by Zena Tahhan, Al Jazeera

Images of death and destruction from the northern province of Idlib in Syria have flooded social media, with local activists and aid workers saying shelling by Russian and Syrian government warplanes in the area has intensified.

Rescue workers from the Syrian Civil Defence (SCD), a volunteer search and rescue team, say that at least 18 civilians have been killed and more than 45 wounded in the continuous bombardment and a gas attack on the rebel-held province since Sunday night.

“The Russians are in a frenzy. They’re going mad. The shelling is ongoing throughout the day and night. The warplanes are hitting residential areas,” Hadi Abdullah, a local journalist, told Al Jazeera by phone from the town of Kafr Nabl in the northwestern Syrian province bordering Turkey.

“The massacres started yesterday night. The whole area was vib

ating. About 12 homes came crumbling down,” continued Hadi, describing the attacks on the town on Sunday night.

The uptick in attacks comes after fighters from the Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham group shot down a Russian warplane and killed its pilot on Saturday.

While Russia – the Syrian government’s main ally – says it is targeting rebel fighters, locals say the majority of the attacks have been on residential neighbourhoods and hospitals.

The shelling spanned several areas, including Massaran, Khan al-Sabil, and Idlib city, where aid workers say many remain trapped under the rubble.

The main hospital in Maaret al-Numan, east of Kafr Nabl, has stopped working after it was hit by air raids, according to the SCD – also known as the White Helmets.

“About 10 air raids hit the hospital. It was a disaster,” said Hadi, who had rushed to the scene.

“The most difficult and heartbreaking scene was when the volunteers were quickly pulling the babies out of the hospital. I can’t get the image out of my head,” he recalled with a trembling voice.

At about 1am, Hadi headed to film events in Idlib city, where they had heard a Russian warplane targeted a residential building.

“A whole seven-story building came crashing down. The level of destruction is unreal,” said Hadi.

Chlorine gas attack
Volunteers with the SCD also reported a suspected chlorine gas attack on the town of Saraqeb on Sunday night, which wounded nine, including three aid workers. This is the second gas attack in two weeks.

“At about 9:20 pm local time (7PM GMT), two warplanes dropped two barrels containing chlorine on a heavily populated civilian area in Saraqeb,” Laith Abdullah, an aid worker, told Al Jazeera from Saraqeb.

“There was gas and smoke everywhere. Everyone was suffocating – people were screaming out ‘ambulance’,” Laith continued.

“It is difficult to describe; it is difficult to explain the amount of pain we were in and how much we were suffering.”

‘Doomsday’
Idlib province is one of the few remaining areas in Syria where fighters opposed to President Bashar al-Assad’s government are putting up a fight.

While Idlib city is dominated by Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – a former al-Qaeda affiliate – some 40 other armed groups loyal to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) also operate in other areas of the province.

The FSA is a loose conglomeration of armed brigades made up of Syrian army defectors and civilians, which receive financial and logistical support from the United States, Turkey, and several Gulf countries.

Idlib was included in a Russian-Iranian-Turkish deal for de-escalation zones aimed at halting fighting and offering safety to civilians, but it has continuously been targeted.

The province is strategically important for the Syrian government and Russia due to its proximity to the coastal region where the Russian-operated Syrian Khmeimim airbase sits.

Reporting from the Turkish-Syrian border, activist Ibrahim Ismail estimated there were “more than 150 raids in just half an hour” on Sunday night.

“Yesterday night was horrible. People are describing it as Doomsday and saying there were more than eight warplanes in the air. The shelling is heavy and arbitrary,” Ismail told Al Jazeera.

by Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have called on Yemeni government fighters and southern secessionists to focus their efforts on fighting Houthi rebels, in an apparent attempt to end a standoff between the two sides in Aden.

Emirati-backed separatists took over large parts of the southern port city earlier this week, including military bases, but stopped short of advancing on the presidential palace after clashing with pro-government forces and briefly surrounding the building while Prime Minister Ahmed bin Daghr and his ministers were inside.

The move exposed potential divides between Saudi Arabia, which finances and arms the Yemeni government, and the UAE, which is providing direct financial and military aid to the separatist Southern Transitional Council and its armed militia.

Yemeni government officials accused the Emirati government of deploying fighter planes to help the separatist fighters.

In a statement published by the Saudi Press Agency on Thursday, the Saudi-led coalition said Riyadh and Abu Dhabi shared “one goal and a shared vision for Yemen”.

“Saudi Arabia and the UAE have no ambitions but for Yemen to be a safe, stable, and able, Arab nation,” the statement said.

