Tag Archives: War

Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce

Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of mortar bombs landed on the last major rebel stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, despite a 48 hour truce proposed by Russia to coincide with the start of peace talks in Geneva.

After a relatively calm morning, shelling picked up later in the day, accompanied by ground attempts to storm the besieged enclave, a witness in the Eastern Ghouta area told Reuters.

The Syrian army stepped up bombardment two weeks ago in an effort to recapture Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held pocket of densely populated agricultural land on the outskirts of the capital under siege since 2012.

Scores of people have been killed in air strikes during the offensive, and residents say they are on the verge of starvation after the siege was tightened.

Russia had proposed a ceasefire on Monday in the besieged area for Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but “we have to see if it happens”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed when dozens of mortars crashed into Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday.

Eastern Ghouta is one of several “de-escalation” zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s government. But fighting has continued there.

On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, the observatory said. It had reported intense bombardment that killed 41 people over two days from Sunday to Monday.

“A two-day truce is not nearly enough for civilians facing grave violations of international law – including bombardment and besiegement – but it is a window of opportunity to save the lives of the most desperately in need of treatment,” said Thomas Garofalo, International Rescue Committee’s Middle East Public Affairs Director, in a statement on Wednesday.

The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad’s removal as a result of negotiations.

The government delegation will be headed by Syria’s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari, state-run news agency SANA said.

A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria’s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch and Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Angus McDowall, Jeremy Gaunt and Peter Graff)

Truce near Damascus mostly being observed before Syria talks begin

Truce near Damascus mostly being observed before Syria talks begin

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Russian-proposed ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta area of Syria has been widely observed, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, as a delegation from Damascus arrived in Geneva to join peace talks there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the ceasefire in the besieged rebel-held enclave near Damascus is being “observed in general”.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura said on Tuesday that the Syrian government had accepted the Russian proposal to stop fighting in the area on Nov. 28-29.

The observatory, which monitors the war, reported that the ceasefire had seen insignificant breaches on Wednesday morning in the village of Ain Terma, where Syrian forces fired five shells.

On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, it added.

“We are in peace today,” a witness from the Eastern Ghouta village of Douma told Reuters on a messaging site.

The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad’s removal as a result of negotiations.

The government delegation will be headed by Syria’s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari, state-run news agency SANA said.

A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria’s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power.

(Reporting by Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Angus McDowall/Jeremy Gaunt)

Rouhani says Saudis call Iran an enemy to conceal defeat in region

Rouhani says Saudis call Iran an enemy to conceal defeat in region

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia presents Iran as an enemy because it wants to cover up its defeats in the region.

“Saudi Arabia was unsuccessful in Qatar, was unsuccessful in Iraq, in Syria and recently in Lebanon. In all of these areas, they were unsuccessful,” Rouhani said in the interview live on state television. “So they want to cover up their defeats.”

The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran back rival sides in the wars and political crises throughout the region.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “the new Hitler of the Middle East” in an interview with the New York Times published last week, escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals.

Tensions soared this month when Lebanon’s Saudi-allied Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in a television broadcast from Riyadh, citing the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and risks to his life.

Hezbollah called the move an act of war engineered by Saudi authorities, an accusation they denied.

Hariri returned to Lebanon last week and suspended his resignation but has continued his criticism of Hezbollah.

Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russia form a line of resistance in the region that has worked toward stability and achieved “big accomplishments”, Rouhani said in the interview, which was reviewing his first 100 days in office in his second term.

Separately, Rouhani defended his government’s response to an earthquake in western Iran two weeks ago, a major challenges for his administration.

The magnitude 7.3 quake, Iran’s worst in more than a decade, killed at least 530 people and injured thousands. The government’s response has become a lightning rod for Rouhani’s hard-line rivals, who have said the government did not respond adequately or quickly to the disaster.

Supreme Leader Khamenei, the highest authority in Iran, has also criticized the government response.

Hard-line media outlets have highlighted the role played by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the most powerful military body in Iran and an economic powerhouse worth billions of dollars, in helping victims of the earthquake.

