Tag: InternationalNews

{Suicide bombers posing as Iftar distributors kill at least 38 Yemeni soldiers and injure 24 in Yemen’s southeast.}

A wave of suicide bombings has killed at least 38 Yemeni soldiers in the country’s southeast, just as they were about to break their fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, local sources say.

Four bombings hit security checkpoints in the coastal city of Mukalla at sunset on Monday, the local news agency Mukalla Now said.

Fighters pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

According to the news agency, another 24 people, including women and children, were injured in the blasts, with the city’s main Ibn Sina Hospital broadcasting urgent appeals for blood donations.

A local journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al Jazeera the attackers were posing as distributors for the fast-breaking meal, Iftar, and carried out the bombings while handing out food to troops who had spent the day fasting.

He told Al Jazeera that one of the attackers detonated his suicide vest at a checkpoint in a western area of the city, while the other three attacks took place in downtown Mukalla.

The last blast caused the most damage, he said, as one of the attackers forced his way through to an area where the soldiers were preparing to eat before blowing himself up.

A security official told the AFP news agency that the dead troops were from the Hadhrami Elite units, a recently formed local force which, backed by Gulf troops, recaptured Mukalla from al-Qaeda in April.

Both ISIL and al-Qaeda have expanded operations during Yemen’s civil war, and have claimed responsibility for several bombings and suicide attacks in Mukalla and the southern port city of Aden.

But over the past few months months, government and Saudi-coalition forces have hit back, driving the armed fighters out of Mukalla, the capital of Hadramawt province, which al-Qaeda controlled for a year.

There has been mounting international pressure to end the war on Yemen, which the UN estimates has killed more than 6,400 people and displaced more than 2.8 million.

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.

It also estimates that 82 percent of the population is now in desperate need of humanitarian aid, with nearly half of Yemen’s 22 provinces on the verge of famine.

Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Gulf 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 beleaguered Zaidi Shia community, insist they are fighting to defend themselves against government aggression and marginalisation.

{Violence, intimidation and calls of “Go home” directed at minorities from Europeans in England to non-white Britons.}

Britain “will not tolerate intolerance”, the office of Prime Minister David Cameron has said, after a series of racist incidents were reported following its decision to leave the European Union.

Number 10 Downing Street came out on Monday with the warning, less than a week after the country voted to leave the EU in a referendum.

“We should be absolutely clear that this government will not tolerate intolerance … intimidating migrants, telling them they need to go home,” Cameron’s spokeswoman told journalists.

The Polish Embassy in London earlier said it was “shocked and deeply concerned” by incidents of abuse directed at Poles and other eastern Europeans living in England.

They include the posting of laminated cards reading “Leave the EU – no more Polish vermin” to members of the Polish community in Huntingdon, near the eastern city of Cambridge, on Saturday.

There were also reports of racist graffiti scrawled on a Polish community centre in Hammersmith, west London. The Metropolitan Police Service said it was investigating the claim.

“We would like to thank people for all the messages of support and solidarity with the Polish community expressed by the British public,” the embassy said.

London mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday placed the city’s police force on alert following the incidents.

Khan said he took “seriously my responsibility to defend London’s fantastic mix of diversity and tolerance.

“I’ve asked our police to be extra vigilant for any rise in cases of hate crime, and I’m calling on all Londoners to pull together and rally behind this great city.”

Mark Hamilton, the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: “We are seeing an increase in reports of hate crime incidents to True Vision, the police online hate crime reporting site.

“This is similar to the trends following other major national or international events. In previous instances, crime levels returned to normal relatively quickly but we are monitoring the situation closely.”

{{’90 incidents’}}

Other incidents were reported on social media. Many used the #postrefracism tag and account to call out examples of intolerance, both to EU citizens living in England and non-white Britons.

One Twitter user, Ben Zen, wrote that two Britons waved an English flag towards him and, having heard him speak in Romanian, said: “We voted you out. Go home you f*****g immigrants.”

Another, Carlos from London, posted images of a Polish father and son who had been severely beaten, reporting that the family members had said Englishmen were behind the attack.

On Facebook, Ai Sha shared a video showing members of the far-right English Defence League gathering outside a mosque in Birmingham waving a flag that read: “Rapefugees Not Welcome”, as they shouted “f*****g p**dos” and “Allah, Allah, who the f*** is Allah?”. Police later made two arrests.

