Tag Archives: War

Ukraine cuts power to pro-Russia separatist region

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine cut electricity to parts of an eastern region controlled by pro-Russian separatists on Tuesday, citing unpaid debt – a step the Kremlin said amounted to a rejection by Kiev of breakaway territories.

Three years after Moscow annexed the Crimean region, tensions between Ukraine and separatists in the Russian-held eastern part of the country remain high and a 2015 ceasefire is violated regularly.

“This night, the power supply to the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk region was completely halted,” Vsevolod Kovalchuk, head of the state power distributor Ukrenergo, said on Facebook.

Local media quoted a separatist official as saying the rebel-held territory, which borders Russia, had been prepared for the suspension and would connect to other sources.

Boris Gryzlov, Moscow’s envoy to the long-running Ukraine peace talks, criticised the move as politically motivated and said Russia would provide power to the affected territory.

Luhansk residents told Reuters by phone that electricity supplies appeared to be working as normal.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the decision to cut power to the territory was “another step by Ukraine on the road to rejecting territory,” which has been under separatist control since 2014.

Ukraine cut gas supplies to Luhansk in 2015, also blaming unpaid debts, and imposed a trade blockade on the occupied regions in March.

Kiev has accused the area of accumulating 2.6 billion hryvnias ($97.67 million) in unpaid electricity charges.

An American paramedic working for European security watchdog OSCE’s monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine was killed and two others injured on Sunday when their vehicle struck a mine near small village of Pryshyb, closed to Luhansk.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova in Moscow, Editing by Andrew Heavens and Richard Lough)

UN seeks to avert famine in Yemen, where a child dies every 10 minutes

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres attends the High-level Pledging Event for the Humanitarian Crisis in Yemen at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland April 25, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations needs massive funds to avert famine in Yemen and warring parties there must ensure humanitarian aid can be delivered, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday as he opened a donor conference in Geneva.

A U.N. appeal for $2.1 billion this year for Yemen, where Guterres said a child under the age of five dies of preventable causes every 10 minutes, is only 15 percent covered.

Two years of conflict between Houthi rebels aligned with Iran and a Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition that carries out air strikes almost daily have killed at least 10,000 people in Yemen, and hunger and disease are rife there.

Nearly 19 million people or two-thirds of the population need emergency aid, Guterres said, renewing a call for peace talks and urging all parties to “facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid by air, sea and land”.

“We are witnessing the starving and the crippling of an entire generation. We must act now to save lives,” he added.

“All infrastructure must remain open and operational.”

Yemen’s Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid Bin Daghr said his government, which controls only part of the country, would allow access for aid supplies. “We are ready to open new corridors for this aid,” he said.

Initial pledges announced at the conference included $150 million from Saudi Arabia, $100 million from Kuwait, 50 million euros ($54.39 million) from Germany and $94 million from the United States.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has committed $1 billion to Yemen and reached a record 5 million people last month with rations but needs to scale up deliveries to reach 9 million who are deemed “severely food insecure”, its regional director Muhannad Hadi said in an interview.

They include some 3 million malnourished children.

“REAL FAMINE THAT WILL SHAME US”

“If the international community does not move right now, and if WFP does not get the right funding and support to address all needs, I think the cost of that will be real famine that will shame us in coming months and weeks,” Hadi told Reuters.

Yemen imports 90 percent of its food, 70 percent of which passes through the strategic Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Concerns are growing about a possible attack by the Yemeni government and its Arab allies, who say the Houthis use it to smuggle weapons and ammunition.

“We are concerned about (all) facilities in Yemen because at this stage we can’t afford to even lose one bridge or one road network let alone to lose a major facility like Hodeidah port,” Hadi said.

“In order to achieve security in this region, we have to address the food security needs. It’s impossible to have security in the country while people are hungry,” he said.

The U.N. called on April 5 for safeguarding of the port, where five cranes have been destroyed by airstrikes, forcing ships to line up offshore because they cannot be unloaded.

U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien told the conference the United Nations and its humanitarian partners are scaling up and are prepared to do more, “provided there are resources and access”.

(This version of the story corrects figure in para 2 to $2.1 billion instead of $1.2 billion)

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

Hundreds more join Mosul exodus as Iraqi forces retake two more western districts

Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fires towards Islamic State militants during a battle, west of Mosul,Iraq April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer

By Maher Chmaytelli

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Pushing carts loaded with bags, babies and the elderly, hundreds of people fled Mosul on Saturday after Iraqi forces retook two more districts in the west of the city from Islamic State.

