Duterte sees bombed church, tells army to crush Abu Sayyaf

January 29, 2019

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — President Rodrigo Duterte and his top security officials on Monday visited a Catholic cathedral in the southern Philippines where suspected Islamic militants set off bombs that killed 20 people and wounded more than 100.

The first blast sent people, some of them wounded, fleeing out the church's main door. Army troops and police were rushing inside when the second bomb exploded a minute later. The explosions scattered wooden pews inside the main hall, blasted out window glass panels and hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, witnesses said.

The attack occurred in the Sulu provincial capital on Jolo island, where Abu Sayyaf militants have carried out years of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings and have aligned themselves with the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Duterte walked slowly into the bombed cathedral, where the wooden pews were still in disarray. At one point he looked at the ceiling, where many panels were ripped off by the blasts. Duterte ordered the armed forces to crush the Abu Sayyaf. The group has an estimated 300 to 400 members, mostly in Sulu where it is holding several foreign and Filipino kidnap victims.

Duterte later met with families of the victims at a military camp in Jolo where coffins were laid side by side. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who was with the president, blamed the attack on Abu Sayyaf commander Hatib Sawadjaan, who he said has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

"This is an act of terrorism," Lorenzana said. "This is not a religious war." Sawadjaan is based in the jungles of Patikul town, near Jolo, and has been blamed for ransom kidnappings and beheadings of hostages, including two Canadian men, in recent years.

Police put forces around the country on heightened alert to prevent similar attacks. The bombings came nearly a week after minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation endorsed a new autonomous region in the southern Philippines in hopes of ending nearly five decades of a separatist rebellion that has left 150,000 people dead. Although most Muslim areas approved the autonomy deal, voters in Sulu province rejected it. The province is home to a rival rebel faction that is opposed to the deal as well as smaller militant cells that are not part of any peace process.

A statement by the Islamic State group posted on social media claimed the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers who wore explosive belts, one detonating at the gate and the other in the parking lot.

Police said at least 20 people died and 111 were wounded. The fatalities were 15 civilians and five troops. Among the wounded, about 90 are civilians. The United Nations and others denounced the attack. The U.N. Security Council late Monday condemned "the heinous and cowardly" attack and "underlined the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors" of the attacks accountable.

Western governments have welcomed the autonomy pact in part to ease concerns that Filipino militants could ally themselves with foreigners and turn the southern region into a breeding ground for extremists.

Aside from Abu Sayyaf, other militant groups in Sulu include a small band of young jihadis aligned with the Islamic State group. Government forces have pressed on sporadic offensives to crush the militants, and Duterte has extended martial law in the entire southern third of the country to allow troops to finish off radical Muslim groups and other insurgents, but bombings and other attacks have continued.

Duterte to see site of fatal bombings, Abu Sayyaf suspected

January 28, 2019

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — President Rodrigo Duterte and his top security officials planned on Monday to visit a Catholic cathedral in the southern Philippines where suspected Islamic militants set off bombs that killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 100.

The first blast sent people, some of them wounded, fleeing out the church's main door. Army troops and police were rushing inside when the second bomb exploded a minute later. The explosions scattered wooden pews inside the main hall, blasted out window glass panels and hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, witnesses said.

The attack occurred in the Sulu provincial capital on Jolo island, where Abu Sayyaf militants have carried out years of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings and have aligned themselves with the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

Duterte was to meet with some of the survivors and hold a security meeting with military and police officials on Monday. Police have put forces around the country on heightened alert to prevent similar attacks.

"We will pursue to the ends of the earth the ruthless perpetrators behind this dastardly crime until every killer is brought to justice and put behind bars. The law will give them no mercy," the president's office said earlier.

The bombings came nearly a week after minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation endorsed a new autonomous region in the southern Philippines in hopes of ending nearly five decades of a separatist rebellion that has left 150,000 people dead. Although most Muslim areas approved the autonomy deal, voters in Sulu province, where Jolo is located, rejected it. The province is home to a rival rebel faction that's opposed to the deal as well as smaller militant cells that are not part of any peace process.

