Tag Archives: War

Islamic State still a threat as Mosul residents return to city in ruins

A member of Iraqi federal police patrols in the destroyed Old City of Mosul, Iraq August 7, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Raya Jalabi

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Abu Ghazi stood smoking a cigarette outside what used to be his home in Mosul’s Old City, where only the sound of the footsteps of a few soldiers on patrol and twisted pieces of metal and fabric flapping in the wind disturb the eery silence.

“They should just bulldoze the whole thing and start over,” he said, gazing at the rows of collapsed buildings with their contents strewn across the upturned streets.

“There’s no saving it now, not like this.”

Hundreds of yards away on Wednesday Federal Police shot an Islamic State fighter as he emerged firing his gun from an underground tunnel on Makkawi Street.

Similar stories have been reported by aid workers and residents of West Mosul in the past few days.

“West Mosul is still a military zone as the search operations are ongoing for suspects, mines and explosive devices,” a military spokesman said.

“The area is still not safe for the population to return.”

However, in nearby Dawrat al Hammameel, with machines whirring in his workshop, Raad Abdelaziz said he has encouraged neighbors to return despite the still very real danger weeks after the government declared victory over the jihadists.

Just this week, his nephew, Ali, saw a militant emerge from under a house and try to injure some civilians before he was caught and handed over to the Federal Police.

But Abdelaziz, whose factory was up and running just two weeks after he returned to Mosul with his family, persists: We want people in the neighborhood to come back to their jobs.”

He is already filling orders for water and gas tanks from residents intent on rebuilding. “Life is already coming back gradually,” he said.

FLOCKING OVER THE PONTOON

Like Abu Ghazi and Raad Abdelaziz, dozens of those displaced by the fighting have returned to West Mosul, which saw some of the fiercest fighting in nine-month battle to rout the militants from their stronghold in Iraq’s second-largest city.

At the northern pontoon, one of two remaining access points between East and West Mosul, hundreds walked towards the western half of the city, carrying suitcases, household goods and livestock. Others drove across the makeshift bridge in overflowing coaches.

Ziad al Chaichi came back to reopen his tea shop in West Mosul a week ago, having fled his nearby home in March.

“Everything’s still a mess – we have nothing. No water, no electricity – we need the essentials,” he said in his shop where dainty porcelain tea pots hung from the walls. He was thankful that some people were buying his tea, including Abdelfattah, a neighbor who sat with a group of men outside.

“We want life to return here,” said Abdelfattah, 60, who came back to a partially collapsed home with his family about three weeks ago. “Not for us – the older generation – but for the children… Until then, we’re just sitting here patiently, drinking tea.”

PUNGENT REMINDER

Even in death, the militants haunt Mosul’s residents.

A handful of their bodies are lying around the Old City, a pungent reminder of the last ten months.

“We wish they would just take them away,” said Najm Abdelrazaq. But unlike with civilian bodies, the police and the military refuse to allow it, he said.

“Why should we dignify them and remove the bodies?” one soldier said, when asked why the bodies were being left to rot in the 47 degree Celsius (116 Fahrenheit) heat. “Let them rot in the streets of Mosul after what they did here.”

Returnees are concerned about the smell and the risk of disease, but they’d rather have the bodies of their neighbors recovered first.

Around the corner from Chaichi’s shop, scrawled across several collapsed houses in blue ink was: “The bodies of families lie here under the rubble.”

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

U.S. denies bombing Iraqi Shi’ite militia near Syrian border

Mourners pray near the coffins of Iraqi Shi'te fighters known as Kattaib Sayeed al-Shuhadaa, who were killed near the Syrian border, during the funeral in Najaf, Iraq August 8, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State on Tuesday denied responsibility for an attack near the Syrian border which killed dozens of members of an Iraqi Shi’ite militia and, that group said, several of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.

A spokesman for the Iran-backed Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada militia said 36 of its fighters had been killed in the attack on Monday and 75 others were wounded and receiving treatment.

“We hold the American army responsible for this act,” the militia said in a statement late on Monday, noting that they were targeted with smart rockets.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday that initial investigation showed that Islamic State launched the attack against the militia group.

