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Austria: Arrests after 71 dead refugees found in truck

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Austrian police confirm final death toll, saying the refugees included eight women and four children.

Initial investigations revealed the truck had left Budapest on Wednesday morning, before being sighted near the Austrian border overnight [Reuters]

Initial investigations revealed the truck had left Budapest on Wednesday morning, before being sighted near the Austrian border overnight [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Austrian authorities say three people have been arrested in Hungary after the bodies of 71 refugees were found in a truck abandoned on a motorway.

Police had originally put the death toll at between 20 and 50 after the truck was found on Thursday, but Austrian officials revised the figure upwards on Friday.

Speaking at a press conference in Eisenstadt, Austrian police official Hans Peter Doskozil said the dead comprised 59 men, 8 women and four children, including a young infant.

He said it was likely that those in the truck suffocated.

Of the three arrested, one is a Bulgarian who is believed to have owned the vehicle. The others, a Bulgarian and another with Hungarian documents, are “pretty certain to be those who drove the vehicle,” Doskozil said.

Officials said they hoped the three would lead them to others responsible for trafficking the dead across Europe.

The truck, found on Thursday, had travelled to Austria from Hungary. The partly decomposed bodies were piled on top of each other in a cargo container in the vehicle, parked off the highway in Burgenland state.

The shocking discovery cast a shadow over talks in Vienna, where Europe’s leaders had gathered on Thursday to discuss the mounting refugee crisis on the continent.

“We were all shaken by the horrible news that up to 50 people died … these were people coming to seek safety,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, prior to the new toll being released.

“This is a warning to work to resolve this problem and show solidarity.”

The conference held a minute of silence to commemorate the dead.

This year has seen record numbers of people trying to reach the EU by sea and land as they flee conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

In Austria, the number of asylum requests rose above 28,300 between January and June alone – as many as for the whole of 2014 – and officials expect the total to reach 80,000 this year.

The Western Balkans conference was called to find a common European answer to the refugee crisis that is overwhelming some countries while leaving others relatively unaffected.

Austrian plan

At the summit, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz floated elements of a five-point plan that foresees establishing safe havens in the refugees’ home countries where those seeking asylum in the EU could be processed and – if they qualify – be given safe passage to Europe.

Beyond safe havens, possibly protected by troops acting under a UN mandate, the Austrian plan to be submitted to EU decision-makers foresees increased controls on Europe’s outer borders and coordinated action against human smuggling.

It also calls for refugee quotas for each of the EU’s 28 members – something that many countries have opposed.

 

EU members Greece and Italy, and non-EU Balkan countries such as Macedonia and Serbia – whose leaders attended the summit – are dealing with the initial refugee burden through sea and land routes. But many of these refugees are only in transit to western European countries.

Nearly 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean this year with at least 2,373 “migrants and refugees” dying in a bid to reach Europe, nearly 300 more than the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Clashes force 5,000 to flee after beheading in CAR

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Fresh violence in central town of Bambari comes ahead of planned presidential elections next month.

Over the past five months, thousands have been returning to CAR as the situation was seen to be improving [Getty]

Over the past five months, thousands have been returning to CAR as the situation was seen to be improving [Getty]

by Azad Essa, Al Jazeera

Around 5,000 people have fled from their homes in Bambari following clashes between rival militias over the past few days, demonstrating how fragile the situation in the Central African Republic (CAR) remains ahead of next month’s presidential election, the UN refugee agency has said.

The latest flare-up in Bambari erupted after a 19-year-old Muslim was beheaded by fighters on August 20, according to the UNHCR.

In a town hit hard by violence, the new set of clashes around Bambari prompted the escape of almost 5,000 people in recent days, seeking shelter at the UN’s nearby base.

“We cannot say the country is at peace – because the events in Bambari show how fragile the situation remains,” Dalia al-Achi, spokesperson for the UNHCR, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

“They are living in a [former] cotton factory [at the UN base] where there is no sanitation, lights or any infrastructure. It is not fit for living,” she said.

On Friday, Diane Corner, deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), said in a tweet that 5,000 people had been displaced and that  the protection of civilians remained the mission’s top priority.

