Turkish flag, instead of party banners.

About 13,000 people, in addition to police officers, were involved in running the event. Helicopters, ambulances and more than 700 medical personnel were also on duty.

Similar rallies were held simultaneously across the country, according to officials from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Death penalty backed

Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, who is also the leader of the AKP, as well as the main opposition Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli were present at the rally.

Kilicdaroglu and Bahceli addressed the rally before handing the stage to the prime minister and the president.

In his speech, Erdogan said that he would support the re-introduction of the death penalty should parliament approve it, saying that countries such as the United States and China also have capital punishment.

Yildirim praised those “who fought bravely and stood in defiance” of the coup attempt.

Opposition leader Kilicdaroglu said the failed coup had opened a “new door of compromise” in politics, adding that politics must now be kept out of the mosques, courts and barracks.

“There is a new Turkey after July 15,” Kilicdaroglu said.

The pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party’s (HDP) co-leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag were not invited. The HDP opposed the coup, but was excluded from the rally because of its alleged support for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Galip Dalay, columnist and Turkey analyst, told Al Jazeera that including the HDP would have “completed the picture”. He said, though, that the event was significant as it showed “unity across [the] political spectrum.”

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

Erdogan has previously called for HDP members to be prosecuted, accusing the party of being the PKK’s political wing.

The HDP is the third-biggest party in parliament. It denies having direct links with the PKK and promotes a negotiated end to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed hundreds of lives since a peace process, once led by Erdogan and his governing party, collapsed in 2015.

{{‘One nation, one heart’}}

Before and during the rally, the hashtags #birliktegucluyuz (Together we are strong) and #TekmilletTekyurek (One nation, one heart) were trending on Twitter, with thousands of people revelling in the solidarity on show between the political parties.

The failed coup, led by a faction of the Turkish military, killed more than 270 people and posed the gravest threat yet to Erdogan’s 13 years in power.

Factions of the security forces loyal to Erdogan, with the help of thousands of Turkish citizens who took to the streets to confront the troops, quickly put down the attempt.

US-based preacher and businessman Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally, has been blamed for the coup attempt. He has denied any involvement and condemned it.

Since the events of July 15, more than 70,000 people in the military, judiciary, civil service and education sector have been arrested or suspended for alleged links to Gulen’s movement.

{Emperor Akihoto said declining health may hinder ability to fulfill his duties, in sign of possible future abdication.}

Japanese Emperor Akihito, 82, said in a rare video address to the public that he worried his age may make it difficult for him to fully carry out his duties.

In nationally televised remarks on Monday, Akihito also said there were limits to reducing the emperor’s duties as the “symbol of the state”, the status accorded to the monarch under Japan’s post-war constitution.

Public broadcaster NHK reported last month that Akihito, who has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer, wanted to step down in a few years – a move that would be unprecedented in modern Japan.

Once considered divine, the emperor is defined in the constitution as a symbol of the state and the unity of the people, and has no political power.

Akihito stopped short of saying outright that he wanted to abdicate, which could be interpreted as interfering in politics.

“When I consider that my fitness level is gradually declining, I am worried that it may become difficult for me to carry out my duties as the symbol of the state with my whole being, as I have done until now,” he said.

An English translation of his remarks was issued by the Imperial Household Agency, which manages his affairs.

Akihito is said to feel strongly that an emperor’s full performance of his duties is integral to his constitutional role, experts say.

Opinion polls show the vast majority of ordinary Japanese sympathise with the emperor’s desire to retire, but this would need legal changes.

The idea has sparked opposition from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative base, which worries that debate on the imperial family’s future could widen to the topic of letting women inherit and pass on the throne, anathema to traditionalists.

Speculation about Akihito’s future started last month with reports that he had told confidantes that his advancing age was making it harder to perform ceremonial duties and that he would like to step down in a few years.

{{Public support}}

The origins of Japan’s monarchy, said to be the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy, are ancient and legend says that it is an unbroken line going back some 2,600 years.

It is deeply ingrained in the nation’s native Shinto religion and it comes with numerous ritual duties, including planting rice in a field within the palace grounds.

The speech comes during an annual time of sensitivity with August being a month of remembrance. Japan commemorated the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Saturday and does so again on Tuesday for Nagasaki.

