Tag Archives: War

Britain, France renew call for Assad to go after Syria chemical attack

Norwegian Foreign Minister Borge Brende, Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and officials observe a minute of silence in respect for the victims of suspected Syrian government chemical attack during an international conference on the future of Syria and the region, in Brussels, Belgium, April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

By Gabriela Baczynska and Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Britain and France on Wednesday renewed their call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go, after a suspected chemical weapons attack by Damascus killed scores of people in a rebel-held area.

Foreign ministers Boris Johnson of Britain and Jean-Marc Ayrault of France spoke during an international conference on Syria, which the European Union convened in Brussels in a bid to shore up stalled peace talks between Assad and his rivals.

“This is a barbaric regime that has made it impossible for us to imagine them continuing to be an authority over the people of Syria after this conflict is over,” Johnson said.

Ayrault said the attack was a test for the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

The future of Assad, who is backed militarily and politically by Russia and Iran, has been the main point of contention blocking progress in talks. The war has raged for more than six years, killing 320,000 people, displacing millions and leaving civilians facing dire humanitarian conditions.

“The need for humanitarian aid and the protection of Syrian civilians has never been greater. The humanitarian appeal for a single crisis has never been higher,” United Nations’ Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

The U.N. has called for $8 billion this year to deal with the crisis and the Brussels gathering was due to come up with fresh pledges of aid.

ACCOUNTABILITY

Hours before the U.N. Security Council meets over a resolution proposed by Washington, London and Paris on the attack, Guterres said: “We have been asking for accountability on the crimes that have been committed and I am confident the Security Council will live up to its responsibilities.”

The three countries blamed Assad for the attack. Russia said it believed the toxic gas had leaked from a rebel chemical weapons depot struck by Syrian bombs, setting the stage for a diplomatic collision at the Security Council.

In condemning Assad, Trump did not say how he would respond. The attack came a week after Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.N. envoy Nikki Haley said their focus was on defeating Islamic State in Syria rather than pushing Assad out.

“Under Obama, we agreed that Assad had to go, but now it is unclear where the Trump position lies,” said a senior EU diplomat.

On the aid front, Germany pledged 1.2 billion euros ($1.28 billion) for 2017 on top of its previous commitments. London offered an additional one billion pounds ($1.25 billion).

The EU and its members have so far mobilized about 9.5 billion euros in Syria emergency humanitarian aid, Brussels says.

The bloc says it will withhold development aid and not pay for any reconstruction if Damascus and its backers wipe out Syria’s opposition and moderate rebels, regaining full control of the country but denying its ethnic and religious groups political representation.

“But behind this line, there are divisions in the EU on Assad. Some are hawkish, some others want to think whether we could work with him somehow,” another senior EU diplomat said.

“The EU’s internal splits only add up to those among the big players in this war. There is a sense of despair but the international community just cannot agree on how to fix Syria.”

(Additional reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels, John Irish in Paris, Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Conference on Syria overshadowed by chemical attack

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini takes part in a joint news conference during an international conference on the future of Syria and the region, in Brussels, Belgium, April 5, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman

By Robin Emmott and Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union’s aid chief called for more humanitarian access in Syria on Tuesday at an international conference meant to support the country’s ailing peace prospects, but one that quickly got overshadowed by a chemical attack inside Syria.

As Christos Stylianides spoke at the gathering in Brussels, a suspected gas attack hit the rebel-held Idlib province, killing at least 58 people, including children.

The United Nations’ Syria envoy said the ‘horrific’ attack came from the air and that the U.N. Security Council would meet to demand accountability.

The EU’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad held “primary responsibility”.

“Chemical weapons are the worst of war crimes,” she said.

The Brussels conference comes as Syria’s civil war enters its seventh year, raging on in large part due to the inability of regional and global powers to agree on how to end it.

“Humanitarian access is at a new low due to continued deliberate obstruction by all parties to the conflict,” Stylianides told the two-day conference.

“You remember east Aleppo, where no aid could enter for months despite our collective calls,” he said, referring to the government siege of rebel-held areas last year. “More Aleppos are everywhere in Syria.”

The United Nations has appealed for $8 billion this year to deal with one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions of people displaced inside Syria and in neighboring countries.

