U.N.’s rights boss warns Russia over Syria air strikes

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein attends the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council at the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, September 13, 2016.

By Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein warned Russia on Tuesday over the use of incendiary weapons in Syria’s besieged enclave of eastern Aleppo, and said crimes by one side did not justify illegal acts by the other.

Zeid said that the situation in Aleppo demanded bold new initiatives “including proposals to limit the use of the veto by the permanent members of the Security Council”, which would enable the U.N. body to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Such a referral would be more than justified given the rampant and deeply shocking impunity that has characterized the conflict and the magnitude of the crimes that have been committed, some of which may indeed amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Zeid said in a statement.

Syria’s government and its allies had undertaken a “pattern of attacks” against targets with special protection under international humanitarian law, including medical units, aid workers and water-pumping stations, he said.

Russia is a key player in the Syrian civil war by virtue of its military support for President Bashar al-Assad and its role as one of five veto-holding powers on the Security Council.

The use of indiscriminate weapons such as incendiary weapons in heavily populated areas was of particularly grave concern, Zeid said, drawing a parallel with the battles of Warsaw, Stalingrad and Dresden during World War Two.

There is no statute of limitations on international crimes, his spokesman Rupert Colville said.

“I remind all State parties to Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, including the Russian Federation, that they are strictly prohibited from using incendiary weapons in airstrikes on heavily populated areas, and that the use of such weapons by ground forces is severely restricted,” Zeid said.

The rebels’ use of inaccurate “hell-fire cannons”, homemade mortars that fire gas cylinders packed with explosives and shrapnel, was also totally unacceptable, he said.

Designating the enemy as a “terrorist organization” was not an excuse to ignore the laws of war, Zeid said.

World Health Organization spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said that between Sept. 23 and Oct. 2, 342 people had been killed in eastern Aleppo, including 106 children, and 1,129 injured, including 261 children.

Those figures were based on reports from functioning health centers and the true figures were probably much higher, she said.

“As of yesterday, we had only six partially functioning hospitals that are in service, only one hospital that offers trauma services,” Chaib told the briefing.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

In a bunker under a mountain, Syrian hospital knocked out by strikes

A damaged hill is pictured near an underground hospital that was hit by an airstrike in the rebel held town of Kafr Zita, Hama countryside, Syria

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Even entombing the hospital under solid rock tunneled beneath a mountain was not enough to protect it from bombs dropped by Syria’s government or its Russian allies, medical staff say.

Opposition groups built the “central cave hospital” north of Hama to withstand bombardment, tunneling into a mountain in northwestern Syria for more than a year to bury it below 17 meters of rock.

To some degree it worked: when Russian or Syrian government warplanes bombed it in two waves of air strikes on Sunday, nobody inside the cave was seriously hurt.

But massive bombs wrecked the emergency ward near the entrance, caved in interior ceilings, crumbled cement walls and destroyed generators, water tanks and medical equipment, knocking the underground hospital out of service.

“The mountainous rock, praise God, did not collapse at all,” hospital head Abdallah Darwish told Reuters from the area.

Western countries including the United States say Syria’s government and its Russian allies are guilty of war crimes for deliberately targeting civilians, aid deliveries and hospitals during a three week escalation of the civil war.

Moscow and Damascus say they target only militants and deny that they have hit hospitals, although several have been hit during the latest bombing campaign, which began after a ceasefire collapsed in September.

According to Darwish, two waves of strikes hit the hospital. The first attack caused a huge blast at the front entrance of the hospital before another big bomb fell nearby, causing staff to panic, Darwish said.

Since launching their latest intensified air campaign, the Russian and Syrian forces have been using much more powerful “bunker-buster” bombs, which residents of opposition-held areas say have the force to bring down entire buildings.

At least one of the bombs dropped on the cave hospital appeared to be a bunker buster because of the force of the blast, said Ahmad al-Dbis, of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), a coalition of international aid agencies which funds hospitals in Syria including this one. Staff reported the blast caused “something like an earthquake”, he said.