With just over a month left before presidential elections are held in the country, experts are not convinced the country would be able to host credible polls.

More than one million people have been displaced since Muslim-led Seleka rebels took the capital, Bangui, in March 2013.

Following a spate of abuses by the Seleka, vigilante groups known as anti-Balaka (anti-machete), made up of animist and Christian fighters, emerged to fight off the new leadership.

They also targeted the country’s Muslim minority, seen as sympathetic to the Seleka.

The country has been run by a transitional government since January 2014, after the Seleka were forced out of the capital.

Over the past five months, thousands have been returning to CAR as the situation in the country was seen to be improving, but the recent violence is likely to undo a lot of the efforts being put into rebuilding the nation.

“More than half the districts of the Central African Republic continue to be controlled by the Seleka coalition and its allies, who have not allowed a return of the national administration to the areas they control,” Peter Bouckaert, emergency director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Bouckaert told Al Jazeera that the bloodshed may have reduced over the last twelve months, but attributed the drop in violence to the fact that most Muslims had been “forced to flee [and] not because the war is over”.

Bouckaert said that despite the obvious weaknesses of hosting presidential polls under the current conditions, the EU and France continue to push for the elections.

“The danger is that they see a quick and flawed election as an excuse to once again abandon the Central African Republic, with a claim that the country will then have made a ‘democratic transition’,” Bouckaert said.

“A very large percentage of the population, particularly Muslims living in refugee camps in Chad and Cameroon, but also many rural people, have not even been registered to vote yet, and preparation for a national vote has been minimal,” he said.

The UN says more than half the country’s population are still in need of aid, while 1.5 million people were affected by food insecurity.

In early August, the UN said that only 31 percent of the humanitarian appeal for the CAR had been secured. Aurelien Agbenonci, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in CAR, told Al Jazeera at the time that if more support was not forthcoming, the UN “won’t be able to continue humanitarian activities till the end of the year”.

Dozens of refugees die as boat sinks off Libyan coast

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Official in Zuwarah says many of the hundreds on board the boat appear to have been trapped in the cargo hold.

boat-sinks-off-libya

by Al Jazeera

A boat reportedly packed with people from Africa and South Asia bound for Italy has sunk off the Libyan coast, raising fears that dozens have died.

A security official in Zuwarah, a town in the North African nation’s west from where the overcrowded boat had set off, said on Thursday there were about 400 people on board.

While an official death toll has not been announced, sources told Al Jazeera that dozens of people died in the incident, with many reported to have been trapped in the cargo hold when the boat capsized.

By late in the evening, the Libyan coastguard had rescued about 201 people, of which 147 were brought to a detention facility for “illegal migrants” in Sabratha, west of the capital Tripoli, the security official was cited by Reuters news agency as saying.

Another local official and a journalist based in Zuwarah confirmed the sinking but also had no information on casualties.

The people on board had been from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco, and Bangladesh, the Libyan security official said.

The Italian coastguard, which has been coordinating rescue operations with the European Union off the Libyan coast, could not confirm a sinking.

Libya’s coastguard has very limited capabilities, relying on small inflatables, tug boats and fishing vessels.

Al Jazeera’s Claudio Lavanga, reporting from Rome, said according to accounts by survivors, most of the people who had died were locked inside the hold of the boat.

“We’ve seen this many times before, only a few days before 50 refugees died because they were held in the hold,” Lavanga said.

“Sometimes they die of suffocation and sometimes they drown because they can’t escape after the boat capsizes…these are people who don’t have the money to pay for a ‘deck’ position.”

Smugglers’ launchpad

Zuwarah, Libya’s most western town located near the Tunisian border, is a major launchpad for smugglers shipping refugees and migrants to Italy.

Libya has turned into a transit route for people fleeing conflict and poverty to make it to Europe.

Cross-border smuggler networks exploit the country’s lawlessness and chaos to bring Syrians into Libya via Egypt or nationals of sub-Saharan countries via Niger, Sudan, and Chad.

More than 2,300 people have died this year in attempts to reach Europe by boat, compared with 3,279 during the whole of last year, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Anas El Gomati, who founded the Tripoli-based think-tank The Sadeq Institute, said Libya’s government does not feel it should be helping pay the bill to deal with refugees making their way to Europe as it is facing continued violence across the country.