Qatar and Kuwait joined the EU, Norway and the United Nations to organize the latest international effort following conferences in Berlin, London and Helsinki to raise funds.

The European Union has already pledged 1.2 billion euros ($1.28 billion) for 2017. Other governments will come under pressure to make good on promises made in February 2016 at the London conference, which raised $11 billion over four years.

EU LACKS HARD LEVERAGE

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, Nancy Wilson, the head of Relief International, said problems getting access and providing supplies were chief obstacles on the ground.

“You can’t run a health clinic if you don’t have clean water and medical supplies,” she said. “Some kind of political solution that would cease the fighting would be the biggest challenge.”

The EU called the conference to show support for the peace process by bringing together prime ministers, foreign ministers and ambassadors from some 70 countries.

But the bloc’s role in international attempts at bringing the war to an end has been largely marginal, as highlighted again by the absence in Brussels of top-level officials from Russia, Turkey and the United States.

Five million Syrians have fled into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and the European Union to escape the conflict among rebels, Islamist militants, government troops and foreign backers.

The future of Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, remains the key point of contention, blocking political talks.

The EU says it will not pay for any post-war reconstruction unless there is a “credible political transition” that would give the opposition, moderate rebels and the various ethnic and religious groups a say in Syria.

“We caution against paying for Assad’s destruction without a political end to the war,” said European lawmaker Mariejte Schaake of the Netherlands.

The initial U.S. and Russian backing for the U.N.-led process has waned as Moscow now sponsors separate talks with regional powers Iran and Turkey.

Washington is now also at odds with Europe – while they used to agree that Assad must go, President Donald Trump has made fighting terrorism his top priority instead.

(Additional reporting by Farah Salhi; Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Andrew Bolton)

Russia denies Assad to blame for chemical attack, on course for collision with Trump

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, 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

By Maria Tsvetkova and Tom Perry

MOSCOW/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Russia denied on Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to blame for a poison gas attack and said it would continue to back him, setting the Kremlin on course for its biggest diplomatic collision yet with Donald Trump’s White House.

Western countries, including the United States, blamed Assad’s armed forces for a chemical attack which choked scores of people to death in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in a rebel-held area of northern Syria on Tuesday.

Washington said it believed the deaths were caused by sarin nerve gas dropped by Syrian aircraft. But Moscow offered an alternative explanation that would shield Assad: that the poison gas belonged to rebels and had leaked from an insurgent weapons depot hit by Syrian bombs.

The United States, Britain and France have proposed a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that would pin the blame on Damascus. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would argue its case blaming the rebels at the United Nations.

“Russia and its armed forces will continue their operations to support the anti-terrorist operations of Syria’s armed forces to free the country,” Peskov told reporters.

Video uploaded to social media showed civilians sprawled on the ground, some in convulsions, others lifeless. Rescue workers hose down the limp bodies of small children, trying to wash away chemicals. People wail and pound on the chests of victims.

The World Health Organization said the symptoms were consistent with exposure to a nerve agent.

Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, called the Russian statement blaming the rebels a “lie” and said rebels did not have the capability to produce nerve gas.

“Everyone saw the plane while it was bombing with gas,” he told Reuters from northwestern Syria. “Likewise, all the civilians in the area know that there are no military positions there, or places for the manufacture (of weapons).”

The incident is the first time Washington has accused Assad of using sarin since 2013, when hundreds of people died in an attack on a Damascus suburb. At that time, Washington said Assad had crossed a “red line” set by then-President Barack Obama.

Obama threatened an air campaign to topple Assad but called it off at the last minute after the Syrian leader agreed to give up his chemical arsenal under a deal brokered by Moscow, a decision which Trump has long said proved Obama’s weakness.

The new incident means Trump is faced with same dilemma that faced his predecessor: whether to openly challenge Moscow and risk deep involvement in a Middle East war by seeking to punish Assad for using banned weapons, or compromise and accept the Syrian leader remaining in power at the risk of looking weak.

Trump described Tuesday’s incident as “heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime”, but also faulted Obama for having failed to enforce the red line four years ago. Obama’s spokesman declined to comment.

