UN: Thousands Killed and Abused in South Sudan
Politically fueled ethnic violence in South Sudan since mid-December has led to the brutal killing and abuse of thousands of civilians and sparked a government campaign to vilify the United Nations and harass U.N. personnel, the U.N. peacekeeping chief said Tuesday.
Herve Ladsous told the U.N. Security Council that despite a Jan. 23 cease-fire agreement, forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebel soldiers loyal to dismissed former vice president Riek Machar “continue to prioritize the pursuit of military gains over talks towards a comprehensive political settlement.”
Fighting that broke out Dec. 15 among presidential guards in the capital Juba quickly spread across the country and took on ethnic dimensions between the dominant Dinka tribe who support Kiir and the Nuer tribe loyal to Machar.
“Political polarization that has been caused by the conflict now affects the lives of every single person in South Sudan as well the operations of the government and country as a whole,” Ladsous said.
He said preliminary inquiry reports indicate that atrocities and very severe human rights violations were committed by both sides in the conflict, and he warned that the longer the fighting goes on “the more chances for further regional intervention will grow.”
Clashes with militants in Egypt kill 2 troops
CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s interior ministry says fierce clashes that erupted after troops raided a makeshift bomb factory outside of Cairo have killed two military officers and five militants.
The ministry says a combination of police, special forces and military explosives experts raided a warehouse in a village in Qalioubiya province, just north of the capital early Wednesday, when the fighting broke out.
It says the militants responded with gunfire and car bombs, setting off the clashes that lasted several hours. Four militants were arrested.
The raid followed an investigation that showed the place was used as a bomb-making factory by the al-Qaida-inspired Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or Champions of Jerusalem.
Former Australian soldier Caner Temel killed fighting alongside Syrian rebels
Updated Wed 19 Mar 2014, 3:05pm AEDT
The Federal Government says a former Australian soldier has been killed fighting with rebels in Syria.It says Caner Temel, from Auburn in Sydney’s west, spent 17 months in the Army before going absent without leave in September 2010.
The ABC reported in January that Temel was shot in the head by a rebel sniper after a long siege on the outskirts of the Syrian town of Sareqeb, south of Aleppo.
The Government said the 22-year-old had served as a sapper based in Brisbane. It said he would have been discharged from the Army after being absent for 28 days.
Assistant Defence Minister Stuart Robert says the Defence Department is still working through issues of when Temel left Australia.
But the ABC understands that between June and August last year, Temel was recruited to fight the Syrian government for an Al Qaeda-affiliated militant group.
Mr Robert said Temel was working in a construction squadron at the time he went AWOL and had received basic arms and explosives training.
“All of our engineers will do a limited amount of explosives works in terms of clearing obstacles and that type of basic engineer work,” he told AM.
TT Note: Israel forced into responding to Middle East violence:
Israeli air strikes in Golan ‘kill Syrian soldier’
Israel says it has attacked several Syrian military sites in retaliation for a bombing that wounded four of its troops in the occupied Golan Heights.
Syrian state media said one soldier was killed and seven others were wounded at three positions outside Quneitra.
The Israeli military said the targets had included a headquarters, a training facility and artillery batteries.
The Syrian army had “aided and abetted” the attack on a patrol near the ceasefire line on Tuesday, it added.
But the Syrian General Command of the Army and Armed Forces was quoted as saying the air strikes were an attempt to “divert attention from the successive victories” of its troops against rebel forces, particularly the recapture of the town of Yabroud, north of Damascus, over the weekend.
Dozens killed in another bloody day for Iraq
Clashes and shelling in Fallujah, and violence in Baghdad and elsewhere kills 37 as elections loom.
Iraqi forces have periodically shelled neighbourhoods of Fallujah in recent months [Reuters]
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Violence across Iraq, including shelling and clashes in a rebel-held city on Baghdad’s doorstep, have killed 37 people amid a protracted surge in bloodletting with polls looming next month. In the city of Fallujah, 60km west of the capital, government-led shelling and fighting between soldiers and gunmen killed 15 people and wounded 40, according to Ahmed Shami, the chief medic at the city’s main hospital. The violence erupted just after midnight on Wednesday as sporadic shelling targeted northern, eastern and southern neighbourhoods of the city. Speaking to the AFP news agency tribal leaders in the city confirmed the doctor’s account. “Shelling first targeted several areas…and clashes also happened,” Mohammed Saleh, a leader of the Bijari tribe, said. Mahmud al-Zobaie, a leader of the Zoba tribe, said many people were “killed and wounded” and homes were “damaged because of the shelling.” |
More here (al-Jizz)
Gunmen kill 2 soldiers in Yemen ambush
March 17, 2014 02:46 PM
“Unknown gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades at an army vehicle” in the town of Shehr killing both soldiers on board, before fleeing, the source said.
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| A Yemeni soldier stands guard on a street in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) |
| ADEN: Gunmen in Yemen’s southeastern Hadramawt province killed two soldiers in an ambush on an army patrol on Monday, a security official said. |
Afghanistan: Six killed in Taliban attack
IANS | Mar 20, 2014, 10.55 AM IST
KABUL: At least six people were killed and 20 injured on Thursday morning in a Taliban coordinated car bombing and shooting attack on a police station in Afghanistan’s Jalalabad city, an official said.
“The militants launched the attack on the police station in the city at around 5.30am,” the official told Xinhua.
“The force of the car bombing destroyed the station building and damaged several other buildings around, including governor house and the local national TV office building. More than five militants were involved in the pre-dawn attack,” he added.
Egyptian Christian Succumbs to Head Injury after Attack by Suspected Extremists in Libya
Young immigrant worker latest casualty of anti-Copt hostility in Libya.
Parts of Libya have become lawless since the 2011 uprising. (Wikipedia photo by Bernd Brincken)
ISTANBUL, Turkey (Morning Star News) – An Egyptian Christian shot in the head by a suspected Islamic extremist in Libya on March 2 has succumbed to his injuries, family members said.
Salama Fawzy Tobia died very early in the morning on Saturday (March 15) in El Raey El Saleh Hospital in Samalut, Minya Province with his brother watching over him. He was 23.
His family had transported Tobia back to Egypt after the Egyptian government, on a doctor’s recommendation that he not be moved, refused to assist in returning him to his country. The injury to his brain essentially left him in a coma until he died. As he faded, his family sat a silent vigil over him in shifts.
