Turkey holding critical local elections

March 30, 2014

ISTANBUL (AP) — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has a central role in Turkey's local elections Sunday even though his name won't be on the ballots.

The elections are widely seen as a referendum on Erdogan's tumultuous rule of more than a decade, and the prime minister has been campaigning as if his own career were on the line. High-profile races for mayor of Istanbul and Ankara with incumbents from Erdogan's Justice or Development Party, better known by its Turkish acronym AKP, will be watched closely for signs of whether his influence is waning. The Turkish elections board says more than 50 million people are eligible to vote.

Although quality polling is hard to come by in Turkey, it is widely expected that the AKP will outstrip opposition parties Sunday, winning a plurality of the vote. But how much of a plurality will matter. Erdogan's party has already been trying to lower expectations. His party has pointed to the 39 percent they received in the 2009 local elections as a benchmark.

Erdogan and his party have dominated Turkish politics over the last decade in a period of great prosperity. The party came to power backed by a pious Muslim base looking for greater standing in a country that had favored a secular elite. But AKP, whose party symbol is a light bulb, has also cultivated an identity of pragmatism and competency.

That image has been rocked by a corruption scandal with a series of leaked tapes that have brought down four ministers with revelations of bribe-taking and cover up. One tape allegedly involves Erdogan and family members, but he and his allies have rejected the allegations as a plot orchestrated by followers of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally who has split with him.

Erdogan has been suggesting at rallies of hundreds of thousands of supporters that the election will let the people decide if the tapes are significant.

Turkish AKP faces key test in local elections

30 Mar 2014

PM Erdogan turns to the ballot box that has favored him over a decade in his battle to ward off graft allegations.

Over 50 million eligible voters cast their ballots in Turkey's local elections, amid corruption allegations and damaging security leaks that have shaken the 12-year rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

The municipal elections have become a crisis referendum on the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, and his religiously conservative AKP.

The party, which swept to power in 2002 on a platform of eradicating the corruption that blights Turkish life, hopes on Sunday to equal or better its overall 2009 vote of 38.8 percent.

Erdogan has been crisscrossing the nation of 77 million during weeks of hectic campaigning to rally his conservative core voters, during which he temporarily lost his voice.

"They are all traitors," Erdogan said of his opponents at a rally in Istanbul, Turkey's commercial capital and the most-populated city, on Saturday.

"Let them do what they want. Go to the ballot box tomorrow and teach all of them a lesson... Let's give them an Ottoman slap."

Erdogan has purged thousands of people from the judiciary and police following the anti-graft raids in December targeting businessmen close to Erdogan and sons of ministers.

The prime minister said that those behind the investigations were trying to form a "state within a state" or “parallel state”, blaming the movement of Fethullah Gulen, the United States-based Turkish cleric whose followers are apparently highly influential in Turkey's police forces and judiciary. Many analysts say that the two sides used to be allies in the past in their struggle against Turkey's politically dominant military.

"There are no other parties apart from AKP and no leader apart from Erdogan that can get this country out of its difficulties," said, Mustafa Hayir, a 35-year-old supermarket employee from the conservative Istanbul neighborhood of Yeni Sahra on the Asian side of the city.

Ali Toprak, a 33-year-old engineer from the European Istanbul district of Levent, disagrees: "I want Erdogan to take his hands away from my lifestyle, religion, and core values of my nation. I am fed up with his hypocrisy in all policy areas."

Lira loses value

Uncertainty has taken its toll on the stock market and on the Turkish lira, which has lost four percent of its value this year. Many foreign and domestic investors are awaiting the elections and their aftermath before making decisions.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), portrays Erdogan as a corrupt "dictator" ready to hang on to power by any means. Capture of the capital Ankara or Istanbul would allow them to claim some form of victory.

Erdogan formed the AKP in 2001, attracting nationalists and centre-right economic reformers as well as religious conservatives who form his base. Since his 2011 poll victory, he has in his statements, moved more towards these core supporters.

The corruption scandal, also involving anonymous Internet postings of tapped state communications implicating Erdogan in corrupt actions he denies and media interventions he confirms, was all but eclipsed in recent days by the leaking of a recording of a top-level security meeting.

YouTube and Twitter blocked

In the recording, the intelligence chief, foreign minister and military commanders discussed possible armed intervention in Syria. The Turkish intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, allegedly talked about staging a fake attack on Turkish soil in order to start an operation on Syria.

Turkey has blocked YouTube and Twitter, and has reportedly intercepted various Domain Name Systems after tens of leaks had been shared on the two online platforms.

It is unclear who recorded the meeting and posted it on YouTube - though officials point a finger at Gulen’s movement.

Erdogan describes the movement as a terrorist organization in an "alliance of evil" with major opposition parties.

Source: al-Jazeera.
Link: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/turkish-akp-faces-key-test-local-elections-201433042158872294.html.

'Turkey YouTube leak act of espionage'

Sat Mar 29, 2014

Turkey’s president has slammed the leaked recording of top security officials on possible military operations in Syria as an act of espionage against the security of his country.

In his first public statement regarding the incident on Friday, Abdullah Gul described the wiretapping as a “huge audacity” and vowed to punish the perpetrators.

“What’s necessary will be done and those who planned, organized, participated, contributed to and carried out this act will by all means be found. There will absolutely be no tolerance,” Gul said.

“This is an act of espionage, because it is directly related with the security of the state. Those who were at the meeting are the top officials of the bureaucracy,” he added.

The Turkish president made the remarks a day after an audio recording was uploaded on the video-sharing website YouTube revealing a discussion among top Turkish security officials about the military operations in neighboring Syria.

The audio file is a recording of Turkey's intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Deputy Chief of Military Staff Yasar Guler, and other senior officials.

Ankara reacted to the anonymous posting by blocking users’ access to YouTube throughout Turkey, saying the leaking of the controversial recording had created “a national security issue”.

The YouTube ban came a week after the government imposed a ban on Twitter, accusing the social networking website of violating Turkey's laws.

Turkish media reports say initial investigations suggest that although the office of the foreign minister was wiretapped for over a year, the bugs could never be found because they were removed and replaced periodically.

Other government officials also condemned the incident and declared it to be an imminent threat to national security.

Earlier on Friday, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan censured the leaking of the recording as “villainous”.

On Thursday, Davutoglu also denounced the leak as a “declaration of war” against the Turkish government and nation, saying, “A cyber attack has been carried out against the Turkish Republic, our state and our valued nation.”

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/356406.html.

Turkey revokes Gulen 'green passport'

Sat Mar 29, 2014

Turkey has revoked “green passport” of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen after it was revealed that he obtained it “via deceitful means.”

Turkish media reported on Friday that Gulen has been accused of “illegally” obtaining the passport in the eastern province of Erzurum in 1990 and using it to immigrate to the United States in 1999.

Turkey’s “green passport” is a special passport that allows the owner to travel visa-free to certain countries.

Reports say Turkish authorities may seek an Interpol “red notice” for the extradition of Gulen from the United States.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Gulen of using his influence in the country’s police and judiciary to prompt a corruption probe to bring down his government.

Gulen’s Hizmet (Service) movement was an important supporter of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) when it came to power 11 years ago.

The alliance, however, shattered after dozens of the prime minister’s political and business allies were arrested in police raids in a graft probe last December.

The scandal, which has turned into a very serious challenge to Erdogan’s 11-year-rule, brought down four ministers and led to a cabinet reshuffle.

Erdogan has denounced the corruption investigation as a “dirty plot” by Gulen’s backers to undermine his government ahead of local elections on March 30 and a presidential vote in August. Gulen has repeatedly denied the allegations.

Erdogan has also dismissed hundreds of police and prosecutors believed to be linked to the cleric.

The Turkish parliament, which is dominated by the AKP, has approved a law to close a network of private preparatory schools, many of which are run by Hizmet.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://edition.presstv.ir/detail/356430.html.

Drug, gun haul grows from lawless Albanian village

June 23, 2014

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albanian police say they have so far destroyed some 43 tons of marijuana and 133,000 cannabis plants in a lawless southern village that they fought their way into last week.

In a statement they said searches of more than 500 homes in Lazarat also turned up 26 heavy guns, 218 light weapons, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades, explosives and other weapons. Police also destroyed five drug-processing laboratories and made 23 arrests. The operation is continuing.

Last week, about 800 police come under sustained gunfire from automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars for four days. One policeman and three villagers were injured during the operation.

Lazarat, 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of Tirana, has been the center of marijuana production in Albania, which is also a transit country for hard drugs.

Albania battles gangs in Europe's pot capital

June 17, 2014

LAZARAT, Albania (AP) — Until ten years ago, Lazarat was a regular farming community. Now the village in southern Albania is Europe's biggest illegal marijuana producer, raking in billions of euros every year from the plants openly cultivated in fields and house gardens.

Set in a green plain overlooked by high hills, this sprawling southern village of 5,000 is believed to produce about 900 metric tons of cannabis a year, worth some 4.5 billion euros ($6.1 billion) — just under half of the small Balkan country's GDP.

The lucrative business has left its marks on society. Today flashy cars and expensive homes dot the village, where many residents were left unemployed after the political purges that followed changes of government in Albania in the late 1990s. Ironically, many had previously worked for the customs service, handling nearby border crossings with Greece.

The marijuana-farming has grown constantly since then, encouraged by strong demand in neighboring Greece and Italy, while Albania has also become a major transit point for other drugs coming in to Europe from Asia and Latin America.

