Tag Archives: Massacre

A riot aimed at the persecution or massacre of Jewish soccer fans in Amsterdam: Israel sends evacuation planes

Dutch-Police-stand-guard

Important Takeaways:

  • Amsterdam police on Friday said ten people were in custody after Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer fans were attacked by what Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema described as “anti-semitic hit-and-run squads”.
  • “This is a very dark moment for the city, for which I am deeply ashamed,” Halsema said at a news conference.
  • “Anti-semitic criminals attacked and assaulted visitors to our city, in hit-and-run actions,” Halsema said, adding perpetrators had managed to escape a large police presence.
  • The Dutch Organization for Central Jewish Consultation issued an urgent call on Friday for immediate, tough measures following apparent antisemitic attacks after an Ajax-Maccabi Tel Aviv football match.
  • “The terrible scenes we witnessed last night show that there is no time to wait before taking tough measures”, the CJO said in a statement.
  • Authorities say that the situation has calmed down over the last hour, and Israelis have been instructed to shelter in place. A Dutch police spokeswoman said 57 have been arrested so far.
  • Footage circulating on social media has shown fans being beaten, chased with knives, and narrowly avoiding being hit by vehicles. Dutch riot police were sent in to respond to the attackers.
  • Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been informed of the incident and has sent two rescue planes to assist Israeli citizens. The IDF is coordinating the rescue mission, and are sending cargo aircraft and two planes from the Hercules squadron with medical and rescue teams.

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Israel’s Nova massacre site was “where the juxtaposition between good and evil is most apparent”

Nova music festival memorial

Important Takeaways:

  • ‘The pain will never leave’: Nova massacre survivors return to site one year on
  • As mourners gathered at the site of the Nova music festival to commemorate the victims of Hamas’s attack one year ago, low sobs and murmured prayers were punctuated by the sound of artillery being fired by soldiers into nearby Gaza.
  • Relatives gathered around the homemade memorials to the estimated 365 people killed at the festival on that day in 2023, while attack helicopters whirred overhead and occasionally let loose bursts of automatic gunfire toward Gaza, only three miles away from the festival site in Re’im, southern Israel.
  • Police had before the ceremony warned attenders that if they heard a siren, they had just seconds to drop to the ground before a rocket from Hamas could hit.
  • “Many relatives still come here to try to hug the ground and feel the warmth that remains from their relatives. It’s a pain that will never leave them.”
  • Noa Tishby, an Israeli activist and actor, said the Nova site was “where the juxtaposition between good and evil is most apparent”. “That’s really close,” she said, as another artillery round was fired off toward Gaza.
  • Many of the families said they strongly supported the Israeli response in Gaza. Few could predict how or when the war would end.

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Hamas refuses to release 10-month-old baby

Kfir-Bibas-Getty-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is refusing to release an infant Israeli hostage, Kfir Bibas, who was nine months old at the time of his abduction, among the 50-70 hostages it is letting go as part of a four-to-six-day “pause” in the fighting.
  • The Times of Israel reported:
    • The IDF’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee indicates to Sky News that the Bibas family — father Yarden, mother Shiri, 10-month-old baby Kfir and 4-year-old Ariel — will not be released today from Hamas captivity.
    • Adraee explains that the family was taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 massacre, and was then transferred to another Palestinian terror faction in Gaza. They are currently being held in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
    • The Bibas family confirms that their loved ones will not be released today.

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Death toll in Israel continues to climb: Official findings are absolutely horrific

Dead-in-Israel

Important Takeaways:

  • Israel Strikes 450 Targets as Scale of Hamas’ Massacre Rises: Babies Beheaded, 1,200 Civilians Dead
  • Day 5 of the Israel-Hamas war.
  • Israel says it struck at least 450 Hamas targets in Gaza in the last 24 hours, while Israeli ground forces mass on the border for an imminent invasion.
  • The death toll in Israel continues to climb – more than 1,200 civilians dead, 170 soldiers slain, and more than 3,500 Israelis wounded. Forty murdered Israeli babies were found among the massacred civilians, and some of those babies had been beheaded.
  • The health ministry in Gaza says some 1,055 people have been killed and 5,000 injured during Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Hamas in the sealed coastal enclave.
  • In the Israeli community of Kfar Aza, soldiers discovered what’s been described as a “massacre.”
  • Gen. Itai Veruv, who led the three-day campaign to retake Kfar Aza after Hamas militants invaded, said, “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms, in their protection rooms, and how the terrorists killed them. It’s not a war, it’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre. It’s a terror activity.”
  • Doron Spielman, Israel Defense Forces spokesman, added, “Who could do this? They must have shed their humanity, and what is left is something inhuman. To see baby carriages with bullet holes and blood? Who goes up to a baby and kills a baby? Who kills a mother? I see the bodies in their homes.”
  • On Tuesday, Biden also announced the U.S. is rushing military assistance to Israel including ammunition and interceptors to help the Iron Dome.
  • The president also said he’s instructed his team to share intelligence with Israel as they work together to safely bring home all the hostages.

