Tag Archives: Middle East

Iraqi forces in final assault to take Hawija from Islamic State

Iraqi forces in final assault to take Hawija from Islamic State

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces launched a final assault on Wednesday to capture the town of Hawija, one of two pockets of territory in Iraq still under Islamic State control, the country’s military said in a statement.

Iraqi state TV broadcast live footage showing the area covered by thick black smoke, rising from oil wells torched by the militants as a tactic to prevent air detection. Hawija is located near the oil city of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq.

The offensive on Hawija is being carried out by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops and Iranian-trained and armed Shi’ite paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation.They began moving on the town of Hawija two days after capturing the Rashad air base, 30 km (20 miles) to the south and used by the militants as a training and logistics site.

Iraq launched an offensive on Sept. 21 to dislodge Islamic State from Hawija and surrounding areas where up to 78,000 people could be trapped, according to the United Nations.

Iraqi security officials say the militants are preventing some residents from leaving, while others are afraid of escaping towards government forces because of explosives that might have been laid by Islamic State around the town.

The other area of the country still under the control of the militant group is a stretch of land along the Syrian border, in western Iraq, including the border town of al-Qaim.

The militants also hold the Syrian side of the border at al-Qaim, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two different sets of hostile forces — a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition, and Syrian government troops with foreign Shi’ite militias backed by Iran and Russia.

Islamic State’s cross-border “caliphate” effectively collapsed in July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, in a grueling battle which lasted nine months.

The militants’ leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate from Mosul in mid-2014, released an audio recording last week that indicated he was still alive. He called on his followers to keep up the fight despite the setbacks.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Catherine Evans)

U.N. says 78,000 civilians could be trapped in Iraq’s Hawija

U.N. says 78,000 civilians could be trapped in Iraq's Hawija

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Up to 78,000 people could be trapped in Islamic State-held Hawija in northern Iraq, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as security forces push to recapture the town.

Iraq started an offensive on Sept. 21 to seize Hawija, which fell to the hands of militants after the Iraqi army collapsed in 2014 in the face of the Islamic State offensive and remains the last militant-held town in the country’s north.

U.N. humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said the number of people who have fled the fighting has increased from 7,000 people during the first week of the operation to some 12,500 people now. But up to 78,000 remain trapped, he said.

Iraqi security officials say the militants prevent some residents from leaving, while others are afraid of escaping toward government forces because of the explosives that might have been laid by Islamic State around the town.

“We remain concerned for the lives and well-being of these vulnerable civilians and remind those doing the fighting that civilians must be protected at all times and allowed to safely leave Hawija,” Laerke said.

Laerke said more people were expected to flee the fighting in areas around Hawija in the next 24 to 48 hours as security forces push into more densely populated areas.

Hawija, north of Baghdad, and a stretch of land along the Syrian border, west of the Iraqi capital, are the last stretches of territory in Iraq still in the hands of Islamic State.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Alison Williams)

Afghan Shi’ites fear further attacks on Ashura celebrations

File Photo - Afghan security forces inspect at the site of a suicide attack near a large Shi'ite mosque, Kabul, Afghanistan. September 29, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

KABUL (Reuters) – The Afghan capital Kabul braced on Saturday for further possible attacks ahead of Ashura, the holiest day on the Shi’ite Muslim calendar, a day after an attack claimed by Islamic State that killed at least five people near a large Shi’ite mosque.

Ahead of the celebration on Sunday, signs of increased security were in evidence across Kabul, with extra police checkpoints and roadblocks in many areas, while security was also increased in other cities.

Afghanistan, a majority Sunni Muslim country, has traditionally not suffered the sectarian violence that has devastated countries like Iraq, but a series of attacks over recent years have targeted the Shi’ite community.

“We are concerned about this. We had internal fighting in the past but never religious fighting,” said Arif Rahmani, a member of parliament and a member of the mainly Shi’ite Hazara community that has been particularly targeted.

The government has provided some basic training and weapons for a few hundred volunteer guards near mosques and other meeting places but many fear that the protection, which covers only some of the city’s more than 400 Shi’ite mosques, is insufficient.

In 2011, more than 80 people were killed in Ashura attacks in Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and there have been a string of others since, with 20 people killed in a suicide attack on a mosque in Kabul a month ago.

Friday’s attack, by suicide bombers posing as shepherds walking their sheep along a road outside the Hussainya mosque in the Qala-e-Fatehullah area of the city, did not reach the mosque itself but wounded 20 people in addition to the five killed.

No up-to-date census data exists for Afghanistan but different estimates put the size of the Shi’ite community at between 10-20 percent of the population, mostly Persian-speaking Tajiks and Hazaras.

Ashura, on the 10th day of the month of Muharram, celebrates the martyrdom of Hussein, one of the grandsons of the Prophet Mohammad, and is marked by large public commemorations by Shi’ite Muslims.

