NEW DELHI: Russia has already trained a group of Indian personnel to operate the first regiment of the Triumf S-400 surface-to-air missile systems and the delivery of the components of the weapons to India has begun ahead of schedule, a Russian official said on Monday.

Alexander Mikheyev, the head of Russia’s state-run military firm Rosoboronexport, told news agency TASS that a number of Russian experts will visit India in early January to oversee the installation of the weapons at the sites where it will be stationed.

He said Russia has already trained “Indian specialists” to operate the S-400 systems.

“The Indian specialists who will operate the first regiment set have completed their training and returned home,” the Rosoboronexport chief said on the sidelines of the Dubai Airshow.

The director general of the Rosoboronexport said the company is in consultations with “seven partners” on possible supplies of S-400 Triumf missile systems.

“Rosoboronexport continues consultations with Russia’s seven strategic partners on supplies of high-technology and effective S-400 missile systems,” Mikheyev said.

He also said that the shipment of equipment of the missile systems to India has begun ahead of schedule and that the first S-400 regiment will be delivered by the end of the year.

“All the material of the first regiment set will be delivered to India at the end of 2021. Immediately after the New Year, our specialists will arrive in India for the equipment transfer at the sites where it will be stationed,” Mikheyev said.

His comments came a day after Russia’s Director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSMTC) Dmitry Shugaev said that Russia has begun the delivery of the S-400 missile systems to India.

In October 2018, India had signed a USD 5 billion deal with Russia to buy five units of the S-400 air defence missile systems, despite a warning from the Trump administration that going ahead with the contract may invite US sanctions.

The Biden administration has not yet clarified whether it will impose sanctions on India under the provisions of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) for procuring the S-400 missile systems.

The CAATSA, which was brought in 2017, provides for punitive actions against any country engaged in transactions with Russian defence and intelligence sectors.

The US has already imposed sanctions on Turkey under the CAATSA for the purchase of a batch of S-400 missile defence systems from Russia.

The S-400 is known as Russia’s most advanced long-range surface-to-air missile defence system.

Following the US sanctions on Turkey, there were apprehensions that Washington may impose similar punitive measures on India.

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, during a visit to India last month, said that any country deciding to use the S-400 missiles is “dangerous” and not in anybody’s security interest.

At the same time, she hoped that the US and India will be able to resolve differences over the procurement.

It is learnt that the matter is being discussed between India and the US.

Russia has been one of India’s key major suppliers of arms and ammunition.

Santa Fe (US)(AP): A woman has been killed and a man injured after they were shot by a prop firearm at a movie set outside Santa Fe, authorities said.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office Thursday said a 42-year-old woman was airlifted to a hospital, where she died, while a 42-year-old man was getting emergency care at another hospital.

Authorities didn’t identify the two people, who reportedly were crew members and not actors.

Production has been halted on the Western movie Rust, which is being directed by Joel Souza with Alec Baldwin producing and starring in it.

A spokesperson for Baldwin said there was an accident on the set involving the misfire of a prop gun with blanks.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported Baldwin was seen Thursday outside the sheriff’s office in tears, but attempts to get comment from him were unsuccessful.

According to investigators, it appears that the scene being filmed involved the use of a prop firearm when it was discharged, sheriff’s spokesman Juan Rios told the Albuquerque Journal. Detectives are investigating how and what type of projectile was discharged.

Deputies responded about 2 pm to the movie set at the Bonanza Creek Ranch after 911 calls came in of a person being shot on set, Rios said.

Filming for Rust was set to continue into early November, according to a news release from the New Mexico Film Office.

The movie is about a 13-year-old boy who is left to fend for himself and his younger brother following the death of their parents in 1880s Kansas, according to the Internet Movie Database website. The teen goes on the run with his long-estranged grandfather (played by Baldwin) after the boy is sentenced to hang for the accidental killing of a local rancher.

In 1993, Brandon Lee, 28, son of the late martial-arts star Bruce Lee, died after being hit by a .44-caliber slug while filming a death scene for the movie ‘The Crow’. The gun was supposed to have fired a blank, but an autopsy turned up a bullet lodged near his spine.

