Tag Archives: War

Erdogan swipes at Russia, U.S. missions in Syria

Erdogan swipes at Russia, U.S. missions in Syria

ANKARA/SOCHI (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan took swipes at U.S. and Russian interventions in Syria on Monday and said if countries truly believed a military solution was impossible, they should withdraw their troops.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump said in a joint statement on Saturday they would continue to fight against Islamic State in Syria, while agreeing that there was no military solution to the country’s wider, six-year-old conflict.

“I am having trouble understanding these comments,” Erdogan told reporters before flying to Russia for talks with Putin. “If a military solution is out of the question, then those who say this should pull their troops out.

“Then a political method should be sought in Syria, ways to head into elections should be examined… We will discuss these with Putin,” he said.

After more than four hours of talks with Putin in the southern Russian resort of Sochi, Erdogan said the two leaders had agreed to focus on a political solution to the conflict.

“We agreed that the grounds to focus on a political solution (in Syria) have been formed,” he said.

Putin said Russia would continue to work on Syria with Turkey and their efforts were yielding results: “The level of violence has definitely been reduced, favorable conditions are being created for the progression of a inter-Syrian dialogue.”

Neither leader went into more specific detail. Asked if the two discussed Erdogan’s earlier comments, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the talks were about more complex issues which could not be made public, according to RIA news agency.

Turkey has been annoyed by both Russian and U.S. missions in Syria. Before his trip to Russia, Erdogan said both Moscow, which backs President Bashar al-Assad, and Washington, which armed Syrian YPG Kurdish forces Ankara sees as allied to separatists fighting in southeastern Turkey, had set up bases.

“The United States said it would completely leave Iraq, but it didn’t. The world is not stupid, some realities are being told differently and practiced differently,” he said.

He said the United States had 13 bases in Syria and Russia had five. The YPG has said Washington has established seven military bases in areas of northern Syria. The U.S.-led coalition says it does not discuss the location of its forces.

Russia has been a strong supporter of Assad, whose removal Erdogan has demanded, and Moscow’s military intervention two years ago helped turn the conflict in the Syrian president’s favor.

Turkish troops have also fought in Syria to halt the advance of Kurdish YPG forces along its frontier.

“We attach great importance to the joint steps Turkey and Russia will take on (the) defense industry,” Erdogan said.

His remarks follow Turkey’s recently completed purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, a defense deal that Turkey’s Western allies see as a snub to the NATO alliance.

The weapon cannot be integrated into NATO defenses.

Ankara says it is making agreements with the Franco-Italian EUROSAM consortium to develop, produce and use its own sources for air defense system.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu and Ece Toksabay in ANKARA, Olesya Astakhova in SOCHI and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul; Writing by Dominic Evans and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Peter Graff, William Maclean)

Britain, Russia clash over Syria at chemical weapons body

Britain, Russia clash over Syria at chemical weapons body

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Britain accused Russia on Thursday of carrying out a “thinly veiled political attack” against the head of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, escalating a row over the body’s investigation into toxic attacks in Syria.

The comments, made during a session at the Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), were the latest sign of deep political division at the body over the Syrian conflict.

In an Oct. 26 report the U.N.-OPCW investigation team blamed the Syrian government for an April 4 attack using the banned nerve agent sarin in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, killing around 80 people. The Syrian government has denied using chemical weapons and Moscow rejected the findings.

The mechanism was established in 2015 by the U.N. Security Council to identify individuals, organizations or governments responsible for chemical attacks in Syria. Its mandate expires on Nov. 17, but its work is incomplete.

Moscow is poised to veto efforts by Britain, France, Germany and the United States to extend the mandate.

A draft Russian-Iranian proposal circulated at the OPCW and seen by Reuters called for a new investigation, to be based on samples taken from the attack site. The Syrian government itself has already presented samples from the scene to the investigation team, which tested positive for sarin.

“It is a thinly veiled political attack on the professional integrity of the director general,” the British delegation said in a statement, referring to the OPCW’s outgoing Turkish head, Ahmet Uzumcu. “It seeks to undermine the capability and competence of the (OPCW).”

The Russian delegation at the OPCW could not be reached for comment.

Syria joined the OPCW after a sarin attack on Aug. 21, 2013, killed hundreds of people in Ghouta, a district on the outskirts of Damascus. It has said it declared and destroyed all its chemical stockpile, but chemical attacks continue in the country’s civil war [L4N1L24LP].

