Tag Archives: Arson

Exclusive: U.N. expects up to 300,000 Rohingya could flee Myanmar violence to Bangladesh

Rohingya refugees wait for food near Kutupalong refugee camp after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Ukhia, Bangladesh, September 6, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By Simon Lewis

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Up to 300,000 Rohingya Muslims could flee violence in northwestern Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh, a U.N. agency official said on Wednesday, warning of a funding shortfall for emergency food supplies for the refugees.

According to estimates issued by United Nations workers in Bangladesh’s border region of Cox’s Bazar, arrivals since the latest bloodshed started 12 days ago have already reached 146,000.

Numbers are difficult to establish with any certainty due to the turmoil as Rohingya escape operations by Myanmar’s military.

However, the U.N. officials have raised their estimate of the total expected refugees from 120,000 to 300,000, said Dipayan Bhattacharyya, who is Bangladesh spokesman for the World Food Programme.

“They are coming in nutritionally deprived, they have been cut off from a normal flow of food for possibly more than a month,” he told Reuters. “They were definitely visibly hungry, traumatized.”

The surge of refugees, many sick or wounded, has strained the resources of aid agencies and communities which are already helping hundreds of thousands displaced by previous waves of violence in Myanmar. Many have no shelter, and aid agencies are racing to provide clean water, sanitation and food.

Bhattacharyya said the refugees were now arriving by boat as well as crossing the land border at numerous points.

Another U.N. worker in the area cautioned that the estimates were not “hard science”, given the chaos and lack of access to the area on the Myanmar side where the military is still conducting its ‘clearance operation’. The source added that the 300,000 number was probably toward the worst-case scenario.

The latest violence began when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base. The ensuing clashes and a military counter-offensive killed at least 400 people and triggered the exodus of villagers to Bangladesh.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that the violence could spiral into a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

Based on the prediction that 300,000 could arrive, the WFP calculated that it would need $13.3 million in additional funding to provide high-energy biscuits and basic rice rations for four months.

Bhattacharyya called for donors to meet the shortfall urgently. “If they don’t come forward now, we may see that these people would be fighting for food among themselves, the crime rate would go up, violence against women and on children would go up,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; editing by David Stamp)

Exclusive: Bangladesh protests over Myanmar’s suspected landmine use near border

FILE PHOTO: A Rohingya man carrying his belongings approaches the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Bandarban, an area under Cox's Bazar authority, Bangladesh, August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo

By Krishna N. Das

DHAKA (Reuters) – Bangladesh lodged a protest after it said Myanmar had laid landmines near the border between the two countries, government officials said on Wednesday, amid growing tensions over the huge influx of Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar.

An army crackdown triggered by an attack on Aug. 25 by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces has led to the killing of at least 400 people and the exodus of nearly 125,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh, leading to a major humanitarian crisis.

When asked whether Bangladesh had lodged the complaint, Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque said “yes” without elaborating. Three other government sources confirmed that a protest note was faxed to Myanmar in the morning saying the Buddhist-majority country was violating international norms.

“Bangladesh has expressed great concern to Myanmar about the explosions very close to the border,” a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The source asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

A Myanmar military source said landmines were laid along the border in the 1990s to prevent trespassing and the military had since tried to remove them. But none had been planted recently.

Two Bangladeshi sources told Reuters they believed Myanmar security forces were putting the landmines in their territory along the barbed-wire fence between a series of border pillars. Both sources said Bangladesh learned about the landmines mainly through photographic evidence and informers.

“Our forces have also seen three to four groups working near the barbed wire fence, putting something into the ground,” one of the sources said. “We then confirmed with our informers that they were laying land mines.”

The sources did not clarify if the groups were in uniform, but added that they were sure they were not Rohingya insurgents.

Manzurul Hassan Khan, a Bangladesh border guard officer, told Reuters earlier that two blasts were heard on Tuesday on the Myanmar side, after two on Monday fueled speculation that Myanmar forces had laid land mines.