Previously, authorities left the drug gangs pretty much to their own devices, as police visits tended to be met with gunfire. But change has come with the new Socialist government, which came into power last year with a clear aim to stamp out the marijuana economy and persist with efforts to seek Albanian membership in European Union. The country's application for candidate member status in the 28-nation bloc has already been turned down three times, with organized crime and corruption always cited as a stumbling block.

In their most ambitious effort so far, 500 police officers were deployed this week to impose law and order in Lazarat as part of a nationwide anti-drug operation— only to be hailed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortar shells and heavy machine gun fire once they reached the outskirts of the village. With local television broadcasting the events live, police and the Interior Ministry urged residents to stay indoors and warned others to stay away from the area, some 230 kilometers (140 miles) south of the capital, Tirana.

Police chief Artan Didi told reporters in Tirana that police were targeting a "very well-structured and organized criminal group that is keeping the village in its claws." On the second day of operations Tuesday, police numbers were reinforced to 800 and officers took control of about a quarter of the village, seizing "considerable quantities" of marijuana and ammunition, as well as drug-processing machinery. Amid near-continuous gunfire, they also destroyed 11,000 cannabis plants, and were planning to gingerly advance into gang-defended areas.

Interior Minister Saimir Tahiri vowed to persist until "every square centimeter in Lazarat is under state control." According to the Socialists, Lazarat — a stronghold of the former ruling Democratic party — previously benefited from links with the political elite.

"Time is over for the links of the world of crime in Lazarat with parliament, with politics, with those they exploited until yesterday," Tahiri said. "What you are seeing today is the best example of our determination to install the rule of law in every corner of Albania."

The Democrats issued a statement saying that, while they support anti-drugs operations, the government's response was too heavy-handed and "exerts psychological terror on the civilian population." Six men have been arrested in the village on suspicion of participating in an earlier shootout and of attacking and robbing a television news crew.

Police said most of the shooting was coming from two houses that apparently had stockpiles of weapons. Dozens of heavily-armed drug gang members were firing from vantage points inside the community and drawing from at least four underground former army weapons dumps that are easily accessible from the village.

Albania, a small mountainous country on the Adriatic coast opposite Italy, has just over 3 million people. It was for decades Europe's most isolated country until a student uprising toppled the communist regime in 1990 and Albanians emigrated en masse to Greece, Italy and other western countries.

Another uprising in 1997 led to the extensive looting of military installations, flooding Albania with weaponry, most of which is still unaccounted for. Lazarat's access to the underground depots dates to that period.

"We are afraid that if we enter (the village) and respond to the shooting, we may cause casualties," a special police officer dressed in camouflage and wearing a bulletproof vest told an Associated Press photographer at the scene. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not officially authorized to speak to the media.

"Moreover, (they) have all the weapons and equipment we have," he said. Four people — a policeman and three villagers — have been hurt so far, suffering light gunshot injuries.

Llazar Semini reported from Tirana.

Albanian police besiege lawless marijuana village

June 16, 2014

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Authorities say suspected gang members have fired rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns at hundreds of police officers who tried to enter a lawless village in southern Albania as part of a crackdown on marijuana production.

Police said nobody was hurt in the pre-dawn attack Monday outside Lazarat, where authorities believe gangs produce about 900 metric tons of cannabis a year. The drug production is estimated to be worth about 4.5 billion euros ($6.1 billion) — roughly half of the small Balkan country's GDP.

They said around 500 lightly-armed police, including special forces officers, surrounded the village overnight after a smaller force was repelled over the weekend by light-arms fire that injured one villager.

Police said they would continue the crackdown on the drug producers and "liberate Lazarat from criminals."

Hundreds protest alleged Afghan election fraud

June 21, 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets Saturday to protest against alleged fraud in last week's presidential runoff, forcing a closure of the airport road amid escalating tensions over what Western officials had hoped would be a smooth transfer of power.

Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who is running against Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, a former finance minister, has accused electoral officials and others of trying to rig the June 14 vote against him.

Abdullah announced this week that he was severing ties with the Independent Election Commission and would refuse to recognize any results it releases. He also suggested that the U.N. step in, an idea supported by President Hamid Karzai, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.

The IEC's official timetable says initial results are due on July 2. Around a thousand demonstrators gathered in Kabul to protest against the electoral commission, accusing it of fraud and chanting: "Our vote is our blood and we will stand up for it!"

Hundreds of anti-riot police surrounded the demonstration, which was peaceful. "We gather today to protest against the election commission, which is not an independent commission at all. They are conducting fraud for a specific candidate," said Mohammed Ghani Sharifi, a 23-year-old protester. "The people are so upset and they cannot tolerate such fraud because the people took risks to cast their votes."

While the vote was relatively peaceful, the Taliban had warned people not to participate and carried out a handful of attacks in different parts of the country. In a separate demonstration, hundreds of protesters marched from the northern part of the capital toward the airport, where they were stopped by a police roadblock that closed the road, preventing anyone from entering or leaving Kabul's international airport.

"This is not about who becomes the leader of the country, but our protest is because of the fraud. No fraud should have happened for either candidate," said Mohammed Essa, 23, who took part in the second protest, which was also peaceful.

"This is just the beginning of our protests," he added. The U.N. representative to Afghanistan, Nicholas Haysom, told a press conference that people had a "democratic right" to protest while urging them to remain peaceful and "refrain from inflammatory statements."

Afghanistan's next president is expected to sign a long-delayed security pact to allow nearly 10,000 American troops to remain in the country after most foreign forces withdraw by the end of the year. Both candidates have promised to sign the pact, but the next president must be sworn in first.

Earlier on Saturday, a suicide car bombing in Kabul aimed at a senior government official killed one civilian and wounded three others but did not harm its apparent target, Afghan security officials said.

Kabul police spokesman Hashmat Stanikzai said the bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle alongside the armored car of Mohammed Masoom Stanikzai, a senior official in the High Peace Council, a government body tasked with peace talks with the Taliban insurgency. The two men are not related.

Shafiullah, a police officer at the scene, said Stanikzai, who also serves as an adviser to President Hamid Karzai, was not harmed because he was traveling in an armored car. He said that while the explosion was "very strong" it took place early in the morning when the streets were relatively empty. Like many Afghans, the police officer only has one name.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban frequently launch suicide attacks against Afghan civilians, government officials and security forces. In the western Herat province, one civilian was killed and another was wounded when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, provincial police spokesman Raouf Ahmadi said, adding that the two were on their way to the district bazaar.

Officials say more than 50 dead in Afghan flooding

June 07, 2014

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Flooding in a remote part of northern Afghanistan has killed more than 50 people and forced thousands to flee their homes, officials said Saturday.

It was the latest in a string of deadly flash floods, landslides and avalanches in Afghanistan's rugged northern mountains, where roads are poor and many villages are virtually cut off from the rest of the country.

Lt. Fazel Rahman, the police chief in the Guzirga i-Nur district of the northeastern Baghlan province, said 54 bodies have been recovered, including the remains of women and children, but many others are still missing. He said the death toll could climb to 100 and called for emergency assistance from the central government.

"So far no one has come to help us. People are trying to find their missing family members," Rahman said, adding that the district's police force was overstretched by the scale of the disaster. An exact death toll remained unclear. A statement from President Hamid Karzai's office said 58 people had been killed, while others put the toll higher.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said two Army helicopters were sent to the area to provide assistance. The Afghanistan Natural Disaster Management Authority began shipping out stockpiles of food and other supplies in Baghlan province to the affected area, said Mohammad Aslim Sayas, deputy director of the agency.

He said a delegation was sent to the affected villages to their assess needs. Guzirga i-Nur district is located more than 140 kilometers (85 miles) north of the provincial capital, Puli Khumri. Jawed Basharat, the spokesman for the Baghlan provincial police, said they were aware of the flooding, but that it would take eight to nine hours for them to reach the area by road.

Afghans living in the northern mountains have largely been spared from the country's decades of war, but are no strangers to natural disasters. Last month, a landslide triggered by heavy rain buried large sections of a remote northeastern village in the Badakhshan province bordering China, displacing some 700 families. Authorities have yet to provide an exact figure on the number of dead from the May 2 landslide, and estimates have ranged from 250 to 2,700. Officials say it will be impossible to dig up all the bodies.

A landslide in Baghlan province in 2012 killed 71 people. After days of digging unearthed only five bodies, authorities decided to halt the recovery effort and turn the area into a memorial for the dead.

Aid rushed to survivors after Afghan landslide kills hundreds

Aab Bareek, Afghanistan (AFP)
May 04, 2014

Aid groups on Sunday rushed to help survivors of a landslide in northern Afghanistan that entombed a village, killing hundreds of people and leaving 700 families homeless in the mountains.

Much of Aab Bareek village in Badakhshan province was swallowed on Friday by a fast-moving tide of mud and rock that swept down the hillside and left almost no trace of 300 homes.

Government officials said the current death toll was at least 300 and warned it could rise by hundreds more, after initial reports suggested that as many as 2,500 people may have died.

Large crowds gathered at the remote disaster site, where rescue efforts were abandoned due to the volume of deep mud covering houses.

Only a few bodies have been pulled from the debris.

"Around 1,000 families are thought to have been affected with some 300 houses totally destroyed," the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

"Assessments to determine priorities on immediate child protection and water, sanitation, and hygiene needs for (displaced) families are continuing."