The draft U.N. Security Council statement drawn up by Washington, London and Paris condemned the attack and demanded an investigation. Russia has the power to veto it, which it has done to block all previous resolutions that would harm Assad, most recently in February.

France’s foreign minister said the chemical attack showed Assad was testing whether the new U.S. administration would stand by Obama-era demands that he be removed from power.

“It’s a test. That’s why France repeats the messages, notably to the Americans, to clarify their position,” Jean-Marc Ayrault told RTL radio. “I told them that we need clarity. What’s your position?”

“BARBARIC REGIME”

Trump’s response to a diplomatic confrontation with Moscow will be closely watched at home because of accusations by his political opponents that he is too supportive of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He has previously said the United States and Russia should work more closely in Syria to fight against Islamic State.

U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential election last year through computer hacking to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The FBI and two congressional committees are investigating whether figures from the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow, which the White House denies.

The chemical attack in Idlib province, one of the last major strongholds of rebels that have fought since 2011 to topple Assad, complicates diplomatic efforts to end a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of Syrians from their homes.

Over the past several months Western countries, including the United States, had been quietly dropping their demands that Assad leave power in any deal to end the war, accepting that the rebels no longer had the capability to topple him by force.

The use of banned chemical weapons would make it harder for the international community to sign off on any peace deal that does not remove him.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who two months ago shifted his country’s policy by saying Assad could be allowed to run for re-election, said on Wednesday that he must go.

“This is a barbaric regime that has made it impossible for us to imagine them continuing to be an authority over the people of Syria after this conflict is over.”

(Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Dozens killed in suspected gas attack on Syrian rebel area

A Syrian man from Idlib is carried by Turkish medics wearing chemical protective suits to a hospital in the border town of Reyhanli in Hatay province, Turkey, April 4, 2017. Ferhat Dervisoglu/Dogan News Agency via REUTERS

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected Syrian government chemical attack killed at least 58 people, including 11 children, in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitor, medics and rescue workers in the rebel-held area said.

A Syrian military source strongly denied the army had used any such weapons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack, believed to have been carried out by Syrian army jets, caused many people to choke, and some had foam coming out of their mouths. All the children were under the age of eight.

“This morning, at 6:30 a.m., warplanes targeted Khan Sheikhoun with gases, believed to be sarin and chlorine,” said Mounzer Khalil, head of Idlib’s health authority. The attack had killed more than 50 people and wounded 300, he said.

“Most of the hospitals in Idlib province are now overflowing with wounded people,” Khalil told a news conference in Idlib.

The air strikes that hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in the south of rebel-held Idlib, killed at least 58 people, said the Observatory, a British-based war monitoring group.

Warplanes later struck near a medical point where victims of the attack were receiving treatment, the Observatory and civil defense workers said.

The civil defense, also known as the White Helmets – a rescue service that operates in opposition areas of Syria – said jets struck one of its centers in the area and the nearby medical point.

It would mark the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near the capital in August 2013. Western states said the Syrian government was responsible for the 2013 attack. Damascus blamed rebels.

MILITARY DENIES

The Syrian military source on Tuesday denied allegations that government forces had used chemical weapons.

The army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place”, the source said.

A series of investigations by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that various parties in the Syrian war have used chlorine, sulfur mustard gas and sarin.

A joint U.N.-OPCW report published last October said government forces used chlorine in a toxic gas attack in Qmenas in Idlib province in March 2015. An earlier report by the same team blamed Syrian government troops for chlorine attacks in Talmenes in March 2014 and Sarmin in March 2015. It also said Islamic State had used sulfur mustard gas.

The OPCW had no immediate comment on Tuesday.

France called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting about Tuesday’s suspected attack. Turkey, which backs the anti-Assad opposition, said the attack could derail Russian-backed diplomatic efforts to shore up a ceasefire.

“A new and particularly serious chemical attack took place this morning in Idlib province. The first information suggests a large number of victims, including children. I condemn this disgusting act,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.

Reuters photographs showed people breathing through oxygen masks and wearing protection suits, while others carried the bodies of dead children, and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up on the ground.

Activists in northern Syria circulated pictures on social media showing a purported victim with foam around his mouth, and rescue workers hosing down almost naked children squirming on the floor.

