The Jim Bakker Show

Islamic State captures up to 3,000 fleeing Iraqis: UNHCR

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters may have captured up to 3,000 fleeing Iraqi villagers on Thursday and subsequently executed 12 of them, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said in a daily report on events in Iraq.

The report followed a statement on Thursday from the Iraqi Observatory for Human rights, which said about 1,900 civilians had been captured by an estimated 100-120 Islamic State fighters, who were using people as shields against attacks by Iraqi Security Forces. Tens of civilians had been executed, and six burnt.

“UNHCR has received reports that ISIL captured on 4 August up to 3,000 IDPs (internally displaced people) from villages in Hawiga District in Kirkuk Governorate trying to flee to Kirkuk city. Reportedly, 12 of the IDPs have been killed in captivity,” the UNHCR report said.

The United States is leading a military coalition conducting air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, where the group seized broad swathes of territory in 2014. The fighting had displaced 3.4 million people in Iraq by July 2016.

Islamic State’s grip on some towns has been broken, but it still controls its de facto capitals of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

Last month the U.N. appealed for $284 million to prepare aid for an assault on Mosul, as well as up to $1.8 billion to deal with the aftermath.

It has so far received nothing in response, according to the U.N. Financial Tracking Service.

UNHCR has begun building a site northeast of Mosul for 6,000 people and is preparing another northwest of the city for 15,000, a fraction of those expected to need shelter.

Tens of thousands who fled from the city of Falluja have still not returned since its recapture from Islamic State in June. Three volunteers helping to clear Falluja of rubble and explosives died while clearing a house on Aug 1, UNHCR said.

“Although local authorities have suggested that returns to Falluja could begin in September, the Ministry of Migration and Displacement has stated that it may take another three months before conditions are conducive for large scale returns,” it said.

But Iraqi authorities reported 300,000 displaced people had returned to Ramadi district, UNHCR said. Iraqi forces declared victory over the jihadist group in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, in December, but later called a halt to returns after dozens of civilians were killed by mines.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

U.S. warplanes launch bombing campaign on Islamic State in Libya

By Goran Tomasevic and Yeganeh Torbati

SIRTE, Libya/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. planes bombed Islamic State targets in Libya on Monday, responding to the U.N.-backed government’s request to help push the militants from their former stronghold of Sirte in what U.S. officials described as the start of a sustained campaign against the extremist group in the city.

“The first air strikes were carried out at specific locations in Sirte today causing severe losses to enemy ranks,” Prime Minster Fayez Seraj said on state TV. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the strikes did not have “an end point at this particular moment in time”.

Forces allied with Seraj have been battling Islamic State in Sirte – the home town of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi – since May.

The militants seized the Mediterranean coastal city last year, making it their most important base outside Syria and Iraq. But they are now besieged in a few square kilometers of the center, where they hold strategic sites, including the Ouagadougou conference hall, the central hospital and the university.

Seraj said the Presidential Council of his Government of National Accord, or GNA, had decided to “activate” its participation in the international coalition against Islamic State and “request the United States to carry out targeted air strikes on Daesh (Islamic State).”

The air strikes on Monday – which were authorized by U.S. President Barack Obama – hit an Islamic State tank and two vehicles that posed a threat to forces aligned with Libya’s GNA, Cook said.

In the future, each individual strike will be coordinated with the GNA and needs the approval of the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, Cook added.

This was the third U.S. air strike against Islamic State militants in Libya. But U.S. officials said this one marked the start of a sustained air campaign rather than another isolated strike.

The last acknowledged U.S. air strikes in Libya were on an Islamic State training camp in the western city of Sabratha in February.

Although it does not include the use of ground troops beyond small special forces squads rotating in and out of Libya and drones collecting intelligence, the air campaign opens a new front in the war against IS and what American officials consider its most dangerous component outside Syria and Iraq.

Obama authorized the strikes after a recommendation by U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. Washington took part in air strikes in 2011 to enforce a no-fly zone in Libya which helped topple Gaddafi. The country has struggled since then and Obama said in an interview with The Atlantic magazine in April that the intervention “didn’t work”.

