Tag Archives: Refugees

At least 76 killed in air strike on Nigerian refugee camp: ICRC

Aftermath of bombing of refugee camp in Nigeria

GENEVA (Reuters) – At least 76 people were killed in Tuesday’s accidental Nigerian Air Force strike on a refugee camp and more than 100 were wounded, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (ICRC) said on Wednesday.

The air force has said an unknown number of civilians were killed and wounded in the mistaken strike in Rann, Borno state. The state has been the epicentre of Boko Haram’s seven-year-long attempt to create an Islamic caliphate in the northeast.

The air force has said civilians were accidentally killed and wounded in the attack, which was aimed at the jihadist group, but neither it nor the government has provided an official figure for the number of casualties. Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has said 52 were killed and 120 were wounded.

ICRC said six Nigeria Red Cross members were killed and 13 wounded. “In addition to aid staff, it is estimated that 70 people have been killed and more than a hundred wounded,” it said in a statement.

Lai Mohammed, the information minister, said “the accidental bombing is not a true reflection of the level of professionalism” he had witnessed in the air force.

The strike followed a military offensive against Boko Haram in the last few weeks.

The group’s insurgency has killed more than 15,000 people since 2009 and forced some two million to flee their homes, many of whom have moved to camps for internally displaced people.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; additional reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

U.N. alarmed at migrants dying of cold, ‘dire’ situation in Greece

refugee boy rides bike through snow

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Refugees and migrants are dying in Europe’s cold snap and governments must do more to help them rather than pushing them back from borders and subjecting them to violence, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.

“Children are particularly prone to respiratory illnesses at a time like this. It’s about saving lives, not about red tape and keeping to bureaucratic arrangements,” Sarah Crowe, a spokeswoman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF told a U.N. briefing in Geneva. “The dire situation right now is Greece.”

UNHCR spokeswoman Cecile Pouilly cited five deaths so far from cold and said about 1,000 people including children were in unheated tents and dormitories on the Greek island of Samos, calling for them to be transferred to shelter on the mainland.

Hundreds of others had been moved to better accommodation on the islands of Lesbos and Chios in the past few days.

In Serbia, about 80 percent of the 7,300 refugees, asylum seekers and migrants are staying in heated government shelters, but 1,200 men were sleeping rough in informal sites in Belgrade.

The bodies of two Iraqi men and a young Somali woman were found close to the Turkish border in Bulgaria and two Somali teenagers were hospitalized with frostbite after five days in a forest, Pouilly said. The body of a young Pakistani man was found along the same border in late December.

A 20-year-old Afghan man died after crossing the Evros River on the Greece-Turkey land border at night when temperatures were below -10 degrees Celsius. The body of a young Pakistani man was found on the Turkish side of the border with Bulgaria.

“Given the harsh winter conditions, we are particularly concerned by reports that authorities in all countries along the Western Balkans route continue to push back refugees and migrants from inside their territory to neighboring countries,” Pouilly said.

Some refugees and migrants said police subjected them to violence and many said their phones were confiscated or destroyed, preventing them from calling for help, she said.

“Some even reported items of clothing being confiscated thus further exposing them to the harsh winter conditions,” she said. “These practices are simply unacceptable and must be stopped.”

Joel Millman, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said migrant movements across the Mediterranean had “started out in a big way” in 2017, and the death toll for the year was already 27.

The World Meteorological Organization said a movement of cold Siberian air into southeastern Europe had driven temperatures in Greece, Italy, Turkey and Romania 5-10 degrees Celsius lower than normal. Such cold outbreaks happen about once in 35 years on average, the WMO said.

(additional reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Australia causing refugees ‘severe and lasting harm’: Human Rights Watch

refugee advocates

By Tom Westbrook

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s poor treatment of refugees in offshore detention camps is “draconian” and is causing lasting damage to refugees and to Australia’s reputation as a rights-respecting country, Human Rights Watch said on Friday.

Conditions in the camps are abusive and detainees “regularly endure violence, threats and harassment”, Human Rights Watch said in the Australian chapter of its annual global report.

Under Australian rules, anyone intercepted while trying to reach the country by boat is sent for processing to camps in the Pacific Island nation of Nauru and at Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea (PNG). They are never eligible to be resettled in Australia.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration, asked about the report before its release, declined to comment but referred to earlier department assertions that conditions at the camps were adequate and were the responsibility of Nauru and PNG.