Most of the town’s streets had become empty, a witness said.

CEASEFIRE

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said 15 people, mostly women and children, had been brought into Turkey.

An official at the Turkish Health Ministry had said earlier that Turkey’s disaster management agency was first “scanning those arriving for chemical weapons, then decontaminating them from chemicals” before they could be taken to hospitals.

The conflict pits President Bashar al-Assad’s government, helped by Russia and Iranian-backed militias, against a wide array of rebel groups, including some that have been supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that Russian planes had not carried out air strikes on Khan Sheikhoun.

Syrian and Russian air strikes have battered parts of Idlib, according to the Observatory, despite a ceasefire that Turkey and Russia brokered in December.

Jets also struck the town of Salqin in the north of Idlib province on Tuesday, killing eight people, the monitor said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the suspected attack, Turkish presidential sources said. They said the two leaders had also emphasized the importance of maintaining the ceasefire. Turkey’s foreign minister called the attack a crime against humanity.

The European Union’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said: “Obviously there is a primary responsibility from the regime because it has the primary responsibility of protecting its people.”

TOXIC ARSENAL

Idlib province contains the largest populated area controlled by anti-Assad rebels – both nationalist Free Syrian Army groups and Islamist factions including the former al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Idlib’s population has ballooned, with thousands of fighters and civilians shuttled out of Aleppo city and areas around Damascus that the government has retaken in recent months.

U.S. air strikes since January have also hit several areas in the rural province where jihadists have a powerful presence.

Following the 2013 attack, Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a U.S.-Russian deal, averting the threat of U.S.-led military intervention.

Under the deal, Syria agreed to give up its toxic arsenal and surrendered 1,300 tonnes of toxic weapons and industrial chemicals to the international community for destruction.

U.N.-OPCW investigators found, however, that it continued to use chlorine, which is widely available and difficult to trace, in so-called barrel bombs, dropped from helicopters.

Although chlorine is not a banned substance, the use of any chemical is banned under 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria is a member.

Damascus has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the six-year war, which has killed hundreds of thousands and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Ercan Gurses and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Robin Emmott in Brussels, John Irish in Paris; Editing by Tom Perry and Alison Williams)

Emotional reunion shows plight of Syria’s lost children

Hajar Saleh poses with her grandson Jaafar as she holds a picture depicting Jaafar's parents, Amina Saleh and her husband Imad Azouz who were killed fleeing Syria's civil war, at a garden in the Damascus district of Mezzeh,

By Dahlia Nehme

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – When Jaafar’s grandmother recognized him by his birthmark in a Turkish orphanage, months after his parents were killed fleeing Syria’s civil war, she held him tight, screaming for joy.

The story of how Hajar Saleh, a 47-year-old nurse, spent fraught weeks tracing her grandson in a foreign country and many months trying to bring him home underscores the terrible plight of Syria’s thousands of lost children and their families.

Jaafar was only three-months-old when his parents, Amina Saleh, 23, and her husband Imad Azouz, 25, decided to flee their home in the Sayeda Zeinab suburb of Damascus, close to a frontline, and seek a better life for their family abroad.

Palestinian refugees whose families had been in Syria for decades, they lacked legal travel documents, so they gathered their scant savings and paid a smuggler to guide them across the border into Turkey from an area held by Kurdish groups.

A last photograph Amina sent her mother before the attempted border crossing in January 2016 shows her smiling warily at the camera, wearing a heavy winter coat and black headscarf and holding Jaafar, a tiny pink baby in yellow romper suit.

But when they tried to cross the frontier a few hours later with dozens of other refugees in a smuggler convoy in northeast Syria, the Turkish border guards who battle Kurdish insurgents there opened fire. Amina and her husband were killed.

Little Jaafar escaped unscathed, protected by his father’s body, and was gathered up by survivors of the shooting and taken to the nearby Turkish city of Mardin, where they gave him into the care of a local judge.

Hajar’s account of the ill-fated border crossing comes from them and from what Turkish authorities told the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, she said.

Before they left Mardin, some of the refugees phoned Hajar to inform her of the fate of her daughter and son-in-law, and to give her the name and phone number of the judge, the start of her months-long odyssey to reclaim her grandson.