While stopping short of expressing support for the Yemeni government, which is based in Aden because the capital is under Houthi rebel control, the coalition called on both sides to focus on the goal of “defeating the Houthi militias of Iran.”

The separatists want greater autonomy for South Yemen, which was an independent state until reunification with the north in 1990.

They complain that the government has presided over rampant corruption and neglected southern regions.

The fighting in Aden has left at least 36 people dead and wounded more than 185 people since Sunday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Arab coalition intervention
The UAE and Saudi Arabia intervened militarily in Yemen in March 2015 after Houthi rebels swept across the country and threatened to conquer the last government stronghold of Aden.

While the coalition and government fighters successfully fended off the Houthi takeover of Aden, years of air attacks have failed to dislodge the Houthis from much of the rest of the country.

The coalition’s stated aim of restoring President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s rule still seems distant, as the capital Sanaa remains under Houthi control.

The Saudis have indicated they want out of the war and have largely limited their campaign to bombing raids, but the Emiratis have also committed troops to the effort to defeat the Houthis.

Separatists, government forces, and the Houthis, are competing for control over Yemeni territory alongside al-Qaeda and the local affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

The war has severely damaged the country’s infrastructure with the UN warning that up to 8 million people are at risk of starvation and more than a million have contracted cholera.

by Al Jazeera

A coalition of Egyptian opposition groups have called for an election boycott, calling the vote an “absurdity bordering on madness” after all serious candidates were either arrested or subjected to a campaign of intimidation.

In a joint statement, eight Egyptian opposition parties and 150 pro-democracy public figures urged Egyptians to stay away from the March polls in protest, accusing the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of preventing “any fair competition”.

“It is not right for us to surrender to what has become an absurdity bordering on madness,” said Abdel-Geleel Mustafa, a veteran opposition figure, at a news conference in Cairo.

Hamdeen Sabahi, Sisi’s only rival in the 2014 presidential elections, launched the campaign under the slogan, “Stay at home.”

He called on political parties to unite against what he called Sisi’s “brutal tyranny of power”.

Sisi, a former general who came to power in a 2013 coup against his democratically elected predecessor, Mohamed Morsi, is all but certain to win the March election in a landslide.

Several potential candidates have either been arrested or faced threats, intimidation and physical violence, forcing them to drop out.

Sami Anan, a former general, had planned to run against Sisi but was arrested at gunpoint on Tuesday by Egyptian security services.

His vice-presidential candidate, Hisham Genena, was attacked and seriously injured in a busy Cairo street on Saturday.

Earlier this month, Ahmed Shafik, former prime minister, backtracked on his intention to run, claiming he would “not be the ideal person to lead the state”.

The New York Times quoted one of Shafik’s lawyers as saying that the Egyptian government had forced him to withdraw by threatening to investigate previous charges of corruption against him.

In December 2017, Ahmed Konsowa, an army colonel, was sentenced to six years in prison after announcing his candidacy, while human rights lawyer Khaled Ali withdrew after receiving a three-month prison sentence.

Government apologist
Sisi’s only challenger is Mousa Mostafa Mousa, a government apologist who entered the race at the 11th hour, amid fears that a widespread boycott could lead to embarrassingly few votes being cast.

Mousa, who formally submitted his candidacy 15 minutes before the deadline despite not publicly declaring his intention to run until the day before, denied allegations he was cooperating with the government, saying, “We are not puppets in this race.”

However the 66-year-old has repeatedly endorsed Sisi, and last year formed a campaign called “Supporters of President el-Sisi’s nomination for a second term”.

Egyptians took to social media and used the hashtag Al-Kombares, which loosely translates to someone playing the role of an “extra”, to mock Mousa’s candidacy and the upcoming poll.

“An innocent question: How was the ‘extra’ Mousa Mostafa Mousa able to get more than 47,000 signatures in 10 days, as he said, without appearing on the candidates’ database?” asked journalist Hossam Elshorbagy.

To be eligible, a candidate must have collected 25,000 signatures from constituents across 15 governorates, or the signatures of 20 members of parliament.

Egypt has been beset with problems since the 2013 coup against Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president.

While it has also received generous economic aid packages from several Gulf countries, economic and security conditions for most Egyptians have deteriorated.

Under Sisi, human rights in Egypt have worsened, with organisations reporting that at least 60,000 people have been imprisoned since the general came to power.

There have also been reports of forced disappearances and a clampdown on press freedom.

by Al Jazeera

Russia-hosted talks on the war in Syria are being held in Sochi without the representation of any major opposition group.

Turkey-backed rebel figures have refused to leave the Russian city’s airport in a last-minute protest.

