Tag Archives: War

Syrian rebels begin to leave last opposition-held Homs district

FILE PHOTO: A road sign that shows the direction to Homs is seen in Damascus, Syria April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

HOMS, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels started leaving the last opposition-held district of Homs city on Saturday in the final phase of an evacuation deal that will see President Bashar al-Assad’s government take back the area.

Fighters took with them their light weapons, as agreed, and boarded buses along with women and children. Many were headed for insurgent-held Idlib province in Syria’s northwest, or the town of Jarablus on the border with Turkey.

At least four buses had left al-Waer by mid-afternoon, and dozens more were expected to follow, to bring more than 2,500 people out of the district long besieged by government forces and their allies in the country’s civil war.

The evacuation of al-Waer is one of the largest of its kind. It follows a number of similar deals in recent months that have brought many parts of western Syria long held by the opposition and besieged by government and allied forces back under Assad’s control.

Syria’s government calls the evacuation deals, which have also taken place in besieged areas around Damascus, and in Aleppo at the end of last year, reconciliation agreements. It says they allow services and security to be restored.

The opposition has criticized the agreements, however, saying they amount to forced displacement of Assad’s opponents away from Syria’s main urban centers, often after years of siege and bombardment.

The United Nations has criticized both the use of siege tactics which precede such deals and the evacuations themselves as amounting to forcible displacement.

The al-Waer deal, backed by Syria’s ally Russia, began to be implemented in March. Thousands of people have left in a several stages. By the time it is completed, up to 20,000 people will have left the district, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says.

Homs Governor Talal Barazi said the final phase of the evacuation would last some 20 hours, and expected it to be completed late on Saturday or early on Sunday.

“This is the last day. The number of militants expected (to leave) is around 700. With their families the total number could be around 3,000,” he told reporters in al-Waer.

Barazi said at least 20,000 inhabitants remained in al-Waer, and tens of thousands displaced during fighting would begin to return to the neighborhood after the deal was completed.

“Over the next few weeks communications networks will return” as well as electricity and water, he said.

RUSSIAN MILITARY POLICE

As in other evacuation deals, some rebels have decided to stay in al-Waer and hand over their weapons as Syria’s military and its allies move in.

Young men of conscription age will be required to join the armed forces for military service.

A Russian officer helping oversee the deal’s implementation told reporters Russian military police would help with the transition inside al-Waer.

“Russia has a guarantor role in this agreement. Russian military police will stay, and will carry out duties inside the district,” Sergei Druzhin said through an Arabic interpreter.

Assad’s government, backed militarily since 2015 by Russia and since early on in the war by Iranian-backed militias, has negotiated the pacts from a position of strength and brought Syria’s major urban areas in the west back under its control.

Homs, Syria’s third-largest city before the conflict, was an early center of the popular uprising against Assad in 2011 that turned into a civil war which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million.

As the government brings more areas under its control, rebels still hold pockets of territory around Damascus and in the south, as well as almost all of Idlib province.

Islamic State holds swathes of territory in the east of Syria, and is being fought by separate forces, including U.S.-backed fighters and Russian-backed Syrian troops.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

U.S.: Military solution to North Korea would be ‘tragic on an unbelievable scale’

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis gestures during a press briefing on the campaign to defeat ISIS at the Pentagon in Washington, U.S., May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

By Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that any military solution to the North Korea crisis would be “tragic on an unbelievable scale” and Washington was working internationally to find a diplomatic solution.

North Korea has defied all calls to rein in its nuclear and missile programs, even from China, its lone major ally, calling them legitimate self-defense.

It has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland, and experts say its test on Sunday of a new missile was another important step toward that aim.

“We are going to continue to work the issue,” Mattis told a Pentagon news conference.

“If this goes to a military solution, it’s going to be tragic on an unbelievable scale. So our effort is to work with the U.N., work with China, work with Japan, work with South Korea to try to find a way out of this situation.”

The remarks were one of the clearest indicators yet that President Donald Trump’s administration will seek to exhaust alternatives before turning to military action to force Pyongyang’s hand.

The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea to guard against the North Korean threat, has called on China to do more to rein in its neighbor.

Mattis appeared to defend China’s most recent efforts, even as he acknowledged Pyongyang’s march forward.