John O’Connell, from anti-racism group Far Right Watch, said they had recorded more than 90 incidents in the past three days, ranging from “verbal abuse up to physical violence”.

Rights groups called on people to report incidents as they promised action.

“Now we are witnessing the shocking extent of this with reports around the country of hate speech and minorities being targeted,” said Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. “I will be writing to the Home Secretary to ask what measures are being taken to step up security and policing in areas where such incidences have been reported.”

Human Rights Watch said authorities “should take strong action to curb xenophobic attacks and abuse in the United Kingdom in the wake of the referendum”, as it encouraged people to report xenophobic acts to the police.

“A failure by the authorities and political leaders to address – and be seen to address – these initial attacks risks creating a permissive climate for further attacks and exacerbating divisions within society,” the group warned.

A few days before the referendum, the far-right, anti-immigrant UKIP party was accused of racism after unveiling a poster showing a queue of refugees with the slogan “Breaking point” and a plea to leave the EU.

Below are a few examples of verbal and physical xenophobic attacks shared via social media:

{Deal comes six years after an Israeli raid killed Turkish activists on a flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Gaza.}

Israel and Turkey have reached an agreement to normalise ties, according to Israeli and Turkish media.

The highly anticipated agreement was reported on Sunday, six years after an Israeli raid that killed 10 Turkish activists as an aid flotilla sought to break the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Both sides have been pushing to complete the deal in recent months, with Israel in search of a potential customer for its offshore gas exports and NATO member Turkey wanting to restore its regional clout, analysts say.

The United States has also pushed for the two countries to resolve the dispute.

Turkish undersecretary to the foreign ministry Feridun Sinirlioglu and Joseph Ciechanover, who represented Israel at the UN Gaza Flotilla Probe, met in Rome on Sunday to discuss the reconciliation deal, Turkish daily Hurriyet said.

“The deal will see Israel apologise for the 2010 attack on an aid flotilla travelling to Gaza, in which 10 Turkish nationals were killed by Israeli commandoes, compensations for the victims’ families and a minor easing of Israel’s blockade of the Palestinian territory,” Al Jazeera’s Imtiaz Tyab reported from West Jerusalem.

{{Monday announcement}}

An Israeli official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity said the agreement had been finalised but details would not be officially announced until Monday.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is also expected to hold a press conference about the Israel reconciliation deal in Ankara on Monday, Hurriyet reported, citing the prime minister’s office as the source.

Two of Turkey’s key conditions for normalisation – an apology and compensation – were largely met earlier, leaving its third demand, that Israel lift its blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, the main obstacle left.

Reports in recent days described a compromise on the issue.

Under the reported terms of the deal, Israel will allow the completion of a much-needed hospital in Gaza, as well as the construction of a new power station and a desalination plant for drinking water.

Turkey’s aid to Gaza would also be channelled through the Israeli port of Ashdod rather than sending it directly to the Palestinian enclave, the reports said.

Turkey has long insisted that closing the file on the flotilla raid should include an end to Israeli restrictions on trade with Gaza.

In this context Turkey has demanded, and Israel has rejected, “unrestricted access” to Gaza for Turkish assistance and trade.

Israel has also committed to depositing some $20m in a fund for compensation for the Turkish victims’ families, the Israeli official told AFP, ending all claims against Israeli soldiers.

On the other hand, Turkey has committed to keeping Hamas from carrying out activities against Israel from its country, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Hamas would continue to be able to operate from Turkey for diplomatic purposes, the paper said.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has said it was not involved in Turkey’s decision to normalise ties with Israel, but its officials hope the deal will have a wider impact across the Palestinian territories.

Netanyahu has come under pressure within Israel not to agree to the deal if it does not include provisions for Hamas to hand over four missing Israelis, including the remains of two soldiers presumed dead and two civilians believed held alive by Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli official told AFP that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to instruct “all relevant Turkish agencies to help resolve the issue of Israel’s missing citizens”.

Previously tight relations between Israel and Turkey were significantly downgraded after Israeli commandos staged a botched pre-dawn raid on the six-ship flotilla in May 2010.

Nine activists aboard the Turkish-owned Mavi Marmara ferry were killed, with a 10th person later dying of his wounds.

Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza in June 2006 after Palestinian fighters there kidnapped an Israeli soldier. The restrictions were tightened a year later when Hamas took control of the enclave.

There have been three wars between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in Gaza since 2008, including a devastating 50-day conflict in the summer of 2014.

{Armed group says it was behind last week’s explosion that killed seven Jordanian soldiers near the Syrian border.}

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group has claimed responsibility for a car bomb suicide attack last week on the Jordanian border with Syria.

The attack, which took place in a buffer zone opposite the Syrian refugee camp of al-Rukban, killed seven Jordanian troops and wounded 13.

ISIL’s news agency released a statement on Monday claiming to have carried out what it described as a suicide attack targeting the “American Jordanian al-Rukban military base”.

The group also posted a video showing a car speeding through flat desert towards an army post, followed by an explosion near the site.

Jordanian officials said last week that the attack involved multiple vehicles.

Following the attack, Jordan said it would respond with an “iron fist”.

It sealed off the border, cutting off about 70,000 Syrian refugees stranded in the area from international aid delivery. Aid officials say no food and little water have reached the area.

The latest attack came two weeks after five Jordanian intelligence agents were killed when a gunman stormed the General Intelligence Directorate office in Ain el-Basha near the Palestinian refugee camp of al Baqa’a.

ISIL controls large areas in neighbouring Syria and Iraq, and Jordan has fortified border defences to prevent attacks and infiltration attempts.

Jordan has also widened a crackdown on ISIL sympathisers at home, jailing hundreds in the past two years for promoting the group’s ideas on social media.

The kingdom is a member of the US-led international military coalition against ISIL and has been carrying out air strikes in both Iraq and Syria.

One of its pilots was captured by ISIL fighters when his plane went down in Syria in December 2014. ISIL later released gruesome footage of him being burned alive, sparking outrage.

{At least six people killed and several wounded in suicide bombing attack in the village of Qaa near the Syrian border.}

At least six people have been killed and several wounded in a suicide bombing attack in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria, according to local media reports.

Four suicide bombers blew themselves up among a group of people on their way to work in the village of Qaa in Bekaa valley early on Monday, security sources told Al Jazeera.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV said at least 19 people were also wounded in the attack.

The broadcaster had earlier reported the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers, but later said there were more than two.

All those killed were civilians, the mayor of Qaa told Voice of Lebanon, while three Lebanese soldiers were among the wounded.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

{CIA plan to arm Syrian rebels undermined by theft of weapons by Jordanian intelligence agents, officials say.}

Amman, Jordan – Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.

Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, FBI officials believe after months of investigating the attack, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The existence of the weapons theft, which ended only months ago after complaints by the US and Saudi governments, is being reported for the first time following a joint investigation by Al Jazeera and The New York Times.

The theft, involving millions of dollars of weapons, highlights the messy, unplanned consequences of programmes to arm and train rebels – the kind of programme the CIA and Pentagon have conducted for decades – even after the Obama administration had hoped to keep the training programme in Jordan under tight control.

The Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from the weapons sales, using the money to buy expensive SUVs, iPhones and other luxury items, Jordanian officials said.

The theft and resale of the arms – including Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades – have led to a flood of new weapons available on the black arms market.

Investigators do not know what became of most of them, but a disparate collection of groups, including criminal networks and rural Jordanian tribes, use the arms bazaars to build their arsenals. Weapons smugglers also buy weapons in the arms bazaars to ship outside the country.

The FBI investigation into the Amman shooting, run by the bureau’s Washington field office, is continuing.

But American and Jordanian officials said the investigators believed that the weapons that a Jordanian police captain, Anwar Abu Zaid, used to gun down two Jordanians, two American contractors and one South African had originally arrived in Jordan intended for the Syrian rebel-training programme.

The officials said this finding had come from tracing the serial numbers of the weapons.

Mohammad H al-Momani, Jordan’s minister of state for media affairs, said allegations that Jordanian intelligence officers had been involved in any weapons thefts were “absolutely incorrect”.

“Weapons of our security institutions are concretely tracked, with the highest discipline,” he said.