An amateur video obtained by Al Jazeera on Tuesday showed a group of Syrian opposition delegates, who had arrived from Ankara late on Monday, waiting for a flight back to Turkey.

“Late last night, there was a kerfuffle down at the airport here – distressed Turkish officials running around trying to persuade a group of Turkish-backed opposition delegates to leave the airport,” said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Sochi, referring to Monday evening.

“They apparently didn’t want to come out of the airport buildings because they had seen Syrian government flags plastered all over the branding for this Sochi conference, and that upset them.”

New constitution

The Sochi event, officially known as a Syrian Congress of National Dialogue, aims to foster an agreement between the government and the opposition to form a commission to write a new constitution for the war-torn country, Challands said.

But that seemed unlikely to happen without backing from major opposition figures.

The Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC), the country’s main opposition group, said following two days of UN-led talks in Vienna last week it would not attend the Sochi congress.

The SNC accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian backers of continuing to rely on military might and showing no willingness to enter into honest negotiations.

Authorities from Syria’s Kurdish autonomous region said at the weekend they would also boycott the event because of the ongoing Turkish offensive on the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

“The belief among the opposition has always been that the Sochi conference, and probably this commission as well, is essentially representing Moscow and Damascus interests,” Challands said.

“They, along with Turkey, have been saying over the past few hours and days that perhaps they would agree with the proposals of the commission as long as it is limited and focused on maintaining direction towards Geneva [the UN-curated peace process].”

He added the opposition groups believed talks in Geneva were going to ultimately give the final peace settlement for Syria.

“And Turkey and the Syrian opposition groups do not want anything to deviate from that.”

The Sochi conference was originally scheduled to be a two-day event, but it was shortened to a one-day forum on Tuesday.

Russia’s Tass news agency on Tuesday cited the forum’s organising committee as saying that 1,511 out of more than 1,600 invited delegates arrived in Sochi for the event from Syria, Geneva, Cairo, Moscow and Ankara.

The committee source reportedly said 107 delegates were representing the Syrian “domestic” opposition, including Qadri Jamil from “the Moscow platform”, Randa Kassis from “the Astana platform”, Syria’s Tomorrow Movement led by Ahmad Jarba, Haytham Manna from National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change and representatives of the Civil Movement.

The committee source broke down the ethnicities of the participants, saying the majority were Arabs. Kurds, Yazidis, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Chechens, Dagestanis, Abkhazians, Turkmens and Druze were also represented, according to the source.

Inside Syria, clashes and air raids by the Turkish army continued against Syrian Kurdish fighters in Afrin on the eve of the Sochi congress on Monday, with new civilian casualties reported.

In neighbouring Idlib, at least 23 civilians were killed on Monday in air raids launched by Syrian government warplanes, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and Syrian Civil Defence.

by Al Jazeera

Police have arrested the main suspect involved in the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in the central Punjab province of Pakistan, a police official told Al Jazeera.

Zainab Ansari was found dead in a rubbish dump on January 9 in Kasur, several days after her disappearance.

An autopsy revealed she had been raped and strangled to death.

“The suspect lives in the same [area] where Zainab lived,” a police district official confirmed to Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

The suspect has confessed, the official said.

“He was arrested before, but was released as we did not have evidence. After that, he shaved his beard off so that no one could recognise him.”

The rape and murder of Zainab Ansari was the 12th such case in Kasur district in the last year, according to local media reports.

The incident led to angry protests in various parts of Kasur that resulted in at least two deaths and several injuries.

In 2015, Kasur was in the international headlines when hundreds of videos of child molestation surfaced, and police later arrested several members of a racket involved in selling child pornography to websites in Europe.

Most of the victims were under 14, including a six-year-old boy, according to officials.

The hashtag #JusticeForZainab has trended in Pakistan and elsewhere.

by Al Jazeera

A group of separatists in southern Yemen, backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have declared a state of emergency in the port city of Aden and vowed to overthrow the country’s internationally recognised government within the next week.

Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the leader of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), said Yemen’s parliament would be barred from convening in Aden or anywhere else in southern Yemen unless President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi replaced Prime Minister Ahmed bin Daghr and his entire cabinet.

Speaking at a meeting on Sunday, al-Zubaidi accused Hadi’s government of “rampant corruption” and of “waging a misinformation campaign against the southern leaders using state funds”.

“The Southern Resistance Forces (SRF) declare a state of emergency in Aden and announce that it has begun the process of overthrowing the legitimate government and replacing it with a cabinet of technocrats,” a statement issued by the STC said.

The SRF, an armed group that has clashed with forces loyal to Hadi for control of strategic areas including Aden airport, will “become the core of a new force that will rebuild South Yemen’s security and military institutions,” the statement added.

