Tag Archives: Death

Sri Lanka’s torrential rains drive more than 130,000 from homes

People walk through a flooded road after they moved out from their houses in Biyagama

COLOMBO (Reuters) – Flash floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, triggered by more than three days of heavy rain, have forced more than 130,000 people from their homes and killed at least 11, disaster officials said on Tuesday.

Troops have launched rescue operations in inundated areas of the Indian Ocean island, with boats and helicopters pulling more than 200 people trapped in the northwestern coastal district of Puttalam to safety, officials said.

“This is the worst torrential rain we have seen since 2010,” said Pradeep Kodippili, a spokesman for the disaster management center. Nineteen of Sri Lanka’s 25 districts have been hit.

Heavy rains have also struck the neighboring Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. More than 100 houses were damaged in coastal Kerala and about 50 families had been shifted to a relief camp in the state capital, Thiruvananthapuram, a state official said.

The weather department has forecast heavy rains across Tamil Nadu over the next two days and warned fishermen not to go out to sea.

Flooded roads and fallen trees led to traffic jams in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Trains were halted as water submerged railway tracks, officials said.

Flooding and drought are cyclical in Sri Lanka, which is battered by a southern monsoon between May and September, while a northeastern monsoon runs from December to February.

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Writing by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Car Bomb Baghdad’s Sadr City kills 52

People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A car bomb claimed by Islamic State in a Shi’ite Muslim district of Baghdad killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78 others on Wednesday, Iraqi police and hospital sources said, the largest attack inside the city for months.

Security has gradually improved in the Iraqi capital, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but violence directed against the security forces and Shi’ite civilians is still frequent. Large blasts sometimes set off reprisal attacks against the minority Sunni community.

The fight against Islamic State, which seized about a third of Iraq’s territory in 2014, has exacerbated a long-running sectarian conflict in Iraq mostly between Sunnis and the Shi’ite majority that emerged after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Such violence threatens to undermine U.S.-backed efforts to dislodge the militant group

Wednesday’s attack in Sadr City could also intensify pressure on Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to resolve a political crisis that has crippled the government for more than a month.

A pickup truck packed with explosives went off at rush hour near a beauty salon in a bustling market. Many of the victims were women including several brides who appeared to be getting ready for their weddings, the sources said.

The bodies of two men said to be grooms were found in an adjacent barber shop. Wigs, shoes and children’s toys were scattered on the ground outside. At least two cars were destroyed in the explosion, their parts scattered far from the blast site.

Rescue workers stepped through puddles of blood to put out fires and remove victims. Smoke was still rising from several shops hours after the explosion as a bulldozer cleared the burnt-out chassis of the vehicle used in the blast.

Islamic State said in a statement circulated online by supporters that it had targeted Shi’ite militia fighters gathered in the area.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a nearly two-year-old U.S.-led campaign have driven the group back in the western province of Anbar and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul. But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control.

The ultra-hardline Sunni jihadist group, which considers Shi’ites apostates, has claimed recent attacks across the country as well as a twin suicide bombing in Sadr City in February that killed 70 people.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Ali Abdelaty in CAIRO; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Large Tornado hits south of Oklahoma City, two dead

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – A large and violent tornado hit an area south of Oklahoma City on Monday, causing at least two deaths and reducing at least three homes to splinters, authorities said.

The hardest-hit areas were about 70 to 80 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, where a tornado reported to be more than a mile wide ripped through the area.

One person was killed in Garvin County, about 60 miles south of Oklahoma City, when a home was destroyed by a twister, an emergency official said. Another person was killed near the town of Connerville, about 110 miles south of Oklahoma City, the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office said.

The National Weather Service described that twister as large and destructive, warning people: “You are in a life-threatening situation.”

At least one other tornado was reported to have hit Oklahoma, the service said. Local news showed photographs of two of the destroyed homes by the twisters.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for large parts of southern Oklahoma into western Arkansas. It also said two tornados have been reported in Nebraska.

(Reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City, Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Sandra Maler)

China landslide death toll climbs to 34

Paramilitary policemen search for missing people at the site of a landslide in Sanming

BEIJING (Reuters) – The death toll in a landslide in China’s southeastern Fujian province has risen to 34, with four people still missing, state media said on Monday.

The landslide, triggered on Sunday by heavy rain, hit a hydroelectric power station that was under construction in Fujian’s Taining County. President Xi Jinping had demanded that local officials step up rescue efforts.

Persistent rain has made rescue work more difficult, Xinhua said. It earlier said 22 bodies had been found.

In December, a landslide in the southern city of Shenzhen buried 77 people. The government has blamed breaches of construction safety rules for that disaster and a number of officials have been arrested.

Sunday’s landslide is the latest accident to have raised questions about China’s industrial safety standards and lack of oversight over years of rapid economic growth.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Alison Williams)

‘No Boots on the Ground’ has its limits as U.S. Navy Seal killed in Iraq

U.S. Navy Warfare Operator 1st Class Charles Keating IV, 31, of San Diego. U.S. Navy via Reuters

By Isabel Coles

TEL ASQOF, Iraq (Reuters) – A pickup truck races toward a burning village in northern Iraq, slamming to a halt behind an armored convoy that forms the only barrier between U.S. forces and Islamic State.

“We are fighting alongside our American brothers,” says the Kurdish fighter filming the scene, shouting to be heard over the sound of gunfire and explosions on the outskirts of Tel Asqof.

The clip, purportedly filmed on Tuesday during a fierce battle in which a U.S. Navy SEAL was killed, records the United States’ deepening involvement in the nearly two-year-old war against the jihadist militants.

Loath to become mired in another conflict overseas, the White House has insisted there will be no American “boots on the ground” in Iraq, instead deploying hundreds of troops to “advise and assist” local forces.

But footage of the firefight shown to Reuters by the Kurdish forces who filmed it, along with the accounts of others who took part, show how easily that distinction can blur.

The exact circumstances of Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating’s death remain unclear. Kurdish officials say he was hit by a sniper and evacuated by helicopter within the hour, but died of his wounds.

He is the third U.S. serviceman killed in direct combat with Islamic State since a U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to “degrade and destroy” the insurgent group.

U.S. forces then withdrew, according to Kurdish fighters involved in the battle, leaving an armored Toyota Landcruiser by the side of the road, its tyros flat.

SIGNS OF BATTLE

The armor was not penetrated, but the outer shell of the vehicle bears the marks of an intense firefight: a hole punched through the door by a rocket-propelled grenade and shattered glass where bullets hit the windshield.

Spent casings were still strewn around the car on Wednesday when Reuters visited the village, 28 km (17 miles) north of Mosul. In the nearby grass lay an empty packet of bandages “for treatment of moderate hemhorrage”.

A U.S. military spokesman said Keating was part of a “quick reaction force” called in after American advisers got caught up in the firefight.

Kurdish fighters said a small team of five or six U.S. advisers had been stationed in Tel Asqof, often visiting the front line around 3.5 km (2.2 miles) away and assisting with reconnaissance and air strike coordination.

“It is the first time they fight with us on the ground,” said Wahid Kovali, the head of the force that battled alongside the Americans. “They were heroic.”

It was Islamic State’s largest attack in months against Kurdish peshmerga forces, who are considered the coalition’s most trusted and effective ally in Iraq and have cleared large areas in the north with the help of air strikes.

Close coordination with the coalition means Islamic State is rarely able to breach peshmerga defenses, which stretch several hundred kilometers in an arc around the north and east of Mosul – by far the largest city in the militants’ self-proclaimed caliphate.

Early on Tuesday, however, the militants advanced from the village of Batnaya and blasted through the peshmerga positions, bringing a portable metal bridge to cross a defensive trench.

