Tag: InternationalNews

{Accusing Russia of failing to implement ceasefire, rebels say they might attend talks only if progress is seen soon.}

Syrian rebels have cast doubt on attending Russian-backed peace talks this week, accusing Moscow of failing to get Damascus to fully comply with a ceasefire or take tangible steps to fulfil their demands.

A rebel official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday that at most a handful of rebels might attend, but only if progress was seen in the next two days.

Russia had so far failed to yield any tangible steps towards full implementation of the ceasefire, humanitarian aid access, or a release of female detainees the rebels had demanded at the first meeting in the Kazakh capital Astana, he added.

“It seems Russian pressure is of no benefit,” the official said.

Kazakhstan said on Saturday it had invited the government and rebels for February 15-16 talks. They attended a similar indirect meeting in Astana last month aimed at shoring up a ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally.

“The opposition factions will not attend Astana because the Russian side did not abide by what they agreed to before, during and after Astana to uphold the ceasefire agreement,” Mohammad Al Aboud, a second senior rebel official said.

Russia and Turkey, which backs the rebels, have sought to revive diplomacy towards ending the war since the Syrian government and its backers defeated the rebels in Aleppo in December, their biggest defeat of the conflict.

A new round of UN-backed peace talks are due to begin in Geneva next week.

The Syrian government said earlier on Monday it was ready to agree on prisoner swaps with rebel groups, which the opposition wants before any negotiations over Syria’s political future.

Syrian state media cited an official source as saying the government was “always ready” to exchange prisoners in its jails for people “kidnapped by terrorist groups”.

A rebel official dismissed the statement as a ruse, saying Damascus had far more detainees than the few the rebels held.

{{Geneva Talks}}

The United Nations special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, sent invitations on Monday for the Geneva talks beginning on February 23, after initial prior consultations beginning on or about February 20, his spokeswoman Yara Sharif said.

The main Syrian opposition body on Sunday approved its delegation to next week’s Geneva talks.

This month, in a rare move, the Syrian government and rebel groups swapped dozens of women prisoners and hostages, some of them with their children, in Hama province in northwestern Syria.

Amnesty International said in a report this month that the government had executed up to 13,000 prisoners in mass hangings at a military jail near Damascus. The Syrian justice ministry called the report “devoid of truth”.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Motorcycle bomber hits crowd during protest in eastern Pakistani city, in a deadly attack claimed by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.}

A powerful bomb blast on Monday ripped through a protest in the Pakistani city of Lahore, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, according to officials.

The explosion went off in Lahore’s busy Mall Road during a rally attended by hundreds of pharmacists protesting against changes to a drug sale law outside the provincial assembly building.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a Pakistani Taliban-linked armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded at least 83 people, including media personnel covering the protest.

A spokesman for the group warned in a statement that the blast was “just the start”.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that the blast occurred near the Punjab assembly building when a suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed into a police vehicle.

At least five police officers were killed in the attack, according to Mushtaq Sukhera, inspector general of police in Punjab province.

“It was a suicide attack. The bomber exploded himself when successful negotiations were under way between police officials and the protesters,” Sukhera told reporters.

{{Major Pakistan Attacks 2014-2017}}

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from the blast site, said security forces had cordoned off the area on Mall Road, one of Lahore’s main arteries.

“The explosion was heard for several kilometres. It was a very powerful explosive device,” Hyder said, adding that a state of emergency had been declared in the eastern city.

“A number of people has been moved to hospitals, and the death toll is also mounting,” our correspondent said.

Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, condemned the attack and vowed to step up the fight against armed groups in the country.

“Terrorism isn’t a novelty for us. Our story has been one of constant struggle against its grasp and a fight for the soul of Pakistan,” he said in a statement.

“We have fought this fight against the terrorists among us, and will continue to fight it until we liberate our people of this cancer and avenge those who have laid down their lives for us.”

Lahore was the site of an Easter Day bombing that killed more than 70 people in a public park last year.

Jamaat-ul-Ahrar claimed responsibility for that attack, as well as for a bombing at a hospital in Quetta that killed 74 people in August last year.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Bus returning from a cherry blossom day trip overturns on an exit ramp in Taiwanese capital, leaving at least 32 dead.}

At least 32 people have been killed and 12 wounded when a tour bus flipped over on a highway near Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, according to officials.

