Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Three people killed after Sudan’s military seizes power in coup

By Khalid Abdelaziz

KHARTOUM (Reuters) -Sudan’s military seized power from a transitional government on Monday and soldiers killed at least three people and wounded 80 as street protests broke out against the coup.

The leader of the takeover, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, dissolved the military-civilian Sovereign Council that had been set up to guide the country to democracy following the overthrow of long-ruling autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising two years ago.

Burhan announced a state of emergency, saying the armed forces needed to protect safety and security, but he promised to hold elections in July 2023 and hand over to an elected civilian government then.

“What the country is going through now is a real threat and danger to the dreams of the youth and the hopes of the nation,” he said.

Youths opposed to the coup barricaded streets as clashes broke out with troops.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said three people had died of wounds after being shot by soldiers and at least 80 people had been injured.

Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was detained and taken to an undisclosed location after refusing to issue a statement in support of the takeover, the information ministry said.

The ministry, still loyal to Hamdok, urged resistance and said tens of thousands of people opposed to the takeover had taken to the streets and had faced gunfire near the military headquarters in Khartoum.

Troops had arrested civilian members of the Sovereign Council and government figures, it said, called on Sudanese to oppose the military.

“We raise our voices loudly to reject this coup attempt,” it said in a statement.

In Khartoum’s twin city Omdurman, protesters barricaded streets and chanted in support of civilian rule.

“Burhan cannot deceive us. This is a military coup,” said a young man who gave his name as Saleh.

‘RAISE OUR VOICES’

Sudan has been ruled for most of its post-colonial history by military leaders who seized power in coups. It had become a pariah to the West and was on the U.S. terrorism blacklist under Bashir, who hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s and is wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for war crimes.

The country had been on edge since last month when a failed coup plot, blamed on Bashir supporters, unleashed recriminations between the military and civilians in the transitional cabinet.

In recent weeks a coalition of rebel groups and political parties aligned themselves with the military and called on it to dissolve the civilian government, while cabinet ministers took part in protests against the prospect of military rule.

Sudan has also been suffering an economic crisis. Helped by foreign aid, civilian officials have claimed credit for some tentative signs of stabilization after a sharp devaluation of the currency and the lifting of fuel subsidies.

Washington had tried to avert the collapse of the power-sharing agreement by sending a special envoy, Jeffrey Feltman. The director of Hamdok’s office, Adam Hereika, told Reuters the military had mounted the takeover despite “positive movements” towards an agreement after meetings with Feltman in recent days.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said: “We reject the actions by the military and call for the immediate release of the prime minister and others who have been placed under house arrest.”

The military takeover will have lasting consequences on Sudan’s relations with the United States and it should reverse course immediately, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez said.

The military had been meant to pass on leadership of the Sovereign Council to a civilian figure in the coming months. But transitional authorities had struggled to move forward on issues including whether to hand Bashir over to the Hague.

Burhan said it was incumbent on the armed forces to act to halt “incitement to chaos and violence”.

The United Nations, Arab League and African Union all expressed concern. Political leaders should be released and human rights respected, AU Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement.

Britain called the coup an unacceptable betrayal of the Sudanese people. France called for the immediate release of Hamdok and other civilian leaders. Egypt called on all parties to exercise self-restraint.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, an activist coalition in the uprising against Bashir, called for a strike.

Burhan’s “reckless decisions will increase the ferocity of the street’s resistance and unity after all illusions of partnership are removed,” it said on its Facebook page.

The main opposition Forces of Freedom and Change alliance called for civil disobedience and protests across the country.

Two main political parties, the Umma and the Sudanese Congress, condemned what they called a coup and campaign of arrests.

Hamdok, an economist and former senior U.N. official, was appointed as a technocratic prime minister in 2019 but struggled to sustain the transition amid splits between the military and civilians and the pressures of the economic crisis.

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, Nafisa Eltahir, Moataz Abdelazim, Enas Alashray, Nadine Awadalla, Daniel Moshashai, Patricia Zengerle, Nandita Bose, Trevor Hunnicutt and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Aidan Lewis, Michael Georgy; Editing by Peter Graff and Angus MacSwan)

U.S. taps private groups to help resettle Afghan refugees

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The State Department said on Monday it will partner with private groups to help Afghans who have resettled in the United States after Americans pulled out their troops from the country and the Taliban took over the government in Kabul.

