The Jim Bakker Show

The Battle against the fanatical Islamic State

A boy who just fled a village controlled by Islamic State fighters cries as he sits with his family on a bus before heading to the camp at Hammam Ali south of Mosul, Iraq, February 22, 2017.

(Reuters) – It was an awkward coalition riven by political and sectarian differences, facing an elusive, fanatical enemy dug into an urban maze of narrow streets and alleyways. So, could Iraq’s government really deliver on its vow to vanquish Islamic State?

In the end, the army, Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters mustered rare unity to end Islamic State’s reign of terror in Iraq’s second city Mosul, seat of the ultra-hardline Sunni insurgents’ “caliphate”.

Baghdad’s victory in July 2017 after nine months of fighting was the coup de grace for the caliphate and came three years after a jihadist juggernaut seized one third of Iraq.

Smoke rises after an air strike during fighting between members of the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, August 15, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

But even with supportive U.S. air strikes, Baghdad’s triumph came at a devastating cost for the once-vibrant, multicultural city in northern Iraq and the surrounding region.

When Islamic State militants first arrived in Mosul in June 2014 after sweeping aside crumbling Iraqi army units, many Mosul residents initially welcomed them.

The militants were Sunni Muslims, like many in Mosul who had accused the forces of then-Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of widespread sectarian abuses.

Islamic State consequently presented itself as Mosul’s savior. But as jihadists brandishing AK-47 assault rifles began imposing an Islamist doctrine even more brutal and mediaeval than al Qaeda, its popularity soon faded.

Maliki’s successor, Haider al-Abadi, had long been seen as an ineffective leader who could not make tough decisions.

However, a U.S.-backed campaign against IS in Mosul offered Abadi a chance to emerge as a steely statesman capable of taking on a group that had terrorized a sprawling city with beheadings in public squares while staging deadly attacks in the West.

A man cries as he carries his daughter while walking from an Islamic State-controlled part of Mosul towards Iraqi special forces soldiers during a battle in Mosul, Iraq, March 4, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

REIGN OF TERROR

Just smoking one cigarette, an act IS saw as anti-Islamic, earned you dozens of lashes. Children were used as informers. Women in minority communities were turned into sex slaves.

But taking back Mosul was never going to be easy.

Long before the first shot was fired, Abadi and his advisers and military commanders had to tread cautiously, taking into account sectarian and ethnic sensitivities that could splinter the united front he urgently needed to establish.

Iraqi and Kurdish intelligence agencies had recruited informers inside Mosul, from ex-soldiers and army officers to taxi drivers, who would face instant execution if caught.

Even if an alliance of convenience was struck, glossing over sectarian splits, Mosul itself posed formidable physical obstacles.

Key districts consisted of ancient little streets and alleyways inaccessible to tanks and armored vehicles, and they were so densely populated that U.S.-led coalition air strikes risked heavy civilian casualties.

So, street by street, house by house, fighting was unavoidable.

Such challenges first popped up in Mosul’s hinterland as Kurdish forces slowly advanced against fierce IS resistance.

In one village, a single IS sniper hunkered down in a house held up hundreds of Kurdish fighters, the U.S. special forces advising them and 40 of their vehicles. Eventually, his rifle went silent after three air strikes on the house.

As pro-government forces inched forward, the United Nations warned of a possible humanitarian disaster and expressed fear that jihadists could seize civilians for use as human shields, and gun down anyone trying to escape.

IS fighters – both Iraqis and foreigners – were experts at carrying out suicide bombings and assembling homemade bombs. Many houses were booby-trapped. Iraqi military commanders had to factor these lurking perils into their gameplan.

In interviews, IS insurgents shed light on what Iraqi forces were up against. They were quite open about their ideology and what they were willing to do to transform the Middle East.

One man said he had used rape as a weapon of war against more than 200 women from Iraqi minorities, and had killed 500 people.