OPERATIONS IN SIRTE AND SUBURBS

“I want to assure you that these operations are limited to a specific timetable and do not exceed Sirte and its suburbs,” Seraj said, adding that international support on the ground would be limited to technical and logistical help.

“GNA-aligned forces have had success in recapturing territory from ISIL (Islamic State) thus far around Sirte, and additional U.S. strikes will continue to target ISIL in Sirte in order to enable the GNA to make a decisive, strategic advance,” said Cook, the Pentagon spokesman.

The White House said U.S. assistance to Libya would be limited to air strikes and information sharing.

“There are unique capabilities that our military can provide to support forces on the ground and that’s what the president wanted to do,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters on Air Force One on Monday.

But that coordination will be a challenge, experts said.

Local forces in Libya fighting Islamic State are diffuse and fragmented, with no single center of command, said Frederic Wehrey, a Libya expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington who recently spent three days with fighters in Sirte.

“U.S. and Western diplomatic strategy has been to try to boost this GNA, but I think there are certain limits,” Wehrey said. “It’s not the sort of conventional military operation we would think of where there’s a central point of contact.”

U.S. and Libyan officials estimate that several hundred Islamic State fighters remain in Sirte.

Brigades mainly composed of militia from the western city of Misrata advanced on Sirte in May, but their progress was slowed by snipers, mines and booby-traps.

Those forces have complained that assistance from the government in Tripoli and external powers was slow to materialize. At least 350 of their fighters have been killed and more than 1,500 wounded in the campaign.

Libyan fighter jets have frequently bombed Sirte, but they lack the weapons and technology to make precision strikes.

Islamic State took advantage of political chaos and a security vacuum to start expanding into Libya in 2014. It gained control over about 250 km (155 miles) of sparsely populated coastline either side of Sirte, though it has struggled to win support or retain territory elsewhere in the country.

The GNA was the result of a U.N.-mediated deal signed in December to end a conflict between two rival governments and the armed groups that supported them. But it is having difficulty imposing its authority and winning backing from factions in the east.

Western powers have offered to support the GNA in its efforts to tackle Islamic State, stem the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean and revive Libya’s oil production.

But foreign intervention is politically sensitive, and the GNA has hesitated to make formal requests for help.

U.S. officials were developing military options in Libya earlier this year. But enormous hurdles, including struggles in the formation of a unified Libyan government strong enough to call for and accommodate foreign military assistance, stood in the way. [nL2N15K24F]

Small teams of Western countries’ special forces have been on the ground in eastern and western Libya for months. Last month France said three of its soldiers had been killed south of the eastern city of Benghazi, where they had been conducting intelligence operations.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli and Idrees Ali in Washington; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Dan Grebler)

Civilian casualties increase as Afghanistan troops battle Taliban

Broken glass and debris are seen inside a resturant a day after a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan

By Josh Smith

KABUL (Reuters) – Civilians are being killed and wounded in record numbers in Afghanistan, the United Nations reported on Monday, just days after one of the deadliest attacks ever in Kabul.

Overall at least 1,601 civilians were killed and 3,565 wounded in the war in the first six months of 2016, the United Nations reported, as insurgent groups like the Taliban try to topple the government installed in Kabul after the 2001 U.S.-led military intervention.

Anti-government groups, the largest of which is the Taliban, accounted for at least 60 percent of non-combatants killed and wounded.

Twin blasts on Saturday were claimed by Islamic State militants and killed at least 80 people and injured more than 230, most of them civilians.

Those numbers are not included in the U.N. report, but the attack highlighted its finding that suicide bombings and complex attacks are now harming more civilians than are roadside bombs.

Casualties caused by pro-government forces increased 47 percent over the same period last year, the United Nations said.

Afghan forces were responsible for 22 percent of casualties overall, and the international troops remaining in the country caused 2 percent, while 17 percent could not be attributed to one side or the other.

For the first time, the Afghan air force killed or wounded more civilians in its operations than did air strikes carried out by international forces, the United Nations reported.

