Tag Archives: Strikes

CBS confirms plans for US strikes on Iranian targets

US-Strikes-Iran

Important Takeaways:

  • Plans for U.S. strikes on Iranian personnel and facilities in Iraq, Syria approved after Jordan drone attack
  • U.S. officials have confirmed to CBS News that plans have been approved for a series of strikes over a number of days against targets — including Iranian personnel and facilities — inside Iraq and Syria. The strikes will come in response to drone and rocket attacks targeting U.S. forces in the region, including the drone attack on Sunday that killed three U.S. service members at the Tower 22 base inside Jordan, near the Syrian border.
  • Speaking at the Pentagon Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that the U.S. won’t tolerate attacks on American troops.
  • “This is a dangerous moment in the Middle East,” Austin said, noting that Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on commercial shipping in the Red Sea were also happening in the region. “We will continue to work to avoid a wider conflict in the region, but we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our interests and our people, and we will respond when we choose, where we choose and how we choose.”
  • Weather will be a major factor in the timing of the strikes, the U.S. officials told CBS News, as the U.S. has the capability to carry out strikes in bad weather but prefers to have better visibility of selected targets as a safeguard against inadvertently hitting civilians who might stray into the area at the last moment.
  • Iran’s Reaction…any strike on Iranian territory or personnel would escalate tension in the tumultuous region, not make U.S. forces safer.

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Fire and petrol bombs after ‘generally peaceful’ Hong Kong march, police say

Fire and petrol bombs after ‘generally peaceful’ Hong Kong march, police say
By Farah Master and Jessie Pang

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong protesters lit a fire outside court buildings, threw petrol bombs and spray-painted graffiti on government buildings, following a “generally peaceful” march at the weekend, police said on Monday.

Protesters called for strikes across the city on Monday, but most railway and transport links ran smoothly during the morning rush hour and there were no reports of widespread disruptions.

Vast crowds of black-clad demonstrators had thronged the streets of the Asian financial hub on Sunday, in the largest anti-government rally since local elections last month and a resounding show of continued support for the pro-democracy movement.

While the march appeared to be largely peaceful – in marked contrast to some other mass demonstrations over the last six months, where protesters fought pitched battles with police – authorities said there was some damage after it ended.

“Although the event was generally peaceful, acts of breaching public peace happened afterwards,” police said in a statement on Monday.

“Some rioters spray-painted the exterior walls of the High Court, threw petrol bombs and set fire outside the High Court and the Court of Final Appeal, damaging government properties and seriously challenging the spirit of the rule of law,” police said, adding that shops and banks were vandalized in the Causeway Bay and Wan Chai areas of Hong Kong island.

Reuters reporters at the march on Sunday saw graffiti and protesters setting up barricades, but were not in the vicinity of the other incidents.

The Hong Kong Bar Association condemned what it called “acts of arson and vandalism” and said those responsible must be brought to justice.

Protesters estimated the turnout at 800,000, while police said it was 183,000.

Police said they arrested 42 people over the weekend for rioting, possessing weapons and other charges. Some 6,022 people have now been arrested in relation to the unrest since early June, police said.

‘FED UP’

In an editorial, the official China Daily newspaper called on the Hong Kong government to uphold the rule of law.

“Many residents in Hong Kong are fed up with the violence and disruption that have plagued the city for months,” said the newspaper, often used by Beijing to put out its message.

Hong Kong’s new police commissioner had said he would take a “hard and soft approach” to the demonstrations, where acts of violence would be treated harshly but other issues more flexibly.

The chairman and president of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Hong Kong were denied entry over the weekend to the neighboring Chinese territory of Macau, without explanation.

Macau’s security chief, Wong Sio Chak, on Monday said security concerns were the only reason for barring entry into the city, broadcaster RTHK reported.

AmCham Chairman Robert Grieves and President Tara Joseph had been traveling to Macau for an annual ball. The pair were told to sign a statement saying they “voluntarily agreed not to pursue entry to Macau”.

Wong declined to comment specifically on their cases and said it was speculation that their refusal was linked to Beijing’s response to U.S. legislation backing pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong, RTHK said.

U.S. President Donald Trump last month signed into law the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, linking the former British colony’s special treatment under U.S. law to its autonomy from Beijing.

The unrest in the city of about 7.4 million people started in June as demonstrations against a now-withdrawn bill allowing extradition to mainland China. It has since morphed into calls for greater democratic freedoms and sometimes violent protests.

Protesters have set out five demands, including universal suffrage and an investigation into alleged police brutality.