“Libya’s security approach – and security apparatus – is now completely disorganised and in chaos,” he said.

“You have hundreds of different groups that are operating on the ground now, some of them taking advantage of a very, very chaotic situation – one of civil war.”

On Thursday, 71 refugees were found dead in a parked lorry in Austria near the Hungarian border on Thursday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the discovery had shaken European leaders discussing the refugee crisis at a Balkans summit.

Libya has been struggling to cope with an influx of foreigners, putting them in overcrowded makeshift detention facilities such as schools or military barracks where they live in poor conditions lacking medical care.

Libya used to deport people it caught but with fighting between armed groups having cut off land border crossings to Niger, Algeria, and Chad many stay months or years in detention facilities.

Man kills self after deadly attack on US journalists

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President Obama mourns loss of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, who were shot dead by Vester Lee Flanagan while live on air.

Parker, left, was conducting an interview about tourism on Bridgewater Plaza in Franklin County before her and Ward were killed [WDBJ7]

Parker, left, was conducting an interview about tourism on Bridgewater Plaza in Franklin County before her and Ward were killed [WDBJ7]

by Al Jazeera

A man who shot dead a reporter and a cameraman for WDBJ7, a local CBS affiliate, live on air in the US state of Virginia has died of a self-inflicted wound in hospital.

Franklin County sheriff, Bill Overton, told a news conference on Wednesday that the suspect had died at Inova Fairfax hospital in northern Virginia.

Overton offered no motive for the shootings and said the investigation would be lengthy.

After leaving the scene, former WDBJ7 employee Vester Lee Flanagan, also known as Bryce Williams, crashed his car on the I-66 highway in Faquier County.

He was located by police and found to be suffering from a gunshot wound. Flanagan, 41, later died in hospital.

Earlier on Wednesday, live on air, shots could be heard in footage taken by WDBJ7 cameraman Adam Ward, 27, before he dropped to the ground.

Alison Parker, 24, who also died, was conducting an interview about tourism on Bridgewater Plaza in Franklin County before at least eight shots rang out. The woman being interviewed was also wounded in the attack.

‘I filmed the shooting’

US President Barack Obama told ABC 6 that it breaks his heart to hear “every time you read or hear about these kinds of incidents”.

“What we know is that the number of people who die from the gun related incidents around this country dwarfs any deaths that happen through terrorism,” Obama said.

Hours after the shooting, someone claiming to be Flanagan posted video online of the shooting that appeared to be from the shooter’s vantage point.

The videos were posted to a Twitter account and on Facebook by a man identifying himself as Bryce Williams, which was Flanagan’s on-air name.

The videos were removed shortly afterwards. One video clearly showed a handgun as the person filming approached Parker.

The person purporting to be Flanagan also posted “I filmed the shooting see Facebook,” as well as saying one of the victims had “made racist comments”.

Flanagan had sued another station where he worked in Florida, alleging he had been discriminated against because he was black.

ABC News reported on its website that it had received a 23-page fax from someone claiming to be Bryce Williams some time between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.

The network turned the fax over to authorities, it said, without giving details on its contents.

Reduced to just 75 lbs, US says Gitmo hunger striker “Not Sick” enough for hospitalization

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Lawyers for languishing detainee say their client is near death, but government has fought to keep details secret

Tariq Ba Odah at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a photo provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents him.

Tariq Ba Odah at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a photo provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents him.

by Jon Queally, Common Dreams

The U.S. Department of Justice has argued to a federal judge that a hunger-striking Guantánamo inmate who weighs just 74 pounds “is not sick enough” to be hospitalized and that his petition for release must be rejected because, if granted, it could encourage other detainees to also starve themselves to near death in protest of their endless detention at the offshore prison.

According to new reporting by the Miami Herald‘s Carol Rosenberg, citing a recently unsealed court filing, the DOJ argued that Tariq Ba Odah, who has been held at the U.S. Navy-run prison for over 13 years without charge or trial, should be held longer even as his weight has dropped from 135 pounds, when he first started his strike in 2007, to approximately 74 pounds as of July 15 — just 56 percent of his ideal body weight.