Those governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Australia said in November it had agreed with the United States to resettle some of the refugees in the Nauru and PNG camps, in return for Australia taking refugees from Central America. But subsequent White House comments cast doubt on whether the new U.S. administration would proceed with the deal.

The arrangement offered “no solution” in any case, Human Rights Watch said, adding Australia should close the camps and better protect refugees.

Australia’s tough policy has drawn strong criticism from the United Nations and other international rights organizations amid a global debate on how to manage huge numbers of asylum seekers displaced by conflict.

Successive Australian governments have supported the policy, which they say is needed to stop people drowning at sea during dangerous boat journeys.

More than 1,990 asylum seekers have drowned on voyages to Australia since January 2000, according to Monash University’s Australian Border Deaths Database.

More than a third of the deaths occurred between 2007 and 2012, when Australia suspended its offshore detention program, including an accident in 2010 when 50 people were killed when their boat was thrown onto rocks at Christmas Island.

That accident swung political and public opinion behind the offshore detention policy, which has enjoyed bipartisan and public support in Australia.

Human Rights Watch also criticized PNG for police brutality, after officers opened fire on student protesters in June.

PNG was also “one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman”, and the government had failed to address corruption, Human Rights Watch added.

Australia and PNG agreed to close the Manus Island camp in August, but gave no date and it remains open. It held 871 people and the Nauru camp 383 people, according to the most recent statistics released by Australia in November.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Robert Birsel)

EU eyes new Libya approach to block feared migrant wave

raft overcrowded with migrants/refugees in the Mediterranean Sea

By Alastair Macdonald

VALLETTA (Reuters) – The European Union plans new measures to deter migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, officials said, as Malta urged the bloc to act on Thursday to head off a surge in arrivals from a country where Russia is taking a new interest.

With options limited by the weakness of the U.N.-recognized government and by divisions among EU states, it is unclear just what the EU may agree. But officials believe a consensus can be found within weeks in support of national steps taken by Italy.

Rome once effectively paid Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi to block migrants. Since he was overthrown with Western backing in 2011, it has struggled to cope with large numbers of new arrivals. Italy is now working with U.N.-backed Prime Minister Fayez Seraj on a new agreement under which Rome will help guard Libya’s southern desert borders against smugglers.

Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who hosted the executive European Commission in Valletta on Wednesday and will host an EU summit discussing migration on Feb. 3, said new Russian contacts with a Libyan rebel commander and intelligence indicating a sharp increase in crossings once the weather improves made urgent EU action imperative.

“Come next spring, we will have a crisis,” he told a news conference, forecasting “unprecedented” numbers following the record 180,000 sea arrivals in Italy last year.

“The choice is trying to do something now … or meeting urgently in April, May, saying there are tens of thousands of people crossing the Mediterranean, drowning … and then trying to do a deal then.”

“I would beg that we try … to do a deal now,” added Muscat, whose government will chair EU councils until June.

The Commission visit to Malta included senior Libya experts, said officials who foresee new EU policy proposals within weeks.

TURKEY MODEL

After all but halting migrant flows to Greece through a deal last year with Turkey to hold back Syrian refugees, the EU wants to cut flows from Libya. It wants to step up deportations of failed asylum seekers and is using aid budgets to pressure African states to cooperate in taking back their citizens.

Some EU states are looking at greater military involvement to disrupt migrant smuggling gangs which have thrived in the absence of effective authority in Libya.

The EU is training the Libyan coastguard in international waters but has not been able to agree for many months on whether to move into Libya’s territorial waters.

But Muscat said he saw an emerging consensus on a new approach, including from a hitherto skeptical Germany, adding Italy’s deal with Libya should be emulated by the EU.

Muscat said the EU should seek Libyan agreement to expand the bloc’s mission – currently involved in search and rescue operations, trying to obstruct traffickers and uphold a U.N. arms embargo – into Libyan waters.

He said the EU should revive an agreement drafted with Gaddafi, which offered funding to Libya in exchange for more checks on migration.

Asked whether he foresaw EU forces patrolling Libyan borders or the EU setting up camps in Libya to process asylum claims, Muscat did not go into detail on how an EU plan would work beyond saying that, as with the Turkey deal, the key element was “scuttling the business model” of smuggling gangs.