U.N. officials said they had heard more commitments by both sides, but few effective actions to improve protection of civilians.

“Every civilian casualty represents a failure of commitment and should be a call to action for parties to the conflict to take meaningful, concrete steps to reduce civilians’ suffering and increase protection,” Tadamichi Yamamoto, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, said in the report.

“Platitudes not backed by meaningful action ring hollow over time. History and the collective memory of the Afghan people will judge leaders of all parties to this conflict by their actual conduct.”

‘INDISCRIMINATE TACTICS’

More than 1,500 children were killed and wounded by the war, in the highest toll ever recorded in a six-month period by the United Nations.

Most civilians were caught up in ground clashes between the two sides as the Taliban increasingly threatened population centers and government troops went on the offensive following the withdrawal of most international combat troops in 2014.

Ground engagements accounted for 38 percent of casualties, followed by complex and suicide attacks at 20 percent, U.N. investigators found.

Casualties caused by roadside bombs decreased dramatically, by 21 percent, a drop the United Nations attributed to changes in the nature of the conflict, as well as better bomb-detection by the government.

The report was sharply critical of the Taliban, who “continued using indiscriminate tactics, including carrying out devastating complex and suicide attacks in civilian areas”.

Islamic State, a group that has made some limited inroads in Afghanistan, accounted for 122 casualties in the first six months of 2016 compared with 13 casualties attributed to it in the same period last year.

The increasing number of casualties caused by the government, meanwhile, was largely due to wide use of heavy explosives during ground battles, investigators reported.

Aerial operations by the Afghan air force in 2016 caused more than triple the number of civilian casualties during the same period in 2015, according to the report, as new aircraft and weapons were deployed.

At least 111 civilians, 85 of them women or children, were killed or wounded by Afghan helicopters and warplanes.

On June 13, for example, Afghan helicopters fired rockets and machine guns at a funeral ceremony for a Taliban member, killing or wounding at least 15 women and children, alongside insurgents, investigators found.

U.N. officials called for an immediate halt to the use of air strikes in populated areas and urged Afghan air crews to use “greater restraint”.

While international forces declared their combat mission over at the end of 2014, they continue to conduct air strikes and special operations missions.

Air strikes by international forces, comprised mostly of American warplanes, caused 38 deaths and 12 injuries among civilians, the U.N. reported.

(Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Libyan forces report gains against IS in battle for Sirte

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan forces said on Friday they had edged further into the center of Sirte as they seek to recapture the city from Islamic State, following heavy fighting until late the previous evening that left dozens dead.

Forces aligned with Libya’s United Nations-backed government in Tripoli advanced rapidly on the militant group’s Libyan stronghold in May, but they have faced resistance from snipers, suicide bombers and mines as they have closed in on the city center.

Sirte had been controlled by Islamic State since last year, becoming its most important base outside Syria and Iraq, and its loss would be a major setback for the group.

After a lull in fighting earlier this week, the government-backed forces launched a fresh assault on several fronts after first pounding IS positions with artillery and air strikes.

The brigades, made up mainly of fighters from the western city of Misrata, said in a statement that they had captured a hotel on the eastern front line used by Islamic State snipers, and also taken control of part of the “Dollar” neighborhood.

They said they had foiled three attempted car bomb attacks and destroyed an armored vehicle. A Reuters witness saw a tank belonging to the brigades being blown up, though it was not clear what caused the explosion.

The witness said shelling continued late into Thursday night, but it was quiet on Friday morning.

Nearly 50 bodies of Islamic State fighters killed during Thursday’s clashes were counted, the statement from the government-backed forces said. At least 25 brigade members were killed and 200 wounded, according to Misrata’s central hospital.

Since the campaign for Sirte began in May, more than 300 fighters from the brigades have been killed and more than 1,300 wounded, a spokesman for the forces said.

Islamic State expanded into Libya amid the political chaos and security vacuum that developed after long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in an uprising in 2011.

The group extended its presence along about 250 km (155 miles) of Libya’s coastline, but failed to win and retain territory elsewhere in the country.