“It seems that Daesh carried out a breach using artillery and car bombs,” Abadi said in a televised press conference in Baghdad.

The U.S.-led coalition, which is attacking Islamic State militants from the air in Syria and Iraq, said the allegations were “inaccurate” and denied conducting air attacks in that area at the time.

In a statement circulated by its supporters, Islamic State claimed it was responsible for the attack and said it had captured armored vehicles, weapons and ammunition. The Iraqi Defence Ministry declined to comment.

As Islamic State is driven back by an array of forces in Iraq and Syria, its opponents and their regional patrons are vying for control of territory and seeking to secure their interests in the wider region within a shrinking battlespace.

Monday’s attack took place near At Tanf in Syria, where U.S. forces have twice before struck Iranian-backed militia in defense of a garrison used by U.S. and U.S.-backed forces.

Iran-backed Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada is part of an umbrella of Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitary groups known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, which is answerable to Baghdad, but includes factions loyal to Iran’s clerical leadership.

In an interview with Iran’s Tasnim news agency, Abu Ala Welayi, Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada’s leader, accused the United States and Islamic State of jointly attacking his forces.

He said seven Revolutionary Guards had been killed, one of them being Hossein Qomi, their main commander and strategist.

No spokesman for the Revolutionary Guards was immediately available to comment.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Louise Ireland and James Dalgleish)

Syrian army steps up strikes on capital’s last rebel enclave

A boy sits near rubble of damaged buildings in Arbin, a town in the Damascus countryside, Syria. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – The Syrian army stepped up shelling and air strikes on the last rebel-held enclaves in the Syrian capital on Monday, its heaviest bombardment in a two-month campaign, rebels and witnesses said.

From the strategic Qasyoun Heights that overlooks Damascus, elite units of the army pounded Jobar district, some 2 km (1.2 miles) east of the Old City wall and Ain Terma just to the south.

The army’s offensive has dented a Russian-sponsored ceasefire announced two weeks ago in the Eastern Ghouta area to the east of Damascus.

Moscow has said it is negotiating with mainstream rebel groups in several areas across Syria to create new de-escalation zones and calm fighting.

Rebels and residents said Moscow had already begun deploying some military police in certain checkpoints that border the rebel-held northern Homs countryside and in southwestern Syria where “de-escalation” zones have been announced.

Residents and rescuers say the Syrian army has intensified shelling of civilian areas in the Eastern Ghouta region where rebels are holed up, many in underground tunnels, out of frustration at the lack of progress.

At least 15 civilians have been killed and scores of others injured in three days of sustained bombardment.

The U.K. based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict said at least 20 army soldiers were either killed, injured or taken prisoner in the past 24 hours, confirming rebel estimates.

Less intense shelling has hit Zamalka, Harasta and Kafr Btna, also in Eastern Ghouta. Social media videos downloaded by activists showed sorties of jets pounding areas in Ain Tarma and Jobar, with fire erupting in places and large plumes of smoke rising into the air.

Eastern Ghouta has been under opposition control for much of the six-year conflict. Jobar is in northeast Damascus and borders the Eastern Ghouta district of Ain Terma.

The army is also using more elephant rockets – inaccurate and improvised munitions often made from gas canisters and fired on a high trajectory – insurgents said.

“The elephant rockets are not having mercy on us. We have dug tunnels and fortified our positions so they are unable to advance,” said Abu Obada al Shami, a commander from Failaq al Rahman, the rebel group whose fighters are drawn from the area.

The rebels, for their part, are trying to hang on to their last foothold in Damascus following the loss earlier this year of Qaboun and Barzeh districts, located north of Jobar.

Before the war began in 2011, more than half a million people lived in Eastern Ghouta, a sprawling mix of towns and farmland.

Two residents said Ain Terma was now a ghost town, with only a few hundred families taking shelter in basements after most former residents fled to other towns in Eastern Ghouta.

“Life is non-existent. Permanent terror and people are not coming out of their basements,” said Abdullah al-Khatib, a former electrician, who lives there with his eight-member family.

Rebels accuse the Syrian army and its Iran-backed allies of breaking the Russia-brokered truce in Eastern Ghouta to throw its full weight against Jobar and Ain Terma.