After talks on Thursday, Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti and EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said in a joint statement that the EU backed engagement with Libya. They said: “The Commission is ready to further support Italy in this engagement politically, financially and operationally.”

(Additional reporting by Isla Binnie in Rome and Gabriela Baczynska and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Refugees brave snow, sub-zero temperatures in Greek camps

Syrian refugee boy in the snow

By Karolina Tagaris

RITSONA, Greece (Reuters) – Refugees stranded in Greece suffered sub-zero temperatures and heavy snowfall on Tuesday at camps not designed for winter weather and the government promised those on one island temporary warm accommodations aboard a navy ship.

A mid-winter icy spell and snowstorms have gripped central and southeastern Europe for days, and parts of Greece have been covered in rare snow with temperatures dipping to -20 degrees Celsius this week. Snow also fell in Athens on Tuesday.

More than 60,000 refugees and migrants have been trapped in Greece since Balkan countries along the main, northward overland route to wealthy western Europe sealed their borders last March. Most now live in overcrowded camps across Greece in abandoned factories or warehouses, or in tents which lack insulation or heating.

“Cold, it’s very cold for children – it’s not like Syria,” said Rostam, a 34-year-old Syrian Kurd who has been living in a camp near the village of Ritsona in eastern Greece near Athens for 10 months with his wife and three young children.

Temperatures hovered at -1 degrees at the camp, a collection shipping containers in a forest where clothes left on hanging on lines outdoors had frozen stiff.

Humanitarian aid organizations, including the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, have pressed Greece to quickly transfer those on freezing, snowbound Aegean islands to the mainland or other European countries.

“The situation is very difficult and especially dangerous for children,” said George Protopapas, Greece director of international organisation SOS Children’s Villages.

“Power outages, freezing temperatures, snow and freezing rain have hampered access to some refugee camps and created very hazardous conditions for all those in temporary shelters.”

Conditions were considerably worse on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos, where more than 5,000 asylum seekers have been waiting for months for their applications to be processed.

Scores of summer tents weighed down by thick snow resembled igloos after several days of icy weather on the island. On Tuesday, the government said it was sending a naval ship to Lesbos to accommodate migrants. It was also scrambling to transfer others to hotels.

“It is important to take immediate measures to ensure that men, women and children are housed in decent accommodation suitable for winter,” the Greek branch of global health charity Medecins du Monde said in a statement.

For some refugees who have been in limbo in Greece for months, things have been worse.

“It’s normal, we’re used to living like this,” said a 25-year-old Syrian who gave his name as Ahmad, one of the first to arrive in the Ritsona camp. “This is not one day or two days, this is 10 months.”

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Thousands return to ruins of freezing Aleppo

Samah, 11, and her brother, Ibrahim, transport their salvaged belongings from their damaged house in Doudyan village in northern Aleppo

By Lisa Barrington

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Thousands of people are starting to return to formerly rebel-held east Aleppo despite freezing weather and destruction  “beyond imagination”, a top U.N. official told Reuters from the Syrian city.

In the last couple of days around 2,200 families have returned to the Hanano housing district, said Sajjad Malik, country representative in Syria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“People are coming out to east Aleppo to see their shops, their houses, to see if the building is standing and the house is not that looted … to see, should they come back,” he said  in an interview.

But given the appalling conditions, the U.N. is not encouraging people to return.

“It is extremely, bitterly cold here,” said Malik. “The houses people are going back to have no windows or doors, no cooking facilities.”

Aid is vital to prevent more deaths. The U.N. is helping people to restart their lives in one room of their apartments to start with, he said, giving them mats, sleeping bags and plastic sheets to cover blown-out windows.

BREAD AND WATER

Hanano was one of the first Aleppo neighborhoods to fall to rebels in 2012, and the first to be retaken by the Syrian government on its way to seizing back full control of the northern city last month – the biggest victory for President Bashar al-Assad in nearly six years of war.

As government forces rapidly advanced, some residents stayed put, tens of thousands fled of their own accord and around 35,000 fighters and civilians were evacuated in late December in convoys organized by the Syrian government.