Ba Odah is among those who have been force-fed as a result of their multi-year hunger strike. Doctors and human rights experts have called the force-feeding process a form of torture.

In June, Rosenberg reports, Ba Odah’s lawyers wrote to a fedeal judge that their client “teeters on the precipice of death — his body struggling, but ultimately failing, to properly absorb the liquid nutrients he is being force fed.”

The DOJ, however, countered by saying the man was solely responsible for his condition, brought about by his voluntary refusal to eat. The government cast his “underlying medical condition” as “self-inflicted” and said his “current possible consequences are all due to his seven-year hunger strike.”

Citing the court filing, Rosenberg continued:

Justice Department lawyers argued that a release order was not legally justified and could cause other captives to try to starve themselves at the remote detention center.

“Granting petitioner’s requested relief could have the unintended consequence of encouraging similar actions by other detainees to effectuate court-ordered release,” U.S. government attorneys wrote in a footnote on page 27 of their brief filed Aug. 14 and released by the court Monday.

Ba Odah is the public face of a long-running hunger strike at the Pentagon prison, whose commanders refuse to disclose how many of its 116 detainees are currently protesting by refusing to eat. In the summer of 2013, more than 100 captives were on hunger strike and 46 of them were designated for restraint-chair forced-feedings by U.S. Navy medical staff.

At the time the DOJ’s filing was submitted, the Center for Constitutional Right’s Omar Farah, who represents Ba Odah, slammed the government for its continued mistreatment of his client and the overall secrecy surrounding the treatment of those on hunger strike.

The government’s action in the case, said Farah in a statement, “is a transparent attempt to hide the fact that the Obama administration’s interagency process for closing Guantánamo is an incoherent mess, and it is plainly intended to conceal the inconsistency between the administration’s stated intention to close Guantánamo and the steps taken to transfer cleared men.  The administration simply wants to avoid public criticism and accountability.”

Calling the government’s secrecy surrounding the government’s petition against Ba Odah unnecessary, Farah continued by saying “there is nothing sensitive about this pivotal moment that needs to be withheld from the public.  Mr. Ba Odah’s grave medical condition is not in dispute.  Given that he has been cleared since 2009, there is no dispute about whether he should be approved for transfer.  All the president has to decide is whether to exercise his discretion not to contest the motion and release Mr. Ba Odah so that he does not die.”

Reporting on the case of Ba Odah earlier this month, The Intercept’s Murtaza Hussain discussed some of the deeper dynamics that have left the 30-year-old Yemeni national under lock and key despite never being convicted of a crime and the fact that he is now among more than fifty other detainees who have received approval to be release to a foreign country:

The heart of the dispute in Ba-Odah’s case is believed to be his physical deterioration, which is the result of a hunger strike. Like several other Guantánamo prisoners, Ba-Odah has refused to eat or drink, in protest of his continued indefinite detention. In response, the government has for years subjected him to a force-feeding procedure that it maintains is both healthy and medically appropriate. The government has also fought tenaciously to keep it from public scrutiny.

Last month, a frustrated judge ordered the government to release video footage of the feeding sessions, characterizing repeated government appeals on this issue as “frivolous.”

There is precedent for releasing prisoners in grave medical condition. In 2013, Ibrahim Othman Ibrahim Idris was released from Guantánamo on medical grounds, after the government chose not to oppose a habeas petition by his lawyers that cited his “severe long-term mental illness and physical illness.” However, to do the same in Ba-Odah’s case would amount to an admission by the government that its controversial force-feeding program is ineffective at keeping hunger-striking prisoners in proper physical health. Despite force-feeding Ba-Odah for years, he is wasting away, with doctors stating that his body is cannibalizing its own internal organs for sustenance.

Farah says that on his last visit to see him in July, Ba-Odah was in “disastrous” physical condition, and that continued government contestation of his habeas petition could end up being tantamount to a death sentence. “The government has maintained that it can maintain the health of hunger-striking prisoners by force-feeding them, something that Ba-Odah’s condition clearly disproves,” Farah says. “His case in particular brings to light some of the darkest failings of Guantánamo.”

