Tag: InternationalNews

{Nearly 70,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, are being denied food and water by Jordanian authorities.}

More than 30,000 Syrian children are facing starvation in Jordan after authorities in Amman suspended life-saving food and medical aid to refugees living along its northeastern border with Syria.

Between 60,000-70,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, have been denied access to food and safe drinking water during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a period of fasting from dusk till dawn, after Jordanian authorities blocked emergency aid supplies to an area known as the “berm” last month following an attack by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Shortly after the attack, Jordan declared the porous border area, which houses the sprawling Rukban refugee camp, a “closed military zone”, and warned that any movement in the area would be treated “without leniency”, despite pleas by aid and humanitarian groups that this would put the lives of refugees at risk.

At a time of year when temperatures can exceed 35C, Al Jazeera has learned that harsh conditions in the camp have forced some Syrians to head back to Syria.

“We’re getting terrible stories of people deciding to go back into Syria because of the appalling conditions they are facing in this desolate and remote desert area,” Gerry Simpson, a senior refugee researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

“What these people need right now is water and food … Jordan has blocked all food and medical aid to these people – over half of whom are children. Jordan has allowed a limited amount of water, but that is nowhere near enough.”

The medical aid charity Doctors Without Borders called the situation a “massive failure of the international community” and warned of increasing cases of malnutrition.

Of the 1,300 children under five years old in the area that it screened for malnutrition, 204 were suffering from moderate malnutrition and 10 were severely malnourished.

It also said that 24.7 percent of the children seen by medical teams had acute diarrhoea.

There are an estimated 650,000 Syrian refugees registered by the United Nations in Jordan, and the country’s northern border is the only access point through which they can enter the country.

“Jordan isn’t the only country that is treating Syrian refugees this way,” Simpson said. “Turkey has closed its border for a year and half now, and shoots at asylum seekers as they try and cross. Lebanon has severely restricted access and so Syrians aren’t able to escape there either.

“Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey are all trapping Syrians inside this awful crucible of war. The International Community, particularly the European Union should be doing far more to reassure these counties that they are going to take in more Syrians and resettle them out of the region – thereby giving Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey no excuse but to continue to protect these vulnerable people,” he added.

Jordan already has a large refugee population with more than 300,000 Palestinians living in refugee camps. Many Iraqis also sought refuge in Jordan following the 2003 US-led invasion and occupation, and since the emergence of ISIL.

{Israeli leaders call for expansion of settlements in West Bank as two Palestinians and an Israeli killed on Friday.}

Two Palestinians and an Israeli settler have been killed in the occupied West Bank, as Israeli leaders threaten to build more Jewish-only settlements in the territory.

Tayseer Habash, a 63-year-old Palestinian from the Nablus area, died on Friday due to excessive tear gas inhalation, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health.

The incident took place at the Qalandia checkpoint near Ramallah as Israeli troops fired tear gas during clashes with Palestinian youth.

“There were lots of people because it’s the last Friday of Ramadan,” Erab al-Fuqaha of the Palestinian Red Crescent told Al Jazeera by telephone. “There was some pushing, and the Israelis fired a lot of tear gas.”

In a video posted on social media by the Activestills collective photo agency, Israeli soldiers are seen hitting Palestinians with batons, throwing sound grenades, firing tear gas canisters and threatening to “use force”.

In the southern West Bank city of Hebron, a Palestinian woman was shot dead by Israeli forces during an alleged stabbing attempt, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld wrote on Twitter.

Outside Otniel, a nearby illegal Israeli settlement, an Israeli man died and three of his relatives were injured when their car flipped after allegedly coming under fire by a Palestinian assailant on Friday afternoon, Israeli media reported.

Although unable to comment on the Qalandia clashes, an Israeli spokesperson told Al Jazeera the three people injured in the crash near the settlement were evacuated to a hospital.

“Forces are now searching the area for the assailant,” the spokesperson said by phone on Friday afternoon.

Threats

Friday’s violence came just a day after a Palestinian teen was shot dead after entering the Kiryat Arba settlement near Hebron and stabbing to death Hallel Yafa Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli girl.