(Reporting by Goran Tomasevic and Ahmed Elumami; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by John Stonestreet)

Mass killings, forced evictions threaten indigenous, minority groups to point of “eradication”: rights group

By Lin Taylor

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Mass killings, forced evictions and conflicts over land put indigenous and minority groups at risk of being eradicated from their ancestral lands, a human rights group said on Tuesday.

From Ethiopia, China and Iraq, the combination of armed conflicts and land dispossession has led to the persecution of minority groups and the erosion of cultural heritage, according to a report by the Minority Rights Group (MRG).

Carl Soderbergh, MRG director of policy and communications, said while discrimination against ethnic or religious minorities is not new, the level of targeted abuse is getting worse.

“The conflict that’s happening in Syria and Iraq right now is leading to the massive displacement of smaller and very ancient religious minorities like the Yazidis and the Sabean Mandeans,” said Soderbergh, lead author of the ‘State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2016’ report.

“They are essentially at risk of being totally eradicated in their traditional areas of origin.”

Civil conflicts and sectarian tensions have engulfed Iraq since 2003 when a U.S.-led coalition toppled Saddam Hussein. In 2014, Islamic State militants declared a caliphate after capturing swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Minorities including the Yazidi, Turkmen, Shabak, Christians and Kaka’i have been disproportionately affected by the recent violence in Iraq.

According to U.N. officials, Islamic State, also referred to as ISIS, has shown particular cruelty to the Yazidis, whom they regard as devil-worshippers, killing, capturing and enslaving thousands.

The persecution of Yazidis was recognized as genocide by the United Nations in June.

“It is getting worse. Whether it’s armed groups like ISIS or (Nigerian Islamist group) Boko Haram or it’s governments, there’s this targeting of heritage that we’re seeing, which is extremely worrisome,” Soderbergh said.

He said many minorities and indigenous peoples also face forced resettlement or evictions from their ancestral lands to make way for large-scale infrastructure or agricultural businesses, which further threatens their cultural heritage and identity.

For example, in parts of East Africa, governments are pushing for pastoralist communities to switch to settled farming with supporters saying such a move will create better food security, curb conflict between herders and farmers and free up land.

But Maasai herdsmen say the privatization and subdivision of their ancestral lands threatens ancient pastoralist practices, endangering livestock on which they depend and eroding communal rights to land and natural resources.

“Once a community is removed from the land, they really struggle to maintain their cultures and convey their cultures to the next generation,” Soderbergh said.

By 2115, it is estimated that at least half of the approximately 7,000 indigenous languages worldwide will die out, the report said.

Although some governments see these groups as a threat to the state, Soderbergh said minorities and indigenous peoples must be included in decisions that affect their communities.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women’s rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

Shelling, air strikes in Libya siege on Islamic State in Sirte

MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) – Libyan forces allied with the U.N.-backed government have been shelling and carrying out air strikes on the center of Sirte city in a siege of Islamic State militants there, an official said on Tuesday.

Militants defending Islamic State’s last stronghold in Libya have been keeping Libyan forces back with sniper fire and mortars in Sirte where they are now surrounded after a two month campaign to take the city.

The fall of Sirte would be a major blow to Islamic State, which took over the city a year ago in the chaos of a civil war between rival factions who once battled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

“Our forces have…targeted militants with artillery and air force around Ouagadougou complex, Ghiza Asskariya district, and in the city center,” said Rida Issa, spokesman for Misrata forces fighting in Sirte.

“They have targeted Islamic State members, vehicles, ammunition stores, and control rooms.”

He said one Misrata fighter was killed and 20 others wounded in a mortar strike on their position in the Zaafran frontline, near the roundabout where Islamic State once crucified victims.

The bodies of around 13 Islamic State fighters were found, but Misrata forces were driven back by sniper fire.

Western powers are backing Prime Minister Fayaz Seraj’s government that moved into Tripoli three months ago in an attempt to unify two rival governments and various armed factions. Seraj is working with a unified National Oil Corporation to restart the oil industry.

But while powerful brigades from Misrata city support Seraj for now and lead the fight to liberate Sirte, other hardliners to the east are still opposing him and his government has made little progress in extending its influence.