Next Monday, the country will mark the 71st anniversary of its defeat in World War II, an annual event at which the emperor delivers a speech.

Akihito was 11 years old when the war ended and witnessed the destruction it brought to Japan.

He has keenly embraced the role of symbolic sovereign and is credited with making efforts to seek reconciliation both at home and abroad over the legacy of the war fought in his father’s name.

He has visited places that saw some of the most intense fighting, including Okinawa at home and Saipan, Palau and the Philippines abroad, offering prayers for the souls of all the dead, not just Japanese.

Any move by Akihito to step down appears to have wide public support. A survey by Kyodo News last week showed that 85.7 percent of people surveyed were in favour of legal changes that would allow abdication.

{President publicly accuses Filipino government officials including judges and members of Congress of having drug links.}

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has named several government officials, including judges, members of Congress and military officers accused of having links to the illegal drug trade, just hours after vowing to maintain his “shoot-to-kill” order against drug dealers.

In a televised national address on Sunday, Duterte declared that the officials he accused would have their day in court, but quickly added while reading the list that “my mouth has no due process”.

He justified his reading of the list, saying he has a sworn duty to inform the public about the state of “narco-politics” in the country.

According to the news website Rappler, Duterte named a total of 158 officials, many of whom are police and military officers, but also include three members of Congress and seven judges.

Duterte was speaking from his constituency of Davao, where he served as mayor before winning the presidency.

Earlier on Saturday, Duterte had vowed to keep his “shoot-to-kill” order “until the last day of my term, if I’m still alive by then”.

“I don’t care about human rights, believe me,” he said, according to official transcripts released by the presidential palace.

About 800 people have been killed since Duterte won a landslide election in May, according to reports by the local press, which has been tracking reports of extra-judicial killings.

Later on Sunday, local television GMA News reported that five mayors and three vice mayors from the southern island of Mindanao surrendered to police, and denied Duterte’s allegations.

Michael Rama, former mayor of Cebu, the country’s second major city, has also denied being involved in the illegal drug business, calling the allegations “untrue”, but vowing to cooperate with authorities.

Meanwhile, the website Rappler reported that one of the judges included in the list has been dead for eight years.

‘I’m waging a war’

Duterte said government officials who use their positions to engage in a trade that wrecks the lives of many Filipinos were first on his list.

The president said he was also offering soldiers and police his “official and personal guarantee” of immunity from prosecution for killings undertaken in the performance of their duties.

Death toll rises as Philippines intensifies war on drugs
In a homily delivered later on Sunday, Catholic leader Archbishop Socrates Villegas condemned the latest killings, saying, “I am in utter disbelief. If this is just a nightmare, wake me up and assure me it is not true. This is too much to swallow.

“From a generation of drug addicts, shall we become a generation of street murderers?” Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a statement posted on his website.

The UN anti-drugs office on Wednesday joined international rights organisations in condemning the rash of killings.

“The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime remains greatly concerned by the reports of extrajudicial killing of suspected drug dealers and users in the Philippines,” its executive director Yury Fedotov said in a statement.

But Duterte said he is waging a war, and is “now invoking the articles of war”.

Police say more than 500,000 people have surrendered to the local authorities and pledged to stop using illegal drugs.

{Iran has executed a nuclear scientist convicted of handing over “top secret” information to the United States, a judicial spokesman has said.}

“Shahram Amiri was hanged for revealing the country’s top secrets to the enemy [US],” the spokesman, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeie, was quoted as saying by the Mizan Online news site on Sunday.

A day earlier, Amiri’s mother told the BBC that “the body had been handed over with rope marks around his neck”.

Amiri disappeared in Saudi Arabia in June 2009 and resurfaced a year later in the US. In a surprise move, Amiri then returned to Tehran in July 2010, saying he had been kidnapped at gunpoint by two Farsi-speaking CIA agents in the Saudi city of Medina.

At first he was greeted as a hero in Tehran, telling reporters as he stepped off the plane that he had resisted pressure from his US captors to pretend he was a defector. He said US officials wanted him to tell the media he had “defected on his own and was carrying important documents and a laptop which contained classified secrets of Iran’s military nuclear programme”.

“But with God’s will, I resisted,” Amiri said as he was welcomed home by his tearful wife and young son.

However, it was soon clear that Iranian authorities had not accepted his version of events and Amiri dropped out of public view. He was probably arrested although it was never officially reported.