Iraqi Special Operations Forces arrest a person suspected of belonging to Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, February 26, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani/File Photo

DEADLY OBSTACLE COURSE

After months of grueling fighting, Iraqi forces finally attained the outskirts of Mosul, but any celebrations were premature. Bombs littered dusty roads. Car bombs were exploding.

A Mosul resident explained that his child no longer flinched as explosions shook his street because many people, including the young, had grown numb to the daily bloodshed.

Each side resorted to desperate measures to gain an edge.

In north Mosul, people walked by fly-infested, bloated corpses of militants who had been left on roadsides for two weeks. Iraqi soldiers explained that the stinking bodies had been left there to send a clear message to residents – don’t join IS or you will suffer the same fate.

A woman injured in a mortar attack is treated by medics in a field clinic as Iraqi forces battle with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq, March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra/File Photo

Caught in the middle were civilians who had suffered under the IS reign of terror for three years and were now wondering if they would survive a relentless battle to “liberate” them.

Parents waited patiently after weeks of fighting for a largely unknowable right moment to make a dash for Iraqi government lines, clutching their children, risking a run-in with jihadists from places as far away as Chechnya.

As much of east and west Mosul was pulverized by coalition air strikes or IS truck and car bombs, the city was reduced to row after row of collapsed or gutted housing.

In the end, IS suffered its most decisive defeat and watched their self-proclaimed caliphate evaporate in Iraq, then in Syria as Kurdish-led forces retook Raqqa, IS’s urban stronghold there.

FUTURE CHALLENGES

But those victories will be followed by tough questions about the future of both Iraq and Syria.

Preserving the shaky understanding forged between the different communities in the run-up to the Mosul campaign will be essential to saving Iraq as a state in the future.

It did not take long for the Mosul coalition to fray.

In October, Iraqi forces dislodged Kurdish Peshmerga fighters from the oil city of Kirkuk and other disputed areas and Baghdad imposed curbed air travel to and from the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in retaliation for a Kurdish independence referendum held in northern Iraq in September.

The battle for Raqqa, which became IS’s operational base in Syria, had a different feel to it as U.S.-backed Kurds and Arabs in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) tightened their siege.

The fighting seemed slower and more measured, step by step along abandoned streets where journalists were given access.

In the weeks before Raqqa’s fall in October, young female SDF fighters faced off against hardened militants and suffered losses. But that did not curb their enthusiasm and some said they would eventually like to join Kurdish PKK militants in Turkey and help advance their 33-year-old insurgency there.

The victors in Iraq and Syria now face new challenges as they rebuild cities shattered by the showdown with IS.

People cross a makeshift ladder in a village near Raqqa after a bridge was destroyed in fighting between the U.S.-led coalition and Islamic State, in Raqqa, Syria, June 16, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo

After IS’s defeat in Raqqa, Raqqa residents formed a council to run the city but they had no budget when it was first set up, just residents streaming into their tin, run-down headquarters demanding everything from instant jobs to getting their damaged farmland back.

Syrian Kurdish fighters were inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Ocalan, head of the PKK militants who has been imprisoned in Turkey for almost 20 years.

Turkey views the political rise of Syria’s Kurds as a threat to its national security and is fiercely opposed to the idea of Kurdish autonomy on its doorstep.

The Kurdish groups who led the fight against Islamic State in its former capital Raqqa must now navigate a complex peace to avoid ethnic tension with the city’s Arab majority and to secure critical U.S. aid.

So, life for Raqqa’s victors will remain fraught with risk.

(Reporting by Michael Georgy; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Syrian, Russian jets bomb residential areas in eastern Ghouta: witnesses, monitor

People are seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3,

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday.

Civil defense workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defense workers said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period.

The Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by army troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave to submission.

The government has in recent months tightened the siege in what residents and aid workers have said is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

The United Nations says about 400,00 civilians besieged in the region face “complete catastrophe” because aid deliveries by the Syrian government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining large swathe of rebel-held area around Damascus that has not reached an evacuation deal to surrender weapons in return for allowing fighters to go to other rebel-held areas farther north.

“They are targeting civilians … a jet hit us there, no rebels or checkpoints,” Sadeq Ibrahim, a trader, said by phone in Hamoriya.