In 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum died after shooting himself in the head with a prop gun blank while pretending to play Russian roulette with a .44 Magnum on the set of the television series ‘Cover Up’. (AP)

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s Muslim minorities have suffered consistent discrimination, harassment and violence since 2013, culminating in the adoption of government policies explicitly targeting them, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

It asserts to trace the development of anti-Muslim sentiment in Sri Lanka, “amid surging Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism”.

The document cites “series of mob attacks committed with impunity”, forced cremation of Muslim COVID-19 victims, ongoing proposals to ban ‘niqab’ (face veil) and ‘madrasas’ (religious schools) and other such “discriminatory” measures, as steps consistent with harassment and violence on the minority group.

“While anti-Muslim sentiment in Sri Lanka is nothing new, the situation has regressed sharply in recent years. Incidents of violence against Muslims, committed with the tacit approval of the authorities, have occurred with alarming frequency. This has been accompanied by the adoption by the current government of rhetoric and policies that have been openly hostile to Muslims,” said Amnesty International, deputy secretary-general Kyle Ward.

“The Sri Lankan authorities must break this alarming trend and uphold their duty to protect Muslims from further attacks, hold perpetrators accountable and end the use of government policies to target, harass and discriminate against the Muslim community.”

The report says incidents of violence towards Muslims have risen in frequency and intensity since 2013, with a series of flashpoints in which attackers and those responsible for hate speeches have enjoyed impunity for their actions.

This escalating hostility began with the anti-halal campaign when Sinhala Buddhist nationalist groups successfully lobbied to end the halal certification on food items, which marks foods permissible for consumption by Muslims in accordance with Islamic scripture and customs.

After months of protests by Buddhist groups, Islamic clerics in Sri Lanka in 2013 had announced the withdrawal of ‘halal’ certification in the interest of communal harmony.

However, the Amnesty report said the campaign gave rise to a number of attacks on mosques and Muslim businesses and there was lack of accountability on nabbing persons responsible for these acts, signalling to others that acts of violence against Muslims could be committed with impunity.

The following year, anti-Muslim riots in the southern coastal town of Aluthgama began after a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist group held a rally in the town, the non-governmental organisation said.

“Here too, perpetrators of violence enjoyed impunity and authorities failed to deliver justice to victims,” the report said.

Referring to the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, the report said hostility towards Muslims increased markedly after the bombings which killed over 258 people.

The April 21, 2019 attacks were carried out by the local Islamist extremist group National Thawheed Jamaat (NTJ), which has links to the ISIS, tearing through three churches and as many luxury hotels.

The deceased included 11 Indians and more than 500 people were injured.

The Amnesty report accused the current government, led by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, of making the Muslim population a “target and scapegoat” to distract from political and economic issues.

“This was evident in the mandatory cremation policy on the disposal of the bodies of COVID-19 victims, which was implemented despite cremation being expressly forbidden in Islam, and a lack of scientific evidence to substantiate the claims that burying victims would further the spread of the disease.”

At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in the island nation, authorities in May 2020 enforced a mandatory order to cremate the bodies of COVID-19 victims, denying minority communities, including Muslims, their religious rights.

The country had earlier come under intense criticism from rights groups, including the UNHRC, over the cremation order.

The order was reversed in February this year.

The Amnesty report criticised existing legislation in Sri Lanka “to target Muslims, including the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA),” which permits suspects to be detained without charge for up to 90 days, and without court representation.

This is in addition to the misuse of the ICCPR Act, a law intended to prohibit the propagation of racial or religious hatred, amounting to incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, it said.

Established in 1961, Amnesty International models its working on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and other international human rights instruments.

AUSTIN: A federal judge on Wednesday, October 6, 2021, ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., calling it an “offensive deprivation” of a constitutional right by banning most abortions in the nation’s second-most populous state since September.

The order by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers say the impact has been “exactly what we feared.” 

In a 113-page opinion, Pitman took Texas to task over the law, saying Republicans lawmakers had “contrived an unprecedented and transparent statutory scheme” to deny patients their constitutional right to an abortion. 