One boy had his left leg blown off on Tuesday near a border crossing before being brought to Bangladesh for treatment, while another boy suffered minor injuries, Khan said, adding that the blast could have been a mine explosion.

A Rohingya refugee who went to the site of the blast on Monday – on a footpath near where civilians fleeing violence are huddled in a no man’s land on the border – filmed what appeared to be a mine: a metal disc about 10 centimeters (4 inches) in diameter partially buried in the mud. He said he believed there were two more such devices buried in the ground.

Two refugees also told Reuters they saw members of the Myanmar army around the site in the immediate period preceding the Monday blasts, which occurred around 2:25 p.m.

Reuters was unable to independently verify that the planted devices were land mines and that there was any link to the Myanmar army.

The Myanmar army has not commented on the blasts near the border. Zaw Htay, the spokesman for Myanmar’s national leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was not immediately available for comment.

On Monday, he told Reuters clarification was needed to determine “where did it explode, who can go there and who laid those land mines. Who can surely say those mines were not laid by the terrorists?”

The Bangladesh interior ministry secretary, Mostafa Kamal Uddin, did not respond to calls seeking comment.

The border pillars mentioned by the Dhaka-based sources mark the boundaries of the two countries, along which Myanmar has a portion of barbed wire fencing. Most of the two countries’ 217-km-long border is porous.

“They are not doing anything on Bangladeshi soil,” said one of the sources. “But we have not seen such laying of land mines in the border before.”

Myanmar, which was under military rule until recently and is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world, is one of the few countries that have not signed the 1997 U.N. Mine Ban Treaty.

(Additional reporting by Wa Lone in YANGON and Ruma Paul in DHAKA; Editing by Philip McClellan and Nick Macfie)

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi under pressure as almost 125,000 Rohingya flee violence

Rohingya refugees walk on the muddy path after crossing the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Teknaf, Bangladesh, September 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

By Simon Lewis and Krishna N. Das

SHAMLAPUR, Bangladesh/DHAKA (Reuters) – Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi came under more pressure on Tuesday from countries with Muslim populations to halt violence against Rohingya Muslims that has sent nearly 125,000 of them fleeing over the border to Bangladesh in just over 10 days.

Reuters reporters saw hundreds more exhausted Rohingya arriving on boats near the Bangladeshi border village of Shamlapur on Tuesday, suggesting the exodus was far from over.

Indonesian foreign minister Retno Marsudi, in Dhaka to discuss aid for the fleeing Rohingya, met her Bangladeshi counterpart, Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, a day after urging Suu Kyi and Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing to halt the bloodshed.

“The security authorities need to immediately stop all forms of violence there and provide humanitarian assistance and development aid for the short and long term,” Retno said after her meetings in the Myanmar capital.

The latest violence in Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state began on Aug. 25, when Rohingya insurgents attacked dozens of police posts and an army base. The ensuing clashes and a military counter-offensive have killed at least 400 people and triggered the exodus of villagers to Bangladesh.

The treatment of Buddhist-majority Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Muslim Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing Suu Kyi, who has been accused by Western critics of not speaking out for the minority that has long complained of persecution.

Myanmar says its security forces are fighting a legitimate campaign against “terrorists” responsible for a string of attacks on police posts and the army since last October.

Myanmar officials blamed Rohingya militants for the burning of homes and civilian deaths but rights monitors and Rohingya fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh say the Myanmar army is trying to force them out with a campaign of arson and killings.

“Indonesia is taking the lead, and ultimately there is a possibility of ASEAN countries joining in,” H.T. Imam, a political adviser to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, told Reuters.

He was referring to the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations that includes both Myanmar and Indonesia.

“If we can keep the pressure on Myanmar from ASEAN, from India as well, that will be good … If the international conscience is awakened, that would put pressure on Myanmar.”

Malaysia, another ASEAN member, summoned Myanmar’s ambassador to express displeasure over the violence and scolded Myanmar for making “little, if any” progress on the problem.