Photos showed long cracks around the rocky, dome-shaped ceiling, and hospital rooms covered in the rubble of collapsing walls.

“Nothing is safe anymore when these kinds of weapons are used,” al-Dbis said.

“ON THE GROUND AND UNDERGROUND”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Monday that accusations that Moscow had struck hospitals were “groundless”. He said militants were using civilians and “so-called hospitals” as human shields, setting up medical facilities in cities without correctly marking them.

The Russian Defence Ministry did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment about the specific incident.

A Syrian military source reiterated government denials that hospitals have been targeted. However, the source said militants were being targeted wherever they were, “on the ground and underground”.

Since the ceasefire collapsed, fierce battles have been waged in the northern city of Aleppo, where pro-government forces are trying to capture the last major urban area under rebel control, and near Hama, where rebels have launched an advance of their own that threatens to approach the important government-held city.

The cave hospital opened north of Hama in late 2015 after aid groups and other donors paid about half a million dollars to build and equip it. It is close to a frontline where clashes and heavy bombardment have occurred in recent days.

“It was hit at the height of our work, at a time when there was the largest number of patients and wounded,” al-Dbis said.

All medical staff and patients were evacuated while equipment was put into storage for fear of another attack on the hospital, he said, describing it as the best fortified in all of rebel-held Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring body based in Britain, reported heavy bombardment by government forces in the area, including the town of Kafr Zita and other towns on Sunday.

INTENSIVE CARE

The Observatory said helicopters had dropped “barrel bombs” made from oil drums near the hospital the day before, and cited sources as saying they caused several people to choke – a sign of a gas attack. Rebels also said there had been a chlorine attack in the area.

The government vehemently denies using chemical weapons, but a United Nations inquiry last month said the Syrian military had been responsible for poison gas attacks in the past.

“The chlorine attack the night before had 30 victims, most of whom were treated at the cave,” said Adham Sahloul, an advocacy officer at the Syrian American Medical Society, which funds most of the hospital’s operating costs. “But they were out of the hospital by then.”

Doctors at the hospital perform more than 150 surgeries and treat at least 40 intensive care cases from rural areas near Hama every month, according to UOSSM.

The hospital provides all medical treatment without charge, and mainly serves people living in nearby towns who had already fled their homes in other parts of Syria. Some wounded rebels are also treated there, al-Dbis said.

“I will not hide it, there’s great fear among the hospital staff,” Darwish, the hospital director, said. “But God willing, we will get back to work after the repairs. And when they stay deep inside the hospital, nothing will happen to them.”

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Angus McDowall and Peter Graff)

War planes knock out Aleppo hospital as Russian backed assault intensifies

Medics inspect the damage outside a field hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-held al-Maadi neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria,

By Ellen Francis and Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russian or Syrian warplanes knocked a major Aleppo hospital out of service on Wednesday, hospital workers said, and ground forces intensified an assault on the city’s besieged rebel sector, in a battle that has become a potentially decisive turning point in the civil war.

Shelling damaged at least another hospital and a bakery, killing six residents queuing up for bread under a siege that has trapped 250,000 people with food running out.

The World Health Organization said it had reports that both hospitals were now out of service.

The week-old assault has already killed hundreds of people, with bunker-busting bombs bringing down buildings on residents huddled inside. Only about 30 doctors are believed to be left inside the besieged zone, coping with hundreds of wounded a day.

“The warplane flew over us and directly started dropping its missiles … at around 4 a.m.,” Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist at the M10 hospital, the largest trauma hospital in the city’s rebel-held sector, told Reuters.

“Rubble fell in on the patients in the intensive care unit.”

Medical workers at the M10 hospital said its oxygen and power generators were destroyed and patients were transferred to another hospital in the area. There were no initial reports of casualties in the hospital.

Photographs sent to Reuters by a hospital worker at the facility showed damaged storage tanks, a rubble strewn area, and the collapsed roof of what he said was a power facility.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russian air power, Iranian ground forces and Shi’ite militia fighters from Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, has launched a massive assault to crush the rebels’ last major urban stronghold.