It added that 700 families were displaced, with many fleeing their homes in fear the unstable hillside could unleash more deadly landslides.

Tents, emergency food supplies, health services and support for children who lost parents were being organized after many survivors spent another night in the open…

Source: Terra Daily.
Link: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Aid_rushed_to_survivors_after_Afghan_landslide_kills_hundreds_999.html.

Survivors mourn hundreds killed in Afghan landslide

Aab Bareek, Afghanistan (AFP)
May 04, 2014

Survivors of a landslide that entombed a village in northern Afghanistan mourned hundreds of dead relatives on Sunday as aid teams rushed to care for 700 families left homeless in the mountains.

Much of Aab Bareek village in Badakhshan province was swallowed on Friday by a fast-moving tide of mud and rock that sweep down the hillside and left almost no trace of 300 homes.

Government officials have put the current death toll at 300 people and warned it could rise by hundreds more, after initial reports suggested that as many as 2,500 people may have died.

Large crowds gathered at the remote disaster site, where the volume of deep mud covering houses made rescue efforts hopeless.

Only a few dead bodies have been pulled from the debris.

Wailing near her father's destroyed house, Begum Nisa, a 40-year-old mother of three, described the moment when the wall of mud smashed through the village.

"I was eating lunch by the window of my house, then suddenly I heard a huge roar, and I realized that our village was hit by landslides," she said.

"I shouted to my family to save themselves, but it was too late. I have lost my dear father and mother. I also lost my uncle and five members of his family."

Local people and emergency workers had used shovels to try to dig out survivors but without success, and relief work turned to caring for about 700 displaced families.

Tents, food and water began arriving on Saturday as Afghan and international aid groups worked to get supplies through to the village.

- More landslides feared -

Many families spent another night in the open, with residents and visiting officials fearing that the unstable hillside could unleash more deadly landslides in the coming days.

"We have a list of around 300 people confirmed dead," Badakhshan governor Shah Waliullah Adeeb told reporters at the scene on Saturday.

"We cannot continue the search and rescue operation anymore, as the houses are under meters of mud. We will offer prayers for the victims and make the area a mass grave."

Many villagers were at Friday prayers in two mosques when they were entombed by the torrent of mud, and a second landslide hit people who had rushed to assist those in need.

Afghanistan held a national day of mourning on Sunday after President Hamid Karzai expressed his condolences to those who had lost loved ones.

The UN mission in Afghanistan said its staff was on the ground, along with the Afghan Red Crescent and other aid groups.

"The immediate focus is on approximately 700 families displaced either directly as a result of this slide or as a precautionary measure from villages assessed to be at further risk," UNAMA said.

It added that more water, medical support, food and emergency shelters were needed.

Badakhshan is a mountainous province in northeast Afghanistan bordering Tajikistan, China and Pakistan.

It has been relatively peaceful since the US-led military intervention began in 2001, but has seen increasing Taliban activity in recent years.

The landslides follow recent severe flooding in other parts of northern Afghanistan, with 150 people dead and 67,000 people affected by floods in Jowzjan, Faryab and Sar-e-Pul provinces.

Flooding and landslides often occur during the spring rainy season in northern Afghanistan, with flimsy mud houses offering little protection against rising water levels and torrents of mud.

Afghanistan is in the middle of presidential elections, with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and ex-World Bank economist Ashraf Ghani due to compete in a head-to-head vote on June 7.

Both candidates called for urgent action to support those affected by the landslide.

Source: Terra Daily.
Link: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Survivors_mourn_hundreds_killed_in_Afghan_landslide_999.html.

ISIS fight on more than one front in Syria

2014-07-31

DAMASCUS- The jihadist Islamic State (IS), which has taken over large swathes of war-torn Syria in just a few months, was on Thursday engaged in fighting Kurds and members of a Sunni tribe.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the well-equipped Kurds, who started fighting IS soon after it emerged in Syria in spring last year, had on Wednesday taken back several hills surrounding the city of Ain al-Arab (Kobane in Kurdish) in the north.

The IS has been trying to take over Ain al-Arab -- Syria's third Kurdish city -- and incorporate it into the Islamic "caliphate" it proclaimed last month.

The fighting killed 14 members of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (PYG) and 35 IS members. Dozens of other fighters were wounded, said the Observatory.

The fighting comes two weeks after some 800 Kurdish fighters entered Ain al-Arab from neighboring Turkey to fight IS.

There are some 3.5 million Kurds in Syria, comprising some 15 percent of the population. With the country swamped in a war that broke out three years ago, the Kurds are seeking autonomy in the areas where they are a majority.

Eastwards, the IS pounded regime positions in Hassakeh, as they tried to surround the city of 200,000 Kurds, Arabs, Armenians and other Christians.

In the eastern, oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor, most of which is under IS control, members of the Shaitat Sunni tribe fought the jihadists, tweeting about an "uprising" against the radical group.

The fighting erupted after the IS detained three members of the tribe, "violating an agreement" between the two sides, it said.

According to the Observatory, the Shaitat tribe had promised IS it would not oppose it, in exchange for the jihadists not harassing or attacking its members.

The Sunni Shaitat tribe extends across three villages -- Abu Hamam, Kashkiyeh and Ghranij.

On Thursday, a day after fighting broke out, IS members raided the three villages, searching houses and kidnapping or "detaining" an unknown number of people, said the Observatory, adding that fighting was raging in the Shaitat villages.

Meanwhile, IS set up new checkpoints in the Deir Ezzor countryside, but gunmen opened fire at one of the checkpoints.

At least five jihadists were killed in the fighting, including a Belgian.

Syria's war began as a peaceful movement for democratic change, but erupted into conflict after President Bashar al-Assad's regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent.

Many months into the fighting, foreign jihadists began entering Syria.

Also on Thursday, the Observatory reported that IS had imposed a strict dress code for women in Deir Ezzor, forbidding them showing any part of their bodies.

"Women... are completely forbidden from showing their eyes," said an IS statement that the Observatory said was distributed in areas under jihadist control in Deir Ezzor province.

Women are also forbidden from wearing "open abayas (traditional black gowns) that reveal colorful clothes worn underneath", it said, adding that women "must not wear high heels".

It threatened an unspecified punishment for women who violated the dress code, while also banning the sale of cigarettes and narguileh (water pipe) products, as well as smoking in public.

On another front in Syria's complex war, the number of people killed in army shelling on an opposition-held town northeast of Damascus on Wednesday rose to 17, according to the Observatory.

Among the fatalities were three children. Dozens of other people were injured.

A photographer in Douma, which has been under suffocating army siege for more than a year, said the shelling had hit several parts of the town, including a busy market area.

"The shelling came suddenly. One minute, children were playing in the market, the next, there were body parts and wounded people everywhere," Abd Doumany said.

The photographer also described graphic scenes at one of the town's ill-equipped field hospitals.

"The wounded were being treated on the floor," he said.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=67384.

Carnage in Gaza Strip as death toll passes 1,300

2014-07-31

By Mai Yaghi
Gaza City

More than 100 Palestinians were killed Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, among them victims of Israeli fire on a crowded market and a United Nations school.

The United States and United Nations condemned the school shelling and Hamas said it fired rockets into Israel in retaliation for both attacks.

But hours after its condemnation the US said it had agreed to sell Israel fresh ammunition to replenish its dwindling supplies.

At least 17 people were killed in the strike on the market in Shejaiya, near Gaza City, as Israel observed a four-hour humanitarian lull in other parts of the crowded coastal strip.

At least 200 people were wounded in the strike, medics said, on a day that saw at least 111 people killed.

Early Thursday two more people died of wounds sustained previously, bringing the death toll from 23 days of unrelenting Israeli attacks to 1,363.

Hamas said Wednesday it fired rockets at Tel Aviv and the southern port city of Ashkelon in response to the market and school strikes.

The Israeli military said that a rocket hit open ground "in the Tel Aviv area" and another two were intercepted over Ashkelon.

It said that a total of 81 rockets fell in Israel on Wednesday, with another nine shot down by missile defenses and that Israel hit 88 targets in Gaza.

Israel had said its brief truce would not apply in places were troops were "currently operating", hours after the army made what it called a "significant advance" into the narrow coastal strip.

Hamas denounced the four-hour lull as a publicity stunt, saying it had "no value".

- Furious response -

The market strike came hours after Israeli shells slammed into a UN school in Jabalia refugee camp which was sheltering some 3,300 homeless Gazans, killing 16 and drawing a furious response from the United Nations.

"This morning a UN school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack," UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on a visit to Costa Rica.

"It is unjustifiable, and demands accountability and justice."

The attack was also denounced by the White House in a carefully worded statement that avoided mentioning Israel.

"The United States condemns the shelling of a UNRWA school in Gaza, which reportedly killed and injured innocent Palestinians, including children, and UN humanitarian workers," a statement said.

The Pentagon later said it had granted an Israeli request for ammunition, including some from a stockpile stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state.

But Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told his Israeli counterpart Moshe Yaalon that he was concerned about the deadly consequences of the spiraling conflict, and called for a ceasefire and end to hostilities.

Rights group Amnesty International had urged Washington to halt arms supplies to Israel.

"It is time for the US government to urgently suspend arms transfers to Israel and to push for a UN arms embargo on all parties to the conflict," it said in a petition to US Secretary of State John Kerry.