After months of fierce Syrian and Russian air strikes, reconstruction will take a long time, Malik said, but the immediate priority is to keep people warm and fed. U.N.-supported partners provide hot meals twice a day to 21,000 people, and 40,000 people get baked bread every day.

Over 1.1 million people once again have access to clean water in bottles or through tankers and wells.

Mobile clinics are up and running, and more than 10,000 children have received polio vaccinations. Thousands of children who have not been able to attend school need reintegrating into the education system through remedial classes to rebuild their confidence, Malik said.

There was no register of births, deaths and marriages in the rebel-held sector, so the U.N. is working with the government to issue people with papers. “I met a woman with five children and she was excited that she now has her kids registered as Syrians. She has ID cards and a family book,” he said.

Bombing has destroyed hospitals, schools, roads and houses, and damaged the two main water pumping stations. The experienced U.N. official said the level of destruction surpassed anything he had seen in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Somalia.

“Nothing would have prepared us to see the scale of destruction there, it’s beyond imagination.”

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Smuggled by boat or scaling wrecked bridges, residents escape Mosul’s besieged west

Displaced people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, gather at Hassan Sham camp, east of Mosul, Iraq,

By Isabel Coles

HASSAN SHAM, Iraq (Reuters) – They wait for nightfall before attempting the perilous escape across bombed-out bridges and front lines between Islamic State militants and Iraqi forces.

Some cross the Tigris River by boat, after the U.S.-led coalition bombed the five bridges connecting the city’s two halves to restrict Islamic State movements. Others scale what remains of the bridges using a rope.

Most of the 116,000 civilians who have fled Mosul since Iraqi forces launched their campaign to recapture Islamic State’s biggest stronghold came from the eastern half of the city, where government troops have gradually gained ground.

But as the biggest battle in Iraq since 2003 enters its 12th week, a growing number of people are escaping from the besieged west bank of the Tigris, a half of the city that is still fully under the militants’ control.

“Only the lucky ones get out,” said Jamal, who crossed the river using a rope to climb over the remnants of one bridge and is now at a camp for civilians displaced from Mosul with his wife and three children.

“If they opened a route for a quarter of an hour, not a single person would remain on the western side.”

Although there is no fighting yet in the west, food is scarcer than ever since government-backed Shi’ite militias advanced through desert terrain southwest of Mosul in November, sealing Islamic State’s only access route to the city.

Civilians who fled the west in recent days said the militants had announced they would soon distribute food and break the siege in an attempt to placate their increasingly desperate subjects and convince them to stay.

A displaced girl , who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, stands behind the fence at Hassan Sham camp, east of Mosul, Iraq,

A displaced girl , who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, stands behind the fence at Hassan Sham camp, east of Mosul, Iraq, January 2, 2017. Picture taken 2, 2017. REUTERS/Ari Jalal

“HAVE TO EXECUTE THE WHOLE OF MOSUL”

In the run-up to the campaign, aid agencies were preparing for a mass exodus from Mosul. So far most of the city’s residents — numbering as many as 1.5 million — either have chosen to stay or have been unable to escape.

That has worked in Islamic State’s favor, slowing the progress of Iraqi forces seeking to avoid civilian casualties.

Twenty year old Abu Mohsen, whose was ferried across the Tigris by his friend, a fisherman, said when the operation began, most people in the west had planned to wait it out. But as advances slowed last month, their calculations were changing.

“When the operations stopped people said the army will not reach us. They said it will take a year or two,” he said.

Iraqi forces renewed their push to retake the city last week, making progress in several eastern districts.

Until recently, the militants punished anyone caught fleeing their self-styled caliphate with execution, but recent arrivals at the camp said the sheer volume of people trying to escape had forced them to lessen the penalty.

“They would have to execute the whole of Mosul, so they started to flog people and send them back home instead,” said 22 year old Abu Abd, who crossed the river three days ago when Islamic State militants were distracted.

Some of the bridges can still be crossed on foot, but Islamic State forbids passage to those they suspect of fleeing to the government side, especially those with women and children.

Displaced people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, gather at Hassan Sham

Displaced people, who fled the Islamic State stronghold of Mosul, gather at Hassan Sham camp, east of Mosul, Iraq, January 2, 2017. Picture taken 2, 2017. REUTERS/Ari Jalal

Most of the boats crossing the Tigris are controlled by Islamic State. Those who make it across the river must then find a way through the frontline between the militants and Iraqi forces, who are fighting street to street.