Syria’s largest city before the war, Aleppo has been divided for years between government and rebel zones, and would be the biggest strategic prize of the war for Assad and his allies.

Taking full control of the city would restore near full government rule over the most important cities of western Syria, where nearly all of the population lived before the start of a conflict that has since made half of Syrians homeless, caused a refugee crisis and contributed to the rise of Islamic State.

UNPRECEDENTED BOMBING

The offensive began with unprecedented bombing last week, followed by a ground campaign this week, burying a ceasefire that had been the culmination of months of diplomacy between Washington and Moscow.

Washington says Moscow and Damascus are guilty of war crimes for targeting civilians, hospitals, rescue workers and aid deliveries, to break the will of residents and force them to surrender. Syria and Russia say they target only militants.

The Syrian army said a Nusra Front position had been destroyed in Aleppo’s old quarter, and other militant-held areas targeted in “concentrated air strikes” near the city.

Another hospital, M2, was damaged by bombardment in the al-Maadi district, where at least six people were killed while queuing for bread at a nearby bakery, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring body and residents.

Food supplies are scarce in the besieged area, and those trapped inside often queue up before dawn for food.

The collapse of the peace process leaves U.S. policy on Syria in tatters and is a personal blow to Secretary of State John Kerry, who led talks with Moscow despite scepticism from other top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration. As the ceasefire crumbled last week, U.S. Republican Senator John McCain called Kerry “intrepid but deluded”.

BATTLEFIELD VICTORY

Washington says the offensive shows Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin have abandoned negotiations in order to seek battlefield victory, turning their backs on an earlier international consensus that no side could win by force. Assad’s Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah allies have said in recent days the war will be won in combat.

But the rebels remain a potent military force even as they have lost control of urban areas. The collapse of peace efforts ends a proposed scheme to separate Western-backed fighters from hardened jihadists.

Colonel Fares al-Bayoush, a rebel commander, told Reuters foreign states had given the insurgents a new type of Grad surface-to-surface rockets. The rockets, with a range of 22-40 km, had arrived in “excellent quantities” and will be used on battlefronts in Aleppo, Hama and the coastal region, he said.

A video posted on YouTube on Monday showed Free Syrian Army rebels firing Grad missiles at government positions near Aleppo. Bayoush said the weapons in the video were newly supplied.

MORE GROUND ATTACKS

A senior rebel official said pro-government forces were mobilizing in apparent preparation for more ground attacks in central areas of the city.

“There have been clashes in al-Suweiqa from 5 a.m. until now. The army advanced a little bit, and the guys are now repelling it, God willing,” a fighter in the rebel Levant Front group said in a voice recording sent to Reuters, referring to an area in the city center where there was also fighting on Tuesday.

Another rebel official said government forces were also attacking the insurgent-held Handarat refugee camp a few kilometers to the north of Aleppo.

“It doesn’t seem that their operation in the old city is the primary operation, it seems like a diversionary one so that the regime consumes the people on that front and advances in the camp,” the official, Zakaria Malahifij, head of the political office of the Fastaqim group, told Reuters from Turkey.

Pope Francis urged forces to stop bombing civilians in Aleppo, warning them on Wednesday they would face God’s judgment. Speaking in St. Peter’s Square, Francis called Aleppo “this already martyred city, where everybody is dying – children, old people, sick people, young people …

“I appeal to the consciences of those responsible for the bombings, who will one day will have to account to God.”

(Reporting by Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Philip Pullella, writing by Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership)

Fierce air strikes on Aleppo after Syrian army declares offensive

People inspect a damaged site after airstrikes on the rebel held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

By Ellen Francis and Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Warplanes launched some of the heaviest air strikes yet on rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Friday after the Russian-backed Syrian army declared an offensive to fully capture Syria’s biggest city, killing off any hope of reviving a ceasefire.

Residents said the streets were deserted as the 250,000 people still trapped in the besieged opposition-held sector of Aleppo sought shelter from jets. The army said the operation would include a ground attack, and could last “for some time”.