The government has said it will abide by the truces which Russia has brokered but says it continues to target Islamist militant factions not covered by the agreement.

“This truce is a lie. The regime has not implemented it. They are shelling us without interruption using all types of weapons,” Abu Hamza, another rebel fighter said.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, editing by Richard Balmforth)

Tillerson says U.S., Russia can settle problems, ease tension

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson answers questions during a news conference in Manila, Philippines August 7, 2017.

By Karen Lema

MANILA (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday he believes Washington and Russia can find a way to ease tensions, saying it wouldn’t be useful to cut ties over the single issue of suspected Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

Tillerson said Russia had also expressed some willingness to resume talks about the crisis in Ukraine, where a 2015 ceasefire between Kiev’s forces and Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of the country is regularly violated.

“We should find places we can work together… In places we have differences we’re going to have to continue to find ways to address those,” Tillerson told reporters.

Tillerson met his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on the sidelines of an international gathering in Manila on Sunday, where he also asked about Moscow’s retaliation against new U.S. sanctions.

Tillerson said he told Lavrov the United States would respond to the Kremlin’s order for it to cut about 60 percent of its diplomatic staff in Russia by September 1.

“We have not made a decision on how we will respond to Russia’s request to remove U.S. diplomatic personnel. I asked several clarifying questions…I told him we would respond by September first,” Tillerson said.

The meeting was their first since President Donald Trump reluctantly signed into law the sanctions that Russia said amounted to a full-scale trade war and ended hopes for better ties.

Lavrov on Sunday said he believed his U.S. colleagues were ready to continue dialogue with Moscow on complex issues despite tensions.

Tillerson said he discussed Russia’s suspected meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with Lavrov to “help them understand how serious this incident had been and how seriously it damaged the relationship” between the two nations.

But Tillerson said that should not irreversibly damage ties.

“The fact that we want to work with them on areas that are of serious national security interest to us, and at the same time having this extraordinary issue of mistrust that divides us, that is just what we in the diplomatic part of our relationship are required to do,” Tillerson said.

The United States sent its special representative on Ukraine, Kurt Volker, a former U.S. envoy to NATO, to Ukraine last month to assess the situation in the former Soviet republic.

Washington cites the conflict as a key obstacle to improved relations between Russia and the United States.

“We appointed a special envoy to engage with Russia but also coordinating with all parties. This is full visibility to all parties. We are not trying to cut some kind of deal on the side,” Tillerson said.

 

(Editing by Martin Petty and Nick Macfie)

 

Rockets, gunfire test new Russia-backed truce near Syria’s Homs

A boy rides on a tricycle along a damaged street in the besieged area of Homs,

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Warring sides exchanged rocket and gunfire north of the Syrian city of Homs overnight, hours after a Russia-backed truce took effect, a war monitor said on Friday, while heavy rocket fire also marred a similar deal east of the capital Damascus.

Russia, an ally of the Syrian government, said on Thursday its defense ministry and Syria’s opposition had agreed to set up a “de-escalation” zone in the rebel-held countryside north of government-held Homs.

After an initial few hours of calm, the rebels and government forces and their allies began to target each other’s territory. The monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory, said it had so far not received reports of any deaths.

The Russia-backed truce was similar to a de-escalation deal worked out in July for the besieged Eastern Ghouta rebel enclave east of Damascus.

Despite the deal and some reduction in violence, air strikes, rockets and exchanges of fire have continued to hit Eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian Observatory said since the Eastern Ghouta truce was declared on July 22 it had recorded at least 25 civilian deaths, including seven children, and dozens of injuries. Russia said it had deployed its military police in Eastern Ghouta in July to try to enforce the de-escalation zone.

Eastern Ghouta, the only major rebel-held area near the capital, has been blockaded by Syrian government forces since 2013. It has shrunk considerably in size over the past year as the Russia-backed Syrian army has taken control of other rebel-held areas around Damascus.

The Observatory said on Friday around 70 rockets had fallen in 24 hours on Eastern Ghouta in the heaviest bombing since the de-escalation zone was declared.