“From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution,” wrote Pitman, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama.

“That other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion is theirs to decide; this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”

But even with the law on hold, abortion services in Texas may not instantly resume because doctors still fear that they could be sued without a more permanent legal decision. Planned Parenthood said it was hopeful the order would allow clinics to resume abortion services as soon as possible.

Texas officials are likely to seek a swift reversal from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously allowed the restrictions to take effect. State officials did not immediately react to the ruling.

The lawsuit was brought by the Biden administration, which has said the restrictions were enacted in defiance of the U.S. Constitution.

“For more than a month now, Texans have been deprived of abortion access because of an unconstitutional law that never should have gone into effect. The relief granted by the court today is overdue, and we are grateful that the Department of Justice moved quickly to seek it,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. 

The law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which is usually around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. To enforce the law, Texas deputized private citizens to file lawsuits against violators, and has entitled them to at least $10,000 in damages if successful.

The Biden administration argued that Texas has waged an attack on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion under the GOP-engineered restrictions, which took effect Sept. 1.

Abortion providers say their fears have become reality in the short time the law has been in effect. Planned Parenthood says the number of patients from Texas at its clinics in the state decreased by nearly 80% in the two weeks after the law took effect.

Some providers have said that Texas clinics are now in danger of closing while neighboring states struggle to keep up with a surge of patients who must drive hundreds of miles. Other women, they say, are being forced to carry pregnancies to term.

Other states, mostly in the South, have passed similar laws that ban abortion within the early weeks of pregnancy, all of which judges have blocked. But Texas’ version has so far outmaneuvered the courts because it leaves enforcement to private citizens to file suits, not prosecutors, which critics say amounts to a bounty.

“This is not some kind of vigilante scheme,” said Will Thompson, counsel for the Texas Attorney General’s Office, while defending the law to Pitman last week. “This is a scheme that uses the normal, lawful process of justice in Texas.”

The Texas law is just one that has set up the biggest test of abortion rights in the U.S. in decades, and it is part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court began a new term, which in December will include arguments in Mississippi’s bid to overturn 1973’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion.

Last month, the court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Texas law in allowing it to remain in place. But abortion providers took that 5-4 vote as an ominous sign about where the court might be heading on abortion after its conservative majority was fortified with three appointees of former President Donald Trump.

Ahead of the new Supreme Court term, Planned Parenthood on Friday released a report saying that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, 26 states are primed to ban abortion. This year alone, nearly 600 abortion restrictions have been introduced in statehouses nationwide, with more than 90 becoming law, according to Planned Parenthood.

Texas officials argued in court filings that even if the law were put on hold temporarily, providers could still face the threat of litigation over violations that might occur in the time between a permanent ruling.
At least one Texas abortion provider has admitted to violating the law and been sued — but not by abortion opponents. Former attorneys in Illinois and Arkansas say they sued a San Antonio doctor in hopes of getting a judge who would invalidate the law.

BUCHAREST: Romanian Prime Minister Florin Citu of the governing National Liberal Party was ousted Tuesday after a no-confidence motion in his government passed overwhelmingly, deepening an ongoing political crisis.

The motion censure was filed by the opposition Social Democrat Party (PSD) and supported by former coalition partner USR-Plus, and the far-right AUR party.

The motion passed with 281 votes; only 234 were needed.

The fall of the government caps a political crisis that began a month ago when Citu fired justice minister Stelian Ion of USR-Plus for not signing off on a regional development program.

USR-Plus called the move an “abusive revocation” and quit the three-party cabinet.

During the debates in parliament Tuesday ahead of the vote, Citu lashed out at USR-Plus, saying he had tolerated “a team of incompetents.”

President Klaus Iohannis will now consult lawmakers on appointing a new prime minister, while Citu may remain at the government’s helm for 45 days.

Citu could be reappointed if lawmakers fail twice to agree on a new premier.

Claudiu Tufis, an associate professor of political science at the University of Bucharest, told The Associated Press that he expects the outcome of Tuesday’s vote to be a Liberal cabinet with support from the Social Democrats.

