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Israel hits Syrian site said to be linked to chemical weapons

By Sarah Dadouch and Jeffrey Heller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ISRAELI SIGNAL?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HEZBOLLAH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aid convoy reaches Syria’s Deir al-Zor after three-year siege

FILE PHOTO: A view shows damaged buildings in Deir al-Zor, eastern Syria February 19, 2014. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/File Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A convoy of aid arrived at Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria on Thursday, bringing supplies to soldiers and civilians days after the Syrian army broke a three-year Islamic State siege, Syrian state media reported.

The Syrian army and its allies reached Deir al-Zor on Tuesday in a sudden advance into the city after months of steady progress east across the desert, state news agency SANA said.

The United Nations has estimated that 93,000 civilians were living under IS siege in Deir al-Zor in “extremely difficult” conditions, supplied by air drops.

The 40 trucks that reached the area on Thursday carried basic needs such as fuel, food and medical supplies to civilians, and included two mobile clinics, SANA reported.

The army also holds another besieged enclave at the city’s airbase, separated from its advancing forces by hundreds of meters of IS-held ground.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Thursday that the army has not yet connected with that enclave, and is working on expanding its corridor from the west.

The advance has led to casualties on both sides, the British-based war monitor added.

The army expanded its control of ground around the corridor after heavy artillery and air strikes, SANA reported on Wednesday.

Separately, the U.S. special envoy to the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, Brett McGurk, said on Wednesday that a convoy of the group’s fighters and families from the Syria-Lebanon border was still in open desert.

The coalition is using air strikes to block the convoy from reaching IS-held territory in eastern Syria, to which the Syrian army and its ally Hezbollah were escorting it as part of a truce following fighting on the Syria-Lebanon border.

Islamic State is fighting separate advances from both the Syrian army and its allies in eastern and central Syria, as well as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in Raqqa.

The group has lost nearly half of its territory across both Iraq and Syria, but still has 6,000-8,000 fighters left in Syria, the United States-led coalition has said.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Syrian government forces used chemical weapons more than two dozen times: U.N.

Catherine Marchi-Uhel of France, newly-appointed head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) attends a news conference on Syria crimes at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Syrian forces have used chemical weapons more than two dozen times during the country’s civil war, including in April’s deadly attack on Khan Sheikhoun, U.N. war crimes investigators said on Wednesday.

A government warplane dropped sarin on the town in Idlib province, killing more than 80 civilians, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said, in the most conclusive findings to date from investigations into chemical weapons attacks during the conflict.

The Commission also said U.S. air strikes on a mosque in the village of Al-Jina in rural Aleppo in March that killed 38 people, including children, failed to take precautions in violation of international law.

The weapons used on Khan Sheikhoun were previously identified as containing sarin, an odourless nerve agent. But that conclusion, reached by a fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), did not say who was responsible.

“Government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition-held areas. In the gravest incident, the Syrian air force used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, killing dozens, the majority of whom were women and children,” the U.N. report said, declaring the attack a war crime.

In their 14th report since 2011, U.N. investigators said they had in all documented 33 chemical weapons attacks to date.

Twenty seven were by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, including seven between March 1 to July 7. Perpetrators had not been identified yet in six early attacks, they said.

The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. It said its strikes in Khan Sheikhoun hit a weapons depot belonging to rebel forces, a claim dismissed by the U.N. investigators.

That attack led U.S. President Donald Trump to launch the first U.S. air strikes on a Syrian air base.

A separate joint inquiry by the U.N. and OPCW aims to report by October on who was to blame for Khan Sheikhoun.

The U.N. investigators interviewed 43 witnesses, victims, and first responders linked to the attack. Satellite imagery, photos of bomb remnants and early warning reports were used.

‘GRAVELY CONCERNED’ ABOUT COALITION STRIKES

The independent investigators, led by Paulo Pinheiro, also said they were “gravely concerned about the impact of international coalition strikes on civilians”.

