Tag Archives: Death

One student killed, three wounded in University of Texas stabbings

FILE PHOTO: A student walks at the University of Texas campus in Austin, Texas, U.S., on June 23, 2016. REUTERS/Jon Herskovitz/File Photo

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A man enrolled at the University of Texas went on a stabbing spree with a large hunting knife at the school’s Austin campus on Monday, killing one student and wounding three others also believed to be students, police said.

The suspect, identified as Kendrex White, was apprehended about two minutes after campus police received reports of the attack on the school’s main grounds. White was being questioned by police and formal charges related to the attack were likely to come later.

“I don’t know what his motivation is,” University of Texas at Austin Police Chief David Carter told a news conference.

White has been booked by Austin police on a single charge that was not listed in online jail records.

All the victims were found in about a one-block area and were men aged 20 or 21, police said. Their names have not been released.

“There are no words to describe my sense of loss,” University President Greg Fenves told the news conference.

The person killed was found dead at the scene, Austin-Travis County EMS Captain Rick Rutledge said in a telephone interview.

The university canceled classes for the day.

“Our prayers go out to all those affected by today’s tragic events,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a statement.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Powerful storm front that killed 16 threatens eastern United States

Homeowners clean up debris after a tornado hit the town of Emory, Texas.

By Ian Simpson

(Reuters) – A powerful storm system bore down on the eastern United States on Monday after spawning tornadoes and torrential rains that killed at least 16 people and shut down hundreds of roads over the weekend, forecasters said.

The storm that tore through the central United States from Texas to Illinois could spawn damaging winds, hail and  tornadoes as it heads into parts of the Middle Atlantic and Northeast, the National Weather Service said.

The front, described as a “powerhouse of an upper level system,” could pack downpours of more than an inch (2.5 cm) an hour as it hammers Pennsylvania and New York state, the weather agency said.

Flooding that could be record breaking in eastern Oklahoma, northern Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois was expected to take several days to recede, it said.

 

Water overtaking a Bridge located on Table Rock lake Picture by Austin Metcalf

Water overtaking a Bridge located on Table Rock lake Picture by Austin Metcalf

High water in Missouri on Monday forced about 330 roads to close, including a stretch of Interstate 44 near Rolla, the state transportation department said on its website. More than 100 highways also were shut in neighboring Arkansas, state officials said.

In North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper urged residents to remain on their guard, especially in areas already hit by flooding. Almost 30 roads were closed from high water and washouts, his office said in a statement.

Tornadoes from the storm system killed four people on Saturday in Canton, Texas, about 60 miles (95 km) east of Dallas. The National Weather Service said Canton was hit by four tornadoes, with two packing winds of 136 miles to 165 miles (219 km to 265 km) per hour.

Five people died in Arkansas, with two still missing, said state emergency management spokeswoman Melody Daniels. She could not confirm news reports that the missing were children who were in a car swept off a bridge.

A business damaged by tornadoes is seen in Canton, Texas.

A business damaged by tornadoes is seen in Canton, Texas. REUTERS/Brandon Wade

In Mississippi, one man was killed when a tree fell on his home, and a 7-year-old boy was electrocuted when he unplugged an electric golf cart in standing water, said Greg Flynn, a spokesman for the state’s emergency agency.

Two people were killed in Tennessee in storm-related incidents, authorities said. They included a Florence, Alabama, woman struck by a falling tree on Sunday, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.

In Missouri, a 72-year-old Billings woman was swept away by high waters on Saturday, and two men ages 18 and 77 drowned in  separate incidents on Sunday, emergency management spokesman Mike O’Connell said.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Andrew Hay)

Tornadoes, storms kill 11 in U.S. South

A business damaged by tornadoes is seen in Canton, Texas

(Reuters) – Tornadoes ripped through an East Texas county on Saturday evening, killing at least four people and injuring dozens, while high winds, falling trees and floods killed five in neighboring states, according to news reports.