Government ministries have provided health care for victims and temporary housing has been sent to the earthquake zone, but problems still exist, Rouhani said in the interview.

(Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh, Editing by Larry King)

Medical supplies, U.N. aid workers reach Yemen after blockade eased

Medical supplies, U.N. aid workers reach Yemen after blockade eased

GENEVA/SANAA (Reuters) – Humanitarian aid workers and medical supplies began to arrive in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Saturday, U.N. officials said, after the easing of a nearly three-week-old military blockade that caused an international outcry.

International aid groups have welcomed the decision to let aid in, but said aid flights are not enough to avert a humanitarian crisis. About 7 million people face famine in Yemen and their survival depends on international assistance.

“First plane landed in Sanaa this morning with humanitarian aid workers,” WFP’s regional spokeswoman Abeer Etefa told Reuters in an email, while officials at Sanaa airport said two other U.N. flights had arrived on Saturday.

The United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) said one flight carried “over 15 tonnes” of vaccines that will cover some 600,000 children against diphtheria, tetanus and other diseases.

“The needs are huge and there is much more to do for

#YemenChildren,” the world body said on its Twitter account.

Airport director Khaled Al Shayef said that apart from the vaccinations shipment a flight carrying eight employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross had also landed.

“Sanaa airport was closed from Nov. 6 until today, more than 18 days and this closure caused an obstruction to the presence of aid workers,” Shayef told Reuters television in Sanaa.

“There are more than 500 employees trapped either inside or outside being denied travel as well as 40 flights that were denied arrival at Sanaa airport,” he added.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting the armed Houthi movement in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif, as well as U.N. flights to Sanaa, but there has been no confirmation of any aid deliveries yet.

FAMINE

A spokesman for the U.S.-backed coalition said in a statement issued on Friday that 82 permits have been issued for international aid missions since Nov. 4, both for the Sanaa airport and Hodeidah, the country’s main port where some 80 percent of food supplies enter.

“That includes issuing clearance for a ship today (Rena), carrying 5,500 Metric Tons of food supplies, to the port of Hodeidah,” coalition spokesman Colonel Turki Al Maliki said in a statement issued in a status update published by the Saudi embassy in Washington.

Officials at the port said on Saturday that no ships have arrived yet and they were not expecting any to dock soon.

The coalition closed air, land and sea access in a move it said was to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, from Iran.

The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying weapons.

The blockade drew wide international concern, including from the United States and the United Nations secretary-general.

Sources in Washington said that U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had asked Saudi Arabia to ease its blockade of Yemen before the kingdom decided to do so.

The heads of three U.N. agencies had earlier urged the Saudi-led military coalition to lift the blockade, warning that “untold thousands” would die if it stayed in place.

The coalition has asked the United Nations to send a team to discuss ways of bolstering its UNVIM programme which was agreed in 2015 to allow commercial ships to enter Hodeidah.

The coalition joined the Yemen war in March 2015, after the Houthis forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to flee their temporary headquarters in the southern port city of Aden into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The Yemen was has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than two million, caused a cholera epidemic that had affected nearly one million people, and drove Yemen to the verge of famine.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; writing by Sami Aboudi; editing by Alexander Smith)

Islamic State beheads 15 of its own fighters: Afghan official

Islamic State beheads 15 of its own fighters: Afghan official

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Islamic State beheaded 15 of its own fighters due to infighting in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar, officials said, while a separate suicide attack on Thursday tore into a crowd in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, killing at least eight.

The two incidents underline the insecurity and lawlessness across Afghanistan, where thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded this year amid unrelenting violence involving militant groups including Islamic State and the Taliban.

In a bloody day for the province, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing at least eight people at a meeting of supporters of a police commander who was sacked for illegal land grabbing.

There was no claim of responsibility and no immediate indication of who was behind the attack on the crowd in Jalalabad, which had gathered to demand the reinstatement of the commander, who survived the attack.

A spokesman for the Jalalabad hospital confirmed eight people had been killed and 15 wounded.

