Tag: InternationalNews

{Army loses 10 soldiers in raid in Anbar province, just hours after killing of Iraqi Kurdish oil executive in Kirkuk}

Fighters from ISIL have killed at least 10 Iraqi soldiers in the country’s western province of Anbar, according to officials.

No claim of responsibility for the killing has been made.

“We had 10 soldiers killed and six wounded in an attack by Daesh early this morning,” an army lieutenant-colonel told AFP news agency on Tuesday, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group, also known as ISIS.

Speaking to AFP, a police officer and a local official confirmed the attack and casualty toll.

In a separate incident earlier on Tuesday, armed men fatally shot a senior executive of Iraq’s state-run North Gas Company (NGC) as he was heading to his office in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police and company sources said.

Mohammed Younis, Iraqi Kurdish deputy manager of NGC, and his driver were killed instantly when assailants in a speeding car fired on their vehicle, police sources said.

Kirkuk has a mixed population of Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs.

It has been under Kurdish control since June 2014, when ISIL overran the northwest of the country and Iraqi security forces collapsed.

The largest city in northern Iraq, Mosul was captured by ISIL in mid-2014.

On April 23, ISIL fighters attacked a police base in a town that is being used as a staging ground for the Mosul offensive, killing at least three policemen.

Backed by the US-led coalition, Iraqi forces launched an operation, their largest in years, in mid-October last year to retake the city.

They retook the side of the city that lies east of the River Tigris in January and launched a push on remaining ISIL fighters in western Mosul, which is more densely populated and has seen fierce fighting.

On the west bank of the Tigris, Iraqi forces control southern neighbourhoods and are slowly surrounding Mosul’s Old City, whose narrow streets are expected to make federal operations very difficult.

Residents who managed to escape from the Old City say that there is almost nothing to eat but flour mixed with water and boiled wheat grain.

The loss of Mosul would be a huge blow to ISIL.

According to an Iraqi military spokesman, ISIL only controls 7 percent of Iraq, down from the 40 percent of the national territory over which it ruled three years ago.

The only two other significant towns ISIL still holds are Hawija and Tal Afar. The group also controls territory in remote areas of western Iraq, near the Syrian border.

Iraqi forces on Thursday launched a fresh push against ISIL-held villages there, as part of a months-old operation to retake areas along the Euphrates in Anbar.

Fighting has killed several thousand civilians and fighters on both sides, according to aid organisations.

Source:Al Jazeera

{On April 30th, Transparent Election Foundation for Afghanistan and an international NGO HWPL (Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light) hosted the event of “Peace Sneakers Project” in Mashal University. Over 80 participants from government officials, women and youth leaders from CSOs (Civil Society Organizations), and law experts joined the event where the ‘Sneakers Performance” was held with wishes for reconciliation of ethnic tensions in Afghanistan.}

HWPL, an international organization under the United Nations Department of Public Information (UN DPI), co-hosted this event as a peace project in Afghanistan. Dr. Habiba Sarabi(Deputy chair High Peace Council), Fazl Ahmad Manawi(Religious scholar), and Ismael Qasimyar(Afghanistan High Peace Council International relation representative) gave a speech on the topic of the necessity of peace building in Afghanistan. As a ceremony, the youth choir for peace from Pigah High School was performed, and the sneakers with messages of peace written by the participants were provided. It was enacted to give a massage for Afghan people to get involved in cooperation for peace building.

Mr. Naeem Ayubzada, (President of Transparent Election Foundation for Afghanistan) the main host expressed his impression on this project by saying that “Afghanistan consists of many ethnics including Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek. They have different culture and ethnic history but they all are citizens and families of Afghanistan. So when thinking of the sneakers event, I felt that efforts of all to have the same heart and mindset regarding this are the very first step of peace building in the country. Like shoes, we have to come and go freely to each other.”

Won Bae, the vice manager of HWPL said, “We hope to send these 100 pairs of sneakers donated by HWPL members not just for a relief support but for giving a message that all ethnics can get united to make peace through such a cooperative project. From organizing to meetings, we could find a partnership and cohesion among co-hosts to make peace. We are looking forward to the next event that participants will voluntary lead from planning to hosting.”.