After walking for miles, families were taken by bus from a government checkpoint in the south of the city to camps housing more than 410,000 people displaced since the offensive to retake Mosul began in October.

“We left with no water, food or electricity,” said 63-year-old Abu Qahtan, the elder of a group of 41 people from five families. “We left with the clothes on our backs.”

Iraqi forces have taken much of Mosul from the militants who overran the city in June 2014. The military now controls the eastern districts and are making advances in the west.

Islamic State fighters, holding out in the Old City, are surrounded in the northwest and are using booby traps, sniper and mortar fire to defend themselves.

On Saturday, artillery and gun fire could be heard as families arrived from Hay al-Tanak district which they said was still half controlled by the militants.

Troops, backed by helicopters, were moving towards the al-Nuri mosque where, nearly three years ago, Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced his self-declared caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria.

A Reuters reporter, standing within sight of the mosque, saw heavy smoke in that area after an air strike.

The U.S.-trained Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) has retaken the nearby al-Thaura and al-Saha districts, statements said.

CTS commander Major General Maan Saadi said his troops were linking up with Iraq’s Federal Police moving in on the Old City from a different position.

“We are completing the encirclement of the terrorists in the Old City,” he told Reuters.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still trapped in western Mosul, where Iraqi forces are making slow progress against Islamic State in what is a labyrinth of narrow streets.

As of April 20, some 503,000 people have been displaced from Mosul, of which 91,000 have returned, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said, citing government figures.

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, is the militants’ last urban stronghold in the country.

(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Russia complains to U.S. over exclusion from Syria chemical probe

A crater is seen at the site of an airstrike, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has told the United States it regrets Washington’s opposition to letting its inspectors take part in an investigation into a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this month, the foreign ministry said on Friday.

It said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the two sides agreed to consider one more time an “objective investigation into the incident” under the aegis of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The U.S. State Department said that during the call Tillerson reiterated to Lavrov his support for the OPCW’s existing investigative mechanism. They also discussed a range of issues, including those covered during Tillerson’s April 11-12 visit to Moscow, the department said in a statement.

The United States accused the Syrian army of carrying out the April 4 attack in which scores of people died from poison gas, and it responded by launching cruise missiles against a Syrian air base.

Russia has defended its ally Damascus and blamed the incident on rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The episode added to a long list of disputes between the two countries and has dashed Russian hopes that ties might improve with Donald Trump in the White House. Trump said last week that relations with Moscow “may be at an all-time low.”

Referring to another irritant in the relationship, the Russian ministry said Lavrov called on Tillerson to hand back “Russian diplomatic property in the USA unlawfully confiscated by the Barack Obama administration.”

Former President Obama expelled 35 suspected Russian spies in December and ordered the Russians to depart two countryside vacation retreats outside Washington and New York that he said were linked to espionage..

The ministry said the parties had agreed to launch a working group soon “to seek ways to get rid of irritants in bilateral relations.”

(writing by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Cynthia Osterman)

Evacuations of besieged Syrians resume after two-day halt

A convoy of buses carrying evacuees from the two Shi'ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya arrive to government-controlled Aleppo, in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 12, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The evacuation of Syrian civilians and fighters from four besieged towns, part of a swap deal between the warring sides, resumed on Friday after a 48-hour halt, state media and a war monitoring group said.

More than 35 busloads of civilians and pro-government fighters from the towns of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province arrived in Aleppo city, which is under government control, the war monitor said.

Thousands of evacuees from the two rebel-besieged Shi’ite towns had been stuck at a staging area outside Aleppo, where a bomb attack on an evacuation convoy killed scores of people last week.

In exchange, ten buses carrying rebels and their relatives from Zabadani left a second nearby transit point to cross into rebel territory, state-owned Ikhbariyah channel said.

The towns of Zabadani and Madaya, which had long been under siege by pro-government forces near Damascus, came under state rule this week after Sunni rebels and civilians were evacuated.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the 48-hour suspension was due to rebel demands for the government to free 750 prisoners as part of the agreement.

The Britain-based war monitor said it remained unclear if authorities had released any prisoners as the reciprocal evacuations resumed in the morning.