- School shelling 'intolerable' -

It was the second time in a week that a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees was hit, prompting a blistering attack on Israel by UNRWA Commissioner General Pierre Kraehenbuehl.

"I condemn in the strongest possible terms this serious violation of international law by Israeli forces," he said, indicating the school's location had been communicated to the Israeli army 17 times.

"No words to adequately express my anger and indignation," he wrote on his official Twitter account, describing it as "intolerable".

But Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Wednesday blamed Hamas for the heavy loss of civilian life in Gaza.

"They have initiated and continue this conflict, and continue to seek the destruction of the state of Israel," Harper a longtime supporter of Israel, said in televised remarks.

In Israel, the army said three soldiers were killed in Gaza, raising the overall number of soldiers killed to 56 since the operation began on July 8.

Public radio quoted Major General Sami Turgeman, the senior officer for the Gaza region, as saying that the destruction of militants' remaining tunnels into Israel could be complete "in a few days".

Israel has said uncovering and destroying an apparently sophisticated network of tunnels is a primary goal of its assault.

- Israeli team in Cairo -

But there appeared to be little Israeli appetite for a truce, despite an hours-long meeting of the security cabinet, with a senior official telling Haaretz newspaper that the Jewish state was not even close to a ceasefire.

"When a ceasefire proposal that answers Israel's important needs is laid on the table, it will be considered," he said, warning that the military operation would expand.

"The (military) will expand attacks against Hamas and the rest of the terror organizations."

Nevertheless, a two-member Israeli delegation traveled to Cairo late Wednesday to discuss a possible ceasefire with Egyptian officials, an official at the airport said, adding they were expected to leave after several hours.

Cairo, a key mediator in previous truce negotiations between Israel and Hamas, was also expected to host a Palestinian delegation later this week.

Public radio said that the full Israeli cabinet would convene on Thursday for the first time since the start of the Gaza operation.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=67371.

Syria militants leave Lebanese border town

August 07, 2014

LABWEH, Lebanon (AP) — Militants from Syria who overran a Lebanese border town mostly withdrew back across the rugged hills separating the two countries as a cease-fire appeared to hold Thursday, allowing Lebanese troops to free seven fellow soldiers and ambulances to evacuate dozens of casualties.

The seizure of Arsal over the weekend marked the first time that Islamic extremists from Syria carried out a large-scale incursion into Lebanon and raised fears of a further spillover of the conflict across the porous border.

A senior Lebanese security official said the majority of the fighters had withdrawn by mid-Thursday. As the militants pulled back, the extent of the fighting that began Saturday became clearer. Sunni clerics who negotiated the cease-fire uploaded videos of wounded, wailing children and photographs of dead children.

"We were weeping to see people in need. We had some bread, and people were fighting for the bread," said Sheik Hussam al-Ghali of the Association of Muslim Clerics, who oversaw the negotiations. "I went to some of the (Syrian refugee) camps. The stench of death was very strong," he told media on the outskirts of Arsal.

Red Cross official Abdullah Zogheib said the group evacuated 42 wounded people Thursday, most of them women and children. Later, up to 150 cars packed with Syrian refugees were seen leaving Arsal. A security official in eastern Lebanon said arrangements were made for them to cross back into Syria through the Masnaa border crossing.

"We fled from the shelling, terrorists and gunmen," said a Syrian man who identified himself as Abu Hadi, leaving with his family in a pick-up truck. It was not immediately clear where in Syria the refugees were going, but many may have been fleeing the violence in Arsal for areas inside their country where there has been less fighting recently.

The fighting in Arsal began Saturday when militants from Syria overran the town, seizing Lebanese army posts, soldiers and policemen, and demanding the release of a rebel commander detained in Lebanon. The militants included fighters from the Islamic State group as well as from the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's official Syrian affiliate.

At least 17 soldiers have been killed in the clashes, which trapped tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians and Syrian refugees in Arsal, and ratcheted up tensions inside Lebanon between supporters and opponents of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

As the truce negotiated overnight appeared to hold, the Lebanese army said it had freed seven soldiers who had been captured by the militants, without providing further details. Twelve more soldiers are still missing along with an unknown number of policemen.

A field hospital in Arsal said 38 people had been killed in the fighting by Wednesday. The Association of Muslim Clerics posted photographs of at least two dead little girls it said were killed in Arsal, alongside videos and photographs of wounded children, on its Facebook page.

Cleric al-Ghali and a pro-rebel activist who uses the name Ahmad Alquseir said that some Syrian tent encampments near Arsal were struck and burnt by shelling. In Syria meanwhile, militants from the Islamic State group overran one of the last remaining army bases in the northeastern Raqqa province, activists said Thursday.

The militants seized the Brigade 93 base overnight after days of heavy fighting, according to Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and the Raqqa Media Center, an activist collective. The base lies some 40 miles (60 kilometers) from the provincial capital of Raqqa, a stronghold for the Islamic State group.

Abdurrahman said dozens of Syrian soldiers were killed. The Britain-based Observatory obtains its information from activists on the ground in Syria. State media did not report the incident. A video uploaded to social media networks showed heavily armed men with thick beards -- who claimed to be from the Islamic State group -- walking through the military base, showing off trucks, tanks, assault rifles and boxes of ammunition left behind by fleeing soldiers.

"We will not stop until we liberated the blessed land of the Levant. Our aim isn't just the Levant. It is the whole world," said one fighter in broken Arabic, vowing to overrun Saudi Arabia next. Photographs uploaded by supporters of the Islamic State showed fighters posing beside dead bodies, at least one of them beheaded.

The Islamic State group, an al-Qaida breakaway, has seized wide swaths of Syria and Iraq, where it is imposing an ultraconservative version of Muslim law, including killing people seen as apostates, and beheading and crucifying rivals.

Associated Press writer Diaa Hadid contributed to this report from Beirut.

Syria rebels raid Lebanese town, capture troops

August 02, 2014

BEIRUT (AP) — Rebels fighting in Syria's civil war crossed into Lebanon and raided a border town Saturday, killing and capturing security force members in the most serious incursion into the tiny country during its neighbor's 3-year-old conflict.

The rebels, who included foreign fighters, demanded to trade soldiers and police officers it captured in Arsal for some of the "most dangerous detainees," the Lebanese army said in a statement. Masked gunmen roamed the streets as Lebanese helicopter gunships flew over the town, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) from the capital, Beirut.

A Lebanese army general told The Associated Press that the gunmen attacked army positions near Arsal and troops returned fire. Another official said the gunmen also took control of the main police station in the town.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that Arsal residents later freed police officers at the station, though rebels captured some weapons and released several detainees. It said gunmen killed two residents near the police station.

A picture posted online allegedly showed gunmen in Arsal driving away with about a dozen men, two of them in police uniforms. The photograph corresponded to other AP reporting about the attack. Gunmen killed two soldiers and wounded several others, the National News Agency reported.

"What is happening today is among the most dangerous of what Lebanon and the Lebanese are being subjected to," the army statement said. "The gunmen kidnapped several soldiers and policemen who were spending the weekend with their families ... and demanded the release of some of the most dangerous detainees held by the army.

"The Lebanese army will not accept that its members be hostages and will not stay silent about targeting the army and Arsal residents." The statement said the Lebanese army "will not allow any side to move the battle from Syria" into Lebanon. It added that the army "will not allow any foreign gunman to endanger the security of Lebanon or to harm its soldiers or policemen."

The Lebanese army general said earlier in the day that gunmen took two soldiers who were driving an army tanker truck. The army's later statement said the two soldiers were later freed in an army operation.

The general and the official spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to speak publicly. Prime Minister Tammam Salam described the attack as a "flagrant aggression against the state of Lebanon" and vowed that his government "will deal with the developments with extreme firmness and strength."

Saturday's attacks came hours after the army said troops detained Syrian citizen Imad Ahmad Jomaa, who identified himself as a member of Syria's al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. The National News Agency said Jomaa was detained as he was being brought to a hospital in Lebanon after being wounded while fighting Syrian troops.

A resident in Arsal told the AP that masked gunmen roamed the streets. The man, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said two shells hit a small Syrian refugee camp in the town, sparking a fire.

"Clashes are continuous and people are staying in their homes," the man said by telephone as cracks of gunfire could be heard in the background. "Arsal is under the control of gunmen who are driving around."

Arsal is home to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and rebels enjoy wide support among its population. Lebanese Sunnis, such as the residents of Arsal, often back the Sunni rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar Assad. Shiites, like those belonging to Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, typically back Assad.

Syria's civil war has spilled over into Lebanon on multiple occasions and inflamed sectarian tensions leaving scores dead. However, previous rebel raids never went so deeply into Lebanese territory. The Islamic State group, a powerful extremist rebel group in Syria, recently seized large swaths of territory in neighboring Iraq. It wasn't immediately clear whether the gunmen in Arsal intended to remain in the town, which is surrounded by Shiite villages where Hezbollah is active.

The violence in Arsal came after an ambush near Syria's border with Lebanon killed dozens of opposition fighters, activists said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights said Syrian troops and members of Lebanon's Hezbollah group ambushed opposition fighters in the Qalamoun region near the Lebanese border, killing at least 50 of them. It said seven troops and Hezbollah fighters were killed in the fighting.

Government troops backed by Hezbollah fighters have seized nearly all the strategic Qalamoun region since launching an offensive there last November, severing rebel supply lines from neighboring Lebanon.