Several attempts at a lasting ceasefire in western Syria, where rebels have lost ground to government forces and their allies, have collapsed with both sides blaming the other for outbreaks of violence.

 

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Gareth Jones)

 

Three years since Islamic State attack, Yazidi wounds still open

Yazidis visit a cemetery during a commemoration of the third anniversary of the Yazidi genocide in Sinjar region, Iraq August 3, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Maher Chmaytelli

SINJAR, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraq’s Yazidis marked three years since Islamic State launched what the United Nations said was a genocidal campaign against them on Thursday, but their ordeal is far from over despite the ouster of the jihadist fighters.

Militants were driven out of the last part of the Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq in May. However, most Yazidis have yet to return to villages they fled when Islamic State over-ran Sinjar in the summer of 2014, killing and capturing thousands because of their faith.

Nearly 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in Islamic State captivity, and control over Sinjar is disputed by rival armed factions and their regional patrons. Justice for the crimes Yazidis suffered, including sexual enslavement, has also so far proved elusive.

“The Yazidis’ wound is still bleeding,” one man told Reuters at a ceremony attended by several thousand people including the mayor and other local dignitaries, held at a temple at the foot of the mountain that dominates Sinjar.

“The Kurds and the Iraqi government are fighting for Sinjar and we are paying the price,” said the man.

A U.N. human rights Commission of Inquiry, which declared the killings of thousands of Yazidis to be a genocide, said on Thursday that the atrocity had not ended and that the international community was not doing enough to stop it.

“The genocide is on-going and remains largely unaddressed, despite the obligation of States… to prevent and to punish the crime,” the commissioners said in a statement.

Islamic State fighters killed thousands of captured men during their attack on the Yazidis, a religious sect whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions. Islamic State considers Yazidis as devil-worshippers.

Images of desperate Yazidis fleeing up the mountain in the blazing summer heat were broadcast around the world and helped to galvanize the United States to conduct its first air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq.

At least 9,900 of Iraq’s Yazidis were killed or kidnapped in just days in the Islamic State attack in 2014, according to a study documenting the number of Yazidis affected which could be used as evidence in any trial for genocide.

About 3,100 Yazidis were killed – with more than half shot, beheaded or burned alive – and about 6,800 kidnapped to become sex slaves or fighters, according to the report published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

Enslaved women and girls are now reportedly being sold by Islamic State fighters trying to escape the U.S.-led assault on their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, the U.N. commission said.

DISPUTE OVER SINJAR

The array of forces that drove Islamic State out of Sinjar are now vying for control of the area near the borders of Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Kurdish peshmerga forces retook around half of Sinjar in late 2015, effectively annexing it to the autonomous region they hope to convert into an independent state. A referendum on independence is due to be held in September, which the government in Baghdad opposes.

Mainly Shi’ite paramilitary groups, some backed by Iran, retook the rest of the Yazidi homeland in May, bringing them within meters of the peshmerga.

Another group, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), also gained a foothold in Sinjar and clashed with the peshmerga earlier this year. Its presence has made the area a target for Turkey, which has fought a three-decade war against the PKK on its own soil.

“People are worried about returning,” said General Ashti Kojer, the local head of Kurdish police, known as Asayish. “The (Sinjar) region has become a conflict zone”.

Kojer and another local official said the political environment was preventing international organizations from working on reconstruction and rehabilitation in Sinjar, further discouraging Yazidis from returning.

Water has to be trucked in, electricity is supplied from private generators, schools are closed, and the closest hospital is Dohuk — around three hours’ drive away.

“The lack of services and political problems are preventing families from returning,” Jalal Khalaf, the director of the mayor’s office in Sinjar, told Reuters.

BLAME GAME

In a speech at the ceremony, the Yazidi mayor of Sinjar, Mahma Xelil, said former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was responsible for the tragedy because he was in charge when the militants overran Mosul, capturing billions of dollars of weapons they used in their attack on the minority.

Other Yazidis blame the Kurds, who were defending the area at the time, for failing to resist the IS onslaught.

At the ceremony, people carried signs saying “Stop Yazidi Genocide”. Families streamed into cemeteries to remember their loved ones. Women wore bandanas saying “Genocide”.

