Tag Archives: War

Mexican journalists mourn, protest after deadly day

Journalists and photographers hold up pictures of journalist Javier Valdez during a demonstration against his killing and for other journalists who were killed in Mexico, at the Angel of Independence monument in Mexico City, Mexico May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Henry Romero

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican journalists covered news conferences wearing black on Tuesday, and brought pictures of slain colleagues to rallies to put pressure on authorities to act against an escalation of murderous attacks on their trade.

The mourning and protests followed a particularly deadly day for the media in Mexico, where warring drug cartels have made it one of the most dangerous countries to be a journalist.

On Monday, veteran organized crime writer Javier Valdez was shot dead by unidentified assailants in the northwestern state of Sinaloa while gunmen in Jalisco state killed a reporter at a small weekly magazine and critically wounded his mother, an executive at the family-run publication.

Authorities have yet to announce arrests in the two new cases, feeding fears of impunity that have become disturbingly familiar to the profession in Mexico.

“We’ve been living in a giant simulation; they say they’re investigating and that freedom of expression is protected, but clearly it’s not,” Juan Carlos Aguilar of the collective Right to Inform said at a protest in Mexico City.

Last year a record 11 journalists were killed, according to advocacy group Articulo 19.

Journalists wrote “they are killing us” in large letters at the foot of the Angel of Independence monument in central Mexico City and flashed pictures of dead reporters to passing cars. Rallies were also held in other cities, including crime-ravaged Culiacan, where Valdez was killed.

Valdez spent years documenting the violence in Mexico, and his death triggered an outpouring of grief across the country.

The killings come ahead of a key state election next month and the 2018 presidential vote – fuelling worries that it could result in a less-informed public.

“This isn’t just us being killed as people, this is a silencing of those who talk,” freelance journalist Paula Monaco said at the protest.

Mexico is struggling to contain a resurgence in violence among rival drug cartels that has pushed homicides to levels not seen since 2011.

Groups monitoring journalistic freedom say corrupt local authorities and police target journalists as well, and that the vast majority of attacks on the press go unpunished, despite a special prosecutor’s office assigned to investigating them.

A new special prosecutor was recently named amid criticism that the previous one failed to secure convictions in dozens of unsolved cases.

“This is truly a crisis. We’re tired of burying our colleagues,” said photojournalist Quetzalli Gonzalez.

(Reporting By Mitra Taj and Reuters TV; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Syrian government denies U.S. accusation of crematorium at prison

A satellite view of part of the Sednaya prison complex near Damascus, Syria. Department of State/via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian government on Tuesday denied U.S. accusations that a crematorium had been built at one of its prisons that could be used to dispose of detainees’ remains.

A foreign ministry statement published by state news agency SANA said the U.S. administration had come out with “a new Hollywood story detached from reality” by alleging the crematorium had been built at Sednaya military prison near Damascus.

Stuart Jones, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said on Monday that U.S. officials believe the crematorium could be used to dispose of bodies at a prison where they believe Assad’s government authorized the hanging of thousands of inmates during Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

Amnesty International reported in February that an average of 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison. Between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Sednaya in the four years since a popular uprising descended into war, it said.

The government also denied that accusation.

Amnesty said the executions took place between 2011 and 2015, but were probably still being carried out and amounted to war crimes.

In a briefing on Monday, Jones showed aerial images of what he said was the crematorium at the Sednaya site.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Iraq says battle for Mosul nearly won as forces close in on Old City

Displaced Iraqis flee during clashes between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in western Mosul, Iraq, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

By Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi forces have dislodged Islamic State from all but 12 square km of Mosul, a military spokesman said on Tuesday, after planes dropped leaflets into the city telling civilians the battle was nearly won.

Seven months into the U.S.-backed campaign, the militants now control only a few districts in the western half of Mosul including the Old City, where Islamic State is expected to make its last stand.

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.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces said the enemy was completely surrounded in the city and its fighters and resources were being destroyed.

“The enemy is on the brink of total defeat in Mosul,” U.S. Air Force Colonel John Dorrian told a news conference in Baghdad.

