Tag: InternationalNews

{Authorities say rebels attacked Chinese-speaking Kokang region while armed group says violence was self-defence.}

At least 30 people have been killed in a region on Myanmar’s border with China after rebels – some dressed in police uniforms – launched a surprise attack, according to authorities.

Monday’s clashes were some of the worst to break out in the Chinese-speaking Kokang region of the northeastern state of Shan since fighting in 2015 left scores dead and forced tens of thousands to flee across the border into China.

Rebels from the Myanmar Nationalities Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) group launched an attack early on Monday against police and military posts in Kokang, according to the office of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader.

A separate group of fighters later attacked locations in Laukkai, a main town in Kokang.

“According to initial information, many innocent civilians including a primary school teacher … were killed because of attacks by the MNDAA armed group,” the state counsellor’s office said in a statement.

It also said some attackers wore local police uniforms.

The statement, accompanied by graphic pictures of the dead and wounded, said at least five civilians and five local police were killed in the fighting.

It also said that a further 20 “burned bodies” had been found alongside weapons.

Zaw Htay, the government spokesman, told AFP news agency that the 20 bodies were of MNDAA fighters.

Unverified video shared on social media appeared to show parts of the town still ablaze on Monday afternoon while civilians scurried to safety amid the rattle of small arms fire.

READ MORE: Aung San Suu Kyi hosts ethnic minorities in Myanmar

An army source told AFP that the fighting was continuing as darkness fell.

“Residents in town are fleeing. We do not know exact figures yet,” the officer said.

The Northern Alliance, an umbrella group of rebels including the MNDAA which has yet to join national peace talks, confirmed its members were fighting in Laukkai.

But in a Facebook post, it said they carried out the attack “to resist an enemy offensive in self-defence” and cited Myanmar military operations since December.

Multiple conflicts

Myanmar is torn by multiple ethnic conflicts, but the Kokang conflict has raised tensions with China.

The latest fighting raises the spectre of a fresh refugee exodus into China.

In early 2015 tens of thousands fled there when dozens of civilians, rebels and army troops died in months of fighting across the remote and mountainous region.

China said Myanmar warplanes dropped bombs on its side of the border during that bout of fighting.

Kokang has strong bonds with China – local people speak a Chinese dialect and China’s yuan is the common currency.

Observers say China’s government holds considerable sway over the rebels.

Clashes with the Northern Alliance have intensified across Shan state since late last year, claiming more than 160 lives across an arc of land in the long border region.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Three of four ballistic missiles landed in waters as close as 300km to Japan’s northwest coast, Shinzo Abe says.}

North Korea has fired four ballistic missiles into the sea off Japan’s northwest coast, South Korean and Japanese officials said, days after the reclusive state promised retailiation over US-South Korea military drills it sees as a preparation for war.

Seoul said four missiles were fired from North Pyongan province into the East Sea on Monday and that South Korea and the United States were “closely analysing” tracking data for further details.

Seoul and Washington began annual joint military exercises last week – something North Korea has long condemned as a deliberate provocation.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said three of the North Korean missiles came down in Tokyo’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – waters extending 200 nautical miles (370km) from its coast.

“This clearly shows North Korea has entered a new stage of threat,” Abe said in parliament.

“The launches are clearly in violation of [UN] Security Council resolutions. It is an extremely dangerous action.”

South Korea’s military said the missiles were unlikely to have been intercontinental ballistic missiles which could reach the US, but flew on average 1,000km and reached a height of 260km.

Some of the missiles landed in waters as close as 300km to Japan’s northwest coast, Japan’s Defence Minister Tomomi Inada said in Tokyo.

South Korea’s acting president, Hwang Kyo-ahn, condemned the launches and said the country would swiftly deploy a US anti-missile defence in the face of angry objections from China.

“These missile tests are creeping closer to Japan and we assume North Korea can hit most of South Korea,” Robert Kelly, professor of political science and diplomacy at Pusan National University, told Al Jazeera.

“Bombing North Korea can be hugely dangerous because it can easily hit the South Korean capital. Missile shields are probably the best defence for the future.”

Pyongyang carried out two atomic tests last year and a series of missile launches, but Monday was only the second time its devices entered Japan’s EEZ.

Seoul has blamed Pyongyang for the killing of Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of the North’s leader, by two women using VX nerve agentat Kuala Lumpur’s International Airport last month. North Korea denies that.

