Archives for May 2019

Sri Lankan authorities Monday extended by 48 hours the deadline for the public to surrender swords, daggers, sharp weapons and clothing similar to that of military uniforms as part of a crackdown on suspects following the Easter Sunday bombings which killed over 250 people.

On Saturday, the Sri Lankan police asked the public to hand over swords and large knives to the nearest police station after a large haul of weapons, including swords, and camouflaged materials were recovered during searches of mosques and houses.

“The time period granted to hand in swords, daggers, sharp weapons and clothing similar to that of military uniforms has been extended by 48 hours. The time period set to hand in such objects was to expire at midnight today (Monday),” News 1st channel reported.

The police Head Office has taken all necessary steps to inform the police stations across the country about the extension, police media spokesperson SP Ruwan Gunasekara said.

According to the police, several people including politicians were arrested for possessing sharp-edged weapons like swords since the crackdown began to arrest the suspects and their network, following the April 21 blasts which killed 253 people and injured over 500 others.

The Islamic State terror group claimed the attacks, but the government blamed local Islamist extremist group National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ).

Sri Lanka banned the NTJ and arrested over 100 people in connection with the blasts.

Sri Lanka has imposed a state of emergency since the attacks and given sweeping powers to soldiers and police to arrest and detain suspects for long periods.

House-to-house searches are being carried out across the country looking for explosives and propaganda material of Islamic extremists. 

Agencies

Rockets and missiles from Gaza killed four civilians in Israel, while Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, in surging cross-border fighting on Sunday, according to Gazan officials and the Israeli military.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered the military to continue “massive strikes” against Gaza’s ruling Hamas group and Islamic Jihad in the most serious border clashes since a spate of fighting in November.

Israel’s military said that more than 600 rockets and other projectiles – over 150 of them intercepted by its Iron Dome anti-missile system – had been fired at southern Israeli cities and villages since Friday.

It said it attacked more than 260 targets belonging to Gaza militant groups. Gaza officials said Israeli air strikes and artillery fire killed 27 people, including 14 civilians, since Friday.

A rocket that hit a house in Ashkelon on Sunday killed a 58-year-old man, police said. He was the first such Israeli civilian fatality since the seven-week Gaza war in 2014.

Another rocket strike killed a factory worker, a hospital official said. The military said a civilian was killed near the border by an anti-tank missile fired at his car from Gaza and a fourth died when a rocket struck the city of Ashdod.

In Gaza, militant groups identified eight fighters killed in Israeli strikes, while medical officials said that nine civilians also died, including a couple and their baby daughter.

In what it said was a separate, targeted attack, Israel’s military killed Hamed Ahmed Al-Khodary, a Hamas commander. The military said he was responsible for transferring funds from Iran to armed factions in Gaza. Hamas confirmed Khodary had been killed.

The attack on his car was the first such killing by Israel of a top militant since the war five years ago. Israel had suspended what Palestinians call an assassination policy in an attempt to lower tensions.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh issued a statement late on Sunday saying his group was not seeking a broader conflict and held out the possibility of a ceasefire, although sirens warning of rocket fire continued to sound in Israeli cities into the night.

President Donald Trump expressed full US support for Israel and called for an end to the rocket attacks, saying Gazans would only face more hardship and that it was time to seek peace.

“Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defence of its citizens… To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace – it can happen!,” Trump said in a message on Twitter.

Sirens and explosions

The sounds of sirens and explosions reverberated on both sides of the frontier on Sunday, fraying nerves and keeping schools closed.

Israel halted supplies from its main natural gas field. The Tamar field’s offshore production platform is in range of Palestinian rockets. Israel also stopped fuel imports into Gaza through the main Kerem Shalom crossing.

The latest round of violence began two days ago when an Islamic Jihad sniper fired at Israeli troops, wounding two soldiers, according to the Israeli military.

Islamic Jihad accused Israel of delaying implementation of previous understandings brokered by Egypt in an effort to end violence and ease blockaded Gaza’s economic hardship.

