Tag: InternationalNews

{The bombing at the prophet’s mosque killed four security officers and came on same day as attacks in Qatif and Jeddah.}

Saudi Arabia has arrested 12 Pakistanis and seven Saudis in connection with the suicide bombing on the prophet’s mosque in the city of Medina and other attacks in Jeddah and Qatif.

Saudi Arabia said a suicide bomber who attacked the prophet’s mosque in the city of Medina on Monday was a 26-year-old Saudi citizen with a history of drug abuse.

Naer Muslim Hamad crossed a parking lot next to the mosque and detonated an explosive belt, killing four soldiers, the state news agency SPA quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying.

The statement also named three individuals it said carried out attacks on Monday in Qatif. It said none of them had obtained Saudi IDs.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has vowed that his government will “strike with an iron fist”.

“The kingdom is fully determined to strike with an iron fist all those who aim at the minds or ideas of our dear young people,” Salman said on Tuesday, in an address to the nation for the Islamic feast of Eid al-Fitr.

The Medina attack, 24 hours before the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, drew condemnation from Muslim leaders worldwide.

A bombing near the US consulate in Jeddah on the same day killed only the attacker, and no casualties other than the bomber have been reported in Qatif.

The Saudi interior ministry identified the Jeddah attacker as Abdullah Waqar Khan, a Pakistani national in his early 30s. In a tweet, the ministry said that Khan, a driver, had moved to Jeddah 12 years ago to live with his wife and her parents.

Pakistan said on Tuesday that it was going to investigate whether the suicide bomber in Jeddah was one of its nationals.

Many observers suspect the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) of being behind the bombings.

The armed group, which controls areas of eastern Syria and northern Iraq, has frequently denounced the Saudi monarchy and has claimed previous attacks on Shia mosques in Qatif and elsewhere in the kingdom.

The group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s car bomb attack on a shopping street in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in which more than 200 people were killed.

{At least five officers shot dead as protest over police killings of black men drew to close, police say.}

At least five police officers have been shot dead in the United States at protests over recent police killings of black men.

The Dallas Police Department said on Twitter: “It has been a devastating night. We are sad to report a fifth officer has died.”

At least three of those killed were shot by what appeared to be sniper fire, police said.

Addressing the media, Dallas police chief David O Brown said the force was in negotiation with one suspect, and that gunfire was being exchanged on the second storey of a central parking garage. That suspect, he added, was “not being very cooperative”.

Three other people were in custody, he said, including a woman.

“The suspect we are negotiating with … has told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement, and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown, so we are being very careful with our tactics,” Brown said.

“We still don’t have a complete comfort level that we have all the suspects.”

Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from Dallas, said: “This [the standoff] is right in the heart of downtown Dallas. The march happened at what’s called the Belo Garden Park. It’s a little green space surrounded by tall office buildings where the communities have rallies of this type. The parking garage overlooks that park.”

Gunfire broke out late on Thursday during an otherwise peaceful protest over two recent police killings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.The sound of gunfire sent marchers running and police scrambling for cover.

{{Reports said hundreds attended the protests.}}

Brown said two gunmen shot at police officers from “elevated positions”, hitting at least 11 of them. At least three of the wounded were in a critical condition, he said.

Firefighters and police were keeping people away as dozens of police cars with their lights flashing converged at the scene.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction over the city.

US President Barack Obama was being briefed on the shooting of police officers, while on a visit to Poland for a NATO summit, the White House said.

{{‘Everyone started running’}}

“Everyone just started running,” Devante Odom, 21, told The Dallas Morning News. “We lost touch with two of our friends just trying to get out of there.”

Carlos Harris, who lives downtown, told the newspaper that the gunmen “were strategic. It was tap tap pause. Tap tap pause.”

Video footage from the scene showed protesters marching along a street in the city centre, about half a mile from City Hall, when the shots erupted and the crowd scattered, seeking cover.

Brown, the police chief, said that it appeared the attackers “planned to injure and kill as many officers as they could”.

{{Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for unity.}}

“In times like this we must remember – and emphasise – the importance of uniting as Americans,” he said, in a statement.

The search stretched throughout downtown, an area of hotels, restaurants, businesses and some residential apartments. The scene was chaotic, with helicopters hovering overhead and officers with automatic rifles on the street corners.