“In parliament, but not in the cabinet,” he said.

USR-Plus have expressed a wish to restore the coalition with a different prime minister.

The Liberal-led government came to power following a parliamentary election last December.

The ongoing crisis could hamper Romania’s efforts to tackle an alarming surge of COVID-19 infections in the European Union nation of 19 million, which is currently putting the country’s hospitals under serious strain.

On Tuesday, Romania recorded its highest number of daily COVID-19 infections — 15,037 cases — since the pandemic started.

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Thursday announced a series of steps, including issuing several executive orders and taking a few punitive measures, aimed at vaccinating the rest of America, arguing that the unvaccinated people pose a grave danger to the health of all Americans.

“My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: What more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see? We have made vaccinations free, safe and convenient. The vaccine is FDA approved. Over 200 million Americans have gotten at least one shot. We’ve been patient but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said in an address to the nation from the White House.

“So please, do the right thing,” he asserted.

“The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing. Nearly three-quarters of the eligible have gotten at least one shot, but one quarter has not gotten any. That’s nearly 80 million Americans not vaccinated and a country as large as ours, that’s 25 per cent minority. That 25 per cent can cause a lot of damage, and they are,” he said.

Announcing a new plan to require more Americans to be vaccinated to combat those blocking public health, Biden said his plan also increases testing.

“It protects our economy and will make our kids safer in schools,” he said.

Some of the prominent measures taken by Biden include the new rule requiring all private employers with more than 100 employees to mandate weekly testing as well as plans to require vaccines for federal workers and contractors.

“My plan will extend the vaccination requirements that I previously issued in the health care field. Already, I’ve announced, we’ll be requiring vaccinations at all nursing home workers who treat patients on Medicare and Medicaid because I have that federal authority. Tonight, I’m using that same authority to expand that to cover those who work in hospitals, home health care facilities, or other medical facilities, a total of 17 million health care workers,” he said.

He also asked nearly 3,00,000 educators in the federal head start programmes to get vaccinated and called on all governors to require vaccination for all teachers and staff.

Biden said his another plan is increasing testing and masking.

“From the start, America has failed to do enough COVID-19 testing. In order to better detect and control the delta variant, I’m taking steps tonight to make testing more available, more affordable, and more convenient. I use the Defense Production Act to increase production of rapid tests, including those that you can use at home,” he said.

“In addition to testing, we know masking help stop the spread of COVID-19. That’s why when I came into office, I required masks for all federal buildings and on federal lands, on airlines, and other modes of transportation,” he said, adding that the Transportation Safety Administration will double the fines on travellers that refuse to mask.

Reiterating that COVID-19 transcends border, he said they need to continue fighting the virus overseas, continue to be the arsenal of vaccines.

“We’re proud to have donated nearly 140 million vaccines over 90 countries, more than all other countries combined, including Europe, China, and Russia combined,” he said.

“That’s American leadership on a global stage. And that’s just the beginning. We’ve also now started to ship another 500 million COVID vaccines, Pfizer vaccines, purchased to donate to 100 lower-income countries in need of vaccines. And I’ll be announcing additional steps to help the rest of the world later this month,” Biden said.

LUCKNOW: The BSP will make efforts to not field ‘bahubali’ (strongmen) or mafia candidates in next year’s Uttar Pradesh polls, party supremo Mayawati said Friday, announcing that jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari will not be given a party ticket from Mau again.

Mayawati’s announcement comes days after Mukhtar Ansari’s brother Sigbatullah Ansari joined the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party.

“In upcoming assembly polls, the BSP’s effort will be to not field ‘bahubali’ and mafia elements. So, the name of Bhim Rajbhar, the BSP UP president, has been finalised from the Mau assembly seat in place of Mukhtar Ansari,” she said in a tweet in Hindi.

Mukhtar’s another brother, Afzal Ansari, is a BSP MP who represents the Ghazipur seat.

He had defeated the BJP’s Manoj Sinha, who is now the Lieutenant Governor of Jammu and Kashmir.