The Syrian uprising began in the form of peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad in March 2011, but escalated into an insurgency when government forces violently cracked down on dissent. Over 170,000 people have been killed in Syria in more than three years of fighting, activists say.

Hezbollah commander killed in Iraq

July 31, 2014

BEIRUT (AP) — Officials say a commander with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was killed in Iraq.

The Lebanese officials, close to the Shiite Hezbollah, say Ibrahim Mohammed al-Haj was killed during the past week while on a "jihadi mission" without providing further details. It is the first known Hezbollah death in Iraq since Sunni extremists captured large parts of the country north and west of Baghdad in June.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Iraqi officials have said that a handful of advisers from Hezbollah are offering front-line guidance to Iraqi Shiite militias fighting jihadi militants north of Baghdad.

Hezbollah fighters openly joined Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces last year in a decision that has fueled sectarian tensions in Lebanon.

Libya jihadists declare Benghazi 'Islamic emirate'

2014-07-31

BENGHAZI (Libya) - Libya’s Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia has said that it seized complete control of Benghazi late on Wednesday, declaring the city an “Islamic emirate,” the group’s representative said.

Ansar al-Sharia is blacklisted by the United States over its alleged role in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, eastern Libya.

An official representative for the armed group told a local radio channel that Benghazi is now under its control.

“Benghazi has now become an Islamic emirate,” said Mohammed al-Zahawi, the spokesman, to Radio Tawhid.

However, Khalifa Haftar, a retired, renegade former army general who earlier this year launched a self-declared campaign to clear the city of Islamist militants, denied the group’s claims.

“The national Libyan army is in control of Benghazi and only withdrew from certain positions for tactical reasons,” Haftar told Al Arabiya News Channel.

“The claim that Benghazi is under the control of militias is a lie,” he said.

Islamist groups have seized an army special forces headquarters in Libya's Benghazi after days of fighting left at least 35 soldiers dead and plunged the country deeper into lawlessness.

An Islamist and jihadist alliance announced the capture of the main military base in the eastern city in a statement Wednesday, which was confirmed by an army official.

Ansar al-Sharia posted photos on Facebook of dozens of weapons and crates of ammunition it claimed its jihadists had seized from the base.

Libya's Red Crescent said it had recovered the bodies of 35 soldiers from the base.

"Up to now we have managed to recover 35 bodies. But there are more" to be found, Red Crescent spokesman Mohamed al-Misrati said.

Fighting in Benghazi has claimed about another 60 lives since Saturday, medical officials in the city said.

"Special forces under the command of (Colonel) Wanis Abu Khamada withdrew after several attacks," said the army official after the biggest loss yet for the armed forces in their fight against the country's powerful militias.

The Special Forces are one of the units of Libya's regular armed forces that support rogue Libyan general Khalifa Haftar, but they have not placed themselves under his command.

Haftar began his offensive against radical Islamist groups in Benghazi, dubbed "Operation Dignity", in mid-May.

On Wednesday, intermittent gunfire was heard in several parts of the city, and protesters managed to peacefully evict members of the "Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries" from Al-Jala hospital that they controlled, a correspondent said.

Former deputy premier and MP Mustapha Abu Shagur was meanwhile freed by his kidnappers, hours after they snatched him from his Tripoli home on Tuesday, his family said.

The kidnapping highlighted the failure of authorities to rein in militias that sprang up during the 2011 uprising which overthrew long-time dictator Moamer Gathafi.

"Doctor Abu Shagur has been freed. He is tired but in good health," his nephew Isam al-Naass said.

Libya's recently elected parliament had been due to meet in Benghazi on August 4 but will instead hold an emergency meeting Saturday in the eastern city of Tobruk, a lawmaker said.

"In light of the dangerous situation in the country we decided to hold an emergency meeting in Tobruk," east of Benghazi, said Abu Bakr Biira, the MP who was due to preside over the inaugural session.

Amid rising lawlessness, several countries, including Portugal, the Netherlands, Canada and Bulgaria, evacuated citizens or closed their embassies in Tripoli earlier this week.

France said on Wednesday it had temporarily closed its embassy while a French diplomatic source said 40 French nationals, including the ambassador, had been evacuated along with seven British citizens by sea.

The naval ship carrying them is bound for the southern French port of Toulon, the foreign ministry said.

Brazil also evacuated its diplomatic staff Wednesday citing "deteriorating safety conditions". The Brazilian staff at its Tripoli embassy will now work in Tunis.

A Filipina nurse was also briefly kidnapped by an unknown group and raped in the capital Tripoli, medics and security officials said. The health ministry said the incident could push Manila to hasten the evacuation of its citizens.

Tripoli airport has been closed because of fighting between rival militias seeking to control the facility, and a rocket on Sunday sparked a blaze at a fuel depot which was still burning on Wednesday, but with less intensity.

The blaze began in a tank containing more than six million liters (1.6 million gallons) of fuel and then spread to another fuel storage site.

An oil ministry official said on Wednesday efforts to contain the inferno "are continuing as necessary".

Libya has appealed for international help, but former colonial power Italy and Greece have said their involvement would be contingent on a halt to the fighting.

On Tuesday, the government again called for a ceasefire in the airport battle that has killed around 100 people and wounded 400 since July 13.

The clashes, the most violent since the 2011 revolt, started with an assault on the airport by armed groups, mainly Islamists.

The attackers are battling to flush out fellow former rebels from the hill town of Zintan, southwest of Tripoli, who have controlled the airport for the past three years.

Neighboring Tunisia, where hundreds of thousands of people fled during the 2011 revolt, said Wednesday it would be unable to cope with another massive influx.

Foreign Minister Mongi Hamdi told a news conference in Tunis some "5,000 to 6,000" people a day "in recent days" were crossing the frontier.

"We will close the border if the national interest requires it," he said.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=67386.

Benghazi 'falls to al-Qaeda-linked rebels'

31 Jul 2014

Armed groups claimed to have taken control of Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, after defeating units loyal to a renegade general, taking over their barracks and seizing tanks, rockets and hundreds of boxes of ammunition.

The main police headquarters was on Thursday still smoldering after it was hit by shelling a day earlier, and smoke rose from the barracks of al-Saiqa soldiers loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, once the strongest security body in the city until it was overrun earlier this week.

The armed groups' sweep through Benghazi was a heavy reversal for Haftar, who for months had led his loyalists in a self-declared campaign to stamp out "terrorists" and "extremists".

His forces now appeared to only hold the airport on the city's edges.

Those opposing him belong to a newly-formed umbrella group called Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries, made up of multiple armed factions.

Among the factions is Ansar al-Sharia, the group accused by the US of leading a September 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic facility in the city that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.

"We are the only force on the ground in Benghazi,'' a commander of one of the coalition's factions told the AP news agency on Thursday.

He said the coalition's fighters had driven all fighters loyal to Haftar out the city, and congratulated his followers on their "victory and conquest".

The Shura Council was formed after US troops abducted a top commander, Ahmed Abu-Khatala, and accused him of involvement in the attack on the US embassy.

On July 14, the coalition said it took over a Benghazi army barracks that is one of the biggest in eastern Libya, called Barracks 319. Over the past week, they took control of more than five other barracks, including the Saiqa camp.

Source: al-Jazeera.
Link: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/benghazi-falls-al-qaeda-linked-rebels-2014731161541245353.html.

Japan architects sell a lifestyle on global stage

August 07, 2014

TOKYO (AP) — A new generation of Japanese architects believes the world has fallen out of love with the 20th century steel and concrete skyscraper. They are pushing a human-friendly alternative that some say has roots in the elegant simplicity of the traditional Japanese tea house.

Instead of pursuing monuments that cry out with a message of economic power, these Pritzker Prize-winning architects are scoring success with a uniquely Japanese reinterpretation of the past. Unlike their predecessors, who modernized Japan with Western-style edifices, they talk of fluidly defining space with screens and sliding doors, innovatively blending with nature, taking advantage of earthy materials and incorporating natural light, all trademarks of Japanese design.

Their sensibility is also a hit abroad, said Erez Golani Solomon, professor of architecture at Waseda University in Tokyo. "Food and architecture," said Solomon, stressing how the two are Japan's most potent brands. "They are powerful — Japan's strongest cultural identity."

Kengo Kuma, one of the star architects, finds he is in demand not only in Japan and in the West but also in places such as China, which has tempestuous relations with Tokyo but now boasts a growing fan base for Kuma's works.

Among the major China projects for Kuma are the recent Xinjin Zhi Museum, whose sloping angles and repeated tile motifs are characteristically Kuma, and the Yunnan Sales Center, a sprawling complex of shops, housing and a theater, where wooden lattice decorates the main structure overlooking a pond.

He also designs private homes for affluent Chinese who admire Zen philosophy and want to incorporate that stark aesthetic into their daily lives, he said.

Kuma, an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, a pioneering American architect known for cherishing nature and people in his designs, at times uses interlocking wooden frames, defining a building's shape with a collage of angles that seem to change organically. Natural wood is everywhere, in screens, doors and furniture.

Japanese architecture offers warmth and kindness as it is adept in the use of natural light and artisanal craftsmanship, such as bamboo and paper. It is "working together like music," Kuma said, to create a comfortable and luxurious spot even in a cramped space. That's the basic principle of a Japanese tea house, he said.

"It's part of our genetic makeup," Kuma told The Associated Press, sitting in his Tokyo studio among elegant chairs designed by himself and others by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and pointing with disgust at the vaulting skyscrapers visible from his window.