In the city of Sinjar, posters and banners hung up on roundabouts depict harrowing scenes from the attack three years ago: families fleeing and distressed women and children.

Large parts of the city, which was also home to Muslim Kurds and Arabs, remain empty. Around 1,000 Yazidi families have returned to Sinjar since the city was retaken in 2015, according to Khalaf. The city and the surrounding area had been home to around 400,000 Yazidis.

Farhan Lazgin brought his family back to Sinjar around one year ago because he was fed up with living in a camp.

His home was in relatively good shape, but his two children have missed out on a year of school, and may fall further behind because teachers are not returning to the city.

Zeido Shammo, one of the few shopowners to have returned to the city, said he no longer trusted local forces: “We ask for international protection,” he said, echoing the sentiment of many Yazidis.

Although Islamic State has been routed from the area, Shammo said he could not feel safe until their hardline ideology was eradicated too: “Daesh (Islamic State) is defeated but we are still worried because the mentality of Daesh still exists.”

Opposite his shop, Islamic State slogans have yet to be painted over. One reads: “The State of the Caliphate Remains”.

(Writing by Isabel Coles, additional reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Peter Millership and David Stamp)

Trump, frustrated by Afghan war, suggests firing U.S. commander: officials

FILE PHOTO: A U.S. Navy Corpsman and U.S. soldier take part in a helicopter Medevac exercise in Helmand province, Afghanistan, July 6, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani/File Photo

By Steve Holland and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s doubts about the war in Afghanistan has led to a delay in completing a new U.S. strategy in South Asia, skepticism that included a suggestion that the U.S. military commander in the region be fired, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

During a July 19 meeting in the White House Situation Room, Trump demanded that his top national security aides provide more information on what one official called “the end-state” in a country where the United States has spent 16 years fighting against the Taliban with no end in sight.

The meeting grew stormy when Trump said Defense Secretary James Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, a Marine general, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war.

“We aren’t winning,” he told them, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In addition, once the meeting concluded, Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, got into what one official called “a shouting match” with White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster over the direction of U.S. policy.

Some officials left the meeting “stunned” by the president’s vehement complaints that the military was allowing the United States to lose the war

Mattis, McMaster and other top aides are putting together answers to Trump’s questions in a way to try to get him to approve the strategy, the officials said.

The White House had no comment on the accounts of the meeting.

Another meeting of top aides is scheduled on Thursday.

Although Trump earlier this year gave Mattis the authority to deploy U.S. military forces as he sees fit, in fact the defense secretary’s plans to add around 4,000 more U.S. troops to the 8,400 currently deployed in Afghanistan are being caught up in the delay surrounding the strategy, the officials said.

“It’s been contingent all along informally on the strategy being approved,” a senior administration official said of the troop deployment.

Trump has long been a skeptic of lingering U.S. involvement in foreign wars and has expressed little interest in deploying military forces without a specific plan on what they will do and for how long.

Officials said Trump argued that the United States should demand a share of Afghanistan’s estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth in exchange for its assistance to the Afghan government.

But other officials noted that without securing the entire country, which could take many years, there is no way to get the country’s mineral riches to market, except to Iran. Trump complained that the Chinese are profiting from their mining operations, the officials said.

(Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. says ‘grave’ consequences if Syria’s al Qaeda dominates Idlib province

A general view taken with a drone shows the Clock Tower of the rebel-held Idlib city, Syria June 8, 2017. Picture taken June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – The United States warned a takeover of rebel-held northwestern Idlib province by Syrian jihadists linked to a former al Qaeda affiliate would have grave consequences and make it difficult to dissuade Russia from renewing bombing that recently stopped.

In an online letter posted late on Wednesday, the top State Department official in charge of Syria policy, Michael Ratney, said the recent offensive by Hayat Tahrir al Sham, spearheaded by former al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front, had cemented its grip on the province and put “the future of northern Syria in big danger”.

“The north of Syria witnessed one of its biggest tragedies,” said Ratney who was behind secret talks in Amman with Moscow over the ceasefire in southwest Syria announced by U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in July. It was the first such U.S.-Russian effort under the Trump administration to end Syria’s civil war.