On Saturday, a bomb blast hit a convoy carrying evacuees from al-Foua and Kefraya killing at least 126 people, including more than 60 children, who were waiting on Aleppo’s outskirts.

Thousands of Syrians have been evacuated mostly out of besieged rebel areas in recent months, under deals between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and rebel groups fighting for six years to unseat him.

U.N. Syria humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said that there had been more evacuation deals this year than in previous years, but that they appeared driven more by military priorities than humanitarian concerns.

“They seem to follow a military logic, they do not seem to put the civilians at the heart of the agreement,” he told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.

The United Nations was not involved in the evacuation of the four towns, Egeland said. He added it was misleading to consider them voluntary evacuations when the towns had been besieged for years.

“Besiegement should end by being lifted,” he said, “not by places being emptied from people.”

(Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut, additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; editing by Richard Lough)

‘We want to be happy’: Iraqi violinist plays in Mosul as troops battle IS

Ameen Mukdad, a violinist from Mosul who lived under ISIS's rule for two and a half years where they destroyed his musical instruments, performs in eastern Mosul, Iraq, April 19, 2017. REUTERS/ Muhammad Hamed

By Ulf Laessing

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Amid the bombed-out ruins of an ancient site revered by both Muslims and Christians in Mosul, Iraqi violinist Ameen Mukdad on Wednesday held a small concert in the city he was forced to flee by Islamic State militants.

As Mukdad played scores he had composed in secret while living under the militants’ austere rule, explosions and gunfire could be heard from Mosul’s western districts where U.S.-backed forces are still battling Islamic State for control.

“This is a place for all, not just one sect. Daesh represents no religion but is an ideology that suppresses freedom,” Mukdad told Reuters, using a derogatory name for the militants. “Everything about Daesh is wrong.”

Mukdad, 28, fled Mosul after Islamic State fighters stormed his house and confiscated his instruments, deeming his music a violation of their hardline interpretation of Sunni Islam.

Wednesday’s hour-long concert marked his first return to the city that was overrun by Islamic State in 2014.

Mukdad said he chose the Tomb of Jonas, or Mosque of the Prophet Younis, as the site is known by Muslims, to symbolize unity.

“I want to take the opportunity to send a message to the world and send a strike against terrorism and all ideologies which restrict freedom that music is a beautiful thing,” he said.

“Everyone who opposes music is ugly.”

DEFYING ISLAMIC STATE

Mukdad advertised the concert venue and time on social media, a bold move in eastern Mosul at a time the militants still control the Old City across the Tigris river.

Soldiers guarding the venue, which lies near the ancient Nineveh ruins, at first refused access after the boom of a nearby rocket rang out, saying they could not guarantee the public’s safety. They later relented, and troops joined the applauding crowd.

“The performance was like a dream,” said Tahany Saleh, who as a woman was forced by the militants to cease her university studies.

“I wanted to come to give a message that war has not stopped life in Mosul,” she said. “You can see all this damage but still we still want to be happy, we want to listen music.”

Under Islamic State rule, entertainment was banned. But in defiance of the militants, Mukdad continued to play at home alone or quietly with a dwindling circle of fellow musicians, closing windows to avoid detection.

“I stopped playing because I was too afraid but Ameen kept going,” said Hakam Anas, one of his friends who founded a musical club with the violinist. “We tried persuading him that he could get easily killed, but he kept playing.”

One night the militants raided Mukdad’s house, taking his instruments and vowing to punish him. He escaped to Baghdad where he still lives.

In a sign of how nervous Mosul residents remain six months into the military operation to flush out Islamic State, just 20 people, mostly young men, attended the concert.

“This is what we young people need,” said Abdullah Thaier.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing; editing by Richard Lough)

U.S. troops still battling Islamic State near site of Afghan bomb strike

A member of Afghanistan's Special Forces unit jumps from a wall during patrol in Pandola village near the site of a U.S. bombing in the Achin district of Nangarhar, eastern Afghanistan, April 14, 2017. REUTERS/Parwiz

By Josh Smith and Ahmad Sultan

KABUL/ABDUL KHIL, Afghanistan (Reuters) – U.S. troops are still battling suspected Islamic State fighters near the site where a massive bomb was dropped in eastern Afghanistan last week, a U.S. military official said on Wednesday.

Nicknamed “the mother of all bombs”, the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb was dropped last Thursday from an American MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan.