With its global association with organizations from law, religion, education, women, youth, and media, HWPL conducts peace projects with civil society groups. The Declaration of Peace and Cessation of War (DPCW) drafted by HWPL with international legal experts addresses the need to establish a culture of peace also designated by the UN resolutions to overcome challenges of violence. Ethnic diversity based on the principle of coexistence and human rights is also the essential part of the declaration to be promoted in local communities. As a global project, ‘Legislate Peace Campaign’, making peace as a legal basis in countries is being held over 120 cities from 2015 and 700 thousands signatures are collected until now.

{Navy announces detention of 32 people, half of them children, believed to be Rohingya refugees and two smugglers.}

Sri Lanka’s navy has arrested 32 people suspected of being Rohingya refugees and their Indian traffickers off the country’s northern coast.

Chaminda Walakuluge, a navy spokesman, said a coastguard patrol observed the boat entering Sri Lankan waters on Sunday.

The 30 passengers from Myanmar included 16 children, among them a baby just 15 days old and a four-month-old child.

The two Indians were suspected of being their traffickers.

Walakuluge said the suspects had been handed over to police for further inquiries.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state since the military began a security operation last October in response to what it says was an attack by Rohingya armed men on border posts, in which nine police officers were killed.

Last month Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leader, denied reports saying security forces carried out ethnic cleansing of the country’s Rohingya Muslims, despite the United Nations and human rights groups saying a crackdown by the army may amount to crimes against humanity.

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate whose international star as a rights defender is waning over the treatment of the Rohingya, has not condemned the crackdown and has not spoken out in defence of the persecuted minority.

Instead, she has called for space to handle the issue in a country where the more than one million Rohingya are not recognised as an ethnic minority and widely vilified as “illegal” immigrants from Bangladesh – even though many have lived in Buddhist-majority Myanmar for generations.

A UN report released in February said the army’s campaign targeting the Rohingya involved mass killings, gang rapes and the burning down of villages, likely amounting to crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, where more than 75,000 Rohingya have fled to escape the crackdown, people have recounted grisly accounts of horrendous army abuse, including soldiers allegedly executing an eight-month-old baby while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers.

“What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother’s milk,” Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the UN rights chief, said in a statement at the time.

“What kind of ‘clearance operation’ is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?”

Source:Al Jazeera

{US official says President Trump’s invitation to Rodrigo Duterte to the White House is mostly about North Korea.}

A top aide on Sunday defended President Donald Trump’s invitation to his Philippine counterpart to visit Washington, saying the need to rally Asian allies over North Korea overshadowed concerns about President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.

Duterte had in the past regularly hit out at the United States, the Philippines’ one-time colonial ruler, for perceived hypocrisy over human rights. Last year he branded then-US President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” for criticising his war on drugs.

On Saturday, the White House said in a statement that Trump had invited Duterte during a “friendly” call in which the leaders discussed the Philippine president’s fight against drugs and the two countries’ alliance.

The statement touched only lightly on Duterte’s controversial crackdown on crime, which has claimed thousands of lives and drawn international condemnation.

But when White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was asked on Sunday why Trump was “honouring” Duterte with the White House invitation, he told ABC News network, “I’m not so sure it’s a matter of honouring this president.

“The issues facing us, developing out of North Korea, are so serious that we need cooperation at some level with as many partners in the area as we can get,” Priebus said.

That way, he added, “if something does happen in North Korea, we have everyone in line backing up a plan of action that may need to be put together with our partners in the area”.

Later on Sunday, Trump also invited the prime ministers of Thailand and Singapore for official visits.

Deadly drug war

Duterte has spoken of loosening the long-standing alliance with the US as he looked to court China, whose push to control most of the disputed South China Sea has alarmed neighbours.

At one point Duterte suggested he may even move to abrogate a 2014 defence agreement that allows US access to five Philippine military camps.

He has walked back most of those threats but has proceeded with his efforts to align more closely with China.

The White House said Saturday the two leaders, both elected to office last year, had helped orient the US-Philippine relationship “in a very positive direction”.

The White House said Trump “enjoyed the conversation” with Duterte, and looked forward to attending the key US-ASEAN and East Asia summits in the Philippines in November.

Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella confirmed Trump’s invitation, although he gave no indication of when the visit would take place.

“The discussion that transpired between the presidents was warm, with President Trump expressing his understanding and appreciation of the challenges facing the Philippine president, especially on the matter of dangerous drugs,” Abella said in a statement.

Duterte has not been shy about his brutal campaign against drugs.

Philippines police have reported killing 2,724 people as part of the anti-drug campaign; authorities insist the shootings have been in self-defence.

Many thousands of others have been killed by shadowy vigilantes, according to rights groups.

A Philippine lawyer last week filed a complaint at the International Criminal Court accusing Duterte of mass murder, alleging his war on drugs had led to about 8,000 deaths.

Source:Al Jazeera

{The group of 36 Yazidi survivors was saved by Iraqi forces fighting to retake Mosul from ISIL.}

A group of 36 Yazidi survivors has been rescued in Iraq after three years of “slavery” under ISIL’s rule in northern Iraq, the United Nations said on Sunday.

The group of men, women, and children from the persecuted religious sect was freed by Iraqi forces fighting to retake Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, according to local media.

The women and girls have received lodging, clothing and medical and psychological assistance in Duhok – a Kurdish city north of Mosul, since Friday, Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said.

“What these women and girls have endured is unimaginable,” Grande said in a statement.

ISIL systematically killed, captured, and enslaved thousands of Yazidis in the summer of 2014 as they overran the Sinjar area, where many of the minority group lived. UN investigators have said that constitutes genocide.

The Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements from several Middle Eastern religions, were the most persecuted community under ISIL, which considers them devil-worshippers. As many as 1,500 Yazidi women and girls remain in captivity, the UN estimates.

After months of fighting to retake western Mosul, a senior Iraqi commander said on Sunday that he expects to dislodge ISIL from its de facto capital in the country some time next month.

The battle should be completed “in a maximum of three weeks”, the army’s chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Othman al-Ghanimi, was quoted as saying by state-run newspaper al-Sabah on Sunday.

A US-led international coalition is providing air-and-ground support for the offensive in Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, which fell to the hardcore fighters in June 2014.

ISIL has lost most of the city’s districts since the offensive began in October and is now surrounded in the northwestern districts.

Civilians have paid a heavy price, however.

The Pentagon said on Sunday that investigations conducted during the month of March revealed coalition air strikes killed 45 civilians, mostly in and around Mosul.

In a statement, the Pentagon called the deaths “unintentional”.

At least 362 civilians have been killed by coalition raids in Iraq and Syria since the start of the air campaign in 2014, according to the US defence department.

Activists and monitor groups put the number much higher, saying coalition air strikes have killed more than 3,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria since then.

The number of people displaced from Mosul since October is close to 400,000, about a fifth of Mosul’s population before its capture by ISIL.

The UN estimates that as many as 500,000 people remain in the area controlled by the fighters, 400,000 of whom are in the historic Old City centre with little food and water and no access to hospitals.

Fighters have dug in among the civilians, often launching deadly counterattacks to repel forces closing in on the Old City’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque, from where ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.

Iraqi forces estimate the number of ISIL members still in Mosul at 200 to 300, mostly foreigners, down from nearly 6,000 when the offensive started.

The number of fighters aligned against ISIL in Mosul exceeds 100,000.

Even if defeated in Mosul, ISIL will remain in control of vast swaths of land in the border area with Syria, where Baghdadi is believed to be hiding, according to Iraqi military sources.

Source:Al Jazeera

{USS Carl Vinson strike group carries out exercises with South Korean navy as North’s media warns ‘stop running wild’.}

South Korea and the United States wrapped up their annual large-scale military drills on Sunday but continued a separate joint naval exercise that has triggered the threat of nuclear war from North Korea.

The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group arrived in waters near the Korean Peninsula and began exercises with the South Korean navy late on Saturday. The South Korean navy declined to say when the exercises would be completed.

North Korea has threatened to sink the US armada.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have been running sky-high for weeks, with signs the North might be preparing a sixth nuclear weapon test – and with Washington refusing to rule out a military strike in response.

The massive Foal Eagle military exercises – which the defence ministry in Seoul said ended as scheduled on Sunday – involved about 20,000 South Korean and 10,000 US troops. Another annual joint manoeuvre known as Key Resolve ended last month.