Mayawati said the decision to not field criminal and mafia elements has been taken to meet people’s expectation as she appealed to party leaders to keep this in mind while choosing candidates.

“So that there is no problem in taking strict action against such elements once the government is formed.”

She added, “Alongside ensuring ‘a rule of law, by law’, the BSP’s resolve is to also change Uttar Pradesh’s image now.”

She said the BSP’s should be known as the government that follows the philosophy of ‘Sarvajan Hitay and Sarvajan Sukhay’ (universal good).

KABUL: The Taliban were expected to form a government as early as Friday, September 3, 2021, with the new regime under intense international scrutiny over its vow to rule Afghanistan with greater tolerance, especially on women’s rights.

The announcement of a new administration could be made after Friday afternoon prayers, two Taliban sources told AFP, as the Islamists shift gears from insurgent group to governing power, days after the United States fully withdrew its troops and ended two decades of war.

While the West has adopted a wait-and-see approach to the Taliban, there were some signs of engagement with the new leaders gathering pace.

The United Nations said it had restarted humanitarian flights to parts of the country, linking the Pakistani capital Islamabad with Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan and Kandahar in the south.

A Taliban spokesman tweeted early Friday that China’s foreign ministry had promised to keep its embassy in Afghanistan open and to “beef up” relations and humanitarian assistance.

The British and Italian foreign ministers were meanwhile both headed to Afghanistan’s neighbours in the coming days to discuss the plight of refugees still hoping to escape the Taliban.

The new rulers have pledged to be more accommodating than during their first stint in power from 1996 to 2001, which also came after years of conflict — first the Soviet invasion of 1979, and then a bloody civil war.

That first regime was notorious for its brutal and violent interpretation of Islamic law, and its treatment of women, who were forced behind closed doors, banned from school and work and denied freedom of movement.

Now, all eyes are on whether the Taliban can deliver a cabinet capable of managing a war-wracked economy and honour the movement’s pledges of a more “inclusive” government.

Speculation is rife about the makeup of a new government, although a senior official said this week that women were unlikely to be included.

In the western city of Herat, some 50 women took to the streets Thursday in a rare, defiant protest for the right to work and over the lack of female participation in the new government.

“It is our right to have education, work and security,” the demonstrators chanted in unison, said an AFP journalist who witnessed the protest.

“We are not afraid, we are united,” they added.

Herat is a relatively cosmopolitan city on the ancient silk road near the Iranian border. It is one of the more prosperous in Afghanistan, and girls have already returned to school there.

One of the organisers of the protest, Basira Taheri, told AFP she wanted the Taliban to include women in the new cabinet.

“We want the Taliban to hold consultations with us,” Taheri said. “We don’t see any women in their gatherings and meetings.”

Among the 122,000 people who fled Afghanistan in a frenzied US-led airlift that ended on Monday was the first female Afghan journalist to interview a Taliban official live on television.

Speaking to AFP in Qatar, the former anchor for the Tolo News media group said women in Afghanistan were “in a very bad situation”.

“I want to say to the international community — please do anything (you can) for Afghan women,” Beheshta Arghand said.

Women’s rights were not the only major concern in the lead-up to the Taliban’s announcement of a new government.

In Kabul, residents voiced worry over the country’s long-running economic difficulties, now seriously compounded by the militant movement’s takeover.

“With the arrival of the Taliban, it’s right to say that there is security, but business has gone down below zero,” Karim Jan, an electronic goods shop owner, told AFP.

The United Nations warned earlier this week of a looming “humanitarian catastrophe” in Afghanistan, as it called for those still wanting to flee the new regime to be given a way out.

Italy’s foreign minister was due to visit Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Qatar and Pakistan from Friday to assist Afghan refugees, while his British counterpart was to head to the region next week.

Qatar’s foreign minister said on Thursday the Gulf state was working with the Taliban to reopen Kabul’s airport as soon as possible.

Turkey said it was also evaluating proposals from the Taliban and others for a role in running the airport.

SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered officials to wage a tougher epidemic prevention campaign in “our style” after he turned down some foreign COVID-19 vaccines offered via the U.N.-backed immunization program.

