UN decides to stop updating Syria death toll

By Associated Press, Published: January 7

GENEVA — The U.N.’s human rights office has stopped updating the death toll from Syria’s civil war, confirming Tuesday that it can no longer verify the sources of information that led to its last count of at least 100,000 in late July.

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, blamed the failure to provide new figures on the organization’s own lack of access on the ground in Syria and its inability to verify “source material” from others.

“It was always a very difficult figure,” Colville said in answer to a question by The Associated Press. “It was always very close to the edge in terms of how much we could guarantee the source material was accurate. And it reached a point where we felt we could no longer cross that line. So for the time being, we’re not updating those figures.”

More here.

Iraq missile strikes ‘kill 25 militants (TT: Al-Qaida terrorists) in Ramadi’

AFP 20 hours ago

A boy holds his Kalashnikov rifle on the streets of the city of Ramadi on Jan. 6, 2014. Iraq’s prime minister urged people in the besieged city of Falluja on Monday to drive out al Qaida-linked insurgents to pre-empt a military offensive that officials said could be launched within days. West of Ramadi on Monday, clashes broke out at dawn between militants and special forces helped by tribal fighters.( Ali al-Mashhadani/REUTERS)

Iraqi forces targeted militants with “missile strikes, resulting in the killing of 25,” Staff Lieutenant General Mohammed al-Askari told AFP.

Parts of Ramadi and all of Fallujah were lost by government forces last week, the first time militants have exercised such open control in major cities since the height of the insurgency that followed the 2003 US-led invasion.

Security forces and tribesmen failed to retake south Ramadi from Al-Qaeda-linked militants in an overnight attack, police said.

Four civilians were killed and 14 wounded in the fighting, Dr Ahmed Abdul Salam of Ramadi hospital told AFP.

He had no figures for any casualties in the ranks of either the army or the militants.

AFP

Kohistan ‘honour’ killing: Pakistani woman Rukhsana Bibi relives horror

By M Ilyas Khan

BBC News, Akora Khatak, north-western Pakistan

Rukhsana Bibi eloped with Mohammad Yunus last May

On a hot and humid night in late August, a small group quietly scales the wall of a mud-brick house in a village near Pakistan’s north-western town of Akora Khatak.

In the dim, starlit courtyard, they make out the figures of a man and a woman lying in two separate charpoy cots, sleeping. About 15 minutes later, they walk out through the main door, leaving the couple in pools of blood.

This description of the scene in Akora Khatak forms the backdrop to allegations of a so-called “honour killing”, one of the great unspoken stories of the Pakistan-Afghanistan region where it widely prevails. Nowhere is it pursued as doggedly as in Kohistan, a remote and mountainous region in northern Pakistan.

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Blast ‘kills nine’ in Pakistan’s Khyber agency

At least nine people, including three children, have been killed in a blast at a house in Pakistan’s north-western Khyber tribal area, reports say.

It took place in an arms dump at the home of a tribal leader in the Tirah Valley, which has seen clashes between militant groups and the military.

Officials believe the place was used as a weapons distribution point by Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI) militants.

Police say they are investigating the nature of the blast.

One report suggests that it was set off when explosives were being prepared, but there is no official confirmation of this.

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16 Taliban killed across Afghanistan: Interior Ministry

More here: (warning: Iranian propaganda rag)