The rebels and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring body described raids by warplanes they said must belong to Russia. Residents also spoke of attacks by helicopters using bombs made from oil drums, a tactic usually attributed to the Syrian army.

“Can you hear it? The neighborhood is getting hit right now by missiles. We can hear the planes right now,” Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist, told Reuters. “The planes are not leaving the sky, helicopters, barrel bombs, warplanes.”

The intense bombardment left no doubt that the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and its Russian allies had spurned a plea from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to halt flights to resurrect the ceasefire, which lasted a week before collapsing on Monday.

A rebel commander said the blasts were the fiercest the city had faced.

“I woke up to a powerful earthquake though I was in a place far away from where the missile landed,” he said in a voice recording sent to Reuters. His group had “martyrs under the rubble” in three locations.

In a late night announcement on Thursday, the Syrian military announced “the start of its operations in the eastern districts of Aleppo”, and warned people to stay away from “the headquarters and positions of the armed terrorist gangs”.

Elaborating on this on Friday, a military source said the offensive would be a “comprehensive one”, with a ground assault following air and artillery bombardment. “With respect to the air or artillery strikes, they may continue for some time,” it said.

There was no immediate comment from the Russian or Syrian militaries detailing Friday’s air strikes.

The Syrian army’s declaration of the offensive coincided with international meetings on Syria in New York, the latest diplomatic efforts officially intended to revive the truce, which was brokered by the United States and Russia.

Its collapse, the same fate as all previous efforts to halt a 5-1/2-year-old war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, has doomed what may be the final bid for a peace breakthrough before President Barack Obama leaves office.

“ANNIHILATION”

The Syrian government, strengthened by Russian air power and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, has been tightening its grip on rebel-held districts of Aleppo this year, and this summer achieved a long-held goal of fully encircling the area.

The government already controls the city’s western half, where fewer people have fled. Before the war, the city held nearly 3 million people and was Syria’s economic hub.

Recovering full control of Aleppo would be the most important victory of the war so far for Assad, who has sought to consolidate his grip over the western cities where the overwhelming majority of Syrians lived before fighting drove half of the nation from their homes.

The Observatory said there were at least 40 air strikes since midnight.

Ammar al Selmo, the head of civil defense rescue service in opposition-held Aleppo, said three of its four centers in Aleppo had been hit. “What’s happening now is annihilation in every sense of the word,” he told Reuters. “Today the bombardment is more violent, with a larger number of planes.”

The U.S.-Russian agreement marked their second attempt this year to halt the war. It was supposed to bring about a nationwide ceasefire, improved humanitarian aid access, and a joint U.S.-Russian effort against jihadist groups including Islamic State and the Nusra Front, long al Qaeda’s Syrian wing.

“LONG, PAINFUL, DIFFICULT”

But the ceasefire collapsed into renewed bombardments on Monday, including an attack on an aid convoy that Washington has blamed on Moscow, which denies involvement.

Assad remains defiant, saying on Thursday he expected the conflict to “drag on” as long as it is part of a global conflict in which the groups fighting him are backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the United States.

On Thursday at the United Nations, the United States and Russia failed to agree on how to revive the ceasefire during what U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura called a “long, painful, difficult and disappointing” meeting.

The International Syria Support Group, including Moscow, Washington and other major powers, met on the sidelines of the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders in New York.

“We have exchanged ideas with the Russians and we plan to consult tomorrow with respect to those ideas,” Kerry said, expressing concern at the reports of the planned new Syrian offensive. “I am no less determined today than I was yesterday but I am even more frustrated.”

Western states have backed Kerry’s call to ground warplanes to create the right conditions for the truce. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault described Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s response to that proposal as “not satisfying.”

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff and Peter Millership)

Putin, Assad ignore U.S. ; Aleppo hit by worst strikes for months

Damaged aid trucks are pictured after an airstrike on the rebel held Urm al-Kubra town, western Aleppo city, Syria S

By Tom Perry and Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Warplanes mounted the heaviest air strikes in months against rebel-held districts of the city of Aleppo overnight, as Russia and the Syrian government spurned a U.S. plea to halt flights, burying any hope for the revival of a doomed ceasefire.