“Malaysia believes that the matter of sustained violence and discrimination against the Rohingyas should be elevated to a higher international forum,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said in a statement.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan, who has said the violence against Rohingya Muslims constituted genocide, told Suu Kyi the violence was of deep concern to the Muslim world, and he was sending his foreign minister to Bangladesh.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a visit to Myanmar on Tuesday, during which he will meet top officials, including Suu Kyi.

Pakistan, home to a large Rohingya community, has expressed “deep anguish”.

FULL CAMP

The latest estimate of the numbers who have crossed into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, based on calculations by U.N. workers, is 123,600.

That takes to about 210,000 the number of Rohingya who have sought refuge in Bangladesh since October, when Rohingya insurgents staged smaller attacks on security posts, triggering a major Myanmar army counteroffensive and sending about 87,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh.

Refugees arriving in Shamlapur, and residents of the village, said hundreds of boats had arrived on Monday and Tuesday with several thousand people.

Reuters reporters saw men, women, children and a few possessions, including chickens, disembark from one boat.

“The army set fire to houses,” said Salim Ullah, 28, a farmer from Myanmar’s village of Kyauk Pan Du, gripping a sack of belongings.

“We got on the boat at daybreak. I came with my mother, wife and two children. There were 40 people on the boat, including 25 women.”

The new arrivals – many sick or wounded – have strained the resources of aid agencies and communities already helping hundreds of thousands of refugees from previous spasms of violence in Myanmar.

Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, said one camp in Bangladesh, Kutupalong, had reached “full capacity” and resources at others were being stretched.

“We are doing what we can, but will need to seek more resources,” Tan said.

Bangladesh is concerned about Myanmar army activity on the border and would lodge a complaint if Bangladeshi territory was violated, an interior ministry official said.

A Bangladesh border guard officer said two blasts were heard on Tuesday on the Myanmar side, after two on Monday fueled speculation Myanmar forces had laid land mines.

One boy had his left leg blown off near a border crossing before being brought to Bangladesh for treatment, while another boy suffered minor injuries, the officer, Manzurul Hassan Khan, said, adding the blast could have been a mine explosion.

The Myanmar army has not commented on the blasts near the border but said in a statement on Tuesday Rohingya insurgents were planning bomb attacks in Myanmar cities including the capital, Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay to “attract more attention from the world”.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Nurul Islam in COX’S BAZAR, Wa Lone and Shoon Naing; in YANGON and Ruma Paul in DHAKA; Writing by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez)

Rohingya Muslims flee as more than 2,600 houses burned in Myanmar’s Rakhine

Rohingya refugees rest after travelling over the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Teknaf, Bangladesh, September 1, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – More than 2,600 houses have been burned down in Rohingya-majority areas of Myanmar’s northwest in the last week, the government said on Saturday, in one of the deadliest bouts of violence involving the Muslim minority in decades.

About 58,600 Rohingya have fled into neighboring Bangladesh from Myanmar, according to U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, as aid workers there struggle to cope.

Myanmar officials blamed the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) for the burning of the homes. The group claimed responsibility for coordinated attacks on security posts last week that prompted clashes and a large army counter-offensive.

But Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say a campaign of arson and killings by the Myanmar army is aimed at trying to force them out.

The treatment of Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by Western critics of not speaking out for the Muslim minority that has long complained of persecution.

The clashes and army crackdown have killed nearly 400 people and more than 11,700 “ethnic residents” have been evacuated from the area, the government said, referring to the non-Muslim residents.

It marks a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since October, when a smaller Rohingya attack on security posts prompted a military response dogged by allegations of rights abuses.

“A total of 2,625 houses from Kotankauk, Myinlut and Kyikanpyin villages and two wards in Maungtaw were burned down by the ARSA extremist terrorists,” the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said. The group has been declared a terrorist organization by the government.