After a rapid success in driving Islamic State back from a coastal strip of territory it controlled, the battle for Sirte has slowed to street-by-street fighting as Misrata forces clear out residential areas.

Misrata commanders say a few hundreds militants are dug in around the Ouagadougou complex, the university and a city hospital. They are cautious of advancing rapidly after more than 200 fighters died in the campaign so far.

While forces from the city of Misrata are fighting Islamic State in Sirte, rival brigades allied to Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army are fighting to the east on another front in Benghazi and around another eastern town. Haftar’s hardline backers reject Seraj’s government.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; Writing by Patrick Markey; editing by Ralph Boulton)

North Korea says will treat U.S. detainees under ‘wartime law’

A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor is launched during a successful intercept test, in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency.

By Ju-min Park and Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday it has told the United States it will sever the only channel of communication between them, at the United Nations in New York, after Washington blacklisted leader Kim Jong Un last week for human rights abuses.

All matters related to the United States, including the handling of American citizens detained by Pyongyang, will be conducted under its “wartime law,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

The move is the latest escalation of tension with the isolated country, which earlier on Monday threatened a “physical response” after the United States and South Korea said they would deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea.

“As the United States will not accept our demand for the immediate withdrawal of the sanctions measure, we will be taking corresponding actions in steps,” KCNA said.

“As the first step, we have notified that the New York contact channel that has been the only existing channel of contact will be completely severed,” it said.

“The Republic will handle all matters arising between us and the United States from now on under our wartime laws, and the matters of Americans detained are no exception to this.”

It was not clear how “wartime laws” would affect the handling of the two Americans detained. But North Korea has indicated in the past that wartime laws would mean that detainees will not be released on humanitarian grounds.

The North and the United States remain technically at war because the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Washington sided with the South, ended only with a truce.

The two Americans known to be detained in North Korea include Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan, according to North Korean state media. The other, Korean-American Kim Dong Chul, is serving a 10 year sentence for espionage, state media said.

A University of Virginia spokesman said the university remains in touch with Warmbier’s family but did not have additional comment.

The so-called New York channel has been an intermittent point of contact between the North and the United States, which do not have diplomatic ties, to exchange messages and, less frequently, hold discussions.

North Korea said last week it was planning its toughest response to what it deemed a “declaration of war” by the United States after Washington sanctioned Kim.

On Saturday, the North test-fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, but it appeared to have failed after launch.

ESCALATING TENSION

The United States and South Korea said on Friday that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system will be used to counter North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.

The announcement was the latest move by the allies against the North, which conducted its fourth nuclear test this year and launched a long-range rocket, resulting in tough new U.N. sanctions.

“There will be physical response measures from us as soon as the location and time that the invasionary tool for U.S. world supremacy, THAAD, will be brought into South Korea are confirmed,” the North’s military said early on Monday.

“It is the unwavering will of our army to deal a ruthless retaliatory strike and turn (the South) into a sea of fire and a pile of ashes the moment we have an order to carry it out,” the statement carried by KCNA said.

The North frequently threatens to attack the South and U.S. interests in Asia and the Pacific.

South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-gyun warned the North not to take “rash and foolish action”. Otherwise, he said, it would face “decisive and strong punishment from our military.”

The move to deploy the THAAD system also drew a swift and sharp protest from China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday that THAAD exceeded the security needs of the Korean peninsula, and suggested there was a “conspiracy behind this move.”

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Monday the THAAD system was not intended to target any third country but was purely aimed at countering the threat from the North, in an apparent message to Beijing.

A South Korean Defence Ministry official said selection of a site for THAAD could come “within weeks,” and the allies were working to have it operational by the end of 2017.

It will be used by U.S. Forces Korea “to protect alliance military forces,” the South and the United States said on Friday. The United States maintains 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean war.

(Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Tony Munroe)

Iran says U.N. report on its ballistic missile tests ‘unrealistic’

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran has rejected as “unrealistic” a report by the U.N. leader that criticized its ballistic missile launches as inconsistent with its nuclear deal with world powers, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said on Friday.