A top Philippine government official told The Associated Press that an Abu Sayyaf commander, Hatib Sawadjaan, is one of the main suspects. At least four of Sawadjaan's men were filmed by security cameras near the bombed area, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

Sawadjaan is based in the jungles of Patikul town, near Jolo, and has been blamed for kidnappings for ransom and beheadings of hostages, including two Canadian men, in recent years. Sawadjaan's faction has aired ransom-demanding videos that used Islamic State-styled black flags as backdrops.

A statement by the Islamic State group posted on social media claimed the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers who wore explosive belts, one detonating at the gate and the other in the parking lot.

Police said at least 20 people died and 111 were wounded. The fatalities were 15 civilians and five troops. Among the wounded, about 90 are civilians. The United Nations and others denounced the attack. In a statement attributed to a spokesman, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice and reiterated the U.N.'s support for the Philippines' efforts to fight terrorism and to carry forward a peace process in the Muslim region.

Western governments welcomed the autonomy pact in part to ease concerns that Filipino militants could ally themselves with foreigners and turn the southern region into a breeding ground for extremists.

Aside from Abu Sayyaf, other militant groups in Sulu include a small band of young jihadis aligned with the Islamic State group. Government forces have pressed on sporadic offensives to crush the militants, and Duterte has extended martial law in the entire southern third of the country to allow troops to finish off radical Muslim groups and other insurgents, but bombings and other attacks have continued.

20 dead as bombs target Sunday Mass in Philippine cathedral

January 27, 2019

JOLO, Philippines (AP) — Two bombs minutes apart tore through a Roman Catholic cathedral on a southern Philippine island where Muslim militants are active, killing at least 20 people and wounding 81 others during a Sunday Mass, officials said.

Witnesses said the first blast inside the Jolo cathedral in the provincial capital sent churchgoers, some of them wounded, to stampede out of the main door. Army troops and police posted outside were rushing in when the second bomb went off about one minute later near the main entrance, causing more deaths and injuries. The military was checking a report that the second explosive device may have been attached to a parked motorcycle.

The initial explosion scattered the wooden pews inside the main hall and blasted window glass panels, and the second bomb hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, witnesses said. Cellphone signal was cut off in the first hours after the attack. The witnesses who spoke to The Associated Press refused to give their names or were busy at the scene of the blasts.

Police said at least 20 people died and 81 were wounded, correcting an earlier toll due to double counting. The fatalities included 15 civilians and five troops. Among the wounded were 14 troops, two police and 65 civilians.

Troops in armored carriers sealed off the main road leading to the church while vehicles transported the dead and wounded to the town hospital. Some casualties were evacuated by air to nearby Zamboanga city.

"I have directed our troops to heighten their alert level, secure all places of worships and public places at once, and initiate pro-active security measures to thwart hostile plans," said Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in a statement.

"We will pursue to the ends of the earth the ruthless perpetrators behind this dastardly crime until every killer is brought to justice and put behind bars. The law will give them no mercy," the office of President Rodrigo Duterte said in Manila.

It said that "the enemies of the state boldly challenged the government's capability to secure the safety of citizens in that region. The (Armed Forces of the Philippines) will rise to the challenge and crush these godless criminals."

Jolo island has long been troubled by the presence of Abu Sayyaf militants, who are blacklisted by the United States and the Philippines as a terrorist organization because of years of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings. A Catholic bishop, Benjamin de Jesus, was gunned down by suspected militants outside the cathedral in 1997.

No one has immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack. It came nearly a week after minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation endorsed a new autonomous region in the southern Philippines in hopes of ending nearly five decades of a separatist rebellion that has left 150,000 people dead. Although most of the Muslim areas approved the autonomy deal, voters in Sulu province, where Jolo is located, rejected it. The province is home to a rival rebel faction that's opposed to the deal as well as smaller militant cells that not part of any peace process.

