Tag Archives: Violence

Protesters throw rocks, bottles at police outside Trump rally

A protester disrupts a rally with Trump and his supporters in Albuquerque

By Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – Protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers who responded with pepper spray outside a rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump in Albuquerque, New Mexico, police said.

Hundreds of protesters tried to storm the convention center in New Mexico’s biggest city, knocking down barricades and throwing objects at a door and then hurling rocks and bottles at mounted police in riot gear, the Albuquerque Police Department said on Twitter on Tuesday and video posted online showed.

Several police officers were injured, the police tweeted.

Protesters chanted anti-Trump slogans, held anti-Trump signs and waved Mexican flags before the demonstration descended into chaos with some protesters standing on top of police cars.

Television footage showed officers responding by using pepper spray and smoke bombs to disperse the crowd.

Police said they made arrests both outside and inside the rally, where protesters continually interrupted Trump’s speech.

No one at the police department was immediately available for comment.

Protests have become common outside rallies for Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee, who has polarized opinion with his rhetoric against illegal immigration. He abandoned a rally in Chicago in March after clashes between his supporters and protesters.

He has accused Mexico of sending drug dealers and rapists across the U.S. border and has promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

According to CNN, his supporters chanted “build that wall” during his rally on Tuesday in Albuquerque where a little less than half of the population is Hispanic or Latino.

“Watching thugs (and) punks in Albuquerque – en route to California. They don’t even know what they are protesting,” Trump aide Dan Scavino said on Twitter.

Trump heads on Wednesday to a rally in Anaheim, California, which has a growing Latino minority.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Three bombings in Baghdad kill over 70 in worst violence so far

People gather at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's mainly Shi'ite district of Sadr City, Iraq, May 17, 2016.

By Kareem Raheem

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – At least 72 people were killed and more than 140 wounded by three bombings in Baghdad on Tuesday, police and medical sources said, extending the deadliest spate of attacks in the Iraqi capital so far this year.

Islamic State claimed one suicide bombing which killed 38 people and wounded over 70 in a marketplace in the northern, mainly Shi’ite Muslim district of al-Shaab.

A car bomb in nearby Shi’ite Sadr City killed at least 28 dead and 57 wounded, and another car blew up in the mixed Shi’ite-Sunni neighborhood of al-Rasheed, south of the capital, killing six and wounding 21, the sources said.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi ordered the arrest of the security official in charge of al-Shaab’s security after the attack, Abadi’s office said in a statement, without giving a reason for the detention.

Attacks claimed by IS in and around the city last week killed more than 100 people, the highest death toll in so few days so far this year, sparking anger and street protests over the government’s failure to ensure security.

Security had improved in Baghdad in recent years as sectarian tensions waned and the city’s perimeter was fortified. Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni militants who control parts of north and west Iraq, have not tried to take the capital but carry out increasingly regular suicide bombings there, hitting Shi’ite areas and government targets.

With the latest death tolls, fears are growing that Baghdad could relapse into the bloodletting of a decade ago when sectarian-motivated suicide bombings killed scores of people every week.

This has cranked up pressure on Abadi who is struggling to solve a political crisis or risk losing control of parts of Baghdad to Islamic State militants. Away from the capital, Iraq’s military is waging a counter offensive against the group.

Abadi has said the crisis, sparked by his attempt to reshuffle the cabinet in an anti-corruption bid, is hampering the fight against Islamic State and creating space for more insurgent attacks on the civilian population.

A spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command told state television the attacker in al-Shaab had detonated an explosives-filled vest along with a planted bomb. Initial investigations revealed that the bomber was a woman, he said.

Islamic State said in a statement distributed online by supporters that one of its fighters had targeted Shi’ite militiamen with hand grenade and a suicide vest. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the other two bombings.

(Additional reporting by Saif Hameed and Mostafa Hashem in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Pregnant in a war zone: What are your choices?

Queen Rania of Jordan meets with Syrian refugee women during her visit at the Kara Tepe refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos

By Astrid Zweynert

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – In Yemen women give birth in caves to avoid air strikes, in war-torn Syria child marriages are increasing, while in eastern Ukraine, where conflict has been raging for two years, domestic violence is rising, aid agencies have been reporting.

Even though these scenarios are typical of the hardships faced by women in conflict zones or disasters, too little is being done to address their needs beyond providing them with the most basic humanitarian aid, said Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

“The focus is on water, food and shelter and that’s crucial and life-saving but life does go on in conflicts and disasters, including sex and births,” Osotimehin told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in London.