Source:Al Jazeera

{More than 66,000 people have been forced to flee, according to the UN, as Syrian army makes progress on ISIL stronghold.}

More than 66,000 people have been forced to flee fighting in northern Syria , ravaged in recent weeks by dual offensives on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL ) group, according to the United Nations.

The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said on Sunday that tens of thousands of people have left their homes in northern Aleppo province, particularly around the former ISIL stronghold of Al Bab.

“This includes nearly 40,000 people from Al Bab city and nearby Taduf town, as well as 26,000 people from communities to the east of Al Bab,” OCHA said adding that nearly 40,000 people displaced from the town fled north to areas controlled by other rebel forces.

Since February 25, OCHA said, another 26,000 people fled violence further east, where Syrian government forces supported by Russian air power have also been waging a fierce offensive against ISIL.

It added that the “high contamination” of unexploded bombs and booby traps set by retreating ISIL fighters was complicating efforts to return.

Many of those fleeing the violence sought refuge in areas around Manbij, a town controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Al Jazeera’s Natasha Ghoneim, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border , said there was a “growing humanitarian crisis”.

“The civilians we talked to mentioned some horrific details, including their money being stolen and also children being slaughtered by ISIL,” she said.

“There’s also the issue of return: when and if. ISIL have planted many mines in the neighbourhood and that will become a big issue if and when they are allowed to return home.”

{{Long queues}}

An AFP news agency correspondent in Manbij said that long queues of families were still forming at checkpoints leading to the town on Sunday.

Pick-up trucks full of children and women wearing full black veils were being searched individually by SDF personnel before being allowed to enter.

In Syria’s northern province of Aleppo, where ISIL have faced simultaneous assaults in recent weeks, twin suicide attacks killed 15 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Sunday.

One attacker detonated a car bomb near the ISIL-held town of Deir Hafer, killing eight fighters with regime forces late on Saturday, according to SOHR.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it “was carried out by fighter Abu Abdullah al-Shami with an explosive-laden vehicle”.

Deir Hafer lies on a key road linking Aleppo city to the ISIL-controlled town of Khafsah, which holds the main station to pump water into Aleppo, and further east to the group’s de facto capital Raqqa.

Residents of Aleppo city have been without mains water for 48 days after ISIL cut the supply.

On Sunday, Russian and regime warplanes bombarded ISIL positions in support of Syrian troops, which had advanced to 9km from Khafsah, SOHR said.

They were just 6km from the pumping station, Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of SOHR, said.

In a second attack, ISIL said a fighter “detonated his suicide belt” in the rebel-held town of Azaz, also in Aleppo province.

SOHR said the suicide attack in the town “killed seven fighters and wounded several others, some of them in critical condition”.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in Azaz.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Criticism of move to block rallies of Turkish officials comes day after claim Germany is ‘aiding and harbouring terror’.}

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised Germany for blocking several rallies there in advance of a referendum in Turkey on expanding his powers as head of state, comparing the decision to Nazi practices.

The remarks came on Sunday, a day after he accused Germany of “aiding and harbouring terror” for allowing outlawed Kurdish leaders to hold regular public meetings in the country.

“Your practices are not different from the Nazi practices of the past,” Erdogan said on Sunday in Istanbul at a campaign for the referendum.

“I thought it’s been a long time since Germany left [Nazi practices]. We are mistaken.”

Several German towns prevented appearances by Erdogan’s ministers last week, citing security and safety concerns.

Turkey summoned the German ambassador to the foreign ministry in Ankara to lodge a protest after local authorities in the southwestern German town of Gaggenau cancelled a talk by Bekir Bozdag, Turkey’s justice minister.

The talk was reportedly intended to promote a “yes” vote for constitutional changes in the upcoming referendum.

Authorities in Cologne also withdrew permission for rallies where Nihat Zeybekci, Turkey’s economy minister, was due to speak.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected Turkey’s accusations that her government had a hand in scrapping the rallies, saying the decisions were “taken by municipalities, and as a matter of principle, we apply freedom of expression in Germany”.

The cancellations have angered the Turkish government, which has accused Germany of working against the “Yes” campaign in the referendum.

Journalist detained

In his comments on Sunday, Erdogan said: “You will lecture us about democracy and then you will not let this country’s ministers speak there.”