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Zelensky calls on U.N. to expel Russia after atrocities during Russia occupation of Ukraine

Revelations 6:3-4 “ when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Zelensky says Russian soldiers ‘cut tongues out of civilians’ in Bucha massacre
  • The Ukrainian president made a virtual appearance at the UN Security Council meeting following a visit to Bucha – the site of alleged mass killings where mutilated bodies of civilians have been found lying in the streets or dumped into mass graves.
  • He said some victims of the Bucha massacre were ‘shot on the streets’ while others were ‘thrown into the wells..so they die in suffering’.
  • ‘Civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road just for their pleasure.
  • ‘They cut off limbs, slashed their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children.
  • ‘Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressors did not want to hear from them.’
  • ‘Russia’s leadership feels like colonizers in ancient times, they need our wealth, our people – Russia has already deported hundreds of thousands of our citizens to their country, they abducted more than 2,000 children.’
  • Zelensky did not use his address to call for more weapons or sanctions, instead focusing on Russian atrocities and role of the UN Security Council in stopping Putin.

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At least 8 dead in mangrove after gun battle with Rio police

By Rodrigo Viga Gaier

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) -Residents on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro on Monday found the corpses of at least eight people in a mangrove after a sustained gun battle with local police.

The bodies were found near a complex of slums called Salgueiro, in the city of Sao Goncalo, a poor and violent region that is part of metropolitan Rio.

Locals told media outlets that they believed other bodies would be found.

“The bodies were all thrown into a mangrove swamp, with signs of torture. They were tossed one on top of the other. This was clearly a massacre,” one resident told the G1 news website.

Other residents, who also declined to be named, gave similar accounts to other outlets.

The bodies were found after a weekend-long operation in the area, which began after a local police officer died while on patrol on Saturday. Sao Gonacalo is overseen by the 7th battalion, which has long been one of Rio state’s most deadly.

Rio’s military police did not respond to locals’ accusations of officers having been involved in torture or multiple killings but said in a statement: “So far, eight bodies have been found.”

Police said they had entered the region to “stabilize” it after violence from alleged drug gangs.

They said officers would remain in the area to allow civil police officers to investigate.

In 2019, Reuters reported on the shooting to death of a local resident by officers from the 7th amid a sharp rise in police killings. So far this year, officers from the 7th battalion killed 1,096 people, the highest of any battalion in the state, and up 17% from the first nine months of last year.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga GaierWriting and additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Alison Williams and David Gregorio)

U.S. looks into reports of atrocities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is looking into reports of human rights abuses and atrocities in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the U.S. State Department said on Monday.

Department spokesman Ned Price told a news briefing that the United States is “gravely concerned” about accounts last week by CNN and the BBC of a massacre in the region by Ethiopian forces.

“We are, of course, looking into these reports. We have taken close note of them and we’ll continue to pay close attention,” Price said.

“We strongly condemn the killings, the forced removals, the sexual assaults, the other human rights abuses that multiple organizations have reported,” Price added, declining to say who the United States believed was responsible.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry has said a joint investigation with external experts into alleged human rights violations would start soon.

Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country, is struggling to control several flashpoints where ethnic rivalries over land, power and resources have ignited ahead of national elections scheduled for June.

Price also welcomed an Ethiopian foreign ministry pledge that Eritrean troops would withdraw from Tigray, calling such a withdrawal an important step forward in de-escalation in the region.

Eritrea and Ethiopia denied the presence of Eritrean troops in Tigray for months, despite dozens of eyewitness accounts. G7 countries including the United States called on Friday for a swift, unconditional and verifiable withdrawal of the Eritrean soldiers, followed by a political process acceptable to all Ethiopians.

“The immediate and complete withdrawal of Eritrean troops from Tigray will be an important step forward in de-escalating the conflict and restoring peace and regional stability,” Price told reporters.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Chris Reese and Will Dunham)

Nearly 40 killed in violent day of protests against Myanmar coup, U.N. envoy says

(Reuters) – Thirty-eight people were killed in Myanmar as the military quelled protests in several towns and cities on Wednesday, the United Nations said, the most violent day since demonstrations against last month’s military coup first broke out.