During a Politburo meeting Thursday, Kim said officials must “bear in mind that tightening epidemic prevention is the task of paramount importance which must not be loosened even a moment,” the official Korean Central News Agency reported Friday, September 3, 2021. 

While stressing the need for material and technical means of virus prevention and increasing health workers’ qualifications, Kim also called for “further rounding off our style epidemic prevention system,” KCNA said.

Kim previously called for North Koreans to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions, indicating the nation’s borders would stay closed despite worsening economic and food conditions. Since the start of the pandemic, North Korea has used tough quarantines and border closures to prevent outbreaks, though its claim to be entirely virus-free is widely doubted.

On Tuesday, UNICEF, which procures and delivers vaccines on behalf of the COVAX distribution program, said North Korea proposed its allotment of about 3 million Sinovac shots be sent to severely affected countries instead. North Korea was also slated to receive AstraZeneca shots through COVAX, but their delivery has been delayed. 

According to UNICEF, North Korea’s health ministry still said it would continue to communicate with COVAX over future vaccines.

Some experts believe North Korea may want other vaccines, while questioning the effectiveness of Sinovac and the rare blood clots seen in some recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine. 

The previously allocated 1.9 million AstraZeneca doses would be enough to vaccinate 950,000 people — only about 7.3% of the North’s 26 million people — meaning North Korea would still need much more quantities of vaccine to inoculate its population. 

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Seoul’s Ewha Womans University, said North Korea is likely angling to receive more effective jabs from COVAX and then strategically allocate them domestically. 

“Pyongyang appears to have issues with COVAX involving legal responsibility and distribution reporting requirements. So it might procure vaccines from China to deliver to border regions and soldiers while allocating COVAX shots to less sensitive populations,” Easley said.

“The Kim regime likely wants the most safe and effective vaccine for the elite, but administering Pfizer would require upgraded cold chain capability in Pyongyang and at least discreet discussions with the United States. The Johnson & Johnson option could also be useful to North Korea given that vaccine’s portability and one-shot regimen,” he said.

In a recent U.N. report on the North’s human rights situation, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres asked North Korea to “take all necessary measures, including through international cooperation and assistance, to provide access to COVID-19 vaccines for all persons, without discrimination.”

He also asked North Korea to form a plan to enable diplomats and aid workers to return to the North and revive humanitarian aid distribution systems as soon as possible in conjunction with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

After their meeting in Seoul last month, Sung Kim, the top U.S. diplomat on North Korea affairs, and his South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk told reporters that they discussed humanitarian cooperation with North Korea in providing anti-virus resources, sanitation and safe water.

LONDON: An inquiry investigating child sexual abuse in a wide range of religious organisations and settings in England on Thursday found “shocking failures” in how many religions handled abuse allegations, with victim-blaming and abuse of power by religious leaders often contributing to under-reporting.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse looked into child protection in 38 religious organisations in England and Wales, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists, Methodists, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and non-conformist Christian denominations.

It took evidence from two weeks of public hearings held earlier this year.

It cited figures showing that from 2015 to 2020, of all known institutions where abuse had been reported, 11% took place within a religious organization or setting.

Some 10% of suspects were employed by or linked to a religion.

” Some religious settings have no child protection policies in place, it found, and there is currently “either no or very limited oversight” of child protection in religious organisations.

“Religious believers can find it difficult to accept that members of their congregation or religious leaders could perpetrate abuse,” its report said.

“As a result, some consider that it is not necessary to have specific child protection procedures or to adhere strictly to them.

” The report cited examples including four victims who were sexually abused when they were about 9 years old while they were taught the Quran by a teacher in a mosque.

The teacher was convicted in 2017.

In another instance, the report said, a boy was abused by a prominent leader in an evangelical organization connected to the United Reformed Church at Sunday school camp and other places from 7 to 10 years old.

The abuser was convicted in 2017, decades after the abuse took place.

Thursday’s report came after the inquiry’s earlier investigations into the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches that detailed widespread abuse.

The long-running inquiry, which has heard from thousands of victims, has also looked into allegations of abuse linked to British government institutions and lawmakers.