But Human Rights Watch, which analyzed satellite imagery and accounts from Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, said the Myanmar security forces deliberately set the fires.”New satellite imagery shows the total destruction of a Muslim village, and prompts serious concerns that the level of devastation in northern Rakhine state may be far worse than originally thought,” said the group’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson.

FULL CAPACITY

Near the Naf river separating Myanmar and Bangladesh, new arrivals in Bangladesh carrying their belongings in sacks set up crude tents or tried to squeeze into available shelters or homes of locals.

“The existing camps are near full capacity and numbers are swelling fast. In the coming days there needs to be more space,” said UNHCR regional spokeswoman Vivian Tan, adding more refugees were expected.

The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. Bangladesh is also growing increasingly hostile to Rohingya, more than 400,000 of whom live in the poor South Asian country after fleeing Myanmar since the early 1990s.

Jalal Ahmed, 60, who arrived in Bangladesh on Friday with a group of about 3,000 after walking from Kyikanpyin for almost a week, said he believed the Rohingya were being pushed out of Myanmar.

“The military came with 200 people to the village and started fires…All the houses in my village are already destroyed. If we go back there and the army sees us, they will shoot,” he said.

Reuters could not independently verify these accounts as access for independent journalists to northern Rakhine has been restricted since security forces locked down the area in October.

Speaking to soldiers, government staff and Rakhine Buddhists affected by the conflict on Friday, army chief Min Aung Hlaing said there is no “oppression or intimidation” against the Muslim minority and “everything is within the framework of the law”.

“The Bengali problem was a long-standing one which has become an unfinished job,” he said, using a term used by many in Myanmar to refer to the Rohingya that suggests they come from Bangladesh.

Many aid programs running in northern Rakhine prior to the outbreak of violence, including life-saving food assistance by the World Food Programme (WFP), have been suspended since the fighting broke out.

“Food security indicators and child malnutrition rates in Maungdaw were already above emergency thresholds before the violence broke out, and it is likely that they will now deteriorate even further,” said Pierre Peron, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Myanmar.

More than 80,000 children may need treatment for malnutrition in northern Rakhine and many of them reported “extreme” food insecurity, WFP said in July.

In Bangladesh, Tan of UNHCR said more shelters and medical care were needed. “There’s a lot of pregnant women and lactating mothers and really young children, some of them born during the flight. They all need medical attention,” she said.

Among new arrivals, 22-year-old Tahara Begum gave birth to her second child in a forest on the way to Bangladesh.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said.

(Reporting By Reuters staff; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jacqueline Wong)

Texas mosque fire called arson, reward offered: ATF

arson fire on islamic center mosque in texas

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A January fire that gutted a Texas mosque has been ruled arson, with a reward of up to $30,000 offered for tips leading to arrests, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said on Wednesday.

The fire at the Victoria Islamic Center, about 125 miles (200 km) southwest of Houston, was started just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily barring travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Authorities have found no evidence linking the fire with the order.

U.S. Islamic rights groups have said they saw the fire as part of a growing wave of bigotry toward Muslims in the country.

“Houses of worship are a sacred place in this country, and ATF is committed to devoting the necessary resources to solving this crime,” Fred Milanowski, the special agent in charge of the ATF Houston Field Division, said in a statement.

The fire destroyed the building and caused about $500,000 in damages, the ATF said. The Houston Field Division of the ATF, the Victoria Islamic Center and Crime Stoppers are offering rewards of up to $10,000 each, the ATF said.

An online GoFundMe.com campaign to rebuild the mosque has raised more than $1 million.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Two juveniles charged with arson in Tennessee wildfires that killed 14

Firefighters stand by a destroyed home after a wildfire forced the mandatory evacuation of Gatlinburg, Tennessee

By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) – Two juveniles were charged with arson on Wednesday in connection with the eastern Tennessee wildfires that broke out last month in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in which 14 people died, officials said.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesman Josh DeVine declined to release details about the juveniles, who have been arrested, citing their ages and the ongoing investigation.