UK petition to arrest Netanyahu for Gaza war crimes reaches over 80,000 signatures

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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu © Sebastian Scheiner / Reuters

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu © Sebastian Scheiner / Reuters

by RT

A petition calling on the UK government to arrest Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes in Gaza when he arrives in London has garnered more than 80,000 signatures. But David Cameron’s government says no way: Netanyahu has diplomatic immunity.

The petition, posted on the UK government’s website, has already been signed by some 81,000 Brits. Its initiator, Damian Moran, claims that under international law, the Israeli prime minister can be detained when he comes to the British capital in September “for the massacre of over 2,000 [Palestinian] civilians” during the 51-day offensive by the Israeli Defense Force in Gaza last year. The number of signatures has doubled in the last two weeks.

If the petition garners 100,000 signatures by February 7, 2016, the UK parliament is required by law to debate it. However, Moran, the petition’s author, said he “doesn’t expect him [Netanyahu] to get arrested because of the universal jurisdiction laws.” He added: “It is a clear message to him that there’s a massive amount of people who don’t want him here.”

The UK government was required to provide an official answer to the petition as soon as it gathered 10,000 signatures. It replied: “Under UK and international law, visiting heads of foreign governments, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have immunity from legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained.”   “We recognise that the conflict in Gaza last year took a terrible toll,” the government statement added. “[A]s the Prime Minister said, we were all deeply saddened by the violence and the UK has been at the forefront of international reconstruction efforts.”   The UK recognizes Israel’s right to “take proportionate action to defend itself,” within the “boundaries of international humanitarian law” and British government condemns the “terrorist tactics” of Hamas, who “fired rockets on Israel, built extensive tunnels to kidnap and murder, and repeatedly refused to accept ceasefires,” the statement said. Like any state, Israel has the right to ensure its own security, as its citizens also have the right to “live without fear of attack,” it added, stressing that the UK is a close ally of Israel’s and the two countries enjoy an “excellent bilateral relationship.”

Israel’s embassy in London dismissed the petition as a “meaningless publicity stunt.”

The military action, Operation Protective Edge, was launched on July 8, 2014 against Hamas-ruled Gaza, and resulted in deaths of over 2,000 Palestinians, including 551 children. Sixty-six Israeli soldiers died in the operation.

Record number of refugees enter Hungary from Serbia

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More than 2,000 refugees crossed frontier on Monday, just days before Hungary completes a border fence.

After crossing Serbia, refugees enter Hungary to continue their journey to western and northern EU countries [EPA]

After crossing Serbia, refugees enter Hungary to continue their journey to western and northern EU countries [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

A record number of refugees streamed into EU member Hungary from Serbia, police said, just days before Hungary completes a border fence.

A total of 2,093 potential asylum seekers, the highest ever daily total, crossed the border near the Hungarian town of Roszke, a police statement said on Monday.

They were part of a wave of around 8,000 refugees whose journey to the European Union had been blocked last week when Macedonia declared a state of emergency and closed its borders after being overwhelmed by the huge influx of people, amid Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Many refugees said they had passed through Serbia after travelling through Macedonia’s border with Greece.

“We were stopped in Macedonia for two days, the riots were terrible, police used guns and tear gas, I saw an old woman beaten, her money and papers taken,” a 29-year-old IT engineer from Mosul in Iraq told the AFP news agency.

Al Jazeera’s Djordge Kostic, reporting near the border with Hungary, said an estimated 1,500 refugees are currently staying at 28 shelters set up by the UN and Russian-Serbian aid organisation in the city of Kanjiza.

He said the refugee situation at Kanjiza is “better organised” than in other parts of Serbia.

“There water, food, toilet and shower stalls provided to them. They even have Wi-Fi,” he said.

From there, the refugees can proceed to Horgos, about 12-km away, where they can take the train to Hungary, our correspondent said.

Meanwhile,Al Jazeera’s Aljosa Milenkovic, reporting from Presevo on the Serbia-Macedonia border, said more refugees were likely to come, “putting to test the region’s ability to cope with the large number of people transiting through”.

The latest movements came as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Fracois Hollande called for a unified system for the right to asylum, and the setting up of reception centres in Greece and Italy.

