Hezbollah suffers heavy losses in clashes with jihadists

2014-10-06

BAALBEK - Eight fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah movement were killed in clashes with jihadists in an area on the border with Syria, a Hezbollah source said on Monday.

The source revised an earlier toll of five dead for Sunday's attack by jihadists on a Hezbollah post and clashes that followed.

The early morning attack targeted the post in mountains around the town of Nabi Sbat, east of Baalbek on the border with Syria.

The source said "dozens" of jihadists were killed in the assault, which Lebanon's National News Agency said was launched from Assal al-Ward in Syria's Qalamun province.

Al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, Al-Nusra Front, claimed involvement in the attack on one of its official Twitter accounts on Monday.

The group said its fighters "launched an attack from Assal" on the Hezbollah post.

"More than 11 of them were killed and their weapons seized," it added, posting photos it said were of dead Hezbollah fighters.

Lebanon's border with Syria is not officially defined and much of it is porous and unpatrolled, with local residents, smugglers and others moving freely across it.

Hezbollah maintains several military posts along inaccessible parts of the border, and it rarely gives official details on clashes with jihadists or other fighters.

The clashes come two months after jihadists from the Islamic State group and Al-Nusra attacked Lebanese security forces in Arsal, which also lies on the Syrian border in eastern Lebanon.

The jihadists withdrew into the mountains around Arsal after a ceasefire, but took with them around 30 soldiers and policemen as hostages.

Three of them have since been executed, contributing to rising anxiety in Lebanon over the encroachment of jihadists and spillover from the more than three-year-old war in Syria.

Hezbollah has dispatched fighters to bolster President Bashar al-Assad's troops against an uprising that many of Lebanon's Sunnis support.

The conflict has exacerbated existing tensions in Lebanon, and made Hezbollah and its strongholds of support a target for extremists who have detonated bombs in several areas.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://middle-east-online.com/english/?id=68354.

Assad backs all efforts to fight terrorism

September 23, 2014

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — President Bashar Assad said Tuesday he supports any international effort against terrorism, apparently trying to position his government on the side of the U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria.

Assad's remarks came hours after the opening salvo in what the United States has warned will be a lengthy campaign to defeat the extremists who have seized control of a huge swath of territory spanning the Syria-Iraq border. Damascus said the U.S. informed it beforehand that the strikes were coming.

One Syrian activist group reported that dozens of Islamic State fighters were killed in the pre-dawn strikes, but the numbers could not be independently confirmed. Several activists also reported at least 10 civilians killed.

Some Syrian rebels fighting to oust Assad welcomed the American-led strikes, but others expressed frustration that the coalition was only targeting the Islamic State group and not the Syrian government.

One rebel faction that has received U.S.-made advanced weapons, Harakat Hazm, criticized the airstrikes, saying they violate Syria's sovereignty and undermine the anti-Assad revolution. "The only party benefiting from the foreign intervention in Syria is the Assad regime, especially in the absence of a real strategy to bring it down," the group said in a statement posted on its Twitter feed.

The air campaign expanded to also hit al-Qaida's branch in Syria, known as the Nusra Front, which has fought against the Islamic State group. Washington considers it a terrorist group threatening the U.S., although Western-backed Syrian rebel groups frequently cooperate with Nusra Front fighters on the battlefield.

In a meeting Tuesday with an Iraqi envoy, Assad voiced his support for "any international anti-terrorism effort," according to the state news agency SANA. Assad did not specifically mention the coalition airstrikes, but said Syria is "decisively continuing in the war it has waged for years against extremist terrorism in all its forms."

He also stressed that all nations must commit to stop support for terrorism — an apparent reference to countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar who are strong backers of Syrian rebels, whom the Syrian government calls terrorists.

In recent weeks, Syrian officials insisted that any international strikes on its soil must be coordinated with Damascus or else they would be considered an act of aggression and a breach of Syria's sovereignty. The United States has ruled out any coordination with Assad's government.

Still, Damascus appeared to want to show it was not being left out, vowing in a statement to fight extremist faction across Syria and pledging to coordinate "with countries that were harmed by the group, first and foremost Iraq."

Syria "stands with any international effort to fight terrorism, no matter what a group is called — whether Daesh or Nusra Front or something else," it said, using an Arabic name for the Islamic State group.

Syria's Foreign Ministry said Washington told Damascus' U.N. envoy of the impending raids shortly before they began. It also said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry passed a message through Iraq's foreign minister to Syria's top diplomat to inform Damascus of the plans.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States informed Syria through the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. of its intent to take action, but did not request the Assad government's permission or coordinate with Damascus.

Syria's two key allies, Iran and Russia, condemned the strikes. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in New York that the U.S.-led coalition's airstrikes are illegal because they were not approved by or coordinated with Syria's government.