The fires have been centered in Sevier County just east of Knoxville and have damaged or destroyed more than 1,750 structures, local and federal authorities said in a statement.

It was the highest death toll from wildfires in the United States since 2013, when 19 firefighters died near Prescott, Arizona.

“Our promise is that we will do our very best to help bring closure to those who have lost so much,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director Mark Gwyn said in a statement.

The two youths were charged with aggravated arson and were held at a juvenile detention center in Sevier County, the bureau said in a statement.

It added that authorities from the National Park Service, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Sevier County Sheriff’s Office participated in the probe.

The largest of the blazes, the so-called Chimney Tops 2, broke out on Nov. 23 in a remote rugged area dubbed Chimney Tops in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, authorities said.

Fed by drought-parched brush and trees and stoked by fierce winds, the flames quickly spread, turning into an inferno that roared out of the park. Thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes and businesses.

Authorities have said since last week that the fire was human caused.

A large amount of the damage was in Gatlinburg, known as the “gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains,” in eastern Tennessee, about 40 miles (64 km) southeast of Knoxville.

At one point, residents of Pigeon Forge, which is home to country music star Dolly Parton’s theme park Dollywood, were forced to leave the area. Dollywood has since re-opened.

Parton and other performers will put on a show Dec. 13 on the Great American Country channel to raise funds for people affected by the fires, Parton’s company said in a statement.

The Chimney Tops 2 Fire is 64 percent contained after burning more than 17,000 acres (6,880 hectares), according to the government tracking website InciWeb.

Rainfall over the last week has helped firefighters control the blazes.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Andrew Hay)

Israel arrests 13 on suspicion of arson over mass wildfires

Firefighters work as a wildfire burns in the village of Beit Meir near Jerusalem

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli police arrested 13 people on Friday on suspicion of arson, authorities said, after massive wildfires tore through central and northern Israel, a conflagration that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu branded as “terrorism”.

Firefighters kept battling the flames in wooded hills around Jerusalem and in northern areas on Friday, with support from Palestinian firemen and emergency teams from Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Italy, Russia and Turkey.

Netanyahu said he had also accepted offers of help from Egypt and Jordan.

Unseasonably dry weather and easterly winds helped kindle the fires, which erupted on Tuesday and now stretch across half the country.

Arson appeared to be behind some of the blazes, Netanyahu said. “A price will be paid for this arson-terrorism,” he told reporters on Friday. He said the arson was carried out by “elements with great hostility toward Israel.”

A resident stands next to burnt cars from Thursday's fire in the northern city of Haifa, Israel

A resident stands next to burnt cars from Thursday’s fire in the northern city of Haifa, Israel November 25, 2016. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

“We cannot tell yet if this is organized, but we can see a number of cells operating,” Netanyahu said.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a dozen people had been detained either while attempting to set fires or fleeing the area, but he provided no further details. Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan told reporters 13 people were arrested.

Erdan said those arrested were “minorities”, an allusion to either Arab Israeli citizens or Palestinians. “The highest likelihood is that the motive is nationalistic,” Erdan told Army Radio. Police, however, stopped short of declaring any motive.

The fires are the biggest in the country since 2010, when 44 people were killed in a killed in a massive blaze in the north. Investigators concluded that fire was caused by negligence.

ACCUSATIONS

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of a far-right party, said on Thursday the fires could not have been started by Jews and on Friday blamed them on “nationalist terrorists”, a reference in Israel to Palestinians.

“There is no coincidental ‘wave of fires’,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is a nationalist terrorist wave by fire terrorists meant to murder civilians and cause fright.”

A living room burnt in Thursday's fire is pictured in the northern city of Haifa, Israel

A living room burnt in Thursday’s fire is pictured in the northern city of Haifa, Israel, November 25, 2016. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

There has been no official response from Palestinian leaders. But Ayman Odeh, a leading Israeli Arab politician from Haifa, rejected the suggestion Arabs were responsible for arson attacks and accused the Israeli government of taking advantage of the situation to incite against the Arab minority.

