Tag Archives: Syrian

Sri Lanka blasts were revenge for New Zealand mosque killings: minister

A man holds a cross during a mass burial of victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, at a cemetery near St. Sebastian Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

By Sanjeev Miglani and Shihar Aneez

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Devastating Easter bombings in Sri Lanka were retaliation for attacks on mosques in New Zealand, a Sri Lankan official said on Tuesday, as Islamic State claimed responsibility for the coordinated blasts that killed 321 people.

Islamic State’s claim, issued on its AMAQ news agency, came shortly after Sri Lanka said two domestic Islamist groups, with suspected links to foreign militants, were believed to have been behind the attacks at three churches and four hotels, which wounded about 500 people.

People attend a mass burial of victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

People attend a mass burial of victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

Islamic State gave no evidence for its claim. The government has said at least seven suicide bombers were involved.

“The initial investigation has revealed that this was in retaliation for the New Zealand mosque attack,” junior minister for defense Ruwan Wijewardene told parliament.

He did not elaborate on why authorities believed there was a link to the killing of 50 people at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch during Friday prayers on March 15. A lone gunman carried out those attacks.

Wijewardene said two Sri Lankan Islamist groups – the National Thawheed Jama’ut and Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim – were responsible for the blasts early on Sunday during Easter services and as high-end hotels served breakfast.

U.S. intelligence sources said earlier the attacks carried some of the hallmarks of Islamic State, even though it had not made an immediate claim of responsibility, as it usually does.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament investigators were looking into foreign links.

Earlier on Tuesday, Sri Lankan government and military sources said a Syrian had been detained among 40 people being questioned over the bombs.

“He was arrested after the interrogation of local suspects,” one of the sources said, referring to the unidentified Syrian.

A woman reacts during a mass burial of victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

A woman reacts during a mass burial of victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

FUNERALS

Tuesday was declared a national day of mourning and the funerals of some of the victims were held, as pressure mounted on the government over why effective action had not been taken in response to a warning this month about a possible attack on churches by the little-known National Thawheed Jama’ut group.

The first six attacks – on three churches and three luxury hotels – came within 20 minutes on Sunday morning.

Two more explosions – at a downmarket hotel and a house in a suburb of the capital, Colombo – came in the early afternoon.

Most of the dead and wounded were Sri Lankans, although government officials said 38 foreigners were killed. That included British, U.S., Australian, Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch and Portuguese nationals.

The U.N. Children’s Fund said 45 children were among the dead.

Footage on CNN showed what it said was one of the bombers wearing a heavy backpack. The man patted a child on the head before entering the Gothic-style St. Sebastian church in Katuwapitiya, north of Colombo. Dozens were killed there.

The bombs brought a shattering end to a relative calm that had existed in the Buddhist-majority Indian Ocean island since a bitter civil war against mostly Hindu, ethnic Tamil separatists ended 10 years ago, and raised fears of a return to sectarian violence.

Sri Lanka’s 22 million people include minority Christians, Muslims and Hindus. Until now, Christians had largely managed to avoid the worst of the island’s conflict and communal tensions.

The government imposed emergency rule at midnight on Monday, giving police extensive powers to detain and interrogate suspects without court orders.

An overnight curfew has also been imposed since Sunday.

People react as silence is observed as a tribute to victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, during a memorial service in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

People react as silence is observed as a tribute to victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, during a memorial service in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte

FBI TO HELP

U.S. President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Wickremesinghe on Monday to pledge U.S. support in bringing the perpetrators to justice.

The Washington Post quoted an unidentified law enforcement official as saying Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents were being sent to Sri Lanka to help with the investigation.

The FBI had offered expertise to test evidence and analysts were scouring databases for information, the Post said. Counter-terrorism officials from Britain were also due on Tuesday, a Western diplomat in Colombo said.

The attacks have also underlined concern over fractures in Sri Lanka’s government, and whether the discord prevented action that might have stopped them.

The government received a tip-off from India this month about a possible attack on churches by the National Thawheed Jama’ut.