Most of the passengers – senior citizens returning from a day trip to a popular cherry blossom viewing site – were trapped underneath the crushed vehicle on an exit ramp in the Nangang district of eastern Taipei, state media said on Monday.

Rescue personnel used a crane to pry the vehicle open.

“It happened on a curve, so the bus flipped and that could be due to excess speed,” said Tu Bing-cheng, a Taipei city official.

“The whole frame of the bus changed shape, got crushed and left no openings.”

The survivors, some of whom were seriously injured, were sent to hospitals nearby.

Authorities are still trying to determine the exact cause of the accident. Investigators said driver fatigue could not be ruled out, the Apple Daily reported.

A bus driver working for the travel agency that sold the tour told a local broadcaster that some colleagues had previously complained about the tiring assignment.

A bus accident in Taiwan last July killed 26 tourists from mainland China, raising concern from officials in Beijing about travel safety.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Rights group accuses Syria of eight chemical attacks, killing at least nine people during offensive to retake key town.}

Syrian government forces used chemical weapons in rebel-held areas of Aleppo during the final weeks of the battle to retake the key city, killing at least nine people and wounding hundreds more, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In a report on Monday, the US-based rights group said it had verified eight chemical attacks during the offensive from November 17 to December 13, adding that four children were among the victims.

HRW said it had interviewed witnesses, collected photos and reviewed video footage to reach the conclusion that chlorine bombs were dropped from government helicopters during the operation.

Around 200 people were wounded by the toxic gases used on opposition-controlled areas of the northern city, according to HRW.

One of the deadliest bombings hit the neighbourhood of Sakhur on November 20, killing six members of the same family, including four children whose lifeless bodies were shown on a video taken by the Shabha press agency.

‘Coordinated attacks’

Aleppo, once Syria’s bustling commercial hub, had been largely divided between a government-held west and a rebel-controlled east since 2012.

Syrian forces, backed by Russia, launched an offensive in November to seize east Aleppo, a key battleground in Syria’s nearly six-year war.

The government of Bashar al-Assad announced on December 22 that it had taken full control of the city.

HRW said its report did not find proof of Russian involvement in the chemical attacks, but noted Moscow’s key role in helping the government to retake eastern Aleppo.

READ MORE: Aleppo’s heritage sites ‘in danger’

The HRW report detailed attacks on a playground, clinics, residential streets and houses that left scores of people struggling to breathe, vomiting and unconscious.

The alleged attacks, which may have involved as many as three helicopters operating jointly, took place in areas where government forces were poised to advance, said the rights group.

“The pattern of the chlorine attacks shows that they were coordinated with the overall military strategy for retaking Aleppo, not the work of a few rogue elements,” said Ole Solvang, HRW’s deputy emergencies director.

‘Industrial strength’

Louis Charbonneau, the UN director at HRW, told Al Jazeera that the senior military officials who would have been overseeing the battle for Aleppo had to know chemical weapons were used.

“This is industrial strength. People get a burning in their throats, their eyes tear up. Their lungs fill with fluid. Your body simply will not let you bring in air. You can actually see the yellow-green gas as it is moving through,” he said, explaining the effects of the gas.

The actual number of chemical attacks could be higher, said the group, adding that journalists, medical personnel and other credible sources had reported at least 12 attacks in that period.

Chlorine use as a weapon is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria joined in 2013 under pressure from Russia.

The use of chlorine bombs as an indiscriminate weapon could amount to war crimes.

HRW urged the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on senior leaders in the chain of Syrian command, but such a move would likely be vetoed by Russia.

France and Britain are pushing the Security Council to ban the sale of helicopters to Syria and impose the first UN sanctions against Syrian military leaders and entities tied to chemical weapons development.

A joint investigation by the UN and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons found that several units of the Syrian army had used toxic weapons against three villages in northern Syria in 2014 and 2015.

It was the first time an international probe blamed Assad’s forces after years of denial from his government in Damascus.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Government issues emergency over “imminent” collapse of Oroville Dam’s spillway as thousands flee from their homes.}

At least 130,000 people living below the tallest dam in the United States have been asked to evacuate as a spillway appeared in danger of imminent collapse.