Nearly a third of the residents of Haifa, a coastal city of around 250,000 people, including a large Arab population, spent the night in shelters and nearby towns and villages after being ordered to leave on Thursday in the face of walls of flame.

Smoke billowed over the city on Friday morning as firefighters worked to douse the remaining fires. City officials said the situation was under control but that at least 700 homes had been badly damaged or destroyed.

About 80,000 evacuees from Haifa were allowed to return to their homes on Friday as firefighters curbed the flames.

Israel’s chief of police said on Thursday people may have decided to start fires after seeing the trouble they were causing. “We’re in an area where if someone sees on the news there is an opportunity, he can take advantage of the opportunity,” said Roni Alsheich.

An Israeli army spokeswoman said forces had arrested a Palestinian man caught trying to set a fire near the Israeli settlement of Kochav Yaakov in the occupied West Bank. Footage aired on Israeli television showed three people setting a fire in an open area near the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

Police said one man from the Bedouin village of Rahat in southern Israel had been arrested for incitement after he posted a message on his Facebook page calling on others to start fires.

Palestinians seek an independent state in territories including the West Bank that Israel took in a 1967 war. The last round of peace talks collapsed in 2014.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Luke Baker and Mark Heinrich)

Swedish refugee asylum center burns down in suspected arson attack

Firefighters extinguish a fire that broke out at a refugee accommodation in Fagersjo, south of Stockholm, Sweden on the night of October 16,

STOCKHOLM, Oct 21 (Reuters) – A Swedish asylum centre burned down overnight in a suspected attack by arsonists, police said on Friday, the second incident of its kind in a week in the Stockholm region.

Staff alerted police in the early hours of Friday after hearing noises and seeing lights outside the building, Stockholm police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said.

A fire then broke out, he said, adding police had opened an investigation. “Things do not just catch fire outside (a house) for no reason.”

Two staff and nine residents were at the centre at the time of the blaze, during which no one was hurt, Lindgren said.

Sweden reversed decades of generous immigration policies last year, introducing border controls and tougher laws after an a record number of asylum applications that coincided with unprecedented flows of refugees entering Europe to escape war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

Police have been keeping a close watch on the country’s asylum centres, several of which have since been attacked,
including one in southern Stockholm that caught fire early last Sunday.

No one was injured either in that blaze, which led to 37 residents being evacuated.

Lindgren said there was no indication the two fires were linked, or that the risk of attacks against asylum centres had increased.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson; editing by John Stonestreet)

Protest erupts after police kill black man in North Carolina

Protesters in Charlotte over the death of a black man

By Greg Lacour

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (Reuters) – Protesters blocked a highway and clashed with police in Charlotte, North Carolina, early on Wednesday morning after officers fatally shot a black man they said had a gun when they approached him in a parking lot.

About a dozen officers and several protesters suffered non-life threatening injuries during an hours-long demonstration near where Keith Lamont Scott, 43, was shot by a policeman on Tuesday afternoon, police and local media said on social media.

Early Wednesday morning, protesters blocked Interstate 85, where they stole boxes from trucks and started fires before police used flash grenades in an attempt to disperse the angry crowd, an ABC affiliate in Charlotte reported.

A group of protesters then tried to break into a Walmart store before police arrived and began guarding its front entryway, video footage by local media showed.

Earlier in the evening, police in riot gear reportedly used tear gas on protesters who threw rocks and water bottles at them as they wielded large sticks and blocked traffic. One officer was sent to the hospital after being struck in the head by a rock, police said.

Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts urged for calm.

“The community deserves answers and (a) full investigation will ensue,” she said on Twitter, adding in a subsequent post, “I want answers too.”

Scott was shot by officer Brentley Vinson earlier in the day, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. The shooting occurred when officers were at an apartment complex searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant and they saw Scott get out of his vehicle with a firearm, the department said.