“They (North Korea) clearly aren’t listening but there appears to be some impact by the Chinese working here. It’s not obviously perfect when they launch a missile,” Mattis said, when asked about Sunday’s launch.

RE-ENTRY CAPABILITY?

South Korea has said the North’s missile program was progressing faster than expected, with Sunday’s test considered successful in flight.

North Korea said the launch tested the capability to carry a “large-size heavy nuclear warhead,” and its ambassador in Beijing has said that Pyongyang would continue such test launches “any time, any place.”

Mattis acknowledged that Pyongyang had likely learned a great deal from the latest test of what U.S. officials say was a KN-17 missile, which was believed to have survived re-entry to some degree.

“They went to a very high apogee and when it came down obviously from that altitude they probably learned a lot from it. But I’m not willing to characterize it beyond that right now,” Mattis said.

David Wright, co-director and senior scientist at the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, the big question was whether North Korea could build a re-entry vehicle for a long-range missile that wouldn’t burn up during re-entry and could keep a warhead from becoming too hot in the process.

“This test in principle gave them a lot of information about this, assuming they had sensors that could send information back during reentry so they could monitor the heat, or they could recover the reentry vehicle and examine it,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Cynthia Osterman)

South Sudan forces killed 114 civilians around Yei in six months: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: A soldier walks past women carrying their belongings near Bentiu, northern South Sudan, February 11, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola /File Photo

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – South Sudanese pro-government forces killed at least 114 civilians in and around Yei town between July 2016 and January 2017, as well as committing uncounted rapes, looting and torture, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday.

“Attacks were committed with an alarming degree of brutality and, like elsewhere in the country, appeared to have an ethnic dimension,” a report on the U.N. investigation said.

“These cases included attacks on funerals and indiscriminate shelling of civilians; cases of sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls, including those fleeing fighting; often committed in front of the victims’ families.”

Fighting flared when the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), loyal to President Salva Kiir, pursued his rival and former deputy Riek Machar and a small band of followers as they fled from the capital Juba, southwest through Yei and into neighboring Congo.

The pursuit of Machar ushered in a particularly violent period in South Sudan’s Equatorias region, with multiple localized conflicts, particularly in Yei, the report said.

“In view of the restrictions of access faced by (the U.N.), the number of documented cases may only be a fraction of those actually committed. Some of the human rights violations and abuses committed in and around Yei may amount to war crimes and/or crimes against humanity and warrant further investigation.”

South Sudan army spokesperson Col. Santo Domic Chol told Reuters on Friday that the report was “baseless”.

“This is not the first time the U.N. has accused the SPLA and tried to portray us as enemies of the people,” he said.

“The SPLA is one of the biggest military institutions in the country and it accommodates people from different background and the whole SPLA cannot go out and rape citizens… so it has to be specific that we have seen two or three SPLA soldiers in such location committing such crimes,” he said.

Domic said President Kiir had given orders to all SPLA commanders in Yei to punish soldiers who commit gender-based violence.

South Sudan has been in chaos since Kiir and Machar’s rivalry first sparked a conflict in December 2013, with U.N. investigators finding gang rape on an “epic” scale, ethnic cleansing and, most recently, famine.

But Yei, a traditionally ethnically diverse area, had been largely peaceful, the report said.

The town had an estimated population of 300,000 before the crisis began in July 2016, but 60-70 percent of the population had fled by September.

Civilians from Yei and other areas poured into Uganda, with 320,000 arriving as refugees by the end of 2016, 80 per cent of them women and children. About 180,000 more were registered in Uganda by the first week of February 2017.

Many people were trapped by the fighting, and others were attacked on the road as they tried to escape, but the SPLA helped ethnic Dinka civilians – the same ethnicity of President Kiir – to move to the capital, providing them with the use of military and civilian vehicles for transport.

Citing data from South Sudan’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, the report said 46,000 Dinka civilians, mainly from Yei town, had been registered in Juba by the end of 2016.

Violence has continued in the area, with rebel forces attacking Yei and killing at least four government soldiers earlier this week.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Turkey ready to retaliate against any threats, Erdogan warns

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivers a statement to reporters alongside U.S President Donald Trump after their meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S. May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkey is ready to retaliate if it faces a threat from the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and will not shirk from launching a military campaign if need be, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.