Speaking ahead of the violence, Robert James, an organiser of the protest, told Al Jazeera he had expected fewer people to attend.

“I thought this was going to be me and 300 friends … I, like everyone else, felt like I couldn’t sit back,” he said, referring to the two recent killings of black men by police. “It’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

‘What do we want? Justice!’

The protests in Dallas were among several across the country that were held after a Minnesota officer on Wednesday fatally shot Philando Castile, a black American, while he was in a car with his partner Diamond Reynolds and her daughter in a St. Paul suburb.

Reynolds livestreamed the aftermath of the shooting in a widely shared Facebook video.

A day earlier, Alton Sterling was shot in Louisiana after being pinned to the pavement by two white officers. That, too, was captured on a mobile phone video.

Other protests across the US on Thursday were peaceful.

In midtown Manhattan, protesters first gathered in Union Square Park where they chanted “The people united, never be divided!” and “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”

In Minnesota, where Castile was shot, hundreds of protesters marched in the rain from a vigil to the governor’s official residence. Protesters also marched in Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia.

{Report says the country’s prison camps commonly subject many of the 120,000 detainees to torture, assault and execution.}

The United States government has imposed sanctions for the first time on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, accusing him of being directly responsible for a long list of human rights abuses in his country.

In announcing the sanctions on Wednesday, the US Department of Treasury said Kim and 10 other top officials were behind the killing and torture of political prisoners in the country’s system of political prison camps.

“Under Kim Jong-Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labour, and torture,” said Adam Szubin, the acting Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

The Treasury said Kim, North Korea’s Supreme Leader, was responsible for abuses in his roles as head of the country’s Ministry of State Security and Ministry of People’s Security.

According to officials in Washington, North Korea’s Ministry of State Security holds between 80,000 to 120,000 prisoners in political prison camps where torture, execution, sexual assault, starvation and slave labour are common.

The US also alleged that another ministry overseen by Kim runs a network of police stations, detention centres and labour camps, where suspects under interrogation “are systematically degraded, intimidated and tortured”.

{{Top officials named}}

Authorities in Washington for the first time identified other top officials directly involved in rights abuses, including Choe Pu Il, the minister of people’s security, Ri Song Chol, a senior official in the Ministry of People’s Security, and Kang Song Nam, a bureau director with the Ministry of State Security.

Treasury official Tom Malinowski, who oversees human rights and labour issues, said that many of the people on the list had not been previously known.

“This won’t bring any sort of dramatic change, but lifting anonymity of these functionaries will make them think twice when they consider and act of cruelty or oppression,” Malinowski said.

Another senior US official said that naming the specific officials involved would help strip the anonymity under which they carry out systematic abuses.

US officials said they do not expect immediate consequences from the designations, which freeze the assets on US territory of those named and forbid Americans from doing business with them.

However, they said there is evidence in North Korea that an increasing number of people are aware of the extent of abuses.

They said identifying the abuses and those responsible, could encourage North Koreans hoping for a change in the country’s political leadership.

{Inquiry into Britain’s role finds the consequences of Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 were underestimated.}

Britain decided to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on “flawed intelligence” which was not challenged and should have been, a long-awaited report has found.

John Chilcot, the chairman of the Iraq Inquiry and a retired civil servant, said on Wednesday that the invasion went “badly wrong”.

“Military action in Iraq might have been necessary at some point, but in March 2003, there was no immediate threat from [then Iraq President] Saddam Hussein,” he said, speaking 30 minutes before the report’s offical publication.

The 2.6 million-word Iraq Inquiry, which took seven years to prepare, can be accessed in full online.

It said former prime minister Tony Blair committed to war before peaceful options had been exhausted and that the legality of his case was questionable.

Blair “set the UK on a path leading to diplomatic activity in the UN and the possibility of participation in military action in a way that would make it very difficult for the UK subsequently to withdraw its support for the US,” the report concluded.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from London, said: “[Chilcot’s remarks were] about as damning as you can possibility get without explicitly saying that war in Iraq was illegal.”

Blair “set the UK on a path leading to diplomatic activity in the UN and the possibility of participation in military action in a way that would make it very difficult for the UK subsequently to withdraw its support for the US,” the report concluded.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from London, said: “[Chilcot’s remarks were] about as damning as you can possibility get without explicitly saying that war in Iraq was illegal.”