The previous day, Erdogan said Deniz Yucel, a correspondent for Germany’s Die Welt newspaper who is in detention in Turkey, was a “German agent” and a “representative” of the banned Kurdish rebel group, PKK.

Yucel, who has both Turkish and German citizenship, was detained on February 14 after his reports about a hacker attack on the email account of Turkey’s energy minister, according to Die Welt.

Erdogan accused Germany of harbouring Yucel for a month at the German consulate in Istanbul before agreeing to hand him over to authorities.

He was charged with spreading “terrorist propaganda” on Monday.

Merkel on Saturday called Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, to try to defuse the dispute and the two countries’ foreign ministers are set to meet later this week.

Source:Al Jazeera

{WHO says eight tonnes of aid delivered for first time since onset of war to hospitals in country’s third largest city.}

Eight tonnes of medicine have been delivered to hospitals in government-held Taiz, Yemen’s third largest city under Houthi rebel siege, according to the UN health agency.

The World Health Organisation said it was the first time since the conflict began that the UN negotiated access by direct route to Taiz city.

“The truck arrived in Taiz city yesterday. The medicines have been distributed to hospitals today,” Tarik Jasarevic, WHO spokesperson, told AFP news agency.

More than 350,000 people are in need of urgent medical aid in Taiz, he said.

The medical supplies included trauma kits, emergency medicine and pneumonia kits.

Jasarevic also said that previously the UN had only been able to get some medical supplies to Taiz via smaller, side roads in the Arabian Peninsula country.

The 23-month-long Houthi rebel siege of Taiz has caused shortages of food, water and medicines.

At least 37 of the city’s 40 hospitals and medical institutions have been forced to close, and the doctors and nurses brave enough to remain are forced to operate without essentials such oxygen – which doctors require to put patients under general anesthesia.

During his latest visit to Yemen, Stephen O’Brien, the UN humanitarian affairs chief, discussed with Houthi leaders the question of aid entry into areas such as Taiz.

The meeting happened after he was stopped from delivering aid to the city, according to the UN News Centre.

The latest UNICEF report says that more than 400,000 children were at risk of starvation in Yemen with nearly 2.2 million in need of urgent care.

The report mentions Taiz as one of the main governorates affected.

Yemen has been torn apart by conflict since 2014, when Houthi rebels, allied with troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, captured large expanses of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

A coalition of Arab countries assembled by Saudi Arabia launched an air campaign against the rebels in March 2015.

Seven ceasefire accords have failed to end the war, which has left more than 7,500 dead and 40,000 people wounded, according to UN tally.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Bombing of livestock market in ISIL-held Oqayrabat village possibly carried out by Russian fighter jets, monitor says.}

Air strikes have killed at least 11 civilians and wounded dozens in ISIL-held central Syrian village in Hama province, according to a monitor.

Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said “the raids targeted a livestock market in the village of Oqayrabat” that is held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

“They are probably Russian air strikes,” he said.

Al Jazeera could not independently confirm the Britain-based SOHR’s report.

The SOHR, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

Abdel Rahman said the raids on the village were part of “new military operations by the Syrian regime and its Russian ally targeting jihadist positions in Hama province”.

Syrian and Russian jets on Saturday were heavily bombing ISIL fighters north and east of Palmyra, which has changed hands several times in Syria’s nearly six-year war.

Oqayrabat lies northwest of Palmyra, the ancient desert city that was recaptured by Russian-backed government forces from ISIL on Wednesday.

The road between the two had been often used by ISIL to travel between the provinces of Hama and Homs, where Palmyra lies.

Also on Saturday, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the government recaptured eight villages from ISIL in northeast parts of Aleppo province supported by the Russian air strikes.

According SOHR, the aim of the operation was ISIL-held Khafsah, the main station pumping water into Aleppo.

Residents of Aleppo, Syria’s second city, have been without mains water for 47 days after ISIL cut the supply.

The fighting over the past week has sparked an exodus of “more than 30,000 civilians, most of them women and children”, SOHR said on Saturday.

Most of the displaced went to areas around Manbij city of Aleppo province, held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters who are also fighting ISIL.

An AFP correspondent in Manbij saw dozens of families speeding towards the relative safety of the city on motorcycles and in small buses and cars.

Many looked exhausted as they lined up at a checkpoint manned by the Manbij Military Council, the SDF unit that controls the town, to be searched and get permission to enter.

