London: Muslim residents observing Ramadan have been hailed as heroes after they helped save many sleeping neighbours from the horrific Grenfell Tower fire.

Residents who had stayed up for Sehri (pre-dawn meal) saw the inferno break out just before 1 a.m.

After sensing the smoke smell about an hour after midnight Tuesday, the fasting Muslims came out of their homes and began running around, frantically knocking on neighbours’ doors to wake them up, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

They were dubbed a “lifeline” in helping to get people out of their flats even as fire alarms and sprinklers failed to work in the west London block, the daily reported.

Khalid Suleman Ahmed, who lived on the eighth floor of Grenfell Tower, said: “No fire alarms went off and there were no warning. I was playing PlayStation waiting to eat suhuur when I smelt smoke.

“I got up and looked out of my window and saw the seventh floor smoking. I woke my auntie up, then got clothes on and started knocking on neighbours’ doors.”

Rashida, a resident, told Sky News how fasting Muslims may have saved lives in the tower block as many of them were awake.

“Most Muslims now observing Ramadan will normally not go to bed until about 2 a.m., maybe 2.30 a.m., when they have their late night last meal. They do their last prayer.

“So most of the families around here would have been awake,” she said.

Nadia Yousuf, 29, also said that Muslim residents were among the first to alert neighbours to the blaze as they woke up to prepare to break their fast.

A number of Islamic cultural centres and mosques like the Al-Manaar Mosque opened their doors to help those affected.

The nearby St. Clement’s and St. James’ church and local Sikh temples also opened their doors to people who were evacuated.

A woman near the scene told reporters: “If it wasn’t for all these young Muslim boys around here helping us coming from the mosque, a lot more people would have been dead.

“They were the first people with bags of water giving to people and helping, running and telling people.”

Andre Barroso, 33, told The Independent: “Muslims played a big part in getting a lot of people out. Most of the people I could see were Muslim. They have also been providing food and clothes.”

Twenty people are fighting for their lives in a critical condition with 78 people taken to six different hospitals across London.

(IANS)

London: Several people have died and over 50 people have been hospitalized after a huge fire ripped through a 24-storey London apartment block early on Wednesday, according to emergency services.

Firefighters were alerted to the blaze at Grenfell Tower, an apartment block located in the neighbourhood of Kensington, shortly after Tuesday midnight, reports Efe news.

London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton said that a number of people are thought to have died.

“I am very sad to confirm that there have been a number of fatalities. I cannot confirm the number at this time due to the size and complexity of this building. It would clearly be wrong for me to speculate further.

“In my 29 years of being a firefighter I have never ever seen anything of this scale,” Cotton said.

Councilor Nick Paget-Brown, who represents the area in which Grenfell Tower is located, said the tower block contains some 120 individual apartments, many of which house young families, meaning the number of people trapped by the blaze could run into the hundreds.

Some 200 firefighters and 40 fire trucks were deployed to the scene and emergency workers were battling to get the fire under control.

London’s Ambulance Service (LAS) said over 50 patients had been taken to five different hospitals across London following the blaze.

LAS Assistant Director Stuart Crichton said: “Over 100 of our medics are working hard to respond to this incident, including ambulance crews, advanced paramedics, advanced trauma teams from London’s Air Ambulance and those staff managing the incident in our special operations centre.”

Investigators were working to establish the cause of the blaze.

London’s Metropolitan Police, who also confirmed that there had been several fatalities, said that “a number of people” were being treated for a range of injuries and smoke inhalation and that “residents were continuing to be evacuated” from the tower.

Police have closed off roads nearby and asked people to avoid the area.

An earlier report said that at least 600 people were believed to have been inside the flats when the fire began.

Residents who escaped spoke of others trapped and screaming for help, with some holding children from windows and others jumping from upper floors, the Telegraph newspaper reported.

Pictures from the scene showed flames engulfing the block and a plume of smoke visible across the capital, while others showed residents looking out of windows in the block.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called it a “major incident”.

Paul Munakr, who lives on the seventh floor, managed to escape.

“As I was going down the stairs, there were firefighters, truly amazing firefighters that were actually going upstairs, to the fire, trying to get as many people out of the building as possible,” he told the BBC.