Tens of thousands of Afghans have arrived in the United States as part of an American evacuation. Many of them would have been at risk had they remained because of their work over the previous 20 years with U.S. and allied troops or with other U.S. and foreign agencies.

The new program will allow a groups of adults to form “sponsor circles” to provide initial support to the refugees as they arrive and help them settle in communities across the country, the State Department said.

“Americans of all walks of life have expressed strong interest in helping to welcome these individuals,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

“The Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans harnesses this outpouring of support and enables individuals to become directly involved in the welcome and integration of our new neighbors.”

The program, launched in partnership with the private group Community Sponsorship Hub, will expand the government’s capacity to resettle the Afghans, complementing the work of the department’s nonprofit resettlement agency partners, he said.

President Joe Biden’s administration is working to accommodate as many as 50,000 refugees in the United States. Others evacuees are in U.S. installations or stuck in third countries abroad.

Sarah Krause, executive director of the Community Sponsorship Hub, said the sponsorship program will help create enduring bonds between the Afghans and the communities that sponsor them.

The group will certify sponsor circles by conducting background checks, ensuring participants complete mandatory training, and reviewing their pledges to provide financial support and initial resettlement services to Afghan newcomers for the first 90 days after they arrive in a local community.

Some refugee organizations have been pushing for the United States to adopt a program of private or community sponsorship for individual refugees, similar to a model used in Canada.

Last month, former U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama helped launch a new group, Welcome.US, aimed at supporting the Afghan refugees.

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Nigerian state to shut camps for people displaced by insurgency

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (Reuters) – Nigeria’s Borno state, the epicenter of an ongoing Islamist insurgency, will shut all camps that are holding thousands of internally displaced persons by the end of the year, its governor said on Friday, citing improved security in the state.

The conflict between the insurgents and Nigeria’s armed forces has also spread to Chad and Cameroon and has left about 300,000 dead and millions dependent on aid, according to the United Nations.

Borno, which shares a border with Niger, Cameroon and Chad has for more than a decade been the foremost outpost of an insurgency led by Islamist group Boko Haram and later its offshoot Islamic State for West Africa Province (ISWAP).

Speaking after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari in Abuja, Borno governor Babgana Zulum said security had improved in the state so much that those living in camps in the state capital Maiduguri could return home.

“So far so good, Borno State government has started well and arrangements have been concluded to ensure the closure of all internally displaced persons camps that are inside Maiduguri metropolis on or before 31st December, 2021,” Zulum said.

But humanitarian groups say most families are unwilling to return to their ancestral lands especially in the northern parts of Borno, which they deem unsafe.

Buhari has in the past months claimed his government was gaining ground on the insurgents. Last week the country’s top general said ISWAP leader Abu Musab al-Barnawi was dead, without giving details.

Zulum said Borno state authorities would continue to repatriate Nigerian refugees from a camp in Cameroon.

Boko Haram’s leader Abubakar Shekau died in May and Nigeria says hundreds of fighters loyal to the Islamist group have been surrendering to the government since then.

(Reporting by Maiduguri newsroom, Writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by David Gregorio)

Exclusive-U.S. hopes to soon relocate Afghan pilots who fled to Tajikistan, official says

By Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States hopes to soon relocate around 150 U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force pilots and other personnel detained in Tajikistan for more than two months after they flew there at the end of the Afghan war, a U.S. official said.

The State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, declined to offer a timeline for the transfer but said the United States wanted to move all of those held at the same time. The details of the U.S. plan have not been previously reported.

Reuters exclusively reported first-person accounts from 143 U.S.-trained Afghan personnel being held at a sanatorium in a mountainous, rural area outside of the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, waiting for a U.S. flight out to a third country and eventual U.S. resettlement.

Speaking on smuggled cell phones kept hidden from guards, they say they have had their phones and identity documents confiscated.