The older generation of Japanese may have embraced the superiority of the Western lifestyle, including construction he feels is merely based on stacking blocks on top of each other, but not architects of his generation, said Kuma.

"People all over the world are sick and tired of modern monuments," he said. "The desire for the human and the gentle is a backlash to the globalization that brought all these monster skyscrapers."

No other place illustrates Kuma's Japanese sense of blending with the surroundings than his Nezu Museum in Tokyo. Its sloping roofs evoke temples, and one side is all glass, facing a Henri Rousseau-evoking garden spilling with plants, Buddhist statues and a pond with irises.

Also erasing boundaries with the outside is the architecture of Sou Fujimoto, another rising star.

Fujimoto's house of glass, and it is literally just that, sits in a residential area in Tokyo, stunning in how it quietly asserts itself, despite its transparency, turning stereotypes of housing on their heads.

Instead of seeking shelter from the environment, residents experience the passage of time, seeing the sun and the stars above; watching and being watched by neighbors and passers-by. No room is defined by walls, as we know them, although drapes can be drawn for privacy.

Inhabitants move from one area to another within a borderless box. At night, the home glows like a luminescent jewel.

Like Kuma, Fujimoto is busy, working all over the world, including Germany, the U.S., France and China. Eighty percent of his work is from outside Japan, and half of his staff is non-Japanese.

His works have a striking look. His beachside cultural center in Serbia is a giant spiral, while a bungalow in southern Japan is a cube of wooden blocks. His Serpentine Pavilion in London of metal lattice has been compared to a cloud. In Montpellier, France, construction begins next year for a housing complex he has designed with balconies sprouting precariously at all angles from a tower.

Fujimoto, who admires modern architecture pioneer Le Corbusier, sees the jumbled, kitsch Tokyo city landscape as connected with the forests he grew up with in the rural northernmost island of Hokkaido.

"This understanding of the connection between nature and the man-made is Japanese. The Japanese garden utilizes nature while also being finely crafted. You go back and forth between those two points," Fujimoto said. "I like this co-existence of the convoluted with simplicity, being not just minimalist and simple but also energetic and complex."

In a telling sign of their rising stature, four of the winners of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in the last six years have been Japanese: Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Toyo Ito and Shigeru Ban.

In the past, the winners were few and far between. Kenzo Tange, known for his statuesque, curvaceous Tokyo Olympic stadium, won the Chicago-based Pritzker in 1987; Fumihiko Maki, who infused an Eastern sensibility into his floating forms of glass, metal and concrete, won in 1993; and the self-taught and idiosyncratic Tadao Ando was the third Japanese to win, nine years after Tange.

More recently, Japanese have also been recognized with the gold medal by The American Institute of Architects. Maki won in 2011 and Ando in 2002. Ito won the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2006. A win by a non-Westerner for such awards had long been rare.

Sejima, who works with Nishizawa, is coveted for her trademark ethereally white designs, often using glass, such as the Louvre Lens in France, the Christian Dior building in Tokyo and the Zollverein School in Germany.

Ban carved out his career by using recycled paper tubes as construction material, and his housing ideas have been widely praised for their use as temporary housing after disasters.

When people were crammed in a gym after the 2011 tsunami in northeastern Japan, his idea of hanging cloth as partitions on paper-tubing frames delivered privacy and a sense of mental peace.

Ban also created housing out of shipping containers, placed on top of each other, proving that a little artistry could add beauty as well as comfort to disaster housing.

Ban denies anything "Japanese" about his designs, scoffing at the often made suggestion that he is inspired by "shoji" paper screens, stressing he uses paper as construction materials.

"I hate to use Japanese tradition consciously as a style," he said, while conceding that his idea of connecting the inside with the outside may be Japanese, but noting with a laugh the influence can be seen with American architects as well.

"Nationality is not that important," he said.

Ban is no exception in being in great demand outside Japan, such as his villa in Sri Lanka that blends with the ocean on one side and a forest on the other, and the Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, which was built of paper and glass to replace the cathedral damaged in the 2011 quake.

Fuji Kindergarten in Tachikawa, outside Tokyo, by Takaharu and Yui Tezuka, also illustrates the idea of fusing the outside with the inside.

The walls of the doughnut-shaped building are glass, and they open as sliding doors into a courtyard. The spherical roof works as a playground, for the children to run around and around.

The couple often uses the roof for living space, and they swear sitting side by side on a sloped surface, like a riverbank, as opposed to facing each other across a table, is good for human relations.

With Japanese architecture, a slight change of approach transforms a roof into something more than just a roof, in the same way the artistry with which a chef cuts and presents raw fish transforms it into sashimi, Takaharu Tezuka said.

The Tezukas also utilize the Japanese "engawa," or porch, to blur the distinction between inside and outside for a "wall-less" effect.

"One of the most important qualities of Japanese architecture is its openness," said Takaharu Tezuka. "Some European and American architects say it's important to have intermediate space, between inside and outside. But our approach is different. Everything is intermediate."

It's also clear the Tezukas have also made family a central theme in their designs.

Seeing that children climb into closet-like niches, they created hideaway spots in their buildings. Their work proposes a move away from the stereotypical Japanese workaholic lifestyle toward an enjoyment of quality in daily life.

The 1987 Pritzker winner "Kenzo Tange was dealing with Japanese architecture as a symbol," said Takaharu Tezuka, who always wears blue. "But now we are referring to lifestyle."

Takaharu's wife and collaborator Yui wears red. Everything they share, such as their car, is yellow and their daughter dresses in yellow. Their son wears green.

"Architecture is a tool, and it holds the possibility for changing your life," she said. "Life will become fun."

New Ukrainian rebel leader gives Moscow distance

August 08, 2014

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian has replaced a Russian at the helm of the insurgency in eastern Ukraine and declared that he wants "only moral support" from Moscow, as the Kremlin apparently tries to rebut Western claims that it is calling the shots among the rebels.

Many in the rebel ranks decry what they call Russia's betrayal of their cause, but most vow to keep on fighting even as Ukrainian government troops close in on the main rebel stronghold, the eastern city of Donetsk.

In an ominous sign that the fighting may escalate further, the new leader of the insurgency has boasted of hundreds of new recruits and says a lot of rocket launchers and tanks have been seized from a Ukrainian unit.

Alexander Zakharchenko, a native of mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, took over late Thursday as prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, which has declared independence from the central government in Kiev.

He succeeded Alexander Borodai, a Moscow political consultant who reportedly played a role in Russia's annexation of Crimea in March before moving into eastern Ukraine. Borodai has worked for a nationalist tycoon with alleged connections to the Kremlin.

Ukraine's eastern regions have strong ties to Russia, and much of its population was alarmed when a new pro-Western government came to power in Kiev with support from Ukrainian nationalists. The change of government was the result of months of street protests that ousted the pro-Moscow president in February.

In another sign that the rebellion may be losing steam, several other rebel leaders with links to Russia have quietly left the region in the past few weeks. The Russian commanders "are fleeing like rats," said Andrei, a 27-year-old rebel in Donetsk. Like other locals who have joined the separatist cause, he gave only his first name out of fear of retribution either from the rebel leadership for speaking freely or from the Ukrainian authorities for taking up arms.

"We had hoped for help from Moscow, we had expected Russian troops, but Russia betrayed us," Andrei said. "Many fighters are beginning to think about their future and also are escaping to Russia." Oleg, a 34-year-old member of a different rebel battalion, said his unit is running out of food, clothes and medicine.

"But we are ready to fight to the end and to die," he said. "Russia left us here to die and we are ready. They simply used us and abandoned us." The new leader of the insurgency vowed to continue the fight but refrained from urging Moscow to send troops, a call issued by many rebel leaders in the past.

"Only moral support," Zakharchenko said Friday when asked what assistance the rebels expect from Vladimir Putin's government. The Russian president has faced a storm of criticism from nationalist quarters at home for not sending the Russian army into Ukraine.

Another Moscow resident high up in the rebel hierarchy, Igor Girkin, a former Russian special services officer better known by his assumed name of Strelkov, has become an iconic figure in Russian nationalist circles. Some speak of him as a possible future leader of Russia, a depiction certain to irk Putin.

Ukraine and the West have accused Moscow of beefing up its military on the border, dispatching what NATO estimates is 20,000 troops to the border of Ukraine. The deployment has fueled fears of a Russian invasion under the guise of restoring stability to eastern Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced late Friday that it has wrapped up military exercises in southern Russia that the U.S. had decried as a provocative step. The exercises involving fighter jets and bombers were held this week in the Astrakhan region, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Donetsk.

Speaking Friday at a U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power warned Russia that any further intervention in Ukraine, including under the pretense of delivering humanitarian aid, "would be completely unacceptable and deeply alarming, and it would be viewed as an invasion of Ukraine."

The Russian government has denied Western accusations of backing the Ukrainian mutiny with weapons and soldiers. It also has dismissed Western suspicions that it gave the rebels the surface-to-air missiles used to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over rebel-held territory on July 17, killing all 298 people on board. The rebels have publicly denied shooting down the plane, but one rebel leader told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the rebels were involved in the downing.

Ukrainian troops routed the insurgents from smaller towns in the region earlier this month and have now encircled Donetsk, where fighting has crept closer to the city center. An estimated 300,000 of the city's 1 million residents have fled.