In his first public address since returning from a visit with U.S. President Donald Trump, Erdogan said he told the United States that Ankara would “exercise its rights under the rules of engagement”, without consulting anyone, if it felt it needed to.

Turkey regards the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union. Washington sees the YPG as distinct from the PKK and as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

“We are facing a picture where terrorist organizations are constantly supported, strengthened and are confronting us. Turkey is not a country that will consent to such treatment,” Erdogan said in a speech to business leaders in Istanbul.

“With the Euphrates Shield operation we have carried out the first step to foil this plot. After this, we will not hesitate to carry out similar operations whenever we see necessary.”

Ankara launched its “Euphrates Shield” operation inside Syria last year, backing Syrian rebels with tanks, air strikes and special forces to sweep Islamic State from its southern border – and stop the advance of the YPG.

“If these terrorist organizations constitute a threat toward our country, we would do what is necessary by exercising our rights under the rules of engagement. We are telling you this now in advance,” Erdogan said.

“When we take this step, we don’t speak or consult with anyone as we don’t have any time to waste. We would just take the step.”

ENVOY IN FOCUS

Erdogan said he told the United States that Turkey could not be part of the operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State because of the participation of the YPG.

His comments came hours after Ankara said the United States should dismiss its special envoy in the battle against Islamic State, citing his support for the Kurdish militia.

“Brett McGurk, the USA’s special envoy in the fight against Daesh (Islamic State), is definitely and clearly giving support to the PKK and YPG. It would be beneficial if this person is changed,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told NTV television.

Cavusoglu said Trump had understood Turkey’s position, and did not challenge Erdogan when the Turkish president set out his possible response to the YPG.

Differences over Syria policy have caused friction with Washington, a NATO ally of Turkey’s. U.S. officials said this month that the White House had approved supplying arms to the YPG, a decision that caused alarm in Ankara.

Last month, Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish fighters in Iraq’s Sinjar region and YPG militia in Syria. Washington voiced concern over the air strikes and said they harmed the coalition’s fight against Islamic State.

Adding to the tension, on Thursday U.S. Senator John McCain called for the expulsion of Turkey’s U.S. ambassador after violence erupted between protesters and Turkish security personnel during Erdogan’s visit.

“We should throw their ambassador the hell out of the United States of America … This kind of thing cannot go unresponded to diplomatically,” McCain, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told MSNBC in an interview on Thursday, adding that legal action could also be pursued.

Turkey blamed the violence outside its ambassador’s residence on demonstrators linked to the PKK, but Washington’s police chief called it a “brutal attack” on peaceful protesters.

Police said 11 people were injured, including a Washington police officer, and two people were arrested for assault.

(Writing by David Dolan and Dominic Evans; Editing by Ralph Boulton, Larry King)

Fresh Syria peace talks off to another stumbling start

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura attends a meeting during Intra Syria talks at the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – Syria peace talks hosted by the United Nations in Geneva spawned a new series of meetings on Thursday with no hint of tangible progress toward a deal to end the six-year-old civil war.

U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura had promised a refreshingly brisk pace of business-like meetings over a short four-day round, with new elections, a new constitution, reformed governance and counter-terrorism on the agenda.

He opened proceedings on Thursday by proposing setting up a “consultative mechanism”, which he would head, to avoid a power vacuum in Syria before a new constitution is in place.

That was rejected by the Syrian government and raised a string of questions from the opposition, so de Mistura said he was “moving beyond” those discussions to start a new set of expert meetings with each side.

A U.N. statement referred to “an initial part of a process of expert meetings on legal and constitutional issues of relevance to the intra-Syrian talks”.

In a sign of the chasm between foes who have frustrated repeated international efforts at peacemaking, they are not negotiating face-to-face but only in turn with de Mistura.

Government negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari told reporters that the expert meetings were an initiative from his delegation and would take place on Thursday and continue Friday if needed.

“We hope that this step … will help in pushing this round forward, and the Geneva process in general toward the seriousness that is hoped for by everyone,” Ja’afari said.