It was not immediately clear what action, if any, was taken in response. A government minister said on Monday that Wickremesinghe had not been informed about the warning and had been shut out of top security meetings because of a feud with President Maithripala Sirisena.

Sirisena fired Wickremesinghe last year only to be forced to reinstate him under pressure from the Supreme Court. Their relationship is reported to be fraught.

The U.S. State Department said in a travel advisory “terrorist groups” were possibly plotting more attacks in Sri Lanka.

China’s embassy warned its nationals against traveling to Sri Lanka in the near term because of “huge security risks”.

China is a major investor in Sri Lanka. The embassy said one Chinese national was killed, five wounded and five were missing.

(Reporting by Sanjeev Miglani; Additional reporting by Ranga Sirilal, Joe Brock, Mark Hosenball and Kieran Murray in WASHINGTON, and Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo in BEIJING; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Michael Perry, Paul Tait and Alex Richardson)

Russia offers rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta

A man pushes a cart past damaged buildings at the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, Damascus, Syria March 5, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

By Katya Golubkova and Dahlia Nehme

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Russian military has offered Syrian rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta, setting out a proposal to let the opposition surrender its last major stronghold near Damascus to President Bashar al-Assad.

The Russian defense ministry said rebels could leave with their families and personal weapons through a secure corridor out of eastern Ghouta, where Moscow-backed government forces have made rapid gains in a fierce assault.

The Russian proposal did not specify where the rebels would go, but the terms echo previous deals under which insurgents have ceded ground to Assad and been given safe passage to other opposition-held territory near the Turkish border.

“The Russian Reconciliation Centre guarantees the immunity of all rebel fighters who take the decision to leave eastern Ghouta with personal weapons and together with their families,” said the defense ministry statement.

Vehicles would “be provided, and the entire route will be guarded”, it added.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in the besieged enclave of satellite towns and rural areas on the outskirts of Damascus in one of the fiercest bombing campaigns of the seven-year-old civil war.

The United Nations believes 400,000 people are trapped inside the enclave where food and medical supplies were already running out before the assault began with intense air strikes two weeks ago.

Damascus and Moscow have pressed on with the campaign despite a U.N. Security Council call for a ceasefire, arguing that the rebel fighters they are targeting are members of banned terrorist groups who are not protected by the truce.

The offensive appears to have followed the tactics Assad and his allies have used at other key points in the war: laying siege to rebel-held areas, bombing them fiercely, launching a ground assault and offering passage out to civilians who flee and fighters who withdraw.

Wael Alwan, the spokesman for one of the main rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, Failaq al-Rahman, said Russia was “insisting on military escalation and imposing forced displacement” on the people of eastern Ghouta, which he called “a crime”.

Alwan, who is based in Istanbul, also told Reuters there had been no contact with Russia about the proposal.

The Syrian army has captured more than a third of the enclave in recent days, threatening to slice it in two.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor says government bombardment of the area has killed 790 people since Feb. 18, including 80 people killed on Monday alone.

Assad said on Sunday the Syrian army would continue the push into eastern Ghouta, which government forces have encircled since 2013. Many civilian residents have fled from the frontlines into the town of Douma.

CLAIMS OF CHLORINE USE

For the rebels fighting to oust Assad, the loss of eastern Ghouta would mark their worst defeat since the battle of Aleppo in late 2016. Rebel shelling on Damascus has killed dozens of people during the last two weeks, state-run media has said.

Russia has organized daily, five-hour long “humanitarian ceasefires” with the stated aim of allowing civilians to leave and to permit aid deliveries. It has accused rebels of preventing people from leaving the area, which rebels deny.

The health directorate in rebel-held Ghouta said on Tuesday it had received reports of people suffering suffocation as a result of chlorine gas in the eastern Ghouta village of Hammourieh on Monday.

A media official with the directorate said it was “following up on the details of this incident and would release a detailed report after following up on the cases”.

Western countries and rescue workers say Syria has repeatedly used chlorine gas as a weapon in eastern Ghouta in recent weeks, which the government has strongly denied.

The civil defense rescue service in eastern Ghouta said the latest bombardment with chlorine gas had caused 30 people to suffer from suffocation in the shelling in Hammourieh.