Nangarhar, on the porous border with Pakistan, has become a stronghold for Islamic State, generally known as Daesh in Afghanistan, which has grown to become one of the country’s most dangerous militant groups since it appeared around the start of 2015.

Attaullah Khogyani, the provincial governor’s spokesman, said the 15 Islamic State fighters were executed after a bout of infighting in the group, which has become notorious for its brutality. The killings occurred in the Surkh Ab bazaar of Achin district.

Further details were not available and there was no confirmation from Islamic State, whose local branch is known as Islamic State in Khorasan, an old name for the area that includes modern Afghanistan.

The Taliban and Islamic State have frequently fought each other in Nangarhar and both have been targeted by sustained U.S. air strikes.

But the exact nature of the relationship between the two groups is little understood. There have been isolated incidents in Afghanistan in which the fighters of both appear to have cooperated.

Afghan intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters this year showed security officials believe Islamic State is present in nine provinces, from Nangarhar and Kunar in the east to Jawzjan, Faryab and Badakhshan in the north and Ghor in the central west.

(Reporting by Ahmad Sultan; Writing by Girish Gupta; Editing by James Mackenzie and Clarence Fernandez)

Iraq launches operation to clear desert near Syria of Islamic State

Iraq launches operation to clear desert near Syria of Islamic State

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces launched an operation on Thursday to clear the desert bordering Syria of Islamic State in a final push to rid Iraq of the militant group, the military said.

Troops from the Iraqi army and mainly Shi’ite paramilitaries known as Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) were taking part in the campaign against militants hiding in a large strip of border land, Iraqi military officials said.

“The objective behind the operation is to prevent remaining Daesh groups from melting into the desert region and using it as a base for future attacks,” said army colonel Salah Kareem, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym.

Islamic State fighters who ruled over millions of people in both Iraq and Syria since proclaiming their “caliphate” in 2014, have been largely defeated in both countries this year, pushed out of all population centers to empty desert near the border.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective, but he would declare final victory only after the militants were routed in the desert. [nL8N1NR57C]

In the latest operation, Iraqi forces had “purified” 77 villages and exerted control over a bridge and an airport, operations commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah said in a statement. Over 5,800 squared kilometers had been “purified,” he added.

On Friday Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control. Iraqi army commanders say the military campaign will continue until all the frontier with Syria is secured to prevent Islamic State from launching cross border attacks.

“We will completely secure the desert from all terrorist groups of Daesh and declare Iraq clean of those germs,” said army Brigadier General Shakir Kadhim.

LANDMINES, BOMBS

Army officials said troops advancing through sprawling desert towards the Syria border are facing landmines and roadside bombs placed by retreating militants.

“We need to clean scattered villages from terrorists to make sure they no longer operate in the desert area with Syria,” said army Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Fairs.

Iraqi military helicopters provided cover for the advancing troops and destroyed at least three vehicles used by militants as they were trying to flee a village in the western desert, said the army officer.

Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate has swiftly collapsed since July, when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, after a grueling battle that had lasted nine months.

Driven also from its other main bastion in Syria’s Raqqa, Islamic State has since been gradually squeezed into an ever-shrinking pocket of desert straddling the Syria-Iraq frontier, pursued by a range of enemies that include most regional states and global powers.

The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be hiding in the stretch of desert which runs along the border of both countries.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Nick Macfie, William Maclean and Peter Graff)

Saudi Crown Prince calls Iran leader ‘new Hitler’: NYT

Saudi Crown Prince calls Iran leader 'new Hitler': NYT

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince called the Supreme Leader of Iran “the new Hitler of the Middle East” in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday, sharply escalating the war of words between the arch-rivals.

The Sunni Muslim kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran back rival sides in wars and political crises throughout the region.

Mohammed bin Salman, who is also Saudi defense minister in the U.S.-allied oil giant kingdom, suggested the Islamic Republic’s alleged expansion under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei needed to be confronted.

“But we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn’t work. We don’t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East,” the paper quoted him as saying.

Tensions soared this month when Lebanon’s Saudi-allied Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned in a television broadcast from Riyadh, citing the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and risks to his life.