“May God take his revenge on the regime and Russia,” said Abdullah Khalil, another resident, who said he lost members of his family in the air strike on Arbin and was searching for survivors among the rubble.

A boy is seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

The intensified bombardment of Eastern Ghouta follows a rebel attack last month on an army complex in the heart of the region that the army had used to bomb nearby rebel-held areas.

Residents said, however, that the failure of the army to dislodge rebels from the complex had prompted what they believe were retaliatory indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the Eastern Ghouta.

Government advances since last year have forced people to flee deeper into its increasingly overcrowded towns. The loss of farmland is increasing pressure on scarce food supplies.

The Eastern Ghouta is part of several de-escalation zones that Russia has brokered with rebels across Syria that has freed the army to redeploy in areas where it can regain ground.

Rebels accuse the Syrian government and Russia of violating the zones and say they were meant as a charade to divert attention from the heavy daily bombing of civilian areas. The Syrian government and Russia deny their jets bomb civilians and insist they only strike militant hideouts.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Jets strike U.S.-backed forces in eastern Syria – SDF

FILE PHOTO: Members of Deir al-Zor military council which fights under the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) stand together in Deir al-Zor province, Syria August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – U.S.-backed militias said they came under attack on Saturday from Russian jets and Syrian government forces in Deir al-Zor province, a flashpoint in an increasingly complex battlefield.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting with the U.S.-led military coalition, said the strikes wounded six of its fighters.

Washington and Moscow are backing separate offensives in the Syrian conflict – with both sides advancing against Islamic State militants in the eastern region that borders Iraq.

“Our forces east of the Euphrates were hit with an attack from the Russian aircraft and Syrian regime forces, targeting our units in the industrial zone,” the SDF said in a statement.

The SDF accused Damascus of trying to obstruct its battle against Islamic State. Such attacks “waste energies that should be used against terrorism … and open the door to side conflicts,” it said.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government or Moscow.

The assaults by the Russian-backed Syrian army and the U.S.-backed SDF have at times raised fears of clashes that could stoke tensions between the competing world powers.

The offensives have converged on Islamic State from opposite sides of the Euphrates river, which bisects oil-rich Deir al-Zor, Islamic State’s last major foothold in Syria.

Syrian troops with Iran-backed militias have closed in from the west since last week, while the SDF advances from the east.

Russian and U.S. battles against Islamic State in Syria have mostly stayed out of each other’s way, with the Euphrates often acting as a dividing line. Talks have been under way to extend a formal demarcation line, officials have said.

In June, the SDF accused the Syrian army of bombing its positions in Raqqa province and the United States shot down a Syrian government warplane.

ACROSS THE RIVER

Ahmed Abu Khawla, the commander of the SDF’s Deir al-Zor military council, said Russian or Syrian fighter jets flew in from government-held territory before dawn.

The warplanes struck as the SDF waged “heated and bloody battles” in the industrial zone on the eastern bank, seizing factories from Islamic State militants, he said.

“We have requested explanations from the Russian government,” he told Reuters. “We have asked for explanations from the coalition … and necessary action to stop these jets.

The strikes came a day after Khawla said his fighters would not let Syrian government forces cross the Euphrates.

On Friday, he warned the army and its allies against firing at SDF positions across the river – which he said they had done in recent days. The Russian foreign ministry said units of the Syrian army had already crossed.

A senior aide to President Bashar al-Assad said the government would fight any force, including the U.S.-backed militias, to recapture the entire country.

“I’m not saying this will happen tomorrow … but this is the strategic intent,” Bouthaina Shaaban said in a TV interview.

The U.S.-led coalition said last week that the SDF did not plan to enter Deir al-Zor city, where Syrian troops recently broke an Islamic State siege that had lasted three years.

A pro-Damascus military alliance launched attacks on Saturday from the southern corner of Deir al-Zor province to drive Islamic State from the Iraqi border.

Islamic State is also coming under attack by U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces just over the border from Syria’s Deir al-Zor inside Iraq.