“In al-Jina, Aleppo, forces of the United States of America failed to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects when attacking a mosque, in violation of international humanitarian law,” the report said.

A U.S. military investigator said in June that the air strike was a valid and legal attack on a meeting of al Qaeda fighters. It was believed to have killed about two dozen men attending the group’s meeting and caused just one civilian casualty.

The American F-15s hit the building adjacent to the prayer hall with 10 bombs, followed by a Reaper drone that fired two Hellfire missiles at people fleeing, the U.N. report said.

“Most of the residents of al-Jina, relatives of victims and first responders interviewed by the Commission stated on that on the evening in question, a religious gathering was being hosted in the mosque’s service building. This was a regular occurrence.”

“The United States targeting team lacked an understanding of the actual target, including that it was part of a mosque where worshippers gathered to pray every Thursday,” it said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by John Stonestreet)

Syrian army fights to secure corridor into Deir al-Zor

By Laila Bassam and Angus McDowall

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army and its allies are fighting to secure and expand a precarious corridor to their comrades in Deir al-Zor a day they smashed through Islamic State lines to break the jihadist siege.

The army reached Deir al-Zor on Tuesday in a sudden, days-long thrust that followed months of steady advances east across the desert, breaking a siege that had lasted three years.

However, Islamic State counter-attacks lasted through Tuesday night, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, as the jihadists tried to repel the army.

It points to a tough battle ahead as the army aims to move from breaking the siege to driving Islamic State from its half of the city, the sort of street-by-street warfare in which the jihadists excel.

“The next step is to liberate the city,” a non-Syrian commander in the military alliance backing President Bashar al-Assad said.

Assad and his allies — Russia, Iran and Shi’ite militias including Hezbollah — will follow the relief of Deir al-Zor with an offensive along the Euphrates valley, the commander said.

The Euphrates valley cuts a lush, populous swathe of green about 260 km (160 miles) long and 10 km (6-7 miles) broad through the Syrian desert from Raqqa to the Iraqi border at al-Bukamal.

The area has been Islamic State’s stronghold in Syria but came under attack this year when an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by a U.S.-led coalition besieged and assaulted Raqqa.

Rapidly losing territory in both Syria and Iraq, Islamic State is falling back on the Euphrates towns downstream of Deir al-Zor, including al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal, where many expect it to make a last stand.

However, the jihadist group specializes in urban combat, using car bombs, mines, tunnels and drones, and has held out against full-scale attack for months in some towns and cities.

FIGHTING

Parallel with their thrust toward Deir al-Zor, the Syrian army and its allies have been fighting Islamic State in its last pocket of ground in central Syria, near the town of al-Salamiya on the Homs-Aleppo highway.

On Wednesday, army advances gained control of four villages in that area, further tightening the pocket, a military media unit run by Assad’s ally Hezbollah reported.

In Raqqa, the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, has taken about 65 percent of the jihadists’ former de facto capital in Syria, it has said.

Deir al-Zor lies along the southwest bank of the Euphrates. The government enclave includes the northern half of the city and the Brigade 137 military base to the west.

The government also holds an air base and nearby streets, separated from the rest of the enclave by hundreds of meters of IS-held ground and still cut off from the advancing army.

Instead of breaking the siege along the main road from Palmyra, stretches of which remain in Islamic State hands, the army reached the Brigade 137 along a narrow salient from the northwest.

“Work is progressing to secure the route and widen the flanks so as not to be cut or targeted by Daesh,” the commander said, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The route from the west into Brigade 137 is only about 500 meters (yards) wide, the commander said.

Islamic State counter-attacks in that area managed to cut the corridor into the enclave for several hours on Tuesday night using six car bombs, the Observatory reported.

The army will also push toward the still besieged airbase, southwards from the Brigade 137 camp and eastwards along the main highway, the commander said.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Syrian army, allies break Islamic State siege in eastern city

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government forces on Tuesday reached troops besieged for years by Islamic State in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, the militants’ last major stronghold in Syria, the army said.