Police and soldiers opened fire with live rounds with little warning, witnesses said.

The bloodshed occurred one day after neighboring countries had called for restraint in the aftermath of the military’s overthrow of the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“It’s horrific, it’s a massacre. No words can describe the situation and our feelings,” youth activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi told Reuters via a messaging app.

The dead included four children, an aid agency said. Hundreds of protesters were arrested, local media reported.

“Today it was the bloodiest day since the coup happened on the 1st of February. We had today — only today — 38 people died. We have now more than over 50 people died since the coup started, and many are wounded,” United Nations special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, said in New York.

A spokesman for the ruling military council did not answer telephone calls seeking comment.

Schraner Burgener said that in conversations with Myanmar’s deputy military chief Soe Win, she had warned him that the military was likely to face strong measures from some countries and isolation in retaliation for the coup.

“The answer was: ‘We are used to sanctions, and we survived’,” she told reporters in New York. “When I also warned they will go (into) isolation, the answer was: ‘We have to learn to walk with only few friends’.”

The U.N. Security Council is due to discuss the situation on Friday in a closed meeting, diplomats said.

SUSTAINED SHOOTING

Ko Bo Kyi, joint secretary of Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners rights group, had said earlier the military killed at least 18. But the toll rose by the end of the day.

In the main city Yangon, witnesses said at least eight people were killed, seven of them when security forces opened sustained fire in a neighborhood in the north of the city in the early evening.

“I heard so much continuous firing. I lay down on the ground, they shot a lot,” protester Kaung Pyae Sone Tun, 23, told Reuters.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was “appalled” by the increase in violence. The administration of President Joe Biden was evaluating “appropriate” measures to respond and any actions would be targeted at Myanmar’s military, he added.

The United States has conveyed to China that it is looking for Beijing to play a constructive role in Myanmar, the spokesman said.

The European Union said the shootings of unarmed civilians and medical workers were clear breaches of international law. It also said the military was stepping up repression of the media, with a growing number of journalists arrested and charged.

In the central town of Monywa, six people were killed, the Monywa Gazette reported. Others were killed in the second-biggest city Mandalay, the northern town of Hpakant and the central town of Myingyan.

Save the Children said in a statement four children were among the dead, including a 14-year-old boy who Radio Free Asia reported was shot dead by a soldier on a passing convoy of military trucks. The soldiers loaded his body onto a truck and left the scene, according to the report.

‘WE SHALL OVERCOME’

Security forces breaking up protests in Yangon detained about 300 protesters, the Myanmar Now news agency reported.

Video posted on social media showed lines of young men, hands on heads, filing into army trucks as police and soldiers stood guard. Reuters was unable to verify the footage.

Images of a 19-year-old woman, one of two shot dead in Mandalay, showed her wearing a T-shirt that read “Everything will be OK”.

Police in Yangon ordered three medics out of an ambulance, shot up the windscreen and then kicked and beat the workers with gun butts and batons, video broadcast by U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia showed. Reuters was unable to verify the video independently.

Democracy activist Esther Ze Naw told Reuters that the sacrifices of those who died would not be in vain.

“We shall overcome this and win,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) failed to make a breakthrough in a virtual foreign ministers’ meeting on Myanmar.

While united in a call for restraint, only four members – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore – called for the release of Suu Kyi and other detainees.

“We expressed ASEAN’s readiness to assist Myanmar in a positive, peaceful and constructive manner,” the ASEAN chair, Brunei, said in a statement.

Myanmar’s state media said the military-appointed foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, attended and “apprised the meeting of voting irregularities” in the November election.

The military justified the coup by saying its complaints of voter fraud in the Nov. 8 vote were ignored. Suu Kyi’s party won by a landslide, earning a second term.

The election commission said the vote was fair.

Junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has pledged to hold new elections but given no time frame. U.N. envoy Schraner Burgener said his deputy Soe Win told her that “after a year they want to have another election.”

Suu Kyi, 75, has been held incommunicado since the coup but appeared at a court hearing via video conferencing this week and looked in good health, a lawyer said.

(Reporting and writing by Reuters Staff; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Grant McCool and Rosalba O’Brien)

Spain sentences Salvadoran ex-officer to 133 years in jail over priests’ massacre

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s High Court sentenced a former army colonel from El Salvador on Friday to 133 years in prison for the murder of five Spanish Jesuit priests in 1989 during the Central American country’s civil war.