A witness, Jody Martin, said: “I watched one person falling out, I watched another woman holding her baby out the window… hearing screams.”

(IANS)

High court to rule on ban barring entry to people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

The legal battle has been taken to the US Supreme Court [File: David Ryder/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

The US administration has asked the Supreme Court to revive its controversial ban on travellers from six Muslim-majority countries, despite repeated setbacks in the lower courts that found it was discriminatory.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on March 6, barring people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government put in place stricter visa screening.

Last week, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, maintained a block on the ban, stating that Trump’s travel policy was rooted in “intolerance”.

A similar ruling against Trump’s policy from a Hawaii-based federal judge is still in place and will be reviewed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We have asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and are confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism,” Sarah Isgur Flores, spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said.

“The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the legal groups challenging the ban, tweeted in response: “We’ve beat this hateful ban and are ready to do it again.”

The National Immigration Law Center also said it was “ready to keep fighting” the “unconstitutional ban”.

Many others took to Twitter to express similar views:

At least five votes are needed on the nine-justice court in order to grant a stay. The court has a five-four conservative majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy – a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s four liberals – the frequent swing vote.

Another of the court’s conservatives, Neil Gorsuch, was appointed by Trump this year.

If the government’s request is granted, the ban would go into effect, but Peter Matthews, professor of political science at Cypress College, predicted that the Supreme Court would not allow Trump’s “discriminatory” to be reinstated.

“The Supreme Court ruling will be the final say on this idea of equal protection under the law and non-discrimination based on religion,” he told Al Jazeera from Los Angeles.

“It’s a very important basic principle of America, and I think even the conservatives justices, at least one or two of them … will side with the argument that liberty is so important that you cannot ban a group of people just because of their faith in a blanket way – it’s absolutely unconstitutional, in my view.”

Trump issued a first travel ban order on January 27, just a week after taking office. It led to chaos and protests at airports before it was blocked by courts.

The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16.

During the campaign, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

His administration has argued that the travel ban is needed to prevent “terrorism” in the US, but the ACLU and several other groups, as well as law experts, scholars and activists say that Trump’s statements on the campaign trail and statements from his advisers since he took office make clear that the intent of the policy is to ban Muslims.

“During his campaign, Trump promised a ban on Muslims entering the country. This is discrimination on the basis of religion, which is unconstitutional,” Danielle McLaughlin, a constitutional law scholar, told Al Jazeera in March.

Former ruler of Panama was held in medically induced coma after brain surgery in March.

by Al Jazeera

Manuel Noriega, Panama’s former ruler, has died aged 83, the country’s President, Juan Carlos Varela, announced on Twitter.

Noriega was the country’s military ruler from 1983 to 1989, when he was removed from power by the United States during its invasion of Panama.

“The death of Manuel Antonio Noriega closes a chapter in our history; his daughters and their families deserve a burial in peace,” Varela said.

Noriega was held in a medically induced coma after suffering brain haemorrhaging in March. The haemorrhage occurred after Noriega underwent surgery to have a tumour removed from his brain.

During his rule, Noriega initially positioned Panama as a US asset in a region that was becoming increasingly hostile to Washington’s interests.

He was commissioned into the Panama National Guard in 1967, and in 1968 promoted to lieutenant.

Noriega rose swiftly in the armed forces, becoming a key ally of General Omar Torrijos during a military coup in 1968. As the de facto leader from 1968 to 1981, Torrijos relied heavily on Noriega’s network of loyal soldiers.

CIA informant

Noriega was soon promoted to head of Panama’s secret police, a role which brought him into close contact with the CIA.

The US intelligence agency had a vested interest in protecting the strategic trade route of the Panama Canal, which was under US administration until 1977.

Noriega soon became a regular informant for the Americans and was rewarded with an estimated $320,000, although he claimed at his trial in 1990 he was a prize asset that cost the CIA millions.

Throughout the 1970s, he shook off accusations that he was orchestrating the disappearances of Panamanian opposition figures.