Several commanders from security forces set up by the UAE attended the meeting and declared their support for the announcement.

The statement, however, did not give details on how it intended to topple Hadi’s government, only that he had a week to comply.

Different agendas?
The announcement underscores rising tensions between Hadi’s government, which is supported by Saudi Arabia, and the southern separatists, who are backed by the UAE.

The UAE entered Yemen’s war in March 2015 as part of a Saudi-led coalition after Houthi rebels, traditionally based in the northwest of the country, overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa, in 2014.

Nearly three years on, Saudi Arabia has said it “wants out” of the war, but the UAE has become more involved in the conflict, indicating a divide in the two countries’ agendas.

The UAE has been financing and training armed groups in the south of the country who answer to al-Zubaidi, a 50-year-old militia leader who emerged from relative obscurity in late 2015 after helping purge the Houthis from Aden.

Al-Zubaidi was initially rewarded and made governor of Aden by Hadi, but soon fell out of favour after reports emerged he was receiving patronage from the UAE to campaign for secession.

The Middle East Eye news website, quoting sources, reported that Hadi was incensed with the UAE, accusing Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of acting as an occupying force, as opposed to a liberation force.

Hadi’s weakening has gone hand-in-hand with the UAE’s growing power in southern Yemen.

The Gulf nation has financed a network of militias that only answer to it, set up prisons, and created a security establishment parallel to Hadi’s government, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Arab coalition has so far failed to achieve its stated aims as Houthi rebels continue to hold the capital Sanaa and much of the north.

The war has taken a huge toll on the country with more than 60,000 people killed and wounded by fighting, and millions of Yemenis at risk of famine amid a massive cholera outbreak.

by Al Jazeera

The bodies of nine Syrian refugees who crossed into Lebanon were found frozen in a mountainous area near the border with Syria, according to the Lebanese army.

The military said in a statement that the bodies were discovered on a people-smuggling route in the early hours of Friday after a snowstorm hit the Masnaa area, where Lebanon’s largest official border crossing with Syria is located.

“The army saved six other displaced Syrians, one of whom died later in a hospital from frostbite,” the statement added, raising the death toll to 10.

“The bodies were taken to the hospitals in the area, and the army continues to search for other displaced people trapped in the snow, in order to evacuate them and provide medical treatment for them.”

10 bodies of Syrians were found near the Lebanon-Syria border crossing in Masna'a. 5 refugees were found alive. It appears they died while trying to cross into Lebanon. All countries bordering on Syria have locked their borders to refugees. https://t.co/I7mlmDaSJe via @chehayebk pic.twitter.com/58xxSGYtlE

— Elizabeth Tsurkov (@Elizrael) January 19, 2018

The identities of the Syrian refugees were not immediately known. According to some reports, at least one child was found among the bodies.

Two other Syrian nationals were arrested and charged with people-smuggling, the army added.

‘We are deprived of everything’
Temperatures dropped on Friday as winter storms battered the Lebanon-Syria border, making the lives of the more than 357,000 Syrian refugees living in makeshift tents in the Bekaa Valley, some 60km north of Masnaa, even more difficult.

Reporting from the region, Al Jazeera’s correspondent Zeina Khodr said that Syrian refugees “face many challenges during the winter months”.

“They live in tents that are made out of plastic sheeting, which does little to protect them from the cold and the rain,” she said.

Hammadi Chelbi, a Syrian refugee who has been living in Bekaa Valley after he fled the Syrian conflict in its first year, told Al Jazeera that he and his family are living in misery.

“We have nothing but pain, sickness and suffering,” he said. “We are deprived of everything.”

There are one million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, although government officials estimate that the number is closer to 1.5 million.

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) says it is not getting the money it needs to help Syrian refugees in Lebanon through another harsh winter.

Last year, it requested $228m but received less than 60 percent of that, prompting it to warn that life in the camps was getting worse.

by Al Jazeera

A member of the Qatari royal family, who was allegedly held against his will in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has accused Saudi Arabia and the UAE of orchestrating a months-long Gulf crisis in order to seize Qatar’s wealth, and threatened to commit suicide.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Ali Al Thani has previously been portrayed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE as the main opposition figure to the Qatari government amid the major diplomatic dispute.

In an audio recording from January 15 obtained by Al Jazeera, Sheikh Abdullah said he was put under “tremendous pressures” which led him to decide to “put an end to his life”.

“The [Gulf] crisis is based on interests and the desire of both Mohammed bin Zayed and Mohammed bin Salman to usurp the wealth and riches of Qatar,” Al Thani said, referring to the Abu Dhabi and Saudi crown princes respectively.