Western governments have welcomed the autonomy pact. They worry that small numbers of Islamic State-linked militants from the Middle East and Southeast Asia could forge an alliance with Filipino insurgents and turn the south into a breeding ground for extremists.

"This bomb attack was done in a place of peace and worship, and it comes at a time when we are preparing for another stage of the peace process in Mindanao," said Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. "Human lives are irreplaceable," he added, calling on Jolo residents to cooperate with authorities to find the perpetrators of this "atrocity."

Security officials were looking "at different threat groups and they still can't say if this has something to do with the just concluded plebiscite," Oscar Albayalde, the national police chief, told ABS-CBN TV network. Hermogenes Esperon, the national security adviser, said that the new autonomous region, called Bangsamoro, "signifies the end of war for secession. It stands for peace in Mindanao."

Aside from the small but brutal Abu Sayyaf group, other militant groups in Sulu include a small band of young jihadis aligned with the Islamic State group, which has also carried out assaults, including ransom kidnappings and beheadings.

Abu Sayyaf militants are still holding at least five hostages — a Dutch national, two Malaysians, an Indonesian and a Filipino — in their jungle bases mostly near Sulu's Patikul town, not far from Jolo.

Government forces have pressed on sporadic offensives to crush the militants, including those in Jolo, a poverty-wracked island of more than 700,000 people. A few thousand Catholics live mostly in the capital of Jolo.

There have been speculations that the bombings may be a diversionary move by Muslim militants after troops recently carried out an offensive that killed a number of IS-linked extremists in an encampment in the hinterlands of Lanao del Sur province, also in the south. The area is near Marawi, a Muslim city that was besieged for five months by hundreds of IS-aligned militants, including foreign fighters, in 2017. Troops quelled the insurrection, which left more 1,100 mostly militants dead and the heartland of the mosque-studded city in ruins.

Duterte declared martial law in the entire southern third of the country to deal with the Marawi siege, his worst security crisis. His martial law declaration has been extended to allow troops to finish off radical Muslim groups and other insurgents but bombings and other attacks have continued.

Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

Russia and Putin mark 75 years since WWII siege of Leningrad

January 27, 2019

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — The Russian city of St. Petersburg marked the 75th anniversary of the end of the devastating World War II siege by Nazi forces with a large military parade Sunday in the city's sprawling Palace Square.

Russian President Vladimir Putin later laid flowers at a monument in Piskarevskoye Cemetery, where hundreds of thousands of siege victims are buried. The siege of the city, then called Leningrad, lasted nearly 2½ years until the Soviet Army drove the Nazis away on Jan. 27, 1944.

Estimates of the death toll vary, but historians agree that more than 1 million Leningrad residents died from hunger or air and artillery bombardments during the siege. On Sunday, more than 2,500 soldiers and 80 units of military equipment paraded as snow fell and temperatures hovered around minus-18 degrees Celsius (0 Fahrenheit). The vehicles included a T-34 tank; such tanks played a key role in defeating the Nazis and became a widely revered symbol of the nation's wartime valor and suffering.

During the siege, most Leningrad residents had to survive on rations of just 125 grams (less than 0.3 pounds) of bread a day and whatever other food they could buy or exchange at local markets after selling their belongings.

Among those who succumbed to the deprivations of the siege was Putin's 1-year-old brother. Putin himself was born after the siege, in 1952. The Russian president did not attend the parade, which some civic groups had objected to as inappropriate, saying the day should commemorate the victims rather than flaunt military strength.

The Kremlin also announced Sunday that Putin had signed an order allocating 150 million rubles ($2.3 million) for creating new exhibits at the state museum of the siege. "Today we mourn those who died defending Leningrad, who at the cost of their lives broke through the blockade. We recall those who worked in the besieged city, who, risking themselves, delivered bread and medicine along the Road of Life," Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media.

Medvedev was referring to the ice road across Lake Ladoga that was the only conduit for supplies and evacuations during much of the siege. Tamara Chernykh, 81, told The Associated Press that she still can't forget the tiny pieces of bread that her granny used to put under her pillow as a night treat for a starving four-year-old girl in besieged Leningrad during the deadly winter of 1941-1942.