Three tornadoes were confirmed by the U.S. National Weather Service in Canton, a city about 60 miles (95 km) east of Dallas in Van Zandt County.

The winds flipped over cars, snapped trees, destroyed houses and left roads strewn with debris and fallen power lines, according to photographs and video published by the Dallas Morning News.

“We have at least four fatalities,” Canton Mayor Lou Ann Everett said at a news conference on Sunday, adding that number could rise. “The damage was extensive in the affected area. It is heartbreaking and upsetting.” Forty-nine people had been treated for injuries, she said.

Earlier a Canton fire department captain said he believed five people had been killed.

The mayor urged people to stay away from a sprawling flea market known as First Monday Trade Days, as crews tried to clean up debris.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a search and rescue team to the area.

The storms caused floods in neighboring states, killing a 72-year-old woman in southwestern Missouri who was washed away in her car, according to local media reports.

In Arkansas, a woman was killed when a tree fell on her mobile home in DeWitt, and a 10-year-old girl was killed after flood waters swept her away in Springdale, ABC News reported. A fire chief responding to the storm was killed on Sunday in Cleburne County, the county sheriff said

At least two other people reportedly died in storm-related incidents, while two children were missing after their mother’s car was swept from a road by floodwaters in Madison County. As many as 100,000 homes and businesses lost power, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson declared a state of emergency on Sunday night.

In Mississippi, a person was killed after a tree fell on their house in Durant, ABC reported. The governors of Missouri and Oklahoma declared states of emergency.

In the St. Louis area, severe thunderstorms were forecast through Sunday. Some people were told to evacuate and 33 rescues were conducted, mostly in the state’s central and southwestern regions, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens said.

(Editing by Chris Michaud)

French intelligence says Assad forces carried out sarin attack

FILE PHOTO: A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, 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/File Photo

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – French intelligence has concluded that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a sarin nerve gas attack on April 4 in northern Syria and that Assad or members of his inner circle ordered the strike, a declassified report showed.

The chemical weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of people, according to a war monitor, Syrian opposition groups and Western countries. It prompted the United States to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base, its first deliberate assault on the Assad government in the six-year-old conflict.

Assad has said in two media interviews since April 4 that the evidence of a poison gas attack was false and denied his government had ever used chemical weapons.

The six-page French document, seen by Reuters and drawn up by France’s military and foreign intelligence services – said it reached its conclusion based on samples they had obtained from the impact strike on the ground and a blood sample from a victim.

“We know, from a certain source, that the process of fabrication of the samples taken is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories,” Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters after presenting the findings to the cabinet.

“This method is the signature of the regime and it is what enables us to establish the responsibility of the attack. We know because we kept samples from previous attacks that we were able to use for comparison.”

Among the elements found in the samples were hexamine, a hallmark of sarin produced by the Syrian government, according to the report.

It said the findings matched the results of samples obtained by French intelligence, including an unexploded grenade, from an attack in Saraqib on April 29, 2013, which Western powers have accused the Assad government of carrying out.

“This production process is developed by Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) for the regime,” the report said.

The United States on Monday blacklisted 271 employees belonging to the agency.

Syria agreed in September 2013 to destroy its entire chemical weapons program under a deal negotiated with the United States and Russia after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack in the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

The report said that based on its assessments, there were “serious doubts on the accuracy, completeness and sincerity of the dismantlement of Syria’s chemical arsenal.”

SIX WARPLANE STRIKES

The report, which lists some 140 suspected chemical attacks in Syria since 2012, also said intelligence services were aware of a Syrian government Sukhoi 22 warplane that had struck six times on Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 and that samples taken from the ground were consistent with an airborne projectile that had munitions loaded with sarin.

“The French intelligence services consider that only Bashar al-Assad and some of his most influential entourage can give the order to use chemical weapons,” the report said.

It added that jihadist groups in the area in Idlib province did not have the capacity to develop and launch such an attack and that Islamic State was not in the region.