PICKUPS AND HUMVEES

From there they traversed open fields to Tel Asqof in a convoy including pickup trucks mounted with anti-aircraft guns, a bulldozer reinforced with metal plates and at least two Humvees, the charred remains of which could be seen inside the village.

“Daesh (Islamic State) came from here,” said a fighter named Adel, pointing down a street where flies converged on the splayed corpses of three militants.

Spreading out through Tel Asqof, the insurgents took up positions in houses, firing at the Americans on the outskirts of the village.

Craters in the asphalt mark where suicide bombers, some driving cars, blew themselves up as Kurdish forces closed in, eventually routing the militants.

Kurdish forces went house-to-house on Wednesday looking for any hold-outs and recovering their weapons and ammunition.

Back at a base, they laid out their haul, including machine guns, two explosive belts, four rocket-propelled grenades and several Kalashnikovs. There was also a small rucksack containing an unused roll of bandage and some dried figs.

One Kurdish fighter wore a digital watch taken from the wrist of a dead militant. “It’s a souvenir,” he said.

Saad, a peshmerga lieutenant who was wounded in the foot and still had a drip in the back of his hand, showed off an automatic rifle on which the previous owner had inscribed the name “Abu Khattab”. Stamped on the metal near the trigger was “Property of the U.S. government”.

At a press briefing on April 25, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the administration’s promises that there would be “no boots on the ground” in Iraq did not mean U.S. soldiers would never be involved in combat, only that there would be no “large-scale conventional ground combat operations”.

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

U.S. says it, allies to do more to combat Islamic State

A F/A-18E/F Super Hornets of Strike Fighter Attack Squadron 211 (VFA-211) lands on the flight deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) aircraft carrier

By Phil Stewart

STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Wednesday that Washington and its allies had agreed to do more in their campaign to defeat Islamic State, but that more risks lay ahead.

He made the comment following talks in Germany with defense ministers and representatives from 11 other nations participating in the alliance.

He said the United States greatly regretted the death of a Navy SEAL in an attack by the jihadist group in northern Iraq on Tuesday. He named the man as Petty Officer First Class Charles Keating.

“These risks will continue… but allowing ISIL safe haven would carry greater risk for us all,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“…We also agreed that all of our friends and allies across the counter-ISIL coalition can and must do more as well, both to confront ISIL in Iraq and Syria and its metastases elsewhere.”

The talks included ministers from France, Britain and Germany and were planned well in advance of Tuesday’s attack, in which Islamic State fighters blasted through Kurdish defenses and overran a town.

The elite serviceman was the third American to be killed in direct combat since the U.S.-led coalition launched a campaign in 2014 to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State, and is a measure of its deepening involvement in the conflict.

Offering new details about Keating’s mission, Carter said the SEAL’s job was to operate with Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces to train and assist them north of the city of Mosul.

“That part of the peshmerga front came under attack… and they found themselves in a firefight,” Carter said.

In mid-April the United States announced plans to send an additional 200 troops to Iraq and put them closer to the front lines of battle to advise Iraqi forces.

In late April, President Barack Obama announced he would send an additional 250 special operations forces to Syria, greatly expanding the U.S. presence on the ground there to help draw in more Syrian fighters to combat Islamic State.

Carter said the risks extended to pilots flying a U.S.-led campaign of daily air strikes. “Every time a pilot goes up in an airplane above Syria or Iraq they’re at risk,” he said.

The Islamist militants have been broadly retreating since December, when the Iraqi army recaptured Ramadi, the largest city in the western region. Last month, the Iraqi army retook the nearby region of Hit, pushing the militants further north along the Euphrates valley.

But U.S. officials acknowledge that the military gains are not enough.