With the help of advisers and air strikes by the coalition, Iraqi forces have made rapid gains since opening a new front in the northwest of Mosul earlier this month, closing in on the Old City.

The Old City’s warren of densely packed houses and alleys is the most complex battleground and home to the al-Nuri mosque from which Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate spanning Iraq and Syria in 2014.

“We reassure everyone that … in a very short time, God willing, we will declare the liberation and clearing of west Mosul and raise the Iraqi flag over … the Old City,” said spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Rasool.”

Outnumbered, the militants have snipers embedded among the hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in west Mosul. Many people have been killed by militants or heavy bombardments.

The leaflet dropped over Mosul also ordered civilians to immediately stop using any vehicle to avoid being mistaken for militants who have fought back against Iraqi forces with suicide car bombs and motorcycle bombs.

“Our airforce and Iraqi military planes will strike any vehicle that moves on the streets of these districts from the evening of May 15 until their liberation,” read a copy of the leaflet seen by Reuters. “The decisive hour has approached”.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

U.S. plan to arm Kurdish militia casts shadow over Trump-Erdogan talks

FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends the Roundtable Summit Phase One Sessions of Belt and Road Forum at the International Conference Center in Yanqi Lake on May 15, 2017 in Beijing, China REUTERS/Lintao Zhang/Pool/File Photo *** Local Caption *** Aung San Suu Kyi

By Orhan Coskun and Daren Butler

ANKARA (Reuters) – Angered by a U.S. decision to arm Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria, Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan heads to Washington this week for talks with Donald Trump seeking either to change the president’s mind or to “sort things out ourselves”.

Trump’s approval of plans to supply the YPG as it advances toward the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, just days before his first meeting with Erdogan, has cast a shadow over Tuesday’s planned talks between the two NATO allies.

Ankara, a crucial partner in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, considers the YPG an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast for three decades and is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and United States.

Washington sees the YPG as distinct from the PKK and as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State.

“If we are strategic allies we must take decisions as an alliance. If the alliance is to be overshadowed we’ll have to sort things out for ourselves,” Erdogan told reporters on Sunday, according to the pro-government Sabah newspaper.

Erdogan was speaking during a visit to China, ahead of his trip to Washington for his first meeting with Trump.

Turkey had hoped that Trump’s inauguration would mark a new chapter in ties with Washington after long-running tensions with the Obama administration over Syria policy and Ankara’s demands for the extradition of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Erdogan blames Gulen supporters for a failed coup attempt last July and has conducted a large-scale crackdown on them, drawing criticism from Washington. Gulen, who has denied involvement in the coup, remains in the United States.

Erdogan welcomed Trump’s election victory last November and said he hoped it would lead to “beneficial steps” in the Middle East. When Erdogan narrowly won sweeping new powers in an April referendum, Trump rang to congratulate him, unlike European politicians who expressed reservations about the vote.

DYNAMITE

But hopes for rapprochement took a hit last week. The decision to arm the YPG was “tantamount to placing dynamite under Turkey-USA relations”, a senior Turkish official said.

“Just as it was being said that relations (which were) seriously harmed during the Obama period are being repaired, Turkey moving apart from one of its biggest allies would be an extremely bad sign,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

Erdogan portrays U.S. support for the Kurdish militia – instead of Syrian Arab rebels – as a leftover policy from the Obama administration, which he said had wrongly accused Turkey of doing too little in the fight against Islamic State.

“It is a slander of the Obama administration. Unfortunately now they have left the Syria and Iraq problem in Trump’s lap,” Erdogan said in China.

Erdogan will tell Trump that backing a Kurdish force to retake Arab territory held by Islamic State will sow future crises, and that other forces in the region including Kurdish Iraqi leaders also oppose the YPG, the Turkish official said.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said after talks in London last week with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that Trump’s meeting with Erdogan would be an opportunity to “correct the mistake” of support for the YPG.

“Now we will conduct the final talks,” Erdogan said. “After that we will make our final decision.”

The United States sees few alternatives to supporting the YPG, which forms a major part of the Syrian Democratic Forces advancing on Raqqa, if it is to achieve the goal of crushing Islamic State in Syria.

Erdogan did not spell out what actions Turkey might take if Washington does press ahead with its plans.