Assad’s assertion that the attack was fabricated was “not credible” given the mass flows of casualties in a short space of time arriving in Syrian and Turkish hospitals as well as the sheer quantity of social media posts and video showing people with neurotoxic symptoms, said the report.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said on April 19 that sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, but it is not mandated to assign blame.

Russia, which backs Assad in the conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, has said the gas was released by an air strike on a poison gas storage depot controlled by rebels.

“The Kremlin thinks as before that the only way to restore the truth of what happened in Idlib is impartial international investigation. We regret that OPCW restrains so far from such an investigation,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the French report.

A senior French diplomatic source said Paris had passed the report on to its partners and would continue to push for a probe.

Moscow was attempting to discredit the OPCW, the source said: “There is a propaganda effort by Russia to say that the OPCW’s work is not credible.”

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Callus, Pravin Char and Sonya Hepinstall)

Death toll in Venezuelan protests reaches nine

Mourners look at the coffin of Paola Ramirez, a student who died during a protest, in her wake in San Cristobal, Venezuela April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez

CARACAS (Reuters) – A man was killed in a protest in the Venezuelan capital on Thursday night, an official said on Friday, marking the ninth death in a wave of sometimes violent demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

Melvin Guaitan died of a bullet wound in the slum of Petare, municipal mayor Carlos Ocariz said via Twitter. Local media reported looting and street clashes with security forces in poor areas of Caracas late on Thursday and early Friday.

“We demand that those responsible for this incident are investigated and punished,” wrote Ocariz, without providing additional details.

Opposition leaders have promised to keep up their protests, demanding that Maduro’s government call regional elections that have been delayed since last year, free almost 100 jailed opposition activists and respect the autonomy of the opposition-led Congress.

They are calling for community-level protests across the country on Friday, a white-clad “silent” march in Caracas on Saturday to commemorate those killed in the unrest, and a nationwide “sit-in” blocking Venezuela’s main roads on Monday.

Maduro’s government is so far resisting the pressure of the most serious protests in three years. Ruling Socialist Party leaders describe the protesters as violent hoodlums who are damaging public property and disrupting public order to overthrow the government with the support of ideological adversaries in Washington.

“This wounded and failed opposition is trying to generate chaos in key areas of the city and convince the world that we’re in some sort of civil war, the same playbook used for Syria, for Libya and for Iraq,” said Socialist Party official Freddy Bernal in an internet broadcast at 1:00 a.m.

A Reuters witness heard gunshots and tear gas canisters being fired late into the night on Thursday in the working class Caracas neighborhood of El Valle, with numerous businesses in the morning showing signs of having been looted.

Local media reported similar situations in other parts of the city.

The OPEC nation’s economy has been in free-fall since the collapse of oil prices in 2014. The generous oil-financed welfare state created by late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, Maduro’s predecessor, has given way to a Soviet-style economy marked by consumer shortages, triple-digit inflation and snaking supermarket lines.

Public anger at the situation spilled over last month when the Supreme Court, which is seen as close to the government, briefly assumed the powers of the Congress. The protests were further fueled when the government barred the opposition’s best-known leader, two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, from holding public office.

(Reporting by Eyanir Chinea and Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Paris gunman’s criminal past in focus as police hunt second suspect

French CRS police patrol the Champs Elysees Avenue the day after a policeman was killed and two others were wounded in a shooting incident in Paris, France, April 21, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

By Emmanuel Jarry and John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – The man who shot dead a French policeman in an Islamist militant attack had served time for armed assaults on law enforcement officers, police sources said on Friday, as authorities sought a second suspect flagged by Belgian security services.

The gunman, identified as Karim Cheurfi, opened fire on a police vehicle parked on the Champs Elysees in Paris late on Thursday, killing one officer and injuring two others before being shot dead.

The attack overshadowed the last day of campaigning for Sunday’s presidential election first round, bringing raw issues surrounding Islamist militancy to the fore.

Cheurfi, a French national who lived in the eastern Paris suburb of Chelles, had been convicted for previous armed assaults on law enforcement officers going back 16 years, the sources said, and was well known to authorities.