The Syrian government swiftly denied using poison gas, and said rebels had received instructions from their foreign “sponsors” to use chemical weapons in eastern Ghouta in order to accuse the Syrian army of doing so.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday only an impartial investigation in Syria by an international commission can determine if allegations about the use of chemical weapons are true.

Asked about the possibility that the United States could strike Syria over allegations that forces loyal to Assad had used chemical weapons, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin hoped nothing would be done to breach international law.

Rebel-held areas of the Ghouta region were hit in a major attack with nerve gas that killed hundreds of people in 2013. Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal to avert U.S. retaliation for that attack, but was found by the United Nations to have used sarin nerve gas again last year in an incident that prompted U.S. retaliatory air strikes.

Unlike sarin, chlorine is not banned for civilian uses, but its use as a weapon is forbidden.

Aid trucks reached eastern Ghouta on Monday for the first time since the start of the latest offensive. But the government stripped some medical supplies from the convoy and pressed on with its air and ground assault.

The convoy of more than 40 trucks pulled out of Douma in darkness after shelling on the town, without fully unloading supplies during a nine-hour stay. All staff were safe and heading back to the capital Damascus, aid officials said.

(Reporting by Katya Golubkova in Moscow, Tom Perry and Dahlia Nehme in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by John Stonestreet)

Syrian, Russian jets bomb residential areas in eastern Ghouta: witnesses, monitor

People are seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3,

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday.

Civil defense workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defense workers said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period.

The Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by army troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave to submission.

The government has in recent months tightened the siege in what residents and aid workers have said is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

The United Nations says about 400,00 civilians besieged in the region face “complete catastrophe” because aid deliveries by the Syrian government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining large swathe of rebel-held area around Damascus that has not reached an evacuation deal to surrender weapons in return for allowing fighters to go to other rebel-held areas farther north.

“They are targeting civilians … a jet hit us there, no rebels or checkpoints,” Sadeq Ibrahim, a trader, said by phone in Hamoriya.

“May God take his revenge on the regime and Russia,” said Abdullah Khalil, another resident, who said he lost members of his family in the air strike on Arbin and was searching for survivors among the rubble.

A boy is seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3,

A boy is seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

The intensified bombardment of Eastern Ghouta follows a rebel attack last month on an army complex in the heart of the region that the army had used to bomb nearby rebel-held areas.

Residents said, however, that the failure of the army to dislodge rebels from the complex had prompted what they believe were retaliatory indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the Eastern Ghouta.

Government advances since last year have forced people to flee deeper into its increasingly overcrowded towns. The loss of farmland is increasing pressure on scarce food supplies.

The Eastern Ghouta is part of several de-escalation zones that Russia has brokered with rebels across Syria that has freed the army to redeploy in areas where it can regain ground.

Rebels accuse the Syrian government and Russia of violating the zones and say they were meant as a charade to divert attention from the heavy daily bombing of civilian areas. The Syrian government and Russia deny their jets bomb civilians and insist they only strike militant hideouts.

 

 

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

U.S.-backed Syrian force cuts last road out of Islamic State stronghold

An Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter walks with his weapon in northern Raqqa province, Syria

By Tom Perry and Humeyra Pamuk

BEIRUT/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – U.S.-backed Syrian militias cut the last main road out of Islamic State-held Raqqa on Monday, severing the highway between the group’s de facto capital and its stronghold of Deir al-Zor province, a militia spokesman said.

The development, confirmed by a British-based organization that monitors Syria’s war, marks a major blow against Islamic State, which is under intense military pressure in both Syria and Iraq.

It is losing ground to three separate campaigns in northern Syria – by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militias, by the Russian-backed Syrian army, and by Turkey and allied Syrian rebels.

“Cutting the road between Raqqa and Deir al-Zor means that practically the encirclement of the Daesh (Islamic State) capital is complete by land,” a Kurdish military source told Reuters, adding that the only remaining way out of the city was south across the Euphrates River.

