Early morning blaze kills at least 23 students and two teachers at Darul Quran Ittifaqiyah school in Kuala Lumpur.

Police and firemen work at the religious school [A. Ananthalakshmi/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

At least 25 people, mostly students, were killed after a blaze broke out early on Thursday at a religious school in Kuala Lumpur – the deadliest fire in decades in Malaysia.

The fire at Darul Quran Ittifaqiyah – a “tahfiz” boarding school where students learn to memorise the Quran – was reported at 5:40am (21:40 GMT Wednesday), according to a statement from the Malaysian Fire and Rescue Department.

Khirudin Drahman, director of Kuala Lumpur’s fire and rescue department, told AFP news agency the number of confirmed dead are 23 students and two teachers.

“It really does not make sense for so many to die in the fire,” he said. “I think it is one of the country’s worst fire disasters in the past 20 years. We are now investigating the cause of the fire.”

Seven people were taken to a nearby hospital for injuries, while 11 others were rescued.

Firefighters rushed to the scene and the blaze was out within an hour, but not before it wreaked terrible devastation – pictures in local media showed ash-covered, fire-blackened beds.

Kuala Lumpur Police Chief Amar Singh told reporters the boys who died were aged 13-17, and they probably suffocated due to smoke inhalation. The dormitory had only one entrance, leaving many of the victims trapped inside, he said.

An official said bodies were piled on top of each other, indicating a possible stampede as people tried to flee the fire. Some witnesses said they had heard the students crying for help after the fire broke out.

“They’re still counting the bodies, which were piled on top of each other in a corner,” Singh said.

Hundreds of people, including families of some victims, gathered outside the school as more bodies were being removed by fire officials.

The blaze began in the sleeping quarters on the top floor of the three-storey school building, fire officials said.

The police chief said no foul play was suspected. Abu Obaidat bin Mohamad Saithalimat, deputy director of the fire department, told reporters outside the school the fire was likely caused by an electrical short circuit.

Loga Bala Mohan, the government’s federal territories deputy minister, said: “We sympathise with the families. It is one of the worst fires involving so many lives. We urgently want the authorities to quickly probe the cause of the deadly fire so that we will be able to prevent future disasters.”

Tahfiz schools usually teach students between the ages of five and 18.

There were 519 tahfiz schools registered across the country as of April, but many more are believed to be unregistered. Such schools are unregulated by the education ministry and fall under the purview of the religious department.

Report dismisses claims by banks that under law they must provide services to illegal Jewish settlements in West Bank.

Over half a million Jewish settlers live in illegal settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem [Ahmad Gharabli/AFP]

by Al Jazeera

A leading rights group says Israeli banks are contributing to the expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank by providing loans and mortgages for construction there.

A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released on Wednesday says no Israeli law requires the banks to provide such services for the settlements. It says the banks have continued to do so regardless of their human rights obligations.

“Israeli banks are financing settlement construction and facilitating settlement expansion as a matter of choice, not because they are somehow required to do so under domestic law,” said Sari Bashi, Israel and Palestine advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

The group is calling on the banks to extricate themselves from the settlements or face the risk of action from shareholders.

Furthermore, HRW said that institutional investors should ensure that their business relationships are free from settlement-related products or investments.

The report mentioned the example of some previous international investors, such as the United Methodist Church pension fund and the Dutch pension fund PGGM, who have divested from Israel’s five largest banks after citing their involvement in settlements as being inconsistent with their human rights policies.

Israel’s banks lend money to home buyers, settlement councils or to companies carrying out construction in the West Bank. Most also have branches in settlements.

Israeli law requires banks to accept settlers as customers, meaning they cannot refuse to open accounts for them. But a legal analysis by Human Rights Watch of Israeli banking laws concluded that banks are not obligated to provide financial backing for construction in the West Bank.

While an anti-discrimination law prohibits refusal of service based on place of residence, the report said banks could cite other reasons for declining to provide loans, such as the construction’s implications for Palestinians’ human rights.