In addition to the assault rifle used in the attack, he had a pump action shotgun and knives in his car, the sources said. Three of his family members have been placed in detention, the French interior ministry announced on Friday.

While in detention, Cheurfi had also shot and wounded a prison officer after seizing his gun. Eventually freed after serving most of his sentence, he was arrested again this year on suspicion of preparing an attack on police – but released for lack of evidence.

A French interior ministry spokesman confirmed on Friday that a manhunt was underway for a second individual, based on information from Belgian security services.

“It’s too early to say how or whether he was connected to what happened on the Champs Elysees,” ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said. “There are a certain number of leads to check. We are not ruling anything out.”

A potential second suspect was identified as Youssouf El Osri in a document seen by Reuters. Belgian security officials had warned French counterparts before the attack that El Osri was a “very dangerous individual en route to France” aboard the Thalys high-speed train.

The warning was circulated more widely among French security services in the hour following the Champs Elysees attack.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Champs Elysees shooting hours after the attack, in a statement identifying the attacker as “Abu Yousif the Belgian.”

El Osri’s connection with either Cheurfi or the man named in Islamic State’s statement remained unclear on Friday.

Coming just days after police said they had foiled another planned Islamist attack, arresting two men in the southern city of Marseille, the Champs Elysees shooting dominated the final day of election campaigning.

Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, both talked up their tough law-and-order stances while centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron stressed he was also up to the challenge.

(Additional reporting by John Irish, Gerard Bon and Yves Clarisse; Writing by Laurence Frost; Editing by Andrew Callus)

One police officer killed, two wounded in Paris shooting

Police secure the Champs Elysee Avenue after one policeman was killed and another wounded in a shooting incident in Paris, France, April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Hartmann

By Julien Pretot

PARIS (Reuters) – One policeman was killed and two others wounded in a shooting incident in central Paris on Thursday night, police and the interior ministry said.

The shooting, in which the assailant was also killed, took place on the Champs-Elysees shopping boulevard just days ahead of France’s presidential election.

A witness told Reuters that a man got out of a car at the scene and began shooting with a machine gun. A police source also said more shots had been fired at another location near the scene.

A French interior ministry spokesman said it was too early to say what the motive of the attack was, but that it was clear the police officers had been deliberately targeted.

The French prosecutors’ office said the counter-terrorism office had opened an inquiry.

Three police sources said, however, that the shooting could have been an attempt at an armed robbery.

“I came out of the Sephora shop and I was walking along the pavement where an Audi 80 was parked. A man got out and opened fire with a kalashnikov on a policeman,” witness Chelloug, a kitchen assistant, told Reuters.

“The policeman fell down. I heard six shots, I was afraid. I have a two year-old girl and I thought I was going to die… He shot straight at the police officer.”

Police authorities called on the public to avoid the area.

TV footage showed the Arc de Triomphe monument and top half of the Champs Elysees packed with police vans, lights flashing and heavily armed police shutting the area down after what was described by one journalist as a major exchange of fire near a Marks and Spencers store.

The incident came as French voters prepared go to the polls on Sunday in the most tightly-contested presidential election in living memory.

France has lived under a state of emergency since 2015 and has suffered a spate of Islamist militant attacks that have killed more than 230 people in the past two years.

Earlier this week, two men were arrested in Marseille whom police said had been planning an attack ahead of the election.

A machine gun, two hand guns and three kilos of TATP explosive were among the weapons found at a flat in the southern city along with jihadist propaganda materials according to the Paris prosecutor.

(Reporting by Richard Balmforth; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Andrew Callus)

Colombia landslide kills at least 17 as rains lash Andes

View of a neighborhood destroyed after mudslides, caused by heavy rains leading several rivers to overflow, pushing sediment and rocks into buildings and roads, in Manizales, Colombia April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Santiago Osorio

BOGOTA (Reuters) – At least 17 people were killed and seven are missing after a landslide sent mud and rocks crashing into several neighborhoods in Manizales, Colombia, the government said on Wednesday, the second deadly landslide in the country this month.