He added that the constitution was “the exclusive right of the Syrian people, and we do not accept any foreign interference in it”.

Opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi told Reuters that the Damascus delegation was trying to divert attention from the main objective of the talks – political transition, a phrase used by the opposition to mean Assad’s ouster.

Asked if the three days of talks had made headway, he said: “Not too much. Original expectations were not very high.”

The United States and Russia – who back the rebels and Assad respectively – forged an international consensus in December 2015 mandating de Mistura to push for a political solution.

But the talks have been increasingly marginalized over the past year as Assad’s forces, backed by Russia and Iran, have won back territory from the rebels, while the United States has largely stepped back from a leading role in Syrian diplomacy.

Syria’s war has killed hundreds of thousands and created more than 6 million refugees. About 625,000 people are besieged, mostly by Assad’s forces.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Duterte says China’s Xi threatened war if Philippines drills for oil

Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in Beijing. REUTERS/Etienne Oliveau/Pool

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday Chinese counterpart China Xi Jinping had warned him there would be war if Manila tried to enforce an arbitration ruling and drill for oil in a disputed part of the South China Sea.

In remarks that could infuriate China, Duterte hit back at domestic critics who said he has gone soft on Beijing by refusing to push it to comply with an award last year by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled largely in favor of the Philippines.

Duterte said he discussed it with Xi when the two met in Beijing on Monday, and got a firm, but friendly warning.

“We intend to drill oil there, if it’s yours, well, that’s your view, but my view is, I can drill the oil, if there is some inside the bowels of the earth because it is ours,” Duterte said in a speech, recalling his conversation with Xi.

“His response to me, ‘we’re friends, we don’t want to quarrel with you, we want to maintain the presence of warm relationship, but if you force the issue, we’ll go to war.”

Duterte has long expressed his admiration for Xi and said he would raise the arbitration ruling with him eventually, but needed first to strengthen relations between the two countries, which the Philippines is hoping will yield billions of dollars in Chinese loans and infrastructure investments.

The Hague award clarifies Philippine sovereign rights in its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone to access offshore oil and gas fields, including the Reed Bank, 85 nautical miles off its coast.

It also invalidated China’s nine-dash line claim on its maps denoting sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.

Duterte has a reputation for his candid, at times incendiary, remarks and his office typically backpeddles on his behalf and blames the media for distorting his most controversial comments.

Duterte recalled the same story about his discussion with Xi on oil exploration in a recorded television show aired moments after the speech.

He said Xi told him “do not touch it”.

He said Xi had promised that the arbitration ruling would be discussed in future, but not now.

Duterte said China did not want to bring up the arbitral ruling at a time when other claimant countries, like Vietnam, might also decide to file cases against it at the arbitration tribunal.

It was not the first time the firebrand leader has publicly discussed the content of private meetings with other world leaders.

His remarks came the same day that China and the Philippines held their first session in a two-way consultation process on the South China Sea.

They exchanged views on “the importance of appropriately handling concerns, incidents and disputes involving the South China Sea”, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that gave few details.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Martin Petty)

In Syria, a bus ride shows shifting map of war

Passengers wait in Qamishli city in Syria's Kurdish-held northeast to embark on a bus headed for government-controlled Aleppo, Syria May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said

By Rodi Said

QAMISHLI, Syria (Reuters) – A new bus service linking Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast with the government-held west, unthinkable before Islamic State was driven from the area, is raising hopes of renewed commerce between two long-estranged parts of a fractured country.

Kurdish-led authorities hope the new corridor will end the economic isolation of their region, bordered as it is by hostile parties. For Damascus, the corridor holds out the prospect of sourcing fuel and food from the resource-rich northeast.

The service from Kurdish-controlled Qamishli to Aleppo city goes through territory captured from Islamic State (IS) by Russian-backed Syrian government forces in February. Until then, only an intrepid few would make a journey that entailed crossing through areas held by Islamic State and competing rebel groups.

“Before, there were no passengers, very, very few, because of the security conditions,” said Ahmad Abou Abboud, the head of Qamishli office of the bus company that started the service in late April.

Demand has risen steadily since the first busses – sleek, white, air-conditioned coaches with purple curtains – went into operation. Weekly trips have increased from two to three, Abboud told Reuters in Qamishli.