Hezbollah called the move an act of war engineered by Saudi authorities, an accusation they denied.

Hariri has since suspended his resignation.

Saudi Arabia has launched thousands of air strikes in a 2-1/2-year-old war in neighboring Yemen to defeat the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement that seized broad swaths of the country.

Salman told the Times that the war was going in its favor and that its allies controlled 85 percent of Yemen’s territory.

The Houthis, however, still retain the main population centers despite the war effort by a Saudi-led military coalition which receives intelligence and refueling for its warplanes by the United States. Some 10,000 people have died in the conflict.

The group launched a ballistic missile toward Riyadh’s main airport on Nov. 4, which Saudi Arabis decried as an act of war by Tehran.

Bin Salman said in May that the kingdom would make sure any future struggle between the two countries “is waged in Iran”.

For his part, Khamenei has referred to the House of Saud as an “accursed tree”, and Iranian officials have accused the kingdom of spreading terrorism.

(Reporting By Noah Browning; Editing by Michael Perry and Ralph Boulton)

Aid agencies say Yemen blockade remains, Egeland calls it ‘collective punishment’

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Saudi-led coalition’s blockade of Yemen, which has cut off food imports to a population where 7 million people are on the brink of famine, is “illegal collective punishment” of civilians, a prominent aid official said on Thursday.

Major agencies said aid was still blocked a day after the Saudi-led military coalition said it would let humanitarian supplies in.

The U.S.-backed coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen said on Wednesday it would allow aid in through the port of Hodeidah, as well as U.N. flights to the capital Sanaa, more than two weeks after blockading the country.

“We have not yet had any movement as of now,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance.

Jan Egeland, a former U.N. aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council, said of the blockade: “In my view this is illegal collective punishment.”

Egeland, whose group helps 1 million Yemenis, welcomed the coalition announcement as a “step in the right direction”, but added: “We only have it in writing now and haven’t seen it happen.”

The coalition closed air, land and sea access on Nov. 6 to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran. The action came after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward Riyadh. Iran has denied supplying weapons.

“Sending a missile in the direction of Riyadh is really very bad. But those who are suffering from the blockade had nothing to do with this missile,” Egeland told Reuters while in Geneva.

“Even if both the flights and humanitarian shipments will go through now, it is not solving the underlying crisis that a country that needs 90 percent of its goods imported is not getting in commercial food or fuel.”

Houthi authorities who control the capital Sanaa were also imposing restrictions on access for aid workers, he said.

The United Nations says some 7 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine and 945,000 have been infected since April with cholera. More than 2,200 people have died.

U.N. officials have submitted requests to the coalition for deliveries via Hodeidah and Sanaa, and the “hope and expectation” was that the vital aid pipelines would re-open on Friday, the U.N.’s Laerke said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was vital to get commercial traffic resumed.

“Yemenis will need more than aid in order to survive the crisis and ward off famine,” spokeswoman Iolanda Jaquemet said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Iraq to declare final victory over Islamic State after desert campaign

Iraq to declare final victory over Islamic State after desert campaign

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday Islamic State had been defeated from a military perspective but he would only declare final victory after IS militants were routed in the desert.

Iraqi forces on Friday captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town under Islamic State control, signaling the collapse of the group’s “caliphate” proclaimed after it overran much of Iraq’s north and west in 2014.

Securing desert and border areas is what remains in the campaign against Islamic State, military commanders say.

“From a military perspective, we have ended the presence of Daesh in Iraq,” Abadi said while addressing a weekly news conference, referring to Islamic State by an Arabic acronym.

“God willing we will announce very soon after the end of the purification operations victory over Daesh in Iraq.”

Abadi’s comments came as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of Islamic State while a senior Iranian military commander thanked the “thousands of martyrs” killed in operations organized by Iran to defeat the militant group in Syria and Iraq.

Political disagreements will pave the way for the Sunni militant group to carry out attacks, however, Abadi said. He was referring to the central Baghdad government’s dispute with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government over the latter’s declaration of independence following a Sept. 25 referendum.

