Tag Archives: War

Turkey orders arrest of scores of municipality, ministry staff: media

U.S. based cleric Fethullah Gulen at his home in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 29, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Mostoller/File Photo

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish authorities ordered the detention of 139 staff from Ankara municipalities and two ministries in an investigation targeting supporters of the U.S.-based cleric accused of being behind last July’s failed coup, CNN Turk said on Wednesday.

Since the attempted putsch, authorities have jailed pending trial 50,000 people and sacked or suspended 150,000 from a wide range of professions including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links to what the government calls terrorist organizations.

Detention warrants on Wednesday were issued for 60 staff at the Ankara city council, 19 at district councils, 30 staff at the development ministry and 30 at the education ministry, broadcaster CNN Turk said.

The cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in the United States for almost 20 years, has denied involvement in the putsch.

Ankara accuses Gulen, a former ally of President Tayyip Erdogan, of infiltrating Turkish institutions, including the judiciary, police and military in a decades-long campaign. Government critics say the post-coup crackdown has been used to crush dissent.

State-run Anadolu news agency said the municipality staff, some of whom had previously been dismissed from their jobs, were found to have used ByLock, an encrypted messaging app the government says was used by Gulen’s followers.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Humeyra Pamuk and Richard Lough)

Syrian army says senior Islamic State militant killed

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army said on Wednesday it had killed Islamic State’s military commander in Syria during operations in the north of the country, where the Russian-backed government forces are seizing more territory back from the jihadist group.

If confirmed, this would represent a major blow against Islamic State (IS) ahead of an attack which the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters – are expected to launch against the jihadists in their stronghold of Raqqa city.

A Syrian military source told Reuters the IS commander, Abu Musab al-Masri, had been the group’s “minister of war” for Syria. Syrian state media had earlier cited a military source as saying he was the organization’s “minister of war”, suggesting he was the overall IS military commander.

He was named among 13 senior Islamic State figures killed in Syrian army operations east of Aleppo, including men identified as Saudi and Iraqi nationals, according to the military source cited by state media.

Al-Masri was killed in the operations that got underway on May 10. The military source did not say where he was killed.

Baghdad-based IS expert Hisham al-Hashimi said the death of Masri, if confirmed, would be a “significant blow to the group ahead of the battle of Raqqa”. He said al-Masri was the fourth most senior figure in the organization.

A previous IS minister of war, Abu Omar al-Shishani, was killed last year. The Pentagon said Shishani was likely to have been killed in a U.S. air strike in Syria. The militant group confirmed his death in July but said he had died fighting in the Iraqi city of Shirqat south of Mosul.

Islamic State faces separate campaigns in northern Syria by the Russian-backed Syrian army, the U.S.-backed SDF, and Turkey-backed rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner.

The six-year-long Syrian war has allowed IS to seize swathes of Syria and to carve out a cross-border “caliphate” in both Syria and neighboring Iraq.

The SDF, which includes the Kurdish YPG militia, has been waging a multi-phased operation to encircle Raqqa with the aim of capturing it from Islamic State.

(Additional reporting by Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Gareth Jones)

U.N. sees ‘incremental progress’ after Syria talks

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura attends a news conference during the Intra Syria talks at the United Nations Offices in Geneva, Switzerland, May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura ended four days of Syria talks on Friday, saying there had been “incremental progress” and he planned to reconvene negotiations in June.

But the warring sides still showed no sign of wanting to be in the same room, let alone on the same page in terms of negotiating Syria’s political future.

Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari told reporters the talks had not included any discussion of the four main agenda items – reformed governance, new elections, a new constitution and the fight against terrorism.

He suggested the United States had tried to undermine his negotiating position by saying at the start of the round that a crematorium had been built at Sednaya prison north of Damascus to dispose of detainees’ remains. [nL2N1IH0TY]

Ja’afari called the accusation “a big lie” and “a Hollywood show” and said the timing was “no coincidence”.