The issue is set to top the agenda at a summit of Balkan leaders on Thursday, which Merkel will attend.

Razor-wire fence

Hungary has registered more than 100,000 asylum seekers so far in 2015, over double the total for all of last year. In 2012, the figure was just 2,000.

The numbers have sharply increased to around 1,500 a day in August, after Hungary’s conservative government announced it would build a razor-wire fence along its southern border with Serbia.

In recent days, refugees have entered Hungary alongside a cross-border train track near Roszke, one of the few sections of the border with Serbia not yet blocked by three rolls of razor-wire, which the government says will completely seal off the border by August 31.

The fence is one of several measures making it more difficult for refugees to enter and stay in Hungary. The government is also tightening asylum laws, introducing penalties for illegal border-crossing, and the planned closure of permanent refugee camps.

About 102,000 “migrants” entered the EU via Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro or Kosovo between January and July this year, versus just 8,000 for the same period in 2014, according to EU border agency Frontex.

The number of refugees now making their way from Greece towards the EU is worrying many EU politicians and has left the Balkan countries struggling to cope with the humanitarian crisis.

China stocks suffer biggest one-day loss in eight years

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China market plummets more than eight percent as investors disillusioned with measures taken dump shares.

EPA/WOO HE

EPA/WOO HE

by Al Jazeera

China’s stock market has fallen by its biggest margin in eight years at the end of trading, defying the government’s multibillion-dollar effort to stop a slide that has wiped out the gains of this year’s price boom.

The plunge on Monday in China’s equities followed last week’s losses of 11 percent, and hammered stock prices across Asia, as fears grew that a slowdown in China could send the rest of the world into a recession.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.5 percent to close at 3,209.91 points, its biggest one-day loss since an 8.8 percent decline on February 27, 2007. The index is down 38 percent from its June 12 peak.

Analysts blame the fall on both weak onshore performance and investors moving money out of yuan-denominated assets after a surprise devaluation in the Chinese currency earlier in August.

The further decline threatened to weigh anew on global markets after last week’s Chinese losses triggered a worldwide selloff.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell for the seventh straight day, dropping 5.2 percent to 21,251.57 points as Taipei stocks tumbled 583.85 points to 7,203.07 in morning trading, a drop of 7.49 percent.

More than $5 trillion has been wiped off the value of global equities markets since China’s shock devaluation.

Many investors had expected the People’s Bank of China would over the weekend cut the amount banks have to keep in reserves, which could boost stocks by increasing market liquidity and address weakness in China’s vast manufacturing sector.

No such move materialised, and the only policy support in evidence was an announcement formalising rules allowing pension funds to buy stocks, a policy initiative that had already been trailed.

Earlier measures taken

Beijing already carried out rounds of cuts to transaction fees and encouraged companies to buy back their own stock. Such buybacks usually result in increased valuations of outstanding shares by reducing net supply.

Rajiv Biswas, a senior director and economist for IHS Global Insight in Singapore, told Al Jazeera that Beijing needs to do more to prop up the economy.

“It doesn’t seem that they are prepared to really put in a big package of measures, but would rather put in dribs and drabs along the way. And that is not convincing anybody that the economy is about the turn around anytime soon,” he said.

“One of the problems is that they are directing their efforts towards stabilising the stock market. But we are not seeing enough initiatives to support the real economy,” Biswas added.

“It’s the real economy that investors in the country are not confident about. All the signs are showing that the economy is cooling.”

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said that malaise on the markets could continue as investors awaited US gross domestic product or GDP figures set for release this week, and a decision on whether the US Federal Reserve would lift interest rates.

Monday’s falls followed heavy falls on Wall Street on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting its worst single-day session in four years and all benchmark indices losing more than three percent.

Iraqi forces clash with ISIL in push for Anbar

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Dozens of casualties reported as army backed by militias expand offensive to retake western province.

Iraqi forces and loyalists launched an offensive to recapture Anbar province in July [Reuters]

Iraqi forces and loyalists launched an offensive to recapture Anbar province in July [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Dozens of Iraqi forces have reportedly been killed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq’s Anbar province, which has witnessed heavy fighting since Iraqi forces launched an offensive in July.

