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Pakistan kills 43 suspected Taliban members in airstrikes

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A Pakistani F-16 fighter jet performs in-flight maneuvers. (AFP/File)

A Pakistani F-16 fighter jet performs in-flight maneuvers. (AFP/File)

by Andolu Ajansi

Pakistan’s army has claimed to have killed 43 suspected Taliban fighters in the North Waziristan tribal area on Thursday.

The army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations said air strikes hit the fighters in the Gharala Mae and Shawal valley areas near the Afghanistan border.

More than 160 fighters have been killed in five consecutive days of strikes by the army, which followed the killing of a provincial official in the northeastern Punjab province in a suicide attack on Sunday.

North Waziristan – one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in Pakistan – has been a battleground between the army and the Taliban since June 2014 following a full-scale military onslaught that has killed around 3,000 suspected militants.

The figures cannot be independently verified as the army has declared the area off-limits to journalists.

Over 350 soldiers have also lost their lives in landmine blasts and clashes with the Taliban during this period and the military operation has displaced a million tribesmen from North Waziristan.

Children bearing brunt of war in Yemen, UNICEF says

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Nearly 400 children killed and 377 children recruited as child soldiers since the Saudi-led bombing began in March.

At least 1,950 civilians have been killed in the fighting and 1.3 million others have fled their homes [UNICEF]

At least 1,950 civilians have been killed in the fighting and 1.3 million others have fled their homes [UNICEF]

by Al Jazeera

The conflict in Yemen has killed nearly 400 children since the end of March, and a similar number of children have been recruited by armed groups, according to a new report by the UN children’s agency.

UNICEF’s report released on Wednesday, says that 398 children have been killed and 377 others have been recruited to fight since the Saudi-led coalition began airstrikes in Yemen.

“This conflict is a particular tragedy for Yemeni children,” Julien Harneis, UNICEF Representative in Yemen, said.

“Children are being killed by bombs or bullets and those that survive face the growing threat of disease and malnutrition. This cannot be allowed to continue,” he added.

The UN said that as devastating as the conflict is for the lives of children, it will have terrifying consequences for their future.

On Wednesday, human rights watch dog, Amnesty International, said that all sides fighting in Yemen have left a “trail of civilian death and destruction” in the conflict, killing scores of innocent people in what could amount to war crimes.

The London-based rights group said the violence has been particularly deadly in the southern city of Aden and in Taiz, with dozens of children among those killed.

Yemen’s conflict pits the Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against forces including southern separatists, tribal fighters and troops loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis are leading a US-backed Arab coalition that is carrying out air strikes against Houthi fighters since March.

Civilian death toll

Overall, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday, at least 1,950 civilians have been killed in the fighting and 1,3 million others have fled their homes.

The UN and aid groups have called repeatedly for ways to get food, fuel, medicine and other supplies into Yemen, but tight restrictions imposed by the coalition on air and sea transport remain in place, while Yemen’s exiled government accuses the Houthis of hijacking aid.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world, and its population relies on imports for about 90 percent of its supplies. Attempts at UN-brokered humanitarian pauses to bring in aid have failed.

The new UNICEF report says about 10 million children, or half of the country’s population, need urgent humanitarian assistance.

It also says more than half a million pregnant women in Yemen’s hardest-hit areas are at higher risk for birth or pregnancy complications because they can’t get to medical facilities.

Across the country, nearly 10 million children – 80 percent of the country’s under-18 population – are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance [UNICEF]

UAE allocates land for Abu Dhabi’s first Hindu temple

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Indian Prime Minister Modi lauds decision to provide land for temple during landmark two-day visit to UAE.

modi-uae

by Al Jazeera

The Indian government has lauded a decision by the United Arab Emirates to allocate land for the building of the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi.

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, currently on a two-day trip to the UAE, said in a tweet on Sunday, that he was thankful to the UAE government, describing the move, “a great step”.

There are currently two Hindu temples and one Sikh gurudwara in Dubai, but none in Abu Dhabi.

On Sunday, Modi became the first Indian premier to visit the country in 34 years, meeting with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The trip is seen an important step in burgeoning trade relations between India and the UAE, and the decision to allocate land for a temple in Abu Dhabi underpins the strategic vision of the two nations. The UAE, a federation of seven emirates, is home to about 2.6 million Indian expatriates who comprise a third of the total population and outnumber the local Emirati population. Annual Indian remittances from the UAE are estimated at $14bn. India is the UAE’s second-largest trading partner and the UAE is India’s third largest trading partner behind the US and China. Trade between the two reached $60bn last year.