Officials have suggested it could step up air strikes on PKK bases in northern Iraq, or YPG targets in Syria. It could also impose limits on the use of its Incirlik air base as a launchpad for the air campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But that would hamper operations against jihadis who also menace Turkey and have claimed responsibility for attacks including the bombing of Istanbul airport in June 2016.

“Naturally (Turkey) would have to consider the aftermath of closing the Incirlik base to (U.S.) use,” said Soli Ozel, a lecturer at Turkey’s Kadir Has university.

“It will not be very easy to put relations back on track,” Ozel said. “I think ultimately a formula will be found. I think neither side wants to cut relations.”

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Ukraine imposes sanctions on Russian web firms, citing cyber threat

A Yandex taxi is seen in central Kiev, Ukraine, May 16, 2017. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich

By Natalia Zinets

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukraine imposed sanctions on Russia’s largest internet group Yandex and other popular online firms on Tuesday, saying it wanted to guard against cyber attacks, and the Kremlin threatened retaliation.

The restrictions froze any assets held by the Russian businesses inside Ukraine and banned hosts there from linking to them, though the websites were all still accessible in Kiev on Tuesday afternoon.

The ban was imposed partly to protect against companies “whose activities threaten the information and cyber security of Ukraine”, the Kiev government’s Security and Defence Council said in a statement.

They added to a list of more than 400 Russian firms blacklisted by Kiev since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ensuing pro-Russian separatist uprising in eastern Ukraine.

Mail.ru Group, which owns the Odnoklassniki social network and Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, said that around 25 million Ukrainians could be affected by the “politically motivated” decision.

“We have never been involved in politics. We have not broken a single law of Ukraine,” it said in a statement. It said the Ukrainian market contributed an “immaterial” amount of revenue and so Mail.ru would not revise its financial plans.

Yandex declined comment and there was no immediate comment from other companies on the list.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Moscow had not forgotten the principle of reciprocity when it came to such disputes, calling the move “short-sighted.”

Many of the affected sites are hugely popular in Ukraine.

Vkontakte was the second-most visited website in Ukraine as of March, according to data cited by the Ukrainian Internet Association. Yandex, Odnoklassniki and Mail.ru were also in the top five most popular sites that month.

In comments to Russian newspaper Kommersant, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova called the sanctions a “manifestation of politically motivated censorship”.

Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations from Kiev that it has been waging a “cyber war” on Ukraine at the same time as it fuels Ukraine’s separatist conflict by supporting rebels with troops and weapons.

Ukraine has also accused Russian computer hackers of targeting its power grid, financial system and other infrastructure with viruses.

(Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova and Anastasia Teterevleva in Moscow; writing by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Matthias Williams and Mark Heinrich)

Iraq’s Shi’ite paramilitaries squeeze Islamic State toward Syria border

Debris is seen on a street controlled by Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State fighters in north west of Mosul. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) – Iraq’s Shi’ite paramilitaries launched an offensive on Friday to drive Islamic State from a desert region near the border with Syria as security forces fought the militants in the city of Mosul.

Spokesman Karim al-Nouri said the target of the operation was the Qairawan and Baaj areas about 100 km west of Mosul, where U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are advancing in their campaign to rout the militants from city.

Seven months into the Mosul campaign, Islamic State has been driven from all but a handful of districts in the city’s western half including the Old City, where it is using hundreds of thousands of civilians as human shields.

The paramilitaries have been kept on the sidelines of the battle for the city of Mosul itself, but have captured a vast, thinly populated area to the southwest, cutting Islamic State supply routes to Syria.

Islamic State is losing territory and on the retreat in both Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqi military said in a statement its air force was supporting the operation by the paramilitary groups known collectively as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Unlike regular Iraqi security forces, the PMF does not receive support from the U.S.-led coalition, which is wary of Iran’s influence over the most powerful factions within the body.

Officially answerable to the government in Baghdad, the PMF were formed when Islamic State overran around one third of Iraq including Mosul nearly three years ago and Iraqi security forces disintegrated.

Nouri said PMF control over the border would assist Syrian government forces when they push toward the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa.