Ibrahim al-Quftan, co-chair of Manbij’s civil administration, told AFP that as many as 40,000 displaced had arrived in recent days.

“The numbers of displaced people here are still rising because of the clashes between the Syrian regime and Daesh (ISIL),” Quftan said.

“These people are suffering very difficult circumstances.”

Manbij already hosts “tens of thousands of displaced people that fled previous clashes in the area and are living in difficult circumstances”, said SOHR’s Abdel Rahman.

“This will make it difficult [for local authorities] to welcome a new wave of displaced people, given their inability to tend to their pressing needs.”

Also on Saturday, Turkey said a MiG-23 fighter jet, probably belonging to the Syrian air force, had crashed on the Syrian side of the border. There was no pilot in the wreckage.

“The MiG-23, believed to have been owned by the Syrian regime, crashed on the Syrian side of the border,” Binali Yildirim, Turkey’s prime minister, said.

“The pilot may have bailed out and come down on either side … . A search and rescue operation is under way.

“It’s not clear why the plane crashed. It may be due to weather conditions.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Kang Chol declared persona non grata following the alleged murder of North Korean leader’s half-brother in Kuala Lumpur.}

Malaysia has declared North Korea’s ambassador persona non grata over the alleged murder of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, and ordered the diplomat to leave the country within the next 48 hours.

Kang Chol’s expulsion came on Saturday, just weeks after Kim Jong-nam was allegedly poisoned at Kuala Lumpur airport on February 13.

“The expulsion of the DPRK [North Korea] ambassador is… an indication of the government’s concern that Malaysia may have been used for illegal activities,” Malaysia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The decision was made after he failed to appear at Malaysia’s foreign ministry at 6pm local time on Saturday despite being summoned, said Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi, reporting from Kuala Lumpur.

“[Authorities] were also expecting North Korea to issue an apology because of the accusations they were making against Malaysia. But that also didn’t happen, so they took this drastic measure they said.”

Kim Jong-nam died after falling suddenly ill at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where he was allegedly attacked by two women who, according to Malaysian police, smeared his face with VX, a chemical classified by the UN as a weapon of mass destruction.

He was at the airport to fly to Macau, where he had a home.

In late February, Kang Chol accused Malaysia of colluding with “hostile forces” to harm North Korea, after rival South Korea said North Korea had orchestrated the attack that killed Kim Jong-nam.

Following the incident, Malaysia summoned Chol as well as cancelled a rare visa-free travel deal with North Korea and recalled its ambassador to Pyongyang.

South Korea’s spy agency believes North Korea was behind the alleged murder, but has produced no evidence.

{{‘A conspiracy plot’}}

In another development on Saturday related to the case, one of the suspects said he was a victim of a conspiracy by Malaysia aimed at damaging North Korea’s “honour”.

Speaking to reporters outside the North Korean embassy in Beijing, Ri Jong-chol said: “I realised that this is a conspiracy plot to try to damage the status and honour of the republic.”

He said he was presented with false evidence while in Malaysia.

Ri, who was deported to China on Friday after being released by Malaysian police a day earlier, denied accusations that his car was used in the case.

Insisting that he was not at the airport on the day of Kim Jong-nam’s death, he said: “I had no reason to go. I was just doing my work.”

Ri said he worked in the soap-manufacturing industry.

Kim Jong-nam and Kim Jong-un are sons of former leader Kim Jong-il, who died in late 2011, but they had different mothers.

Analysts in Seoul say Kim Jong-un probably had his brother killed because he could be a potential challenger to his rule in a country.

North Korea has a history of ordering killings of people it views as threats to its government.

While Kim Jong-nam was not thought to be seeking influence, his position as eldest son of the family that has ruled North Korea since its founding could have made him appear to be a danger.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Suspect in the murder of North Korean leader’s brother points finger at Malaysian authorities as he denies involvement.}

A suspect in the murder of the North Korean leader’s estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, has said he was a victim of a conspiracy by Malaysia aimed at damaging North Korea’s honour.

Speaking to reporters outside the North Korean embassy in Beijing, Ri Jong-chol, a North Korean, accused the Malaysian government on Saturday of using coercion to extract information from him in detention.

“I realised that this is a conspiracy plot to try to damage the status and honour of the republic,” he said, adding that he was presented with false evidence while in Malaysia.