Russia warned that the "unilateral" U.S. airstrikes are destabilizing the region and urged Washington to secure either Damascus' consent or U.N. Security Council support. The Lebanese Shiite militant Hezbollah group, which has dispatched fighters to Syria to bolster Assad's forces, also condemned the strikes.

"We are against an international coalition, whether it is against the regime ... or whether it is against Daesh," Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech. "This is an opportunity, pretext, for America to dominate the region again."

The strikes, conducted by the U.S., Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, hit Islamic State training compounds and command centers, storage facilities and vehicles in the group's de facto capital, Raqqa, in northeastern Syria, and the surrounding province, U.S. officials said. They also struck territory controlled by the group in eastern Syria leading to the Iraqi border.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least 70 Islamic State group fighters were killed and more than 300 wounded. Rami Abdurrahman, the Observatory head, said about 22 airstrikes hit Raqqa province in addition to 30 in Deir el-Zour province.

Farther west, the strikes hit the village of Kfar Derian, a stronghold of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. Around a dozen Nusra Front fighters were killed, as well as 10 civilians, according to two activists based in nearby Aleppo, Mohammed al-Dughaim and Abu Raed. One of the group's best snipers, known as Abu Youssef al-Turki, was among those killed.

Lucas reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Diaa Hadid in Beirut, Zeina Karam in New York, Omar Akour in Amman, Aya Batrawy in Dubai and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.

Syria refugee flood to Turkey hits 100,000

September 22, 2014

KUCUK KENDIRCILER, Turkey (AP) — The 19-year-old Kurdish militant, who has been fighting the Islamic State group in Syria, brought his family across the border into Turkey to safety Sunday. But in the tranquility of a Turkish tea garden just miles from the frontier, Dalil Boras vowed to head back after nightfall to continue the fight.

Pulling a wad of Syrian bills from his pocket, the young fighter — who has already lost a 17-year-old brother to the Islamic militants' brutal advance — said that if the Turkish border guards tried to stop him, money would persuade them.

Boras and his relatives are among some 100,000 Syrians, mostly Kurds, who have flooded into Turkey since Thursday, escaping an Islamic State offensive that has pushed the conflict nearly within eyeshot of the Turkish border.

The al-Qaida breakaway group, which has established an Islamic state, or caliphate, ruled by its harsh version of Islamic law in territory it captured straddling the Syria-Iraq border, has in recent days advanced into Kurdish regions of Syria that border Turkey, where fleeing refugees on Sunday reported atrocities that included stonings, beheadings and the torching of homes.

On Sunday, heavy clashes broke out between the Islamic State militants and Kurdish fighters only miles from the Syrian border town of Kobani, where the Islamic State group was bombarding villagers with tanks, artillery and multiple rocket launchers, said Nasser Haj Mansour, a defense official in Syria's Kurdish region.

"They are even targeting civilians who are fleeing," Haj Mansour told The Associated Press. At a border crossing where Turkish authorities were processing the refugees, Osman Abbas said he and 20 relatives were fleeing a village near Kobani when Islamic State fighters shot one of his sons. The 35-year-old had tried to return to their home to recover valuables while the rest of the family fled.

"They took our village, they took our house, they killed my son," Abbas said. "I saw it with my own eyes." As refugees flooded in, Turkey closed the border crossing at Kucuk Kendirciler to Turkish Kurds in a move aimed at preventing them from joining the fight in Syria. A day earlier, hundreds of Kurdish fighters had poured into Syria through the small Turkish village, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Clashes broke out as Kurds trying to approach the crossing from inside Turkey scuffled with security forces, who responded with tear gas, paint pellets and water cannons. The state-run Anadolu Agency said the Kurdish protesters had hurled stones at the security forces.

Two people were seriously injured in the clashes, including one Kurdish legislator who was hospitalized, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions' Party said, adding that the Kurds were protesting the Islamic State group's attacks as well as the border closure.

The sound of gunfire could be heard from the Syrian side of the frontier, where refugees were piling up after authorities shut the crossing. It wasn't immediately clear whether they were unable to cross or simply waiting to see what would happen.

Despite the huge number of new refugees, Turkish authorities said they were ready to deal with the influx. The conflict has pushed more than a million Syrians over the border in the past 3 1/2 years. "We have been prepared for this," said Dogan Eskinat, a spokesman for Turkey's disaster management agency. "We are also prepared for worse."

Boras, the young Kurdish fighter, said the lines between Kurdish and Islamic State fighters had held stable near Kobani for months, until the Islamic State group broke through in recent days, armed with more powerful weapons, including tanks. He said he did not know where the heavier weaponry came from.

Two days earlier, his 17-year-old brother was killed in fighting, he said, and another 16-year-old brother, who he had brought to Turkey with his family, slipped back over the border Sunday. The three brothers were fighting with the YPK military wing of Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party. Turkey is wary of YPK militants, who it believes are affiliated with the PKK movement, which waged a long and bloody insurgency in southeast Turkey.