Inocente Orlando Montano Morales, 77, was also found responsible by the judges for the murders of the priests’ housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter, as well as a local Jesuit priest. The court could not convict him of these crimes because his extradition to Spain did not cover these cases.

The massacre was one of the most notorious acts of a decade-long civil war during which 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 went missing.

The judges said they found Montano Morales guilty of five counts of “murder of terrorist nature,” adding that the killings were committed by the state apparatus, making them what “is commonly known as terrorism implemented by the state”.

They added that the total maximum prison term is 30 years.

Montano Morales has been in custody since 2011 when he was arrested in the United States on immigration fraud charges. He was deported to Spain in 2017.

The Spanish government has indicted 20 former Salvadoran army officers for the killings of the priests, their housekeeper and her daughter. One of the priests, Father Ignacio Ellacuria, was a prominent critic of the U.S.-backed right-wing government.

The massacre occurred on Nov. 16, 1989, when a group of soldiers from the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of the Central American University where Ellacuria was rector.

Ellacuria had advocated a negotiated settlement to the military-led junta government’s war against the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). International revulsion at the murders of the priests helped to push through such a solution, with the war ending in 1992.

(Reporting by Nathan Allen and Andrei Khalip; Editing by Ingrid Melander and Frances Kerry)

U.S. Supreme Court will not shield gun maker from Sandy Hook lawsuit

U.S. Supreme Court will not shield gun maker from Sandy Hook lawsuit
By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a blow to the firearms industry, rejecting Remington Arms Co’s bid to escape a lawsuit by families of victims aiming to hold the gun maker liable for its marketing of the assault-style rifle used in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre that killed 20 children and six adults.

The justices turned away Remington’s appeal of a ruling by Connecticut’s top court to let the lawsuit proceed despite a federal law that broadly shields firearms manufacturers from liability when their weapons are used in crimes. The lawsuit will move forward at a time of high passions in the United States over the issue of gun control.

The family members of nine people slain and one survivor of the Sandy Hook massacre filed the lawsuit in 2014. Remington was backed in the case by a number of gun rights groups and lobbying organizations including the powerful National Rifle Association, which is closely aligned with Republicans including President Donald Trump. The NRA called the lawsuit “company-killing.”

The Dec. 14, 2012 rampage was carried out by a 20-year-old gunman named Adam Lanza, who shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and fired on the first-graders and adult staff before fatally shooting himself as police closed in.

The United States has experienced a succession of mass shootings in recent decades, including several that have staggered the public such as the 2017 attack at a Las Vegas concert that killed 58 and one at a nightclub in Orlando in 2016 that killed 49. Assault-type rifles have been a recurring feature in many of the massacres.

The U.S. Congress has not enacted new gun control laws in the wake of the mass shootings largely because of Republican opposition.

The plaintiffs have argued that Remington bears some of the blame for the Sandy Hook tragedy. They said the Bushmaster AR-15 gun that Lanza used – a semi-automatic civilian version of the U.S. military’s M-16 – had been illegally marketed by the company to civilians as a combat weapon for waging war and killing human beings.

The plaintiffs said that Connecticut’s consumer protection law forbids advertising that promotes violent, criminal behavior and yet even though these rifles have become the “weapon of choice for mass shooters” Remington’s ads “continued to exploit the fantasy of an all-conquering lone gunman.” One of them, they noted, stated, “Forces of opposition, bow down.”

Remington argued that it should be insulated from the lawsuit by a 2005 federal law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which was aimed at blocking a wave of lawsuits damaging to the firearms industry.

The case hinges on an exception to this shield for claims in which a gun manufacturer knowingly violates the law to sell or market guns. Remington has argued that the Connecticut Supreme Court interpreted the exception too broadly when it decided to let the case go ahead.

Though the case does not directly implicate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the NRA told the justices in a filing that the lawsuit could put gun manufacturers out of business, making the right meaningless.

A state trial court initially threw out the claims but the Connecticut Supreme Court revived the lawsuit in March, prompting Remington’s appeal.

The justices already have taken up one important gun rights case in their current term.

They are due to hear arguments on Dec. 2 in a lawsuit by gun owners and the state’s NRA affiliate challenging New York City restrictions on handgun owners transporting firearms outside the home. The city had asked the justices to cancel the arguments because its measure was recently amended, meaning there was no longer any reason to hear the dispute. But the court decided to go ahead with the case.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)