Recent heavy rains have endangered residents in dozens of provincial towns, where makeshift construction on the slopes of the Andes mountains makes neighborhoods particularly susceptible to avalanches and flooding.

The landslide in Manizales, capital of coffee-growing Caldas province west of Bogota, followed a similar disaster in Mocoa, Putumayo earlier this month that killed more than 320 people and displaced thousands from their homes.

“We are helping to find the disappeared … and unfortunately the number will rise,” President Juan Manuel Santos said of the death toll after arriving in Manizales.

At least 57 houses have been affected, the government said. Local media reported that Manizales received a month’s average rainfall just overnight.

Rescuers from the Red Cross, civil defense, firefighters and armed forces are searching for the disappeared in the mud and debris of destroyed buildings.

Running water, electricity and gas services have been suspended in the areas affected by the landslides.

“The situation in Manizales is very worrying. The toll is saddening,” Transport Minister Jorge Eduardo Rojas said after meeting with the province’s governor and the mayor of the city.

The forecast is for at least another two days of rain in the area.

Even in a country where rains, a mountainous landscape and informal construction combine to make landslides a common occurrence, the scale of the Mocoa disaster far surpassed recent tragedies, including a 2015 landslide that killed nearly 100 people.

Colombia’s deadliest landslide, the 1985 Armero disaster, killed more than 20,000.

(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Helen Murphy; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Venezuelan protests against government leave three dead

Demonstrators clash with riot police during the so-called "mother of all marches" against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela April 19, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Eyanir Chinea and Anggy Polanco

CARACAS/SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela (Reuters) – Two Venezuelan students and a National Guard sergeant died on Wednesday after being shot during protests against unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro, increasing turmoil in the volatile nation amid a devastating economic crisis.

Opposition supporters protested in Caracas and other cities in what they called “the mother of all marches,” denouncing Maduro for eroding democracy and plunging the oil-rich economy into chaos.

Crowds swelled to hundreds of thousands, including Maduro supporters who held a counter-demonstration in the capital at the urging of the president, and clashes were reported across the country during the most sustained protests since 2014.

Maduro says that beneath a peaceful facade, the protests are little more than opposition efforts to foment a coup to end socialism in Venezuela. The opposition says he has morphed into a dictator and accuses his government of using armed civilians to spread violence and fear.

The deaths mean eight people have now been killed during protests in Venezuela this month. The opposition blames the deaths on security forces and alleged paramilitary groups. Over 400 people were arrested during protests on Wednesday, rights group Penal Forum said.

The opposition called for another protest on Thursday, raising the specter of prolonged disruption in Venezuela.

“Same place, same time,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles on Wednesday night. “If we were millions today, tomorrow we’ll be more.”

Wednesday’s dueling marches drew parallels to the clashes between pro and anti-government protesters in 2002 that triggered a brief coup against late President Hugo Chavez.

Carlos Moreno, 18, a student, was leaving his home to play soccer in Caracas when armed government supporters approached a nearby opposition gathering and fired shots, according to witnesses. He was shot in the head, they said, and three security officials said he later died in a clinic after undergoing surgery.

Later on Wednesday in the opposition hotbed of San Cristobal near the Colombia border, university student Paola Ramirez died after being shot by men pursuing her and her boyfriend, according to relatives and witnesses.

“We were on a motorbike and they were following us, shooting,” her boyfriend told Reuters. “I left her on a block where she was going to find her sister and I went to hide the bike. I heard shots and when I arrived she was on the ground. I tried to protect her as much as I could,” he added, sobbing in front of her body.

The public prosecutor’s office said it was investigating both cases.

The opposition attributed both deaths to groups known as “colectivos,” armed government supporters who are frequently accused of involvement in confrontations during protests.

There are few clear ways of identifying colectivos, who call themselves community groups but whom the opposition accuses of being violent paramilitary wings of the ruling Socialist Party.

