Category Archives: News

‘Why are the Russians bombing my ambulances?’

Michael Weiss writes: Dr. Ammar Martini has a simple question he would like answered: “Why are the Russians bombing my hospitals and ambulances?”

One of the cofounders of Orient Humanitarian Relief, a non-profit that provides medical treatment and educational services in northern and central Syria, Martini was recounting to The Daily Beast how Russian airstrikes in the Idlib countryside Saturday destroyed a part of his emergency ambulance center. “They destroyed four or five of our vehicles,” he said. “These attacks were specifically targeting Orient.”

Below is a video Oubai Shahbandar, a former Pentagon officials turned Orient employee, shared The Daily Beast, showing the charred vehicles. “If the Russians think ambulances are legitimate terrorist targets,” Shahbandar emailed, “imagine what they’re going to do to the rest of Syria.”

It’s been a dark week for medical volunteers, all around. A Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was struck repeatedly on Saturday by U.S. warplanes. 19 were killed, the majority of them hospital workers. Colonel Brian Tribus, the U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan, said that any powdered medical facilities constituted “collateral damage” against legitimate Taliban targets threatening U.S. forces in the area. Doctors Without Borders countered that there were no militants in or around its facility, and accused the American military of a “war crime.” That isn’t clear, at this point. But what is apparent is that the Kunduz hospital attack is a major violation of the standards U.S. forces have set for themselves. A military investigation is underway, and the Pentagon has now retracted its initial claim that American soldiers were under threat.

Russia, too, nearly hit a separate Doctors Without Borders hospital in a refugee camp in Al Yamdiyyah, Latakia. According to McClatchy, “The bomb struck in the village just a few hundred yards from the actual border, wounding several townspeople, local residents said. The Doctors Without Borders hospital apparently was not damaged.” However, Dr. Jawad Abu Hatab, a heart surgeon at the hospital, told the news agency that he believed Russia had been targeting the site and missed.

So far, 80 percent of Russia’s air sorties in Syria have hit decidedly non-ISIS targets, mainly in the center, north, and west of the country. That’s where, in addition to civilians, a grab bag of opposition fighters ranging from hardline Islamists to al-Qaeda to U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army units have all had bullseyes painted on their backs. [Continue reading…]

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Russians moving artillery, ground forces to Hama, Syria

NBC News reports: A senior defense official has told NBC News that the Russian military has been moving artillery and ground forces towards Hama — one of the locations that the Russians targeted in the first 24 hours of their airstrikes.

“So much for fighting ISIS,” the defense official said.

U.S. officials have questioned whether Moscow’s airstrikes — in the name of defeating ISIS — were genuinely targeting the group or were instead a cover to shore up Syrian President Bashar Assad by bombing anti-government rebel groups. Russia defended its latest round of airstrikes in Syria amid mounting questions over their targets, insisting that Moscow’s planes had struck ISIS installations. [Continue reading…]

The Independent reports: Russia has built up a “substantial” military presence including ground troops in Syria, according to the Nato secretary-general.

Jens Stoltenberg told journalists that Vladimir Putin’s forces have not mainly been targeting Isis, but other opposition groups.

“I will not go into any specific numbers but I can confirm that we have seen the substantial build-up of Russian forces in Syria – air force, air defences but also ground troops in connection with the air base they have,” he continued. [Continue reading…]

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Russian attacks seem designed to expose the U.S. as a feckless ally of Syrian rebels

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia has targeted Syrian rebel groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency in a string of airstrikes running for days, leading the U.S. to conclude that it is an intentional effort by Moscow, American officials said.

The assessment, which is shared by commanders on the ground, has deepened U.S. anger at Moscow and sparked a debate within the administration over how the U.S. can come to the aid of its proxy forces without getting sucked deeper into a proxy war that President Barack Obama says he doesn’t want. The White House has so far been noncommittal about coming to the aid of CIA-backed rebels, wary of taking steps that could trigger a broader conflict.

U.S. officials said Russia’s targeting of its allies on the ground was a direct challenge to Mr. Obama’s Syria policy. Underlining the distrust, the Pentagon decided against sharing any information with Moscow about the areas where U.S. allies were located because it suspected Russia would use that information to target them more directly or provide the information to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“On day one, you can say it was a one-time mistake,” a senior U.S. official said of Russia’s strike on one of the allied rebel group’s headquarters. “But on day three and day four, there’s no question it’s intentional. They know what they’re hitting.”

U.S. officials say they now believe the Russians have been directly targeting CIA-backed rebel groups that pose the most direct threat to Mr. Assad since the campaign began on Wednesday, both to firm up regime positions and to send a message to Mr. Obama’s administration. [Continue reading…]

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Perfect weather for bombing Syria

RFERL reports: As Russia presses ahead with air strikes in Syria, the Kremlin’s push for domestic support for the offensive has spread to an unlikely area: weather forecasts.