Both play out scenarios for a conflict with North Korea, but Seoul and Washington insist they are purely defensive in nature. Pyongyang says the drills are provocative plans for an invasion or a “decapitation strike” against the North Korean leadership.

A North Korean state-run newspaper on Sunday warned of “catastrophic consequences”, accusing the USS Carl Vinson strike force of rehearsing a “pre-emptive attack on the North” in a “special operation”.

“This has pushed the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula to an unpredictable dangerous phase,” said the state-run North Korean newspaper Minju Choson in a commentary.

“The enemies have to know that military threat and blackmail with the mobilisation of nuclear carriers and nuclear submarines cannot work on the DPRK,” it said, using the acronym for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The US and the puppet group of traitors have to ponder over the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by their foolish military provocation – and stop running wild.”

US President Donald Trump has warned of a possible “major conflict” after Pyongyang carried out a series of failed missile tests, including one on Saturday.

North Korean ballistic missile tests are banned by the United Nations because they are seen as part of Pyongyang’s push for a nuclear-tipped weapon that can hit the US mainland.

Trump said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will eventually develop better missiles, and “we can’t allow it to happen”.

In a taped interview broadcast on Sunday on the US network CBS, the president would not discuss the possibility of military action, saying: “It is a chess game. I just don’t want people to know what my thinking is.”

Trump will speak with the leaders of Singapore and Thailand on Sunday over the “potential for nuclear and massive destruction in Asia”, because of the situation with North Korea, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said.

“There is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what is happening in North Korea,” he said.

The US and South Korea started installing a missile defence system that is supposed to be partially operational within days.

The Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system, or THAAD, is controversial in South Korea. Residents in the village of Seongj, where the missile system is being deployed, scuffled with police on Sunday.

Trump raised eyebrows in South Korea last week when he said would make Seoul pay $1bn for the missile system. His national security adviser, HR McMaster, said on Sunday the matter is subject to negotiation.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Attacks took place in July during final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, killing four security officers.}

Saudi Arabia has arrested 46 people suspected of belonging to a cell responsible for an attack in Medina outside of one of Islam’s holiest sites last year.

“Investigations revealed they were directly involved in the crime of targeting worshippers in the Prophet’s sacred mosque,” Interior Ministry spokesman Major-General Mansour al-Turki told reporters on Sunday.

Turki said the group was also behind a suicide bombing near the US consulate in Jeddah in 2016. Both attacks took place in July during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The bombing outside Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in the western Saudi city of Medina killed four security officers, while two policemen were wounded in the attack in Jeddah.

Turki said 32 of those arrested were Saudis, while the 14 others were from Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan and Jordan.

The ministry previously identified the Medina bomber as a Saudi national and the Jeddah bomber as a Pakistani.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks, nor did the Interior Ministry blame a specific group.

In recent months, Saudi authorities have stepped up a nationwide clampdown on suspected attackers.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), based in Iraq and Syria, has carried out a series of bombings and shootings in Saudi Arabia since mid-2014 killing scores of people, mostly members of the Shia-Muslim minority and security services.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Pre-monsoon heat extends right across South Asia.}

Over the past few weeks, temperatures across South Asia have steadily built up ahead of the summer rains.

There has been much talk of the severe heat and, at times, drought conditions that have accompanied this pre-monsoon heat across India and Pakistan.

Sri Lanka has suffered alongside them as the sweltering conditions have intensified.

Temperatures in Colombo, the nation’s capital, have been running just above the April average of 31 degrees Celsius. However, the humid onshore winds have made it feel more like 36C.

Despite the high temperatures, this remains a part of the world where many people do not have air conditioning in their homes.

The young and the elderly are most vulnerable and warnings have been issued across the country.

The heat has even been felt up on the higher ground. Nuwara Eliya is a city in the tea country hills of central Sri Lanka, it is known as little England because climate in the city is similar to that in parts of Europe.

Nuwara Eliya normally has an April temperature of around 10 to 15C. The mercury reached 24C on Wednesday. Recent days have seen highs nearer 22C.

The heat will only really be broken with the onset of the southwest monsoon and the summer rains.