Rebel officials and rescue workers said incendiary bombs were among the weapons that rained from the sky on the city. Hamza al-Khatib, the director of a hospital in the rebel-held east, told Reuters the death toll was 45.

“It’s as if the planes are trying to compensate for all the days they didn’t drop bombs” during the ceasefire, Ammar al-Selmo, the head of the civil defense rescue service in opposition-held eastern Aleppo told Reuters.

“It was like there was coordination between the planes and the artillery shelling, because the shells were hitting the same locations that the planes hit,” he said.

The assault, by aircraft from the Syrian government, its Russian allies or both, made clear that Moscow and Damascus had rejected a plea by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to halt flights so that aid could be delivered and a ceasefire salvaged.

In a tense televised exchange with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the United Nations on Wednesday, Kerry said stopping the bombardment was the last chance to find a way “out of the carnage”.

President Bashar al-Assad meanwhile indicated he saw no quick end to the war, telling AP News it would “drag on” as long as it is part of a global conflict in which terrorists were backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States.

Moscow and Washington announced the ceasefire two weeks ago with great fanfare. But the agreement, probably the final bid for a breakthrough on Syria before President Barack Obama leaves office next year, appears to have suffered the same ill fate as all previous peace efforts in a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians and made half the nation homeless.

The truce foundered on Monday with an attack on an aid convoy, which Washington blamed on Russian warplanes. Russia denied involvement. Prior to that, tensions between Washington and Moscow spiked over a lethal air raid on Syrian government troops by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.

Washington says it struck Syrian forces by mistake on Sept 17. Assad said in his interview he believed the strikes, which he said lasted over an hour, were deliberate.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military or mention on state media of Thursday’s bombardment of Aleppo.

“It was the heaviest air strikes for months inside Aleppo city,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain.

A senior official in the Levant Front, an Aleppo-based rebel group, told Reuters: “The Russians only want surrender. They have no other solution.”

In another sign of the Syrian government’s determination to seize and hold more territory, it pressed on with the evacuation of rebel fighters from the last opposition-held district of Homs, which would complete the government’s recapture of the central city, now largely reduced to ruins.

U.N. RESUMES AID DELIVERIES

Assad, helped by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, has steadily tightened his grip on the opposition-held eastern areas of Aleppo this year, achieving a long-held goal of fully encircling it this summer.

Capturing the rebel-held half of Syria’s largest city would be the biggest victory of the war for the government side, which has already achieved its strongest position in years thanks to Russian and Iranian support.

The United Nations announced that it was resuming aid deliveries to rebel-held areas on Thursday following a 48-hour suspension to review security guarantees after Monday’s attack on an aid convoy near Aleppo that killed around 20 people.

“We are sending today an inter-agency convoy that will cross conflict lines into a besieged area of rural Damascus,” Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told Reuters.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for a temporary halt to all military flights: “If the ceasefire is to stand any chance, the only path is a temporary, but complete ban of all military aircraft movement in Syria – for at least three days, better would be seven days,” Steinmeier said.

HOMS EVACUATION

But the president of Iran on Wednesday dismissed that idea, saying it would help Islamic State and the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, which changed its name in July and says it cut its ties to the network founded by Osama bin Laden.

Assad has appeared as uncompromising as ever in recent weeks, reiterating his goal of taking back the whole country on the day the U.S.-Russian brokered truce took effect.

The government’s main focus has been to consolidate its grip over the main cities of western Syria and the coastal region that is the ancestral homeland of Assad’s Alawite sect.

On Thursday, around 120 rebel fighters and their families were evacuated from the last opposition-held district of Homs under an agreement with the government by which they were given safe passage to nearby rebel-held areas.

The opposition says such agreements are part of a government strategy to forcibly displace populations from opposition-held areas after years of siege and bombardment.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates several thousand rebel fighters remain in the al-Waer district.

The fighters, carrying their personal weapons, and their families will head from the al-Waer neighborhood to the rebel-held northern Homs countryside, then travel on to rebel-held Idlib province, Homs Governor Talal Barazi said.