Iraq is beset by political infighting, corruption, a growing fiscal crisis and the Shi’ite Muslim-led government’s fitful efforts to seek reconciliation with aggrieved minority Sunnis, the bedrock of Islamic State support.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; editing by Ralph Boulton and John Stonestreet)

Rebels bombard Aleppo killing 19 and hitting a hospital

A Syrian army soldier helps to evacuate civilians after rockets fired by insurgents hit the al-Dabit maternity clinic in government-held parts of Aleppo city

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rebels bombarded government-held areas of Aleppo with rockets on Tuesday, killing 19 people and hitting a hospital, while also launching a ground assault on army-held positions of the divided city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Syrian army said insurgents had launched a widespread assault and that it was responding. State-run Syrian news channel Ikhbariya said three women were killed and 17 more people wounded at the al-Dabit maternity clinic.

The army statement said the attack was at “a time when international and local efforts are being made to shore up the (cessation of hostilities agreement) and to implement … calm in Aleppo”.

The Observatory said the hospital had been heavily damaged.

In rebel-held parts of Aleppo, the Observatory said there had been three air strikes, citing information of an unconfirmed number of people killed.

The Observatory said 279 civilians have been killed in Aleppo by bombardments since April 22, with 155 of them killed in opposition-held areas, and 124 killed in government-held districts.

The ground assault focused on the Jamiat al-Zahraa area of the city, where insurgent groups detonated tunnels and took a few buildings before advances were checked by the arrival of reinforcements on the government side, the Observatory said.

A Syrian army source said a car bomb was used in an attack nearby, adding that the assault had failed. The source added that “matters had been moving toward Aleppo being included in the truce, but it seems there are those who do not want that”.

Asked if it reduced the chances of a truce in Aleppo, the source said: “Certainly, because practically the one carrying out these actions does not want a truce”.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry, editing by Richard Balmforth)

113 die in four shipwrecks between Libya and Italy

Surviving immigrants lie on the deck of the Italian coastguard ship Bruno Gregoretti in Senglea, in Valletta's Grand Harbour

GENEVA (Reuters) – An estimated 113 people died in four shipwrecks between Libya and Italy at the weekend as the crossing becomes the preferred sea route for migrants to Europe, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.

With the closing of land routes in the Balkans and a recent deal under which Greece sends migrants back to Turkey, Italian officials have said they expect more people to try to make this longer and much more dangerous crossing from Libya.

In one of four incidents, an Italian merchant ship rescued 26 people off the coast of Libya in rough seas and others were feared missing, Italy’s Coast Guard said on Saturday.

IOM, citing survivor testimony, said 84 people appeared to be missing from that wreck, while at least 29 drowned in two other attempted crossings in rubber dinghies of the Channel of Sicily. It was still investigating a fourth incident.

“Just since Friday we know of 4 shipwrecks and 113 people killed, just off Libya,” IOM spokesman Joel Millman said.

“It is becoming the preferred route. So therefore we are very mindful of what could be coming in the next few months,” Millman told a news briefing.

Migrants from West Africa, especially Nigerians, and the Horn of Africa dominate the Libya-Italy route, which Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis are not taking for now, Millman added.

In all, 1,357 migrants and refugees perished at sea during the first four months of the year, mostly along the Central Mediterranean route, against 1,733 during the period in 2015, the agency said.

Since January, 28,593 migrants and refugees have arrived by sea in Italy, while 154,862 have landed in Greece, the IOM said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Bombs in Baghdad kill 14, including some Shi’ite pilgrims

Car bomb attack in Baghdad May 2, 2016

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Three bombs went off in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people, including Shi’ite Muslim worshippers conducting an annual pilgrimage inside the capital, police and medical sources said.

The largest blast, which Islamic State said it was behind, came from a parked car bomb in the Saydiya district of southern Baghdad that killed 11 and wounded 30, the sources said.

At least a few of the casualties were pilgrims passing through the area on their way to the shrine of Imam Moussa al-Kadhim, a great-grandson of Prophet Mohammad who died in the 8th century.