After Torrijos’s mysterious death in a plane crash in 1981, the new military ruler, Ruben Dario Paredes del Rio, consolidated Noriega’s power base by promoting him as the head of the security services.

Within a short time, power had effectively concentrated in Noriega’s hands. In 1983, he succeeded Paredes as the de facto military ruler.

During the Reagan presidency in the 1980s, the US began relying heavily on Noreiga as an ally against Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

1989 surrender

In 1987, a former chief-of-staff who had worked under Noriega accused his former boss of corruption and electoral fraud, as well as being behind the plane crash in which Torrijos died.

The accusations triggered huge demonstrations in Panama.

Noriega defiantly stayed in power, with critics maintaining that the country had become a hub for Latin America’s drug trade, particularly in helping Colombia’s powerful Medellin cartel in laundering drug money.

In December 1989, US President George Bush ordered a US marine invasion to topple Noriega, who had become a liability and an embarrassment to US interests.

Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City.

One US tactic to flush him out was to play deafening music non-stop outside the building. Noriega finally surrendered on January 3, 1990.

Prison terms

Noriega was flown to the US, with prisoner-of-war status, to face charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering.

In 2007, Noriega completed his 17 years of confinement in a Miami federal jail, but he was not a free man.

After completing his 17-year sentence, Noriega was extradited to France and received a seven-year sentence for money laundering.

But Panama wanted Noriega to return to face in-absentia convictions and two prison terms of 20 years for embezzlement, corruption and murder of opponents, including military commander Moises Giroldi, who led a failed rebellion on October 3, 1989, and Hugo Spadafora, whose decapitated body was found in a mailbag on the border with Costa Rica in 1985.

In mid-2011, France approved his extradition to Panama.

Despite amassing great wealth, Noriega had worked hard to cultivate an image of a man of the people. He lived in a modest, two-storey home in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood in Panama City that stood in stark contrast with the opulent mansions customary among Latin American dictators.

“He would only say ‘hello’ very respectfully,” said German Sanchez, who lived next door for 16 years. “You may think what you like of Noriega, but we can’t say he was anything but respectful toward his neighbours.”

“The humble, the poor, the blacks, they are the utmost authority,” Noriega said in one speech.

Asking for forgiveness

While some resentment lingers over the US invasion, Noriega has so few supporters in modern-day Panama that attempts to auction off his old home attracted no bidders and the government decided to demolish decaying building down.

Late in life, the ex-leader essentially had zero influence over his country from behind bars.

“He is not a figure with political possibilities,” University of Panama sociologist Raul Leis said in 2008. “Even though there’s a small sector that yearns for the Noriega era, it is not a representative figure in the country.”

Noriega broke a long silence in June 2015 when he made a statement from prison on Panamanian television in which he asked forgiveness of those harmed by his rule.

“I feel like as Christians we all have to forgive,” he said, reading from a handwritten statement. “The Panamanian people have already overcome this period of dictatorship.”

But for the most part Noriega stayed mum about elite military and civilian associates who thrived on the corruption that he helped instill and which still plagues the Central American nation of some 3.9 million people, a favoured transshipment point for drugs and a haven for money laundering.

“He kept his mouth shut and died for the sins of others,” Koster, the biographer, said in a 2014 interview. “Nobody else ever went to prison.”

Meanwhile, families of more than 100 who were killed or disappeared during his rule are still seeking justice.

Ninety-one people missing and hundreds of homes destroyed after heavy rain triggers devastating flooding and landslides.

The flooding on Friday is the worst Sri Lanka has seen in 14 years [Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Floods and landslides in Sri Lanka’s southern and western regions have killed at least 100 people and damaged more than 800 homes, officials said on Saturday.

Ninety-one people were also reported missing and 40 others have been hospitalised after unusually heavy rain on Friday triggered a string of mudslides and caused rivers to burst their banks, according to the country’s Disaster Management Centre (DMC).

Indian medical teams and emergency relief arrived in the capital, Colombo, on Saturday to help Sri Lanka deal with the worst flooding in 14 years.

“Many thousands are displaced and are trying to come to terms with what has happened with this huge deluge of water,” Al Jazeera’s Minelle Fernandez, reporting from the southern town of Agalawatte, said.