The California Department of Water Resources said on Facebook at about 00:30 GMT on Monday that the spillway of California’s Oroville Dam was “predicted to fail within the next hour”.

While it was still standing nearly three hours later, the Water Resources department said crews would use helicopters to drop rocks to fill a gouge in the spillway.

Authorities were also releasing water to lower the lake’s level.

Officials said the cities of Oroville, Gridley, Live Oak, Marysville, Wheat land, Yuba City, Plumas Lake, and Olivehurst were all under evacuation orders.

Aerial video shows strain on California’s Oroville Dam’s backup spillway hours before thousands ordered to evacuate.

Meanwhile, the Butte County sheriff said in a statement posted on social media: “Immediate evacuation from the low levels of Oroville and areas downstream is ordered, This is NOT A Drill.”

Doug Carlson, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources, said water levels on Friday were over 273 metres, less than 2 metres from the top.

Evacuation centers were set up at a fairgrounds in Chico, California, about 20 miles northwest of Oroville, but roads leading out of the area were jammed as residents sought to drive out of the flood zone.

The dam, which serves mainly for water supply, hydroelectricity generation and flood control, activated its emergency spillway after weeks of heavy rain caused the reservoir to rise above its capacity.

At 230 metres high, the structure, built between 1962 and 1968, is the tallest dam in the US, besting the famed Hoover Dam by more than 12 metres.

Source:Al Jazeera

{President Erdogan says Turkey’s military incursion into northern Syria aims to cleanse a 5,000sq km ‘safe zone’.}

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the final goal of a Turkish incursion into northern Syria is to clear a 5,000sq-km “safe zone”, vowing to press on towards ISIL’s self-declared capital in the country, Raqqa.

Turkish troops and their Syrian rebel allies had entered the centre of the ISIL bastion Al Bab, Erdogan said on Sunday, adding that its capture was just a “matter of time”.

“After Al Bab is about to be over, the period following that will be Manbij and Raqqa,” Erdogan told journalists before his departure on an official visit to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

“We shared our thoughts with the new US administration and CIA and we will follow the developments in line with our stance,” he added.

“The ultimate goal is to establish a safe zone by cleansing a 4,000 to 5,000sq km area from the terrorists.”

ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and is also known as ISIS, captured Raqqa in northern Syria in March 2013.

Erdogan said ISIL fighters had begun deserting Al Bab, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Turkish troops have yet to enter the town’s centre.

The UK-based war monitor, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said Turkish forces had advanced into Al Bab from the west in recent days, and now controlled around 10 percent of the town and all of its western suburbs.

The Turkish army launched a campaign inside Syria on August 24, codenamed Euphrates Shield, to clean its border from ISIL fighters and stop the advance of Kurdish militia, seen by Turkey as a “terrorist” hostile force.

Erdogan said Turkish forces had no intention of staying in Syria once the area had been cleared of both ISIL and Kurdish YPG fighters.

The Turkish-backed opposition forces advancing from the north are racing to seize Al Bab, ISIL’s last stronghold in the northern province of Aleppo. before Syrian government forces reach the town from the south.

The Turkish-backed forces are still a long way from Raqqa, which is largely surrounded by US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.

Last week, the Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces launched a new phase in its Raqqa offensive, aiming to capture towns and villages east of the city. The US-led coalition has targeted several bridges across the Euphrates River in support of the operation.

“The potential for further conflict is clear to see, unless some sort of solution has been agreed between Turkey, the US, Russia and the Kurds,” Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Gaziantep, on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border, said.

Simmons said a border buffer zone, safe areas and no-fly zones had all been proposed by Turkey in the past, but rejected by the administration of ex-US President Barack Obama.

“Now, have things changed? Has US President Donald Trump agreed to something? It isn’t clear at this stage, but Erdogan is insisting that he suggested cities being built in this safe area and refugees coming back from Turkey to be settled in them,” Simmons said.

The clashes in Al Bab have proved the toughest so far for Turkey’s army, with soldier fatalities increasing.

One Turkish soldier was killed and three others wounded in clashes with fighters on Sunday, the private Dogan news agency reported, citing military sources.

The latest casualty raised the number of Turkish troops killed in the Syria offensive to 67.

The three injured troops were evacuated from Al Bab and taken to hospitals in Turkey’s Kilis and Gaziantep provinces near the Syrian border, Dogan reported.