The law also allows companies to decline to serve certain areas so long as they provide advance notice to customers.

Under international law, settlements are considered illegal, and much of the wider international community considers them an obstacle to the two state solution.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, in the 1967 war.

Up to 400,000 people now live in West Bank settlements, and about 200,000 Jewish Israelis live in occupied East Jerusalem.

Rights group says air raids over two months killed dozens, including children, where there were no military targets.

Saada was the scene of deadly coalition air raids on August 4 [File: Naif Rahma/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Human Rights Watch has accused the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen of committing war crimes, saying its air raids killed 39 civilians, including 26 children, in two months.

The rights group says five air raids that hit four family homes and a grocery store were carried out either deliberately or recklessly, causing indiscriminate loss of civilian lives in violation of the laws of war.

“Such attacks carried out deliberately or recklessly are war crimes,” HRW said in a report on Tuesday.

The coalition has repeatedly denied allegations of war crimes and says its attacks are directed against its enemy – Yemen’s armed Houthi group – and not civilians.

Yemen has been torn by a civil war in which Yemen’s internationally recognised government, backed by a coalition supported by the United States and Britain, is trying to roll back the Iran-aligned Houthi fighters who control most of northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa.

“The Saudi-led coalition’s repeated promises to conduct its air strikes lawfully are not sparing Yemeni children from unlawful attacks,” Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW, said in a statement.

“This underscores the need for the United Nations to immediately return the coalition to its annual ‘list of shame’ for violations against children in armed conflict.”

On August 4, coalition aircraft struck a home in Saada, killing nine members of one family, including six children, ages three to 12.

On July 3, an air raid killed eight members of the same family in Taiz province, including the wife and eight-year-old daughter, the organisation said.

HRW said it interviewed nine family members and witnesses to five air raids that occurred between June 9 and August 4 and did not detect any potential military targets in the vicinity.

The war has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than three million and ruined much of the impoverished country’s infrastructure.

The Saudi-led coalition was formed in 2015 to fight the Houthi group and army troops allied with them who have fired missiles into the kingdom.

HRW called on the UN Security Council to launch an international investigation into the abuses at its September session.

On Monday, the UN said it had verified 5,144 civilian deaths in the war in Yemen, mainly from air raids by a Saudi-led coalition, and an international investigation is urgently needed.

Kuwait’s emir says military action by four Arab countries blockading Qatar has been averted as Trump changes his tone.

President Trump walks to the podium with Kuwait leader Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah on Thursday [Evan Vucci/AP]

by Al Jazeera

The emir of Kuwait says the threat of war between Qatar and Arab nations blockading it for the past three months has been neutralised.

Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, the main mediator in the Gulf dispute, spoke in Washington, DC, on Thursday at a joint press conference with US President Donald Trump.

While both sides in the dispute have ruled out the use of armed force, some ordinary Qataris say they worry about the possibility of military action, given the ferocity of the criticism their country has received from media in the four Arab states.

“What is important is that we have stopped any military action,” Sheikh Sabah said.

In a joint statement, the blockading nations expressed regret about the Kuwaiti emir’s comment about stopping military intervention.

“The military option was not and will not be [used] in any circumstance,” it said.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic and trade links with Qatar on June 5, suspending air and shipping routes with the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. Qatar is also home to the region’s biggest US military base.

The four nations say Doha supports regional rival Iran and “funds terrorism” – charges Qatar’s leaders vehemently deny.

The countries reiterated on Thursday the accusation that Qatar continued to finance “terrorism” and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

Trump said there is still funding of radical groups by some nations, but added multiple countries are responsible. “There is massive funding of terrorism by certain countries,” he said.

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from Washington, DC, said Trump’s tone had changed after previously sending mixed signals.

“What is significant is the US president is now no longer singling out Qatar. He made a phone call to the emir of Qatar immediately following his press conference to provide further assurances,” she said.