“In the event of the hegemony of Nusra Front on Idlib, it would be difficult for the United States to convince the international parties not to take the necessary military measures,” the top State Department diplomat said.

Mainly Islamist rebels swept through Idlib province in 2015, inflicting a string of defeats on the Syrian army until Russia stepped in to reverse the tide of the civil war in favour of President Bashar al Assad.

Idlib province, the only Syrian province that is entirely under rebel control, has been a major target of Russian and Syrian aerial strikes that caused hundreds of civilians casualties.

The agricultural region had a respite since a Russian-Turkish brokered accord reached last May approved four de-escalation zones across Syria, among them one in Idlib province.

Many locals fear the jihadists’ hold on Idlib will again make the province a target of relentless attacks by Russian and Syrian forces and turn it into another devastated Aleppo or Mosul.

More than two million people live in Idlib, which has become an overcrowded refuge for many of the displaced, including rebel fighters and their families.

“JOLANI AND HIS GANG”

“Everyone should know that Jolani and his gang are the ones who bear responsibility for the grave consequences that will befall Idlib,” said Ratney, referring to former Nusra head Abu Mohammad al Jolani who effectively leads Hayat Tahrir al Sham.

In less than three days Jolani’s fighters overran their powerful rival, the more mainstream Ahrar al Sham group, seizing control of a strategic border strip with Turkey in some of the heaviest inter-rebel fighting since the start of the conflict.

An emboldened Hayat Tahrir al Sham has sought to allay fears it did not seek to dominate the whole province but suspicions run high among many in the region about their ultimate goals to monopolise power.

The jihadists have linked up with Western-backed Free Syria Army (FSA) groups who continue to maintain a foothold in several towns in the province. The south of the region is still in the hands of rival groups, including Ahrar al Sham but the jihadists have been trying to extend their control.

Ratney told rebel groups, who have been forced to work with the jihadists out of expediency or for self preservation, to steer away from the group before it was “too late.”

He said Washington would consider any organisation in Idlib province that was a front for the militants a part of al Qaeda’s network.

The expanding influence of the former al Qaeda has triggered civilian protests across towns in the province with some calling for the group to leave towns and not interfere in how they are run.

Nusra and its leaders would remain a target of Washington even if they adopted new names in an attempt to deny Washington and other powers a pretext to attack them, the U.S. official said.

The jihadist sweep across Idlib province has raised concerns that the closure of some crossing points on the border with Turkey could choke off the flow of aid and essential goods.

Washington remained committed to delivering aid in channels that avoided them falling into the hands of the hardline jihadists, Ratney said echoing similar concerns by NGO’s and aid bodies after their recent gains.

The main border crossing of Bab al Hawa with Turkey which the al Qaeda fighters threatened to take over has however been re-opened with a resumption of aid and goods to the province that has relieved many people.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Andrew Hay)

South Sudanese refugees in Uganda near million mark

South Sudanese youths match to attend Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby's visit to Mirieyi refugees settlement camp in Adjumani district, Uganda August 2, 2017. REUTERS/James Akena

By Francis Mukasa

MIREYI, Uganda (Reuters) – Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans, prayed on Wednesday with South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda, home to a nearly million fugitives from a four-year civil war in the world’s youngest nation.

Around 1.8 million people have fled South Sudan since fighting broke out in December 2013, sparking what has become the world’s fastest growing refugee crisis and largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Most have fled south to Uganda, whose open-door refugee policy is now creaking under the sheer weight of numbers in sprawling camps carved out of the bush.

“The Bible tells us that the refugee is specially loved by God,” Welby, leader of the 85-million strong Anglican Communion, said as he joined in prayers in a camp in the northern district of Moyo.

“Which means you who are refugees are specially loved by God, that Jesus himself was a refugee and he loves you and he stands with you and the suffering that you have is the suffering that he knows. So I pray for you, I will advocate for you.”

Officials from the United Nations UNHCR refugee agency say $674 million is needed to pay for the basic needs of the refugees this year, but so far only 21 percent of those funds have been secured.

The total number of refugees is due to pass a million in the next week, UNHCR officials said. Nor is there any sign of a let-up in the stream of desperate civilians.