As Chilcot addressed media at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in west London, anti-war protesters gathered outside.

Before Britain entered the war 13 years ago, at least one million people had marched in the capital against a military invasion.

Current Prime Minister David Cameron, of the ruling Conservative Party, said the government needed to learn the lessons from what went wrong in the build-up to Britain’s joining the invasion of Iraq. He added that he has put in place steps to avoid similar problems.

“Military intervention is always difficult, planning for the aftermath of intervention, that is always difficult and I don’t think in this House we should be naive in any way that there’s a perfect set of plans … that can solve these problems in perpetuity.”

{{‘Never again’}}

The families of British troops killed in the Iraq conflict said Britain should use the Chilcot report to ensure the country never made such grave mistakes again.

In a statement, a group of families who had access to the report’s executive summary said that “never again must so many mistakes be allowed to sacrifice British lives and lead to the destruction of a country for no positive end”.

The sister of one killed serviceman, Sarah O’Connor, said the report confirmed there was one “terrorist” that the world needed to know about, “and that is Tony Blair”.

The military families have long pushed for the inquiry and for those responsible for Britain’s involvement to be held accountable.

The Iraq Inquiry had previously faced repeatedly delays, in part by wrangling over the inclusion of classified material, including conversations between Blair and former US President George W Bush. Some of Blair’s pre-war letters to the US president are published in Chilcot’s report, but not Bush’s replies.

The report was released as Iraq reeled from the deadliest attack since the 2003 invasion.

Early on Sunday, a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-rigged lorry in Baghdad’s Karada district as it teemed with shoppers before the holiday marking the end of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, sparking infernos in nearby buildings.

At least 250 people died in the blast, including many children and women.

The bombing was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

{Bombs hurled and gunfire exchanged at gathering of 200,000 people in the northern Kishoreganj district.}

At least two policeman have been killed and five others wounded after a small bomb blew up near a mass Eid prayer congregation in northern Bangladesh, officials said.

At least 200,000 people were gathered near a school in the northern Kishoreganj district when the bomb exploded on the premises of the school on Thursday, according to police and local media.

There were reports of exchanges of gunfire at the scene.

The private Somoy TV station broadcast footage of a gunfight between police and a group of attackers and reported the policeman had been hacked to death.

“They threw a bomb at a police checkpost. A police constable was killed in the explosion. One attacker was killed and another was arrested,” Mahbubur Rahman, a police officer in the district control room, told the AFP news agency.

“The congregation was not affected by the clashes,” Azimuddin Biswas, the district administrator, told AFP.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Al Jazeera’s Maher Sattar, reporting from the capital Dhaka, said large gatherings for the Eid prayers were usually organised with donations from organisations and wealthy business people.

“They usually have very good security because they are such large gatherings,” he said. “They are one of the best protected events in the country.”

The incident comes days after 20 hostages were killed – many of them hacked to death – during a 12-hour siege at a popular restaurant in an upscale suburb of Dhaka.

It was one of the deadliest attacks ever in Bangladesh, where al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group have made competing claims for a series of killings in the past year.

The government has dismissed those statements and insists the violence is homegrown.

{As probe into death of black father of five gathers pace, more footage emerges of moment he was killed by police.}

Protests have grown in the US over the killing of Alton Sterling, a black man who was shot dead by white police in Louisiana, as an investigation into his death was announced.

Hundreds gathered in Baton Rouge on Wednesday night, a day after Sterling was wrestled to the ground by two officers and killed outside a shop as he sold CDs – an incident filmed with a mobile phone.

The rallies came as more mobile phone footage alleged to be of the incident emerged, and as the United States Justice Department said it would investigate the killing.

Many carried signs to express their anger and demand for justice, blocking streets near the shop where Sterling, a father of five, died.

Demonstrators chanted “black lives matter” and “hands up don’t shoot”.

Protesters and friends of Sterling had earlier erected a makeshift memorial on the white folding tables and fold-out chair he had used to sell mixtape CDs.

Sandra Augustus, an aunt who helped raise Sterling after his mother died, spoke to the crowds with a broken voice.

She said a second video that emerged on Wednesday showing the moments before her nephew was shot had left her angry.