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Deep in Yemen war, Saudi fight against Iran falters

Deep in Yemen war, Saudi fight against Iran falters

By Noah Browning

MARIB, Yemen (Reuters) – At a hospital in the Yemeni city of Marib, demand for artificial limbs from victims of the country’s war is so high that prosthetics are made on site in a special workshop.

A soldier with an artificial arm hitches up his robe to reveal a stump where his leg once was. He is angry that authorities have done little to help him since he was wounded.

“I was at the front and a mortar exploded near me. We fought well, but now I get no salary, no support from the government or anyone. They just left us,” said Hassan Meigan.

More than two years into a war that has already left 10,000 dead, regional power Saudi Arabia is struggling to pull together an effective local military force to defeat the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement that has seized large parts of Yemen.

The dysfunction is a reminder to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that his campaign to counter arch-enemy Iran in the Middle East, including threats against Tehran’s ally Hezbollah, may be hard to implement.

During a rare visit to a large area of Yemeni territory controlled by the pro-Saudi government, journalists saw a patchwork of mutually suspicious army units, whose loyalty to disparate regions and commanders has hindered their war against Houthi fighters.

Some soldiers appeared to be hunkering down in their bases rather than joining the fight. Those who do fight say salaries go unpaid for months. The front lines have barely moved for months.

Saudi Arabia has sought to create a unified military force based in Marib, but these troops have failed to eject the Houthis from the nearby capital Sanaa, where the Saudis see the rebels as a threat to their national security.

With Saudi politics in turmoil after a wave of high-profile arrests and Iranian influence growing, Yemeni officers recognize the importance of an effective army but acknowledge that success still eludes them.

“Empowering the National Army and unifying all weapons and authority under it is our goal. This is what we’re trying to accomplish so we can end the war with a military victory,” Brigadier General Marzooq al-Seyadi, a top Yemeni commander, told Reuters.

“The difficulties until now in achieving this in the face of local and ideological factors have posed problems … but with the aid of the Arab Coalition and the United States, which provides daily advice and support to our side, we will succeed.”

A coalition spokesman, Colonel Turki al-Malki, said in September that the mission was to back Yemen “whether it’s inside the country by supporting the Yemeni National Army or defending the borders and territory of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”.

Sunni Saudi Arabia has led the mostly Gulf Arab coalition against the Shi’ite Houthis, since they seized the Yemeni capital and fanned out across the country.

But the Houthis’ rump state in Yemen’s Western highlands has weathered thousands of Saudi-led air strikes that have been aided by refueling and intelligence from the United States.

Denying they are a pawn of Iran, the Houthis say they are fighting to fend off a mercenary army in the thrall of the Gulf and the West.

The group launched a missile toward Riyadh’s main airport on Saturday, which Saudi Arabia said was a declaration of war by Tehran.

But after years of fighting that have ravaged the deeply poor country with hunger and disease, even some of Saudi Arabia’s staunchest allies in Yemen say they are angry at being manipulated from abroad.

“We’re fighting as proxies … (Western powers) can end the war in Yemen. They can pressure Iran and Saudi Arabia, solve their issues and their differences,” said Ali Abd-Rabbu al-Qadhi, a lawmaker and tribal leader from Marib.

“It’s Yemeni blood that’s being shed … We’re one society with common roots and one religion, but the international conflict has brought us to where we are,” said al-Qadhi, who wore a holstered pistol over his traditional Yemeni sarong.

ONWARD TO SANAA

Despite the lack of progress on the battlefield, some soldiers on the dusty streets of Marib appeared eager to fight.

“Onward to Sanaa, God willing!” smiled Abdullah al-Sufi, 20, whose khaki fatigues hung loose on his gangly frame.

“We know there are foreign conspiracies on Yemeni soil, there are problems, there are setbacks. But we are fighting for our country and for our homes, that’s the important thing.”

As war started in March 2015, after Saudi Prince Mohammed sent in troops, Yemen’s most powerful units had already sided with Houthi militiamen to rain rockets and tank fire on Marib, which the fledgling new army and allied tribes repelled.

In the most ambitious military adventure in their history, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took part in that fight, but were stung by scores of combat deaths.

The Arab forces have largely pulled back to a support role in bases far from the front line.