Explosives planted on the ground in Tarmiya, 25 km (15 miles) north of Baghdad, killed two and wounded six, while a roadside bomb in Khalisa, a town 30 km (20 miles) south of the city, left one dead and two wounded. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the smaller attacks.

Islamic State militants fighting Iraqi forces in the north and west regularly target security personnel and Shi’ite civilians whom they consider apostates.

The group said in an online statement distributed by supporters that a suicide bomber had targeted pilgrims in the Dora neighborhood adjacent to Saydiya. It said the attack was part of an offensive launched recently in apparent revenge for the killing of a senior leader.

Islamic State’s al Qaeda predecessor was blamed in the past for such attacks on Shi’ite pilgrims, including blasts in 2012 that left 70 people dead nationwide.

Security has gradually improved in Baghdad, which was the target of daily bombings a decade ago, but there has been a string of blasts in recent days, including a suicide attack on Saturday that killed at least 19 people.

Monday’s blasts come as Iraq struggles to emerge from a political crisis over reforming its governing system which saw protesters hold an unprecedented sit-in over the weekend in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Former Auschwitz guard apologizes at trial; says it was ‘nightmare’

Defendant Hanning, a 94-year-old former guard at Auschwitz death camp, arrives for the continuation of his trial in Detmold

By Elke Ahlswede

DETMOLD, Germany (Reuters) – A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard on trial in Germany apologized in court to victims on Friday, telling them he regretted being part of a “criminal organization” that had killed so many people and caused such suffering.

“I’m ashamed that I knowingly let injustice happen and did nothing to oppose it”, said Reinhold Hanning, a former Nazi SS officer, seated in a wheelchair in the court in Detmold.

Hanning is charged with being an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people.

Holocaust survivors, who detailed their horrific experiences at the trial which opened in February, have pleaded with the accused to break his silence in what could be one of the last Holocaust court cases in Germany.

Hanning finally broke the silence he kept over the course of 12 hearings, each limited to two hours due to his old age.

Reading in a firm voice from a paper he took out of his gray suit pocket, he said: “I want to tell you that I deeply regret having been part of a criminal organization that is responsible for the death of many innocent people, for the destruction of countless families, for misery, torment and suffering on the side of the victims and their relatives”.

“I have remained silent for a long time, I have remained silent all of my life,” he added.

Just before, his lawyer, Johannes Salmen, had given a detailed account of the defendant’s view of his life and particularly his time in Auschwitz.

In this 22-page long declaration, Hanning admitted having known about mass murder in the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

“I’ve tried to repress this period for my whole life. Auschwitz was a nightmare, I wish I had never been there,” the lawyer cited Hanning as saying.

The accused was sent there after being wounded in battle and his request to rejoin his comrades on the front had been rejected twice, he said.

“I accept his apology but I can’t forgive him,” said Leon Schwarzbaum, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor and co-plaintiff.

She said Hanning should have recounted everything that happened in Auschwitz and “what he took part in”.

Although Hanning is not charged with having been directly involved in any killings at the camp, prosecutors accuse him of facilitating the slaughter in his capacity as a guard at the camp where 1.2 million people, most of them Jews, were killed.

A precedent for such charges was set in 2011, when death camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk was convicted.

Accused by the prosecutor’s office in Dortmund as well as by 40 joint plaintiffs from Hungary, Israel, Canada, Britain, the United States and Germany, Hanning is said to have joined the SS forces voluntarily at the age of 18 in 1940.

Hanning on Friday said however that his stepmother, a member of the Nazi-party, urged him to join.

A verdict is expected on May 27.

Germany is holding what are likely to be its last trials linked to the Holocaust, in which more than six million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis.

In addition to Hanning, one other man and one woman in their 90s are accused of being accessories to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people at Auschwitz.

A third man who was a member of the Nazi SS guard team at Auschwitz died at the age of 93 this month, days before his trial was due to start.

(Writing by Elke Ahlswede and Joseph Nasr; Editing by Angus MacSwan)