Since then questions have surrounded the decision to use the weapon, which is one of the largest conventional bombs ever used in combat by the U.S. military.

Afghan estimates of heavy militant losses and no civilian casualties have been impossible to verify in the remote region, with access to the area where the bomb fell still blocked.

The strike drew condemnation from some prominent figures, including former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan.

After arriving at the site the day after the strike, U.S. troops fighting alongside Afghan forces have since left, but continue to conduct operations in the broader area, said U.S. military spokesman Captain William Salvin.

“Access has been restricted but that’s because it’s a combat zone,” he told Reuters. “We are in contact with the enemy.”

Echoing initial estimates, Salvin said the U.S. military has “high confidence” that no civilians were harmed.

Some Afghan officials have complained of a lack of information about the effects of the bomb.

“We were and we are kept in the dark and still we haven’t been able to go to the site,” said one senior Afghan security official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“We are confused ourselves and we wonder what MOAB could have caused.”

“FIGHTING FOR GOD”

In meetings of the Afghan security council, some ministers told President Ashraf Ghani they feared the lack of information from the U.S. side could be exploited by Islamic State, which has continued radio broadcasts claiming none of its fighters were killed.

“We haven’t suffered any casualties from this bomb,” said one recent Islamic State broadcast. “We are fighting for the sake of God, who is much stronger than this bomb.”

Salvin would not comment on claims by Afghan defense officials that nearly 100 Islamic State fighters died in the strike.

The attack was aimed at destroying an “extensive” complex of fortified tunnels and mines and not any particularly large concentration of fighters, he said.

“Our assessments are ongoing,” Salvin said, noting that the strike appeared to have collapsed many tunnels, destroyed mines, and “reduced” several nearby structures.

U.S. troops have continued to use explosives to collapse other tunnel entrances not destroyed by the bomb, he said.

For at least a month before the strike, the U.S. military had broadcast radio messages warning of coming operations by American and Afghan troops in southern Nangarhar, and leaflets were dropped on areas affected by the operation, Salvin said.

One leaflet seen by Reuters in a village near the strike shows a picture of a drone with an Afghan army emblem and reads: “We ask residents to leave as soon as possible to save their lives.”

Several villages near the blast site have been largely abandoned for months as fighting increased between Islamic State and the U.S.-backed Afghan forces, locals said.

“There were daily bombings and fighting,” said Khan Afzal, a local policeman on a recent patrol in the village of Abdul Khil, less than a mile from the strike.

“Afghan forces used to fire artillery, bombs were dropped by foreign aircraft, and even Daesh fired rockets at us and at the villagers,” he added, using an Arabic term for Islamic State.

Residents in Achin district say that they knew of no civilians still living voluntarily in the areas near the Islamic State stronghold, but it is still not clear if other non-combatants may have been involved.

“The people who’d normally be talking have fled, and there have been very few reports from inside Islamic State territory,” said Kate Clark, a senior researcher for the Afghan Analysts Network. “The jury’s still out on many things with this strike.”

Some local residents suggested there may have been prisoners held in the tunnel complex, she added, but the area has been something of an information black hole since Islamic State militants were first confirmed there in 2015.

The Afghan offshoot of the Middle East-based, extremist militant movement is small – presumed to number a few hundred fighters – and is battling foreign and government troops as well as rival insurgent groups, most notably the dominant Taliban.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Gareth Jones and Mike Collett-White)

Israel says Assad’s forces still have several tonnes of chemical weapons

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 13, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s military said on Wednesday it believes Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces still possess several tonnes of chemical weapons, issuing the assessment two weeks after a chemical attack that killed nearly 90 people in Syria.

Israel, along with many countries, blames the strike on Assad’s military. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said French intelligence services would provide proof of that in the coming days.

A senior Israeli military officer, in a briefing to Israeli reporters, said “a few tonnes of chemical weapons” remained in the hands of Assad’s forces, a military official told Reuters.

Some local media reports quoted the briefing officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with Israeli military procedure, as putting the amount at up to 3 tonnes.

In a 2013 agreement brokered by Russia and the United States, Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons.

Earlier in the day, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons, a global watchdog, said sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the April 4 strike in Syria’s Idlib province.

The findings supported earlier testing by Turkish and British laboratories.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on April 6 that he was “100 percent certain” that the attack was “directly ordered and planned by Assad”. He did not elaborate on how he reached that conclusion.