“I still have two sons, but Amina was my only daughter. My friend and secret keeper,” said Hajar apologetically, as if to justify her frequent sobbing and the black clothes of mourning she still wears for the dead couple.

LOST CHILDREN

UNICEF told Reuters in March it had documented the cases of 650 separated children in 2016 alone, but that the likely number of undocumented cases was probably far higher.

Since the war began in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and about half the country’s pre-war population made homeless, large numbers of them children.

After learning about her grandson’s plight, Hajar approached every local and international organization she could think of seeking help.

Eventually, UNICEF and the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR located Jaafar and secured travel documents for her to visit Turkey to pursue the legal process of proving kinship and claiming him.

“My daughter always came to me in my dreams and would beg me to bring her son back and raise him,” she said, speaking in the UNICEF headquarters in Damascus.

Little Jaafar, now 16-months-old, wide-eyed, smiling and well-groomed, was meanwhile snatching at everything in his reach and fidgeting to escape his grandmother’s lap for a few steps before quickly returning to her.

Hajar’s journey to the orphanage in Mardin was nearly over before it began, a victim to the chaos inflicted by the attempted coup d’etat in Turkey last summer, a day before she was scheduled to fly, which closed all the country’s airports.

With her Lebanese visa running out, Hajar only managed to fly to Ankara five days later with a day to spare before she would have been returned to Syria.

Unable to speak Turkish and having never traveled before, she was lost for five hours while changing flights in Istanbul before UNHCR officials found her and guided her onwards. After a 16-hour bus drive from Ankara, she finally reached Mardin.

REUNITED

As soon as Hajar saw Jaafar in the Cucuk Evleri Sitesi Mudurlugu orphanage, she recognized him by the prominent birthmark on his forehead, she said.

“I held him tight, crying and screaming in joy and I fainted afterwards,” she said. “When I woke up I held him tight again and sobbed. He stared at me. He didn’t cry or feel afraid. Instead he wiped my tears away,” she added.

With little money left and the weather turning colder, Hajar’s efforts to bring Jaafar home were further complicated by the Turkish government’s purge of the judiciary in the aftermath of the attempted coup, she said.

It took three months to prepare a DNA test and find a judge who could verify it and give her permission to take home her grandson.

“Every time a judge assumed my case, he would be replaced soon after,” she said.

The Turkish authorities told her where her daughter and son-in-law were buried in unmarked graves, but she was unable to visit them. Even when they finally tried to fly back in December, a blanket of heavy snow delayed their journey for days.

But now they have returned to her home in Sayeda Zeinab.

“Jaafar is full of energy and loves putting himself in trouble,” she said. “But for the sake of my daughter, I will raise him as well as I can.”

(Editing by Angus McDowall and Angus MacSwan)

Four countries face famine threat as global food crisis deepens

Internally displaced Somali children eat boiled rice outside their family's makeshift shelter at the Al-cadaala camp in Somalia's capital Mogadishu March 6, 2017. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

LONDON (Reuters) – Global food crises worsened significantly in 2016 and conditions look set to deteriorate further this year in some areas with an increasing risk of famine, a report said on Friday.

“There is a high risk of famine in some areas of north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen because of armed conflict, drought and macro-economic collapse,” the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) said.

FSIN, which is co-sponsored by the United Nations food agency, the World Food Programme and the International Food Policy Research Institute, said the demand for humanitarian assistance was escalating.

FSIN said that 108 million people were reported to be facing crisis level food insecurity or worse in 2016, a drastic increase from the previous year’s total of almost 80 million.

The network uses a five phase scale with the third level classified as crisis, fourth as emergency and fifth as famine/catastrophe.

“In 2017, widespread food insecurity is likely to persist in Iraq, Syria (including among refugees in neighboring countries), Malawi and Zimbabwe,” the report said.

(Reporting by Nigel Hunt; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

U.N. Secretary General calls for more aid as people flee Mosul

Displaced Iraqi sit outside their tent during the visit of United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres at Hasansham camp, in Khazer, Iraq March 31, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

By Isabel Coles and Maher Chmaytelli

HASSAN SHAM CAMP/MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday called on world powers to increase aid to help people fleeing the Iraqi city of Mosul which government forces have been battling to retake from Islamic State.