Syrian opposition delegation leader Nasr al-Hariri said it was not possible to reach a political solution or to fight terrorism as long as Iran and its militias remained in Syria, and reiterated the opposition’s demand to remove President Bashar al-Assad.

The U.N. talks no longer aim to bring an end to the fighting – that objective has been taken up by parallel talks sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran – but they do aim to prepare the way for political reform in Syria, if the six-year-old war ends.

“Any momentum provides some type of hope that we are not just waiting for the golden day but we are actually working for it,” de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.

“History is not, especially in a conflict environment, written by timelines that we set up artificially. They could be a target, a dream, a wish, a day for us to try to aim at.”

Among the modest goals of this sixth round of talks was a more businesslike format for meetings and less rhetorical grandstanding by the warring sides.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Syrian rebels begin to leave last opposition-held Homs district

FILE PHOTO: A road sign that shows the direction to Homs is seen in Damascus, Syria April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

HOMS, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels started leaving the last opposition-held district of Homs city on Saturday in the final phase of an evacuation deal that will see President Bashar al-Assad’s government take back the area.

Fighters took with them their light weapons, as agreed, and boarded buses along with women and children. Many were headed for insurgent-held Idlib province in Syria’s northwest, or the town of Jarablus on the border with Turkey.

At least four buses had left al-Waer by mid-afternoon, and dozens more were expected to follow, to bring more than 2,500 people out of the district long besieged by government forces and their allies in the country’s civil war.

The evacuation of al-Waer is one of the largest of its kind. It follows a number of similar deals in recent months that have brought many parts of western Syria long held by the opposition and besieged by government and allied forces back under Assad’s control.

Syria’s government calls the evacuation deals, which have also taken place in besieged areas around Damascus, and in Aleppo at the end of last year, reconciliation agreements. It says they allow services and security to be restored.

The opposition has criticized the agreements, however, saying they amount to forced displacement of Assad’s opponents away from Syria’s main urban centers, often after years of siege and bombardment.

The United Nations has criticized both the use of siege tactics which precede such deals and the evacuations themselves as amounting to forcible displacement.

The al-Waer deal, backed by Syria’s ally Russia, began to be implemented in March. Thousands of people have left in a several stages. By the time it is completed, up to 20,000 people will have left the district, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says.

Homs Governor Talal Barazi said the final phase of the evacuation would last some 20 hours, and expected it to be completed late on Saturday or early on Sunday.

“This is the last day. The number of militants expected (to leave) is around 700. With their families the total number could be around 3,000,” he told reporters in al-Waer.

Barazi said at least 20,000 inhabitants remained in al-Waer, and tens of thousands displaced during fighting would begin to return to the neighborhood after the deal was completed.

“Over the next few weeks communications networks will return” as well as electricity and water, he said.

RUSSIAN MILITARY POLICE

As in other evacuation deals, some rebels have decided to stay in al-Waer and hand over their weapons as Syria’s military and its allies move in.

Young men of conscription age will be required to join the armed forces for military service.

A Russian officer helping oversee the deal’s implementation told reporters Russian military police would help with the transition inside al-Waer.

“Russia has a guarantor role in this agreement. Russian military police will stay, and will carry out duties inside the district,” Sergei Druzhin said through an Arabic interpreter.

Assad’s government, backed militarily since 2015 by Russia and since early on in the war by Iranian-backed militias, has negotiated the pacts from a position of strength and brought Syria’s major urban areas in the west back under its control.

Homs, Syria’s third-largest city before the conflict, was an early center of the popular uprising against Assad in 2011 that turned into a civil war which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million.

As the government brings more areas under its control, rebels still hold pockets of territory around Damascus and in the south, as well as almost all of Idlib province.

Islamic State holds swathes of territory in the east of Syria, and is being fought by separate forces, including U.S.-backed fighters and Russian-backed Syrian troops.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S.: Military solution to North Korea would be ‘tragic on an unbelievable scale’

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis gestures during a press briefing on the campaign to defeat ISIS at the Pentagon in Washington, U.S., May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

By Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that any military solution to the North Korea crisis would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale” and Washington was working internationally to find a diplomatic solution.