Now units trained by Saudi Arabia fight in scattered theaters with little obvious coordination, loyal to different parties and local leaders in a society awash with guns and notorious for its fickle politics.

The kingdom supports brigades adhering to Sunni Islam’s puritanical Salafi school in Western Yemen, while also backing the Muslim Brotherhood around Marib and loyalists of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in the south.

Additionally, the United Arab Emirates, – the other key Gulf power in the anti-Iran war effort in Yemen – has armed and trained formidable units across southern and eastern Yemen.

To add to the confusion, these fighters despise the Houthis as well as pro-Saudi units in northern Yemen.

YOUNG MARTYRS

Displayed on walls all over Marib, portraits of slain soldiers are captioned with poems praising them as “martyrs” and “lions.”

“My son is sixteen. He said ‘dad, give me a gun, I want to fight.’ He goes to the front now. No father is happy with this, but what can we do? This is a war, this is the situation we’re in,” said one Marib veteran.

Yemen’s government also appears to be living through difficult times.

President Hadi has been in Riyadh since being ejected from his country by the Houthis, and sources said his hosts have banned him from traveling for over a month, citing poor security in Yemen. Officials in his office denied the reports.

But the Saudi response this week to the Houthi ballistic missile – to close all ports, borders and airspace, the majority of which are nominally under Hadi’s control – appeared to deal an unprecedented rebuke to their ally.

Activist Khalid Baqlan expressed the fear of many young people and professionals that the errors of a weak government and foreign powers were hollowing out Yemeni society.

“What we’re seeing is not the building of real state institutions but the empowerment of groups with competing agendas who could fight in the future, benefiting no one,” said Baqlan, from the Saba Youth Council, a civil society group.

“There has to be a political solution, it’s the only way to save the country.”

Yemen’s stalemated war: http://tmsnrt.rs/2zshXBc

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

Syria declares victory over Islamic State

Syria declares victory over Islamic State

By Angus McDowall and Sarah Dadouch

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s army declared victory over Islamic State on Thursday, saying its capture of the jihadists’ last town in the country marked the collapse of their project in the region.

The army and its allies are still fighting Islamic State in desert areas near Albu Kamal, the last town the militant group had held in Syria, near the border with Iraq, the army said.

But the capture of the town ends Islamic State’s era of territorial rule over the so-called caliphate that it proclaimed in 2014 across Iraq and Syria and in which millions suffered under its hardline, repressive strictures.

Yet after ferocious defensive battles in its most important cities this year, where its fighters bled for every house and street, its final collapse has come with lightning speed.

Instead of a battle to the death as they mounted a last stand in the Euphrates valley towns and villages near the border between Iraq and Syria, many fighters surrendered or fled.

In Albu Kamal, the jihadists had fought fiercely, said a commander in the pro-Syrian government military alliance. But it was captured the same day the assault began.

This sealed “the fall of the terrorist Daesh organization’s project in the region”, an army statement said, using an Arabic term for Islamic State.

The fate of its last commanders is still unknown — killed by bombardment or in battle, taken prisoner but unidentified, or hunkered into long-prepared hideouts to plot a new insurgency.

The last appearance of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared himself caliph and heir to Islam’s historic leaders from the great medieval mosque in Iraq’s Mosul, was made in an audio recording in September.

“Oh Soldiers of Islam in every location, increase blow after blow, and make the media centers of the infidels, from where they wage their intellectual wars, among the targets,” he said.

Mosul fell to Iraqi forces in July after a nine-month battle. Islamic State’s Syrian capital of Raqqa fell in October to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias, after four months of fighting.

But all the forces fighting Islamic State in Syria and Iraq expect a new phase of guerrilla warfare, a tactic the militants have already shown themselves capable of with armed operations in both countries.

Western security chiefs have also said its loss of territory does not mean an end to the “lone-wolf” attacks with guns, knives or trucks plowing into civilians that its supporters have mounted around the world.

MIDDLE EAST CHAOS

As it did after previous setbacks, Islamic State’s leadership may now stay underground and wait for a new opportunity to take advantage of the chaos in the Middle East.

It might not have long to wait. In Iraq, a referendum on independence in the northern Kurdish region has already prompted a major confrontation between its autonomous government and Baghdad, backed by neighboring Iran and Turkey.

In Syria, it was two rival campaigns that raced across the country’s east this year, driving back Islamic State — the Syrian army backed by Russia, Iran and Shi’ite militias, and an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the United States.