The Donetsk city council said four apartment buildings in the city were damaged by artillery barrages overnight, killing at least three civilians and wounding 10 others. Shocked residents gathered at the site in the morning, with some leaving flowers on the pavement to commemorate the victims.

"Nina, my godmother, was blown into pieces right in front of the apartment. They only were able to identify her by her dressing gown," 55-year-old Yevgeny Isayev said as he pointed to a crater next to the building's entrance.

Another resident, Marina Barsuk, 53, said the shelling came a few days after rebels had positioned a Grad multiple-rocket launcher near the apartment building and fired at Ukrainian positions. She and other residents believed the latest shelling came from Ukrainian government troops.

The government has adamantly denied, however, that its forces are shelling populated areas. "We are not shooting on Donetsk, we are liberating it," Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said Friday. "The residential areas are being shot at by the terrorists from their positions."

Zakharchenko said the shelling has swelled the rebel ranks, with more than 700 men showing up to volunteer in recent days. He also said his forces have seized 18 Grad systems from Ukrainian troops. His statements could not be independently confirmed. The Ukrainian and Russian armies both use the Soviet-made Grad launchers and now the rebels do too. The Grads fire unguided rockets up to 20 kilometers (12 miles) and their accuracy is very poor, making collateral damage from the shelling of populated areas almost inevitable.

Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

Greek frigate returns after Libya evacuation

August 02, 2014

PIRAEUS, Greece (AP) — A Greek navy frigate carrying embassy staff and nearly 200 people from Greece, China and other countries evacuated from the conflict in Libya returned early Saturday to a port near Athens.

Passengers on the frigate Salamis described a deteriorating security situation in the Libyan capital Tripoli, with frequent power and water cuts. The Greek Defense Ministry the ship transported 77 people from Greece, 78 from China, 10 from Britain, seven from Belgium, one each from Russia and Albania.

The Greek evacuation followed similar action by a number of European countries, as fighting between rival militias in recent weeks. Poland's Foreign Ministry said Friday that it has evacuated two dozen Poles and citizens of two other countries. All of Poland's diplomats have now left the country. Britain says it will suspend work at its consulate in Tripoli once it has completed assisting the departure of British nationals.

"We were hearing explosions all the time, but the fighting was on the outskirts of Tripoli," said Mustafa Avocat, a Greek-Libyan accountant, who was holding his crying infant son, moments after stepping off the Greek frigate.

"Things are getting worse. The power is cut 5-7 hours every day. There are water cuts too ... and the shops are closed." Constantine Koutras, a spokesman for the Greek Foreign Ministry, said moving embassy staff to the port was the most difficult part of the operation.

"I was on the phone to our charge d'affaires at the embassy to get an update and I could hear the sound of gunfire in the background," he told state TV. "So in places like this and in these kinds of situations there is a very small difference between things going well and going very, very badly," he added.

In Manila, about 20 Filipinos arrived Saturday after escaping from Libya through Tunisia. "At the border in Tunisia, it was like we had one foot already in the grave," Abraham Brios, a cook for a Libyan family who returned with his wife, told reporters at the Manila international airport.

"There was shooting in front of us, so we just prayed. ... Now that we are here, we now feel reassured." Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said that more than 800 of about 13,000 Filipinos in Libya had returned to their homeland.

US spying revelations bring German encryption boom

August 07, 2014

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AP) — Revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency's electronic eavesdropping capabilities have sparked anger in Germany and a boom in encryption services that make it hard for the most sophisticated spies to read emails, listen to calls or look through texts.

Jon Callas, co-founder of Silent Circle, which sells an encryption app allowing users to talk and text in private, said a series of disclosures from former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden last year have been good for business.

Silent Circle is one of several online security companies cashing in on new security-conscious customers around the world who want to shield their communications from foreign governments — and nowhere is the market hotter than in Germany, whose chancellor, Angela Merkel, was reported to be a target.

"Germans have always been particularly attuned to security and privacy concerns," Callas said. "I think that culturally, Germany has seen privacy problems in their recent past. There are people who remember the communists. There is still a cultural sore spot over security and privacy, an understanding of what can go wrong better than any other place in the world."

The companies' customers range from diplomats and journalists to privacy advocates and people trying to protect trade secrets. Although Silent Circle doesn't provide specific numbers, Callas said it saw a "huge increase" in subscriptions to its private phone and text service after Snowden's disclosures and a spike in Germany after two reported cases of suspected U.S. spying there this year.

And while the technology has Silicon Valley roots, the servers are in Canada and Switzerland, two countries with strong privacy protections. Two weeks ago, Silent Circle also began selling a secure smartphone, whose first run sold out, Callas said.

At CeBIT, a leading tech industry event held annually in the German city of Hannover, Deutsche Telekom was among several companies to launch new security products after Snowden's revelations. "I want to send a personal thanks to the NSA, because we wouldn't be having this discussing if that hadn't happened," Reinhard Clemens, a Deutsche Telekom board member, told reporters. "That was the best marketing campaign we've ever had."

The company, known for its T-Mobile brand in the United States, sells a smartphone app that encrypts voice and data traffic. It was developed with Berlin-based firm GSMK, an offshoot of the German hacking group Chaos Computer Club.

Customers seeking an all-in-one solution can buy GSMK's $2,750 secure cellphone that will protect confidential communications from all but the most dedicated eavesdroppers. Chief Executive Bjoern Rupp said his company has seen a surge of interest in its encryption technology since details of the NSA's surveillance capabilities leaked last year.

"Snowden is transforming the industry," Rupp told The Associated Press. "There is a completely new consciousness about security." Since launching in 2003, the company has sold about 100,000 secure devices, but the number of apps sold in the past year is "in another dimension," said Rupp, without revealing a precise figure.

British rival Vodafone, meanwhile, launched its own "Secure Call" app at the CeBIT fair with the claim it would allow users to make "calls that are as secure as those of the German government." Merkel herself used to be photographed with a Nokia slider phone. Since reports surfaced that the NSA had listed her among its foreign intelligence targets, the chancellor has avoided being seen with low-end devices. Her new gadget, as widely reported, is a top-range BlackBerry outfitted with a custom-made security suite made by German company Secusmart — endorsed for sensitive communications by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security.

Apparently seizing on the opportunity, BlackBerry recently announced it was buying Secusmart. Ravishankar Borgaonkar, who works with Telekom Innovation Laboratories and FG Security in Berlin, uses an app on his Samsung smartphone that detects how secure each call is with red and green buttons.

For those who don't want to take any chances, the revelations have also sparked a retro trend. The country's business weekly Wirtschaftswoche recently reported typewriter sales rising for the first time in years.

Jordans reported from Berlin.

Migrants clash in France as camp tensions soar

August 05, 2014

PARIS (AP) — Migrants flowing into Europe in unprecedented numbers are causing a tense summer in France, as clashes break out among asylum-seekers in overcrowded camps and police fire tear gas to quell the chaos.

Sudanese and Eritreans battled in the heat in France's port city of Calais, frustrations rising as the Africans jockey for space while trying to sneak into Britain — the dream destination some 30 kilometers (20 miles) away.

British police were on site in Calais trying to make sure they don't cross over. Their French counterparts fired tear gas Tuesday to break up the latest of three battles that left 51 injured, one seriously, the Calais prefecture said.

Migrants fleeing poverty and war in Africa and the Middle East arrive in Calais with hopes of crossing the channel on a ferry or on trucks laden with cargo. Their numbers in the city at the edge of the English Channel have swelled to up to 1,300, overwhelming the city, aid agencies and police.

Up to 40 extra riot police were brought into Calais to start duty Tuesday night, bringing the number of police officers to 600, the city said. "There are migrants who arrive each day and each day some who succeed in getting to Britain," said Deputy Mayor Philippe Mignonet, in charge of security. He refused to say how many migrants outsmart the scanners, CO2 detectors and other technology used on trucks and planted through the Channel Tunnel.

"Calais has been taken hostage," Mignonet said, blaming in part a Franco-British cooperation accord that he says puts the brunt of the burden on Calais. Like other officials, the deputy mayor complains that the British police presence effectively extends Britain's border to France.

Most migrants in Calais start the European portion of their treacherous Mediterranean journeys in Italy, arriving on boats in the island of Lampedusa. Last year, total arrivals in Italy tallied 42,000 — which was already surpassed by spring. With the year far from over, over 60,000 migrants have arrived on Italian shores.

Overwhelmed, Italy is increasingly waiving European rules to fingerprint migrants, allowing them to move on. Those looking to go to Britain often end up in Calais. Britain is seen by many migrants as Europe's Shangri-La, with a more humane treatment of migrants than continental neighbors like France, where there are only 22,000 living units for some 60,000 asylum seekers.

Clashes among migrants are a new phenomenon. Those Monday night and twice Tuesday were a culmination of a months-long tug-of-war between Calais and migrants. The city bulldozed makeshift camps in May. The migrants then occupied a food distribution center but were expelled. Now, authorities threaten to expel hundreds in two abandoned factories. Under pressure, the migrants turn on one another.

"There are lots of people, so there is lots more tension," said Noemie Bourdet of aid group Secours Catholique in Calais. Migrants often are forced to pay small-time smugglers for a place in line in a parking lot where trucks leave for Britain. The clashes may have been over a place at a parking lot that didn't have smugglers demanding payments, according to Bourdet.

Within France, there is a divergence of views about how well Calais and France cope with the migrant issue. "They expel them without solutions," said Bourdet of Secours Catholique, echoing the charge that Calais migrants have been reduced to a security problem.