Samir Saran, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation, a think tank based in Delhi, told Al Jazeera that UAE got it right by allocating land for such a venture.

“There will be those who will think that it is about him [Modi] demanding a temple or pushing a religious agenda. It is none of that. It was simply a case of him being the first leader from India to go to UAE after a long time, and it was a goodwill gesture.

“It is still a relationship centred around trade … Modi certainly didn’t go lobbying for a temple,” Saran said. 

In July 2013, The Times of India, citing a source within the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS), said a Muslim businessman had donated five acres of land for the building of a temple in Abu Dhabi.

According to the source, the move came after the BAPS had traveled to UAE on invitation from the Invest AD group based in the Dubai.

It is not clear if Sunday’s announcement referred to the same land. 

No survivors in Indonesia plane crash, officials say

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Search officials say all 54 on board Trigana Air passenger plane dead, as they find black box on the crash site.

The aircraft was also carrying about $470,000 destined for remote villages [AP]

The aircraft was also carrying about $470,000 destined for remote villages [AP]

by Al Jazeera

Search and rescue teams have found the flight recorder for a Trigana Air passenger aircraft that crashed in eastern Indonesia, killing all 54 on board, according to officials.

“At 1:40 local time the Trigana Air black box was found,” Transportation Ministry official Julius Arivada Barata told the Reuters news agency by text message on Tuesday.

Major-General Heronimus Guru, operations director at Indonesia’s National Search and Rescue Agency, told a news conference in the capital, Jakarta, on the same day that all passengers on the plane were dead and their remains were being put into body bags and recovered.

Officials have declined to comment on the cause of Sunday’s crash until the results of an investigation by the national transport safety committee, but Guru said the terrain in Indonesia’s easternmost province may have been a factor.

“There’s a possibility the aircraft hit a peak and then fell into a ravine because the place that it was found is steep,” Guru said.

Earlier, the National Search and Rescue Agency said the twin turboprop ATR-42-300 probably hit a peak on Sunday before crashing into a ravine in the Bintang Mountains district, about seven nautical miles from Oksibil.

ATR is a joint venture between Airbus and Alenia Aermacchi, a subsidiary of Italian aerospace firm Finmeccanica.

Plane was carrying money

There were 44 adult passengers, five children and infants and five crew on the short-haul flight from provincial capital Jayapura south to Oksibil town.

The aircraft was also carrying about $470,000 destined for remote villages, as part of an assistance programme. There was no suggestion the money was somehow linked to the crash.

Officials from Trigana were not immediately available to respond to questions from Reuters. The airliner has been placed on a European Union list of banned carriers since 2007 over safety or regulatory concerns.

All on board were Indonesian, officials said.

The aircraft made its first flight 27 years ago, the Aviation Safety Network says. Trigana Air Service has a fleet of 14 aircraft, aged 26.6 years on average, according to the airfleets.net database.

Trigana has had 14 serious incidents since it began operations in 1991, online database Aviation Safety Network says. Besides the latest crash, it has written off 10 aircraft.

Indonesia has a patchy aviation record, with other two major crashes in the past year.

In December, an AirAsia flight went down in the Java Sea, killing all 162 aboard. More than 100 people died in June in a crash of a military transport plane.

Egypt adopts controversial anti-terrorism law

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President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approves law that shields police and punishes media for spreading “false” reports.

The law has met support from Sisi's supporters who demand a firm hand to restore stability in the country of 87 million people [EPA]

The law has met support from Sisi’s supporters who demand a firm hand to restore stability in the country of 87 million people [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has approved an anti-terrorism law that sets up special courts and provides protections to its enforcers.

The controversial law, published in the government’s official gazette on Sunday, sets a minimum fine of 200,000 pounds (about $25,000) and a maximum of 500,000 pounds for anyone who strays from government statements in publishing or spreading “false” reports on attacks or security operations against armed fighters.

Critics say the steep fines may shut down smaller newspapers, and deter larger ones from independently reporting on attacks and operations against armed fighters.

It also shields those applying it, such as the military and police, from legal ramifications for the proportionate use of force “in performing their duties.” The law also seeks prison terms for those found guilty of “inciting, or prepared to incite, directly or indirectly, a terrorist act”.

Dalia Fahmy, an assistant professor at Long Island University and a member of the Egyptian Rule of Law Association, told Al Jazeera that any media “that defies the national narrative, will be fined”.