Syrian officials and a senior advisor to Iran have indicated the Syrian army will now stake its claim to Kurdish-held territory. Washington has not yet said how it would respond to a protracted military campaign against its allies.

Aggravating the region’s tensions — and raising the possibility of turmoil from which Islamic State could benefit — is a contest for power between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

It has developed a religious edge, pitting Shi’ite groups supported by Iran against Sunni ones backed by Saudi Arabia, infusing the region’s wars with sectarian hatred.

A senior Iranian official this week spoke from Syria’s Aleppo of a “line of resistance” running from Tehran to Beirut, an implicit boast of its region-wide influence.

In recent days the rivalry has again escalated as Riyadh accused Lebanese Hezbollah of firing a missile from the territory in Yemen of another Iranian ally, the Houthi movement.

Hezbollah is a critical part of the Tehran-backed alliance helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It was Hezbollah fighters who played the key role in ousting Islamic State from Albu Kamal, a commander in that alliance told Reuters.

ISLAMIC STATE’S FALLEN ‘STATE’

Baghdadi’s declaration of a caliphate in 2014 launched a new era in jihadist ambition. Instead of al Qaeda’s strategy of using militant attacks against the West to spur an Islamist revolution, the new movement decided to simply establish a new state.

It led to a surge in recruitment to the jihadist cause, attracting thousands of young Muslims to “immigrate” to a militant utopia slickly realized in propaganda films.

Islamic State’s leadership ranks included former Iraqi officials who well understood the running of a state. They issued identity documents, minted coins and established a morality police force.

Unlike previous jihadist movements that relied on donations from sympathizers, Islamic State’s territorial grip gave it command of a real economy. It exported oil and agricultural produce, levied taxes and traded in stolen antiquities.

On the battlefield, it adapted its tactics, using heavy weaponry captured from its enemies during its first flush of military success, adding tanks and artillery to its suicide bombers and guerrilla fighters.

It imprisoned and tortured foreigners, demanding ransoms for their release and killing those whose countries would not pay in grotesque films posted online.

The number of those treated in this way was as nothing to the multitude of Syrians and Iraqis Islamic State killed for their behavior, words, sexuality, religion, ethnicity or tribe. Some were burned alive, others beheaded and some dropped from the roofs of tall buildings.

Captured women were sold as brides at slave auctions. But as Islamic State was pushed from territory in recent months, there were pictures of women pulling off face veils and smoking previously banned cigarettes.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall, Sarah Dadouch and Lisa Barrington; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

White House condemns missile attacks on Saudi by Yemen’s Houthis

White House condemns missile attacks on Saudi by Yemen's Houthis

BEIJING (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday condemned missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi militias on Saudi Arabia, saying they threatened the region’s security and undermined efforts to halt the conflict.

Saudi Arabia said its air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile fired from warring Yemen over the capital Riyadh on Saturday. The rocket was brought down near King Khaled Airport on the northern outskirts of the capital.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Iran’s supply of rockets to militias in Yemen was an act of “direct military aggression” that could be an act of war.

“Houthi missile attacks against Saudi Arabia, enabled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, threaten regional security and undermine UN efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict,” the White House said in a statement as U.S. President Donald Trump began a visit to the Chinese capital.

“These missile systems were not present in Yemen before the conflict, and we call upon the United Nations to conduct a thorough examination of evidence that the Iranian regime is perpetuating the war in Yemen to advance its regional ambitions,” the statement added.

It said the United States would continue working with other “like-minded” partners to respond to such attacks and expose what it called Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region.

Iran denied it was behind the missile launch. On Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said missile attacks from Yemen were a reaction to what he called Saudi aggression.

In reaction to the missile, the Saudi-led coalition closed all air, land and sea ports to the impoverished country. It also intensified air strikes on areas controlled by the Houthis including the capital Sanaa.

The war has killed more than 10,000 people and triggered one of the worst man-made humanitarian disasters in recent history.

The United Nations on Tuesday called on the coalition to re-open an aid lifeline into Yemen, saying food and medicine imports were vital for 7 million people facing famine.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, writing by Aziz El Yaakoubi, Editing by William Macldan)

Hungry South Sudanese refugees risk death in return home for food

Hungry South Sudanese refugees risk death in return home for food

By Jason Patinkin

PALORINYA, Uganda (Reuters) – Oliver Wani found sanctuary from South Sudan’s civil war in a Ugandan refugee camp. But when the food ran out, he returned home only to be killed in the conflict he had fled.