A National Guard sergeant was killed by a sniper during “violent protests” in Miranda state and a colonel was injured, the human rights ombudsman Tarek Saab tweeted on Wednesday night.

“MADURO OUT!”

Waving the country’s red, yellow and blue flags and shouting “No more dictatorship” and “Maduro out,” demonstrators clogged a stretch of the main highway in Caracas. Troops fired tear gas in Caracas neighborhoods, San Cristobal, the depressed industrial city of Puerto Ordaz, and the arid northern city of Punto Fijo.

“We have to protest because this country is dying of hunger said Alexis Mendoza, a 53-year-old administrator marching in the Caracas neighborhood of El Paraiso. “There are a lot of people in the opposition and they are full of courage.”

The march followed a fortnight of violent protests triggered by a Supreme Court decision in March to assume the powers of the opposition-led Congress – which it quickly reversed under international pressure.

The court’s move nonetheless fueled long-simmering anger over the ruling Socialist Party’s handling of the economy. The OPEC country suffers from Soviet-style shortages of food and medicines and triple-digit inflation.

The opposition is demanding early elections, the freeing of jailed politicians, humanitarian aid, and respect for the autonomy of the opposition-led legislature.

The marchers gathered at more than two dozen points around Caracas, although some were stalled by authorities closing around 20 subway stops. Protesters had hoped to converge on the office of the state ombudsman, but as in previous attempts they were blocked by the National Guard. The protests trailed off with youths throwing rocks squaring off against security forces spraying tear gas.

MADURO SAYS “ANTI-CHRISTS” DEFEATED

Maduro has charged that the opposition is trying to relive the 2002 coup against Chavez, his predecessor and mentor, by blocking roads and vandalizing public property.

On Wednesday afternoon he addressed a cheering red-shirted crowd in Caracas to declare that a “corrupt and interventionist right-wing” had been defeated.

“Today the people stood by Maduro!” the president said, blasting his rivals as “anti-Christs.” “We’ve triumphed again! Here we are, governing, governing, governing with the people!” he added, before breaking into song and dance.

Analysts say there is less likelihood of a coup against Maduro because Chavez launched a broad purge of the armed forces following his brief ouster.

Some unhappy Venezuelans also steer clear of protests, fearful of violence, cynical that marches can bring about change, or too busy looking for food amid the recession.

Venezuela benefited for years from oil-fueled consumption and many poor citizens rose into the middle class. But the 2014 collapse in oil prices left the government unable to maintain a complex system of subsidies and price controls. Snaking grocery lines are now a common sight and people routinely say they skip meals and cannot find basic medication.

Further spurring outrage was a decision by the national comptroller’s office earlier this month to disqualify opposition politician Capriles from holding office for 15 years, dashing his hopes for the presidency.

The elections council, which is sympathetic to the government, has delayed votes for state governors that were supposed to take place last year.

Demonstrators also gathered on Wednesday in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, home to Venezuela’s struggling state-run mining companies, and the oil city of Maracaibo.

“I’ve just graduated … and what I’ve got in the bank isn’t enough for a bottle of cooking oil,” said Gregorio Mendoza, a 23-year-old engineer in Puerto Ordaz. “We’re poorer every day.”

(Additional reporting by Diego Ore, Girish Gupta, Deisy Buitrago, and Andreina Aponte in Caracas, German Dam in Ciudad Guayana, Maria Ramirez in Puerto Ordaz, Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo, and Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Writing by Brian Ellsworth and Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Frances Kerry, Lisa Shumaker and Michael Perry)

For Syrian evacuees, civil war bus bombing a tragic end to a tragic deal

The interior of a damaged bus is seen after an explosion yesterday at insurgent-held al-Rashideen, Aleppo province, Syria

By John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Mothers Noha, a Shi’ite, and Samira, a Sunni, were besieged for nearly two years on each side of Syria’s civil war. At the weekend they finally escaped the suffocating blockades under an evacuation agreement – but their ordeal was not over.