“The law here is a system that is not protecting the citizenry, but rather protecting the state … it is becoming indicative of the consolidation of power in the hands of the executive,” Fahmy said from New York.

Sisi had promised a tougher legal system in July, after a car bomb attack that killed the top public prosecutor, the highest level state official to be killed in years.

Forming or leading a group deemed a “terrorist entity” by the government will be punishable by death or life in prison.

Membership in such a group will carry up to 10 years in jail.

Financing “terrorist groups” will also carry a penalty of life in prison, which in Egypt is 25 years. Inciting violence, which includes “promoting ideas that call for violence” will lead to between five and seven years in jail, as will creating or using websites that spread such ideas

Journalists will be fined for contradicting the authorities’ version of any “terrorist” attack.

Three journalists had already been sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for “defaming” the country and supporting the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood movement.

The retrial of three Al Jazeera journalists – Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste – was adjourned for a tenth time in Egypt on August 2.

Egypt is facing an increasing violence in North Sinai, where one armed group has pledged allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. Cairo and other cities have also witnessed attacks.

Hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been sentenced to death in mass trials since Sisi, a former army chief, overthrew President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

Many of them have won retrials, and Morsi himself, sentenced to death last June, has appealed his verdict.
At least 1,400 people, many of them supporters of Morsi, were killed in a crackdown on protests after his overthrow.

Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, once the most influential grassroots organisation in the country, has been blacklisted as a “terrorist” organisation.

Though criticised by rights activists, the law has met support from Sisi’s many supporters who demand a firm hand to restore stability in the country of 87 million people.

Indonesian plane ‘was carrying nearly $500,000 in cash’

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Search plane spots debris believed from crashed aircraft with 54 people on board, as rescuers prepare search.

The debris thought to be from the Trigana Air Service plane was sighted in the heavily-forested Bintang Mountains region [EPA]

The debris thought to be from the Trigana Air Service plane was sighted in the heavily-forested Bintang Mountains region [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

An Indonesian passenger plane that crashed at the weekend in Papua was transporting about 6.5 billion rupiah ($470,000) in cash to distribute to poor families in the eastern province, a post office official has said.

“Four of our personnel were escorting the funds,” said Haryono, the head of Jayapura post office, who goes by one name. The money was in four bags, he added, according to the AFP news agency.

An Indonesian search and rescue plane spotted debris believed to be from the aircraft that went missing on Sunday with 54 people on board in Papua province.

The wreckage thought to be from the Trigana Air Service plane was sighted on Monday morning in the heavily-forested Bintang Mountains region, local police chief Yunus Wally said.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said a rescue plane had identified smoking wreckage and another smaller plane was on its way to get a closer look.

“At the same time two teams have gone overland but it’s a very mountainous area and they’re not sure how long this journey is going to take to get there,” our correspondent said.

A helicopter may also be sent – depending on what the smaller plane finds – to see if it is possible to land near the crash site.

The Trigana Air Service ATR 42-300 plane’s disappearance is the latest in a string of aviation disasters in Southeast Asia.

The passengers on the plane, reported to be an ATR-42 model, include 44 adults, two children, three toddlers and five crew members.

Hours after the plane’s disappearance, villagers in eastern Indonesia’s Papua region claimed to have found the wreckage, the transport ministry’s director-general of air transportation, Suprasetyo, who goes by one name, said.

“The plane has been found [by villagers]. According to residents, the flight had crashed into a mountain. Verification is still in process,” Suprasetyo said.

According a tweet by Indonesia’s National Agency Search and Rescue agency, the aircraft lost contact while flying over the remote eastern Papua region at 2:55pm local time.

The plane had been scheduled to land at a small airport in Oksibil around 3pm local time (06.00 GMT).

Oksibil is a remote town near the country’s border with Papua New Guinea.

Our correspondent said reports indicated that “the weather was very bad” in Papua at the time the plane was in the air.

“It is also known as quite a spooky area to fly in and planes go missing there.”

On Wednesday, a Cessna propeller plane operated by Indonesian company Komala Air crashed in Papua’s Yahukimo district, killing one person and seriously injuring the five others on board.

Officials suspect that the crash was caused by bad weather.

 

Syria army dropped 2,000 barrel bombs since July: US

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Assad government is seen as becoming reliant on ‘use of barrel bombs as an instrument of terror against innocent Syrian civilians’

Human rights group say barrel bombs are the leading killer in the Syrian war (AFP)

Human rights group say barrel bombs are the leading killer in the Syrian war (AFP)

by Middle East Eye

Syrian forces have dropped more than 2,000 barrel bombs across the country since July, killing hundreds of people, the US ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday.