The joint statement by the blockading nations praised what they called Trump’s firm assertion that the only way to resolve the crisis was by stopping the support and financing of “terrorism”, “and his unwillingness to resolve the crisis unless this is achieved”.

Sheikh Sabah said he had received a letter from Qatar that expressed willingness to discuss a list of 13 demands from its neighbours.

“We know that not all of these 13 demands are acceptable,” Kuwait’s leader said, referring specifically to issues that affected Qatari sovereignty. “A great part of them will be resolved.”

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told Al Jazeera that any mediation had to come “without conditions”, reiterating Doha would not negotiate while transport links with neighbours remained cut.

The Arab powers responded in the statement by accusing Qatar of putting preconditions on negotiations, which they said showed a lack of seriousness in resolving the dispute.

Qatari officials have repeatedly said the demands are so draconian they suspect the four countries never seriously intended to negotiate them, and were instead seeking to hobble Doha’s sovereignty.

At the same time, they have said Qatar is interested in negotiating a fair solution to “any legitimate issues” of concern to fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member states.

Save the Children says kids are ‘unable to sleep, study or play’ as enclave faces electricity and environmental crises.

There are more than one million children living in the Gaza Strip [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

One million children are suffering from “unlivable” conditions in the Gaza Strip, according to Save the Children, an international charity that promotes children’s rights and provides aid worldwide.

“One million children in Gaza are living in dire conditions,” the group said in a statement on Tuesday. “Save the Children considers Gaza to be unlivable now.”

According to the charity, “60 percent of the sea around Gaza is contaminated with untreated sewage and over 90 percent of water sources [are] too contaminated for human consumption”.

The besieged Palestinian territory, where more than two million people live, has also been suffering from an energy crisis since mid-April due to a dispute over taxes between Hamas, which rules the enclave, and the occupied West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Gaza has also been under a tight Israeli blockade for a decade, and residents have been subjected to persistent blackouts.

The continuing electricity crisis and “environmental crisis” has left the more than one million children in Gaza unable “to sleep, study or play”, Save the Children said.

According to the charity, more than 740 schools are struggling to function without electricity, and most families receive only two to four hours of electricity each day.

The UN found in 2012 that if nothing were done to ease the blockade on Gaza, life there would become “unlivable” by 2020.

But following the release of a UN report in July that found that living conditions had worsened since the blockade began, the international body’s humanitarian coordinator for the occupied territories said that point “of unlivability [had] been passed quite a long time ago”.

‘Worse every day’

Save the Children’s Caroline Anning told Al Jazeera that the “situation in Gaza is a growing humanitarian crisis”.

She added that the situation “is getting worse every day”.

Save the Children called on Israel to “lift the Gaza blockade and for Palestinian and Israeli authorities to provide basic services”, adding that the lack of such services was contributing to growing mental health issues in the enclave.

READ MORE: Letter from Gaza – ‘Alive due to lack of death’

“Gaza children are already suffering through a ten-year blockade and the constant threat of conflict,” Jennifer Moorehead, Save the Children’s country director for the occupied Palestinian Territories, said in a statement.

“Living without access to basic services like electricity is affecting their family life and mental well-being,” Moorehead said.

“We’re seeing increased levels of anxiety, aggression and mood swings.”

Hamas has run Gaza since 2007 when it seized the territory from Abbas’ Fatah movement in a dispute over parliamentary elections won by Hamas the previous year.

Multiple attempts at reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah have failed, but the Palestinian Authority has continued to pay Israel for some of the electricity delivered to the enclave.

Israel has launched three offensives on Gaza since 2008, in which thousands of Palestinians were killed.

Severe damage to Gaza’s already weak infrastructure has contributed to the current humanitarian crisis.

Rawalpindi: A Pakistan anti-terrorism court has declared former military ruler Pervez Musharraf a fugitive in ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder trial, ordering his property confiscated, a court official said Thursday.