Diplomats were due to convene later on Thursday in New York as part of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG). A senior U.N. official held out hope that the truce could be reestablished.

“Clearly, the resumption of the talks would be greatly helped by revitalizing the cessation of hostilities, and I think that is a possibility,” U.N. Deputy Special Envoy for Syria Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy told reporters in Geneva.

“That is the objective of the meeting of the ISSG.”

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington and Angus McDowall in Beirut, Marwan Makdesi in Homs, Michael Nienaber in Berlin, and Stephanie Nebehay, Marina Depetris and Tom Miles in Geneva; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Peter Graff)

Gaza militant rocket hits Israel, Israel responds with air strikes

A water tower is seen after local residents said it was damaged by an Israeli shell at Beit Hanoun in Gaza, following a rocket that landed in the Israeli town of Sderot

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip launched a rocket that landed in the Israeli border town of Sderot on Sunday and Israeli aircraft and tanks responded by shelling the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the army and police said.

The rocket caused no injuries or damage in Sderot, where it landed in a residential area, police said.

An Israeli shell during an initial retaliation damaged a Beit Hanoun water tower and there were no casualties, local residents said.

Multiple air strikes later in the evening hit at least 30 different sites in the Gaza Strip belonging to Hamas, the smaller Islamic Jihad and other militant groups and two people were lightly hurt, Gaza health officials said.

A music festival in Sderot attended by hundreds of Israelis was temporarily disrupted as people sought shelter, television footage showed.

The Israeli military said aircraft had attacked targets in the northern Gaza Strip and added that since the beginning of the year, 14 Gaza rockets had hit Israel.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said in a statement that the military “remains committed to the stability of the region and operated in order to bring quiet to the people of southern Israel.”

“When terrorists in Hamas’ Gaza Strip, driven by a radical agenda based on hatred, attack people in the middle of the summer vacation, their intentions are clear – to inflict pain, cause fear and to terrorize,” Lerner said.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “We hold (Israel) responsible for the escalation in the Gaza Strip and we stress that its aggression will not succeed in breaking the will of our people and dictate terms to the resistance.”

Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and has observed a de-facto ceasefire with Israel since a 2014 war but some small armed cells of Jihadist Salafis have defied the agreement and have continued to occasionally launch rockets at Israel.

Israel has held Hamas responsible for all attacks originating in the coastal enclave.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed during the 2014 Gaza conflict. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.

Despite the ceasefire, Hamas has vowed to continue to dig tunnels intended to infiltrate Israel, and while Hamas leaders stress they do not seek an imminent war, they see tunnels as a strategic weapon in any future armed confrontation.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Sandra Maler)

Bomb attacks kill seven, wound 224 in southeast Turkey

Turkey blast

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Two bomb attacks blamed on Kurdish militants killed seven members of the security forces and wounded 224 people in southeast Turkey on Thursday, officials and security sources said, in a renewed escalation of violence across the region.

A car bomb ripped through a police station in the city of Elazig at 9:20 a.m. (0620 GMT) as officers arrived for work. Three police officers were killed and 217 people were wounded, 85 of them police officers, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.

Offices in the police station were left in ruins and filled with smoke after the bomb exploded in front of the complex, destroying part of the facade, CNN Turk footage showed.

Less than four hours later, a roadside bomb believed to have been planted by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants tore through a military vehicle in the Hizan district of Bitlis province, security sources said.

They said the blast killed three soldiers and a member of the state-sponsored village guard militia and wounded another seven soldiers.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings, but Yildirim said there was no doubt they were carried out by the PKK, deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

“The (PKK) terror group has lost its chain of command. Its elements inside (Turkey) are carrying out suicide attacks randomly wherever they get the opportunity,” Yildirim told reporters in Elazig.

“We have raised the state of alarm to a higher level,” he said at the scene of the attack, where a crowd chanted “Damn the PKK!”

The PKK has carried out dozens of attacks on police and military posts since 2015 in the largely Kurdish southeast in its fight for greater autonomy for Turkey’s 15 million Kurds.