Some days it is only hundreds. On others, it is thousands.

In the camps, refugees are already on half their standard food rations of 12kg of maize a month, and now critical services such as health and education are facing cut-backs, UNHCR officials said.

In Bidi-Bidi, the largest of the refugee camps, 180 South Sudanese died in the first six months of the year, nearly half of them small children.

“We came here to hide ourselves from death,” said 31-year-old Moro Bullen, standing next to a row of 16 freshly dug graves, mounds of rust-red earth arranged in three neat rows. Half of the graves were only a meter long.

“We did not come here to die. We came here to be rescued.”

SPLINTERED CONFLICT

Although the roots of the war lie in the animosity between President Salva Kiir, who hails from South Sudan’s powerful Dinka ethnic group, and his former deputy, Riek Machar, a Nuer, it has splintered into a patchwork of overlapping conflicts.

Machar is under house arrest in South Africa, having fled there last year to seek medical attention, but there has been little let-up in the levels of conflict, especially in the Equatoria region abutting Uganda.

“It has evolved significantly. There are many actors. Because there are many actors now it has become more violent. The prognosis is not encouraging in terms of achieving peace,” said Brian Adeba of the Washington-based Enough Project.

Refugees have told Reuters of towns and villages emptied by government forces, dominated by the Dinka, with men, women and children summarily executed, and their bodies mutilated.

Rights groups have also reported widespread rape and looting that the United Nations says indicates ethnic cleansing. It has also warned of a possible genocide in a country that only came into being in 2011, when South Sudan split from Sudan.

The government has denied the reports, and said its troops are merely conducting operations against rebel militiamen.

(Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Ed Cropley and Alison Williams)

Exclusive: Russian losses in Syria jump in 2017, Reuters estimates show

A portrait of Russian private military contractor Yevgeni Chuprunov is seen at his grave in Novomoskovsk, in Tula region, Russia June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Maria Tsvetkova

By Maria Tsvetkova

BELORECHENSK, Russia (Reuters) – Ten Russian servicemen have been killed fighting in Syria so far this year, according to statements from the Defence Ministry.

But based on accounts from families and friends of the dead and local officials, Reuters estimates the actual death toll among Russian soldiers and private contractors was at least 40.

That tally over seven months exceeds the 36 Russian armed personnel and contractors estimated by Reuters to have been killed in Syria over the previous 15 months, indicating a significant rise in the rate of battlefield losses as the country’s involvement deepens.

Most of the deaths reported by Reuters have been confirmed by more than one person, including those who knew the deceased or local officials. In nine cases, Reuters corroborated a death reported in local or social media with another source.

The data may be on the conservative side, as commanders encourage the families of those killed to keep quiet, relatives and friends of several fallen soldiers, both servicemen and contractors, said on condition of anonymity.

(For a graphic on Russian casualties in Syria’s conflict click http://tmsnrt.rs/2hjq3Et)

The true level of casualties in the Syrian conflict is a sensitive subject in a country where positive coverage of the conflict features prominently in the media and ahead of a presidential election next year that incumbent Vladimir Putin is expected to win.

The scale of Russian military casualties in peace time has been a state secret since Putin issued a decree three months before Russia launched its operation in Syria. While Russia does not give total casualties, it does disclose some deaths.

Discrepancies in data may be explained partly by the fact that Russia does not openly acknowledge that private contractors fight alongside the army; their presence in Syria would appear to flout a legal ban on civilians fighting abroad as mercenaries.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday that any Russian private citizens fighting alongside the Syrian army are volunteers. “If there are Russian citizens in Syria as volunteers and so on, they have nothing to do with the state,” Peskov said in response to a question about the Reuters story on a daily conference call with media.

The Defence Ministry denied Reuters findings on Russian losses. “This is not the first time that Reuters is attempting to discredit by any means Russia’s operation aiming to destroy Islamic State terrorists and return peace to Syria,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement on Wednesday.

He said the Russian military is focused on delivering humanitarian aid and negotiating peace in Syria, and called information about Russian private military contractors “a myth”.

The government has previously denied understating casualty figures in Syria, where Moscow entered the conflict nearly two years ago in support of President Bashar al-Assad, one of its closest Middle East allies.