Musharraf was charged with Bhutto’s 2007 assassination in 2013 but has been in self-imposed exile in Dubai ever since a travel ban was lifted three years later. The official said he had “absconded”.

The court also acquitted five men who had been accused of being Taliban militants involved in the conspiracy to murder Bhutto, the Muslim world’s first female prime minister, the official said. However it found two police officers guilty of “mishandling the crime scene”, the court official said, adding they had each been sentenced to 17 years imprisonment and fined 500,000 rupees (INR 300,904.68).

The verdicts are the first to be issued in the case and come nearly 10 years after Bhutto was killed in a gun and suicide bomb attack during an election rally in Rawalpindi. Musharraf’s government blamed the assassination on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement. He was killed in a US drone attack in 2009. In 2010, a UN report accused Musharraf’s government of failing to give Bhutto adequate protection and said her death could have been prevented.

(Agencies)

At least 13 still missing after apparent Saudi-coalition attack in Arhab, with women and children among the dead.

Dozens of people were wounded in the attack, which struck north of Sanaa in the Arhab area [Hussain Albukhaiti/Al Jazeera]

by Al Jazeera

The UN is investigating reports of a Saudi-led air strike on a hotel near the Yemeni capital as the death toll rose to at least 41 people, including women and children.

Hussain Albukhaiti, an activist based in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera that at least 13 people were still missing on Thursday after an air strike a day earlier.

Houthi rebels were apparently the target of Wednesday’s air raid, which hit Muntazah al-Shabab li-Rihla wa-Nawm – a popular hotel in Arhab district 35km north of the capital.

Almaseera, a television channel run by the country’s Houthi rebels, who control Sanaa, confirmed the death toll.

Citing local residents, Albukhaiti said that the Saudi-led coalition, which controls Yemen’s airspace, carried out a “double-tap”, first striking the hotel, then a gate leading to the building.

Dozens of people were crushed to death, he said, after the roof of the two-storey building collapsed.

Several others, including first responders, were then “cut into pieces” by the second military strike.

Albukhaiti said that there was no Houthi rebels present in the area or at any military installation nearby at the time of the attack.

The UN could not confirm the assault, but rights officials were investigating the reports, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman said in New York.

“What is clear is that any attack on civilians is unacceptable. This is a message we have often repeated and we will continue to repeat,” Stephane Dujarric said.

‘Man-made catastrophe’

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien described the conflict between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Houthis as a “deplorable, avoidable, completely man-made catastrophe” in a briefing to the UN Security Council last week.

The number of air strikes per month is now three times higher than last year and monthly reports of armed clashes are up 50 percent, he said.

The conflict in Yemen has escalated dramatically since March 2015, when Saudi-led forces launched a military operation against rebels.

Since fighting began, more than 10,000 people have been killed and millions have been driven from their homes.

The country is also facing a health crisis,with close to 2,000 people having died from cholera since April, more than half a million people infected, and another 600,000 expected to contract the infection this year.

Additional reporting by Faisal Edroos: @faisaledroos

Iran’s atomic boss says Tehran ‘loyal’ to nuclear deal but ready to respond if US renegotiates or walks away from it.

Salehi (right) was part of the Iranian delegation that negotiated the historic nuclear deal with the US and other world powers in 2015 [AP File]

by Al Jazeera

Iran’s atomic chief has warned that Tehran needs only five days to ramp up its uranium enrichment to 20 percent, a level at which the material could be used for a nuclear weapon.

The comments by Ali Akbar Salehi to Iranian state television on Tuesday followed repeated threats by US President Donald Trump to renegotiate or walk away from a historic 2015 nuclear deal.

“If there is a plan for a reaction and a challenge, we will definitely surprise them,” said Salehi, who also serves as one of Rouhani’s vice presidents.

“If we make the determination, we are able to resume 20 percent enrichment in at most five days.”