“It is a big victory but there is still a lot to accomplish,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The SDF is an alliance of militias including the Kurdish YPG and Arab groups. It launched a campaign in November to encircle and ultimately capture Islamic State’s base of operations in Raqqa city, with air strikes and special forces support from a U.S.-led coalition.

Further west, the Syrian army has made its own, rapid progress against Islamic State in the past few weeks, advancing east from Aleppo city toward the Euphrates. The Syrian army last week captured the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State – an operation Russia said it had planned and overseen.

A Syrian military source told Reuters the army would press on to reach the jihadists’ main strongholds in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor.

Syrian government forces, meanwhile, have taken over positions from a U.S.-backed militia in the northern city of Manbij on a frontline with Turkish-backed rebel forces, in line with a deal brokered by Russia, the militia’s spokesman said on Monday.

Last week, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Manbij would be the next target in the campaign Turkey is waging alongside Syrian rebels in northern Syria against both Islamic State and the Kurdish YPG militia.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Monday Ankara was not planning a military campaign without coordinating with the United States and Russia.

The U.S. military has also deployed a small number of forces in and around Manbij to ensure that the different parties in the area do not attack each other, a Pentagon spokesman said.

BRIDGES DESTROYED

Islamic State still controls swathes of Syria, including much of the center and nearly all the eastern province of Deir al-Zor stretching all the way to the Iraqi part of its self-declared caliphate.

The SDF has been the main U.S. partner against Islamic State in Syria. “The road is under the control of the SDF,” spokesman Talal Silo said in a voice message sent to Reuters. “The road between Raqqa and Deir al-Zor.”

There was no immediate word from Islamic State on the social media channels it uses to communicate news.

Air strikes by the U.S.-led coalition have destroyed the bridges across the Euphrates to Raqqa city, the British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

The Observatory said families brought recently by Islamic State to Raqqa from areas to the west had been forced to cross the river by boat, reflecting the problem facing Islamic State in reaching the city.

In Iraq, U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured the second of Mosul’s five bridges on Monday, part of a major onslaught that began in October to take back the city lost to Islamic State in 2014.

EYES ON RAQQA

The Syrian army’s advance toward the Euphrates River from Aleppo has added to the pressure on Islamic State.

One of the targets of the army’s advance appears to be to secure the water supply to Aleppo, which is pumped from the village of al-Khafsa on the western bank of the Euphrates.

The Observatory said on Monday the army had advanced to within 8 km (5 miles) of al-Khafsa.

The Syrian army push has also had the effect of deterring further advances south by Turkish forces and Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels as they carve out an effective buffer zone near the border in areas seized from Islamic State.

“The army will not stop in its military operations against Daesh, and will certainly reach its most important strongholds in Raqqa and Deir al-Zor. This is a national Syrian decision,” the Syrian military source told Reuters.

The source said the army was advancing at a rapid pace and there was “great dysfunction” in Islamic State’s leadership.

Turkey, a NATO member, wants its Syrian rebel allies to lead the Raqqa offensive, and U.S. support for the YPG is a major point of contention between the two states.

(Reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Alison Williams)

Syrian opposition calls for suspension of U.S. led air strikes

Men make their way through the rubble of damaged buildings at a site hit by air strikes in Idlib city, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition called for a suspension of the U.S.-led air campaign against Islamic State in Syria while reports of dozens of civilian deaths from air strikes around the northern city of Manbij are investigated.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 56 civilians were killed in air strikes north of Manbij on Tuesday, a day after it said 21 civilians were killed in a northern district of the besieged Islamic State-held city.

SNC president Anas al-Abdah said the strikes should be halted while the incidents were investigated, according to a statement issued late on Wednesday, and warned that the killing of civilians by the U.S.-led air campaign would “prove to be a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations”.

“It is essential that such investigation not only result in revised rules of procedure for future operations, but also inform accountability for those responsible for such major violations,” Abdah wrote in a letter to foreign ministers of countries in the anti-Islamic State alliance.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday the U.S.-led force would look into the reports of civilian casualties around Manbij.

The Observatory said the dead from Tuesday’s strike included 11 children. Pictures on social media purporting to be from the scene showed dust-covered corpses of two young children next to rubble.