Within hours, Israeli forces blockaded Bani Naim, the assailant’s village near Hebron, activist Issa Amro told Al Jazeera on Thursday night.

On Friday, the Middle East “Quartet” – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – published a report calling on Israel to stop building settlements.

Israel’s policy of usurping Palestinian land in order to expand existing settlements and build new ones “is steadily eroding the viability of the two-state solution”, the Quartet said in the report.

Yet, at the girl’s funeral in Kiryat Arba on Friday afternoon, several Israeli politicians vowed to expand Jewish-only settlements across the occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli media reported.

Referring to areas in the West Bank and present-day Israel, Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a member of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, said: “We will build in Sarona and Kiryat Arba, in Jaffa and Jerusalem, in Itamar and Beersheba.”

Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, the girl’s cousin and a key figure in the Israeli settlement movement, said building settlements was needed “now more than ever” and called for “Israeli sovereignty” in the West Bank.

Yehuda Glick, a far-right Israeli politician, called for Israel to annex the West Bank and Jewish-Israelis to increase their excursions into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third holiest site for Muslims.

More than 530,000 Israelis live in settlements – considered illegal under international law – across the West Bank, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem.

{Fighters target police academy near the capital Kabul killing at least 27 recruits and wounding 40 others.}

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for an attack on a police academy near the capital, Kabul, that killed dozens of recruits.

At least 27 people were killed and another 40 wounded in the suicide blasts, a government official told the Reuters news agency.

Mousa Rahmati, the district governor of Paghman, told the Associated Press that Thursday’s attack took place around 20km west of Kabul.

He said the trainee police officers were returning from a training centre in Wardak province and were heading to the capital on leave.

The Taliban said it was behind the attack in an email sent to The Associated Press by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

Former Afghan parliamentarian Daoud Sultanzoy said the death toll in the “very well coordinated and pre-planned” attack was expected to go up.

“This attacker and the group had enough information to conduct this atrocity in a well-planned manner,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the recent increase in attacks was a sign of Taliban desperation.

“The Taliban, we should expect that they will increase their attacks because they’re suffering in the war front, their commanders are being killed, their activities are being hampered in a very major way by our security forces.”

The attack is the latest major assault by the group and comes just nine days after 14 Nepali security guards were killed in a suicide bomb attack on their minibus, also in the city.

{Three foreign nationals prime suspects for airport killings as Turkish officials say evidence points to ISIL.}

The three suicide bombers in the deadly gun and bomb attack on Istanbul’s international airport were from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, a Turkish government official has said.

The official gave no further details beyond confirming the attackers’ nationalities and declined to be named because details of the investigation have not yet been released.

Forensics teams had been struggling to identify the bombers from their limited remains, officials said earlier.

The three bombers opened fire to create panic outside, before two of them got inside the terminal building and blew themselves up.

The third detonated his explosives at the entrance. At least 43 people, including 19 foreigners, were killed, and further 239 others were wounded.

Turkish police also rounded up 13 suspects over the airport attack, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Police carried out simultaneous raids at 16 addresses in Istanbul on Tuesday night, Anadolu reported, adding that three of the suspects were foreigners.

The raids against suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) cells were launched in Istanbul and the Aegean coastal city of Izmir.

{{Dawn raids}}

Turkish authorities and US officials believe ISIL, also known as ISIS, was responsible for the gun and bomb attack on Europe’s third-busiest airport, the deadliest in a series of suicide bombings in Turkey this year.

Counterterrorism police led by special forces officers carried out raids in several low-income neighbourhoods of Istanbul – including Pendik, Basaksehir and Sultanbeyli – Anadolu said, without citing its sources.

Nine suspected fighters, thought to have been in contact with ISIL members in Syria, were arrested in dawn raids in four districts of Izmir, the news agency said.

It said they were accused of financing, recruiting and providing logistical support to the hardline group.

Turkey is part of a US-led military coalition against ISIL and home to around three million refugees fleeing the five-year civil war in neighbouring Syria.

ISIL has established a self-declared caliphate in parts of both Syria and Iraq, and declared war on all non-Muslims and on Muslims who do not accept its version of Islam. It has claimed responsibility for similar attacks in Belgium and France in the past year.