Tanks and troops pressed quickly toward a government-held enclave in the city, where Islamic State has trapped thousands of civilians and Syrian soldiers since 2014. The advance has opened a land route linking that territory to the outside.

The advance into strategic prize Deir al-Zor, a city on the Euphrates river and once the center of Syria’s oil industry, is a significant victory for President Bashar al-Assad against Islamic State and another stinging blow to the group.

The group is being fought in Syria by government forces, backed by allies Iran and Russia, and separately by a U.S.-led alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters. In Iraq, the jihadists were driven out of their Mosul stronghold earlier this year.

Islamic State still holds half of Deir al-Zor city and much of the province, however, as well as parts of its former stronghold Raqqa to the northwest, where the U.S.-backed offensive is being fought.

“Our armed forces and allies, with support from Syrian and Russian warplanes, achieved the second phase of their operations in the Syrian desert,” Syria’s military said. “They have managed to break the siege.”

State media and a war monitoring group said advancing forces had linked up with the besieged troops at a garrison on the western edge of the city.

Footage on Syrian state TV showed soldiers cheering near the garrison. State media said residents in government-held parts of the city were celebrating the advance.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a nearby military air base and three districts remained under siege by IS. Battles still raged around the city, the British-based war monitor said.

Deir al-Zor governor Mohammed Ibrahim Samra told Reuters that government troops were also pushing toward the air base.

“The forces have begun to lift the siege,” he said. “Our residents have been waiting for this moment … forces are (trying to) break the siege on the military airport as well.”

“The coming days will see the clearing of Deir al-Zor city (of militants)” and advances on nearby countryside under Islamic State control, Samra added.

Assad congratulated the troops in a statement from his office.

The army and its allies made rapid advances in recent days pushing through Islamic State lines with the help of heavy artillery and Russian air strikes.

A Russian warship in the Mediterranean sea fired cruise missiles at Islamic State positions near Deir al-Zor to boost the offensive, Russia’s defense ministry said.

ISLAMIC STATE SQUEEZED

The city has been cut off from government-held Syria since 2013, after rebel groups rose up against Assad during the first flush of Syria’s six-year war. Islamic State then overran rebel positions and encircled the army enclave and nearby air base in 2014.

The United Nations said in August it estimated 93,000 civilians were living there in “extremely difficult” conditions. During the siege, high-altitude air drops have supplied them.

Deir al-Zor lies southeast of Islamic State’s former base in Raqqa.

Hemmed in on all sides, Islamic State fighters have fallen back on footholds downstream of Deir al-Zor in towns near the Iraq border.

The Deir al-Zor gains “form an important launching pad for expanding military operations in the area,” the army said.

For Damascus, the latest advance caps months of steady progress as the army and its allies turned from victories over rebels in western Syria to push east against Islamic State.

The eastwards march has on occasion brought them into conflict with U.S.-backed forces.

Still, the rival campaigns have mostly stayed out of each other’s way, and the U.S.-led coalition has stressed it is not seeking war with Assad.

In a statement on Sunday an alliance of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias allied to Damascus, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, accused Washington of trying to hinder the advance to Deir al-Zor.

An official in the pro-Assad alliance said senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani was closely monitoring fighting, a sign of Iran’s close military involvement.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis; Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut and Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Writing by John Davison; Editing by Andrew Roche and Toby Davis)

U.S. envoy says North Korean leader ‘begging for war’ as U.N. mulls sanctions

Secretary of Defense James Mattis (L) makes a statement outside the West Wing of the White House in response to North Korea's latest nuclear testing, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford listens, in Washington, U.S., September 3, 2017

By Christine Kim and Michelle Nichols

SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States on Monday said countries trading with North Korea were aiding its “dangerous nuclear intentions” as the United Nations Security Council mulled tough new sanctions and the isolated regime showed signs of planning more missile tests.

South Korea said it was talking to Washington about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula following the North’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sunday.