Boras said the Islamic State has been killing indiscriminately as they rolled through villages and that he had seen the devastation, which included blowing up houses with gasoline bombs. "They captured women, buried them to the neck and stoned them," he said.

Late Sunday, the AP reached Boras in Syria by cell phone. He said he was heading back toward Kobani to recover his weapons and return to the front lines. While his report about atrocities could not be independently verified, the situation on the Syrian side of the border is dire.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic State group has taken control of 64 villages in northern Syria since the fighting began there early Wednesday. It says that the fate of 800 Kurds from these villages is unknown, adding that the Islamic State group had killed at least 11 civilians, including two boys.

The Aleppo Media Center, another activist group, said that Sunday's battles were concentrated on the southern and eastern suburbs of Kobani. Mansour said the battles are taking place about eight miles (13 kilometers) from the town.

Mohammed Osman Hamme, a middle-aged Syrian Kurdish refugee who managed to make his way into Turkey, told the AP he fled with his wife and small children from the village of Dariya in Syria's Raqqa province 10 days ago after hearing that the Islamic State group was headed their way.

The family walked for three days, passing the town of Tal Abyad, near the Turkish border, where they saw four severed heads hanging in the streets, he said. As he spoke a tear gas gun went off, causing Hamme's terrified daughter to start screaming. Later, Turkish police used armored cars to push people back from the border crossing at Kucuk Kendirciler.

UNHCR spokeswoman Selin Unal said most of those coming across the border are Kurdish women, children and the elderly. She urged the international community to step up aid for Syrian refugees in Turkey.

"Turkey is assisting with all needs but it's huge numbers," she said.

Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, and Frank Jordans in Berlin, contributed to this report.

Hajj pilgrimage passes peacefully

06 October 2014 Monday

Saudi Arabia breathed a sign of relief on Monday as the huge annual Muslim hajj pilgrimage neared its close.

The kingdom said this year's tighter security and sanitary precautions had paid off, allowing 2.085 million pilgrims to visit Mecca and other holy sites in safety this year, just slightly higher than the 1.98 million pilgrims last year.

The hajj, a spiritual journey that draws Muslims from around the world, had been tinged with concerns about the Ebola epidemic and other threats, especially after Saudi Arabia joined a U.S.-led alliance against ISIL militants and participated in air strikes against targets in Syria.

The pilgrimage, which culminates in the three-day feast of Eid al-Adha, officially ends on Tuesday. Security has been much tighter than in previous years, with more checkpoints on roads to the holy sites and more special forces deployed there.

"Everything went as planned ... and security was at its best situation," said Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansour al-Turki.

"I'm pleased to announce that this year's hajj was free from epidemic diseases," acting Saudi Health Minister Adel Faqih told a news conference in Mena.

Saudi Arabia enforced control this year by cracking down on domestic pilgrims traveling to holy sites without permits, Turki said. That helped keep the number of pilgrims well below the 3.2 million who packed Islam's holiest sites in 2012.

"We worked well on illegal pilgrims staying inside the kingdom, dealing with such illegal cases the number of pilgrims was reduced," Turki said.

INCREASED RESTRICTIONS

In addition to cracking down on illegal travelers to the hajj, the kingdom's Health Ministry had to grapple with a potential threat of an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus that has killed 3,300 people this year in West Africa.

In April, the kingdom barred pilgrims from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, the three countries worst hit by Ebola, from applying for hajj visas. More than 7,000 Muslims in those countries had applied, said the United Nations.

Health officials said there had been no confirmed cases at the hajj of Ebola or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another deadly disease that is believed to be carried by camels.

Faqih said there were 170 suspected MERS Coronavirus cases among the pilgrims but test results were negative.

The health ministry had advised slaughterhouses, which usually experience a busy period during hajj when Muslims are required to sacrifice an animal and distribute its meat to the needy, on how to comply with health regulations.

"We have advised them not to slaughter camels this year because 3 percent of the virus cases are linked with camels," Tariq Ahmed Madani, a special MERS consultant to the Health Ministry, told Reuters.

As hajj drew to a close, pilgrims in the holy city of Mena began to shave their heads, the last step in performing the hajj in accordance with the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad.

Unlike in previous years when unlicensed barbers lined the streets, a government crackdown appears to have borne fruit.

"Safety is very important. That's why I made sure to go to a barber shop that uses disposable razors," said Arie Naufal, an Indonesian oil company employee. "As for the other virus, I won't wear a mask because it doesn't really help much."

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/145725/hajj-pilgrimage-passes-peacefully.

Thousands return to Hong Kong streets in protest

October 10, 2014

HONG KONG (AP) — Thousands of protesters poured into a main road in Hong Kong for a pro-democracy rally late Friday, reviving a civil disobedience movement a day after the government canceled talks with student leaders aimed at defusing the standoff.