Al Jazeera’s Reza Sayah, reporting from Istanbul, said that the attack “does bear all the hallmarks of ISIL”, but added Turkish and international officials had not yet provided evidence “connecting the dots”.

“This kind of reaction in the past has not been able to stop attacks,” he said. “Moving forward, as far as the Turkish population is concerned, they want to see an improvement in intelligence gathering.”

{Israeli forces have surrounded the village of Bani Naim in response to a deadly stabbing in a nearby Hebron settlement.}

Israeli forces have blockaded a Palestinian village in the southern West Bank just hours after a teenage settler was allegedly stabbed to death by a Palestinian in a nearby settlement.

“Israeli forces have begun a full siege on the village of Bani Naim,” Issa Amro, a Hebron-based human rights activist and founder of Youth Against Settlements in Hebron, told Al Jazeera.

The village, just east of Hebron city in the southern West Bank, is home to the alleged assailant, 17-year-old Muhammad Nasser Tarayra.

Tarayra was shot and killed on Thursday after “infiltrating” the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba and stabbing a 13-year-old girl to death, according to an Israeli spokeswoman.

The girl, identified as Hallel Yafa Ariel, later died from her wounds in hospital.

“They [Israeli authorities] are threatening to revoke the family’s permits to work in Israel, and they’ve arrested the boy’s father,” Amro said.

Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab, reporting from Jerusalem, said Israeli authorities had also “begun discussions as to whether they will demolish the home of the suspected attacker”.

Amro in Hebron said an obligatory curfew had been imposed across the city’s entire H2 area, the portion of the Palestinian city under full Israeli control. Israeli forces had also erected an additional 20 checkpoints.

“It is supposed to end this evening, but who really knows,” said Amro, referring to the curfew which began at 5pm.

The Israeli army has also reportedly closed down the adjacent section of Road 60, a major north-south highway that runs through the southern West Bank and into present day Israel.

Human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Israel’s punitive measures against Palestinian communities in the wake of attacks, and say they constitute “collective punishment”.

Amro denounced the killing but said the Israeli occupation was to blame.

“We are against this killing as Palestinians, but it must be understood that Netanyahu and the Israeli government are responsible at the end of the day. They’re using their kids as human shields to take Palestinian land,” he said.

“This kid wanted to attack the settlement, but the occupation is responsible for killing him and for the death of this young girl.”

The girl was the cousin of Uri Ariel, an Israeli cabinet minister affiliated with the West Bank settler movement.
The Kiryat Arba, located in Hebron, the West Bank’s most populous city, is home to a few hundred Jewish settlers who live under heavy army guard and among several hundred thousand Palestinians.

Settlements are considered illegal under international law and are a major sticking point in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

{Shaymanonda Das killed in front of temple south west of capital Dhaka, police say, in latest in spate of attacks.}

A Hindu priest has been hacked to death at a temple in Bangladesh, police and senior administrative officials said.

Shaymanonda Das, 45, was killed on Friday in the Jhinaidah district, 300km south west of the capital, Dhaka.

“He was preparing morning prayers with flowers at the temple early in the morning and three young people came by on a motorbike, killed him with machetes and fled away,” Mahbubur Rahman, the head of the local administration, said.

“The nature of killing was similar with the local militants, but we cannot say more at the moment,” Mahbubur told the Reuters news agency.

Police said they did not know the motive behind the killing and that a local member of the Jamaat-e-Islami group had been arrested.

Al Jazeera’s Maher Sattar, reporting from Dhaka, said the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and al-Qaeda have claimed responsibility for some of the recent killings but officials rejected those groups have a role in the violence.

“The characteristics of the murder; three men on a motor cycle, hacking to death, these are similar to a number of attacks that have taken place in Bangladesh over the past few years. They have been claimed by either ISIL or al-Qaeda’s branch in the sub-continent, so far there’s been no such claim yet,” he said.

“Police reject those claims, they say all these murders have been the work of homegrown violent groups.

“Hindus are the largest minority group in Bangladesh and comprise about nine percent of the population.”

“But this is a number that has dwindled since Bangladesh was formed and many Hindus we’ve been told have tried to make their way to India or are thinking about what their future might be.”

Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority nation of 160 million people, has seen a surge in violent attacks in recent months on liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups.

{PM Binali Yildirim says suicide bombers who killed at least 41 at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport likely linked to ISIL.}

Turkey has declared a day of national mourning after three suicide bombers attacked Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport, killing at least 41 people and wounding 239.

The attackers arrived at Ataturk, Europe’s third-busiest airport, late on Tuesday evening where they opened fire before blowing themselves up.

The Turkish government ordered flags to be flown at half-mast on Wednesday, as investigators pored over video footage and witness statements.

Turkish officials said that 23 of the dead were Turkish, and 13 were foreign, including five Saudis and two Iraqis. Citizens from China, Jordan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Iran and Ukraine were also among the 13 foreigners killed.

The Istanbul governor’s office said 109 of the 239 people hospitalised had since been discharged.

“This attack, targeting innocent people, is a vile, planned terrorist act,” Prime Minister Binali Yildirim told reporters at the scene in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“The findings of our security forces point at the Daesh organisation as the perpetrators of this terror attack,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack and Yildirim said efforts to identify the attackers, who arrived at the airport in two taxis, were continuing.

The attackers opened fire at airport guards at the terminal entrance, and a shootout erupted before they blew themselves up one by one at around 10pm (19:00 GMT), authorities said.
Security camera footage shared on social media appeared to capture two of the blasts. In one clip, a huge ball of flame erupts at an entrance to the terminal building, scattering terrified passengers.

Another video shows a black-clad attacker running inside the building before collapsing to the ground – apparently felled by a police bullet – and blowing himself up.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a “joint fight” against terror after the attack.

“If states, as all humanity, fail to join forces and wage a joint fight against terrorist organisations, all the possibilities that we dread in our minds will come true one by one,” he said in a statement.

“It is clear that this attack is not aimed at achieving any result but only to create propaganda material against our country using simply the blood and pain of innocent people.”

One of the attackers “randomly opened fire” as he walked through the terminal building, shortly before three explosions, a witness told Reuters.

“We came right to international departures and saw the man randomly shooting. He was just firing at anyone coming in front of him. He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was 50 metres away from him,” said Paul Roos, 77, a South African tourist on his way back to Cape Town with his wife.

“We ducked behind a counter but I stood up and watched him. Two explosions went off shortly after one another. By that time he had stopped shooting,” Roos said.

“He turned around and started coming towards us. He was holding his gun inside his jacket. He looked around anxiously to see if anyone was going to stop him and then went down the escalator … We heard some more gunfire and then another explosion, and then it was over.”

Ataturk Airport is one of the busiest ports in the world, serving more than 60 million passengers in 2015.

There has been a string of bombings around Turkey over the past year, some of them blamed on ISIL, others claimed by Kurdish groups.

Earlier in June, at least 11 people were killed in central Istanbul following a bombing attack targeting a police vehicle.

The armed group Kurdistan Freedom Hawks, also known by its Kurdish-language acronym TAK, claimed responsibility for that attack.

{Up to 2,000 Canadians, among them children, are believed to be on the no-fly list.}

Toronto, Canada – The families of children whose names are on Canada’s no-fly list are “cautiously optimistic” after Ottawa has set up a review office to investigate complaints about the list and any errors on it.

Canada has established an Inquiries Office “to better deal with false name matches” on its no-fly list, known as the Passenger Protect Programme, the Canadian government announced earlier this month.

That is welcome news for Khadeeja Cajee, whose seven-year-old son, Syed Adam Ahmed, has faced delays at airports and additional security checks since he was a toddler because his name is on the list.

“Now that we have this process in place it gives us a little bit of peace of mind,” Cajee told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

“Previously, I would have worried that when he turned 18 or when he was an adult and he wanted to travel by himself … how much hassle would he have to go through just to make it through security?”

Ahmed’s case gained international attention last December when the youngster was delayed as he attempted to board a flight to the US with his father, Sulemaan Ahmed, to attend a hockey game.

That’s when the family first got confirmation that their son was on the “Deemed High Profile” list. They have since led a campaign to have their son and 44 other Canadian children – dubbed the “No-Fly List Kids” – removed from the list.