Islamic State’s declaration in 2014 of a “caliphate” spanning both countries effectively collapsed in July, when an Iraqi offensive captured Mosul, the militants’ capital in Iraq.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Robin Pomeroy)

Israel hits Syrian site said to be linked to chemical weapons

By Sarah Dadouch and Jeffrey Heller

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel attacked a military site in Syria’s Hama province early on Thursday, the Syrian army said, and a war monitoring group said the target could be linked to chemical weapons production.

The air strike killed two soldiers and caused damage near the town of Masyaf, an army statement said. It warned of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said the attack was on a facility of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, an agency which the United States describes as Syria’s chemical weapons manufacturer.

It came the morning after U.N. investigators said the Syrian government was responsible for a sarin poison gas attack in April.

Syria’s government denies using chemical arms. In 2013 it promised to surrender its chemical weapons, which it says it has done.

The Observatory said strikes also hit a military camp next to the center that was used to store ground-to-ground rockets and where personnel of Iran and its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah group, had been seen more than once.

An Israeli army spokeswoman declined to discuss reports of a strike in Syria.

Syria’s foreign ministry has sent letters to the U.N. Security Council protesting at Israel’s “aggression” and saying anyone who attacked Syrian military sites was supporting terrorism, Syrian state TV reported.

In an interview in Israel’s Haaretz daily last month on his retirement, former Israeli air force chief Amir Eshel said Israel had hit arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Hezbollah allies nearly 100 times in the past five years.

Israel sees red lines in the shipment to Hezbollah of anti-aircraft missiles, precision ground-to-ground missiles and chemical weapons.

ISRAELI SIGNAL?

The reported attack took place on the 10th anniversary of Israel’s destruction of a nuclear reactor in Syria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19, and is widely expected to voice Israel’s concern over what it sees as attempts by Iran to broaden its military foothold in Syria and threats posed by Hezbollah

Israeli officials have said that Russia, another Assad ally, and Israel maintain regular contacts to coordinate military action in Syria.

Some Israeli commentators saw the latest strike – a departure from the previous pattern of attacks on weapons convoys – as a show of Israeli dissatisfaction with the United States and Russia.

Last month, Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin, but came away without any public statement from Moscow that it would curb Iranian influence.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a brief war in 2006 in which more than 1,300 people died. Both have suggested that any new conflict between them could be on a larger scale than that one.

Hezbollah has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most important allies in the war and last month its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said he had recently traveled to Damascus to meet the Syrian president.

Israel is conducting military exercises in the north of the country near the border with Lebanon.

Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser, told reporters he assumed Thursday’s strike was linked to Nasrallah’s visit to Damascus.

“Weapons systems have been transferred from this organization (the Scientific Studies and Research Centre) into the hands of Hezbollah during the years,” he said.

HEZBOLLAH

In May, an official in the military alliance backing Assad said that Hezbollah drew a distinction between Israel striking its positions in Syria and at home in Lebanon. “If Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, definitely it will respond,” the official said.

The Syrian army statement said the Israeli strike came at 2.42 a.m. (2342 GMT) from inside Lebanese airspace. It said it had been launched in support of Islamic State.

Jets flying over Lebanon overnight broke the sound barrier and Lebanese media reported that Israeli warplanes had breached Lebanese airspace.

The Observatory reported that seven people were killed or wounded in the strike.

“The factory that was targeted in Masyaf produces the chemical weapons and barrel bombs that have killed thousands of Syrian civilians,” Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, said in a tweet.

The strike sent a message that Israel would not let Syria produce strategic weapons, would enforce its own red lines, and would not be hampered by Russian air defense systems in Syria, he added.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Wednesday a government jet dropped sarin on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province in April, killing more than 80 civilians, and that government forces were behind at least 27 chemical attacks.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut and Jeffrey Heller, Ori Lewis, Dan Williams and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; writing by Angus McDowall; editing by Angus MacSwan and Andrew Roche)

Heavy civilian casualties in Raqqa from air strikes: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises after an air strike during fighting between members of the Syrian Democratic Forces and Islamic State militants in Raqqa, Syria, August 20, 2017. REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

GENEVA (Reuters) – Civilians caught up in the battle for the Syrian city of Raqqa are paying an “unacceptable price” and attacking forces may be contravening international law with their intense air strikes, the top United Nations human rights official said on Thursday.

