Tag Archives: Civilian Casualties

Thousands flee Aleppo onslaught as battle reaches climax

Aleppo family flees war zone

By Laila Bassam and Stephanie Nebehay

ALEPPO, Syria/GENEVA (Reuters) – Thousands of people fled the front lines of fighting in Aleppo on Tuesday as the Syrian military hammered the final pocket of rebel resistance and Russia rejected an immediate ceasefire.

The rout of rebels from their ever-shrinking territory in Aleppo sparked a mass flight of civilians and insurgents in bitter weather, a crisis the United Nations said was a “complete meltdown of humanity” with civilians being shot dead.

The U.N. human rights office said it had reports of abuses, including that the army and allied Iraqi militiamen summarily killed at least 82 civilians in captured districts of the city, once a flourishing economic center with renowned ancient sites.

“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. office. “There could be many more.”

Behind those fleeing was a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands had lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed.

Colville said the rebel-held area was “a hellish corner” of less than a square kilometer, adding its capture was imminent.

The Syrian army and its allies are in the “last moments before declaring victory” in Aleppo, a Syrian military source said, after rebel defences collapsed, leaving insurgents in a tiny, heavily bombarded pocket of ground.

Turkish and Russian officials will meet on Wednesday to examine a possible ceasefire and opening a corridor, a senior Turkish official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

But Moscow, the Syrian government’s most powerful ally, rejected any immediate call for a ceasefire. “The Russian side wants to do that only when the corridors are established,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.

The spokesman for the civil defence force in the former rebel area of Aleppo said rebels now controlled an area of less than three sq km. “The situation is very, very bad. The civil defence has stopped operating in the city,” he told Reuters.

A surrender or withdrawal of the rebels from Aleppo would mean the end of the rebellion in the city, Syria’s largest until the outbreak of war after mass protests in 2011, but it is unclear if such a deal can be struck by world powers.

By finally dousing the last embers of resistance burning in Aleppo, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military coalition of the army, Russian air power and Iran-backed militias will have delivered him his biggest battlefield victory of the war.

However, while the rebels, including groups backed by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, as well as jihadist groups that the West does not support, will suffer a crushing defeat in Aleppo, the war will be far from over.

“FLEEING IN PANIC”

Aleppo’s loss will leave the rebels without a significant presence in any of Syria’s main cities, but they still hold much of the countryside west of Aleppo and the province of Idlib, also in northwest Syria.

Islamic State also has a big presence in Syria and has advanced in recent days, taking the desert city of Palmyra.

The army and its allies had taken full control over all the Aleppo districts abandoned by rebels during their retreat in the city, a Syrian military source said on Tuesday.

After days of intense bombardment of rebel-held areas, the rate of shelling and air strikes dropped considerably late on Monday and through the night as the weather deteriorated, a Reuters reporter in the city said.

However, rocket fire pounded rebel-held areas, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, reported. Rebels and government forces still fought at points around the reduced enclave, the Observatory said.

The U.N. children’s agency UNICEF cited an unnamed doctor in Aleppo as saying that many unaccompanied children were trapped in a building that was under attack, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had no knowledge of the incident.

“Artillery shelling is continuing but because of the weather the aerial bombing has stopped. Many of the families and children have not left for areas under the control of the regime because their fathers are from the rebels,” said Abu Ibrahim, a resident of Aleppo in a text message.

Colville said he feared retribution. “In all, as of yesterday evening we have received reports of pro-government forces killing at least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children,” Colville told a news briefing, naming the Iraqi armed group Harakat al-Nujaba as reportedly involved in the killings.

The military official said the rebels were fleeing “in a state of panic”, but a Turkish-based official with the Jabha Shamiya insurgent group in Aleppo said on Monday night that they had established a new frontline along the river.

“The bombardment is not on the frontlines, the greater burden of the bombardment is on the civilians, and this is what is causing a burden on us,” the official said.

Terrible conditions were described by city residents.

Abu Malek al-Shamali, a resident in the rebel area, said dead bodies lay in the streets. “There are many corpses in Fardous and Bustan al Qasr with no one to bury them,” he said.

“Last night people slept in the streets and in buildings where every flat has several families crowded in,” he added.