In the daytime, Chernykh said she and her baby cousin mostly stayed put under several blankets in the darkness. There was no heating during the first and the coldest winter of the siege, when temperatures outside sometimes plunged to -40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit).

Chernykh's grandmother, who gave the bread out of her own scant food ration, said the crumbs would bring good dreams. She died from starvation before the siege ended. Germany has allocated 12 million euros ($13.5 million) to modernize a Russian hospital for veterans of the war and to create a center in St. Petersburg where Germans and Russians can meet, the German and Russian foreign ministers said Sunday.

"We are sure that this voluntary action will improve the life quality of the victims of the siege who are still alive and also serve the historical reconciliation of the peoples of both countries," ministers Heiko Maas and Sergey Lavrov said in the statement.

Leningrad siege survivors recall their ordeal after 75 years

January 26, 2019

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — Tamara Chernykh, 81, still can't forget those tiny pieces of bread that her granny used to put under her pillow as a night treat for a starving four-year-old girl in besieged Leningrad during the deadly winter of 1941-1942.

Chernykh's grandmother, who gave the bread out of her own scanty food ration, said they would bring good dreams. What her granny didn't tell her was that while sharing her bread with the little girl she was dying from starvation herself.

The Nazi siege of Leningrad lasted nearly 2 ½ years until the Soviet Army drove the Nazi troops away on Jan. 27, 1944. Estimates of the death toll vary, but historians agree that more than one million Leningrad residents died of hunger and air and artillery bombardment in one of the most horrifying episodes of World War II.

On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, a native of the city, will lead events marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the blockade of the city that has regained its old name, St. Petersburg. When the advancing Nazi troops closed the circle around Leningrad on September 8, 1941, Chernykh's family consisted of six members living together: herself, her mother, her 12-year-old brother Valentin, her mother's sister and her four-month-old baby daughter, and the granny.

As the city faced daily air raids and artillery barrage, the family moved to a basement downstairs, where all six slept together on a full-size bed, with the baby in the middle to keep her warm. Like most Leningrad residents, they had to survive on a daily ration of just 125 grams (less than 0.3 pounds) of bread and whatever other food they could buy or exchange at local markets after selling their belongings.

In the daytime, Chernykh and her baby cousin mostly stayed put under several blankets in the darkness. There was no heating during the first and the coldest winter of the siege, when temperatures outside sometimes plunged to -40 degrees C (-40 degrees F).

To distract the children from hunger, cold and bombardments, Chernykh's mother kept reading them stories and poems. Everyone's favorite fairy tale at the time was the one about the magic tablecloth that brought any food desired.

"We imagined how that tablecloth would give us meat, fish, soup, porridge," Chernykh told The Associated Press at her apartment. "As for me, I always had a special dream about a sugar roll with cream."

Chernykh's granny was the first to die. "One morning I woke up to not find her in our bed," she said. "My mom said that granny went to see a doctor, but somehow I understood the truth and cried bitterly."

Chernykh's brother, who helped extinguish fire bombs dropped by Nazi planes, got infected with brain fever and died in a hospital. Miraculously, Chernykh's baby cousin, Galina, survived even though her mother lost her breast milk during the siege.

"They say she survived thanks to the chocolate that Galina's father, who fought the Nazis outside Leningrad, brought now and then from his army food ration," Chernykh said. After the siege, Chernykh graduated from a medical school, worked for the Red Cross, became an honorable donor and wrote poetry about the siege. She has two children and five grandchildren, and at her age is still full of energy, doing up to 10 kilometers (6 miles) Nordic walking daily.

As the city prepares to mark the 75th anniversary of complete liberation from the Nazi siege, Chernykh joined other survivors to remember its hardest moments. They maintained a moment of silence to remember the victims, toasted to the victory over Nazis, sang war songs and danced.