Mignonet disagrees. "It is a doubly catastrophic situation for us," he said, explaining that the migrants suffer and Calais suffers, too. "People only talk of Calais for its migrant problems ... This seriously hurts the city's image."

Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, contributed to this report.

French president marks World War I centenary

August 03, 2014

PARIS (AP) — French President Francois Hollande commemorated the 100th anniversary of World War I on Sunday with an appeal to players in the Gaza conflict to put animosities aside — just as France and Germany have done.

In an impassioned speech in Vieil Armand in Alsace, Hollande paid homage to those who lost their lives after Germany declared war on France on Aug. 3, 1914. But he recalled that former enemies France and Germany put aside their differences to pave the way for peace — and that others do the same.

"The history of France and Germany shows that will can always triumph over fatalism and the people who were regarded as hereditary enemies can, in a few years, reconciliate," he said. He called on the world to take the lasting nature of Franco-German relations as a lesson in peacemaking. He said world powers should seek to impose a cease-fire in Gaza, "to stop the suffering of the civilian population."

German President Joachim Gauck joined the French leader for the ceremony— the first time Germany's head of state has attended. Soldiers bitterly contested Vieil Armand — known in German as Hartmannswillerkopf — because the summit offered a commanding view of the Rhine Valley. Armies at the time deemed its capture as strategically important and some 30,000 died in fighting.

The cemetery contains the remains of 12,000 unidentified soldiers. Hollande also put in place a foundation stone for a museum on the site that will open in in 2017.

US airdrops supplies to thousands besieged in Iraq

August 08, 2014

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military dropped humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of Iraqi religious minorities besieged by militants and desperately in need of food and water, President Barack Obama said late Thursday, defending the action as helping to prevent a possible genocide.

Obama said the humanitarian airdrops were made at the request of the Iraqi government as the Islamic State militant group tightened its grip on northern Iraq. Its fighters seized the country's largest hydroelectric dam on Thursday, taking control of enormous power and water resources and leverage over the Tigris River that runs through the heart of Baghdad.

The Sunni radical group has been ending minority communities fleeing. The country's humanitarian crisis is growing, with some 200,000 Iraqis joining the 1.5 million people already displaced from violence this year.

"These terrorists have been especially barbaric towards religious minorities," including Christians, Obama said in a televised statement from the White House. The U.S. food and water supplies were delivered to tens of thousands of members of the Yazidi community trapped on a mountain without food and water. The Yazidis, who follow an ancient religion with ties to Zoroastrianism, fled their homes after the Islamic State group issued an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious fine, flee or face death.

Faced with the threats, some 50,000 — half of them children, according to United Nations figures — ran into the nearby Sinjar mountains. "We can act, carefully and responsibly, to prevent a potential act of genocide. That's what we're doing on that mountain," Obama said.

He announced the airdrops only after the three American military cargo aircraft, escorted by fighter planes, had safely left the drop site. The planes delivered 5,300 gallons (20,060 liters) of fresh drinking water and 8,000 pre-packaged meals.

Officials said the U.S. was prepared to undertake additional humanitarian airdrops if necessary. Iraq's ambassador to the U.N., Mohamed Alhakim, earlier told reporters that his government had very limited resources to help the tens of thousands besieged.

"It's unfortunate, and this is why this is a catastrophe," he said. The Sunni militant group has established its idea of an Islamic state in the territory it controls in Iraq and Syria, imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Iraqi government forces, Kurds and allied Sunni tribal militiamen have been struggling to dislodge the militants, with little apparent success.

The al-Qaida breakaway group posted a statement online Thursday, confirming it had taken control of the Mosul Dam and vowing to continue "the march in all directions," as it expands the Islamic state, or Caliphate, it has imposed. The group said it has seized a total of 17 Iraqi cities, towns and targets — including the dam and a military base — over the past five days. The statement could not be verified, but it was posted on a site frequently used by the group.

The Mosul Dam — once known as the Saddam Dam for ousted dictator Saddam Hussein — is located just north of Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, which fell to the militants on June 10. There are fears the militants could release the dam waters and devastate the country all the way to the capital Baghdad, though maintaining the dam's power and water supplies is key to their attempts to build a state.

"With the dam in its control, the Islamic State can use water as a coercive tool in creating dependency or as a deterrent threat hovering in the background," said Ramzy Mardini, an Iraq expert with the Washington-based Atlantic Council. "It could potentially flood Baghdad or cut off its supply."

The Islamic State militants also overran a cluster of predominantly Christian villages alongside the country's semi-autonomous Kurdish region, sending tens of thousands of civilians and Kurdish fighters fleeing from the area, several priests in northern Iraq said Thursday.

The capture of Qaraqoush, Iraq's biggest Christian village, and at least four other nearby hamlets, brings the Islamic State to the very edge of the Iraqi Kurdish territory and its regional capital, Irbil.

The U.N. Security Council after an emergency meeting on Thursday condemned attacks on minorities in Iraq and said the attacks could constitute crimes against humanity. UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, the current council president, told reporters that his country would circulate a draft resolution late Thursday on Iraq that would include a "message of condemnation' and practical measures.

"There was deep alarm in the Security Council about the speed of events," he said. He said the immediate needs in Iraq are humanitarian but that it was still difficult to assess the scale of the crisis.

Associated Press writers Bram Janssen in Irbil, Sinan Salaheddin and Murtada Faraj in Baghdad, Thomas Adamson and Lori Hinnant in Paris, Trenton Daniel at the United Nations, Julie Pace and Robert Burns in Washington, and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

Ethiopia's Armenians: Long history, small numbers

August 02, 2014

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — The numbers at the St. George Armenian Apostolic Church in Addis Ababa are not adding up. Church records show an average of two funerals a year, but a wedding only every three years and a baptism every five.

"Some people don't come to church vertically. Only horizontally," Vartkes Nalbandian said with a laugh. Vartkes is among a small handful of people keeping Ethiopia's Armenian community alive. Despite a fall in numbers from a peak of 1,200 in the 1960s to less than 100 people today, the Armenian school, church and social club still open their doors.

"There is more to a community than just statistics. We are proud of the Armenian contribution to Ethiopia. It's worth fighting for," said 64-year old Vartkes, the church's fulltime acting archdeacon since the last priest left in 2002.

But given the shrinking numbers, the fight can feel daunting. Armenian goldsmiths, traders and architects were invited to settle in Ethiopia more than 150 years ago by Emperor Johannes IV. Buoyed by the ties between Ethiopian and Armenian Orthodoxy, the community thrived.

After the Armenian Genocide in 1915, Haile Selassie, Ethiopia's regent who later became Emperor, opened his arms to the Armenian people even wider, adopting 40 orphans as wards of court. In return, the Ethio-Armenians proved fiercely loyal.

One trader used his European connections to buy arms for Ethiopia's resistance movement against the Italian occupation during World War II. Others ran an underground newspaper. Several gave their lives in service of their adopted homeland.

"Those were the best days," said 61-year old Salpi Nalbandian, who runs a leather business with her brother Vartkes and other family members. "We were valued members of the court. We made the crowns the emperors wore on their heads. We were not like the Italians, we weren't invaders. We contributed."

But the community's fortunes have changed through the years. Ethio-Armenians had their property and businesses confiscated when the communist Derg seized power in 1974. Many families left then, fearing for their lives. The Nalbandians stayed, determined not to give up on a country they had called home for four generations.

Salpi and Vartkes' musical family has made a lasting contribution to Ethiopia's heritage. Great uncle Kervork wrote Ethiopia's first national anthem, and their father Nerses became well known for his pioneering work in Ethio-Jazz, which blends traditional Ethiopian five-tone scales with the diminished scales of Western jazz.

The pair have become the gatekeepers to a part of Ethiopian culture and history that is in danger of being forgotten. Ethio-Armenians are gradually resembling a diaspora within a diaspora. Children and grandchildren who live in the U.S. and Canada now make pilgrimages to Addis to see the place where their ancestors grew up.

Most of the Armenian buildings in the Armenian "safar" — or neighborhood — in Addis Ababa's city center are now empty or gone, victim to the city's appetite for high-rise buildings that are beginning to dominate the skyline.

St. George's Church holds maybe 200 people but seems larger because it often stands dark and empty. Golden orthodox crosses are the only objects that catch the light from high small windows in the church's pointed dome. The African sunshine struggles to brighten the church's dark green walls.

The remaining Armenian families are scattered around Addis' outskirts, including the Nalbandians, who were forced to vacate their family home. The only reason the house, which in a traditional Armenian style has a wrap-round balcony — is still standing is because Salpi is fighting against the local government to preserve it as a museum dedicated to her father's life and work.

She has had some help upholding her father's legacy from Aramatz Kalayjian, an Armenian filmmaker. He has being working on "Tezeta," a documentary about Ethio-Armenian music, since 2012. "The only remnants of a great cross-pollination of cultures are the few Armenian community members left, the music, history books, and memories that tell of the relationship between Armenians and Ethiopians," Kalayjian said.

Vartkes Nalbandian disagrees with Kalayjian's view that the community is fading. He notes that a Syrian-Armenian man recently visited the Addis community with a view to moving there with his family. "The school is open, the church is open, the club is open," he said. "It doesn't matter if I open the church on a Sunday and preach to many people or just a handful. As long as our spirit is strong, our identity is, too."