Numerous studies have shown women in need of aid because of conflict or disaster are more vulnerable to sexual violence, sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, he said.

An UNFPA report last December said more than 500 women a day die from complications arising from pregnancy and child birth in countries facing conflict or disaster.

“Even in peaceful times, it can be difficult to become a mother. But in a war zone, on a boat with smugglers, or in a refugee camp, being pregnant is truly daunting,” Osotimehin, a physician and former Nigerian minister of health, said.

As humanitarian crises have multiplied in recent years and more than 100 million people now being in need of assistance, women’s health and reproductive rights are often an afterthought, he said.

URGENT NEED

UNFPA said in February it is seeking $107 million to meet the needs of women and girls affected by the war in Syria, the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Four million people out of around 13.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria are women and girls of childbearing age, U.N. data shows.

Among those who have taken refuge in neighboring countries, 1.2 million are of childbearing age.

Osotimehin said child marriage is now being used by desperate parents in Syria, who fear for the safety of their daughters and marry them off in the hope that they will be protected and provided with food and other necessities.

In other war-torn countries the needs of women and girls are equally pressing.

In Yemen, where war has been raging for more than a year, Medecins Sans Frontiers said in February that pregnant women had been seeking shelter in caves to give birth rather than risk going to a hospital.

Osotimehin urged world leaders and aid agencies gathering for the first humanitarian summit in Istanbul, Turkey, later this month to make women’s and girls needs a key part of the humanitarian response as standard.

“It is crucial to direct humanitarian aid to protect women of childbearing age, both to lessen present suffering and reduce it in the future, but current resources are insufficient,” he said.

TALK BUT LITTLE ACTION

Global leaders launched a new women, peace and security program last March, including workshops, training and guidelines to ensure that gender equality and the needs of women and girls are an integral part of the humanitarian response.

While there has been no lack of talk about the needs of women in conflict zones, too little is being done to translate words into concrete and coordinated action, said Osotimehin.

The U.N. adopted a resolution on women, peace and security in 2000 and a call to action saw donors and international agencies commit in 2013 to reducing violence against women in emergencies, while a London summit in 2014 agreed steps to tackle impunity for the use of rape as weapon of war.

Despite those efforts it is unclear how much money is being invested on these issues because there is no uniform way of reporting funding and what it is spent on, said Osotimehin.

(Reporting by Astrid Zweynert; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories)

People uprooted within states by conflict hits record in 2015

Children ride on the back of a truck loaded with water jerrycans at a camp for internally displaced people in the Dhanah area of the

By Megan Rowling

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The number of people uprooted inside their own countries by war and violence hit a record 40.8 million in 2015, with Yemen recording the most cases of newly displaced, an international aid group said on Wednesday.

Globally there were 8.6 million fresh cases of people fleeing conflict last year within borders, an average of 24,000 a day, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said in a report. More than half of those were in the Middle East.

Some 2.2 million people in Yemen, or 8 percent of its population, were newly displaced in 2015, largely the result of Saudi-led air strikes and an economic blockade imposed on civilians, the report said.

IDMC said the number of people forced from their homes by conflict but staying in their own countries was twice those who have become refugees by crossing international borders.

“The world is in a tremendous displacement crisis that is relentlessly building year after year, and now too many places have the perfect storm of conflict and/or disasters,” said Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which runs IDMC.

“We have to find ways to protect people from these horrendous forces of both nature and the man-made ones.”

The U.N. refugee agency has said the number of people forcibly displaced worldwide was likely to have “far surpassed” a record 60 million in 2015, including 20 million refugees, driven by the Syrian war and other drawn-out conflicts.

The IDMC report said displacement in the Middle East and North Africa had “snowballed” since the Arab Spring uprisings that began in 2010 and the rise of the Islamic State militant group, which is waging war in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

“What has really led to the spike we have seen most recently has been the attack on civilians – indiscriminate bombing and air strikes, across Syria but also Yemen,” said Alexandra Bilak, IDMC’s interim director. “People have nowhere to go.”

DISASTER PREVENTION

Globally, there were 19.2 million new cases of people forced from their homes by natural disasters in 2015, the vast majority of them due to extreme weather such as storms and floods, IDMC said.

In Nepal alone, earthquakes in April and May uprooted 2.6 million people.

Egeland said many countries, such as Cuba, Vietnam and Bangladesh, had improved their record on preventing and preparing for natural disasters.