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) conducted ballistic missile tests in early March and called them a demonstration of its non-nuclear deterrent power.

The United States and its European allies said that by testing nuclear-capable missiles, Tehran had defied a U.N. Security Council resolution and urged U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to tackle the matter.

Reuters reported on Thursday that a confidential report by Ban had found Iran’s missile tests to be inconsistent “with the constructive spirit” of the 2015 deal under which Iran curbed sensitive nuclear activity and won sanctions relief in return.

“We suggest that Mr. Ban and his colleagues… produce a realistic report…They should not yield to political pressures from some members of the (Security) Council,” Tasnim quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying.

Ban’s report stopped short of calling the missile launches a “violation” of Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear agreement that defused Iranian-Western tensions which had raised fears of a wider Middle East war.

His report said it was up to the Security Council to decide if Iran violated Resolution 2231 which “calls upon” Iran to refrain for up to eight years from activity related to ballistic missiles with cones that could accommodate a nuclear warhead.

Iran has consistently denied its missiles are designed to carry an atomic device. Ban’s report said Iran had stressed that it had not undertaken “any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

The Council is due to discuss Ban’s report on July 18.

Tehran has accused the United States of failing to meet its commitments under the nuclear deal, saying Washington should do more to lift its own sanctions affecting banks so businesses feel confident of being able to invest in Iran without penalty.

“I hope the Reuters report is not true … I suggest that Mr Ban give a fair report … in which he also mentions America is not fulfilling its commitments under the deal,” the official said told the Tasnim agency.

The German government, responding to reports by its spy service that Iran has been trying to acquire nuclear technology in Germany, said on Friday certain forces in Iran may be trying to undermine the nuclear deal.

International sanctions on Tehran were lifted in January under the nuclear deal, but current U.S. policy bars foreign banks from clearing dollar-based transactions with Iran through U.S. banks.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. sanctions North Korean leader for first time over human rights

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un posing with school children

By David Brunnstrom and James Pearson

WASHINGTON/SEOUL (Reuters) – The United States on Wednesday sanctioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the first time, citing “notorious abuses of human rights,” in a move diplomats say will infuriate the nuclear-armed country.

The sanctions, the first to target any North Koreans for rights abuses, affect property and other assets within the U.S. jurisdiction. They include 10 other individuals besides Kim and five government ministries and departments, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

“Under Kim Jong Un, North Korea continues to inflict intolerable cruelty and hardship on millions of its own people, including extrajudicial killings, forced labor, and torture,” Acting Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Adam J. Szubin said in the statement.

But inside North Korea, adulation for Kim, 32, is mandatory and he is considered infallible. A 2014 report by the United Nations, which referred to Kim by name in connection to human rights, triggered a strong reaction from Pyongyang, including a string of military provocations.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a new law requiring U.S. President Barack Obama to deliver a report within 120 days to Congress on human rights in North Korea. It had designate for sanctions anyone found responsible for human rights violations. Kim Jong Un, the third generation of his family to rule the Stalinist state, topped the list.

The U.S. Treasury Department identified Kim’s date of birth as Jan. 8, 1984, a rare official confirmation of the young leader’s birthday.

Many of the abuses are in North Korea’s prison camps, which hold between 80,000 and 120,000 people including children, the report said.

The five agencies designated were two ministries that run North Korea’s secret police and their correctional services, which operate the prison camps. Also named were the ruling Workers’ Party’s Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), a key bureau used by Kim to wield control of the party and the government.

The sanctions also named lower-level officials, such as Minister of People’s Security Choe Pu Il, as directly responsible for abuses.

FORCED LABOR

Senior U.S administration officials said the new sanctions showed the administration’s greater focus on human rights in North Korea, an area long secondary to Washington’s efforts to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs.

The report was “the most comprehensive” to date on individual North Korean officials’ roles in forced labor and repression.

They said the sanctions would be partly “symbolic” but hoped that naming mid-level officials may make functionaries “think twice” before engaging in abuses. “It lifts the anonymity,” a senior administration official told reporters.