Three car bombs in Al Toui, northwest of Ramadi, killed at least 18 Iraqi forces and members of the Popular Mobilisation Forces on Monday, sources told Al Jazeera.

A total death toll of 46 Iraqi forces and Popular Mobilisation Forces has been reported following days of heavy clashes in several areas as Iraqi forces advanced in their offensive to recapture Anbar province.

At least seven ISIL fighters have been killed, military sources said.

Karim al-Nouri, a spokesman for the Popular Mobilisation Forces, an umbrella organisation of mainly Shia militiamen, said the operation to recapture Anbar has been difficult but the forces have been able to advance towards Ramadi, the capital of Anbar.

“We entered from near Fallujah and pushed northwest of the city. We lost forces along the way but the army and several government hospitals have been a great help,” al-Nouri told Al Jazeera.

“Our aim is to trap ISIL, and it is no longer about who outnumbers who – it’s about the type of weapons being used and we are prepared.”

Al-Nouri said a large number of Iraqi soldiers, moblisation forces and tribal fighters were taking part in the operation.

Significant province

ISIL captured Ramadi in early May and controls most of Anbar, including the city of Fallujah.

Anbar stretches from Iraq’s western borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia all the way east along the Euphrates to the outskirts of Baghdad.

Iraqi forces and loyalists launched an offensive to recapture Anbar province in July, and have been trying to enter the province from several points but have been met with strong resistance from ISIL.

On Friday, ISIL ambushed Iraqi forces and loyalists west of Ramadi, killing up to 50 soldiers.

Anbar has been rocked by violence since the beginning of 2014, months before ISIL launched a nationwide offensive that saw it advance through northern Iraq.

It is currently the main focus of the Iraqi government’s efforts to regain lost ground, with large military operations under way in several parts of the province and multiple daily air strikes by jets from the US-led coalition.

Thousands stuck in limbo at Macedonia border bottleneck

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Rain-soaked refugees brave elements in no man’s land as Macedonian police continue to block border crossing from Greece.

A Syrian refugee woman cries on her husbands arms as they wait to cross into Macedonia at the Greek-Macedonian border [Reuters]

A Syrian refugee woman cries on her husbands arms as they wait to cross into Macedonia at the Greek-Macedonian border [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Thousands of rain-soaked refugees remain trapped in a no man’s land between Greece and Macedonia as Macedonian police continue to block the frontier, preventing them from heading north to other nations within the European Union.

Police let small groups of families with children cross the border overnight on Friday by walking to a railway station in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, where most take trains to the border with Serbia before heading towards EU-member Hungary.

Those who could not cross, including many women and children, spent the rainy and chilly night in the open, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Idomeni on the Greek side of the border, said people were continuing to arrive at the border crossing, where a “bottleneck” had formed on Saturday morning.

“This is now a bottleneck of people, there are hundreds, thousands even, and they’ll keep coming throughout the day,” he said.

Our correspondent said large numbers of Syrians had moved back from the point of crossing to separate themselves from other nationalities.

“They want to separate themselves from the other nationalities; the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Iraqis…what they say is that all these other nationalities claim to be Syrians as well, because it is the Syrians who have the most valid claim to asylum.

“They are refugees, they are fleeing civil war. Many of the others, they say, are economic migrants.”

Violent clashes

Police fired stun grenades and clashed with the migrants who tried to rush over the border on Friday, a day after Macedonia’s government declared a state of emergency on the frontier to deal with the issue.

Ivo Kotevsky, a spokesman for the interior ministry, told Al Jazeera that the officers had not used violence against the refugees but had been forced to take measures to protect themselves and the border.

Kotevsky said Macedonia was trying to do its best in protecting the refugees, who had been “practically expelled from Greece”.

The refugees hope that by crossing to Macedonia they would be able to take trains through Serbia to Hungary, an EU member, which has begun erecting a fence to try to keep the distraught refugees out.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged the Macedonian government to do more, saying it should allocate a site to accommodate people fleeing war.

UNHCR spokesman Petros Mastakas told Al Jazeera that the refugees included “hundreds of vulnerable persons, children, babies and those with extreme vulnerabilities including medical needs.

“Most of them stay rough in the open air,” he said.

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