A U.S.-led coalition is seeking to oust Islamic State from Raqqa, while Syrian government forces, backed by the Russian air force and Iran-backed militias are also advancing on the city.

Some 20,000 civilians are trapped in Raqqa where the jihadist fighters are holding some of them as human shields, the world body says.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said that his office had documented 151 civilian deaths in six incidents alone in August, due to air strikes and ground-based attacks.

“Given the extremely high number of reports of civilian casualties this month and the intensity of the air strikes on Raqqa, coupled with ISIL’s use of civilians as human shields, I am deeply concerned that civilians – who should be protected at all times – are paying an unacceptable price and that forces involved in battling ISIL are losing sight of the ultimate goal of this battle,” Zeid said in a statement.

“…the attacking forces may be failing to abide by the international humanitarian law principles of precautions, distinction, and proportionality,” he said.

The U.S.-led coalition has said it conducted nearly 1,100 air strikes on and near Raqqa this month, up from 645 in July, the U.N. statement said. Russia’s air force has reported carrying out 2,518 air strikes across Syria in the first three weeks of August, it added.

“Meanwhile ISIL fighters continue to prevent civilians from fleeing the area, although some manage to leave after paying large amounts of money to smugglers,” Zeid said. We have reports of smugglers also being publicly executed by ISIL.”

U.S.-led warplanes on Wednesday blocked a convoy of Islamic State fighters and their families from reaching territory the group holds in eastern Syria and struck some of their comrades traveling to meet them, a coalition spokesman said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; writing by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Pritha Sarkar)

U.S. fighter pilots in Afghanistan prepare for more air strikes

A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft takes off for a nighttime mission at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, August 22, 2017. REUTERS/Josh Smith

By Josh Smith

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – For the fighter pilots at the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan, President Donald Trump’s new strategy for the war should mean escalating an already surging air campaign, and possibly including an unrestrained offensive against the Taliban.

The number of U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan has already dramatically spiked since Trump took office in January, from 1,074 in all of last year to 2,244 as of August 20 this year.

After a months-long review of his Afghanistan policy, Trump committed the United States last week to an open-ended conflict in the country and promised a stepped-up campaign against the Taliban insurgents.

Few details have emerged, but the pilots in Bagram are preparing for the possibility they’ll be taking the fight to the Taliban in a way they haven’t since the U.S.-led “combat mission” in Afghanistan was called off at the end of 2014.

Among their targets since then have been Islamic State militants, who are also active in the country.

“Between the two groups, the Taliban are definitely smarter,” F-16 pilot Maj. Daniel Lindsey told Reuters. “The Taliban are much harder to kill.”

While Islamic State has launched a series of deadly attacks around the country, it has nowhere near the influence, reach, and community ties that the Taliban has.

It’s those factors that pilots say make the Taliban a more challenging target, and one that has outlasted years of heavy bombardment.

“The Taliban is often embedded in the community, but nobody likes the Islamic State, so they are often separate,” Lindsey said.

NEW PARAMETERS

In many ways, Trump’s policy is less a new plan than the continuation of a slow slide back into combat for American troops, although officials are quick to say their mission will remain focused on training and advising Afghan forces.

On Thursday, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, confirmed that his forces would increase air support for Afghan troops.

“We know the enemy fears air power,” he told reporters in Kabul.

White House officials have said that rolling back territorial gains by the Taliban will be one of the key objectives of the new strategy.

For a time after former president Barack Obama declared America’s combat mission over in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, U.S. forces were restricted from attacking the Taliban in most circumstances except self-defense.

As the group expanded its hold in Afghanistan, however, Obama began to loosen some of those rules and Trump has gone further in sending U.S. troops back into battle with their old adversaries.