A Kurdish official said so far the road was being used only for travel, not trade.

The new bus service is the result of one of the most important shifts in the map of the Syrian conflict in recent times, with the areas controlled by government forces and Kurdish-allied militias being linked up near the city of Manbij.

HISTORIC ENMITY

It points to the highly nuanced state of relations between the Damascus government of President Bashar al-Assad and the Kurdish authorities that have established control over wide areas of the north since war began in 2011.

Despite historic enmity, Syria’s Kurds and government have seldom clashed. They have also found themselves fighting the same adversaries in the civil war in areas where their military interests have converged, including Turkey-backed rebel groups.

Its critics say the main Kurdish militia, the YPG, has cooperated with government forces. The YPG denies this.

The newly opened route passes west from Qamishli through a swathe of territory held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG. Much of the SDF-held territory was captured from Islamic State with support from the U.S.-led coalition.

The SDF-held region meets areas held by the Syrian government and its allies to the south of Manbij.

“We heard about this route in the media, after that we knew it was opened,” Abou Abboud said. “We were in contact with the relevant parties, and we have contacts with all parties – the regime and the autonomous administration.

“The two sides facilitated it.”

Abdul Karim Saroukhan, head of the Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria, said the bus route was a private initiative, and not sponsored by the government he runs from the city of Amuda 30 km (20 miles) from Qamishli.

Speaking to Reuters, he said the route had yet to be used for commerce. In a Reuters interview in March, Saroukhan expressed hope the route would end the economic “siege” imposed on his region, which is bordered to the north by Turkey and to the east by the Iraqi Kurdish administration – both of which are hostile to the nascent Kurdish government in northern Syria.

Syrian government officials could not be reached for comment. An official in Damascus however said the bus service was a positive thing and suggested it had government approval.

“Any move that helps geographic contact between Syrian regions with the knowledge of the Syrian state is viewed as a helpful, good thing, and helps to restore life to normalcy,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Both sides have recently hinted they could be ready to reach a political accommodation. The Kurdish YPG militia has said it would have “no problem” with the government once Kurdish rights were secured, and the Syrian foreign minister has expressed confidence an “understanding” could be reached.

The YPG has allowed the Syrian government to maintain control over pockets of territory in the northeast, including Qamishli airport from which flights go to Damascus.

The government has meanwhile allowed the YPG to maintain control of a Kurdish neighborhood of Aleppo city.

Suspicion lingers however as the sides promote conflicting visions for Syria’s future. The Kurdish groups and their allies in the north want to preserve their autonomy in any peace deal, and promote a federal model for Syria.

Assad, who controls swathes of western Syria, has repeatedly said he wants to bring all the country back under government rule, and last year dismissed the local governance created in Kurdish areas as “temporary structures”.

(Writing/additional reporting by Angus McDowall and Tom Perry in Beirut; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Islamic State kills villagers as fighting with Syrian army rages near highway

Brooklyn man sentenced to 15 years prison over Islamic State support

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State attacked a village near the main road between Aleppo and Homs on Thursday, killing many residents, Syrian state media and a war monitor said.

The jihadist group has lost large swathes of territory recently in Syria after expanding rapidly in 2014 and 2015, and is under assault from a U.S.-backed coalition of Arab and Kurdish militias as well as by the army, backed by Russia.

However, it still mounts occasional counter attacks including a swift advance in December to capture Palmyra, which it held for several weeks before the army retook the city.

The insurgents said on a social media feed it had captured the village of Aqarib al-Safi, but the government-run SANA news agency reported that the attack had been repulsed.

SANA said Islamic State fighters had killed 20 people in the village before the army and allied militia drove them away. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that clashes were still going on there and in the village of al-Saboura.

The Observatory said that at least 34 people, including both civilians and fighters on both sides, had been killed and that dozens had been injured.

Many of the people who live in that part of Syria belong to the Ismaili sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, and would be regarded by Islamic State as infidels. In 2015, Islamic State killed 46 civilians in a nearby town, the Observatory said.

The Observatory, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said that at least 15 of those killed were civilians, five of them children, and that three of them died in execution-style killings.

The villages are north of al-Salamiya close to the only road still useable between Aleppo and other parts of Syria held by the government.