President Ashraf Ghani condemned Friday’s attack and said it would not break the unity between religions in Afghanistan.

But at a time when rivalry between the patchwork of different ethnic groups in the country has increasingly come into the open, Rahmani said the evident objective of the attacks was to ratchet up the tensions to create instability.

“In the past, there were warnings that there were groups that wanted to stir ethnic and religious conflict among Afghans but now it is reality,” Rahmani said. “There are people who want to create disunity among ethnic and religious groups,” he said.

(Reporting by Mirwais Harooni and James Mackenzie; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Turkey’s Erdogan says Iraqi Kurdish authorities “will pay price” for vote

Turkey's Erdogan says Iraqi Kurdish authorities "will pay price" for vote

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Iraqi Kurdish authorities would pay the price for an independence referendum which was widely opposed by foreign powers.

Iraq’s Kurds overwhelmingly backed independence in Monday’s referendum, defying neighboring countries which fear the vote could fuel Kurdish separatism within their own borders and lead to fresh conflict.

“They are not forming an independent state, they are opening a wound in the region to twist the knife in,” Erdogan told members of his ruling AK Party in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum.

Erdogan has built strong commercial ties with Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq, which pump hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil daily through Turkey for export to world markets.

“We don’t regret what we did in the past. But since the conditions are changed and the Kurdish Regional Government, to which we provided all support, took steps against us, it would pay the price,” he said.

Turkey has repeatedly threatened to impose economic sanction, effectively cutting their main access to international markets, and has held joint military exercises with Iraqi troops on the border.

However, after Erdogan said that Iraqi Kurds would go hungry if Ankara halted the cross-border flow of trucks and oil, it has said that any measures it took would not target civilians and instead focus on those who organized the referendum.

Iraq’s Defense Ministry said on Friday it plans to take control of the borders of the autonomous Kurdistan region in coordination with Iran and Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Bin Yildirim, speaking on Saturday, did not refer specifically to those plans, but said Ankara would no longer deal with Kurdish authorities in Erbil.

“From now on, our relationships with the region will be conducted with the central government, Baghdad,” he said. “As Iran, Iraq and Turkey, we work to ensure the games being played in the region will fail.”

(Reporting by Dirimcan Barut; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Syrian army battles IS attack in Deir al-Zor

Smoke rises as Syrian army soldiers stand near a checkpoint in Deir al-Zor, Syria September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army and its allies fought on Friday to recover ground lost during an Islamic State counterattack in eastern Syria that targeted positions on the road to Deir al-Zor, a commander in the pro-Damascus alliance said.

The assault that began on Thursday marks the first major counterattack against the Syrian army and its allies since they broke through a swathe of Islamic State-held territory to reach the city of Deir al-Zor earlier this month.

“They took a number of positions. We absorbed the attack and work is under way to recover the positions,” the commander, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. Areas lost to Islamic State included the town of al-Shoula, which sits on the road connecting Deir al-Zor to western Syria.

The commander said the road linking Deir al-Zor city to the city of Palmyra was only being used in cases of absolute necessity. A media unit run by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is fighting in support of Damascus, said the road was secure.

Helped by the Russian military and Iran-backed militias, the Syrian army’s advance to Deir al-Zor lifted a three-year-long siege imposed by Islamic State on a government-held enclave in the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic State attacks had killed more than 58 fighters from the Syrian army and allied forces since Thursday.

Islamic State said on Thursday it had killed around 100 government fighters south of the town of al-Sukhna, which is also located on the road to Deir al-Zor, and announced it had taken a hill overlooking the town.

A U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian militias, the Syrian Democratic Forces, is waging a separate offensive against Islamic State in Deir al-Zor to the east of the Euphrates River, which bisects the province.

Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi pressed his followers to “stand fast” and keep fighting in an undated recorded statement released on Thursday.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch and Laila Bassam; Editing by Tom Perry and Toby Chopra)

Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end: Red Cross

Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end: Red Cross

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The humanitarian situation in Yemen is a “catastrophe”, and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday.

Warring parties in Yemen – including the western-backed Saudi-led coalition – are all using disproportionate force, leading to “very excessive” civilian casualties, said Alexandre Faite, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen.

In addition, suspected cases of cholera have reached 750,000, with 2,119 deaths, Faite said, and the Red Cross expects at least 900,000 cases by the end of the year.

“The situation has really evolved in a very dramatic way and I think that it’s nothing short of a catastrophe,” Faite told a news briefing in Geneva.

Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Control of the country is split between the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. Opposed to the Houthis are a Saudi-led coalition.

With the main port of Hodeidah damaged, the Red Cross brings medical aid, including insulin, into Yemen with occasional cargo planes to Sanaa. Other goods come by land convoys from Jordan and Oman and by ship from Jordan, Oman and Dubai.