North Korea has defied all calls to rein in its nuclear and missile programs, even from China, its lone major ally, calling them legitimate self-defense.

It has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland, and experts say its test on Sunday of a new missile was another important step toward that aim.

“We are going to continue to work the issue,” Mattis told a Pentagon news conference.

“If this goes to a military solution, it’s going to be tragic on an unbelievable scale. So our effort is to work with the U.N., work with China, work with Japan, work with South Korea to try to find a way out of this situation.”

The remarks were one of the clearest indicators yet that President Donald Trump’s administration will seek to exhaust alternatives before turning to military action to force Pyongyang’s hand.

The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea to guard against the North Korean threat, has called on China to do more to rein in its neighbor.

Mattis appeared to defend China’s most recent efforts, even as he acknowledged Pyongyang’s march forward.

“They (North Korea) clearly aren’t listening but there appears to be some impact by the Chinese working here. It’s not obviously perfect when they launch a missile,” Mattis said, when asked about Sunday’s launch.

RE-ENTRY CAPABILITY?

South Korea has said the North’s missile program was progressing faster than expected, with Sunday’s test considered successful in flight.

North Korea said the launch tested the capability to carry a “large-size heavy nuclear warhead,” and its ambassador in Beijing has said that Pyongyang would continue such test launches “any time, any place.”

Mattis acknowledged that Pyongyang had likely learned a great deal from the latest test of what U.S. officials say was a KN-17 missile, which was believed to have survived re-entry to some degree.

“They went to a very high apogee and when it came down obviously from that altitude they probably learned a lot from it. But I’m not willing to characterize it beyond that right now,” Mattis said.

David Wright, co-director and senior scientist at the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, the big question was whether North Korea could build a re-entry vehicle for a long-range missile that wouldn’t burn up during re-entry and could keep a warhead from becoming too hot in the process.

“This test in principle gave them a lot of information about this, assuming they had sensors that could send information back during reentry so they could monitor the heat, or they could recover the reentry vehicle and examine it,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

South Sudan forces killed 114 civilians around Yei in six months: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: A soldier walks past women carrying their belongings near Bentiu, northern South Sudan, February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola /File Photo

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – South Sudanese pro-government forces killed at least 114 civilians in and around Yei town between July 2016 and January 2017, as well as committing uncounted rapes, looting and torture, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday.

“Attacks were committed with an alarming degree of brutality and, like elsewhere in the country, appeared to have an ethnic dimension,” a report on the U.N. investigation said.

“These cases included attacks on funerals and indiscriminate shelling of civilians; cases of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls, including those fleeing fighting; often committed in front of the victims’ families.”

Fighting flared when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), loyal to President Salva Kiir, pursued his rival and former deputy Riek Machar and a small band of followers as they fled from the capital Juba, southwest through Yei and into neighboring Congo.

The pursuit of Machar ushered in a particularly violent period in South Sudan’s Equatorias region, with multiple localized conflicts, particularly in Yei, the report said.

“In view of the restrictions of access faced by (the U.N.), the number of documented cases may only be a fraction of those actually committed. Some of the human rights violations and abuses committed in and around Yei may amount to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity and warrant further investigation.”

South Sudan army spokesperson Col. Santo Domic Chol told Reuters on Friday that the report was “baseless”.

“This is not the first time the U.N. has accused the SPLA and tried to portray us as enemies of the people,” he said.

“The SPLA is one of the biggest military institutions in the country and it accommodates people from different background and the whole SPLA cannot go out and rape citizens… so it has to be specific that we have seen two or three SPLA soldiers in such location committing such crimes,” he said.

Domic said President Kiir had given orders to all SPLA commanders in Yei to punish soldiers who commit gender-based violence.

South Sudan has been in chaos since Kiir and Machar’s rivalry first sparked a conflict in December 2013, with U.N. investigators finding gang rape on an “epic” scale, ethnic cleansing and, most recently, famine.