On October 3, state-run television channel Rossiya-24 aired an exhaustive weather bulletin describing the current climatic conditions in Syria as “very favorable” for a bombing campaign.

“October in Syria is generally a propitious time for flights,” said the weather presenter, standing against a backdrop detailing the average temperature, rainfall, wind speed, and number of cloudy days in October in the Middle Eastern country.

“Rain falls only once every 10 days and the most intensive rain, up to 18 millimeters, is usually observed in the north, where the operation by Russia’s air force is underway,” she continued. “But this cannot seriously affect the bombings.”

According to the slick, three-minute forecast — accompanied by Defense Ministry footage showing bombs hitting the ground and sending up huge plumes of smoke — Syria’s balmy autumn temperatures are also perfect for air strikes. [Continue reading…]

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NATO warns Russia after warplane enters Turkish airspace

The New York Times reports: NATO officials issued a warning to Russia on Monday, and the United States began what officials called urgent consultations with Turkey, after Turkish fighter jets intercepted a Russian warplane that entered its airspace over the weekend.

Russia’s actions were “an unacceptable violation” of Turkish airspace, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said after meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, Feridun Sinirlioglu. Mr. Stoltenberg added, “Russia’s actions are not contributing to the security and stability of the region.”

Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, speaking in Madrid during a news conference with his Spanish counterpart, said that American officials were conferring with Turkish counterparts over next steps.

“I don’t believe this was an accident,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to comment publicly. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy reports: A Russian warplane on a bombing run in Syria flew within five miles of the Turkish border and may have crossed into Turkey’s air space, Turkish and U.S. officials said Sunday.

The incident raises new concerns that Russia’s armed intervention in Syria could spill over to neighboring countries, lead to an unintended military confrontation and trigger an even bigger regional conflict.

A Turkish security official said Turkish radar locked onto the Russian aircraft as it was bombing early Friday in al Yamdiyyah, a Syrian village directly on the Turkish border. He said Turkish fighter jets would have attacked had it crossed into Turkish airspace.

But a U.S. military official suggested the incident had come close to sparking an armed confrontation. Reading from a report, he said the Russian aircraft had violated Turkish air space by five miles and that Turkish jets had scrambled, but that the Russian aircraft had returned to Syrian airspace before they could respond. [Continue reading…]

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Russia declares partial victory in bombing campaign in Syria

The Washington Post reports: Russian military officials declared partial victory Saturday in their four-day-old bombing campaign in Syria and said they would intensify airstrikes against rebel groups despite U.S. criticism.

Officials in Washington said Russia was stepping up its military support to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, sending at least two multiple-rocket launcher systems through the Russian naval base at Tartus on Syria’s coast. Such systems can blanket a large area with munitions.

Russian aircraft based in Syria had carried out 20 sorties in 24 hours and destroyed nine targets, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement Saturday morning. They included strikes near the city of Raqqa, which is controlled by the Islamic State, and in the provinces of Idlib and Hama, which are not.

Activists and human rights groups said the strikes continued for a fourth consecutive day, with the attacks extending into northern Latakia province, near the expanded air base from which the Russian air force is operating. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS bomber’s father: My son was radicalised in Ukraine

Al Jazeera reports: The father of a Jordanian youth, who blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Iraq last week, has told Al Jazeera that his son joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group after he was brainwashed by recruiters.

Jordanian Member of Parliament Mazen Dalaeen said on Sunday that his son, Mohamed, was recruited by an Azerbaijani couple living in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Kharkov.

The couple was actively recruiting young impressionable Muslim students to join the ranks of ISIL in Syria and Iraq, he said.

The bereaved father said that the active network that brainwashed his son consisted of a man who went by the name of “Ibrahim” and his wife, who recruited women and went by the name of “Sumayah”.

Mohamed and his Ukrainian wife joined ISIL along with a Chechen and Tunisian couple. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS destroys Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria

The New York Times reports: Another landmark structure in Syria’s ancient city of Palmyra has been deliberately destroyed by Islamic State militants, according to local antigovernment activists and Syrian officials. The building involved this time was a set of triumphal arches, erected in the second century.

Since seizing Palmyra from government forces in May, Islamic State fighters have destroyed some of the most beautiful and historically significant monuments in the sprawling oasis city in Syria’s central desert, one of the world’s most renowned archaeological sites.

The latest to fall was the triple arch built by the Romans to celebrate a victory over the Persians, which bore ancient inscriptions and stood at the entrance to a grand colonnade. [Continue reading…]

Lindsey Hilsum writes: Every evening, Abir Shalil used to look out over the ancient city of Palmyra and wonder at its beauty. The family home where she lived with her parents and six sisters was right there – she grew up amongst the ruins.

Now aged 23, she lives in a shabby tenement in the half-destroyed city of Homs. She didn’t want to think about the horrors she saw fleeing the militants of the Islamic State who seized her home town and the historical site back in May.