She pleaded for protesters and those gathered not to allow the vigil to be marred by violence.

Shortly after speaking, Augustus and another aunt of Sterling’s fainted in the heat and commotion. They were carried away by family members.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and the US Justice Department announced on Wednesday afternoon that there would be an investigation by the department’s civil rights division.

{{‘Man with a gun’}}

Baton Rouge police spokesman, L’Jean McKneely, told local media that officers had responded to an anonymous call that said there was a man in the area with a gun.

Louisiana is an “open carry state”, meaning that with some exceptions adults can be armed if the gun is visible.

The owner of the shop outsied of which Sterling worked, Abdul Muflahi, told local TV that the first officer to arrive to the scene had used a stun gun on Sterling and the second officer tackled the man. As Sterling fought to get the officer off of him, the first officer shot him “four to six times”.

In the footage circulated online five shots can be heard.

The store owner said Sterling did not have a gun in his hand at the time, but he saw officers remove a gun from Sterling’s pocket after the shooting.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. called Sterling’s death a “horrible tragedy” and said there were still questions about what happened.

Quinyetta Mcmillon, the mother of Sterling’s 15-year-old son addressed media, saying: “As a mother, I have now been forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father.”

Community leaders said they did not trust the police and demanded answers.

The head of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in Baton Rouge, Michael McCalahan, called for the police chief to be fired.

“We are going to turn the entire case over to the US Attorneys office and the FBI to conduct the investigation from this point,” he said, shortly after the announcement.

“What we’re going to do today is root out the one percent of bad police officers that go around becoming the judge, the jury and the executioner of innocent people. Period. But more specifically, innocent black lives,” McCalahan said.

Mobile phone footage

Footage of the moment Sterling was killed , which cannot be verified by Al Jazeera, contains images some readers may find distressing.

The 48-second video shows two police officers pushing Sterling down to the ground. One officer is seen pressing his head against the ground. There are shouts of “Get on the f*****g ground!” and “If you move, I swear to f*****g God!”. Then, at least five shots can be heard.

Seconds after the gunshots end, as blood pours from Sterling’s ailing body, an officer can be heard saying “F***!” and, speaking into a radio, “Shots fired! Shots fired!”.

Reports said Sterling died minutes later, as paramedics arrived on the scene.

An autopsy showed that Sterling died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back, according to East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner Dr William Clark.

John Bel Edwards, an attorney and current Governor of Louisiana, announced that the US Justice Department investigation would be carried out by the department’s civil rights division. Edwards said the video of Sterling’s death is “disturbing, to say the least”.

The Justice Department’s investigation will look into whether the officers willfully violated Alton Sterling’s civil rights through the use of unreasonable or excessive force.

{Three of the suspects were handed up to 16-year prison terms for alleged role in 2015 attack plot in Belgium.}

A Belgian court has found 15 people guilty of participating in the activities of a “terror cell”, and gave several of them prison sentences of up to 16 years, the Belga news agency reported.

Marouane El Bali, who survived a gunfight in January 2015 when police shot dead two armed men, was given 16 years in prison on Tuesday, as were two other members of the cell, Mohammed Arshad Mahmood Najmi and Souhaib El Abdi.

Judge Pierre Hendrickx said El Bali was in touch with leading figures of armed groups in Syria and was involved in tactical discussions.

Others received lesser sentences ranging from eight years in prison to a 30-month suspended sentence.

One man accused with the attempted murder of police officers was acquitted of that charge, due to doubts about whether he had used a weapon against them.

Nine of the suspects were sentenced in absentia.

Belga had initially reported that 16 people had been convicted, but later noted that the court had postponed its verdict on one suspect who was absent for medical reasons.

The suspects have also been linked to the men, who later staged attacks in Paris and Brussels.

Prosecutors alleged the suspects were members of an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) cell dismantled in a bloody raid in the Belgian town of Verviers in 2015.

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Brussels, said the nine other suspects sentenced in absentia are believed to be in Syria, our correspondent said.

Prosecutors said the men standing trial were in constant contact with ISIL through the leader of the Paris attacks in November, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and were planning an attack in Belgium.

“The cell in Verviers aimed for the bloodiest possible attacks using bombs and automatic weapons,” judge Hendrickx said.