“When we saw the army it was as though we were dreaming. We couldn’t believe our own eyes,” said Abu Abdullah, who fled from the 17 Tomuz neighbourhood in the west.

The camp is safer, but brings a new kind of hardship. The displaced are not allowed out for security reasons and have no work. For some, it proves too much. Camp workers and displaced people said a displaced man had cut his own throat in a bathroom cubicle on Sunday.

(Editing by Peter Graff)

Syrian child refugees taught to release stress and resist recruitment

Syrian refugee children queue as they head towards their classroom at a school in Mount Lebanon,

By Sally Hayden

BEIRUT (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The screams of a dozen Syrian and Palestinian children pierce the air of a community center in Lebanon’s Shatila refugee camp.

Yet the children are not hurt. They are yelling to express the anger and fear they feel as victims of conflict in special “peace education” classes.

“We don’t hit each other. We don’t say bad things about each other. Boys don’t hit girls,” said 11-year-old Hala, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.

Hala fled Deir el Zor in Syria and has been living in Lebanon for less than two years. She said one of her favorite activities is “playback”, where each child will tell a story or describe a situation that is bothering them and will have the other children act it out.

Organized by Basmeh and Zeitooneh, a local charity, the classes in a chaotic fifth floor room were set up to help children voice their opinions, release the stress caused by war and displacement and rediscover their imaginations, staff say.

They hope by providing children with activities such as painting, dram and storytelling, they will be less vulnerable to recruitment by militant groups preying on children and teenagers who may be out of school with little to occupy them.

“These kids have been through a lot. They’re traumatized in many different ways,” said “peace education” project manager Elio Gharios.

“They’re agitated, maybe introverted, aggressive at times,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Lebanon is home to more than 1 million Syrian refugees, half of them children.

In 1949, it opened the Shatila camp in Beirut to host Palestinian refugees fleeing Israel’s founding in 1948.

As a new wave of Syrian refugees joined the ranks of the displaced, Shatila has grown upwards, with some buildings now six floors high. Houses are damp and overcrowded, and the tangled electricity wires that hang across the streets cause multiple deaths a year.

More of an urban slum than a traditional refugee camp, Shatila which covers one square kilometer is home to as many as 42,000 people, according to Rasha Shukr, the Beirut area manager for Basma and Zeitooneh.

Syrian refugee children play as volunteers entertain them inside a housing compound in Sidon, southern Lebanon

Syrian refugee children play as volunteers entertain them inside a housing compound in Sidon, southern Lebanon June 12, 2016. REUTERS/Ali Hashisho

BRAINWASHING

Gharios, a charismatic 24-year-old Lebanese psychology graduate, said children aged between seven and 14 attend the classes with up to 20 children in each session.

Each class starts with the children deciding on rules for how they can and cannot treat each other.

“They need to know that finding peaceful ways to resolve conflicts is a very important matter … They are reminded every time that violence is not the solution, it’s not the way,” Gharios said.

“They’re young, it is the teenagers who are easiest to brainwash. Many children know how to roll a joint, say, and they’re 12 or 11. Many have witnessed things happen in here where someone would hold a gun against someone else’s head.”

Young Syrian refugees are at particular risk of being recruited by extremist groups in Lebanon and elsewhere because their recent displacement often fuels a sense of hopelessness, says UK-based charity International Alert, which funds projects in Shatila camp, including the classes.

Palestinian groups including Hamas militants and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement are active inside Shatila, according to charities working there.

Islamic State and Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, another extremist group, have also been known to target young refugees online, they say.

International Alert says these classes make children less vulnerable to recruitment because they provide them with a safe environment to discuss problems, learn conflict resolution skills and to rebuild a sense of purpose.

RECRUITMENT

Caroline Brooks, Syria projects manager at International Alert, which supports similar programs throughout Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, said there were many reasons why children may join an extremist group.

Often there is a need for a sense of significance, purpose, and belonging, and sometimes there is a desire for revenge, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

A lack of alternatives and the need to make a living are also strong pull factors, Brooks said.

Conflict and displacement tend to fuel the abuse and exploitation of children, refugee experts say.

For example, many children are forced to work or beg to feed themselves and their families, young girls face greater risk of being married off and domestic violence increases, they say.