“Any disagreement between political factions will encourage Daesh to carry out terrorist attacks,” he said. “I call on our Kurdish brothers to avoid fighting.”

Hours before Abadi spoke, at least 23 people were killed and 60 wounded when a suicide bomber set off a truck bomb near a crowded marketplace in the northern Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu, south of the oil city of Kirkuk.

Abadi praised a federal court verdict that ruled the Kurdish referendum unconstitutional and called on Kurds not to resort to violence.

Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court ruled on Monday that the referendum was unconstitutional and the results void, bolstering Baghdad’s hand in a stand-off with the Kurdish region watched closely by neighbouring Turkey and Iran.

“I hail the federal court’s decision to void the Kurdish region’s referendum,” he said.

Kurds voted overwhelmingly to break away from Iraq in the referendum, defying Baghdad and alarming neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities.

The Iraqi government responded to the referendum by seizing Kurdish-held Kirkuk and other territory disputed between the Kurds and the central government. It also banned direct flights to Kurdistan and demanded control over border crossings.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Mark Heinrich and William Maclean)

Syrian opposition conference starts in Riyadh after key resignations

Syrian opposition conference starts in Riyadh after key resignations

By Stephen Kalin

RIYADH (Reuters) – A Syrian opposition meeting began in Riyadh on Wednesday in a bid to unify the group’s position ahead of peace talks backed by the United Nations to end the country’s six-year civil war.

Saudi Arabia backs the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) group whose leader, former Syrian prime minister Riyad Hijab, resigned on Monday without explanation.

The summit comes after a surprise visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Russia a day earlier to meet President Vladimir Putin, who later discussed the conflict with U.S. President Donald Trump and other Middle East leaders.

Assad has made major gains against opposition forces and Islamic State militants with the help of Russia as well as Iran, the arch-rival of Saudi Arabia, which backs Syrian rebels and had long maintained that Assad should have no role in any transition to bring the war there to an end.

U.N. peace talks mediator Staffan de Mistura urged the opposition figures gathered at a five-star hotel in Riyadh to have the “hard discussions” necessary to reach a “common line”.

“A strong unified team is a creative partner in Geneva and we need that, one who can actually explore more than one way to arrive to the goals that we need to have,” he said in opening remarks.

It was not immediately clear how Hijab’s absence would affect the talks. Several opposition figures said he had taken an uncompromising line that rejected a role for Assad in a U.N. sponsored Geneva based peace process.

Some opposition members have hinted that the new communique would drop the long standing demand by the Riyadh based main opposition, referring to the next round of U.N.-sponsored talks.

The summit, which Saudi Arabia called “expanded”, was opened to more than 140 opposition figures from the Turkey-based coalition and mainstream Free Syrian Army factions as well as independents including about a dozen women.

The HNC has represented the Syrian opposition at previous Geneva talks, while a number of other political opposition groups and figures backed by other countries including Russia and Egypt also exist.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the only solution to the conflict was through a consensus that would achieve the demands of the Syrian people.

“There is no solution to the crisis without a Syrian consensus that would achieve the demands of the Syrian people on the basis of Geneva 1 and (U.N. Security Council) resolution 2254,” he said.

The Moscow group of Syrian political activists led by a former deputy prime minister Qadri Jamil said they turned down an invitation to attend the conference, accusing the members of the main HNC opposition of thwarting efforts to set up a single delegation.

“We consider the effort of some of the opposition to exploit the meeting as a platform for their own political ends goes against Saudi Arabia’s efforts to form a unified delegation,” Jamil said in a statement.

Russia has led an campaign to push for the merger of the Moscow group into a single delegation with the HNC. The main opposition body says it is a stooge of Moscow to sow divisions within their ranks.

The opposition meeting is set to last until Friday, when a joint statement is expected. Several rounds of U.N. talks in Geneva between the Damascus government and the opposition have made little progress since the Syria conflict erupted in 2011.

(Reporting by Dahlia Nehme and Reuters TV Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi; Writing by Stephen Kalin and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)