Tehran ‘outsmarted’ the US

Ejeie said the Iranian intelligence services had “outsmarted” the US.

“This person, having access to confidential and highly confidential information of the regime, had established a connection to our number one enemy, America, and had provided the enemy with Iran’s confidential and vital information,” he said.

“Shahram Amiri was tried in accordance with law and in the presence of his lawyer. He appealed his death sentence based on judicial process. The Supreme Court… confirmed it after meticulous reviews,” he added.

Numerous media reports in recent years have supported the idea that Amiri was a defector with highly prized information on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

“Shahram Amiri described to American intelligence officers details of how a university in Tehran became the covert headquarters for the country’s nuclear efforts,” the New York Times reported in July 2010, citing unnamed US officials.

“While still in Iran, he was also one of the sources for a much-disputed National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s suspected weapons programme, published in 2007,” the report said.

Between 2010 and 2012, four nuclear scientists were assassinated inside Iran and a fifth survived a bomb attack. The government blamed the attacks on US and Israeli intelligence services.

Iran finally reached a deal with world powers, who had grown increasingly concerned that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapon, in July 2015, when Tehran promised to curb its programme in exchange for a lifting of international sanctions.

Tehran and Washington have had no diplomatic ties since 1980, when students stormed the American embassy following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

{UN-sponsored negotiations end without an agreement after Houthi rebels and their allies announce a new governing body.}

UN-sponsored talks for establishing peace in Yemen have ended without a breakthrough, as fighting continues between government forces and rebels near the capital Sanaa.

The adjourning of the talks on Saturday came after Houthi fighters and the party of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president, rejected a UN peace plan and announced the appointment of a 10-member governing body to run Yemen.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN envoy on Yemen, announced on Saturday a month-long suspension of the talks, held in Kuwait for more than 90 days, but denied their failure.

Yemeni minister denies civilians deliberately targeted by coalition
“We will be leaving Kuwait today but the Yemeni peace talks are continuing,” Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in Kuwait City.

“We have guarantees and commitments from the two sides that they are ready to return to the negotiating table,” he said, while criticising the creation of the council by the Houthis and their allies.

“We condemn any unilateral step.”

The rebels said the plan, which had been accepted by Yemen’s internationally recognised government, did not meet their key demand for a unity government – a condition that amounts to an explicit call for President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s removal.

Meanwhile, forces loyal to Hadi launched a major new offensive east of Sanaa to “liberate the district of Nehem”, the pro-government sabanew.net news agency said on Saturday.

The area is a key route to the capital, which has been under Houthi control since 2014.

“The army and the resistance have managed to liberate a number of important military positions that had been controlled by the coup militias, most prominent of which is the Manara mount which overlooks the centre of Nehem district,” the agency quoted a military spokesman as saying.

READ MORE: Key facts about the war in Yemen

Yemen descended into chaos after the 2012 removal of Saleh, whose forces are fighting alongside the Houthi fighters.

Security deteriorated further after the Houthis swept into Sanaa, and pushed south, forcing Hadi’s government to flee into exile in March last year.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia assembled a coalition of Arab states to defeat the Houthis in Yemen.

Border skirmishes

On Saturday fighting was reported on the Yemeni-Saudi border, where a Saudi border guard was killed by fire directed from the Yemeni side, the Saudi state news agency SPA said citing a security spokesman.

A spokesman for the Arab coalition accused the Houthi fighters of escalating attacks along the border, where the coalition had scaled back its military operations to give the Yemeni peace talks a chance to succeed.

The war in Yemen: Hospitals struggle to help
“The militias began military operations along the border after the suspension of the Yemeni consultations,” General Ahmed al-Asseri, the coalition spokesman, told the Saudi-owned Al Hadath television, referring to the Houthi fighters.

“The Houthi militias are trying to achieve gains on the ground to make up for political losses.”

The UN refugee agency estimates that more than 2.4 million Yemenis have fled their homes to elsewhere in the country, and 120,000 have sought asylum in other countries, including Djibouti and Somalia.

As reported by Al Jazeera, internally displaced Yemenis often must cope with a lack of food and inadequate shelter.

Many Yemenis who have not fled are also suffering, especially those in need of healthcare.