“I urge my fellow Qataris to defend your position, beware of them,” he added. “They may lure you with money to destroy your own country.”

On January 14, Sheikh Abdullah released a video statement, saying he was a “prisoner” in the UAE, and that if anything happened to him, “Sheikh Mohammed” is responsible.

While he did not specify, Abdullah appeared to be referring to Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Sheikh Abdullah was transferred to a hospital shortly after his arrival in a wheelchair in Kuwait on Wednesday.

Abdullah’s brother, Sheikh Khalid, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that his sibling’s health deteriorated due to exhaustion and pressure he was exposed to under Emirati authorities.

Sheikh Khalid had added that his brother was in stable condition and should be leaving the hospital soon.

In his audio message, threatening suicide, Sheikh Abdullah said: “Due to the pressures on me, my confinement, and inability to return home (Qatar) or join my family, namely my two daughters, I have decided to end my life with the aim of preventing any harm to others.”

After Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar in June, Sheikh Abdullah appeared frequently on Saudi and UAE television programmes expressing his views in support of the measures against Doha.

Sheikh Abdullah was residing in Saudi Arabia since the blockade began.

by Al Jazeera

An Egyptian military court has sentenced eight people to death, including four in absentia, for alleged involvement in acts of violence in 2015.

Another 17 people were sentenced to life behind bars, including prominent Muslim scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who, along with six others, was tried in absentia on Wednesday.

The alleged acts of violence include the murder of a police officer in Cairo, a judicial source told Anadolu news agency on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media.

Al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian-born head of the Doha-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), was reportedly charged with “incitement to murder”, “spreading false news” and “vandalising public property”.

Twenty-six defendants in the same case were acquitted, including four senior members of Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood group.

Wednesday’s raft of sentences is still subject to appeal. Defendants who were tried in absentia will receive retrials in the event that they are arrested or turn themselves in to the authorities.

Egypt has been roiled by violence since mid-2013 when Mohamed Morsi – the country’s first freely elected president and a Muslim Brotherhood leader – was overthrown and imprisoned in a bloody military coup.

In September, Interpol removed al-Qaradawi, 91, from its online wanted list.

The international police organisation made the move after an assessment of the Egyptian charges against the scholar, who lives in exile in Qatar.

by Al Jazeera

International NGOs have condemned the US government’s decision to cut more than half of its planned funding to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a Twitter post late on Tuesday that Washington was “holding Palestinian kids’ humanitarian needs hostage to political agendas”.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, urged the US government to reverse its decision announced on Tuesday to withhold $65m out of $125m aid package earmarked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

“The move will have devastating consequences for vulnerable Palestinian refugees across the Middle East, including hundreds of thousands of refugee children in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria who depend on the agency for their education,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

“It will also deny their parents a social safety net that helps them to survive, and undermine the UN agency’s ability to respond in the event of another flare-up in the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict.”

On Twitter, Egeland said: “Cutting aid to innocent refugee children due to political disagreements among well-fed grown men and women is a really bad politization of humanitarian aid. US holds back $65m aid to Palestinians.”

The Turkish Mnistry of Foreign Affairs said cuts to UNRWA would “hamper the efforts towards a two-state political solution and regional stability”. It also said that Ankara would increase its contributions to the agency.

Yazan Muhammad Sabri, an 18-year-old Palestinian refugee in Dheisheh camp in the occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem, told Al Jazeera last week that “if the wakala [UNRWA] goes away, there will be no education, no healthcare, no sanitation”.

“There will be nothing – everything will disappear,” he said.

Salah Ajarmeh, a 44-year-old refugee living in West Bank’s Aida camp, told Al Jazeera that “if the services stop, there will be a revolution”.

“Palestinian uprisings began in the refugee camps in Jordan and Syria, and this will happen again.”

‘Not a bargaining chip’
Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s delegation to the US, said in a statement on Wednesday that Palestinian refugees and children’s access to basic humanitarian services was “not a bargaining chip but a US and international obligation”.

“Taking away food and education from vulnerable refugees does not bring a lasting and comprehensive peace,” the statement said.

“Heeding Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s zero-sum game to take Jerusalem off the table and now attempting to dismantle UNRWA, thinking that it would relinquish the rights of Palestinian refugees is a fallacy.”

Zomlot was referring to the earlier US decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that prompted widespread international condemnation and led Palestinian leaders to say that they would “no longer” accept any peace plan put forward by the US.

Tuesday’s announcement on UNRWA came after US President Donald Trump had threatened on January 2 to cut aid to Palestinians.

In a series of tweets, Trump had said: “… We pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect.

“… With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”