Tag: InternationalNews

{Opposition makes progress in effort to remove President Nicolas Maduro, but referendum still a long way off.}

Venezuela’s opposition has been given a green light to proceed with efforts to remove President Nicolas Maduro in a referendum, but the country still appeared far from holding a vote.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) said on Monday that the opposition had collected nearly double the requirement of 200,000 valid signatures on a petition demanding Maduro face a recall referendum.

“We still don’t know if we will be seeing a referendum. It is not guaranteed yet,” Al Jazeera’s Daniel Lak, reporting from the capital Caracas, said.

“But this is a big step forward by an opposition alliance which has basically been opposing not just President Maduro but his predecessor Hugo Chavez.”

The CNE did not set a date for the next stage of a lengthy process in which the opposition must collect four million signatures in just three days.

And, in a boost to the Maduro camp’s claims of rampant fraud, CNE chief Tibisay Lucena said the authorities had detected more than 1,000 apparently fraudulent signatures.

The opposition blames Maduro for an economic implosion that has seen severe food shortages, a healthcare crisis, hyperinflation, violence and looting in a once-booming country that is home to the world’s largest oil reserves.

The opposition is racing to force a referendum by January 10, the cutoff date to trigger new elections — four years into the president’s six-year term.

After that date, a successful recall vote would simply transfer power to Maduro’s hand-picked vice-president.

A recent poll found 64 percent of Venezuelans would vote to remove Maduro. But, the opposition accuses the electoral authority of being sympathetic to Maduro.

The opposition won legislative elections in December, only to find its power stymied by the Supreme Court, which it says is also in Maduro’s pocket.

Separately, Venezuela’s Supreme Court declared the opposition-held National Assembly in contempt on Monday for ignoring its rulings by swearing in three MPs who were suspended over alleged electoral fraud.

The court said all actions of the National Assembly are void until banned members are removed from office.

The opposition accuses the court of using baseless fraud accusations to quash the powerful two-thirds majority it won in legislative elections in December.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has almost always ruled in favour of the government during the last 17 years of socialist rule under Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

The opposition coalition pushing the referendum, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), can now formally request the process go ahead – which they must do within two days.

The electoral council will have 15 days to respond, then 15 working days to set the dates and locations for the second petition drive.

After the second petition is complete, the council will have another 15 business days to count and validate the signatures.

Then it is supposed to set a date for a referendum within three months.

To win, Maduro’s opponents would need more votes than he won the presidency with in 2013 — around 7.5 million.

His allies have an arsenal of possible delaying strategies. They have filed more than 8,000 legal challenges against the recall petition and called on the electoral authorities to ban MUD for alleged fraud.

{The gang rape of the mother and her 14-year-old daughter over the weekend has sparked outrage across the country.}

Police in northern India said on Sunday that they had detained 15 suspects after a woman and her 14-year-old daughter were gang-raped off a busy highway, the latest incident of sexual violence to shock the country.

The attack took place on Friday night near the town of Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh state after the car in which the victims were travelling was stopped by a gang of men with an iron rod, said senior local police official Daljeet Choudhary.

The men dragged the woman, the daughter and three male relatives who were travelling with them to a nearby field. They then tied up the males and raped the woman and the daughter, Choudhary said.

He said several police teams were at work to ensure that the attackers were identified quickly. He gave no details about the detained men.

The family was also robbed of money, jewellery and their mobile phones.

The attack, which caused outrage across India, highlights the persistence of violence against women in the country despite tougher laws against sexual assault that were imposed following the December 2012 death of a young woman who was gang-raped on a bus in New Delhi.

After Friday’s attack, opposition politicians in Uttar Pradesh accused the state government of failing to protect women and children.

Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister of the state, asked local police to ensure that the attackers are identified and arrested quickly.

{Houthi rebels refuse to leave three main Yemeni cities they hold, prompting government delegation to leave Kuwait talks.}

Yemeni government negotiators have decided to leave peace talks in Kuwait after Houthi rebels rejected a United Nations proposal aimed at ending their country’s war.

Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi said on Monday that the government was not abandoning the peace process, but suggested it would only return if the Houthis and a powerful local ally lifted their objections to the UN plan.