At a Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was “begging for war” and urged the 15-member group to adopt the strongest possible measures to deter him.

“War is never something the United States wants. We don’t want it now. But our country’s patience is not unlimited. We will defend our allies and our territory,” Haley said.

“The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions,” she said.

Haley said the United States will circulate a new Security Council resolution on North Korea this week and wants a vote on it next Monday.

China, a top trading partner with North Korea, and Russia called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

“China will never allow chaos and war on the (Korean) Peninsula,” said Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations.

Russia said peace in the region was in jeopardy.

“A comprehensive settlement to the nuclear and other issues plaguing the Korean peninsula can be arrived at solely through political diplomatic channels,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Typically, China and Russia only view a test of a long-range missile or a nuclear weapon as a trigger for further possible U.N. sanctions.

U.S. President Donald Trump had asked to be briefed on all available military options, according to his defense chief.

Officials said activity around missile launch sites suggested North Korea planned more missile tests.

“We have continued to see signs of possibly more ballistic missile launches. We also forecast North Korea could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Jang Kyoung-soo, acting deputy minister of national defense policy, told a parliament hearing on Monday.

North Korea tested two ICBMs in July that could fly about 10,000 km (6,200 miles), putting many parts of the U.S. mainland within range and prompting a new round of tough international sanctions.

MILITARY EXERCISES

South Korea’s air force and army conducted exercises involving long-range air-to-surface and ballistic missiles on Monday following the North’s nuclear test on Sunday, its joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.

In addition to the drill, South Korea will cooperate with the United States and seek to deploy “strategic assets like aircraft carriers and strategic bombers”, Jang said.

South Korea’s defense ministry also said it would deploy the four remaining launchers of a new U.S. missile defense system after the completion of an environmental assessment by the government.

The rollout of the controversial Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system at a site south of the South Korean capital, Seoul, which is vehemently opposed by neighboring China and Russia, had been delayed since June.

At the Security Council, neither Russia nor China mentioned their long-held opposition to THAAD or the prospect of further U.N. sanctions in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear test.

North Korea said it tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile on Sunday, prompting a warning from U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened.

People walk past a street monitor showing a news report about North Korea’s nuclear test in Tokyo, Japan, September 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

Trump has previously vowed to stop North Korea developing nuclear weapons and said he would unleash “fire and fury” if it threatened U.S. territory

Despite the tough talk, the immediate focus of the international response was on tougher economic sanctions.

Diplomats have said the Security Council could now consider banning North Korean textile exports and its national airline, stop supplies of oil to the government and military, prevent North Koreans from working abroad and add top officials to a blacklist to subject them to an asset freeze and travel ban.

Asked about Trump’s threat to punish countries that trade with North Korea, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China has dedicated itself to resolving the North Korean issue via talks, and China’s efforts had been recognized.

“What we absolutely cannot accept is that on the one hand (we are) making arduous efforts to peacefully resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, and on the other hand (our) interests are being sanctioned or harmed. This is both not objective and not fair,” he told a regular briefing.

On possible new U.N. sanctions, and whether China would support cutting off oil, Geng said it would depend on the outcome of Security Council discussions.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said in an editorial that North Korea was “playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship” and it should wake up to the fact that such a tactic “can never bring security it pursues”.

SKEPTICISM

While South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed on Monday to work with the United States to pursue stronger sanctions, Russia voiced scepticism.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said sanctions on North Korea had reached the limit of their impact. Any more would be aimed at breaking its economy, so a decision to impose further constraints would become dramatically harder, he told a BRICS summit in China.

South Korea says the aim of stronger sanctions is to draw North Korea into dialogue. But, in a series of tweets on Sunday, Trump also appeared to rebuke South Korea for that approach.

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!” Trump said on Twitter.

Still, Trump’s response was more orderly and less haphazard than he had offered after North Korea’s previous hostile actions.

His handling of its latest nuclear test reflected a more traditional approach to crisis management, which U.S. officials said illustrated the influence of Mattis and the new White House chief of staff, retired Marine Corps General John Kelly.