China has repeatedly blamed foreign powers, including the United States, for stirring up the unrest.

(Reporting by Farah Master, Jessie Pang and Twinnie Siu; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Stephen Coates, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson)

Two hundred families trapped by Islamic State in Syria, U.N. says

FILE PHOTO: Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) drink tea in the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

GENEVA (Reuters) – Some 200 families are trapped in a shrinking area of Syria controlled by Islamic State, whose forces are stopping many from fleeing, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday, calling for the families’ safe passage.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are on the brink of defeating IS in its last pocket in eastern Syria, the village of Baghouz, where it estimates a few hundred Islamic State fighters and about 2,000 civilians are under siege.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends a news conference at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Many of the families “… continue to be subjected to intensified air and ground-based strikes by the U.S.-led Coalition forces and their SDF allies on the ground,” Bachelet said in a statement.

“We understand that ISIL appears to be preventing some of them if not all of them from leaving. So that’s potentially a war crime on the part of ISIL,” her spokesman Rupert Colville told a news briefing.

The SDF attacking Islamic State have an obligation under international law to take all precautions to protect civilians who are mixed in with the foreign fighters, he said.

In Syria’s northwest, Syrian government forces and their allies have intensified a bombing campaign in Idlib and surrounding areas in recent weeks, coupled with attacks by armed groups that have killed civilians, Bachelet said.

Twin explosions in the bustling center of rebel-held Idlib city on Monday killed at least 15 people and injured scores, medics and witnesses said.. Bachelet put the death toll from that incident at 16 with more than 70 injured.

Bachelet also voiced concern for some 20,000 people who fled the ISIL-controlled areas in eastern Deir al-Zor governorate in recent weeks. They are being held in makeshift camps run by the Kurdish armed groups, including SDF, who are reported to be preventing IDPs from leaving the camps, she said.

“Particular care needs to be taken with the civilians and if possible they should be treated humanely, and allowed to leave the camps. They shouldn’t be held in detention unless they are suspected of committing a particular crime,” Colville said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Editing by William Maclean)

Striking French workers disrupt flights, schools

French students attend a demonstration with public sector workers as part of a nationwide strike against French government reforms in Marseille, France, October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier

By Ingrid Melander

PARIS (Reuters) – French public sector workers went on strike on Tuesday against President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to cull jobs and toughen pay conditions, forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights and disrupting school activities.

Civil servants, teachers and nurses marched through cities across France, from Toulouse in the south to Strasbourg in the east, before the day’s biggest rally in Paris.

It is the first time in a decade that all unions representing more than 5 million public workers have rallied behind a protest call.

But as the Paris rally got underway, the number of protesters appeared low. Turnout will be an important indicator of public appetite for protest against Macron’s social and economic reforms, which the former investment banker says are needed to unlock economic growth and put public finances on a more sustainable footing.

Protests last month against labor law reform that were led by private sector unions failed to persuade Macron to change policy course, but the French labor movement has traditionally been more muscular in the public sector.

“We want to make our voices heard after months and months of attacks against the public sector and its workers,” said Mylene Jacquot, head of the civil servants’ federation at the moderate CFDT, France’s biggest trade union.

“In particular, we want to force the government to make good on its promise regarding our spending power.”

Strike notices were lodged in schools, hospitals, airports and government ministries over plans to ax 120,000 jobs, freeze pay and reduce sick leave compensation.

The civil aviation authority said 30 percent of flights at airports nationwide had been canceled but there was no disruption on the rail network. The Ministry of Education said fewer than one in five teachers were on strike.

“BLOODY MESS”

Macron, 39, has come under fire in recent days from political opponents and the unions for treating workers with contempt after he was recorded describing a group of workers at a struggling factory as “kicking up a bloody mess”.

That misstep came weeks after he called those who resisted reform “slackers”.

As crowds gathered near Paris’s Place de la Republique, protesters held aloft a placard with portraits of Macron, his prime minister and finance minister reading: “The ones kicking up the bloody mess.”

Unions have been divided over Macron’s reforms so far, with only the Communist Party-rooted CGT spearheading street demonstrations against the loosening of employment laws.

In Lyon, Force Ouvriere union boss Jean-Claude Mailly said he would not support the CGT’s call for the labor law decrees to be scrapped after weeks of negotiations between government and unions. But he said there would be other battles to fight with a united front.

“There are other issues ahead: unemployment insurance, pension reform, the matter of public services,” Mailly said.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Pailliez; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Richard Balmforth)