Iraqi forces have seized back most of the country’s second-largest city from the Sunni hardline group in a massive six-month campaign.

But at least 355,000 residents have fled fighting, according to the government, and some 400,000 civilians remain trapped inside the densely-populated Old City where street battles have raged for weeks.

“We don’t have the resources necessary to support these people,” Guterres told reporters during a visit to the Hassan Sham Camp, one of several centers outside Mosul packed with civilians escaping the fighting.

The U.N. and Iraqi authorities have been building more camps but struggle to accommodate new arrivals with two families sometimes having to share one tent.

“Unfortunately our program is only 8 percent funded,” he said, referring to a 2017 U.N. humanitarian response program without giving additional details.

During his visit, which lasted about half an hour, residents complained to Guterres about the quality of drinking water and poor living conditions in tents frequented by mice and insects.

“We want to go back to our villages. We are fed up,” said Saqr Younis, who fled to Mosul when Islamic State arrived in his village in 2014.

“If we had died by bombardment it would have been more merciful,” said Saqr who has been in the camp for four months.

Many of the displaced have returned to their homes in areas retaken from Islamic State but some, like Saqr, have not yet been allowed to return by the authorities.

The Sunni group overran about a third of Iraq in 2014, benefiting from the Sunni-Shi’ite rift that weakened the army.

Iraqi forces have won back control of most cities that fell to the group and the militants have been dislodged from nearly three quarters of Mosul but remain in control of its center.

On Friday, Islamic State fired at least 18 rockets from western Mosul into the eastern part which Iraqi force have retaken, the city’s police chief Brigadier General Wathiq al-Hamdani told Reuters.

Machine gunfire and mortars could be heard in the area of the old city but like in previous days there was no new push by government forces.

State television said the air force bombed an Islamic State position in Baaj, some 130 km west of Mosul near the Syrian border.

Government positions have reached as close as 500 meters to the al-Nuri Mosque, from where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate spanning parts of Iraq and Syria in July 2014.

Baghdadi and other IS leaders are believed to have left the city but U.S. officials estimate around 2,000 fighters remain inside the city, resisting with snipers hiding among the population, car bombs and suicide trucks targeting Iraqi positions.

(additional reporting by Alaa Mohammed in Baghdad; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Julia Glover)

Iraqi forces battle toward landmark Mosul mosque

An Iraqi displaced woman cares of her children after arriving to Hammam al-Alil camp in the south of Mosul, Iraq, March 29, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Isabel Coles and John Davison

MOSUL (Reuters) – Iraqi special forces and police fought Islamic State militants to edge closer to the al-Nuri mosque in western Mosul on Wednesday, tightening their control around the landmark site in the battle to recapture Iraq’s second city, military commanders said.

The close-quarters fighting is focused on the Old City surrounding the mosque where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate nearly three years ago across territory controlled by the group in both Iraq and Syria.

Thousands of residents have fled from IS-held areas inside Mosul, the militants’ biggest remaining stronghold in Iraq. But tens of thousands more are still trapped inside homes, caught in the fighting, shelling and air strikes as Iraqi forces backed by a U.S.-led coalition advance in the west.

Helicopters circling west Mosul strafed Islamic State positions beyond the city train station, the site of heavy back-and-forth fighting in recent days, and thick black smoke rose into the sky, Reuters reporters on the ground said.

Heavy sustained gunfire could be heard from the Old City area, where militants are hiding among residents and using the alleyways, traditional family homes and snaking narrow roads to their advantage, fleeing residents say.

“Federal police forces have imposed full control over the Qadheeb al-Ban area and the al-Malab sports stadium in the western wing of Old Mosul and are besieging militants around the al-Nuri mosque,” federal police chief Lieutenant General Raed Shaker Jawdat said in a statement.

Rapid Response elite interior ministry troops were advancing on the edge of the Old City, clambering over garden walls. Islamic State responded with rocket fire, streaking the sky with white smoke plumes.

“There are teams going into the Old City since yesterday,” said Rapid Response official Abd al-Amir.