“For Abaaoud and the Verviers cell the [Brussels] airport at Zaventem constituted a target,” Hendrickx said.

Abaaoud was shot dead in a gun battle with French police five days after the attacks in Paris.

Prosecutors described the Verviers cell as the “rough draft” of the cell that attacked Paris in November 2015. They said the group was under the orders of Abaaoud.

Shootings and bombings in the French capital on November 13 left 137 people dead, including seven attackers.

On March 22, three coordinated bombings at Brussels Airport in Zaventem and at a metro station killed 35 people, including three attackers.

{Muslim leaders worldwide denounce deadly attack near Prophet Muhammad’s tomb in Saudi Arabia’s Medina.}

The Muslim world has united to condemn a deadly attack at one of Islam’s holiest sites – the Prophet’s Mosque in the Saudi city of Medina.

Setting aside differences, world leaders, politicians, groups and activists expressed their outrage on Tuesday, a day after a suicide bomber killed at least four guards within striking distance of the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb.

The blast followed two more attacks, in Jeddah and Qatif, also on Monday.

A spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry described the triple bombings as “despicable acts that did not respect the sanctity of place, time and innocent people”.

Here are some of the reactions from around the world following the suicide attacks.

Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, condemned the bombing in Medina and called for Muslim unity.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry condemned the attacks, while its army chief telephoned Saudi Defence Minister Prince Muhammad bin Salman to express his support.

“We stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our Saudi brothers in fighting the menace of terrorism,” General Raheel said.

Melvut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, sent his condolences.

Cairo-based Al-Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, condemned the attacks and stressed “the sanctity of the houses of God, especially the Prophet’s Mosque”.

Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani, the foreign minister of Qatar, condemned the triple attacks and expressed Doha’s support to neighbouring Saudi Arabia following the explosions.

Saudi Arabia’s supreme council of clerics said the blasts “prove that those renegades … have violated everything that is sacred”.

Lebanon-based Shia group Hezbollah also denounced the Medina attack as “a new sign of the terrorists’ contempt for all that Muslims consider sacred”.

The governments of Jordan and Lebanon joined in the condemnation, while Iraq said the attacks amounted to “heinous crimes”.

Indian singer Adnan Sami expressed his sadness over the attack in one of the Muslim world’s most important sites.

{Monday’s Medina attack, which killed four policemen, followed suicide bombings in Jeddah and eastern city of Qatif.}

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has vowed that his government will “strike with an iron fist”, a day after a series of bombings hit the country.

Four security guards were killed on Monday outside the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Islam’s second holiest site, as suicide attackers also struck two other cities.

“The kingdom is fully determined to strike with an iron fist all those who aim at the minds or ideas of our dear young people,” Salman said on Tuesday, in an address to the nation for the Islamic feast of Eid al-Fitr.

The Medina attack, 24 hours before the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, drew condemnation from Muslim leaders worldwide.

The Al Saud ruling family considers itself the protectors of Islam’s holiest sites, Medina and Mecca.

Following the attack, Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz, Saudi’s crown prince who is spearheading the country’s anti-terror efforts, visited wounded victims, as he sought to reassure Saudis that the country’s security “is at its highest levels”.

“I know confronting terror operations is not simple. The simple repercussions you feel following the explosion will go away. I’ve been through this experience before and I [understand] how you feel,” Al Arabiya TV quoted him as saying.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack in Medina, or for two other suicide bombings the same day outside a Shia mosque in the eastern city of Qatif and near the US consulate in Jeddah.

The Jeddah bombing killed only the attacker, and no casualties other than the bomber have been reported in Qatif.

The Saudi interior ministry identified the Jeddah attacker as Abdullah Waqar Khan, a Pakistani national in his early 30s. In a tweet, the ministry said that Khan, a driver, had moved to Jeddah 12 years ago to live with his wife and her parents.

Pakistan said on Tuesday that it was going to investigate whether the suicide bomber in Jeddah was one of its nationals.

Many observers suspect the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) of being behind the bombings.

The armed group, which controls areas of eastern Syria and northern Iraq, has frequently denounced the Saudi monarchy and has claimed previous attacks on Shia mosques in Qatif and elsewhere in the kingdom.

The group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s car bomb attack on a shopping street in the Iraqi capital Baghdad in which more than 200 people were killed.