This time, Israeli strategic affairs analysts said, both Islamic Jihad and Hamas militants appeared to believe they had some leverage to press for concessions from Israel, where independence day celebrations begin on Wednesday.

In two weeks, Israel is also hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv, the target of a Gaza rocket attack in March. That attack caused no damage. On Sunday, sirens sounded in the city of Rehovot, 17 km (11 miles) southeast of Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu, who doubles as defence minister, convened his security Cabinet, which issued a statement saying it had ordered the military “to continue its strikes and to prepare for the next stages”.

Ramadan approaching

For residents in Gaza, the escalation comes a day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins in the territory on Monday. It is traditionally a time for prayer, family feasts to break daylight fast and shopping.

Among the 14 Gazan civilians killed since Friday was a 14-month-old child and the child’s aunt, according to the health ministry. Israel’s military said the intelligence information showed they were killed by a misfired Palestinian rocket.

In Gaza, two Palestinian human rights groups described the cause of their deaths as an explosion with an as yet undetermined source.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the firing of rockets into Israel and urged all parties to “exercise maximum restraint”. A U.N. envoy said it was working with Egypt to try to end the fighting.

Israeli bombings in Gaza destroyed four multi-storey structures. Witnesses said the Israeli military had warned people inside to evacuate the buildings, which it alleged housed Hamas security facilities before they were hit.

Saeed Al-Nakhala, an owner of a clothing store in one of the buildings, said he had no time to save his merchandise.

“I was together with my son in the shop, there was a big noise and then another and people started to run. We left everything behind and escaped,” said Nakhala.

Some 2 million Palestinians live in Gaza, the economy of which has suffered years of Israeli and Egyptian blockades as well as recent foreign aid cuts and sanctions by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’ West Bank-based rival.

Israel says its blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, with which it has fought three wars since the group seized control of Gaza in 2007, two years after Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from the area.

Agencies

TV footage shows plane making a crash landing with much of its rear part engulfed in flames.

At least 41 people on board a Russian Aeroflot passenger plane were killed when it caught fire while making an emergency landing at a Moscow airport on Sunday.

Television footage showed the Sukhoi Superjet-100 making the crash landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport with much of the rear part of the plane engulfed in flames.

The harrowing video showed passengers leaping from the front of the burning plane onto an inflatable slide and staggering across tarmac and grass.

At least two children were among the dead, Russian investigators were cited by the Interfax news agency as saying.

Another 11 people were injured, said Dmitry Matveyev, the Moscow region’s health minister. Three were hospitalised but they were not in a serious condition.

The airport said in a statement the plane turned back for unspecified technical reasons and made a hard landing that started the fire.

“Investigators soon will begin interviewing victims, eyewitnesses, airport staff and the airline carrier, as well as other persons responsible for the operation of the aircraft,” Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said.

Seventy-eight on board

News agencies said the Sukhoi aircraft, which had been flying from Moscow to the northern Russian city of Murmansk before turning back, was carrying 73 passengers and five crew members.

“As the aircraft was gaining altitude, about seven minutes into the flight and at about 10,000 feet, the aircraft started to descend,” Anil Padhra, an aerospace engineer, told media.

“This shows that the pilots were aware that something was wrong with the aircraft. They knew that they had to get back to the airport.”

Citing an anonymous source, Interfax said the plane landed with its fuel tanks full because – having lost contact with air traffic controllers – it was too dangerous to dump its fuel tanks over Moscow.

“It attempted an emergency landing but did not succeed the first time, and on the second time the landing gear hit [the ground], then the nose did and it caught fire,” the source said.

The Flightradar24 tracking service showed the aircraft circled twice over Moscow before making the emergency descent and landing after about 45 minutes.

“We had just taken off and the aircraft was hit by lightning… The landing was rough, I almost passed out from fear,” the tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted one passenger, Petr Egorov, as saying.

Agencies