He called the powerful Jordanian intelligence service, known as the General Intelligence Directorate, or GID, “a world-class, reputable institution known for its professional conduct and high degree of cooperation among security agencies”. In Jordan, the head of the GID is considered the second most important man after the king.

Representatives of the CIA and FBI declined to comment.

The US State Department did not address the allegations directly, but a spokesman said that the US’ relationship with Jordan remained solid.

“The United States deeply values the long history of cooperation and friendship with Jordan,” said John Kirby, the spokesman. “We are committed to the security of Jordan and to partnering closely with Jordan to meet common security challenges.”

The training programme, which in 2013 began directly arming the rebels under the code name Timber Sycamore, is run by the CIA and several Arab intelligence services and aimed at building up forces opposing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

The United States and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors, with the Saudis contributing both weapons and large sums of money, and with CIA paramilitary operatives taking the lead in training the rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other weapons.

The existence of the programme is classified, as are all details about its budget. US officials say that the CIA has trained thousands of rebels in the past three years, and that the fighters made substantial advances on the battlefield against Syrian government forces until Russian military forces – launched last year in support of Assad – compelled them to retreat.

The training programme is based in Jordan because of the country’s proximity to the Syrian battlefields. From the beginning, the CIA and the Arab intelligence agencies relied on Jordanian security services to transport the weapons, many bought in bulk in the Balkans and elsewhere around Eastern Europe.

The programme is separate from one that the Pentagon set up to train rebels to combat fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), rather than the Syrian military. That programme was shut down after it managed to train only a handful of Syrian rebels.

Jordanian and American officials described the weapons theft and subsequent investigation on the condition of anonymity because the Syrian rebel training is classified in the United States and a government secret in Jordan.

News of the weapons theft and eventual crackdown has been circulating inside Jordan’s government for several months.

Husam Abdallat, a senior aide to several past Jordanian prime ministers, said he had heard about the scheme from current Jordanian officials. The GID has some corrupt officers in its ranks, Abdallat said, but added that the institution as a whole is not corrupt.

“The majority of its officers are patriotic and proud Jordanians who are the country’s first line of defence,” he said.

Jordanian officials who described the operation said it had been run by a group of GID logistics officers with direct access to the weapons once they reached Jordan. The officers regularly siphoned truckloads of the weapons from the stocks, before delivering the rest of the weapons to designated drop-off points.

Then the officers sold the weapons at several large arms markets in Jordan. The main arms bazaars in Jordan are in Ma’an, in the southern part of the country; in Sahab, outside Amman; and in the Jordan Valley.

It is unclear whether the current head of the GID, General Faisal al-Shoubaki, had knowledge of the theft of the CIA and Saudi weapons. But several Jordanian intelligence officials said senior officers inside the service had knowledge of the weapons scheme and provided cover for the lower-ranking officers.

Word that the weapons intended for the rebels were being bought and sold on the black market leaked into Jordan government circles last year, when arms dealers began bragging to their customers that they had large stocks of US- and Saudi-provided weapons.

Jordanian intelligence operatives monitoring the arms market – operatives not involved in the weapons-diversion scheme – began sending reports to headquarters about a proliferation of weapons in the market and of the boasts of the arms dealers.

After the Americans and Saudis complained about the theft, investigators at the GID arrested several dozen officers involved in the scheme, among them a lieutenant colonel running the operation. They were ultimately released from detention and fired from the service, but were allowed to keep their pensions and money they gained from the scheme, according to Jordanian officials.

Jordan’s decision to host the CIA-led training programme is the latest episode in a long partnership.

Beginning in the Eisenhower administration, the CIA made large payments to King Hussein, who ruled Jordan from 1952 until his death in 1999, in exchange for permission to run numerous intelligence operations on Jordanian soil.

CIA money and expertise also helped the king establish the GID and put down internal and external threats to his government.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States has flooded Jordan with money for various counterterrorism programmes. American and Jordanian spies have run a joint counterterrorism centre outside Amman, and a secret prison in Jordan housed prisoners the CIA captured in the region.

In his 2006 book, State of Denial, the journalist Bob Woodward recounted a 2003 conversation in which George J Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, told Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, “We created the Jordanian intelligence service, and now we own it”.

It is a relationship of mutual dependence, but Jordan has particular leverage because of its location in the heart of the Middle East and its general tolerance to be used as a base of US military and intelligence operations.