Source:Al Jazeera

{At least 60,000 gather in Bucharest to call for the government’s resignation for trying to curb anti-corruption fight.}

Tens of thousands of Romanians have braved freezing temperatures to protest for a 13th consecutive day, demanding the resignation of the government for trying to curb the fight against corruption.

At least 60,000 people on Sunday gathered in Victory Square in the capital, Bucharest, according to local media estimations.

Shouting “resign, resign”, the protesters also formed a huge human Romanian flag in front of the government building, defying temperatures as low as -7 degrees Celsius.

There were also protests in the cities of Cluj, Sibiu, Iasi, and Timisoara, as well as a counter-demonstration in Bucharest outside the presidential palace.

{{Public anger}}

The mass protests started last month when the centre-left government passed an emergency decree that would have watered down laws that punish official corruption.

Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu withdrew the decree after the biggest street protests since communism ended in 1989.

The emergency decree decriminalised criminal punishments for conflict of interest, work negligence and abuse of power cases in which the financial damage is valued at less than $48,000.

Justice Minister Florin Lordache resigned last week over widespread public anger.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from the demonstration in Victory Square, said: “It is quite a big protest, against the expectations of many people who were fearing that the cold weather, and the fact that the government had rescinded this decree that really sparked all this popular anger, would have made many people stay at home.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{Detentions of undocumented migrants seen as culmination of big shift in the US policy since January 25 executive order.}

Texas, USA – Protests have erupted across the US after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency swept across several US cities, detaining undocumented migrants.

Early Friday’s raids came quickly after President Donald Trump signed three executive orders on Thursday reportedly aimed at crime reduction.

Los Angeles, Austin and Phoenix have all seen demonstrations.

Demonstrators in Los Angeles shut down a highway following reports of raids, and Arizona has seen increased numbers at a number of weeks-old protest sites following the detainment of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos.

Garcia de Rayos was the first undocumented immigrant to be detained late on Wednesday in Phoenix, prompting increased demonstrations in front of Phoenix’s central ICE office.

Jose Matus of the Arizona-based Indigenous Alliance without Borders, a non-profit that works to educate indigenous and non-indigenous people living on the border of their rights, told Al Jazeera that Garcia de Rayos had been deported along with her family.

“They found she had a police record, so they decided to take her. It’s part of Trump’s idea to deport so-called felons,” Matus said.

The moves are seen as a culmination of a huge shift in the US immigration policy following Trump’s January 25 executive order to “ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws” of the country.

The ICE reportedly declined to deport Garcia de Rayos for four years under former President Barack Obama, who was informally known as the “deporter-in-chief”.

Matus did not view her as a threat to US national security.

In Austin, at least five undocumented residents have been detained.

{{‘Scrambling’ for information}}

Cristina Parker, the immigration programmes director at Austin-based Grassroots Leadership, which organises against deportations and mass incarceration, informed Al Jazeera there may be more.

“Everyone is scrambling to get information. There are unconfirmed reports of detentions across the city. Those who are most affected by these actions are the hardest to get in contact with, currently,” Parker said.

Austin has been the epicentre of the national battle over so-called sanctuary cities, an unofficial designation of cities that generally offer safety to undocumented migrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

According to local reports, the ICE detained each of the five in separate, targeted raids.

Robert Painter, the interim executive director of American Gateways, which provides low-cost legal help to immigrants, told Al Jazeera on Friday morning that ICE’s actions were “counterproductive … they only sow mistrust between the immigrant community and the government”.

Painter was similarly unable to provide a firm number of how many had been detained or if they were being deported.

“We stand ready to advocate for our immigrant community and provide representation wherever we can,” he concluded.

Back in Arizona, Matus was similarly defiant: “We’re going to continue protesting. Now that the courts have blocked the Muslim ban, there’s the wall. The Tohono O’odham tribe, whose lands cross the [US-Mexico] border, they don’t want that there.”

Native Americans have seen an increase in threatening policies, including infrastructure initiatives and Trump’s revival of the Dakota Access Pipeline that protesters at Standing Rock had fought for months to defeat.

“We’re also worried about the changes to border crossing following these executive orders. It’s a lot of threats,” Matus said.

Source:Al Jazeera