Syria’s foreign ministry said Tuesday’s air strike, which hit the village of Toukhar north of Manbij, was carried out by French forces, while Monday’s strike was by U.S. jets.

“(Syria) condemns, with the strongest terms, the two bloody massacres perpetrated by the French and U.S. warplanes and those affiliated to the so-called international coalition which send their missiles and bombs to the civilians instead of directing them to the terrorist gangs,” it said in a letter sent to the United Nations this week, according to state news agency SANA.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led alliance said there were “multiple national aircraft providing strikes in Manbij. So how the Syrian government knows who conducted what strike, I question.”

The Western-backed Free Syrian Army, an umbrella grouping of factions which has fought against both President Bashar al-Assad and against Islamic State militants, also condemned what it called the “shocking massacres” near Manbij.

“We will not allow any crime to be justified under the pretext of combating terrorism,” it said in a statement signed by more than 30 armed factions.

(This story corrects spelling of village in paragraph 7)

(Reporting by Dominic Evans)

Assad Believed To Still Have Chemical Weapons

The Wall Street Journal has reported U.S. intelligence agencies have told them the Syrian regime of Bashir al-Assad has not turned over all of their chemical weapons as agreed to in 2013.

Assad and his government had agreed to give up all their chemical weapons after a sarin nerve agent attack on a Damascus suburb.  The negative response of the international community and threats to the Syrian government appeared to make them relent of their use of chemical agents.

Inspectors told the Journal that in their visits to Syria, they were only taken to areas that the Assad government said were chemical weapons storage and/or production facilities.  The inspectors were not allowed into areas that were not designated chemical weapon locations by the Syrian government.

“Under the terms of their deployment, the inspectors had access only to sites that the Assad regime had declared were part of its chemical-weapons program. The US and other powers had the right to demand access to undeclared sites if they had evidence they were part of the chemical-weapons program. But that right was never exercised, in part, inspectors and Western officials say, because their governments didn’t want a standoff with the regime,” the report states.

“Members of the inspection team didn’t push for answers, worried that it would compromise their primary objective of getting the regime to surrender the 1,300 tons of chemicals it admitted to having,” the report stated. “The Syrians laid out the ground rules. Inspectors could visit only sites Syria had declared, and only with 48-hour notice. Anything else was off-limits, unless the regime extended an invitation.”

Now, American intelligence agencies say they believe Assad is holding a cache of nerve agents even more powerful than Sarin for use if the terrorist group ISIS makes a run at Syrian government stronghold and appear to be close to overrunning them.

The breaking of this news comes on the heels of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons saying the Syrian chemical weapons have been neutralized at sea on a U.S. Naval vessel, the Cape Ray.

However, 16 metric tons of hydrogen fluoride from the Syrian stock remains in storage at a facility in Port Arthur, Texas.

ISIS Forced Christian Hostage To Call Family While Being Electrocuted

A Syrian Christian captured by ISIS that was released after five months said that he had to call his family while he was being electrocuted because the terrorists wanted to force his family to pay a $80,000 ransom.

The man, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke with New York Magazine and related his story of torture.

He said that he was in Beirut and returning to Syria with a co-worker when they stopped at what they believed to be a checkpoint for the Syrian army.  Instead, it was the terrorists who took them to a location and chained them to the wall.

“Anyway, we were blindfolded and chained, and every day they would torture us. They would come in, one at a time, and electrocute us or beat us with anything they could find,” the man said. “But they didn’t kill me because they wanted to ransom me. One time, they made me speak to my family on the phone as they were electrocuting me. Then, they made me call a friend, who told them he would pay.”

He said the same day he was forced to call his family, they took the other Christian hostage into the room next to him and shot him to death.

“Then one day, they told me and my friend, the man from Aleppo, that our families had paid and we were to be released,” he explained. “They threw us in the streets of Aleppo, near the Turkish border. My God, it was the most wonderful feeling I’ve ever had. There were Free Syrian Army soldiers. We went to them, and they took us to a church. I saw the cross and I thought, I’m alive.”