Celebrations on the government side of the divided city lasted into Monday night, with fighters shooting rounds into the sky in triumph.

TIDE OF REFUGEES

A daily bulletin issued by the Russian Defence Ministry’s “reconciliation center” from the Hmeimin airbase used by its warplanes, reported that more than 8,000 civilians, more than half of them children, had left east Aleppo in 24 hours.

State television broadcast footage of a tide of hundreds of refugees walking along a ravaged street, wearing thick clothes against the rain and cold, many with hoods or hats pulled tight around their faces, and hauling sacks or bags of belongings.

One man pushed a bicycle loaded with bags, another family pulled a cart on which sat an elderly woman. Another man carried on his back a small girl wearing a pink hat.

At the same time, a correspondent from a pro-Damascus television station spoke to camera from a part of Aleppo held by the government, standing in a tidy street with flowing traffic.

In some recaptured areas, people were returning to their shattered homes. A woman in her sixties, who identified herself as Umm Ali, or “Ali’s mother”, said that she, her husband and her disabled daughter had no water.

They were looking after the orphaned children of another daughter killed in the bombing, she said, and were reduced to putting pots and pans in the street to collect rainwater.

In another building near al-Shaar district, which was taken by the army last week, a man was fixing the balcony of his house with his children. “No matter the circumstances, our home is better than displacement,” he said.

All around the buildings in that area were earthen fortifications and rebel slogans daubed on walls. But in a playground, all the equipment was burned.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam in Aleppo, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Millership)

Two U.S. service members, many civilians dead in Afghanistan

Dust from rocket strike in Afghanistan

By Sardar Razmal

KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Two American service members were killed fighting the Taliban near the northern city of Kunduz on Thursday, the U.S. military said amid reports that air strikes called in to protect the troops had caused heavy civilian casualties.

Although the U.S. military gave no details, Afghan officials said there had been heavy fighting overnight about 5 km (3 miles) from the city center, which Taliban fighters succeeded in entering as recently as last month, and air strikes had caused many casualties.

There were angry protests by civilians who brought the bodies of at least 16 dead into Kunduz, Mafuzullah Akbari, a police spokesman said. Some reports put the death toll higher but there was no immediate official confirmation.

“The service members came under fire during a train, advise and assist mission with our Afghan partners to clear a Taliban position and disrupt the group’s operations in Kunduz district,” the U.S. military said in a statement.

In a separate statement, the NATO-led Resolute Support mission confirmed that air strikes had been carried out in Kunduz to defend “friendly forces under fire”.

“All civilian casualty claims will be investigated,” it said.

In a statement, the Taliban said American forces were involved in a raid to capture three militant fighters when they came under heavy fire. An air strike hit the village where the fighting was taking place, killing many civilians.

The deaths underline the precarious security situation around Kunduz, which Taliban fighters came close to over-running last month, a year after they briefly captured the city in their biggest success in the 15-year long war.

While the city itself was secured, the insurgents control large areas of the surrounding province.

The U.S. military gave no details on the identity of the two personnel who were killed or what units they served with and there was no immediate detailed comment on the circumstances of their deaths.

Although U.S. combat operations against the Taliban largely ended in 2014, special forces units have been repeatedly engaged in fighting while providing assistance to Afghan troops.

Masoom Hashemi, deputy police chief in Kunduz province, said police were investigating to try to determine if any of the dead were linked to the Taliban.

Thousands of U.S. soldiers remain in Afghanistan as part of the NATO-led Resolute Support training and assistance mission and a separate counterterrorism mission.

The deaths come a month after another U.S. service member was killed on an operation against Islamic State fighters in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

Afghan forces, fighting largely on their own since the end of the international combat mission, have suffered thousands of casualties, with more than 5,500 killed in the first eight months of 2016.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Robert Birsel)

Separate bomb attacks kill at least 22 in Afghanistan

Officials cleaning the site of the bombing June 20 2016

By Mirwais Harooni

KABUL (Reuters) – More than 20 people were killed in separate bomb attacks in Afghanistan on Monday, including at least 14 when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying Nepali security contractors in the capital Kabul, officials said.

A Reuters witness saw several apparently dead victims and at least two wounded being carried out of the remains of a yellow bus after the suicide bomber struck the vehicle in the capital.