The new system will allow individuals whose names match those on the no-fly list to get a unique identification number to use when buying a plane ticket to avoid delays at the airport.

The changes are under way, but the Canadian government said they could take up to 18 months to fully implement.

Up to 2,000 Canadians are believed to be on the no-fly list, but up until this point, Canadians had no channel through which they could direct complaints or request that their names be removed.

“Eliminating false positives in airport security screening is complex, but we are committed to a long-term solution through a domestic redress system,” Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Ralph Goodale, said in a statement.

‘Equal and fair opportunity’

Cajee said she is waiting to see what the final changes to Canada’s no-fly list will look like, and said she is looking forward to her son having the ability to travel freely.

“I’m cautiously optimistic that he will have an equal and fair opportunity to travel just like any other innocent person should have the right to do,” she said.

In March, the Canadian government also announced the creation of a Canada-US Redress Working Group, which would allow both countries to share information to tackle errors on the list.

Ottawa has admitted that having the same or a similar name to individuals on the US no-fly lists has resulted in delays and difficulty flying for innocent Canadians. In some cases, Canadians have faced problems flying within the country because of their inclusion on the US no-fly list.

Gadeir Abbas, a lawyer with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has represented individuals on the US “terrorist” watch list, a component of which is on the US no-fly list.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Abbas said that the US already shares information from its federal “terrorist” watch list – which has hundreds of thousands of names on it – with dozens of foreign countries, including Canada.

“It appears, in my experience, [that] if you have a watch-listing issue in the US, you’ll have a watch-listing issue in Canada, as well,” Abbas said.

Abbas said that even if Canada resolves the problems with its domestic no-fly list, there are no guarantees that other countries with access to that information will do the same. That means that being placed on the list can have long-standing consequences.

“There is no technical fix to the watch list; it just needs to be ended,” Abbas said. “I hope that Canada doesn’t follow the United States’ terrible example in creating an oppressive system that actually makes us less safe.”

{Brigadier-General Hameed al-Qushaibi was captured by Houthis in July 2014 and later killed.}

The assassination of a prominent Yemeni brigadier-general by Houthi fighters was ordered by high-ranking rebel commanders, according to audio recordings recently obtained by Al Jazeera.

Brigadier-General Hameed al-Qushaibi, who was head of the Yemeni army’s Brigade 310, was captuerd in July 2014 and shot dead by eight Houthi gunmen in Amran, a city situated around 50 kilometres north of Sanaa.

The recordings include phone conversations believed to be between several influential Houthi military leaders, including field commander Youssef al-Madani and military commander Abu Ali al-Hakim.

Both Madani and Hakim were reportedly killed in air strikes launched by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen in 2015.

During the phone conversations, it is revealed that the Houthi rebels viewed Qushaibi’s assassination as revenge for the 2004 killing of the group’s founder, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi.

In one conversation which appears to be between Houthi commander Abdullah al-Hasani and Madani, the former informs the latter that fighters had already killed Qushaibi.

Madani asks Hasani if he was certain that the man they killed was Qushaibi, to which he replies: “We’ve cut him into pieces.”

Explaining that they also shot several of Qushaibi’s fighters, Hasani adds, “I knew him.”

The conversations show that the Houthi leadership decided to conceal the truth about who killed the general, instead planning to claim he committed suicide.

A coalition of Arab countries launched an air campaign in March 2015 to push back the Houthis, but the rebels still control the capital and many parts of the country.

The Houthis, who claim to champion the interests of the beleaguered Zaidi Shia community, say they are fighting to defend themselves against marginalisation.

About 9,000 people have been killed in Yemen since the intervention began, the majority of them civilians, according to United Nations figures. The fighting has also driven 2.8 million people from their homes.

At least 14 million Yemenis, more than half of the country’s population, are in need of emergency food and life-saving assistance in order to prevent impending famine in almost half of Yemen’s 22 provinces, according to a report this month by the UN and the Yemeni government.

The 15-month conflict has taken a horrifying toll on the country’s youth, with UNICEF warning that an estimated 320,000 children face life-threatening malnutrition.