Japanese and South Korean stock markets both closed down about 1 percent on Monday, while safe-haven assets including gold and sovereign bonds ticked higher, but trade was cautious. U.S. stock markets were closed for the Labor Day holiday.

“Assuming the worst on the Korean peninsula has not proven to be a winning trading strategy this year,” said Sean Callow, a senior foreign exchange strategist at Westpac Bank.

“Investors seem reluctant to price in anything more severe than trade sanctions, and the absence of another ‘fire and fury’ Trump tweet has helped encourage markets to respond warily.”

South Korea’s finance minister vowed to support financial markets if instability showed signs of spreading to the real economy.

(Additional reporting by Shin-hyung Lee, Hyunjoo Jin and Cynthia Kim in SEOUL, Steve Holland, David Brunnstrom, Tim Ahmann, David Shepardson and John Walcott in WASHINGTON, John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI, Wayne Cole and Swati Pandey in SYDNEY; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Jeff Mason; Editing by Robert Birsel and Paul Simao)

Australian military probes ‘rumors’ of possible war crimes in Afghanistan

FILE PHOTO: The rear gunner of an Australian Chinook transport chopper mans a heavy machine gun during a low flight over the Arghandab valley in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, May 3, 2010. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

cThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in July on an alleged cover-up of the killing of an Afghan boy as well as hundreds of pages of leaked defense force documents relating to the secretive operations of the country’s special forces.

On Friday, the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force released a statement saying it was conducting an inquiry “into rumors of possible breaches of the Laws of Armed Conflict” by Australian troops in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016.

“The inquiry would like anyone who has information regarding possible breaches of the Laws of Armed Conflict by Australian forces in Afghanistan, or rumors of them, to contact the inquiry,” the statement read.

Australia is not a member of NATO but is a staunch U.S. ally and has had troops in Afghanistan since 2002.

As recently as May, Australia recommitted to the 16-year-long, seemingly intractable war against the Taliban and other Islamist militants by sending an additional 30 troops to Afghanistan to join the NATO-led training and assistance mission.

That brought Australia’s total Afghan deployment to 300 troops.

(Reporting by Joseph Hinchliffe; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Philippine troops in tough push in Marawi; three dead, 52 hurt

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine troops have fought one of their toughest clashes against militants loyal to Islamic State in a southern town, and three soldiers were killed and 52 wounded, many by rebel bombs as they pushed forward, an officer said on Friday.

The Islamists shocked the country by seizing large parts of Marawi town in May. After more than 100 days of fighting, pockets of fighters remain dug in in the ruins.

The army made its push on Thursday, the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, and seized a bridge in what military spokesman Brigadier General Restituto Padilla described as some of the toughest fighting yet.

At least five militants were killed, he said.

“We are working to clear the remaining areas where the enemy is holding out,” Padilla said in a statement.

“Following a short pause early today, to give due respect to the solemnity and significance of this day, the operations will continue without any let up,” he said, referring to the Muslim holiday.

The military has expressed confidence the end is in sight for what has been its biggest security crisis in years, which started in May, but the latest casualties underscore the difficulty that they still face in the battlefield.

In all, 620 militants, 45 civilians and 136 soldiers and policemen have been killed in the fighting that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and raised fears about Islamic State establishing a foothold in Southeast Asia.

The military has missed repeated targets and deadlines to crush the rebels in Marawi, a largely Muslim town on the southern island of Mindanao, raising questions about whether it can contain a wider rebellion.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who placed all of Mindanao under martial law until the end of the year after the militants occupied Marawi, has urged lawmakers to approve funds to beef up the army by 20,000 troops.

On Friday, Duterte said he saw no reason to lift martial law in Mindanao, citing violence in other parts of the island.

“The way it looks, there seems to be some spillover,” he said, without elaborating.

Muslim rebels in the south of the predominately Christian Philippines have for generations battled for greater autonomy but in recent years hopes for peace were raised with several factions engaged in talks.