Hours later, a bomb planted in a motorbike killed at least eight civilians and wounded another 18 in a crowded market in the northern province of Badakhshan, said provincial government spokesman Naveed Frotan. The casualty count could rise, he said.

The attacks are the latest in a surge of violence that highlights the challenges faced by the government in Kabul and its Western backers as Washington considers whether to delay plans to cut the number of its troops in Afghanistan.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said on Twitter that 14 people had been killed and eight wounded in the attack in Kabul. Police were working to identify the victims, he said.

The casualties appeared to include Afghan civilians and Nepali security contractors, Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said, after police and emergency vehicles surrounded the scene in the Banae district in the east of the city.

He said the suicide bomber had waited near a compound housing the security contractors and struck as the vehicle moved through early morning traffic. Besides the bus passengers, several people in an adjacent market were also wounded in the attack during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the Kabul attack in a statement from the Islamist group’s main spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, on Twitter. However it denied responsibility for the attack in Badakhshan.

Islamic State, which is bitterly opposed by the Taliban, said it carried out the Kabul attack but Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed the claim as “rubbish”.

“By organizing this attack, we wanted to show Americans and NATO military officials that we can conduct attacks wherever, and whenever, we want,” the Taliban spokesman said.

The Nepal government was still working through its embassy in Pakistan, which also oversees Afghanistan, to verify reports that its citizens were involved in the attack, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bharat Paudel said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent his condolences to his two South Asian neighbors after the attack.

“We strongly condemn the horrible tragedy in Kabul. Our deep condolences to people and governments of Afghanistan and Nepal on loss of innocent lives,” Modi said on Twitter.

Another explosion in Kabul later on Monday morning wounded a provincial council member and at least three of his bodyguards, Kabul police spokesman Basir Mujahid said. It was thought a bomb had been attached to the lawmaker’s car, he said.

The attacks underlined how serious the security threat facing Afghanistan remains since former Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike last month and was replaced by Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada.

The blasts follow a deadly suicide attack on a bus carrying justice ministry staff near Kabul last month and a separate attack on a court in the central city of Ghazni on June 1.

The Taliban claimed both those attacks in revenge for the execution of six Taliban prisoners.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Hamid Shalizi; Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez)

Amnesty: Russian Airstrikes in Syria ‘May Amount to War Crimes’

Russian airstrikes in Syria killed at least 200 civilians and the Russian government might have lied to cover up the deaths and widespread damage to residential areas, according to a new Amnesty International report.

The human rights organization said Tuesday that some of the strikes seemed to be directly launched at civilian areas, with no clear military target to be found, and “show evidence of violations of international humanitarian law.” In a statement, Philip Luther, who directs Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program, said the strikes “may amount to war crimes.”

The Russian Defense Ministry disputes the allegations in the report, which it says includes “fake information” and “trite clichés,” a ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Russia has been performing airstrikes in Syria since Sept. 30, independent of the United States-led coalition that is dedicated to destroying Islamic State interests. Russian government authorities have publicly stated that the airstrikes are only aimed at terrorist targets.

However, the Amnesty report cites interviews with witnesses and survivors of those attacks, as well as analysis from weapons experts, as evidence that some of the airstrikes occurred in areas where “there were no military targets or fighters in the immediate vicinity.”

The report references six specific attacks in Homes, Idleb and Aleppo between September and November. Amnesty alleges five of those strikes targeted residential areas, while the sixth occurred very close to a hospital.

Amnesty referenced a Nov. 29 incident in which three missiles hit a busy public market in Idleb, killing 49 civilians. One man told the group that he spoke to a woman who was “crying beside a line of dead bodies” after her husband and three children died in the attack. In researching the report, Amnesty said it determined that there were no apparent military targets in the area.

Amnesty’s report also references an Oct. 1 airstrike against a mosque in Idleb, which caused the deaths of two civilians. A witness told Amnesty there weren’t any military targets within 500 meters of the mosque. But the report cites comments Russian officials publicly made about the airstrike, which the officials said targeted Islamic State interests and destroyed a command post.

Weeks later, after reports surfaced that the mosque had been destroyed, Russian officials said the claims were fabricated and showed a satellite picture of the mosque supposedly still intact. However, Amnesty reported the picture showed a different mosque than the one destroyed in the attack.