The 45-year-old farmer was one of more than a million South Sudanese living in sprawling camps just across the border in northern Uganda, seeking refuge from the four-year war that has devastated their homeland.

But funding gaps and organizational problems often delay or reduce their meager rations, driving some desperate families back to the lands they fled and underscoring the struggle to cope with Africa’s biggest refugee crisis in two decades.

Refugees from South Sudan have been arriving in Uganda at an average rate of 35,000 a month this year. The Bidi Bidi camp was home to 285,000 people at the end of September, according to the U.N.’s refugee agency, making it the biggest in Africa.

The U.N. agency (UNHCR) said funding had only covered 32 percent of $674 million requested to help refugees in Uganda in 2017 and the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said it was facing a $71 million shortfall for the next six months.

Wani, who cared for his elderly parents, received no food in October because distributions had been delayed, his father Timon said. The memory of the crops Oliver had left behind proved too tempting and he returned to South Sudan to find food.

Two weeks later, other returning refugees recognized his remains alongside another dead refugee on a forest path in South Sudan, where the ground was littered with bullet casings.

“He went back to look for food,” said Timon, a tall, thin man who wiped away tears with his handkerchief as he spoke at a memorial service for his first-born child in the Palorinya refugee camp. “I’m heartbroken.”

DESPERATE REFUGEES

The four-year war in oil-rich South Sudan, a country only founded in 2011, has forced more than a third of its 12 million citizens to flee their homes. Tens of thousands have died, some in ethnic killings, others from starvation and disease.

Palorinya is the second biggest camp in northern Uganda after Bidi Bidi and alone houses 185,000 refugees.

Each refugee is supposed to get 12 kg of grain, 6 kg of dry beans, cooking oil and salt each month, but the U.N.’s WFP said this was delayed in October because grain was scarce in Uganda and the roads to Palorinya were bad.

Food distributions did not start camp until Oct. 26, WFP said. It takes two weeks to complete a distribution, so tens of thousands of refugees did not get any food that month.

Desperate, some returned to the war zone. At least eight refugees from Palorinya were killed in South Sudan after returning to look for food in October, according to family members and the Anglican church, which tracks civilian deaths.

In August and September, when rations were distributed normally, just two refugees from the camp were killed when they returned to find food, the church diocese in South Sudan’s volatile Kajo Keji region said.

Modi Scopas John, chairman of a Refugee Welfare Committee in Palorinya, said refugees were returning home every day.

“If you have nothing to eat, what do you do?” he asked, perched on a plastic chair under a spindly tree. “You have to look for food.”

FOOD SHORTAGES

Wani was killed in Kajo Keji, where the government and two rebel groups are battling for control in a war sparked by a feud between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar.

Next to Wani lay the body of Yassin Mori, 35, who had also left Palorinya to look for food, according to Mori’s two brothers who ventured into South Sudan to look for him.

Mori left two wives and nine children behind.

“Now we need support because we are left with his children and widows,” Taha Igga, one of the brothers, said at a memorial service in the Ugandan refugee camp.

Mutabazi Caleb, from aid group World Vision, which runs the distributions, said that Palorinya is two months behind other camps in its food distributions.

WFP said it had substituted half the cereal ration with money in September in some other camps so refugees could buy food and was expanding its infrastructure to prevent future delays.

But refugees said even when food arrives, it doesn’t last a month. Of the 12 kg of grain, refugees said they sell one to pay for grinding the rest into flour, and another to buy soap, which is in short supply.

They also complained that the beans were sometimes inedible.

“They are not okay, others are rotten, and they are smelling,” said mother-of-four Liong Viola, 32, picking through her sack of shriveled legumes during an Oct. 26 distribution.

WFP country director El Khidir Daloum said it was investigating the complaint and, “is committed to providing our beneficiaries with the highest quality of food”.

John, the Refugee Welfare Committee chairman, said he urged people to stay in the camps.

“At least let us die here of the hunger rather than go back to South Sudan and be killed like a chicken,” he said.

But hungry refugees often ignore the pleas. At dusk last Saturday, Pastor Charles Mubarak packed extra clothes into a plastic bag to take back into South Sudan where he hoped to harvest cassava fields he left behind when he fled in January.