But the Marawi fighting has dimmed those hopes.

For an interactive on battle for Marawi, click: http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/PHILIPPINES-ATTACK/010041F032X/index.html

(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz; Additional reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Nearly 400 die as Myanmar army steps up crackdown on Rohingya militants

Rohingya refugees stands in an open place during heavy rain, as they are hold by Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) after illegally crossing the border, in Teknaf, Bangladesh, August 31, 2017.

COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Nearly 400 people have died in fighting that has rocked Myanmar’s northwest for a week, new official data show, making it probably the deadliest bout of violence to engulf the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority in decades.

Around 38,000 Rohingya have crossed into Bangladesh from Myanmar, United Nations sources said, a week after Rohingya insurgents attacked police posts and an army base in Rakhine state, prompting clashes and a military counteroffensive.

“As of August 31, 38,000 people are estimated to have crossed the border into Bangladesh,” the officials said on Friday, in their latest estimate.

The army says it is conducting clearance operations against “extremist terrorists” and security forces have been told to protect civilians. But Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh say a campaign of arson and killings aims to force them out.

The treatment of Myanmar’s roughly 1.1 million Rohingya is the biggest challenge facing national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, accused by some Western critics of not speaking out for a minority that has long complained of persecution.

Police officers guard near a house that was burnt down in recent violence in Maungdaw, Myanmar August 31, 2017. RETUERS/Soe Zeya Tun

The clashes and ensuing army crackdown have killed about 370 Rohingya insurgents, but also 13 security forces, two government officials and 14 civilians, the Myanmar military said on Thursday.

By comparison, communal violence in 2012 in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine, led to the killing of nearly 200 people and the displacement of about 140,000, most of them Rohingya.

The fighting is a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has simmered since October, when similar but much smaller Rohingya attacks on security posts prompted a brutal military response dogged by allegations of rights abuses.

Myanmar evacuated more than 11,700 “ethnic residents” from the area affected by fighting, the army said, referring to the non-Muslim population of northern Rakhine.

More than 150 Rohingya insurgents staged fresh attacks on security forces on Thursday near villages occupied by Hindus, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar said, adding that about 700 members of such families had been evacuated.

“Four of the terrorists were arrested, including one 13-year-old boy,” it said, adding that security forces had arrested two more men near a Maungdaw police outpost on suspicion of involvement in the attacks.

About 20,000 more Rohingya trying to flee are stuck in no man’s land at the border, the U.N. sources said, as aid workers in Bangladesh struggle to alleviate the sufferings of a sudden influx of thousands of hungry and traumatized people.

While some Rohingya try to cross by land, others attempt a perilous boat journey across the Naf River separating the two countries.

Bangladesh border guards found the bodies of 15 Rohingya Muslims, 11 children among them, floating in the river on Friday, area commander Lt. Col. Ariful Islam told Reuters.

That takes to about 40 the total of Rohingya known to have died by drowning.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Mattis signs orders to send additional troops to Afghanistan

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis looks on during a bilateral meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., August 30, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Thursday he had signed deployment orders to send additional troops to Afghanistan but did not specify the size of the force.

“Yes, I have signed orders but it is not complete. In other words I have signed some of the (orders for) troops that will go and we are identifying the specific ones,” Mattis told reporters.

Mattis declined to comment on how many additional troops were included in the orders, but U.S. officials have told Reuters that President Donald Trump has given Mattis the authority to send about 4,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

“It is more advisers, it is more enablers, fire support, for example,” Mattis said. He added that no additional troops had moved in yet and could take a “couple of days.”

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

The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated for the United States and Afghan government over the past few years.

The Afghan government was assessed by the U.S. military to control or influence almost 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts as of Feb. 20, a nearly 11 percentage-point decrease from the same time in 2016, according to data released by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

About 11,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Wednesday, thousands more than it has previously stated.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by James Dalgleish and Alistair Bell)

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