That remains another month away. In the meantime much of south Asia will feel the heat and increasing humidity for some time to come.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Rescue work under way to recover 24 missing after landslide buries village in southwest Osh region, the government says.}

At least 24 people have gone missing after a landslide buried a village in Kyrgyzstan’s southwest Osh region, the Central Asian nation’s emergency ministry said on Saturday.

The landslide, caused by heavy rains, destroyed eleven houses in the village in Uzgen district of Osh region at around 01:20 GMT on Saturday.

The exact number of people hit by the landslide was unclear, the ministry said.

More than 180 emergency ministry personnel are working at the site to excavate the buried village, according to local authorities.

The press office of the local administration said people in the area received a warning about risks of a possible landslide and were recommended to leave the area.

Those who decided to stay signed papers saying they had been informed about the danger, the press office said.

Since the beginning of the year, at least 25 landslides have been registered in the Osh region, killing six people, Russia’s state-run news agency RIA reported.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Kenneth William’s death wraps up an aggressive execution schedule set to beat expiry of drug used in lethal injection.}

Arkansas has wrapped up an aggressive execution schedule, putting to death its fourth inmate in eight days, hours after a last minute motion to halt his execution failed before the US Supreme Court.

Kenneth Williams, 38, received a lethal injection on Thursday night at the Cummins Unit prison at Varner for the killing of a former deputy warden in 1999.

He was pronounced dead at 11:05pm, 13 minutes after the execution began.

Arkansas had initially held off on executing Williams, who was scheduled to die at 7pm local time, as officials awaited word from the Supreme Court. His death warrant was set to expire at midnight.

A few minutes after 10pm, the court ruled to deny the petitions, without elaborating on its decisions.

An Associated Press reporter who witnessed Thursday’s execution said Williams lurched and convulsed 20 times during the lethal injection. A prison spokesman said he shook for approximately 10 seconds, about three minutes into the procedure.

“I extend my sincerest of apologies to the families I have senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved ones,” Williams said in a final statement he read from the death chamber. “… I was more than wrong. The crimes I perpetrated against you all was senseless, extremely hurtful and inexcusable.”

Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11-day period before one of its lethal injection drugs expires at the end of April – the nation’s fastest pace since the Supreme Court reauthorised the death penalty in 1976. Courts issued stays for four of the inmates.

Among the four lethal injections was Monday’s first double execution in the United States since 2000.

State officials have declared the string of executions a success, using terms like “closure” for the victims’ families.

The inmates have died within 20 minutes of their executions’ beginning, a contrast from midazolam-related executions in other states that took anywhere from 43 minutes to two hours. The inmates’ lawyers have said there are still flaws and that there is no certainty that the inmates aren’t suffering while they die.

“The long path of justice ended tonight and Arkansans can reflect on the last two weeks with confidence that our system of laws in this state has worked,” Governor Asa Hutchinson said in a statement issued after the execution. “Carrying out the penalty of the jury in the Kenneth Williams case was necessary. There has never been a question of guilt.”

Arkansas scheduled the executions for the final two weeks of April because its supply of midazolam, normally a surgical sedative, expires on Sunday.

The Arkansas Department of Correction has said it has no new source for the drug – though it has made similar remarks previously yet still found a new stash.

Court filings by Williams on Thursday afternoon followed two threads: that Arkansas executions this week were so flawed that there is little doubt Williams will suffer as he dies, and that he has an intellectual disability that would make him ineligible for execution.

He was sentenced to death for killing former deputy warden Cecil Boren after escaping from the Cummins Unit prison in a 1,800-litre barrel of hog slop in 1999. He left the prison less than three weeks into a life term for killing University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader Dominique Hurd in 1998.

At the conclusion of that trial, he had taunted the young woman’s family by turning to them after the sentence was announced and saying “You thought I was going to die, didn’t you?”

After jumping from the barrel of kitchen scraps, he sneaked along a tree line until he reached Boren’s house. He killed Boren, stole guns and Boren’s truck, then drove to Missouri.

There, he crashed into a water-delivery truck, killing the driver, Michael Greenwood. While in prison, he confessed to killing another person in 1998.

Source:Al Jazeera