Tag: InternationalNews

{Deployment labelled effort to keep up “momentum” in campaign, with European allies urged to match US contributions.}

US President Barack Obama has said he plans to send 250 more troops to Syria, a sharp increase in the number of Americans working with local Syrian forces.

“I’ve decided to increase US support for local forces fighting ISIL in Syria … I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 US personnel in Syria, including special forces,” Obama said, announcing the decision after a meeting in Hanover with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The deployment, which will increase US forces in Syria to about 300, aims to accelerate the process of driving back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, White House adviser Ben Rhodes said.

In Iraq, the US plans to send 200 more soldiers and Apache helicopter gunships in preparation for an offensive to retake Mosul.

ISIL controls the cities of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq and is proving a potent threat abroad, claiming credit for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

“I think the administration has come to the conclusion that the Iraq army is not capable of taking Mosul,” Peter Galbraith, a former American diplomat, told Al Jazeera from Paris.

“The strategy is going to be to go after Raqqa with the Syrian Kurds.”

In his remarks, Obama also said that Europe needed to take on its share of the burden to ensure collective security, adding that the Western allies could do more in the fight against ISIL.

While Obama has resisted deploying US troops in Syria, he initially sent 50 US special operations personnel there last year.

The US officials described the forces as being on a “counterterrorism” mission rather than involved in an effort to tip the scales in the war, which Staffan De Mistura, the UN envoy, estimates has killed 400,000 people.

Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008.

However, in the latter part of his presidency, he has made decisions to keep or add to the numbers of troops deployed to conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

Obama is ending a six-day international trip that began in Riyadh, where he held talks with Gulf Arab rulers concerned that US commitment to the Middle East had waned.

After that meeting, Obama sidestepped a question about whether he would send special forces to Syria if talks failed to end the war, saying: “None of the options are good.”

Obama also said the US-led coalition fighting ISIL had squeezed the group’s territory in Iraq and Syria, reducing its numbers and cutting off its finances.

{Vision 2030 envisages forming public investment fund, boosting affordable housing and giving expats long-term residence.}

Saudi Arabia’s cabinet has agreed on a broad-based economic reform plan, known as Vision 2030, revealing how the oil-reliant state plans to diversify its economy over the next 14 years.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the deputy crown prince, said on Monday that the country was building up the its Public Investment Fund to become a major player in global markets.

He said Saudi Arabia was restructuring its housing ministry to increase the supply of affordable housing, and creating a “green card” system within five years to give expatriates long-term residence.

Salman al-Ansari, founder and president of the Washington DC-based Saudi American Public Relations Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), told Al Jazeera the green card system gives more rights to expatriates to invest in the country.

“Almost 10 million foreigners send their money back to their country, they can’t invest in this country, so by this green card idea, we are giving more rights to expats for investment or buy houses,” he said.

“That will create a big move for the Saudi economy. It is a visionary kind of move to not only help the Saudi economy and Saudi citizens but also help the foreigners in the country.”

Saudi Arabia will also sell shares in state oil giant Aramco and set up the world’s largest wealth fund in line with the plan, Mohamed bin Salman said separately in an interview to the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya news channel.

“We plan to sell less than five percent of Aramco. Aramco’s size is very big. It is estimated at between $2 trillion and $2.5 trillion,” he said.

“We plan to set up a $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund … part of its assets will come from the sale of a small part of Aramco.”

Saudi Arabia’s economy has suffered over the last 12 months in line with the falling price of oil, with a $98bn budget deficit last year and an estimated deficit of $87bn this year. Its reserves decreased from $746bn in 2014 to $616bn today.

“They have announced this kind of changes before. It is going to be very interesting to monitor the implementation of the new rules,” Ahmed al-Ibrahim, an expert in Saudi affairs and security, told Al Jazeera.

“To implement some of these, you need the collaboration of society. For example, if you want to increase the empowerment of women, you need to liberalise your society,” he said.

“In so many more ways, Saudi society needs to contribute to the government for the Vision 2030 to succeed.”

The country has proven oil reserves of 267 billion barrels and potential reserves of up to 900 billion.

{The Abu Sayyaf armed group killed one of four hostages after a ransom deadline expired on Monday.}

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned the killing of a Canadian hostage by the Abu Sayyaf armed group in the Philippines, calling it “an act of cold-blooded murder”.

Trudeau made the remarks on Monday after the severed head of 68-year-old John Ridsdel was found dumped in a plastic bag on a remote island.

Ridsdel’s remains were found five hours after the expiry of a ransom deadline set by the group, who had threatened to execute one of four captives, according to the army.

Ridsdel, 68, a former mining executive, was snatched by Abu Sayyaf along with three other people in September 2015 while on holiday.

“Canada condemns without reservation the brutality of the hostage-takers and this unnecessary death. This was an act of cold-blooded murder and responsibility rests squarely with the terrorist group who took him hostage,” Trudeau said.

“The government of Canada is committed to working with the government of the Philippines and international partners to pursue those responsible for this heinous act.”

Trudeau did not respond when asked whether the Canadian government had tried to negotiate with the captors or pay a ransom, or whether it was trying to secure the release of another Canadian being held, Robert Hall.

“Obviously there was talk of money involved, but not by the government of Canada or by the government of Norway, but certainly by the families attempting to do what they could to free the four,” Bob Rae, a former federal politician and longtime Ridsdel friend, told Canadian television.

“But it’s been an awful process, just horrendous.”

In a statement, Ridsdel’s family said they were devastated his life had been “cut tragically short by this senseless act of violence despite us doing everything within our power to bring him home”.