Syria has repeatedly denied it was behind the attack in Khan Sheikhoun. Assad was quoted as saying last week that Syria’s military gave up all its chemical weapons in 2013 after the agreement made at the time, and would not have used them anyway.

Israel closely monitors the civil war in Syria, a northern neighbour. During the six-year conflict, Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines, carrying out occasional air strikes against what it says is the movement of weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militants.

(This version of the article corrects sourcing in paragraph 3)

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Alison Williams)

Syria evacuations resume, bringing town under state control

People, who were evacuated from the two rebel-besieged Shi'ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, stand near buses at insurgent-held al-Rashideen, Aleppo province, Syria April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The last rebels in the town of Zabadani near Damascus have either departed for insurgent-held regions or accepted government rule, pro-government media reported on Wednesday, part of a reciprocal evacuation deal for besieged areas.

Thousands of people also left the rebel-besieged Shi’ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya near Idlib under the deal, which resumed days after a suicide bombing killed dozens in a convoy that was part of the same evacuation, the media said.

“The area of Zabadani is empty of militants after the last batch of them left this morning,” the pro-government Sham FM radio reported, citing a senior official in Zabadani.

A military media unit run by Damascus ally Hezbollah and a Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also reported that evacuations had resumed.

About 45 buses carrying 3,000 people left al-Foua and Kefraya near Idlib for government-controlled Aleppo, while a convoy of 11 buses left army-besieged al-Zabadani, the Hezbollah media unit said.

On Saturday, a bomb attack on a convoy of evacuees from al-Foua and Kefraya killed 126 people, including more than 60 children, the war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported.

Under the deal, civilians and pro-government fighters from the Shi’ite villages were travelling by bus to government-controlled Aleppo, while insurgents and their families from al-Zabadani and Madaya near Damascus crossed to rebel-held territory, having first gone to Aleppo.

Three buses on Wednesday also carried wounded people from Saturday’s convoy attack, as well as the remains of those who had died, the Hezbollah military media unit reported.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Louise Ireland and Andrew Heavens)

Iraq opens new Tigris bridge escape route for people fleeing Mosul

An Iraqi woman carries a girl as she walks along a pontoon bridge over the Tigris river on the outskirts of Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq, April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Ulf Laessing

MOSUL (Reuters) – Iraqi’s army has built a new pontoon bridge over the Tigris river south of Mosul, after flooding had blocked all crossing points, opening an escape route for families fleeing fighting between government forces and Islamic State.

On Friday, the army dismantled makeshift bridges linking the two parts of Mosul due to heavy rain, forcing residents leaving Iraq’s second-largest city to use small boats.

The city’s permanent bridges have been largely destroyed during a six-month military campaign to seize back Mosul from the Sunni Muslim Islamists, which overran it in 2014.

Long queues formed at the new bridge on Tuesday with families crossing in public buses, trucks and taxis.

Aid shipments also resumed to the Hammam al-Alil camp, southwest of Mosul, the main arrival point for people fleeing the fighting.

Deliveries from Erbil, located some 80 km (50 miles) east in peaceful Iraqi Kurdistan, where aid agencies are based, had stopped due to the flooding.

“Everything is back to normal,” said a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Some 20,000 people have escaped from Mosul in the past four days, fewer than before due to the lack of transport, the UNHCR said in a report. Almost 330,000 people have fled Mosul since Iraq started an operation to expel Islamic State in October.

They were some of the around 400,000 people still in western Mosul where military forces are trying to dislodge the militants from the Old City.

Fighting continued in the Old City where heavy smoke could be seen from the area of the Grand al-Nuri Mosque, from where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” spanning parts of Iraq and Syria.

Aircraft, helicopter and artillery opened fire, while gunfire could also be heard at several positions of Iraq’s federal police near the Old City.

“They (Islamic State militants) carry out attacks on our defensive lines, but each time we repel them and they run away, leaving bodies of their dead fighters behind,” Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Lazim Zghayer said of the force’s 9th division.

“Minutes ago, they launched an attack and we responded by shelling them with mortar rounds, killing two of them and their bodies were left in front of our defensive lines,” he said.

Government forces, including army, police and elite counter terrorism units have taken back most of Mosul, including the half that lies east of the Tigris river.

The militants are now surrounded in northwestern Mosul, using booby traps, sniper and mortar fire against the assailants.

(Editing by Alison Williams)