“As a family, we are 10 in number, and I’m not in position to feed them,” he said. “If I get killed I get killed once, but dying of hunger is too difficult.”

Mubarak kissed each neatly folded shirt as he placed them in the bag.

“If they give us the food rations, I wouldn’t think of going back to South Sudan,” he said. “Food is life.”

(Reporting by Jason Patinkin; editing by Katharine Houreld and David Clarke)

Philippines hunts for possible new Islamic State ’emir’ in South East Asia

Philippines hunts for possible new Islamic State 'emir' in South East Asia

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine authorities were on the lookout on Monday for a Malaysian who could be the new leader of pro-Islamic State groups in Southeast Asia, security chiefs said, following the deaths of several high-profile regional extremists.

The army terminated combat operations in southern Marawi two weeks ago after killing what it believed were the last remnants of a rebel alliance that held parts of the lakeside city for five months.

Following the country’s biggest security crisis in decades, troops have made significant gains in the week since they killed Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the Abu Sayyaf group and anointed “emir” of Islamic State in Southeast Asia.

His assumed deputy, Malaysian Mahmud Ahmad, was also believe killed, as was Omarkhayan Maute, a top operative in the alliance.

“We are still looking for Amin Baco,” Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said, describing the Malaysian as the likely new “successor as the emir of those terrorists”.

More than 1,100 people – mostly militants – were killed and 350,000 displaced by the Marawi unrest, a crisis that shocked predominantly Catholic Philippines and led to unease about Islamic State gaining traction in Muslim parts of the island of Mindanao.

Police chief Ronaldo dela Rosa said he received similar information that Baco, an expert bomb-maker, had assumed the role of Islamic State’s point man.

Experts say Baco was trained under Malaysian militant Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, who was killed in 2015 in a clash in marshlands in Maguindanao province that left 44 police commandoes dead.

The information that Baco could be in charge came from an Indonesian arrested in Marawi last week, dela Rosa said.

Despite declaring the end of operations, troops are still fighting some hold-outs hiding amid the ruins of a city battered by months of air strikes. Troops have since killed nine gunmen in Marawi, Colonel Romeo Brawner said on Monday, emphasizing why residents were being kept out of the pulverized battle zone.

Baco was reported to have been killed in Marawi but intelligence sources said he had fled.

“He could be somewhere on Jolo island or in nearby Maguindanao,” an army colonel familiar with Islamist militant groups in Mindanao, told Reuters.

He said Baco had been in the Philippines for a long time and had links with regional extremist group Jemaah Islamiah. He was married to a daughter of a local militant sub-leader.

As early as 2011, he was facilitating movements into the Philippines of funds, arms and fighters from Indonesia and Malaysia, but his links to the Islamic State network were not known to be strong, another military intelligence official said.

He said Baco was in a position to take over because of his familiarity with extremists from various groups in Mindanao.

(Writing by Neil Jerome Morales and Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty and Michael Perry)

Saudi crown prince calls Iran supply of rockets ‘military aggression’

Saudi crown prince calls Iran supply of rockets 'military aggression'

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said Iran’s supply of rockets to militias in Yemen is an act of “direct military aggression” that could be an act of war, state media reported on Tuesday.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s comments were published after Saudi air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile that Saudi Arabia said was fired toward Riyadh on Saturday by the Iran-allied Houthi militia, which controls large parts of neighboring Yemen.

Saudi-led forces, which back the internationally-recognized government, have been targeting the Houthis in a war which has killed more than 10,000 people and triggered a humanitarian disaster in one of the region’s poorest countries.

The supply of rockets to the Houthi movement could “constitute an act of war against the kingdom,” state news agency SPA on Tuesday quoted Prince Salman as saying in a call with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson.

Iran has denied it was behind the missile launch, rejecting the Saudi and U.S. statements condemning Tehran as “destructive and provocative” and “slanders”.

In reaction to the missile, the Saudi-led military coalition said on Monday it would close all air, land and sea ports to the Arabian Peninsula country.

The United Nations on Tuesday called on the coalition to re-open an aid lifeline into Yemen, saying food and medicine imports were vital for 7 million people facing famine.

“The situation is catastrophic in Yemen, it is the worst food crisis we are looking at today,” Jens Laerke of the U.N. Office for the Coordination for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told a briefing in Geneva.

The missile launch was “most likely a war crime” Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday but also urged Saudi Arabia against restricting aid access to Yemen, where the United Nations estimates nearly 900,000 people are infected with cholera.