“But in Asia I would say, and to some extent Latin America, still too little is done to meet the growing strength of the forces of nature fueled by climate change,” he added.

The former U.N. aid chief urged this month’s World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul to focus on building resilience to natural disasters, and finding ways to avert conflicts and protect civilians in war.

IDMC’s Bilak said political action was needed to stop more people being forced from their homes, and staying displaced for long periods.

“The numbers are increasing every year, which clearly shows that the solutions to displacement are not being found,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Sudan and South Sudan have featured in the list of the 10 largest displaced populations every year since 2003, the report noted.

“People are not returning, they are not locally integrating where they have found refuge, and they are certainly not being resettled somewhere else,” Bilak said.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; Additional reporting by Stine Jacobsen in Oslo; Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

French Police clash with more protesters over labor laws

Masked youths face off with French police during a demonstration against the French labour law proposal in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – French police clashed with protesters outside a school building in Paris on Wednesday in fresh unrest involving police amid anger over government plans to reform highly-protective labor laws.

Police used teargas to disperse a crowd that tried to stop them removing nearly 300 immigrants who had moved into an empty secondary school that was due to reopen after renovation, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

“The state is obliged to apply the law,” Cadot said. The migrants from countries including Sudan and Eritrea had been removed peacefully after police broke through a ring of 200 to 250 protesters, he said.

Four police were slightly hurt, a statement said.

Hundreds of police officers have been reported injured in the past weeks in clashes with demonstrators during street marches across France the country – most of them rallies in protest over a bill that would make it easier in some cases to fire employees.

On Tuesday seven riot police officers were hurt in clashes with masked youths in the Western city of Nantes.

“This is totally unacceptable, with 300 police hurt since the start of the year,” said government spokesman Stephane Le Foll. “We will not let this pass.”

The primary focus of protest is the planned reform of some of the most extensive and protective labor rules in Europe.

An Elabe opinion poll released on Wednesday showed that three out of four French people oppose a bill that the government argues will remove red tape and encourage employers to recruit in a country where the jobless rate is above 10 percent.

Critics fear the bill will undermine employers’ obligations under the current national labor code.

Police chief Cadot is also seeking to tighten the noose on a rolling youth protest movement – called Nuit Debout – that has been organizing late-night sit-ins at the large Place de la Republique square in central Paris.

After repeated clashes where youths hurled petrol bombs and paving stones at police, he has banned alcohol consumption and late night music on the square and told Nuit Debout activists to quit the area every day before midnight.

(Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Iraq’s all-female combat unit seeks revenge on Islamic State

Iraqi Kurdish female fighter Haseba Nauzad (2nd R), 24, and Yazidi female fighter Asema Dahir (3rd R), 21, aim their weapon during a deployment near the frontline of the fight against Islamic State militants in Nawaran near Mosul, Iraq,

By Emily Wither

NAWARAN, Iraq (Reuters) – When Islamic State swept into the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar in 2014, a few young Yazidi women took up arms against the militants attacking women and girls from their community.

“They took eight of my neighbors and I saw they were killing the children,” Asema Dahir told Reuters last month at a checkpoint near a front line north of Mosul.

Dressed in military fatigues, the 21-year-old is now part of an all-female unit in the Kurdish peshmerga forces, which have played an important role in pushing back Islamic State in northern Iraq.

The killing and enslaving of thousands from Iraq’s minority Yazidi community focused international attention on the group’s violent campaign to impose its radical ideology and prompted Washington to launch an air offensive.

It also prompted the formation of this unusual 30-woman unit made up of Yazidis as well as Kurds from Iraq and neighboring Syria. For them, only one thing matters: revenge for the women raped, beaten and executed by the jihadist militants.

Dahir said she was stunned by the brutality of the militants, some of whom were neighbors and others from outside the area.

“They killed my uncle and took my cousin’s wife who had only just married eight days earlier,” she said, her piercing eyes clouding over. The bride, like thousands of other Yazidi women, is still being held by the militants.

For matching Wider Image pictures, please click on: http://reut.rs/1SNahZe

During the firefights that raged across Sinjar in 2014, Dahir said she killed two Islamic State fighters before being shot in the leg. Reuters could not independently verify the fighters’ personal accounts.

Well-worn photographs of children and families tucked into the edge of mirrors or pressed onto walls in the women’s spartan barracks are reminders of what they have sacrificed to join the fight.