A ship from Karachi with 500 metric tonnes of rice is now due on Oct 7 in Hodeidah, the first ICRC shipment there since early February.

Faite called on all sides to open Sanaa airport to commercial flights for essential aid supplies and to make progress toward allowing the Red Cross to visit prisoners of war.

“I don’t think political settlement is coming soon and I’m very worried that the extension of the conflict would lead to more problems,” Faite said.

“This is why humanitarian aid, access of essential goods should be there,” he said. “There is a bottleneck”.

Although the death rate for cholera victims has dropped to less than 0.3 percent, Faite said Yemen’s “health sector is really on its knees in Yemen … the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid.”

For the first time, the Red Cross is now providing health workers with food parcels, he said.

“In terms of access to even water, electricity, there isn’t a power grid in the main cities in Yemen. Without the ICRC and other organizations fixing (pumping stations) there wouldn’t be any running water in Sanaa,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by John Stonestreet)

Iran will drop nuclear deal if U.S. withdraws, foreign minister tells al Jazeera

A staff member removes the Iranian flag from the stage after a group picture with foreign ministers and representatives of the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, Britain, Germany, France and the European Union during the Iran nuclear talks at the Vienna International Center in Vienna, Austria July 14, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran will abandon the nuclear deal it reached with six major powers if the United States decides to withdraw from it, its foreign minister told Qatar’s al Jazeera TV in New York.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called the 2015 deal an “embarrassment”. The deal is supported by the other major powers that negotiated it with Iran and its collapse could trigger a regional arms race and worsen tensions in the Middle East.

“If Washington decides to pull out of the nuclear deal, Iran will withdraw too,” Al Jazeera TV wrote on its Twitter feed, quoting the minister.

“Washington will be in a better position if it remains committed to the deal,” the network wrote.

Trump is considering whether the accord serves U.S. security interests. He faces a mid-October deadline for certifying that Iran is complying with the pact.

A State Department official said Washington would not comment on every statement by an Iranian official.

“We are fully committed to addressing the totality of Iranian threats and malign activities,” the official said.

Iranian authorities had repeatedly said Tehran would not be the first to violate the agreement, under which Tehran agreed to restrict its nuclear program in return for lifting most international sanctions that had crippled its economy.

The prospect that Washington could renege on the deal has worried some of the U.S. allies that helped negotiate it. French President Emmanuel Macron said last week that there was no alternative to the nuclear accord.

If Trump, who has called the accord “the worst deal ever negotiated”, does not recertify it by Oct. 16, Congress has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions suspended under the accord.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezim; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

Turkey to give harshest response if border threatened after Iraq referendum: PM

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim addresses his supporters in Kirsehir, Turkey, August 23, 2017. Mustafa Aktas/Prime Minister's Press Office/Handout via REUTERS

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey said on Thursday it had stopped training peshmerga forces in northern Iraq in response to a Kurdish independence vote there, whose backers had thrown themselves “into the fire”.

The Kurdish peshmerga have been at the forefront of the campaign against Islamic State and been trained by NATO-member Turkey’s military since late 2014.

Northern Iraq’s main link to the outside world, Turkey views Monday’s vote – which final results on Wednesday showed overwhelming in favour of independence from Baghdad – as a clear security threat.

Fearing it will inflame separatism among its own Kurds, Ankara had already threatened military and economic measures in retaliation. Government spokesman Bekir Bozdag reiterated on Thursday any such actions would be coordinated with the Iraqi central government.

Bozdag, also a deputy prime minister, told broadcaster TGRT in an interview that more steps would follow the peshmerga decision and that the prime ministers of Turkey and Iraq would meet soon.

Turkey, which is home to the region’s largest Kurdish population, is battling a three-decade Kurdish insurgency in its southeast, which borders northern Iraq.

MINIMUM DAMAGE?

President Tayyip Erdogan said it was inevitable that the referendum “adventure” in northern Iraq, carried out despite Turkey’s warnings, would end in disappointment.

“With its independence initiative, the northern Iraq regional government has thrown itself into the fire,” he said in a speech to police officers at his palace in Ankara.

Earlier this week, Erdogan said Iraqi Kurds would go hungry if his country halted the flow of trucks and oil across the border, near where Turkish and Iraqi soldiers have been carrying out military exercises this week.

Hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day flow through a pipeline in Turkey from northern Iraq, connecting the region to global oil markets.

Erdogan has repeatedly threatened economic sanctions, but has given few details.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said Turkey would not shy away from giving the harshest response to a national security threat on its border, but that this was not its first choice.

Speaking in the central Turkish province of Corum, Yildirim said Turkey, Iran and Iraq were doing their best to overcome the crisis caused by the referendum with the minimum damage.