Vinson fired his weapon and struck Scott, who “posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers,” the department said in a statement.

Vinson, who joined the Charlotte police force in July 2014, is black, according to the department. He has been placed on paid administrative leave.

NATIONAL DEBATE

The fatal shooting came amid an intense national debate over the use of deadly force by police, particularly against black men.

Police did not immediately say if Scott was the suspect they had originally sought at the apartment complex. WSOC-TV, a local television station, reported that he was not.

Detectives recovered the gun Scott was holding at the time of the shooting and were interviewing witnesses, police said.

Protesters and Scott’s family disputed that the dead man was armed. Some family members told reporters that Scott had been holding a book and was waiting for his son to be dropped off from school.

Shakeala Baker, who lives in a neighboring apartment complex, said she had seen Scott in the parking lot on previous afternoons waiting for his child. But on Tuesday, she watched as medics tended to Scott after he was shot, she said.

“This is just sad,” said Baker, 31. “I get tired of seeing another black person shot every time I turn on the television. But (police are) scared for their own lives. So if they’re scared for their lives, how are they going to protect us?”

About 200 people gathered earlier Tuesday night for a peaceful protest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white officer killed an unarmed black man last week in an incident captured on police videos.

Lawyers for the family of Terence Crutcher, 40, disputed that he posed any threat before he was shot by Tulsa Officer Betty Shelby after his sport utility vehicle broke down on Friday.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Man arrested for arson related to destructive California fire

A general view of burned properties destroyed by the Clayton Fire is seen along Quarterhorse Lane in Lower Lake in California, U.S.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. (Reuters) – A man was arrested on Monday on suspicion of arson, officials said, over a wildfire in Northern California that has destroyed more than 175 homes and businesses and forced hundreds of residents to flee.

The conflagration is one of two dozen major wildfires across the drought-parched U.S. West that have all together charred nearly 300,000 acres (120,000 hectares).

Damin Pashilk, 40, faces 17 counts of arson over the so-called Clayton Fire, in the foothill community of Lower Lake, and other fires nearby over the past year, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.

“Mr. Pashilk committed a horrific crime and we will seek prosecution to the fullest extent of the law,” Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott said in a statement.

The fire, burning some 80 miles (130 km) north of San Francisco, was driven by fierce winds after sparking on Saturday evening. It threatens 1,500 structures besides the more than 175 destroyed, Cal Fire said on Monday.

There were no reports of casualties, however.

The Clayton fire, which had blackened about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) by late Monday afternoon, was about 5 percent contained, fire officials said.

More than 1,600 firefighters were battling the flames, Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said, adding that receding winds on Sunday evening had allowed crews to make progress cutting containment lines around the flames and putting out hot spots.

The nearby community of Clear Lake was evacuated, and sheriff’s deputies in Lake County were investigating burned-out structures.

On Monday afternoon, California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, declared states of emergency for the Clayton fire and another in San Luis Obispo County, the so-called Chimney fire, allowing local officials to get help from emergency response agencies statewide.

The Chimney fire was just 10 percent contained by Monday evening. It had scorched more than 5,400 acres (2,185 hectares) within less than 48 hours after erupting on Saturday afternoon, destroying a dozen structures and threatening about 200 more, with hundreds of residents being told to evacuate.

One of the season’s largest fires so far, the Soberanes blaze, was 60 percent contained by Monday. It burned through more than 74,600 acres (30,189 hectares) near scenic Big Sur, destroying 57 homes after it began on July 22.

A bulldozer operator died on July 26 when his tractor rolled over as he helped property owners battle the flames, this year’s sixth wildfire fatality in California.

Authorities have traced the Soberanes fire to an illegal campfire left unattended in a state park.

(Reporting by Stephen Lam in Middletown, Calif.; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, Calif.; Writing by Dan Whitcomb and Curtis Skinner; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Clarence Fernandez)