As of January 2016, 2,800 civilians had been killed by the fighting in Yemen, with 8,100 casualties overall since the conflict escalated in March last year. Both sides have been accused of killing civilians.

{Opposition groups says rebels end government-imposed siege by pushing into eastern parts of Syria’s largest city.}

A major Syrian opposition body has announced that rebels have broken a government siege of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition said on Twitter on Saturday: “Rebels break Aleppo’s siege”.

The Ahrar al-Sham rebel group also posted on Twitter that rebels had seized control of Ramosa on the southwestern edges of the city and thereby “opened the route to Aleppo”.

Syrian government forces encircled Aleppo on July 17 after closing off the last opposition-controlled route into the city.

Al Manar, the television station affiliated with the armed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian government forces, said “the rumours that the seige on the eastern neighbourhoods has been broken is entirely false” in a statement on its website.

Zouhir al-Shimale, a journalist in Aleppo, told Al Jazeera that the siege has “practically been broken”.

A coalition of rebel groups, Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), announced on Friday it had taken control of a strategic military base in the Ramosa quarter in southwestern Aleppo.

The rebels used the base to launch raids on the government-held area, according to Shimale.

Syrian rebels claim capture of Aleppo military base
At around 12pm local time on Saturday, a car bomb exploded in al-Amiriya, at the edge of the besieged part of the city, he said.

Shimale said the area between Ramosa and Amiriya is now all under the control of the rebels.

“There are heavy clashes and random shelling from helicopters and warplanes,” he added.

Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, previously al-Nusra Front, said on Saturday that rebels pushing out from inside Aleppo city had linked up with those on the outskirts, according to AFP news agency.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group that records daily developments in the country, said “the rebels have linked up and advanced into the eastern districts of Aleppo” but have not yet secured a safe route due to Russian aerial bombardment and heavy regime shelling on the area.

An estimated 250,000 civilians live in Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern quarters.

Until recent weeks, Aleppo was roughly divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since mid-2012.

If cemented, the breakthrough in Aleppo would be a boost for the rebels, who have been fighting for weeks to retake control of the city despite heavy bombardment by Russian and Syrian forces.

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

The SOHR estimates that more than 280,000 Syrians have been killed throughout the five years of bloodshed.

{Hunger strikers accuse Israeli jailers of “harassment” and others refused food in solidarity with prisoner Bilal Kayed.}

Hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli prisons have declared a hunger strike, in a new wave of protest that Palestinian officials said was expected to grow.

Some of the hunger strikers accused Israeli prison guards of “harassment” while others refused food in solidarity with prisoner Bilal Kayed, who has been fasting for 52 days over his continued detention without trial, Palestinian officials said.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said in a statement that 80 prisoners stopped eating on Friday, joining 325 who have been fasting for the past two days at various prisons in Israel and the occupied West Bank.

More were expected to join the hunger strike from Sunday.

The Palestinian Authority detainee affairs commission told AFP news agency that inmates are protesting against a prison crackdown this week, in which a number of inmates were placed in solitary confinement, personal belongings were seized and prisoners moved to other facilities.

It said that hunger strikers were being fined $158 each, and forbidden visits for two months.

An Israeli prison official said that a large part of the protest appeared to be in response to a decision by authorities to hold prisoners from the group Hamas in separate cells.

The Israel Prisons Service said that during the week it had moved Hamas prisoners, searched cells and seized mobile phones, acting on “intelligence information about direction of terror from inside prisons”.

A spokesman told AFP that there were currently 262 Hamas prisoners on hunger strike, along with 93 from the group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who are fasting in solidarity with Kayed.

Kayed was to be released in June after serving a 14-and-a-half-year sentence for activities in the PFLP, labelled a terrorist organisation by Israel, the European Union and the US.

Instead, Israeli authorities ordered that he remain in custody under an administrative detention law, which allows prisoners to be held without trial for renewable six-month periods.

Kayed, 35, is suffering from failing kidneys and has lost at least 30 kilos, Palestinian officials said.

Administrative detention is intended by Israel to allow authorities to hold suspects while continuing to gather evidence, with the aim of preventing further attacks in the meantime.

The system has been criticised by Palestinians, human rights groups and members of the international community.

Of more than 7,500 Palestinians currently in Israeli jails, around 700 are being held under administrative detention, Palestinian rights groups said.

Palestinians have regularly gone on hunger strike to protest their detention.