Natalya Malacheva, 68, says her family still keeps a pledge taken by her grandmother during the siege. Malacheva's grandmother and a relative promised on Jan. 1, 1942 that if they survive, they'd take care of the grave of Malacheva's uncle, then a 21-year-old medical student who died from hunger and pneumonia.

"To this day our family takes care of the grave," Malacheva said. "I bring my grandchildren there on important memory dates." Chernykh and her remaining family were evacuated from the city in September 1942, travelling by a barge along the Ladoga Lake that was constantly barraged by Nazi warplanes.

She remembers the joy of a warm porridge with butter that was served before the ride — but still shudders at the memory of another barge with hundreds of people on board that followed theirs being hit by a Nazi plane.

"A sailor on our barge had to cut the towing cable to save our barge from sinking along," she said. "Nobody from the sunken barge survived. It was dreadful to see only a suitcase that popped up on the waves."

NATO to sign Macedonia accession protocol next week

February 02, 2019

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — Macedonia will sign an accession protocol with NATO on Wednesday under its new name North Macedonia after parliaments in the tiny Balkan country and its southern neighbor Greece ratified a historic name change deal.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Saturday on Twitter that "on February 6 we will write history: NATO Allies will sign the accession protocol with the future Republic of North Macedonia together with (Macedonian) foreign minister Nikola Dimitrov." The ceremony will take place at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Greece had blocked Macedonia from joining NATO for three decades because of the name dispute, saying that Macedonia's name implied territorial claims toward Greece's northern province. Macedonia expects Greece to be the first NATO member to ratify the accession protocol. It will then start calling itself by its new name.

The Greek parliament is expected to ratify the accession protocol by Thursday at the earliest or Feb. 11 at the latest. All 29 NATO members must ratify in order for Macedonia to join the alliance as its 30th member. This is expected to happen by the end of 2019 or the beginning of 2020.

Demetris Nellas contributed from Athens, Greece.

Khomeini launched a revolution from a sleepy French village

February 01, 2019

NEAUPHLE-LE-CHATEAU, France (AP) — From a sleepy village outside Paris, the man who would become the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran sat cross-legged beneath an apple tree, delivering messages daily to hundreds of followers clamoring to glimpse the glowering cleric in the black turban.

For several months in late 1978 and early 1979, the humble site became a megaphone for the pronouncements of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that were sent back home to Iranians seeking to overturn 2,500 years of monarchical rule.

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had expelled Khomeini from Iran in 1964, and he spent most of his time in Najaf, Iraq, a pilgrimage city for Iranians and other Shiite Muslims. But Iraq, reportedly under pressure from the shah, forced the cleric to flee to France in 1978.

Khomeini's entourage in Neauphle-Le-Chateau had only the simplest of tools in those pre-internet days. With telephones and cassette tape recorders, they turned the exiled cleric's cottage and garden into a media hub.

"The fate of the Iranian revolution depended on what came out of Mr. Khomeini's mouth," said Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was among the ayatollah's closest aides and later became the first president of the new Iran.

Bani-Sadr was a student in Paris with family ties to Khomeini when he was contacted by the cleric's son seeking help in arranging a French exile. Khomeini arrived at Paris' Orly airport on Oct. 6, 1978, spent a few days in the southern suburb of Cachan, where Bani-Sadr then lived, before relocating to Neauphle-le-Chateau, 25 miles west of Paris.

Today, a large plaque honoring Khomeini's four months in the village stands at the entrance to the unkempt garden that along with the cottage served as his operational headquarters before his triumphal return to Iran on Feb. 1, 1979 .

The house where his team worked has been razed. But the apple tree, spindly and leafless, still stands, adorned with a plastic Iranian flag and surrounded by a red-and-white chain. This week, workers were setting up a tent for an Iranian Embassy ceremony on Sunday to commemorate the brief but critical period in Khomeini's life.

Bani-Sadr, in an interview with The Associated Press, said it was far from certain for Khomeini that a revolution was at hand. "For me, it was absolutely sure, but not for Khomeini and not for lots of others inside Iran," Ban-Sadr said.