Ri, who was deported to China on Friday after being released by Malaysian police a day earlier, denied knowing anything about an accusation that his car was used in the case and said he was not at the airport on the day of the killing.

READ MORE: Who produced the VX poison?

“I had no reason to go. I was just doing my work,” he said, adding that he worked in Malaysia trading ingredients needed for soap manufacturing.

Kim was murdered on February 13 at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where he was allegedly attacked by two women who, according to Malaysian police, smeared his face with VX, a chemical classified by the United Nations as a weapon of mass destruction.

South Korean intelligence and US officials say the murder was an assassination organised by North Korean agents, though the only suspects charged in the case so far are an Indonesian woman and a Vietnamese woman.

North Korea on Thursday denied accusations that it was involved, saying the victim died from heart failure.

The incident has undermined North Korean-Malaysian relations, which had been friendly. Malaysia announced on Thursday that it was stopping visa-free travel for North Koreans.

The suspects, Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, 28, were formally charged with murder in a Malaysian court on Wednesday. If convicted, they will face the mandatory death penalty.

Although he had criticised his half-brother’s regime, Kim was not known to be seeking political power.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Unionist DUP now has just a one-seat advantage as nationalist parties achieve best result in history of province.}

The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party narrowly remained Northern Ireland’s largest party after edging nationalists Sinn Fein by a single seat in a snap election called after the government collapsed.

It was the closest nationalists, traditionally backed by Catholics, have ever come to becoming the biggest party in the Protestant-majority province. Unionist candidates, who tend to be favoured by Protestants, captured less than half of the seats for the first time.

Voters turned out in their highest numbers for two decades in the first regional election in the UK since its vote to leave the European Union as nationalists who favour a united Ireland and unionists who want the province to remain British jostled for influence.

READ MORE: Northern Ireland holds snap assembly election

Final results from Thursday’s assembly elections showed the DUP had won 28 seats and Sinn Fein 27 in the province’s semi-autonomous 90-seat parliament after all ballots were counted on Saturday.

“Let us now move forward with hope, hope that civility can return to our politics,” outgoing first minister Arlene Foster of the DUP told supporters after her re-election on Friday.

“There is work to be done to quickly mend the relationship which has been frayed by the discord of this election.”

Sinn Fein’s leader Michelle O’Neill told journalists it was an “amazing day” as her party benefited from a jump in turnout to 65 percent, the highest since the first elections held after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

Al Jazeera’s Lawrance Lee, reporting from Belfast, said the nationalist party managed to recast itself successfully in the recent months.

“Michelle O’Neill has no direct link to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and they have been campaigning as entirely non-sectarian, what they would call it as progressive issues like gay marriage and women’s rights,” he said.

“They have very successfully managed to portray the DUP as a dinasaur party stuck in a sectarian past which no longer exists.”

The DUP’s failure to win at least 30 seats also means it no longer has the power to veto legislation on its own, something the conservative party had used to block extending gay marriage to the province.

Power-sharing

The two largest parties now have three weeks to form a new power-sharing government to avoid devolved power returning to the British parliament at Westminster for the first time in a decade.

But with relations at their lowest point in a decade, Sinn Fein insists among its demands for re-entering government that Foster must step aside while months of investigations begin into a botched green energy scheme that she established.

READ MORE: May – Northern Ireland crisis mustn’t jeopardise peace

The former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, who accused the DUP of not treating it as equals before collapsing the previous administration in January, will be further buoyed by their strong showing.

Brexit factor

No one predicts the impasse will bring a return to the violence that killed 3,600 people in the three decades before the peace agreement. But some are warning there could be a deterioration in community relations, coupled with government paralysis as Brexit talks determine the province’s political and economic future.

Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU, but was overruled by a majority vote to leave in Britain as a whole.

Britain has signalled its intention to leave the EU’s customs union after Brexit, raising fears of a new hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which is an EU member state.

“Negotiation are due to begin Monday and they have three weeks to try to work out what they are going to do to keep the executive going, if they can’t do that then power returns to London and it will be disaster in the northern Irish politics, given that majority of politicans are against brexit,” Al Jazeera’s Lawrance Lee said.

London, Dublin and Brussels have all insisted they want to keep free movement across the Irish border – a key component of the Good Friday agreement.

But the possibility of a return to checkpoints has stirred memories of The Troubles when cross-border smuggling was rife and British outposts along the frontier became targets for IRA fighters.

Source:Al Jazeera