Asked about the recent effects of U.S. air strikes, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the group’s fighters had become used to dodging American bombs.

“In 2010, 2011 and 2012 the U.S. air strikes were successful and we lost many Mujahideen,” he told Reuters. “But now we have enough experience to avoid casualties during their strikes by hiding in mountain holes and other places.”

Still, forcing the Taliban to hide and preventing them from massing fighters has in some cases been credited with helping Afghan security forces hold on to some cities and blunt Taliban offensives.

EXPANDING STRIKES

Trump also announced that he would “lift restrictions and expand authorities in the field,” but it remains unclear exactly what that would entail.

A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, Capt. William Salvin, said U.S. forces are still limited to conducting air strikes in three broad circumstances: self-defense, counter-terrorism strikes against specific groups, and helping Afghan troops achieve “strategic effects.”

He declined to say whether those parameters might change.

The U.S. military does not publicize its rules of engagement, but Lindsey said compared to when he was a fighter pilot at the height of the troop surge in Iraq in 2007, the so-called “ROE” in Afghanistan were less restrictive.

“Some guys can complain about it, but most I know don’t seem to have any problem finding Islamic State or Taliban to kill,” he said. “If you use the rules smartly, you’ll get the bad guys.”

The surge in air strikes has led the U.S. Air Force units at Bagram to increase their maintenance and intelligence efforts, said F-16 pilot Maj. Abraham Lehman.

Officials say ramping up the number of strikes further would require the deployment of more support staff as well as additional specialized troops on the ground to coordinate the strikes.

While he said he had no information on new plans to deploy additional aircraft, Lehman said it “made sense” to increase air support as the Pentagon sends thousands more troops to the country.

“What we do is always a joint effort between us and the ground troops,” Lehman said.

(Additional reporting by Mirwais Harooni in Kabul, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Yemen air strike kills 12, including six children, witnesses say

People carry the body of a woman they recovered from under the rubble of a house destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa, Yemen August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

DUBAI (Reuters) – An air raid struck a building in Yemen’s capital on Friday, killing 12 people, six of them children, when an adjacent apartment block collapsed, residents said.

Residents and rescuers dug frantically through debris after the attack on the Faj Attan area of Sanaa, retrieving the bloodied, dust-covered bodies of several children, some of whom appeared to be less than 10 years old.

Chunks of masonry lay strewn beside gaping fissures in walls that revealed the apartments’ shattered interiors.

People at the scene told Reuters the warplanes were from a Saudi-led Arab coalition, which has been fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in a war that has lasted more than two years and killed at least 10,000 people.

“The air force of the countries of the American-Saudi aggression carried out a hideous massacre against the citizens in Faj Attan,” an official Houthi movement website said.

Residents said the strike did not target the apartment house where people were killed, but instead hit a vacant building next to it. The apartment house contained eight flats and appeared to have wooden ceilings, a witness said.

The buildings are in the vicinity of a military base housing missiles that has been a frequent target of air raids since the war began in 2015.

The Houthis and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control much of the north of the country, including Sanaa. Yemen’s internationally recognized government is backed by the Saudi-led military alliance and is based in the south.

The United States and Britain provide arms and logistical assistance to the alliance for its campaign. The issue has caused controversy in Britain over the toll on civilians.

In addition to striking military targets, air strikes have hit hospitals, infrastructure and port facilities, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations human rights office called on Friday for an independent investigation into air strikes by the coalition on a hotel near Sanaa on Wednesday. Those attacks killed more than 30 people.

The hotel was a guest house usually used by farm workers, said William Spindler, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. Among those killed were five people displaced from elsewhere in Yemen, he said.

The coalition said that its review of Wednesday’s attack showed that those killed at the hotel were Houthi fighters, not civilians.

Some two million people have been displaced by the war, according to the UN.

“We remind all parties to the conflict, including the Coalition, of their duty to ensure full respect for international humanitarian law,” U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell said.