But Yei, a traditionally ethnically diverse area, had been largely peaceful, the report said.

The town had an estimated population of 300,000 before the crisis began in July 2016, but 60-70 percent of the population had fled by September.

Civilians from Yei and other areas poured into Uganda, with 320,000 arriving as refugees by the end of 2016, 80 per cent of them women and children. About 180,000 more were registered in Uganda by the first week of February 2017.

Many people were trapped by the fighting, and others were attacked on the road as they tried to escape, but the SPLA helped ethnic Dinka civilians – the same ethnicity of President Kiir – to move to the capital, providing them with the use of military and civilian vehicles for transport.

Citing data from South Sudan’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, the report said 46,000 Dinka civilians, mainly from Yei town, had been registered in Juba by the end of 2016.

Violence has continued in the area, with rebel forces attacking Yei and killing at least four government soldiers earlier this week.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Turkey ready to retaliate against any threats, Erdogan warns

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a statement to reporters alongside U.S President Donald Trump after their meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S. May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey is ready to retaliate if it faces a threat from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and will not shirk from launching a military campaign if need be, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

In his first public address since returning from a visit with U.S. President Donald Trump, Erdogan said he told the United States that Ankara would “exercise its rights under the rules of engagement”, without consulting anyone, if it felt it needed to.

Turkey regards the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union. Washington sees the YPG as distinct from the PKK and as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

“We are facing a picture where terrorist organizations are constantly supported, strengthened and are confronting us. Turkey is not a country that will consent to such treatment,” Erdogan said in a speech to business leaders in Istanbul.

“With the Euphrates Shield operation we have carried out the first step to foil this plot. After this, we will not hesitate to carry out similar operations whenever we see necessary.”

Ankara launched its “Euphrates Shield” operation inside Syria last year, backing Syrian rebels with tanks, air strikes and special forces to sweep Islamic State from its southern border – and stop the advance of the YPG.

“If these terrorist organizations constitute a threat toward our country, we would do what is necessary by exercising our rights under the rules of engagement. We are telling you this now in advance,” Erdogan said.

“When we take this step, we don’t speak or consult with anyone as we don’t have any time to waste. We would just take the step.”

ENVOY IN FOCUS

Erdogan said he told the United States that Turkey could not be part of the operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State because of the participation of the YPG.

His comments came hours after Ankara said the United States should dismiss its special envoy in the battle against Islamic State, citing his support for the Kurdish militia.

“Brett McGurk, the USA’s special envoy in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State), is definitely and clearly giving support to the PKK and YPG. It would be beneficial if this person is changed,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told NTV television.

Cavusoglu said Trump had understood Turkey’s position, and did not challenge Erdogan when the Turkish president set out his possible response to the YPG.

Differences over Syria policy have caused friction with Washington, a NATO ally of Turkey’s. U.S. officials said this month that the White House had approved supplying arms to the YPG, a decision that caused alarm in Ankara.

Last month, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish fighters in Iraq’s Sinjar region and YPG militia in Syria. Washington voiced concern over the air strikes and said they harmed the coalition’s fight against Islamic State.

Adding to the tension, on Thursday U.S. Senator John McCain called for the expulsion of Turkey’s U.S. ambassador after violence erupted between protesters and Turkish security personnel during Erdogan’s visit.

“We should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America … This kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically,” McCain, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC in an interview on Thursday, adding that legal action could also be pursued.

Turkey blamed the violence outside its ambassador’s residence on demonstrators linked to the PKK, but Washington’s police chief called it a “brutal attack” on peaceful protesters.

Police said 11 people were injured, including a Washington police officer, and two people were arrested for assault.

(Writing by David Dolan and Dominic Evans; Editing by Ralph Boulton, Larry King)

Fresh Syria peace talks off to another stumbling start

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura attends a meeting during Intra Syria talks at the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Syria peace talks hosted by the United Nations in Geneva spawned a new series of meetings on Thursday with no hint of tangible progress toward a deal to end the six-year-old civil war.