Months after soldiers die, Russia quietly acknowledges some losses, including private military contractors. Their families get state posthumous medals and local authorities sometimes name schools, which fallen soldiers attended as children, after them.

Of the 40 killed, Reuters has evidence that 21 were private contractors and 17 soldiers. The status of the remaining two people is unclear.

MISSION CREEP?

Little is known about the nature of operations in Syria involving Russian nationals. Russia initially focused on providing air support to Syrian forces, but the rate of casualties points to more ground intervention.

The last time Russia lost airmen in Syria was in August, 2016, and it suffered its first serious casualties on the ground this year in January, when six private military contractors died in one day.

Reuters has previously reported gaps between its casualty estimates and official figures, although the difference widened markedly this year.

Russian authorities disclosed that 23 servicemen were killed in Syria over 15 months in 2015-2016, whereas Reuters calculated the death toll at 36, a figure that included private contractors.

IN IT FOR THE MONEY?

One private contractor whose death in Syria was not officially acknowledged was 40-year-old Alexander Promogaibo, from the southern Russian town of Belorechensk. He died in Syria on April 25, his childhood friend Artur Marobyan told Reuters.

Promogaibo had earlier fought in the Chechen war with an elite Russian paratroops unit, according to Marobyan, who was his classmate at school.

He said his dead friend had struggled to get by while working as a guard in his hometown and needed money to build a house to live with his wife and small daughter.

Last year he decided to join private military contractors working closely with the Russian Defence Ministry in Syria and was promised a monthly wage of 360,000 roubles ($6,000), about nine times higher than the average Russian salary.

According to multiple sources, Russian private military contractors are secretly deployed in Syria under command of a man nicknamed Wagner.

Private military companies officially don’t exist in Russia. Reuters was unable to get in touch with commanders of Russian private contractors in Syria through people who know them.

“I told him it was dangerous and he wouldn’t be paid the money for doing nothing, but couldn’t convince him,” Marobyan said, recalling one of his last conversations with Promogaibo.

According to Marobyan, he got the job offer at a military facility belonging to Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) near the village of Molkino. The agency is a part of the Defence Ministry and does not have its own spokesperson.

The Kremlin did not reply to requests for comment.

Promogaibo went there for physical fitness tests and failed twice. He was accepted only after showing up for the third time having losing 55 kg after seven months of training.

“He left (Russia) in February,” said Marobyan, who only learnt that his friend had been killed in Syria when his body was delivered to his hometown in early May.

One more person who knew Promogaibo said he died in Syria.

Reuters was unable to find out where in Syria Promogaibo was killed.

Igor Strelkov, former leader of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine who stayed in touch with Russian volunteers who switched to battlefields in Syria, said in late May that military contractors from Russia recently fought near the Syrian town of Homs alongside Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

GRAVESTONES COVERED UP

Fifty-one-year-old Russian Gennady Perfilyev, a lieutenant colonel, was deployed in Syria as a military adviser. He was killed in shelling during a reconnaissance trip on April 8, his former classmates at Chelyabinsk Higher Tank Command School said.

“Several grammas of metal hit his heart,” Pave Bykov, one of his classmates, told Reuters.

One more classmate confirmed to Reuters Perfilyev was killed in Syria on a reconnaissance trip.

His name has not appeared in the Defence Ministry’s official notices of military deaths in Syria.

He was buried at a new heavily guarded military cemetery outside Moscow where visitors have to show their passports and are asked at the entrance whose grave they want to visit.

On Perfilyev’s gravestone, his name and the date of his death are covered by his portrait.

Several other servicemen killed in Syria and buried nearby also have photos obscuring their names and the dates of their death, which if visible would make it easier to trace how and where they died.

Names on other graves, of non-Syrian casualties, were visible.

Asked if this was a special secrecy measure, a cemetery official, Andrei Sosnovsky, said the names were covered up temporarily until proper monuments could be built.

($1 = 59.8930 roubles)

(Additional reporting by Denis Pinchuk in Moscow, Natalya Shurmina in Yekaterinburg, Russia; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Mike Collett-White)