In the week to Thursday Aug. 24, 58 civilians were killed in Yemen, “including 42 by the Saudi-led coalition,” with the rest attributed to unknown armed men and to the Popular Committees affiliated with the Houthi rebels, she said.

There was no immediate word from the coalition on Friday’s raid.

(Reporting by Reuters, additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva,; Writing by Reem Shamseddine and William Maclean; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Larry King)

Fighting, air strikes in ceasefire area east of Damascus: war monitor

FILE PHOTO: People are seen amid debris at a damaged site in Arbin, a town in Damascus countryside, Syria. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Fighting broke out east of Damascus between rebel and government forces on Wednesday for the first time since both sides declared a ceasefire at the weekend, a war monitor said, with air strikes also hitting the besieged, rebel-controlled enclave. civilian

Air strikes on three towns in East Ghouta killed a child and wounded 11 other civilians, taking the toll of wounded and dead to about 55 civilians in the last 48 hours, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The toll is expected to rise.

On Tuesday, the Britain-based monitor reported the first casualties since the Russian-backed truce began on Saturday.

Russia dismissed reports of air strikes on Tuesday as a “an absolute lie” meant to discredit its work in the de-escalation zone.

Wednesday’s clashes happened around Ain Terma on the western edge of Eastern Ghouta.

Eastern Ghouta, the only major rebel-held area near the capital, has been blockaded by Syrian government forces since 2013. It has shrunk considerably in size over the past year as the Russia-backed Syrian army has taken control of other rebel-held areas around Damascus.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Nigerian refugee camp hit by air strike was not marked on maps: military

People walk at the site after a bombing attack of an internally displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria January 17, 2017. MSF/Handout via Reuters

ABUJA (Reuters) – Nigeria’s air force accidentally attacked a refugee camp in January because the site was not marked in its maps, the military said on Friday.

Up to 170 people died in the strike in the northeastern town of Rann, aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said at the time.

An investigation found that the air force saw people massing in the area on satellite footage, assumed they were Boko Haram Islamist militants and launched the assault, the military said in a statement.

Rann is in Nigeria’s Borno state, the heart of an eight-year-old insurgency by Boko Haram fighters who have killed thousands in their bid to carve out an Islamist caliphate.

“The main reason that caused the unfortunate air strike near the IDP (internally displaced person) camp at Rann, was lack of appropriate marking of the area,” the military statement said.

“Hitherto, people were not expected to amass at that location. Furthermore, the location was not reflected in the operational map as a humanitarian base.”

All humanitarian sites should be marked on military maps in future, the investigators said.

(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Syrian Observatory says 30 killed in east Syria air strike

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an air strike early on Wednesday killed at least 30 civilians and injured dozens more in a village held by Islamic State in eastern Syria.

The strike, in al-Dablan, about 20 km (13 miles) southeast of al-Mayadeen on the west bank of the Euphrates, is the second in 48 hours that the Observatory says has killed dozens of people.

The identity of the jets that carried out the air strike was not known, the Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said.

Both a U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, and the Syrian military backed by Russia, have targeted the jihadist group in cities and towns along the Euphrates valley.

On Monday a coalition airstrike in al-Mayadeen hit a building used by Islamic State as a prison, killing 57 people, the Observatory said on Tuesday.

The coalition did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether its jets carried out Wednesday’s strike in al-Dablan. On Tuesday it said it had hit targets in al-Mayadeen the previous day in a mission “meticulously planned” to avoid harming civilians.

It says it takes great pains to avoid harming or killing civilians and investigates all reports that it has done so. The Syrian government and Russia also deny targeting civilians.

The coalition is supporting an offensive by Kurdish and Arab militias against Islamic State’s besieged Syrian capital of Raqqa, 200 km (150 miles) northwest of al-Dablan up the Euphrates.

Syria’s army and its allies are pushing through the desert to relieve their own besieged Euphrates enclave in Deir al-Zor, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of al-Dablan. U.S. intelligence officials have said Islamic State has relocated its leadership to al-Mayadeen.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

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