As they waited at two transit points miles apart outside Aleppo, a bomb attack hit Noha’s bus convoy, killing more than 120 people including dozens of children. After ambulances rushed off the wounded, new buses arrived and the two convoys eventually reached their destinations – one in government territory and the other in rebel territory.

In the hours leading up to Saturday’s attacks, the two women spoke to Reuters about what they had left behind, their families being split up, and the likelihood they would never return home.

Reuters was not allowed back past security to try to find Noha after the blast, and lost contact with Samira after speaking to her earlier on another evacuee’s phone.

“We’ve lost everything. We hope to go back one day, but I don’t expect we will,” said Noha, 45, asking not to be identified by her last name.

Noha left al-Foua, one of two Shi’ite villages besieged by Syrian insurgents in Idlib province with her two youngest children and 5,000 other people under a deal between the Syrian government and armed opposition.

In exchange, 2,000 Sunni residents and rebel fighters from the government-besieged town of Madaya near Damascus – Samira’s hometown – were given safe passage out, and bussed to Idlib province, a rebel stronghold, via Aleppo.

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

The deals have mostly affected Sunni Muslims living in rebel-held areas surrounded by government forces and their allies. Damascus calls them reconciliation deals and says it allows services to be restored in the wrecked towns.

Rebels say it amounts to forced displacement of Assad’s opponents from Syria’s main urban centres in the west of the country, and engenders demographic change because most of the opposition, and Syria’s population, are Sunni.

But backed militarily by Russia and Shi’ite regional allies, Assad, a member of Syria’s Alawite minority, has negotiated the deals from a position of strength.

“There was little choice. We had to leave, we were scared,” said Samira, 55, who was traveling with her five adult sons.

She had feared her sons would be arrested or forced to join the Syrian military and fight once troops and officials of the Damascus government moved into the town.

Like Noha, Samira was relieved to have escaped a crushing siege which had caused widespread hunger – and in the case of Madaya, starvation – but had left everything behind, including family.

“We owned three houses, farmland and three shops in Madaya town. Now, we don’t have a single Syrian pound,” she said.

Her daughter, pregnant with a third child, had stayed in Madaya because her husband had vowed to “live and die” there, she said.

Samira has not heard from her own husband for nearly four years after he was arrested by Syrian authorities.

NOWHERE TO LIVE

With nothing left and no place to stay in Idlib other than camps, Samira said she would try to migrate, joining the 5 million Syrian refugees who have left since the war broke out in 2011. More than 6 million are internally displaced.

“I don’t want to be in Idlib, we know no one there. Also you don’t know when or where the jets might bomb,” she said, referring to the heavy bombardment by Russian and Syrian warplanes of rebel-held areas in Idlib – including a recent alleged poison gas attack.

“The plan is to try to get to Turkey, to leave Syria for good.”

Noha was also heading into the unknown.

“I don’t know where we’ll live, whether they (authorities) have anything set up. At the very least, we just want to be safe. The children jump at night from the sound of rockets. We just want security, wherever they take us,” she said.

Her adult son and daughter had stayed in al-Foua but were hoping to leave in the next stage of the evacuation deal. Noha’s husband had been killed, but she did not say how.

Both women said they would never have left their hometowns but for the strangling sieges, which caused severe food and medicine shortages, and the gradual change of control in each area.

Government forces moved into Madaya on Friday. Rebels are also due to leave nearby Zabadani as part of the deal. In al-Foua and Kefraya, hundreds of pro-government fighters were evacuated, and the agreement will pave the way for insurgents to take over.

Russia, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah have helped Assad gain the upper hand against rebels in the west of the country in the last 18 months and he now controls all of Syria’s most populous cities there, although insurgents have made gains in some areas.

But with the war that has killed hundreds of thousands far from over, those displaced in swap deals see return a long way off.

“People have built their houses and worked their whole lives setting themselves up, and now they’ve left, with nothing, zero,” Noha said.

(Additional reporting by Ammar Abdullah; Editing by Anna Willard)