The North Korea mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

South Korea, which cut off all political and commercial ties with its own sanctions against the North in February, welcomed the move, saying it will encourage greater international pressure on the North to improve its human rights record.

China’s foreign ministry, asked about the new sanctions, reiterated its policy of opposing unilateral sanctions.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, visiting Beijing on Thursday, said he is very concerned about rising tension on the Korean peninsula and called on North Korea to refrain from making any provocations.

MORE SANCTIONS TO COME

Using sanctions against a head of state is not unprecedented. In 2011, the United States sanctioned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and six other senior Syrian officials for their role in Syria’s violence. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was also sanctioned.

Policymakers often worry that targeting a country’s leader will destroy any lingering chance of rapprochement, former diplomats say.

It is a sign “there probably isn’t much of a hope for a diplomatic resolution,” said Zachary Goldman, a former policy adviser in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

The new sanctions follow a long list of measures that have had little effect in pressuring North Korean leaders to change, experts who study the North’s political system said.

“The sanctions from today will do nothing whatsoever to alter North Korea’s strategic calculus and only underscore their thinking that the U.S. has a ‘hostile policy’ against their country,” said Michael Madden an expert on the North Korean leadership.

“Considering the sanctions name Kim Jong Un, the reaction from Pyongyang will be epic,” he said. “There will be numerous official and state media denunciations, which will target the U.S. and Seoul, and the wording will be vituperative and blistering.”

Peter Harrell, a former State Department sanctions official, said the measures would signal to companies in China, as well as others doing business with North Korea, the U.S. would continue escalating sanctions.

Harrell added it was unlikely any assets would be blocked, however “given the realities of where Kim Jong Un and his cronies likely hide their assets.”

In March, the U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the country in response to its nuclear and missile tests.

That same month, Obama imposed new sanctions on North Korea after it conducted its fourth nuclear test and a rocket launch that Washington and its allies said employed banned ballistic missile technology.

Those steps froze any property of the North Korean government in the U.S. and essentially prohibited exports of goods from the U.S. to North Korea.

“The United States has maintained sanctions and pressure against the North for 65 years since the Korean War, but there’s not been a single case where the intended result was accomplished,” said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

“How much time is left in the Obama administration? There may be the wish to prove the policy of ‘strategic patience’ against the North has not failed, but when it comes to practical results, there won’t be much to show,” Yang said.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Yeganeh Torbati and Joel Schectman in Washington, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Bill Tarrant)

U.N. peacekeepers preparing for possible Congo political violence

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Political uncertainty over Democratic Republic of Congo’s next presidential election could spiral into a severe crisis and United Nations peacekeepers are developing contingency plans for widespread violence, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council released on Tuesday, Ban said that under those plans peacekeepers in Congo might need to ask for help from other U.N. missions.

“I am concerned that in the absence of a credible and meaningful political dialogue among Congolese stakeholders, tensions could degenerate into a severe crisis, with a high risk of relapse into violence and instability,” Ban said.

The Congolese government has said it is unlikely it will be able to hold elections in November for logistical reasons but opponents of President Joseph Kabila accuse him of trying to cling to power. The government has denied the claim.

Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, is barred by the constitution from standing for a third term. But a Kabila ally has raised the prospect of a referendum to allow him to run.

Dozens of Kabila’s critics have been arrested since last year as part of what the United Nations and rights groups say is an escalating crackdown on political dissent ahead of a presidential election.

“I urge the government of Democratic Republic of Congo to respect freedom of expression, assembly and information as fundamental rights that are essential to the conduct of free and fair elections,” Ban said.

Dozens died in street protests in January 2015 against a revision to the election code that could have pushed the election back by years.

“(The U.N. peacekeeping mission) MONUSCO is developing contingency plans in the event of widespread violence in the context of the electoral process,” Ban said.

The U.N. Security Council is due to be briefed on the U.N. peacekeeping mission on Thursday.

The overthrow of longtime Congolese ruler Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 fuelled years of conflict in the mineral-rich east that sucked in more than half a dozen countries and killed millions of people. U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed in Congo since 2000.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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