On Friday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said their assault on Raqqa, the militants’ biggest urban stronghold, would begin soon and that they were awaiting weapons including armored vehicles from the U.S.-led coalition

The PMF is not officially involved in Syria, but tens of thousands of Iraqi Shi’ite militiamen are fighting there on behalf of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Iran.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Editing by Richard Lough)

U.S.-backed Syrian forces expect Raqqa assault soon, await weapons

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) officials hold a press conference in the town of Tabqa, after capturing it from Islamic State militants this week, Syria May 12, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said

By Rodi Said

TABQA, Syria (Reuters) – The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Friday their attack to capture Raqqa city from Islamic State would begin soon and the U.S.-led coalition would supply them with weapons including armored vehicles for the assault.

The SDF, an alliance of militias including Arab groups and the Kurdish YPG militia, has been waging a campaign to isolate and ultimately capture Raqqa city since November, with backing from the U.S.-led coalition.

While the U.S.-led coalition has already supplied weapons to Arab fighters in the SDF, the White House this week authorized for the first time arming its most powerful element – the Kurdish YPG – to help in the Raqqa assault, infuriating Turkey.

SDF commander Abdul Qader Hevdeli declined to say when exactly the assault on Raqqa would begin, but said it would be soon during a news conference in the town of Tabqa, which the SDF captured this week from IS after weeks of fighting.

“I can’t specify exactly, I believe entering and storming the city will happen at the start of the summer,” he said.

“At the start of entering (Raqqa), of course, as (the U.S.-led coalition) promised us, there will be support in the form of specialized weapons, armored vehicles or others,” he said.

He said that weapons the White House has approved for the YPG had yet to arrive. “I believe these weapons or this support will arrive soon,” he said.

The capture of Tabqa and its nearby dam on the Euphrates river marked a major milestone in the SDF campaign against IS. The SDF said in a statement Tabqa would be turned over to a civilian council once fully secured.

It also said the authority that oversees the hydroelectric Tabqa dam would remain “a national Syrian institution that will serve all the regions of Syria without exception”.

(Additional reporting by Beirut bureau; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Richard Lough)

Iraqis dig their own wells in battle-scarred Mosul

Iraqi security personnel stand guard during the inaugration of a water treatment plant on the outskirts of Qaraqosh, Iraq, May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

(This May 11 story has been refiled to correct U.N. to U.N. Development Program and adds government in paragraph 11.)

By Ahmed Aboulenein

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – The families start queuing every day near the well in Mosul’s Karaj al-Shamal neighborhood, filling their large plastic containers with sulphurous, nearly undrinkable water.

As the battle to clear out Islamic State drags on around them, the residents of the wrecked city in northern Iraq have given up waiting for the government or international aid groups and started digging their own water out of the rubble.

They don’t always hit the cleanest sources.

“We have no water, no electricity, no salaries, and no food. What are we supposed to do? Eat grass?” says 56-year-old Fasla Taher, as she take her containers home to the nine orphans and two widowed daughters under her care.

Shaker Mahmoud, a carpenter and day laborer, says he helped dig the well, funded by a local benefactor. The same unnamed donor has paid for five others in the area and local charities have dug some more.

Families try boiling the water to make it safer to drink, but the smell and the taste linger. “It is not fit to drink. I took it to a lab once and they said it was 15-25 percent sulfur,” says Mahmoud.

The supply is still invaluable for washing – at least 10 children had died in the area because of unsanitary conditions since the fighting started.

Islamic State militants overran the city in 2014, taking it as their biggest base in Iraq and triggering counter-attacks that have destroyed large parts of the infrastructure, including the water pipes.

A government offensive that started in October has cleared the militants out of the eastern side of the city. But the ultra-conservative militants are holed up in the Old City on the western side of the Tigris river and fighting seems to have stalled.

WATER TREATMENT

The United Nations Development Program and the government this week also reopened a water sanitation plant, part of a program that they hope will supply all re-taken areas in three months – still a long wait for the residents.

“It’s now been weeks, months really, since there has been safe drinking water here and that is why the opening of this water treatment plant is just so important today,” Lise Grande, UNDP Resident Representative for Iraq, told Reuters on Sunday.