“Peace education” classes, which started this year, have already had some impact, Brooks said citing a 17-year-old in the program who was approached by an Islamic State recruiter through Facebook.

The teenager immediately reported it to a member of staff involved in the classes.

For Hala, the classes which she has been attending for right months have made a huge difference to her and her younger siblings.

“My brothers changed. They became much happier,” she said.

(Reporting by Sally Hayden; Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.)

Mediterranean death toll is record 5,000 migrants this year

A wooden boat, used by migrants and refugees, is abandoned at a beach on the Greek island of Lesbos November, 2015. The writing on the boat reads "Aegean zero hour"

GENEVA (Reuters) – A record 5,000 migrants are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea this year, following two shipwrecks on Thursday in which some 100 people, mainly West Africans, were feared dead, aid agencies said on Friday.

Two overcrowded inflatable dinghies capsized in the Strait of Sicily after leaving Libya for Italy, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said.

“Those two incidents together appear to be the numbers that would bring this year’s total up to over to 5,000 (deaths), which is a new high that we have reported during this crisis,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman told a Geneva briefing.

The Italian coast guard rescued survivors and had recovered eight bodies so far, he said. IOM staff were interviewing survivors brought to Trapani, Italy, he added.

Just under 3,800 migrants perished at sea during all of 2015, according to IOM figures.

An Algerian migrant stands in front the Mediterranean Sea in Spain's north African enclave of Ceuta, Spain,

An Algerian migrant stands in front the Mediterranean Sea in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta, Spain, December 10, 2016. REUTERS/Juan Medina

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said the “alarming increase” in deaths this year appeared to be related to bad weather, the declining quality of vessels used by smugglers, and their tactics to avoid detection.

“These (reasons also) include sending large numbers of embarkations simultaneously, which makes the work of rescuers more difficult,” he said

The UNHCR appealed to states to open up more legal pathways for admitting refugees. Resettlement programmes, private sponsorship, family reunification and student scholarships would help “so they do not have to resort to dangerous journeys and the use of smugglers”, Spindler said.

IOM figures show 358,403 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea in 2016 up to and including Dec. 21, arriving mostly in Greece and Italy.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and John Stonestreet)

Russian ambassador shot dead in Ankara

Turkish police secure the area near an art gallery where the Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov was shot, in Ankara.

ANKARA (Reuters) – The Russian ambassador to Ankara was shot dead in an attack at an art gallery in the Turkish capital on Monday by a gunman shouting “Don’t forget Aleppo”.

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed the death of envoy Andrei Karlov, which marked one of the most serious spillovers of the Syria conflict into Turkey.

Andrei Gennadiyevich Karlov in a 2005 photo.

Andrei Gennadiyevich Karlov in a 2005 photo. REUTERS/Korea News Service

Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its air strikes were instrumental in helping Syrian forces end rebel resistance last week in the northern city of Aleppo.

The Anadolu news agency said the gunman had been “neutralized” soon after the attack, Relations between Moscow and Ankara have long been fraught over the conflict, with the two supporting opposing sides.

The attacker was smartly dressed in black suit and tie, and standing behind the ambassador as he made a speech at the art exhibition, a person at the scene told Reuters.

“He took out his gun and shot the ambassador from behind. We saw him lying on the floor and then we ran out,” said the witness, who asked not to be identified.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene said gunfire rang out for some time after the attack.

A video showed the attacker shouting: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!”

As screams rang out, the gunman could then be seen pacing about and shouting as he held the gun in one hand and waved the other in the air.

Another photograph showed four people including what appeared to be the ambassador lying on the floor.

Russia and Turkey have both been involved in the conflict in Syria, which borders Turkey. Turkey has been a staunch opponent of Assad, while Russia has deployed troops and its air force in support of the Syrian leader.

The U.S. State Department, involved in diplomatic contacts with Russia in an attempt to resolve a refugee crisis unfolding around the city of Aleppo, condemned the attack.

Tensions have escalated in recent weeks as Russian-backed Syrian forces have fought for control of the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, triggering a stream of refugees.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack. Islamic State militants have been active in Turkey and carried out several bomb attacks on Turkish targets over the last year.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler; editing by Ralph Boulton and Mark Trevelyan)