Haseba Nauzad, the unit’s 24-year-old commander, lost her marriage. She was living with her husband in Turkey when Islamic State swept through northern Iraq and announced its so-called caliphate over areas that included traditional Kurdish lands.

“I saw them raping my Kurdish sisters and I couldn’t accept this injustice,” Nauzad said.

Her husband wanted to pay human smugglers to take them to Europe along with more than a million others fleeing conflict in the region, but she insisted on going home to fight the Islamists.

“I put my personal life aside, and I came to defend my Kurdish sisters and mothers and stand against this enemy,” she said. She has lost contact with her husband since he arrived in Germany.

In a conservative society where women are often expected to stay at home, these women say gender does not keep them from entering battle.

“If a man can carry a weapon, a woman can do the same,” said Nauzad. “The men are inspired to fight harder when they see women standing in the same battlefield as them.”

The women in the unit are convinced Islamic State militants are scared of women fighters “because they think if they are killed by a woman, they will not go to heaven,” said Nauzad.

“This story encourages more women to join the fight.”

(Writing by Stephen Kalin; editing by Ralph Boulton)

String of Prosecutions on Rikers Prison Employees

A car exits the Rikers Island Correctional facility in New York March 12, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Joseph Ax and Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The guards, authorities say, wanted to send a message.

“Somebody’s leaving in an ambulance tonight,” Eliseo Perez, an assistant chief for security at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, told inmates after a rash of attacks on guards, according to prosecutors.

Then he allegedly instructed five subordinates to take prisoner Jahmal Lightfoot into a room and kick his teeth in, an attack that left him with facial fractures.

The ongoing trial of nine correction officers for the alleged 2012 assault and a subsequent cover-up is the latest in a string of prosecutions targeting dozens of Rikers employees over the past four years.

More than 50 guards at the 10,000-inmate complex, one of the three largest in the United States by population, have faced criminal charges since 2012 for assault, falsifying reports and smuggling contraband, court documents and data from various city agencies show.

That is about double the rate of prosecution in the prior four years, as authorities crack down on what they say is a toxic atmosphere of violence and corruption.

“Rikers is a very troubled institution,” said Mark Peters, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, which leads most Rikers-related probes. “We are now seeing the result of systemic neglect.”

Rikers houses male, female and adolescent prisoners in 10 separate facilities, mostly inmates awaiting trial.

RIKERS UNDER MICROSCOPE

Mayor Bill de Blasio has made Rikers reform a priority since taking office in 2014.

Peters, whom de Blasio appointed two years ago, said he had devoted one investigative squad exclusively to Rikers and increased its staff from 20 to 30 members.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, whose office prosecutes most Rikers-related cases, recently proposed a new prosecution bureau based at the complex itself.

The list of law enforcement officials whose attention has turned to Rikers also includes Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.

Next month, federal prosecutors will put two guards on trial for the fatal beating of an inmate. Brian Coll, a correction officer, is accused of stomping Ronald Spear to death and enlisting two other guards to help him conceal the truth. One guard has already pleaded guilty to the cover-up.

Bharara’s office also threw the weight of the federal government behind a lawsuit brought on behalf of adolescent inmates by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The case led to a settlement mandating reforms overseen by a court-appointed monitor.

A two-year investigation by Bharara’s office found the correction department failed to discipline guards adequately for excessive force from 2011 to 2013, said Sara Shudofsky, the chief of the office’s civil division, in an interview.

In 2014, de Blasio also appointed Joseph Ponte to head the correction department. Since then, it has pursued internal investigations more aggressively, with 200 cases ending in disciplinary charges last year, up from 93 in 2013, according to department statistics.

The focus on guards has met stiff resistance from the correction officers union, which claims the effort hides the true causes of Rikers’ problems.

“It is clear from the department’s own statistics that inmates are attacking correction officers and other inmates at an alarming rate,” the union president, Norman Seabrook, said in a statement.

Seabrook also said visitors, not guards, are primarily responsible for smuggling contraband, citing the hundreds of visitors arrested in the last year for bringing illegal items into Rikers.

SMUGGLING SURGE

The Department of Investigation has also pursued broader reforms in response to the persistent problems, Peters said.

In 2014, an undercover investigator posing as a guard gained access to Rikers six times despite carrying heroin, marijuana and razor blades. Another department probe uncovered red flags among two-thirds of a class of new hires, such as prior felony convictions or known gang ties.