About another 25 other plants are in line for repairs.

Beyond Mosul itself, officials say it will take $35 billion to restore all facilities in surrounding Nineveh province, though the central government in Baghdad has not yet made funds available.

Back in Karaj al-Shamal, the residents are still doing the work for themselves, as they wait for their own treatment plant to be repaired.

Progress has been slow. Soon after Islamic State quit their area, locals pooled money to repair their pipeline, only to watch it destroyed in an air strike the same day the work finished.

So they resorted to their own wells, and queuing up outside with their large plastic containers.

“This is all set up by generous people. The state is not involved,” Mahmoud says.

(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Security situation in Afghanistan likely to get worse: U.S. intel chief

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testifies before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

By Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The security situation in Afghanistan will further deteriorate even if there is a modest increase in U.S. military support for the war-torn country, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump’s administration weighs sending more forces to Afghanistan.

Afghan army units are pulling back, and in some cases have been forced to abandon more scattered and rural bases, and the government can claim to control or influence only 57 percent of the country, according to U.S. military estimates from earlier this year.

“The intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in (the)military assistance by the United States and its partners,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a Senate hearing.

In February, Army General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said he needs several thousand more international troops to break a stalemate with the Taliban.

Reuters reported in late April that Trump’s administration was carrying out a review of Afghanistan and conversations are revolving around sending between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. and coalition troops to Afghanistan.

Deliberations include giving more authorities to forces on the ground and taking more aggressive action against Taliban fighters. This could allow U.S. advisers to work with Afghan troops below the corps level, potentially putting them closer to fighting, a U.S. official said.

In the same hearing, the head of the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency said the situation would worsen unless U.S. trainers worked with Afghan soldiers closer to the front line, their numbers increased and there was greater intelligence and surveillance.

Trump has not been formally presented with the options yet.

Some U.S. officials said they questioned the benefit of sending more troops to Afghanistan because any politically palatable number would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security. To date, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and over 17,000 wounded.

President Ashraf Ghani’s U.S.-backed government remains plagued by corruption and divided by factions loyal to political strongmen whose armed supporters often are motivated by ethnic, family, and regional loyalties.

Coats said that Afghanistan would struggle to decrease its reliance on the international community “until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban.”

(Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Alistair Bell)

Mattis tells Turkey’s PM: U.S. committed to your security

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addresses a news conference during a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/File Photo

By Phil Stewart

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim on Thursday that Washington was committed to protecting its NATO ally, a spokeswoman said, as Turkey fumes over a decision to arm Kurdish fighters in Syria.

The roughly half-hour meeting in London appeared to be the highest level talks between the two nations since Washington announced on Tuesday plans to back the YPG militia in an assault to retake the city of Raqqa from Islamic State.

Turkey views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Turkey and Europe.

A U.S. official told Reuters that the United States was looking to boost intelligence cooperation with Turkey to support its fight against the PKK. The Wall Street Journal reported the effort could end up doubling the capacity of an intelligence fusion center in Ankara.

It was unclear if the effort would be enough to soothe Turkey, however.

Turkey has warned the United States that its decision to arm Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State in Syria could end up hurting Washington, and accused its NATO ally of siding with terrorists.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington next week, has voiced hopes Washington might reverse the decision.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White disclosed little about Mattis’ meeting with Binali in London, where both men were attending a conference on Somalia.

“The secretary reiterated U.S. commitment to protecting our NATO ally,” she said in a statement after the talks.

Mattis, speaking on Wednesday, expressed confidence that the United States would be able to resolve tensions with Turkey over the decision to arm the Kurds, saying: “We’ll work out any of the concerns.”

Yildirim told reporters on Wednesday the U.S. decision “will surely have consequences and will yield a negative result for the U.S. as well”.

The United States regards the YPG as a valuable partner in the fight against Islamic State militants in northern Syria.

Washington says that arming the Kurdish forces is necessary to recapturing Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria and a hub for planning attacks against the West.

That argument holds little sway with Ankara, which worries that advances by the YPG in northern Syria could inflame the PKK insurgency on Turkish soil.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart, editing by Larry King)