US envoy Samantha Power called for action to end the use of a type of improvised explosive that has particularly been targeted at the Damascus suburb of Darayya and the southwest region of Zabadani, near the Lebanon border.

“The Assad regime has apparently grown reliant on the repugnant use of barrel bombs as an instrument of terror against innocent Syrian civilians,” Power said in a statement.

“It is long past time for the international community to come together to end the deplorable use of barrel bombs and all other forms of attacks against civilians in Syria.”

The United States, France and Britain have repeatedly accused President Bashar al-Assad’s forces of using helicopters to drop barrels rigged with explosives on civilian areas.

Power condemned the latest wave of indiscriminate bombings that have “killed hundreds of people and destroyed schools, mosques, markets, hospitals and ambulances”.

The UN Security Council is discussing proposals for a resolution on barrel bombs that would increase the pressure on Damascus even though it adopted a resolution in February last year demanding an end to the attacks.

Human rights group say barrel bombs are the leading killer in the war, now in its fifth year, with more than 240,000 people dead.

Syrian opposition in Russia

Meanwhile, Syria’s main opposition group on Thursday insisted that Assad must go as it met with Russia’s foreign minister.

The head of Syria’s National Coalition Khaled Khoja held talks with top diplomat Sergei Lavrov as part of a fresh push by Russia to find a way out of the four-year civil war.

Moscow – one of Assad’s main backers – is pushing a plan for a broader grouping than the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group, to include Syria’s government and its allies.

But Khoja – in Moscow for his first talks since February 2014 – ruled out cooperating with Assad and reiterated demands that the strongman must leave before any transitional government can be set up.

“Bashar Assad has no role in the future of Syria,” Khoja said in an interview with the Interfax news agency translated into Russian.

At the start of the meeting, Lavrov insisted that Russia was working with regional and international players to find a political solution to the crisis and stop Syria from becoming a “hotbed of terrorism”.

“The main thing now is that these interests translate into practical coordinated steps,” Lavrov said.

National Coalition representative Badr Jamous described the visit as “very good,” Russian Interfax reported after the sit-down.

“There were many issues where we agreed with the Russian representatives,” Jamous was quoted as saying.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir rejected calls to work with Assad against IS after a meeting with Lavrov in Moscow on Tuesday.

The spate of meetings is part of a broader diplomatic flurry that saw Lavrov sit down with Jubeir and US Secretary of State John Kerry in Doha earlier this month.

As part of the push, Lavrov is expected to meet with the head of a newer grouping of opposition figures known as the Cairo Conference Committee on Friday.

On Wednesday, Russia’s top Middle East envoy met in Moscow with the head of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) Saleh Muslim to discuss the mooted anti-IS coalition and attempts to unite Syria’s opposition groups.

Syria’s opposition and Western officials have hinted that Moscow’s backing for Assad may be wavering, but Moscow insists it remains firmly behind the Syrian leader.

Kerry complains to Moscow about Iran general’s visit

Meanwhile, Kerry called Lavrov on Thursday to express concern about a visit to Moscow by the commander of Iran’s covert forces, a senior State Department official said.

General Qassem Suleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ foreign operations, reportedly visited Russia late last month despite being subject to UN-backed international sanctions.

A State Department spokesman said on Wednesday the United States had confirmed the trip had taken place and said US officials would raise their concerns with Russia at an upcoming New York meeting on violent extremism.

“Secretary Kerry also raised his concerns about the travel to Moscow by IRGC Commander Qassem Suleimani,” the senior official said on Thursday, outlining a call between the two diplomats.

Suleimani is one of several Iranian officials targeted by a 2007 United Nations travel ban because of their alleged links to Iran’s nuclear or ballistic missile programmes.

Despite the recent deal struck by Iran and world powers on its nuclear programme, the targeted sanctions against Suleimani and many of his colleagues remain in effect.

Suleimani has also been sighted visiting Iranian-backed forces in Iraq.

Palestinian prisoner on hunger strike slips into coma

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Mohammed Allaan, who has been on a hunger strike for 60 days, is now on mechanical respiratory support, his lawyer says.

The Red Cross warned last week that hunger-striking Mohammed Allaan's life is in immediate danger [AFP]

The Red Cross warned last week that hunger-striking Mohammed Allaan’s life is in immediate danger [AFP]

by Basma Atassi, Al Jazeera

A Palestinian prisoner who has been on hunger strike for the past 60 days has now entered into a state of coma, his lawyer told Al Jazeera.