In response, the correction department has installed drug-sniffing dogs at Rikers’ entrances and increased its “applicant investigation unit” from 19 employees to 87, to screen potential recruits’ backgrounds and psychological fitness.

Both Peters and Ponte say their departments are now working more closely to address misconduct. That cooperation was on display this month, when a guard was caught on video assaulting an inmate who had thrown a cup of liquid in his direction.

Correction officials turned over the video to investigators immediately, and the guard was arrested within hours.

But the level of violence still troubles observers. The Lightfoot trial, which began in March, highlights the difficulties in curbing incidents by both inmates and officers.

Perez and his team were part of an elite unit assigned to reduce inmate attacks, but prosecutors say their solution was to turn to assault themselves.

Defense attorneys have argued at trial that the guards simply defended themselves when Lightfoot attacked them with a weapon. Prosecutors have said that assertion is false.

“They decided they were going to set the tone that night,” Assistant District Attorney Pishoy Yacoub said at the start of the trial.

(Editing by Scott Malone and Diane Craft)

India working to curb trafficking of women and children

India’s Women and Child Welfare minister Maneka Gandhi, works on a computer before an interview with Reuters at her office in New Delhi, India, October 19, 2015.

By Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – India is working to find ways to curb the widespread trafficking of women and children in the country, including those from neighboring Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan, said Maneka Gandhi, India’s minister for women and children.

South Asia, with India at its center, is the fastest-growing and second-largest region for human trafficking in the world, after East Asia, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime.

Speaking at a conference on child adoption in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya, Gandhi told delegates that the government was in the process of putting in place a series of policies to prevent human trafficking.

“We have discussed this issue in the cabinet. We had called a meeting with these countries last month in which all NGOs working on this and others in Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh came,” she said on Monday.

“We will have another meeting next week in India. We are telling each other what we can do. This month, we are going to see that specific solutions come into being.”

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 5,466 cases of human trafficking registered in 2014, an increase of 90 percent over the past five years.

Activists say this is a gross under-estimation of the scale of the problem, as much of the illicit organized crime is underground.

They claim thousands of people – largely poor, rural women and children – are lured to India’s towns and cities each year by traffickers who promise good jobs but sell them into domestic work or sex work or to industries such as textile workshops.

In many cases, they are not paid or are held in debt bondage. Some go missing, and their families cannot trace them.

Gandhi said India’s remote northeastern states, which include Assam, Sikkim, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, were a key source area for trafficking and called for the appointment of a special female police officer in each village to keep a check on crimes against women and children.

“There is an enormous amount of trafficking of children going on from the northeast. We find them in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and many going to Malaysia and Thailand. It is not fair,” she said.

“The job of special women police is to be vigilant in the village and see that children do not go missing, women are not beaten by husbands, girls are sent to school.”

A comprehensive new anti-trafficking law is also being drafted, say government officials. This will not only unify several existing laws, but also raise penalties for offenders and provide victims with rehabilitation and compensation.

The law, which is expected to be ready by the end of the year, will also provide for the establishment of a central investigative anti-trafficking agency to coordinate and work between states and special courts to hear such cases.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, editing by Alex Whiting. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org)

Macedonian Police Fire Tear Gas on Migrants

Men try to break a border security fence during scuffles between Macedonian police and migrants and refugees near a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idome

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Macedonian police fired tear gas on Wednesday to disperse around 50 migrants stranded in Greece who tried to pull down part of the razor wire fence separating the two countries, a Reuters witness said.

Scuffles briefly broke out and Greek riot police later intervened to break up the crowd.

Tensions have boiled over at the makeshift migrant camp near the town of Idomeni, where more than 10,000 migrants and refugees have been stranded since February, when Balkan countries shut their borders to anyone wanting to head north.

Hundreds of migrants were injured on Sunday in clashes with Macedonian police, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets after a group tried to storm the border.

The Balkan route was the preferred gateway into western and northern Europe last year for around 1 million migrants from the Middle East and beyond.

Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov and his Slovenian and Croatian counterparts, Borut Pahor and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, later on Wednesday visited a migrant transit center just inside Macedonia, which houses 135 migrants trapped by the border closures.

After meeting some of the Croatian and Slovenian police who are helping to guard the Macedonian border, Ivanov said his country’s authorities would keep the migrant route closed in line with EU policies.

“The latest incidents on the border showed there is a great pressure from the migrants to re-open this corridor, but … we will respect that decision,” he told reporters.