Elazig, a conservative province that votes in large numbers for the ruling AK Party, had been spared violence until now.

Video footage showed a plume of black smoke rising above the city after the blast, which uprooted trees and gouged a large crater outside the police complex, which is situated on a busy thoroughfare in the city of 420,000 people.

In Van province, further east, two police officers and one civilian were killed and 73 people were wounded late on Wednesday when a car bomb exploded near a police station, the local governor’s office said in a statement.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack in Van, a largely Kurdish province on the Iranian border. The Van governor’s office said the PKK was responsible.

The southeast has been scorched by violence since a 2 1/2-year ceasefire with the PKK collapsed in July last year. Thousands of militants and hundreds of soldiers and police officers have been killed, according to official figures. Rights groups say about 400 civilians have also been killed.

On Thursday, PKK militants also attacked a police checkpoint in the southeastern town of Semdinli, near the Iraqi and Iranian borders, wounding two police officers, Dogan news agency said.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in violence since the PKK first took up arms in 1984.

(Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley, Akin Aytekin and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Larry King)

Russia launches third day of Syria strikes from Iran

image of Russian plane bombing Syria

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian bombers launched a third day of air strikes against militants in Syria from an Iranian air base, the Russian defense ministry said on Thursday.

The ministry said Tu-22M3 long-range bombers and Su-34 fighter bombers struck Islamic State targets in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zor.

It said the military aircraft had taken off from bases in both Russia and Iran and destroyed six command posts and a large number of fighters and military equipment.

All the Russian planes returned to base after the strikes, the defense ministry said.

(Reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Maria Kiselyova)

Harrowing video shows dazed, bloodied boy pulled from Aleppo rubble

image of boy from Aleppo

(Reuters) – His face bloodied and completely covered in dust, the little boy sits quietly, staring ahead, dazed and shocked after an apparent air strike in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Alone in an ambulance, the boy – identified by doctors as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh – tries to wipe the blood off his head, unaware of the injury he has sustained.

Video of children being pulled from the rubble of a building hit by air strikes in Aleppo has been widely circulated on social media, causing upset and condemnation over the harrowing reality of Syria’s five-year war.

Aleppo, split into rebel- and government-controlled areas, has become the focus of fighting in Syria’s five-year conflict.

Rebel-held areas are suffering heavy air strikes daily as pro-government forces try to retake territory lost to rebels two weeks ago in the southwest of Aleppo.

The video was shot on Wednesday in the rebel-held al-Qaterji neighborhood of the city.

It shows an aid worker carrying the little boy out of a building and placing him on a seat inside an ambulance, before rushing back out to the bombed-out scene. The boy sits alone, stunned, before two more children are brought into the vehicle. A man with blood on his face then joins them.

Last year, international sympathy for victims of Syria’s war was heightened by a photo of a drowned 3-year-old refugee from Syria, Alan Kurdi, washed up on a Turkish tourist beach. The image of Aylan, who died when a people smugglers’ boat taking his family and other refugees to a nearby Greek island capsized, swept across social media and was retweeted thousands of times.

(This version of the story has been refiled to corrects spelling of boy’s name in last paragraph)

(Reporting by Reuters Television and Beirut newsroom; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Series of blasts hit resort towns in southern Thailand

Line of police looking for bombs

By Prapan Chankaew

HUA HIN, Thailand (Reuters) – A series of blasts hit three of the most popular tourist resorts as well as towns in southern Thailand on Thursday and Friday, killing four people and wounding dozens, days after the country voted to accept a military-backed charter in a referendum.

Four bombs exploded in the upscale resort of Hua Hin, about 200 km (125 miles) south of Bangkok on Thursday evening and Friday morning, killing two people and wounding at least 24.

Other blasts hit the tourist island of Phuket, a resort town in Phang Nga province, and Surat Thani, a city that is the gateway to islands such as Koh Samui in Thailand’s Gulf.