There are also 13 Afghan personnel in Dushanbe, enjoying much more relaxed conditions, who told Reuters they are also awaiting a U.S. transfer. They flew into the country separately.

The Afghan personnel in Tajikistan represent the last major group of U.S.-trained pilots still believed to be in limbo after dozens of advanced military aircraft were flown across the Afghan border to Tajikistan and to Uzbekistan in August during the final moments of the war with the Taliban.

In September, a U.S.-brokered deal allowed a larger group of Afghan pilots and other military personnel to be flown out of Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.

Two detained Afghan pilots in Tajikistan said their hopes were lifted in recent days after visits by officials from the U.S. embassy in Dushanbe.

Although they said they had not yet been given a date for their departure, the pilots said U.S. officials obtained the biometric data needed to complete the process of identifying the Afghans. That was the last step before departure for the Afghan pilots in Uzbekistan.

PREGNANT AFGHAN PILOT

U.S. lawmakers and military veterans who have advocated for the pilots have expressed deep frustration over the time it has taken for President Joe Biden’s administration to evacuate Afghan personnel.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was pressed on the matter in Congress last month, expressing concern at a hearing for the pilots and other personnel.

Reuters had previously reported U.S. difficulties gaining Tajik access to all of the Afghans, which include an Afghan Air Force pilot who is eight months pregnant.

In an interview with Reuters, the 29-year-old pilot had voiced her concerns to Reuters about the risks to her and her child at the remote sanatorium. She was subsequently moved to a maternity hospital.

“We are like prisoners here. Not even like refugees, not even like immigrants. We have no legal documents or way to buy something for ourselves,” she said.

The pregnant pilot would be included in the relocation from Tajikistan, the U.S. State Department official said.

Even before the Taliban’s takeover, the U.S.-trained, English-speaking pilots had become prime targets of the Taliban because of the damage they inflicted during the war. The Taliban tracked down the pilots and assassinated them off-base.

Afghanistan’s new rulers have said they will invite former military personnel to join the revamped security forces and that they will come to no harm.

Afghan pilots who spoke with Reuters say they believe they will be killed if they return to Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Grant McCool)

Israel designates Palestinian civil society groups as terrorists, U.N. ‘alarmed’

By Rami Ayyub

TEL AVIV (Reuters) -Israel on Friday designated six Palestinian civil society groups as terrorist organizations and accused them of funneling donor aid to militants, a move that drew criticism from the United Nations and human rights watchdogs.

Israel’s defense ministry said the groups had ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), a left-wing faction with an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis.

The groups include Palestinian human rights organizations Addameer and Al-Haq, which document alleged rights violations by both Israel and the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank.

“(The) declared organizations received large sums of money from European countries and international organizations, using a variety of forgery and deceit,” the defense ministry said, alleging the money had supported PFLP’s activities.

The designations authorize Israeli authorities to close the groups’ offices, seize their assets and arrest their staff in the West Bank, watchdogs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint statement.

Addameer and another of the groups, Defense for Children International – Palestine, rejected the accusations as an “attempt to eliminate Palestinian civil society.”

The United Nations Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories said it was “alarmed” at the announcement.

“Counter-terrorism legislation must not be used to constrain legitimate human rights and humanitarian work,” it said, adding that some of the reasons given appeared vague or irrelevant.

“These designations are the latest development in a long stigmatizing campaign against these and other organizations, damaging their ability to deliver on their crucial work,” it said.

But Israel’s defense ministry said: “Those organizations present themselves as acting for humanitarian purposes; however, they serve as a cover for the ‘Popular Front’ promotion and financing.”

An official with the PFLP, which is on United States and European Union terrorism blacklists, did not outright reject ties to the six groups but said they maintain relations with civil society organizations across the West Bank and Gaza.

“It is part of the rough battle Israel is launching against the Palestinian people and against civil society groups, in order to exhaust them,” PFLP official Kayed Al-Ghoul said.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said the “decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations.”

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek the territories for a future state.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub in Tel Aviv; Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Stephen Farrell in Jerusalem; Editing by William Maclean and Mark Porter)

Red Cross warns aid groups not enough to stave off Afghan humanitarian crisis

By Alexander Cornwell

DUBAI (Reuters) – The Red Cross on Friday urged the international community to engage with Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers, saying that aid groups on their own would be unable to stave off a humanitarian crisis.