(Reporting by Stoyan Nenov, Kole Casule and Aleksandar Vasovic; editing by Richard Balmforth)

Iran, France concerned with Syria violence

Residents inspect damages after an airstrike on the rebel held al-Maysar neighborhood in Aleppo

By Tom Perry, John Irish and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

BEIRUT/PARIS/DUBAI (Reuters) – France and Iran voiced concern over escalating violence in Syria on Tuesday, echoing warnings from the United States and Russia as fighting near the city of Aleppo put more pressure on a fragile truce agreement.

The already widely violated “cessation of hostilities” agreement brokered by Russia and the United States has been strained to breaking point by an upsurge in fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels near Aleppo.

The escalation underlines the already bleak outlook for peace talks set to reconvene this week in Geneva. The United Nations says the talks will resume on Wednesday. The government delegation has said it is ready to join the talks from Friday.

With President Bashar al-Assad buoyed by Russian and Iranian military support, the Damascus government is due to hold parliamentary elections on Wednesday, a vote seen by Assad’s opponents as illegitimate and provocative.

Iran said an increase in ceasefire violations could harm the political process a day after Russia said it had asked the United States to stop a mobilization of militants near Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city until the conflict erupted in 2011.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, speaking after a meeting with U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura in Tehran, blamed the “increasing activities of armed groups” for the violations.

France, which backs the opposition, also expressed concern, but blamed the other side. “It warns that the impact of the regime and its allies’ offensives around Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta are a threat to the cessation of hostilities,” government spokesman Romain Nadal said. The Eastern Ghouta is an opposition-held area near Damascus.

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 250,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis, allowed for the rise of Islamic State and drawn in regional and international powers. The intervention of Russia swung the war in Assad’s favor.

WASHINGTON “VERY, VERY CONCERNED”

The United States, which also backs rebels fighting Assad, on Monday said it was “very, very concerned” about increased violence and blamed the Syrian government for the vast majority of truce violations.

Both the government and a large number of rebel groups had pledged to respect the cessation of hostilities agreed in February with the aim of allowing a resumption of diplomacy towards ending the five-year-long war. Jihadist groups including the Nusra Front and Islamic State were not part of the deal.

A senior official close to the Syrian government said the truce had effectively collapsed.

“On the ground the truce does not exist,” said the official, who is not Syrian and declined to be named because he was giving a personal assessment. “The level of tension in Syria will increase in the coming months.”

The eruption of fighting on the front lines south of Aleppo marks the most serious challenge yet to the truce.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based organization that tracks the war, said dozens of government fighters had been killed in a big offensive to take the town of Telat al-Eis near the Aleppo-Damascus highway on Tuesday.

A rebel fighting in the area said the assault launched at dawn was backed by Russian air strikes and Iranian militias, adding that the attackers had suffered heavy losses. The Syrian military could not be reached for comment.

Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have both deployed in the southern Aleppo area in support of the government, while the Nusra Front is also fighting in close proximity to other rebels.

The Syrian prime minister was quoted on Sunday as saying government forces were preparing a major operation in the region with Russian support.

Further south in Homs province, Russia said one of its attack helicopters had crashed in the early hours of Tuesday, killing both pilots. It said the helicopter had not been shot down and the cause of the crash was being investigated.

“PROVOCATIVE” ELECTION

De Mistura, speaking in Tehran, said he and Amir-Abdollahian had agreed on the importance of the cessation continuing, that aid should reach every Syrian and that “a political process leading to a political transition is now crucially urgent”.

De Mistura, whose two predecessors quit, has said he wants the next round of Geneva talks to be “quite concrete” in leading towards a political transition.

Ahead of the first round of talks, Damascus had ruled out any discussion of the presidency, calling it a red line.

A senior Iranian official on Saturday rejected what he described as a U.S. request for Tehran’s help to make Assad leave power, saying he should serve out his term and be allowed to run in a presidential election “as any Syrian”.

Some members of the main Syrian opposition alliance, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), arrived in Geneva on Tuesday, and U.N. spokesman in Geneva Ahmad Fawzi said the talks were expected to begin on Wednesday.

De Mistura is working according to a U.N. Security Council resolution approved in December that sets out a political process including elections after the establishment of “credible” governance and the approval of a new constitution.

The Syrian government says it is holding Wednesday’s elections in line with the existing timetable that requires a vote every four years. Russia has said the vote does not go against the peace talks and is in line with the constitution.

French President Francois Hollande last month, however, said the idea was provocative and “totally unrealistic”.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva, and Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Millership and Giles Elgood)