Jordan’s security services also have a long history of trying to infiltrate armed groups, efforts that have yielded both success and failure.

In 2009, a Jordanian doctor – brought to the CIA by a GID officer after the doctor said he had penetrated al-Qaeda’s leadership – turned out to be a double agent and blew himself up at a remote base in Afghanistan. Seven CIA employees, as well as the GID officer, were killed in the attack.

Two recent heads of the service, also known as the Mukhabarat, have been sent to prison on charges including embezzlement, money laundering and bank fraud.

One of them, General Samih Battikhi, ran the GID from 1995 to 2000 and was convicted of being part of scheme to obtain bank loans of around $600m for fake government contracts and pocketing about $25m. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, but the sentence was eventually reduced to four years that were served in his villa in the seaside town of Aqaba.

General Mohammad al-Dahabi, who ran the service from 2005 to 2008, was later convicted of stealing millions of dollars that GID officers had seized from Iraqi citizens crossing into Jordan in the years after the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.

His trial showed that he had also arranged for money to be smuggled in private cars from Iraq into Jordan and had been involved in selling Jordanian citizenship to Iraqi businessmen. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined tens of millions of dollars.

President Barack Obama authorised the covert arming programme in April 2013, after more than a year of debate inside the administration about the wisdom of using the CIA to train rebels trying to oust Assad.

The decision was made in part to try to gain control of a chaotic situation in which Arab countries were funnelling arms into Syria for various rebel groups with little coordination.

The Qataris had paid to smuggle shipments of Chinese-made FN-6 shoulder-fired weapons over the border from Turkey, and Saudi Arabia sent thousands of Kalashnikovs and millions of rounds of ammunition it had bought, sometimes with the CIA’s help.

By late 2013, the CIA was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of rebels and send them across the border into Syria.

The specific motives behind the November shooting at the Amman police training facility remain uncertain, and it is unclear when the FBI will officially conclude its investigation.

This year, the widows of the Americans killed in the attack sued Twitter, alleging that it knowingly permitted ISIL to use its social media platform to spread the group’s violent message, recruiting and raising funds.

Captain Abu Zaid, the gunman, was killed almost immediately. His brother, Fadi Abu Zaid, said in an interview that he still believed his brother was innocent and that he had given no indications he was planning to carry out the shooting.

The Jordanian government, he said, has denied him any answers about the shooting, and has refused to release his brother’s autopsy report.

{President Rajaonarimampianina labels attack on national day, in which 84 people were wounded, an “act of terrorism”.}

Two teenagers were killed and more than 80 wounded in a grenade attack in Madagascar’s capital during the country’s national day celebrations, in what the president called “an act of terrorism”.

The blast on Sunday struck the Mahamasina municipal stadium in Antananarivo at around 16:00GMT, just as a free concert was taking place to mark the nation’s 56th anniversary of independence from France.

President Hery Rajaonarimampianina, who visited the injured victims in hospital, blamed the attack on tensions with political opponents in the Indian Ocean island nation.

“There may be differences of opinion between us, but these acts of destabilisation are unacceptable,” he said in a statement broadcast on national television, describing the attack as “not just a destabilising act but an act of terrorism”.

Pleading for calm, he added: “We will not respond to violence with violence.”

According to the gendarmerie, the attack killed two teenagers aged 16 and 18, while 84 people were injured.

A military parade was held at the stadium earlier in the day.

“The explosion was caused by a grenade,” said general Anthony Rakotoarison, head of security and intelligence with the national gendarmerie. “We consider this a terrorist act,” he added.

{{2014 attack}}

The last attack to hit Madagascar was in January 2014 when a grenade blast killed a toddler and wounded several other people outside the same stadium that was targeted on Sunday.

No arrests were ever made in connection with that attack and there was no claim of responsibility.

Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest countries, is slowly getting back on its feet after a lengthy period of political instability triggered by the 2009 ouster of president Marc Ravalomanana by Antananarivo’s then-mayor Andry Rajoelina.

Rajoelina led a transitional government until late 2013, when a new election that was designed to resolve complex struggles brought Rajaonarimampianina to power

International donors, on which the country relies heavily, only recently returned to Madagascar after withdrawing over the 2009 turmoil, and the economy is starting to show the first signs of recovery.