Iraq, including the Kurdish region, was Turkey’s third-largest export market in 2016, according to IMF data. Turkish exports to the country totalled $8.6 billion, behind Germany and Britain.

(Additional reporting by Ece Toksabay, Ercan Gurses and Ezgi Erkoyun; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and John Stonestreet)

Iranians pour onto the streets to mourn soldier beheaded in Syria

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Thousands of people took to the streets of Tehran on Wednesday to bury a soldier whose beheading by Islamic State has come to symbolize the righteousness of Iran’s military involvement in Syria.

In what has become an iconic image on Iranian media, 25-year-old Revolutionary Guard Mohsen Hojaji is shown looking calmly into camera after his capture as he is led away by an insurgent with blood on his face, holding a knife. The photograph was posted by Islamic State.

Even Iranians critical of their government’s military intervention in Syria to help President Bashar al-Assad have taken to social media to express their admiration for Hojaji, who was killed last month.

The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful military force who also oversee an economic empire worth billions of dollars, were initially quiet about their role in Syria.

But in recent years, as casualties have mounted, they have been more outspoken about their engagement, framing it as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim extremists of Islamic State who see Shi’ites, the majority of Iran’s population, as apostates.

Guards killed in Syria and Iraq are touted as protectors of Shi’ite holy sites and labeled “defenders of the shrine” on websites linked to the Guards.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed over Hojaji’s coffin and met with his family on Wednesday, state media reported.

Large crowds carrying red flags, symbolizing martyrdom, and pictures of Hojaji processed to the funeral in Tehran, pictures on state TV showed. Parliament speaker Ali Larijani and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were among the dignitaries who attended, state media said.

“Look at what a stir the martyrdom of this youth has created in the country,” Khamenei said, according to his website.

Hojaji’s funeral comes only three days before Ashura, one of the most important religious events for Shi’ites and a traditional period of mourning which commemorates the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

The Guards recovered Hojaji’s body through a deal between Islamic State, the Syrian army and Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah. More than 300 IS fighters and about 300 family members were allowed to evacuate Syria’s western border with Lebanon under the ceasefire agreement.

On June 7, Islamic State claimed an attack on Tehran’s parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, killing 18 people. The Revolutionary Guards fired missiles at Islamic State bases in Syria on June 18 in response.

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Mattis arrives in Afghanistan as rockets hit Kabul airport

Mattis arrives in Afghanistan as rockets hit Kabul airport

By James Mackenzie and Hamid Shalizi

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Kabul on Wednesday to pledge support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, with the precarious security in the Afghan capital underlined by a rocket attack on the airport hours after he touched down.

Arriving from India, where he sought support for the U.S. administration’s new South Asia security plan, Mattis said the United States was determined not to allow “a merciless enemy to kill its way to power”.

Promising a more “holistic” approach without fixed timetables and involving other countries in the region, including Pakistan, he said the Taliban would have to learn they could not defeat the government.

“I want to reinforce to the Taliban that the only path to peace and political legitimacy for them is through a negotiated settlement,” Mattis told a joint news conference with Ghani and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

The visit comes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a new strategy for Afghanistan, promising a stepped-up military campaign against Taliban insurgents who have gained ground as they seek to reestablish Islamic law after their 2001 ouster.

But a rocket attack on Kabul airport that injured five civilians and was claimed by both Islamic State and Taliban insurgents highlighted the rebels’ ability to strike the Western-backed government.

Fighters holed up in a nearby building continued to resist security forces for hours, a spokesman for the interior minister said.

Mattis condemned the attack as a “criminal act by terrorists”, adding that it was a “classic definition of what the Taliban are up to here now”.

There are now about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan as part of the 13,500-strong NATO-led Resolute Support mission advising and training Afghan forces as well as a separate counterterrorism mission, targeting Islamic State and Al Qaeda.

As part of the new strategy, which will give U.S. commanders greater freedom to use American firepower against the Taliban, Mattis has said the United States will send an additional 3,000 troops to help train Afghan security forces.

It will also make greater use of its air power to support Afghan forces and strike the Taliban, a strategy that carries the risk of an increase in civilian casualties.

“I don’t want to tell the enemy exactly what we are doing but the whole point is to make certain we have a compelling battlefield advantage over anything the Taliban tries to mass against your forces,” he said.

Mattis said U.S. forces would do “everything humanly possible” to limit civilian casualties, which fueled bitter disputes between Washington and the government of former President Hamid Karzai.

Trump has said he expects NATO allies to step up contributions of both troops and funding to the Afghanistan mission, and Stoltenberg said the credibility of the international alliance depended on maintaining its support.

“We know the cost of staying in Afghanistan,” he said. “But the cost of leaving would be higher. If NATO forces leave too soon, there is a risk Afghanistan may return to a state of chaos and once again become a safe haven for international terrorism.”

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Editing by Nick Macfie)