Afghanistan has been plunged into crisis by the abrupt end of billions of dollars in foreign assistance following the collapse of the Western-backed government and return to power by the Taliban in August.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has since increased its efforts in the country while other organizations were also stepping up, Director General Robert Mardini said.

But he told Reuters that support from the international community, who had so far taken a cautious approach in engaging with the Taliban, was critical to providing basic services.

“Humanitarian organizations joining forces can only do so much. They can come up with temporary solutions.”

The United Nations on Thursday announced it had set up a fund to provide cash directly to Afghans, which Mardini said would solve the problem for three months.

“Afghanistan is a compounded crisis that is deteriorating by the day,” he said, citing decades of conflict compounded by the effects of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mardini said 30% of Afghanistan’s 39 million population were facing severe malnutrition and that 18 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance or protection.

The Taliban expelled many foreign aid groups when it was last in power from 1996-2001 but this time has said it welcomes foreign donors and will protect the rights of their staff.

But the hardline Islamists, facing criticism it has failed to protect rights, including access to education for girls, have also said aid should not be tied to conditions.

“No humanitarian organization can compensate or replace the economy of a country,” Mardini said.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

It’s bloom time in Chile’s ‘flowering desert’, despite drought

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – The sand dunes of Chile’s Atacama are once again bathed in vibrant colors following the sprouting of flowers in recent weeks in the world’s most arid desert despite a persistent drought.

The impressive vistas of the so-called flowering desert attract local and foreign visitors each spring in the southern hemisphere, depending on the amount of rainfall received in the winter season.

“This is a natural laboratory, because it lets you see how changes in rainfall affect plant diversity,” said biologist Andrea Loaiza during a tour of the area.

Resistant seeds and bulbs are able to survive Atacama’s extremely dry weather until they flower during the spring.

“If you pick some oil, you’ll find thousands of seeds, thousands of bulbs,” said Gina Arancio, a botanist with the local Universidad de La Serena. She explained that those seeds and bulbs – known collectively as germopolasm – are able to survive during many years even if there is no rain.

Still, while the area is officially protected and people are only allowed to go into designated areas, it is common to see deterioration caused by the transit of vehicles. The threat of plant trafficking is present as well.

Biologist Cesar Pizarro said that the area has tended to receive less and less rainfall over time, with the exception of the years 2007 and 2011.

“Even though the rain is restricted to a small area, it is still impressive to see it in the planet’s most arid desert,” he said.

The water deficit has led to studies in the region that seek to understand the impact that climate change has had over local plant species, as well as the plants’ ability to survive and adapt to the drier environment.

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

U.S. Supreme Court to hear challenge to Texas abortion ban

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on Nov. 1 a challenge by President Joe Biden’s administration and abortion providers to a Texas law that imposes a near-total ban on the procedure – a case that will determine the fate of the toughest abortion law in the United States.

It is the second major abortion case that the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has scheduled for the coming months, with arguments set for Dec. 1 over the legality of a restrictive Mississippi abortion law.

The Texas and Mississippi measures are among a series of Republican-backed laws passed at the state level limiting abortion rights – coming at a time when abortion opponents are hoping that the Supreme Court will overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade that legalized the procedure nationwide.

Mississippi has asked the justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the Texas attorney general on Thursday signaled that he also would like to see that ruling fall.

The justices on Friday deferred a decision on the Biden administration’s request that the justices block the Texas law while the litigation continues, prompting a dissent from liberal Justice Sotomayor. Lower courts already have blocked the Mississippi law.

It is rare that the Supreme Court would, as it did in this case, decide to hear arguments while bypassing lower courts that were already considering the Texas dispute, indicating that the justices have deemed the matter of high public importance and requiring immediate review.

The Texas measure bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, a point when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant. It makes an exception for a documented medical emergency but not for cases of rape or incest.