The resurgence came after a week that saw flagging support for the protesters, who have blocked off main roads and streets in three of Hong Kong's busiest areas since Sept. 28. Some of the roads have reopened to traffic, but a main thoroughfare through the heart of the business district remains occupied.

"If short-term protests won't work, there will be long-term protests," Joshua Wong, a charismatic 17-year-old student leader, told loudly cheering crowds. "This movement will not lose to the government."

Students and activists demanding a greater say in choosing the city's leader have vowed to stay until the government responds, while the government has repeatedly urged protesters to withdraw from the streets and allow the city to return to normal.

Officials had agreed to meet with student leaders but called off negotiations Thursday, saying the grounds for dialogue had been "severely undermined" by the students' call for more people to occupy the streets.

Amid the political crisis, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who is visiting Berlin, said he was confident "social stability" can be preserved in Hong Kong and stressed that Beijing won't change its "one country, two systems" approach to running the territory.

"I am convinced that Hong Kongers, with their wisdom, are in a position — and that the (Hong Kong) government has the authority — to preserve the prosperity of the city and also social stability," said Li, who did not mention the demonstrations directly.

When negotiating the handover of Hong Kong from Britain, China's Communist leaders agreed to a "one country, two systems" model that would preserve Western-style civil liberties and broad autonomy in the city.

Li said Beijing always implemented the "two systems" approach "and it will stay that way." Student leaders say it is up to the government to resolve the crisis. "If they do not give a just, reasonable answer to all the occupiers, there is no reason to persuade people to retreat," said Alex Chow of the Federation of Students.

Crowds filling up the Admiralty area, near the city's government headquarters, chanted "I want true universal suffrage" and "Our Hong Kong, Ours to Save." Many of those gathered near a stage in the main protest zone were young people, including high school students in uniforms, but there were also office workers who came straight from work.

"We don't want to see a government that treats people this way, where thousands can protest for weeks on the street and not get any response at all," said Natalie Or, 16. "Maybe they think if they keep delaying people will disperse on their own, but my friends and I aren't going anywhere. I'll come for months, I'll stay for a year, I'll stay for as long as it takes," she added.

Tens of thousands of people have occupied the semiautonomous Chinese city's streets in the past two weeks to protest Beijing's restrictions on the city's first-ever direct elections for its leader, promised for 2017.

Beijing said a 1,200-member committee stacked with pro-government elites should nominate two or three candidates before the public votes. Protesters want those restrictions revoked because they provide no real choice and do not amount to genuine democracy.

Associated Press writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Czech, Poland's ministers discuss Ukraine

October 10, 2014

PRAGUE (AP) — The foreign ministers of the Czech Republic and Poland said Friday they hope Ukraine's upcoming parliamentary election will help resolve the conflict there through diplomacy.

Lubomir Zaoralek and Poland's new foreign minister, Grzegorz Schetyna, held their first meeting and discussed policy toward Russia and Europe's climate plans. Poland supports the economic sanctions against Russia for its role in the fighting in Ukraine, but the Czech Republic — though supportive — is concerned that the sanctions stifle its trade.

Zaoralek said he hopes that the outcome of the Oct. 26 election in Ukraine will allow for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Schetyna said he hopes the vote will help the Ukrainians decide their future and pledged Poland's continued support for Ukraine's European aspirations.

Schetyna later told The Associated Press that it depended on Russia, whether more sanctions would be needed. "If Russia escalates its policy, if it does not accept the outcome of the free elections in Ukraine, if it does not respect the cease fire, then, in a natural way, the issue (of sanctions) will return to the European, to the world agenda."

Both ministers said that Warsaw and Prague see the need to cut carbon gases to fight climate change but don't want a binding 40 percent target. The European Union member nations are expected to approve a plan that would cut greenhouse gases emissions to 40 percent below the 1990 levels, by 2030. Coal-reliant Poland would find it hard to meet that goal and seems to have found an ally in Prague in its efforts to soften the target.

Considered a moderate, Schetyna took over last month from outspoken Radek Sikorski in a government reshuffle that was prompted by then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk stepping down to take a top European Union job.

Thousands take part in opposition rally in Armenia

October 10, 2014

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — About 12,000 people have rallied in the capital of Armenia to protest a constitutional change being proposed by the president.

Protesters and leaders of Armenia's three major opposition parties, which organized Friday's rally together despite their ideological differences, also called for the resignation of the government, blaming it for a dismal economic growth.

An ad-hoc commission was set up in Armenia early this year to consider potential changes to the constitution. President Serge Sarkisian, who is now the head of state, has proposed a change that would make the prime minister the government's top official.

The opposition claims he has done that so he could run for that job when his second and final term as president ends in 2018 and thereby potentially remain Armenia's leader.