Amnesty called for independent investigations into the alleged transgressions, saying Russian leaders “failed to take feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”

Amnesty said it also has evidence Russia used unguided bombs in civilian areas, as well as widely criticized cluster bombs. Reuters reported Russia’s Defense Ministry denied using any cluster bombs in Syria.

Amnesty reported that it is also “researching and documenting its concerns” about the airstrikes conducted by the United States-led coalition.

Police: Woman Intentionally Hit 30-Plus Pedestrians on Las Vegas Strip

Police said one person was killed and more than 30 were injured when a woman allegedly intentionally drove her car on a busy sidewalk along the Las Vegas Strip on Sunday night.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Joe Lombardo told reporters that 24-year-old Lakeisha Holloway “repeatedly drove her car over pedestrians,” even as some ran up to her vehicle and pounded on her window asking her to stop.

Holloway remained in custody on Monday, prosecutors said. Police did not announce a motive.

Lombardo told reporters that it does not appear that the case was an act of terrorism, though the investigation was still in its infancy and he wasn’t entirely ruling that out as a potential motive.

The Strip was closed between Flamingo Road and Harmon Avenue while police investigated. That section of road is home to the Paris, Planet Hollywood and Bellagio hotels and casinos.

Lombardo told reporters that police were reviewing multiple surveillance videos from the Las Vegas Strip. He said police had “pretty detailed video that shows that it was an intentional act.”

District Attorney Steven Wolfson told reporters at the news conference that prosecutors will file an initial charge of murder with a deadly weapon, but additional charges would be forthcoming.

Those charges may include child abuse and neglect, Wolfson said, as Holloway had a 3-year-old girl in the vehicle at the time of the alleged incident. The child was not injured, authorities said.

Lombardo said at least three of the 30-plus injured suffered critical head injuries.

Russian Air Strikes Kill 45 in Northwest Syria, including Rebel Leader

A rebel commander who previously worked for President Bashar Assad’s army along with dozens of people were killed on Monday after a series of Russian air strikes hit the Northwest region of Syria.

Activists reported to ABC News that the attack was one of the deadliest incidents since Russia began their airstrikes three weeks ago. The head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdurrahman, stated that at least 45 people were killed, including civilians and rebels. Overall, the group states that Russia’s aerial assaults have killed 370 people, and one third of those are civilian deaths, according to Reuters.

The group of rebels call themselves the “Free Syrian Army” and has received foreign military aid from the U.S., including very powerful anti-tank missiles. The group also confirmed the death of Basil Zamo, its chief of staff.

Russia continues to claim that their air strikes are aimed at defeating ISIS but multiple news agencies, including ABC News, report that many of the areas hit by the air strikes have not been occupied by ISIS, but rebels.

The International Business Times reports that medical organizations in the area are accusing Russia and the al-Assad regime of targeting hospitals in the northern province of Syria. Three hospitals have been hit and two of the hospitals were closed. One was closed due to no longer being operational, and the other closed after medical staff decided to evacuate, fearing they would be targeted further by Russian forces.

The conflict in Syria has resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people since the civil war began in March 2011, according to ABC News.

131 Yemeni Civilians Killed in Saudi-led Airstrike

Medical officers reported 131 civilians were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike that hit a wedding party, in what is reported to be the single deadliest incident since the start of Yemen’s civil war.

Yemeni medical officials stated at least 80 women were killed in the attack. The Saudi-led and U.S.-backed coalition supposedly struck the wedding party by accident. The attack struck a village near the town of Mokha. The region is largely populated by livestock traders and fishermen. It is reported that there is no heavy military presence in the area.

“They struck a wedding, there were only civilians there and most of them died because the Mokha hospital is closed because of supply — no drugs, no fuel, no electricity, no nothing, so the staff left,” said Hassan Boucenine, of the Geneva-based Doctors without Borders. The provincial capital of Taiz could not be used due to ongoing fighting.

Officials of the Saudi-led coalition could not be reached immediately for a comment.

The U.N. reports at least 2,355 civilians have been killed since the violence started in March. The main fight is between forces loyal to President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and those allied to Zaidi Shia rebels known as Houthis, who forced Hadi out of the capital of Sanaa in February.