The Biden administration sued in September, challenging the legality of the Texas law. In taking up the case, the Supreme Court said it will resolve whether the federal government is permitted to bring a lawsuit against the state or other parties to prohibit the abortion ban from being enforced.

The other challenge that the justices took up, filed by Texas abortion providers, asks the court to decide whether the design of the state’s law, which allows private citizens rather than the government to enforce the ban, is permissible. The providers, as well as the administration, have said the law is designed to evade federal court review.

Mississippi’s law bans abortions starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Rulings in that case and the Texas case are due by the end of June 2022, but could come sooner.

The Supreme Court previously allowed the Texas law to be enforced in the challenge brought by abortion providers. In that 5-4 decision on Sept. 1, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts expressed skepticism about how the law is enforced and joined the three liberal justices in dissent.

The Texas law is unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by enabling them to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. That feature has helped shield the law from being immediately blocked as it made it more difficult to directly sue the state.

Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits. Critics have said this provision lets people act as anti-abortion bounty hunters, a characterization its proponents reject.

The Biden administration had asked the Supreme Court to quickly restore a federal judge’s Oct. 6 order temporarily blocking the law. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put that order on hold a few days later.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Russian COVID deaths hit 4th straight record a week before new curbs

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia reported a fourth straight daily record of COVID-19 deaths on Friday, with still a week to go before the start of a nationwide workplace shutdown ordered by President Vladimir Putin to try to curb a rise in infections.

Authorities said 1,064 people had died in the previous 24 hours, with new infections hitting a second successive daily record at 37,141.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin’s decision to declare the period from Oct. 30 to Nov. 7 as “non-working days” would provide an opportunity to break the chain of infections, but described the situation as “extremely difficult.”

Asked if more drastic measures might be considered, he said: “Right now, no… There is not a single person who can predict the trajectory of the pandemic with a high degree of confidence.”

He did not rule out the possibility of further measures being taken beyond Nov. 7 if necessary, and once again blamed the situation on negative public attitudes towards getting vaccinated.

“Our vaccination program is going worse than a number of European countries. Fewer people are being vaccinated and more people are getting sick as new, more aggressive strains emerge. That is the reality that is taking place,” he said.

Putin has told regional authorities they can introduce further restrictions at their discretion.

Moscow has ordered unvaccinated over-60s to stay at home for four months from Monday, and from next Thursday will reimpose the strictest lockdown measures since June last year, with only essential shops like pharmacies and supermarkets allowed to remain open.

(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Truckers in Brazil disband blockade after provoking fuel shortages

By Roberto Samora and Gram Slattery

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Truckers blockading a major refinery in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais disbanded on Friday, allowing fuel supplies to normalize in the nation’s second most populous state.

The protesters, principally truckers who deliver fuel, had been demanding a decrease in taxes on diesel. Since Thursday, they had blocked roads near the REGAP refinery near state capital Belo Horizonte, an action that spooked industry leaders and motorists and caused some gas stations in Minas Gerais to run low on fuel.

Truckers have grown increasingly vocal in recent months as a rise in global crude prices has pushed up the cost of diesel domestically and eaten into margins. Trucker groups have threatened a general strike next week, a move that could prove crippling for Brazil’s economy, if widely observed.

A truckers strike over high fuel prices in 2018 ground the economy to a halt, and destroyed the remaining political capital of the already unpopular government at the time. As a result, Brasilia remains attentive to their demands.

On Thursday evening, President Jair Bolsonaro, who is expected to run for re-election next year, said that the government would give Brazil’s 750,000 truckers 400 reais ($70) each, to help cushion the impacts of rising fuel prices.

Shortly after, four key Treasury officials quit amid signs the government is looking to lift a constitutional spending cap, a move that battered local equities markets and the real currency.

Speaking in Brasilia on Friday, Bolsonaro played down overspending concerns, saying that the payment to truckers would cost the government less than 4 billion reais in total.

Brazil-listed shares in Vibra Energia SA and Ultrapar Participacoes SA, the owners of the nation’s largest and second-largest gas station chains, respectively, were both down over 3.5% in afternoon trade. The benchmark Bovespa equities index was off 1.1%.

(Reporting by Roberto Samora in Sao Paulo and Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)