“This unlawful attack is no justification for Saudi Arabia to exacerbate Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe by further restricting aid and access to the country,” it said.

The coalition said aid workers and humanitarian supplies would continue to be able to access and exit Yemen despite the temporary closure of ports but the United Nations said it was not given approval for two scheduled humanitarian flights on Monday.

The United Nations and international aid organizations have repeatedly criticized the coalition for blocking aid access, especially to northern Yemen, which is held by the Houthis.

The Saudi-led coalition has been targeting the Houthis since they seized parts of Yemen in 2015, including the capital Sanaa, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee and seek help from neighboring Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with CNN television on Monday, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir accused the armed Lebanese Hezbollah group of firing the missile at Riyadh from Houthi-held territory.

“With regards to the missile…that was launched on Saudi territory, it was an Iranian missile launched by Hezbollah from territory occupied by the Houthis in Yemen.”

He said the missile was similar to one launched in July at Yanbu in Saudi Arabia and was manufactured in Iran, disassembled and smuggled into Yemen, then reassembled by the operatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, “then it was launched into Saudi Arabia.”

(Reporting by Sylvia Westall and Rania El Gamal in Dubai and Tom Perry in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Writing By Maha El Dahan; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg/William Maclean)

Assad sets sights on Kurdish areas, risking new Syria conflict

Assad sets sights on Kurdish areas, risking new Syria conflict

By Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) – With Islamic State near defeat in Syria, Damascus is setting its sights on territory held by Kurdish-led forces including eastern oil fields, risking a new confrontation that could draw the United States in more deeply and complicate Russian diplomacy.

President Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian allies appear to have been emboldened by events in Iraq, where Kurdish authorities have suffered a major blow since regional states mobilised against their independence referendum, analysts say.

Rivalry between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by the United States, and the Syrian government backed by Iran and Russia is emerging as a fault line with their common enemy – Islamic State – close to collapse in Syria.

Syria’s main Kurdish groups hope for a new phase of negotiations that will shore up their autonomy in northern Syria. Assad’s government, however, is asserting its claim to areas captured by the SDF from the jihadist group, known in Arabic by its enemies as Daesh, in more forceful terms.

On Sunday, Damascus declared Islamic State’s former capital at Raqqa would be considered “occupied” until the Syrian army took control – a challenge to Washington which helped the SDF capture the city in months of fighting.

And the eastern oil fields seized by the SDF in October, including Syria’s largest, will be a target for the government as it tries to recover resources needed for reconstructing areas it controls, according to a Syrian official and a non-Syrian commander in the alliance fighting in support of Assad.

“The message is very clear to the SDF militants and their backers in the coalition, headed by America: the lands they took from Daesh are rightfully the Syrian state’s,” said the non-Syrian commander, who requested that his name and nationality be withheld.

“Regarding the resources of the Syrian people in the east – oil and so on – we will not allow anyone to continue to control the country’s resources and to create cantons or to think about self government,” added the commander, who is part of a military alliance that includes numerous Iran-backed Shi’ite militias from across the region.

The Syrian official said the SDF could not keep control of oil resources. “We won’t permit it,” said the official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity as he was giving a personal view.

The United States has not spelt out how military support for the SDF will evolve after Islamic State’s defeat, a sensitive point due to the concerns of its NATO ally Turkey.

Ankara regards Syrian Kurdish power as a threat its national security as its forces are fighting Kurdish PKK rebels over the border in Turkey.

The U.S.-led coalition, which has established several military bases in northern Syria, has been helping the SDF shore up control of the recently captured al-Omar oil field in Deir al-Zor province.

“Many people will say that will help them with (political) negotiations, but only if the United States remains with them, otherwise they are going to get clobbered,” said Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria and head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“I think the Syrian government is going to push on some of these oil wells, in the same way as Iraq just pushed to get Kirkuk oil, and in the same way the Iraqi push is going to embolden the Syrian army,” he said.

KIRKUK “LESSON”

Iraqi Kurds took control of large areas outside their autonomous region during the fight against Islamic State. However, last month’s independence referendum prompted Western opposition and fierce resistance from Baghdad, Ankara and Assad’s Iranian allies, and the Kurdish authorities have since lost much territory to Baghdad, including oil producing areas around the city of Kirkuk.