U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura had promised a refreshingly brisk pace of business-like meetings over a short four-day round, with new elections, a new constitution, reformed governance and counter-terrorism on the agenda.

He opened proceedings on Thursday by proposing setting up a “consultative mechanism”, which he would head, to avoid a power vacuum in Syria before a new constitution is in place.

That was rejected by the Syrian government and raised a string of questions from the opposition, so de Mistura said he was “moving beyond” those discussions to start a new set of expert meetings with each side.

A U.N. statement referred to “an initial part of a process of expert meetings on legal and constitutional issues of relevance to the intra-Syrian talks”.

In a sign of the chasm between foes who have frustrated repeated international efforts at peacemaking, they are not negotiating face-to-face but only in turn with de Mistura.

Government negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari told reporters that the expert meetings were an initiative from his delegation and would take place on Thursday and continue Friday if needed.

“We hope that this step … will help in pushing this round forward, and the Geneva process in general toward the seriousness that is hoped for by everyone,” Ja’afari said.

He added that the constitution was “the exclusive right of the Syrian people, and we do not accept any foreign interference in it”.

Opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi told Reuters that the Damascus delegation was trying to divert attention from the main objective of the talks – political transition, a phrase used by the opposition to mean Assad’s ouster.

Asked if the three days of talks had made headway, he said: “Not too much. Original expectations were not very high.”

The United States and Russia – who back the rebels and Assad respectively – forged an international consensus in December 2015 mandating de Mistura to push for a political solution.

But the talks have been increasingly marginalized over the past year as Assad’s forces, backed by Russia and Iran, have won back territory from the rebels, while the United States has largely stepped back from a leading role in Syrian diplomacy.

Syria’s war has killed hundreds of thousands and created more than 6 million refugees. About 625,000 people are besieged, mostly by Assad’s forces.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Duterte says China’s Xi threatened war if Philippines drills for oil

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in Beijing. REUTERS/Etienne Oliveau/Pool

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday Chinese counterpart China Xi Jinping had warned him there would be war if Manila tried to enforce an arbitration ruling and drill for oil in a disputed part of the South China Sea.

In remarks that could infuriate China, Duterte hit back at domestic critics who said he has gone soft on Beijing by refusing to push it to comply with an award last year by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled largely in favor of the Philippines.

Duterte said he discussed it with Xi when the two met in Beijing on Monday, and got a firm, but friendly warning.

“We intend to drill oil there, if it’s yours, well, that’s your view, but my view is, I can drill the oil, if there is some inside the bowels of the earth because it is ours,” Duterte said in a speech, recalling his conversation with Xi.

“His response to me, ‘we’re friends, we don’t want to quarrel with you, we want to maintain the presence of warm relationship, but if you force the issue, we’ll go to war.”

Duterte has long expressed his admiration for Xi and said he would raise the arbitration ruling with him eventually, but needed first to strengthen relations between the two countries, which the Philippines is hoping will yield billions of dollars in Chinese loans and infrastructure investments.

The Hague award clarifies Philippine sovereign rights in its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone to access offshore oil and gas fields, including the Reed Bank, 85 nautical miles off its coast.

It also invalidated China’s nine-dash line claim on its maps denoting sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.

Duterte has a reputation for his candid, at times incendiary, remarks and his office typically backpeddles on his behalf and blames the media for distorting his most controversial comments.

Duterte recalled the same story about his discussion with Xi on oil exploration in a recorded television show aired moments after the speech.

He said Xi told him “do not touch it”.

He said Xi had promised that the arbitration ruling would be discussed in future, but not now.

Duterte said China did not want to bring up the arbitral ruling at a time when other claimant countries, like Vietnam, might also decide to file cases against it at the arbitration tribunal.

It was not the first time the firebrand leader has publicly discussed the content of private meetings with other world leaders.

His remarks came the same day that China and the Philippines held their first session in a two-way consultation process on the South China Sea.

They exchanged views on “the importance of appropriately handling concerns, incidents and disputes involving the South China Sea”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that gave few details.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Martin Petty)