“Some places received a year’s supply of rain in 24 hours. It has taken everyone by surprise.”

In Agalawatte, some 100km south of Colombo, rescuers pulled at least 11 bodies out from the mud and earth, while one person was found alive.

“It’s been 15-18 years since we’ve had so much water. It’s left people helpless”, a man told local media.

“We were moving things from 2am. Kitchen stuff floated off, and the roof shades were blown away,” a woman said.

Authorities issued fresh evacuation orders for those living downstream of two major rivers, citing a risk of flooding even though the rains had subsided.

Soldiers have fanned out in boats and helicopters to help with rescue operations. Residents said there are more people trapped in interior villages where boats have been unable to reach.

An Indian ship carrying medical supplies docked in Colombo on Saturday, after Sri Lanka issued an international appeal for help. Another ship is due to arrive on Monday.

The flooding is the worst since May 2003 when 250 people were killed and 10,000 homes destroyed after a similarly powerful Southwest monsoon, officials said.

The DMC said the monsoon ended a prolonged drought that had threatened agriculture as well as hydropower generation.

Mudslides have become common during the monsoon season in the tropical Indian Ocean island as land has been heavily deforested to grow export crops such as tea and rubber.

Last May, a massive landslide killed more than 100 people in central Sri Lanka.

As election campaigning restarts following Manchester attack, UK opposition leader addresses root causes of ‘terror’.

Corbyn is a veteran socialist and anti-war campaigner [File: Darren Staples/Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Britain’s foreign policy and intervention in wars abroad had fuelled the threat of “terrorism” at home, the leader of the UK’s main opposition party said on Friday, as a political truce after a Manchester suicide attack came to an end.

Less than two weeks before a general election, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also vowed to reverse Prime Minister Theresa May’s police cuts and give the security services more resources if they needed them, saying Britain could not “be protected on the cheap”.

Although Corbyn said he did not want “to make a narrow party political point”, opponents accused him of exploiting Monday’s bombing by Salman Abedi, a Briton born to Libyan parents, who killed 22 people, including children, at the Manchester Arena after a concert by US singer Ariana Grande.

“No government can prevent every terrorist attack. But the responsibility of government is to minimise that chance, to ensure the police have the resources they need, that our foreign policy reduces rather than increases the threat to this country,” Corbyn said in a speech in the capital, London.

“Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services pointed out the connections between wars that we’ve been involved in or supported … in other countries, such as Libya, and terrorism here at home.”

Corbyn edges higher in polls

May’s Conservatives are leading in the opinion polls ahead of the June 8 election, and were widely expected to cruise to a landslide win when she called the vote in April.

But one survey on Thursday suggested their lead had been cut to just five points after she was forced to backtrack on a plan to force elderly people to pay more for their social care.

Corbyn, a socialist and veteran anti-war campaigner, said foreign policy was not solely to blame for “terrorism” but he would shy away from the interventionist approach that has seen Britain join military action in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan in recent years.

“We must be brave enough to admit the ‘war on terror’ is not working,” he said, vowing only to deploy troops when there was a clear need and a plan to secure a lasting peace.

His stance puts him not just at odds with May, who says he would put Britain’s security at risk if he won power, but also many in his own party, including former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair who led Britain into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think his timing is incredibly disappointing and crass given there is a live police operation,” Security Minister Ben Wallace told BBC radio. “I don’t think the substance of what he says is correct at all.”

Corbyn, who has already pledged 10,000 extra officers, also promised to reverse police cost-saving measures, many brought in by May in her former role as interior minister. Britain now has fewer officers than in 2001.

Amber Rudd, the interior minister, rejected suggestions cuts had hindered the authorities’ ability to prevent Monday’s attack.

“We must not imply that this terrorist activity wouldn’t have taken place if there had been more policing,” she said.

Suspect’s father held in Tripoli says ‘everything was normal’ with his son days before, as UK police make eight arrests.

by Al Jazeera

Police made arrests in the UK and Libya as the investigation into a suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a Manchester concert venue packed with children focused on tracking down a network of accomplices who authorities fear could strike again.