He added that Khomeini's son, Ahmed, who was in France with his father and other family members, asked him almost daily, "Are you sure the shah will go and the regime will be toppled?" Khomeini's inner circle included Bani-Sadr, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Ibramhim Yazdi and three mullahs. Each was in charge of a task, including dealing with the media whose coverage boosted Khomeini's profile.

Bani-Sadr said he and a group of friends fashioned or vetted the messages Khomeini delivered — based on what they were told Iranians wanted to hear. Tape recordings of his statements were sold in Europe and delivered to Iran. Other messages went out by telephone, read to supporters in various Iranian towns, where they were disseminated.

The activity in Neauphle-le-Chateau put the French government in a bind. Khomeini had entered France like all Iranians at the time, on a passport allowing for a three-month stay. But his activism was increasingly distressing to France, which like other Western countries, was a firm ally of the Iranian monarchy.

Then-President Valery Giscard d'Estaing sent a diplomat to Neauphle-le-Chateau and later an emissary to Tehran to meet with the shah. The French offered to expel Khomeini, but the shah said no, apparently not wanting the cleric to end up anywhere near Iran. The French emissary concluded that the shah's days on the throne were numbered anyway, according to diplomats and press reports.

Jean-Claude Cousseran, the first secretary at the French Embassy in Tehran at the time, denied that France was opportunistically playing both sides or was in the dark about the weight Khomeini carried within Iran.

"There was no ignorance. Everyone knew who Khomeini was, starting with the Americans, starting with the shah," he said. But diplomats kept asking "what will happen next week. ... It's not easy to predict a revolution."

Added Francois Nicoullaud, ambassador to Iran from 2000 to 2005: "From the start, there was no Machiavellian plan." Cousseran pointed out Khomeini had full telephone access to Iran. "That means Iran never forbade calls between Khomeini and his friends," a tactic that would have shut down a lot of the cleric's media operation.

Scores of grateful Iranians brought flowers to the French Embassy, but with what Cousseran viewed as a subtle message that "you will protect him." The Tehran street where the embassy sits was renamed Neauphle-le-Chateau.

The shah, who was secretly ill with cancer, flew out of Iran on Jan. 16, 1979, on an aircraft that he himself piloted. That paved the way for Khomeini's return weeks later. There are conflicting reports as to whether Khomeini's entourage chartered the Air France Boeing 747 that brought him home, or whether, as a French diplomat at the time said in a documentary, that France decided "to take a risk" and arrange for the plane.

Either way, supporters and journalists scrambled to get on the flight, paying the airfare for a coveted seat. "We always said it was the journalists who paid the return voyage of the ayatollah," said Associated Press photographer Michel Lipchitz, who was on the flight.

During the flight, Khomeini was out of sight, keeping to the upper deck lounge of the jumbo jet and praying, Lipchitz said. Khomeini arrived to a hero's welcome in Tehran on Feb. 1. "It was a moment worth 1,000 years of life," Bani-Sadr said. "Extraordinary. Extraordinary."

The plaque in the garden of Neauphle-le-Chateau, inscribed in French and Farsi, says the village name "is forever registered in the history of French-Iranian relations." But the Iran's Islamist government quickly toughened, and France soon was vilified as "the little Satan" when it began taking in members of the Iranian opposition, said Nicoullaud, the former ambassador. Among those exiles were members of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a politically active opposition group that is active to this day and still despised by Iran.

Bani-Sadr, who had become president in Iran, fell from favor. He said he protested to Khomeini the many executions that were carried out, and fled to Paris in July 1981 in an air force plane piloted by a dissident with the then-head of Mujahedeen, Massoud Rajavi.

Now, Bani-Sadr feels betrayed by Khomeini, saying that the cleric "changed in Iran. He restored a dictatorship." Of the inner circle in Neauphle-le-Chateau, Bani-Sadr is the only survivor. Ghotbzadeh was executed and Yazdi died in exile in Turkey.

Still, Bani-Sadr is hopeful. "A revolution is the beginning, not the end," he said.