Iraqi troops shot down at least one suspected Islamic State drone. The militants have been using small commercial models to spy and drop munitions on Iraqi military positions.

With the battle entering the densely populated areas of western Mosul, civilian casualties are becoming more of a risk. The United Nations says several hundred civilians have been killed in the last month, and residents say Islamic State militants are using them as human shields.

The senior U.S. commander in Iraq acknowledged on Tuesday that the U.S.-led coalition probably had a role in an explosion in Mosul believed to have killed scores of civilians, but said Islamic State could also be to blame.

As investigators probe the March 17 blast, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend said increases in casualties were to be expected as the war against the insurgents entered its deadliest phase in the cramped, narrow streets of Mosul’s Old City.

Local officials and eyewitnesses say as many as 240 people may have been killed in the Al-Jadida district when a huge blast caused a building to collapse, burying families inside. Rescue workers are still pulling bodies out of the site.

HUGE BLAST

What exactly happened on March 17 is still unclear and there have been conflicting accounts of how many people died.

Iraqi military command has said one line of investigation is whether Islamic State rigged explosives that ultimately caused the blast that destroyed buildings. Iraqi military said there was no indication the building was hit directly by the strike.

Eyewitnesses have said a strike may have hit a massive truck bomb parked by the building. Others say families were either sheltering in a basement or had been forced inside.

“My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties,” Townsend, the senior coalition commander in Iraq, told a Pentagon news briefing.

“What I don’t know is were they (the civilians) gathered there by the enemy? We still have some assessments to do. … I would say this, that it sure looks like they were.”

The incident has heightened fears for the safety of civilians – an important concern for Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government as it tries to avoid alienating Mosul’s mostly Sunni population.

The United Nations rights chief said on Tuesday at least 307 civilians had been killed and 273 wounded in western Mosul since Feb. 17, saying Islamic State was herding residents into booby-trapped buildings as human shields and firing on those who tried to flee.

(Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Investigators probe Mosul blast as Iraqi forces push into Old City

Iraqi firefighters look for bodies buried under the rubble, of civilians who were killed after an air strike against Islamic State triggered a massive explosion in Mosul. REUTERS/Stringer

By Isabel Coles

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Investigators are in the Iraqi city of Mosul to determine whether a U.S.-led coalition strike or Islamic State-rigged explosives caused a blast that destroyed buildings and may have killed more than 200 people, a U.S. military commander said.

Conflicting accounts have emerged since the March 17 explosion in al-Jadida district in west Mosul, where Iraqi forces backed by U.S.-led coalition air strikes are fighting to clear Islamic State militants from Iraq’s second city.

Iraq’s military command has blamed militants for rigging a building with explosives to cause civilian casualties, but some witnesses say it was collapsed by an air strike, burying many families under the rubble.

If confirmed, the toll would be one of the worst since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, raising questions about civilian safety as Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government tries to avoid alienating Mosul’s mostly Sunni population.

U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Mark Milley, after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Iraq’s defense minister late on Monday, said there had been air strikes in the vicinity that day and on previous days but it was not clear they had caused the casualties.

“It is very possible that Daesh blew up that building to blame it on the coalition in order to cause a delay in the offensive on Mosul and cause a delay in the use of coalition air strikes,” Milley said, using an Arabic term for Islamic State.

“It is possible that a coalition air strike did it. We don’t know yet. There are investigators on the ground.”

A source close to Abadi’s office said the U.S. military delegation also called for more coordination among the Iraqi security force units on the ground and for consideration that thousands of civilians are stuck in their homes.

The United Nations rights chief said on Tuesday at least 307 civilians have been killed and 273 wounded in western Mosul since Feb. 17, saying Islamic State was herding residents into booby-trapped buildings as human shields and firing on those who tried to flee.

“This is an enemy that ruthlessly exploits civilians to serve its own ends,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said. “It is vital that the Iraqi security forces and their coalition partners avoid this trap.”

PRECAUTIONS

Iraqi forces have retaken eastern Mosul and are pushing through the west but have faced tough resistance in the densely populated districts around the Old City, where narrow streets and traditional homes force close-quarters fighting.