The Syrian official said this should serve “as a lesson for the Kurds in Syria, so they think about the future”.

Regional sources say the U.S. unwillingness to stop Iraqi government forces, backed by Shi’ite militias, from recapturing Kirkuk sent an encouraging message to Assad and his Iranian allies to retake the SDF-held oil areas in Syria.

With critical military support from Russia and the Iran-backed militias, Assad has recovered swathes of central and eastern Syria from Islamic State this year, having defeated many anti-Assad rebel factions in western Syria.

The Kurdish YPG militia, the dominant force in the SDF, controls the second largest chunk of Syrian territory – around a quarter of the country. Syrian Kurdish leaders say they are not seeking secession.

The YPG and Damascus have mostly avoided conflict during the Syrian civil war, setting aside historic enmity to fight shared foes. Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria have meanwhile focused on establishing an autonomous government which they aim to safeguard.

Moscow has called for a new “congress” of Syrian groups that may start work on a new constitution. The Russian Foreign Ministry published on Tuesday a list of 33 groups and political parties invited to a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Nov. 18.

A Syrian Kurdish official told Reuters the administration in northern Syria had been invited to the congress. Kurdish officials said they discussed their political demands with the Russians as recently as last month.

A senior Kurdish politician said government statements directed at the Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria were contradictory, noting that the Syrian foreign minister had said in September that Kurdish autonomy demands were negotiable.

“One day they say we are willing to negotiate and then someone else denies this or puts out an opposing statement,” Fawza Youssef said in a telephone interview with Reuters. “One of them declares war and the other wants to come negotiate. What is the regime’s strategy? Dialogue or war?”

After the final defeat of Islamic State in Deir al-Zor, “the situation will drive all the political sides and the combatants to start the stage of negotiations”, Youssef said.

The SDF has also pushed into Arab majority areas, including Raqqa and parts of Deir al-Zor, where it is working to establish its model of multi-ethnic local governance.

Analysts believe the Syrian Kurdish groups could use the SDF-held Arab areas as bargaining chips in negotiations with Damascus.

“There is no other option than to negotiate,” Youssef said. “Either a new stage of tensions and attrition will start – which we are 100 percent against – or a stage of dialogue and negotiations will start.”

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Writing by Tom Perry; editing by David Stamp)

MSF says closing most cholera centers in Yemen as epidemic wanes

MSF says closing most cholera centers in Yemen as epidemic wanes

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) is closing most of its 37 cholera treatment centers in Yemen, saying the epidemic appears to have peaked.

Some 884,368 suspected cholera cases have been recorded in the war-torn country in the past six months, including 2,184 deaths, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). The case fatality rate is now 0.25 percent.

“The number of cholera cases reported in MSF treatment centers has significantly decreased since the peak of the outbreak. As a result, the medical organization is closing the majority of its cholera treatment centers or reducing their capacity,” MSF said in a statement late on Monday.

Some 567 new patients sought treatment for suspected cholera at MSF’s centers in nine governorates of Yemen during the second week of October, down from 11,139 at the peak in the third week in June, it said.

“Only 9 percent of patients admitted by MSF last week needed to be hospitalized and a limited number of patients have symptoms that correspond with the cholera case definition (acute watery diarrhea with or without vomiting),” it said. “The remaining cases are believed to be due to other pathogens.”

Ghassan Abou Chaar, MSF head of mission in Yemen, said: “The cholera outbreak is not over but it is no longer our medical priority in Yemen. However, this should not eclipse the dire health situation of millions of Yemenis who are unable to access basic primary healthcare.”

Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Yemen’s war pits the armed Houthi movement that controls the capital against the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition that has launched thousands of air strikes to restore him to power.

Cholera epidemics usually subside once the disease passes through a population, but aid agencies say the Yemen epidemic lasted longer and spread wider than they initially expected because of the war’s toll on health care.

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said on Sunday that an aid effort by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and other agencies had managed to “largely contain the devastating cholera epidemic”, but warned it could flare up again without urgent investment in health, water and sanitation.

ICRC said last month that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is a “catastrophe”, and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year.

Alexandre Faite, head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, said at the time that the “health sector is really on its knees in Yemen … the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid.”

“Preventable illnesses and deaths are increasing in Yemen, and this can be partly attributed to the salary crisis,” MSF said, noting that doctors, nurses and other public health workers had not been paid in 13 months.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Peter Graff)