“We’ve agreed to the initiative … we are now leaving the territory of the brotherly state of Kuwait but we’re not leaving the talks,” Mekhlafi said while announcing the move.

“We’ll return at any moment, even an hour after our departure, if the other side agrees to sign this document which the (UN) envoy presented.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN envoy, proposed that the government’s foes in the armed Houthi movement quit three main cities they hold, including the capital Sanaa.

Under this plan, new talks would then be convened on forming a government that would include the Houthis, delegates said.

The Houthis dismissed the proposal as a non-starter on Sunday, saying in a statement that any agreement would need to be comprehensive and not postpone a resolution on major issues.

They said they would stay in Kuwait for the talks.

The negotiations that started in April have slowed the nationwide fighting that has killed at least 6,400 people and caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

{Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh told to sign UN-brokered peace deal by August 7.}

Yemen’s exiled government says it has accepted a peace deal proposed by the UN that calls on Houthi rebels – who control large swaths of the country – to concede power after more than 14 months of war.

The announcement came on Sunday after a high-level meeting in Riyadh chaired by Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the AFP news agency said.

The meeting approved a draft agreement by the United Nations that called on the Houthis to withdraw from the Yemeni capital Sanaa, as well as the cities of Taiz and Hodeida, which would pave the way for a comprehensive political dialogue to start 45 days after the signing of the agreement.

The deal would abolish a supreme political council set up by the Houthis and Saleh’s General People’s Congress to run the country, Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi, Yemen’s foreign minister, said.

According to the draft agreement, prisoners of war would be freed, as specified by the UN Security Council Resolution 2216, and a political dialogue between various Yemeni factions would start 45 days after the rebels withdraw and hand over heavy weapons to a military committee to be formed by President Hadi.

The government, however, forced through a pre-condition that the Houthis and forces loyal to Saleh sign the deal by August 7, Mikhlafi said on Twitter.

1.8 million children in Yemen out of school owing to ongoing conflict
There has been no official reaction from the Houthis, who have previously refused to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which stipulates the withdrawal of armed groups from all cities.

The Houthis insist they are fighting to defend themselves against government aggression and marginalisation.

Previous peace talks have failed to bridge the gap between the warring parties, while a ceasefire that went into effect in April has been marred by multiple breaches from both sides.

Yemen has been torn apart by conflict since 2014, when Houthi rebels, allied with troops loyal to Saleh, stormed the capital, Sanaa, and later forced the government into exile.

A coalition comprising many Arab countries 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.

Across the country, at least 14 million people, more than half of the population, are in need of emergency food and life-saving assistance.

The conflict has also taken a horrifying toll on the country’s youth, with UNICEF warning that an estimated 320,000 children face life-threatening malnutrition.

{As concerns rise over dwindling food and medical supplies, rebels aim to break siege on 300,000 residents.}

Syrian rebels have launched an offensive aimed at breaking a government siege of eastern Aleppo, where the UN estimates some 300,000 people are trapped with dwindling food and medical supplies.

A rebel alliance that includes the Jabhat Fatah al Sham group – which was formerly the al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front – and the Ahrar al Sham group said it had taken army positions in the southwestern government-held parts of the city within the first few hours of launching a battle to break the siege imposed on rebel-held areas.

The Syrian army confirmed the offensive on state media but said its troops had pushed back rebel fighters from an airforce artillery base and denied the rebel alliance had captured the Hikma school.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which gathers information from a network of local informants, said rebels and pro-government forces were clashing along several fronts on the outskirts of the divided city.

Government forces closed off the last route to the opposition holdout in early July, replicating siege tactics that it has employed with mixed results throughout the war.

Seizing control of Aleppo would be the biggest victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in five years of fighting, and would demonstrate a dramatic shift of fortunes in his favour since Russia joined the war on his side last year, offering crucial air support.

The UN’s special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, warned on Friday that basic supplies in eastern Aleppo could run out in three weeks.

The Syrian and Russian militaries announced safe corridors for residents who wanted to leave the besieged area on Thursday, but according to the Russian government, only 169 civilians had left by Saturday.