Ridsdel, Hall and the other captives, a Norwegian man and a Filipino woman, had appealed in a March video for their families and governments to secure their release.

Residents found the head in the center of Jolo town. An army spokesman said two men on a motorcycle were seen dropping a plastic bag containing it.

The army said the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf had threatened to behead one of the captives if a 300 million pesos ($6.4 mil) ransom for each of them was not paid by 3 pm local time.

The initial demand was one billion pesos each for the detainees, who were taken hostage at an upscale resort on Samal Island on September 21.

Ridsdel’s former employer described him as gregarious, adventurous and warm.

“We are in profound shock, disbelief and sorrow to have lost our former colleague and close friend,” Calgary-based mining company TVI Pacific said in a statement.

Abu Sayyaf is a small but highly active group known for beheading, kidnapping, bombing and extortion in the south of the country.

It emerged in the early 1990s as an offshoot of a separatist rebellion by minority Moro Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation’s south.

It decapitated a hostage from Malaysia in November last year on the same day that country’s prime minister arrived in Manila for an international summit. Philippine President Benigno Aquino has ordered troops to step up their fight against the group.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines, despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

Abu Sayyaf is also holding other foreigners, including one from the Netherlands, one from Japan, four Malaysians and 14 Indonesian tugboat crew.

{Soldiers shot and killed in fire from Azerbaijan early on Tuesday, Nagorno-Karabakh defence ministry says.}

Two soldiers from the Armenian-backed Nagorno-Karabakh were killed by gunfire from Azerbaijan in the early hours of Tuesday, the defence ministry of the breakaway region said.

There was no immediate response from Azerbaijani authorities.

An earlier bout of violence erupted earlier this month – the worst since a war that ended in 1994, leaving the region under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military.

{Syrian refugees and local residents in harm’s way as deadly cross-border attack also injures 26 in border province.}

Five rockets have hit the Turkish province of Kilis near the Syrian border, killing one person and injuring 26, officials said, in the latest attack launched from a Syrian area controlled by the Islamic State of iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, who visited the southern province on Sunday, said two of the projectiles landed in the morning, slightly injuring six Syrian refugees and 10 Turkish nationals. Three more hit Kilis in late afternoon, killing one person and wounding 10 others.

Akdogan said 45 rocket rounds have been fired at Kilis since January 18 and killed 16 people, including Sunday’s fatality. At least 62 people have been wounded since then.

The Turkish military systematically responds by firing back at targets in Syria, in line with its rules of engagement, and Akdogan said Turkish artillery “immediately” retaliated to the rocket fire after the latest attack.

“Their [the army’s] intervention is continuing … I am calling for our citizens to be calm,” Akdogan said in televised comments..

“All measures will be taken in this regard. Unfortunately there is no authority across our border.”

Akdogan said measures would be announced after a cabinet meeting on Monday.

Police used water cannon to disperse residents who were protesting what they said was the government’s lack of action after the attacks, Turkey’s Dogan new agency reported.

{{Refugees outnumbering Turks}}

Lying just across the border from an area controlled by ISIL, Kilis has been targeted by rocket fire in recent weeks.

It is the only province in Turkey where refugees from the war in Syria – about 110,000 – now outnumber Turkish locals.

On Friday, two people were killed in an attack on Kilis.

The ISIL fighters come to the border on motorcycles and then fire rockets at Kilis, Turkish authorities say.

Turkish howitzers at the border have a difficult time firing on the mobile targets.

Turkey is facing several security threats. As part of a US-led coalition, it is fighting ISIL in neighbouring Syria and Iraq as well as Kurdish fighters in its own southeast and northern Iraq.

{Official says temporary measure aims to ensure Anbar’s provincial capital is cleared of explosives left behind by ISIL.}

Iraq’s military has warned civilians against returning to Ramadi after dozens were killed by mines apparently planted by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in the city’s streets and buildings.

Iraqi forces reclaimed Ramadi from ISIL fighters in December and tens of thousands of residents have moved back to Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, in the past two months.

Most of them have returned from camps east of the city where they took refuge prior to the army’s advance late last year.

A spokesperson for the Anbar governor’s office, which is overseeing much of the effort to restore Ramadi, confirmed the military had issued the directive because it “felt the need to stop the return to ensure that the areas are safe”.

He said it was not clear when people would be allowed to return to Ramadi and declined to comment on what would happen to the residents who had already moved back.

However, Ramadi’s mayor said he expected the freeze to last for a day or two while authorities investigated whether the city was properly cleared of explosives.

Official statistics indicate that 49 people have been killed and 79 others wounded in Ramadi since the start of February, but the UN has said those figures are “almost certainly an underestimation”.

Demining is seen as a critical first step in returning civilians to Ramadi, which a UN team said last month suffers from destruction worse than anywhere else in Iraq after months of fighting that saw ISIL bomb attacks and devastating US-led coalition air strikes.

{{Millions displaced}}

More than 3.4 million Iraqis across the country have been displaced by violence, according to UN statistics, most of them from the minority Sunni Arab community.

In Sunday’s other developments, clashes between Kurdish peshmerga forces and Turkmen Shia paramilitaries killed nine people in a northern town and cut a strategic road between Baghdad and Kirkuk, security and medical sources said.

The clashes between the peshmerga and the Turkmen, who belong to an armed fighters’ umbrella organisation known as the Hashd al-Shaabi, began at around midnight and continued into Sunday, officials said.

Both the peshmerga and the Turkmen fighters are battling ISIL, which overran large areas north and west of Baghdad in 2014.

But Kurdish forces and the Hashed al-Shaabi are vying for influence in some areas, a contest that has led to violence in Tuz Khurmatu.