The army and its allies hold the road and a small strip of land on each side, with Islamic State controlling the eastern area and Syrian rebel groups, including hardline Islamists, the western area.

The Observatory said the attack was the most violent so far this year by Islamic State on the road.

Syria’s civil war began in 2011 after mass protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad and has killed hundreds of thousands of people, driven half the country’s population from their homes and dragged in world powers.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Islamic State mining Mosul to stop families fleeing as Iraqi forces advance

Displaced Iraqi people gather to be transported to a camp for displaced people during the battle between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, May 17, 2017. REUTERS/ Alaa Al-Marjani

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State militants are planting bombs near front doors in Mosul to prevent civilians leaving, a federal police commander and witnesses said on Wednesday, as Iraqi forces make their final push against the jihadists after seven months of fighting.

Trapped in a shrinking area of the city, the militants are increasingly using the several hundred thousand civilians under their control as human shields to avoid being targeted or perhaps tarnish what Iraqi leaders describe as imminent victory.

Backed by a U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi forces have made rapid gains since opening a new front in northwest Mosul this month and have now dislodged Islamic State from all but about 12 square km (5 square miles) of the city.

The militants, however, still control the Old City, where they are expected to make their last stand in the densely populated, narrow streets that are impassible for armored vehicles, forcing Iraqi forces to advance on foot.

The Iraqi government is pushing to declare victory by the holy month of Ramadan – expected to begin on May 27 – even if pockets of resistance remain in the Old City, according to military commanders.

Lieutenant-General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi told state TV his elite Counter Terrorism Services (CTS) were advancing steadily in the Rifaie and Najjar districts, aiming to reach the western bank of Tigris river and complete the Old City’s encirclement.

“God willing the coming hours we will complete our assigned task,” he said on Wednesday.

The militants had deployed 30 suicide car bombs against his troops in Mosul over the past two days, he said.

In the Siha district, Assadi said, Islamic State had chained civilians by the hands and used them as human shields to move around. “We saw them moving with their weapons in the midst of the civilians but we did not strike them,” he said.

The civilians were unchained and released once the militants reached cover, Assadi said.

Hundreds if not more civilians have been killed under bombardment by the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi airforce during the Mosul campaign and the rest are eating weeds and boiled wheat grain to survive as food runs out.

Fearful of triggering bombs if they open the front door, civilians are fleeing through the same holes Islamic State knocked through interior walls to move around the city without being targeted from the sky.

The number of people fleeing Mosul has surged since the re-intensification of hostilities this month.

Nearly 10,000 people were displaced from the city on Tuesday, according to Iraqi government figures, joining an exodus of nearly 700,000 who have left Mosul since the start of the campaign last October.

Two civilians were killed when they returned to the Islah al-Ziraei district days after it was retaken by Iraqi forces when they accidentally triggered a bomb that Islamic State had planted to prevent them leaving their home.

(Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Red Cross finds 115 bodies in CAR diamond-mining town

DAKAR (Reuters) – Red Cross workers have found 115 bodies in Central African Republic’s diamond-mining town of Bangassou after several days of militia attacks, the president of the aid group’s local branch said on Wednesday.

The battle for control of the town marks a new escalation in a conflict that began in 2013 when mainly Muslim Seleka fighters ousted then-President Francois Bozize, prompting reprisal killings from Christian militias.

Recent clashes have centered on diamond-rich central and southern areas of the country, with rival militias battling among themselves to control them, aid workers say.

“We found 115 bodies and 34 have been buried,” Antoine Mbao Bogo told Reuters by phone from the capital Bangui. “They died in various ways: from knives, from clubs and bullet wounds.”

A senior U.N. official had previously reported 26 civilian deaths.

Hundreds of militia with heavy weaponry seized the southeastern border town of Bangassou at the weekend and U.N. peacekeepers have since then been trying to wrest it back.

The deployment of extra U.N. troops and air strikes have helped peacekeepers regain control of strategic points, U.N. spokesman Herve Verhoosel said on Wednesday.

Clashes between militias in the central town of Bria have killed five people, he added. The U.N. is also seeking to verify the deaths of up to 100 people in the town of Alindao.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Richard Lough)