Rights groups have warned it is illegal to deprive civilians of basic necessities, and that residents should not have to choose between leaving their homes or starving.

{{Hospitals targeted}}

In southern Syria, an air strike on a hospital in an opposition-controlled town put the facility out of service opn Sunday.

The hospital in Jasem was targeted in one of several air strikes to hit the town in Deraa province, located some 50km south of Damascus, according to the Local Coordination Committees activist network.

Air strike hits maternity hospital in Syria’s Idlib

The group said six people were killed in the strikes, blaming the government.

SOHR said the hospital strike killed a pharmacist and put the facility out of service.

Hospitals are regularly targeted in Syria’s war, drawing condemnation from the UN and rights groups.

The New York-based Physicians for Human Rights says over 90 percent of attacks on medical facilities in Syria have been carried out by pro-government forces.

“This is just one of many instances where hospitals have been targeted in Syria. And at some point we have to say this is enough and people have to be held to account,” Sanjayan Srikanthan, Deputy Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee, told Al Jazeera.

“Red lines have been declared by the international community and red lines have been ignored.”

{{Push for peace talks}}

In the capital, Damascus, Ramzy Ramzy, the UN’s deputy special envoy for Syria, reiterated the UN’s intent to resume talks between the government and the opposition in late August, saying he discussed a political transition process with Foreign Minister Walid Moallem.

The opposition has demanded that Assad step down and whether it will agree to have him stay in power during a transition period or beyond is a key sticking point in negotiations.

“The minister confirmed the intention of the Syrian government to participate in these talks once they are held,” said Ramzy.

De Mistura was simultaneously meeting with the Iranian deputy foreign minister in Tehran, a close ally of the Damascus government.

In Syria’s north, a US-backed, Kurdish-led fighting force managed to secure control of 40 percent of Manbij, a vital satellite for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group’s de facto capital in Raqqa, according to the SOHR.

The latest advance by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) opened the way for some 2,300 additional civilians to evacuate the town, the monitor said.

A spokesman for the SDF, Sherfan Darwish, said between 40,000 and 50,000 civilians have been released from ISIL controlled areas over the course of the battle for the town, now entering its third month. He said the SDF controlled nearly three-quarters of Manbij.

De Mistura estimated in April that 400,000 people have been killed in the five years of bloody civil war.

{At least one policeman killed in attack targeting heavily guarded hotel close to Kabul’s international airport.}

Three Taliban attackers and one policeman are dead after an attack on Kabul’s Northgate Hotel, just days after the deadliest attack in Kabul for 15 years.

Three policemen were wounded during a battle with insurgents as they tried to enter the hotel through a gap made when they detonated a truck filled with explosives, General Abdul Rahman Rahimi, head of Kabul police, said.

“Two of our police patrols got to the scene immediately after the initial blast,” General Rahimi said.

The Taliban failed to enter Northgate, a facility providing life-support services to foreign military personnel in the Afghan capital.

TOLO News, Afghanistan’s first 24-hour broadcaster, said all staff and guests at the hotel were accounted for and unharmed.

It said the attack and ensuing operation was over and that three Taliban fighters were killed. One died in the explosion and two others were shot dead.

Tremors from the massive truck bombing, which was preceded by a power outage, were felt across the city.

Regular and special police units started clearing operations at dawn and killed both the remaining attackers.

“No harm or casualties were inflicted to national or foreign residents within Northgate,” Rahimi said, but added that police were still investigating whether any civilians had been injured by the blast.

A statement from the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which it said had caused “dozens of casualties”, and added its fighters had entered the compound.

Northgate, close to the US-run Bagram air base north of Kabul, is a heavily guarded compound with blast walls and watchtowers.

Foreign guesthouses have been a regular target of insurgent attacks since the Taliban began their war to topple the Kabul government.

The attack comes after twin bombings left 80 people dead in the Afghan capital on July 23, in the deadliest attack in the city since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001.

After the attack, Afghan security forces closed off streets around the site, which is east of Kabul’s main international airport and on the way to the sprawling Bagram air base north of the capital.