Mohammed Allaan, an alleged “Islamic Jihad” member, stopped eating in June to protest against being held by Israeli authorities without charge.

Israeli authorities have transferred Allaan from one hospital to another after they struggled to find a medic who would feed or examine the prisoner without his will.

Medics at Barzilai Medical Centre, where Allaan is being cared for, have refused to force-feed him, but are injecting his body with supplements essential for his survival.

“Mohammed slipped into a coma last night,” his lawyer Jamil el-Khatib told Al Jazeera on Friday. “He is on mechanical respiratory support now,” he said.

Allaan’s mother is at the hospital along with a few activists, but no one is allowed to see him.

The Red Cross last week warned that Allaan’s life is in immediate danger, and called upon Israeli authorities to allow his mother to visit him in hospital.

Allan was arrested in November 2014 and placed under administrative detention for two six-month periods.

He has been on hunger strike to protest his administrative detention, a controversial measure that allows Israel to detain suspects without charge for long periods.

There were fears by human rights organisations that he would be force-fed after Israel’s parliament last month passed into law the ability to force-feed prisoners on hunger strike.

Israeli group Physician for Human Rights said the government’s sanctioning of force-feeding “pushes the medical community to severely violate medical ethics for political gains, as was done in other dark regimes in history”.

The UN labelled hunger strikes “a fundamental human right”.

Saudi Arabia rejects Russian calls to work with Assad against IS

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Saudi Arabia Russian

by Dawn

Moscow: Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister on Tuesday poured cold water on Russian calls to join forces with the Syrian authorities against the self-styled Islamic State, insisting it would never work with President Bashar al Assad.

Moscow — one of Assad’s few remaining allies — has called for coordination between the Syrian government and members of an international coalition fighting the extremist group, which controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.

But Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al Jubeir insisted there would be no cooperation with the Syrian government after meeting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

“As for a coalition in which Saudi Arabia would participate with the government of Syria, then we need to exclude that. It is not part of our plans,” Jubeir said in comments translated into Russian.

“Our position has not changed… there is no place for Assad in the future of Syria,” Jubeir said.

“We think that Bashar al Assad is part of the problem, not part of the solution.” Saudi Arabia is part of a US-led coalition that began an air campaign against IS in Syria last September.

Russia supports Assad while Saudi Arabia insists he must step down to help end a four-year conflict that has cost over 240,000 lives.

Pakistan police officers held in child-abuse probe

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Three officers transferred amid scandal over abuse of hundreds of children for nearly a decade in Punjab province.

People have protested in the wake of the scandal calling for action against perpetrators [AFP]

People have protested in the wake of the scandal calling for action against perpetrators [AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Three Pakistani police officers have been transferred to other districts over accusations of negligence amid a deepening scandal over a paedophile ring alleged to have abused hundreds of children for nearly a decade, officials say.

A prominent family in the central Punjabi village of Husain Khan Wala allegedly used guns, knives and axes to force children – some as young as five – to perform sex acts on video, which they then sold or used to extort money from the victims’ families, villagers said.

This weekend, the prime minister pledged an investigation after Pakistani media covered protests by parents claiming that police in the district of Kasur had not investigated their complaints.

The officers were removed from their posts “for their negligence on the Kasur sex scandal”, Nabeela Ghazanfar, a spokesperson for the provincial police, told Reuters news agency on Wednesday.

Rai Babar, the district police chief, and two deputy superintendents were reassigned out of the district. Police in Pakistan are rarely sacked.

Parents told Reuters that police had refused to register some complaints and treated some of the victims “like criminals”.

The police have arrested 14 suspects so far. Seven cases have been registered against them for alleged sodomy, kidnapping and torture, Muhammad Amin, a police official, said.

The accused would be tried in an anti-terrorism court, Amin said. Law enforcement officials frequently use the anti-terror courts to bypass Pakistan’s moribund judicial system.

On Monday, opposition politicians criticised the ruling party over the scandal in Punjab, the country’s biggest and wealthiest province and the political heartland of the ruling party.

Shahbaz Sharif, Punjab’s chief minister and the brother of the prime minister, said on Tuesday that he was “personally monitoring” the case.

“We will not let anyone involved in this incident escape the law and justice. All victims and their families will be provided every possible assistance to identify culprits without any fear,” he said in a statement on his Facebook page.

Parents in Kasur have protested that police in the district in Punjab did not investigate their complaints [The Associated Press]

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