Hua Hin is home to the Klai Kangwon royal palace, which translates as “Far from Worries Palace”, where King Bhumibol Adulayadej, the world’s longest reigning monarch, and his wife, Queen Sirikit, have often stayed in recent years, until both were hospitalized.

Friday was a public holiday in Thailand to mark the queen’s birthday, which is celebrated as Mother’s Day.

No group has claimed responsibility, though suspicion could fall on groups fighting an insurgency in Muslim-majority provinces in southern Thailand.

SEVEN ATTACKS

Police had intelligence an attack was imminent, but had no precise information on location or timing, national police chief Chakthip Chaijinda told reporters in Bangkok on Friday.

“We just didn’t know which day something would happen,” he said.

Since Sunday’s referendum on the constitution, there have been attacks in seven provinces using improvised explosive devices and firebombs, Chakthip said.

The devices were similar to those used by separatist insurgents in southern Thailand, but that did not conclusively show they were the perpetrators, he said.

Police ruled out any links to international terrorism, as did Thailand’s Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement on Friday: “The incident is not linked to terrorism but is an act of stirring up public disturbance.”

Thai authorities beefed up security at tourism spots, airports and on public transport in Bangkok, while Thai junta chief and Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha expressed frustration about the motives for the attacks.

“Why now when the country is getting better, the economy is getting better, and tourism is getting better? We have to ask why and who did it,” he told reporters.

TRAVEL ADVISORY

The attacks are bad news for Thailand’s tourist sector, which has been one of the few bright spots in a sluggish economy.

Tourism accounts for about 10 percent of gross domestic product and Thailand was expecting a record 32 million visitors this year.

Australia issued a travel advisory saying Australians should “exercise a high degree of caution” and warned: “Further explosions in any part of Thailand are possible.”

Two blasts on Friday morning in Hua Hin came after twin explosions on Thursday. One of those was near a bar in a narrow alley in the town late on Thursday, killing one Thai woman and wounding 21 people, Krisana said.

Ten of those injured in the Hua Hin blasts were foreigners, Krisana said, and eight of them were women.

The two explosions in Hua Hin late on Thursday were detonated by a mobile device, police said. The first took place 20 minutes earlier and about 50 meters from the second, but injured nobody.

Such twin blasts are common in the three Muslim-majority southernmost provinces of Thailand, where a long-running insurgency intensified in 2004, with more than 6,500 people killed since then.

The three provinces near the border with Muslim-majority Malaysia soundly rejected the referendum on the new military-backed constitution, which passed convincingly in most of the rest of the country in Sunday’s vote.

Violence has occasionally spilled over to areas outside the three provinces, which were part of a Malay sultanate until it was annexed by Buddhist-majority Thailand a century ago.

Hua Hin, Phuket and Phang Nga are far from the usual conflict zone, where attacks are typically aimed at the security forces and government representatives, not tourists.

In a separate incident on Friday, media reported two bombs had exploded in the southern province of Surat Thani, killing one person and wounding five. That came after a blast in Trang, also in the south, on Thursday, in which one person died and six were wounded.

No one was killed or seriously wounded on Friday in two blasts in the beach town of Patong on Phuket island or the two explosions in the beach province of Phang Nga. Authorities also defused two explosive devices in Phuket on Wednesday, police said.

The head of Interpol in Thailand, Police Major General Apichat Suriboonya, told Reuters it appears the bombs were meant more to send a message rather than cause death and destruction. “But the thing is, if you observe the bombs, they are not targeted to kill people but to send a message to some groups. It could be a domestic issue.”

Small bombs have been used frequently for attacks during periods of unrest over the past decade of political turmoil but have been rare since the military seized power in a 2014 coup in Thailand.

The latest bombings came almost a year after an attack on a Hindu shrine, crowded with tourists in central Bangkok, killed 20 people and wounded more than 120. Police have accused two ethnic Uighur Muslims from China for the Aug. 17, 2015, attack.

(Additional reporting by Orathai Sriring, Amy Sawitta Lefevre, Panarat Thepgumpanat, Surapan Boonthanom and Kitiphong Thaichareon; Writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Paul Tait and Bill Tarrant.)