The father of the suspected bomber, identified as Salman Abedi, 22, told the Reuters news agency in the Libyan capital on Wednesday that he had last spoken to his son some five days ago by phone and “everything was normal”.

Ramadan Abedi, who was detained by a Tripoli counter-terrorism force during the interview, said his son Salman had told his family that he was heading on pilgrimage to Mecca.

“I spoke to him about five days ago … there was nothing wrong, everything was normal,” Abedi said.

The suspect blew himself up on Monday night at the Manchester Arena indoor venue at the end of a concert by US pop singer Ariana Grande attended by thousands of children and teenagers.

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group.

Abedi also said he was sure Salman had not been a member of ISIL.

“Salman doesn’t belong to any organisation,” he said. “The family is a bit confused because Salman doesn’t have this ideology, he doesn’t hold these beliefs. We condemn these terrorist acts on civilians, innocent people.”

Police in Tripoli also arrested a brother of Abedi. A spokesman for the local counter-terrorism force said younger brother Hashem Abedi was arrested on suspicion of links with ISIL and was suspected of planning to carry out an attack in the Libyan capital.

A man arrested on Tuesday, one day after the attack at the was reported by British and US media to be Abedi’s other brother.

Manchester police, meanwhile, made several new arrests.

“We currently have eight people in custody in relation to Monday’s attack,” Ian Hopkins, chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said in a statement on Thursday.

“The arrests have taken place in Manchester, Wigan and Duneaton, and we are now carrying out associated searches in relation to those arrests at a number of addresses,” he added.

Earlier, interior minister Amber Rudd said the bomber had recently returned from Libya. Her French counterpart Gerard Collomb said he had links with ISIL and had probably visited Syria as well.

Rudd also scolded US officials for leaking details about the investigation into the Manchester attack before British authorities were ready to go public.

The bomb used in the attack appeared to contain carefully packed shrapnel and have a powerful, high velocity charge, according to leaked photographs from the investigation published by the New York Times.

“We are furious. This is completely unacceptable,” a government ministry source said of the images “leaked from inside the US system”.

Hopkins, the Manchester police chief, said the leaks had “caused much distress for families that are already suffering terribly with their loss”.

The Manchester bombing raised concern across Europe.

Cities including Paris, Nice, Brussels, St Petersburg, Berlin and London have suffered attacks in the last two years.

The 22 victims in Manchester included an eight-year-old girl, several teenage girls, a 28-year-old man and a Polish couple who had come to collect their daughters.

Britain’s official threat level was raised to “critical”, the highest level, late on Tuesday, meaning an attack was expected imminently.

The Manchester bombing was the deadliest attack in Britain since July 2005, when four British Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people in coordinated attacks on London’s transport network.

Rudd said up to 3,800 soldiers could be deployed on Britain’s streets, taking on guard duties to free up police to focus on patrols and investigation. An initial deployment of 984 had been ordered, first in London and then elsewhere.

Soldiers were seen at the Houses of Parliament, May’s Downing Street residence and at the London police headquarters at New Scotland Yard.

Actor Sir Roger Moore, best known for playing James Bond, has died aged 89, his family has announced.

He played the famous spy in seven Bond films including Live and Let Die and the Spy Who Loved Me.

Sir Roger’s family confirmed the news on Twitter, saying he had died after “a short but brave battle with cancer”.

The statement, from his children, read: “Thank you Pops for being you, and being so very special to so many people.”

“With the heaviest of hearts, we must share the awful news that our father, Sir Roger Moore, passed away today. We are all devastated,” they said in a Twitter post.

Sir Roger, who died in Switzerland, will have a private funeral in Monaco in accordance with his wishes, they added.

“The love with which he was surrounded in his final days was so great it cannot be quantified in words alone,” read the statement from Deborah, Geoffrey and Christian.

“Our thoughts must now turn to supporting Kristina [his wife] at this difficult time.”

It added: “We know our own love and admiration will be magnified many times over, across the world, by people who knew him for his films, his television shows and his passionate work for UNICEF which he considered to be his greatest achievement.

Along with his famous Bond role, Moore was also known for TV series The Persuaders and The Saint.

(BBC)