Iraqi forces fighting around the Old City tried to storm the al-Midan and Suq al Sha’areen districts, where Islamic State ran its religious police who carried out brutal punishments, such as crucifixion and public floggings, federal police commander Lt. Gen. Raed Shakir Jawdat told state al-Sabah newspaper.

Helicopters were strafing Islamic State targets around Al Nuri mosque, where Islamic State’s leader declared his caliphate nearly three years ago after militants took control of swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Thousands of civilians are fleeing the fighting, shelling and air strikes, but as many as half a million people may be trapped inside the city. Fleeing residents say they have been used as human shields by militants who shelter in their homes.

The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights said since the campaign against western Mosul began in February, unconfirmed reports have said nearly 700 civilians have been killed by government and coalition air strikes or Islamic State action.

Rights group Amnesty International said the high civilian toll suggested U.S.-led coalition forces had failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths.

The al-Jadida incident is far from clear. Witnesses on Sunday described horrific scenes of body parts strewn over rubble, residents trying desperately to pull out survivors and other people buried out of reach.

The Iraqi military’s figure of 61 bodies was lower than that given by local officials – a municipal official said on Saturday 240 bodies had been pulled from the rubble. A local lawmaker and two witnesses say a coalition air strike may have targeted a truck bomb, triggering a blast that collapsed buildings.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

China able to deploy warplanes on artificial islands any time: U.S. think tank

Construction is shown on Fiery Cross Reef, in the Spratly Islands, the disputed South China Sea. CSIS/AMTI DigitalGlobe/Handout via REUTERS

By David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China appears to have largely completed major construction of military infrastructure on artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea and can now deploy combat planes and other military hardware there at any time, a U.S. think tank said on Monday.

The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI), part of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the work on Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief Reefs in the Spratly Islands included naval, air, radar and defensive facilities.

The think tank cited satellite images taken this month, which its director, Greg Poling, said showed new radar antennae on Fiery Cross and Subi.

“So look for deployments in the near future,” he said.

China has denied U.S. charges that it is militarizing the South China Sea, although last week Premier Li Keqiang said defense equipment had been placed on islands in the disputed waterway to maintain “freedom of navigation.”

China’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Tuesday she was unaware of the details of the think tank’s report, but added the Spratly Islands were China’s inherent territory.

“As for China deploying or not deploying necessary territorial defensive facilities on its own territory, this is a matter that is within the scope of Chinese sovereignty,” she told a daily news briefing.

A Pentagon spokesman, Commander Gary Ross, declined to comment on the specifics of the AMTI report, saying it was not the Defense Department’s practice to comment on intelligence.

But he said that “China’s continued construction in the South China Sea is part of a growing body of evidence that they continue to take unilateral actions which are increasing tensions in the region and are counterproductive to the peaceful resolution of disputes.”

AMTI said China’s three air bases in the Spratlys and another on Woody Island in the Paracel chain further north would allow its military aircraft to operate over nearly the entire South China Sea, a key global trade route that Beijing claims most of.

Several neighboring states have competing claims in the sea, which is widely seen as a potential regional flashpoint.

The think tank said advanced surveillance and early-warning radar facilities at Fiery Cross, Subi and Cuarteron Reefs, as well as Woody Island, and smaller facilities elsewhere gave it similar radar coverage.

It said China had installed HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles at Woody Island more than a year ago and had deployed anti-ship cruise missiles there on at least one occasion.

It had also constructed hardened shelters with retractable roofs for mobile missile launchers at Fiery Cross, Subi and Mischief and enough hangars at Fiery Cross for 24 combat aircraft and three larger planes, including bombers.

U.S. officials told Reuters last month that China had finished building almost two dozen structures on Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross that appeared designed to house long-range surface-to-air missiles.

In his Senate confirmation hearing in January, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson angered China by saying it should be denied access to islands it had built up in the South China Sea.

Tillerson subsequently softened his language, saying that in the event of an unspecified “contingency,” the United States and its allies “must be capable of limiting China’s access to and use of” those islands to pose a threat.

In recent years, the United States has conducted a series of what it calls freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, raising tensions with Beijing.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Richard Chang, Leslie Adler and Nick Macfie)