He added: “Definitely, we are not interested in such a thing happening. We have not achieved the deal easily to let it go so easily. We are committed to the deal, and we are loyal to it.”

Iran gave up the majority of its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium as part of the nuclear deal it struck with world powers, co-signed by Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama.

The 2015 accord, which lifted sanctions on Iran, currently caps the country’s uranium enrichment at five percent.

Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said there is “ongoing concern” among diplomats that further US actions to hold Iran accountable for “unrelated but still very serious violations” of international laws and Security Council resolutions “could end up ruining” the entire deal.

In recent weeks, Trump had already signed new sanctions imposing mandatory penalties on people involved in Iran’s ballistic missile programme and anyone who does business with them.

The US legislation also applies “terrorism” sanctions to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and enforces an existing arms embargo.

Our correspondent said the moves made the Iranians “very upset”.

‘Breakout time towards a bomb’

In response, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned last week that Tehran could ramp up its nuclear programme and quickly achieve a more advanced level if the US continues “threats and sanctions” against his country.

While Iran has long maintained its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, uranium enriched to 20 percent and above can be used in nuclear bombs.

As part of the 2015 deal, Iran processed its stockpile of near 20 percent uranium into a lower enrichment and turned some into fuel plates to power a research reactor and shipped the rest to Russia.

The Obama administration and most independent experts said at the time of the deal that Iran would need at least a year after abandoning the accord to have enough nuclear material to build a bomb.

Before the deal was struck, they said the timeframe for Iran to “break out” towards a bomb was a couple of months.

As part of the Trump administration’s effort to push back against Iran, US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is heading to Vienna to meet UN monitors, and talk about whether Tehran is in full compliance with the nuclear deal, Al Jazeera’s Rosiland Jordan reported.

“Her point is to try to go, and to not just hear from them but to also re-communicate the US concerns about Iran’s intentions,” our correspondent said.

While the economic benefits of the deal have yet to reach the average Iranian, it has paved the way for the reopening of the country’s economy, while also boosting its oil production and sales.

Businesses have also started to sign multi-billion dollar deals with international companies, including Airbus and the US-based Boeing.

Analysts said abandoning the deal would also put those economic gains in jeopardy.

Bombs hit close to Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, leaving dozens dead and injured, local media reports.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen and since February 2014, according to the UN [FILE: Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

An air strike on a hotel near the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, has killed at least 35 people, a local medic said.

A local television channel run by the country’s Houthi rebels, who control Sanaa, blamed the Saudi-led military coalition allied with the Yemeni government for the strike on Wednesday.

“More than 30 martyrs in air strike on small hotel in Arhab,” Houthi-run television station Almaseera said in a newsflash.

Dozens of people were also wounded in the attack, which struck north of Sanaa in the Arhab area.

Hussein al-Tawil, head of the Sanaa branch of Yemen’s Red Crescent, confirmed the death toll as rescuers continued to pull bodies from the rubble.

Reuters reported that a spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition was not immediately available.

Hakim Al Masmari, a journalist with the Yemen Post, told Al Jazeera from Sanaa that air strikes targeted several areas of the city.

“It is probably the biggest massacre Yemen has witnessed by the Saudi-led coalition,” Al Masmari told Al Jazeera by phone.

“The air strike targeted a motel late early this morning. It was part of at least 25 air strikes that targeted Sanaa and the outskirts of the city since midnight. The air strikes attacked every part of Sanaa. It was a deadly night,” he added.

More than 10,000 people have been killed and three million displaced from their homes since February 2014, according to the UN.

Yemen, which is on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, has been engulfed in war since September 2014, when Houthi Shia rebels swept into the capital and overthrew President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s internationally recognised government.

In March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition began a campaign against Houthi forces allied with overthrown President Ali Abdullah Saleh in support of Hadi’s government.

Since then, the Iranian-backed Houthis have been dislodged from most of the south, but remain in control of Sanaa and much of the north.