Dead bodies, people who had been beheaded, terrifying men with guns, awful things, she said. She was passionate about the wanton destruction of her beloved Palmyra. [Continue reading…]

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Nearly a third of world’s cacti face extinction, says IUCN

cactus

The Guardian reports: Nearly a third of the world’s cacti are facing the threat of extinction, according to a shocking global assessment of the effects that illegal trade and other human activities are having on the species.

Cacti are a critical provider of food and water to desert wildlife ranging from coyotes and deer to lizards, tortoises, bats and hummingbirds, and these fauna spread the plants’ seeds in return.

But the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)‘s first worldwide health check of the plants, published today in the journal Nature Plants, says that they are coming under unprecedented pressure from human activities such as land use conversions, commercial and residential developments and shrimp farming.

But the paper said the main driver of cacti species extinction was the: “unscrupulous collection of live plants and seeds for horticultural trade and private ornamental collections, smallholder livestock ranching and smallholder annual agriculture.” [Continue reading…]

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Germany’s refugee crisis is getting worse

Amy X Wang reports: When Germany announced in August that it would waive United Nations rules and allow Syrian migrants to apply for asylum regardless of how they got there, officials knew to expect a flood of people. Hopeful families were already surging into the country from all over the Middle East, an area crippled by social strife and political chaos. Authorities predicted the arrival of more than 800,000 refugees to the country by the end of 2015, and they tried to prepare accordingly.

But Germany is now sagging under the weight. Its cities and towns cannot easily accommodate all the refugees. An official from the Berlin Refugee Council called the issue an “organizational problem” rather than a financial one: Authorities don’t have the resources—or the time—to quickly provide registration, funds, secure accommodation, health services, and identification to all the refugees, 200,000 of whom arrived in September alone.

German police and politicians are frustrated. Exhausted migrants who traveled hundreds of miles to escape civil war only to be held in weeks-long waiting lines are even more so. And adding to Germany’s existing logistical problems now is another: The impending arrival of a freezing, harsh winter. [Continue reading…]

BBC News reports: Hamburg has become the first German city to pass a law allowing the seizure of empty commercial properties in order to house migrants.

The influx of migrants has put pressure on the authorities of the northern city to find accommodation. Some migrants are sleeping rough outdoors.

Hamburg’s law takes effect next week.

In a separate development, prosecutors filed charges of inciting racial hatred against a co-founder of the anti-Islamic Pegida movement.

The prosecutors in the eastern city of Dresden said they acted after Lutz Bachmann had on Facebook described asylum seekers “trash” and “animals”. [Continue reading…]

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Doctors Without Borders: Kunduz airstrike was ‘war crime’

NPR reports: NATO in Afghanistan says it will lead an investigation into an airstrike in Kunduz this weekend that hit a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital, killing 22 people — an attack that the humanitarian organization, also known as Doctors Without Borders, has called “a war crime.”

A U.S.-led airstrike on the northern Afghan city was carried out on Saturday but the circumstances surrounding it remain murky. NATO acknowledges only that the raid occurred near the charity’s hospital.

The NATO coalition says it “has directed a preliminary multi-national investigation known as a Casualty Assessment Team.” It says that an initial investigation would be complete in “a matter of days.” [Continue reading…]

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Russia in Syria: What damage will it do?

Julian Borger writes: Sending troops and military hardware into the middle of another country’s civil war to prop up a ruthless and despised dictator rarely turns out well for anyone, and all the signs suggest that Vladimir Putin’s adventure in Syria will be no exception.

Not all the damage Russia wreaks will be self-inflicted. There are likely be plenty of other losers. Most analysts agree that in the absence of a very quick pivot to diplomacy leading to a real political transition in Damascus, the intervention is likely to prolong the conflict and escalate it, drawing other regional powers in more deeply.

The only beneficiaries may be Islamic State (Isis) recruiters, who can only be grateful for the Russian orthodox church’s designation of Putin’s expeditionary campaign as a “holy war”. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Russia estimates its air strike campaign in Syria could last three to four months, the head of the lower house of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee said on Friday.

“There is always a risk of being bogged down but in Moscow, we are talking about an operation of three to four months,” Alexei Pushkov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, told French radio station Europe 1. He added that the strikes were going to intensify. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Russian warplanes have struck targets deep inside the Islamic State’s heartland province of Raqqa for the first time, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday.

The strikes were carried out against an Islamic State training camp and a command post near the city of Raqqa, expanding the scope of a three-day old air campaign that had previously focused on attacking rebel groups opposed to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

Those attacks continued Friday, with one U.S.-backed rebel group in the northwestern province of Hama saying its bases had been hit for the sixth time in three days by Russian jets.

Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for Russia’s Defense Ministry, said the Raqqa strikes took place overnight Thursday and were among 18 sorties conducted over the previous 24 hours, bringing to 30 the total number of raids since Moscow launched its air campaign in Syria on Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq PM open to Russian airstrikes on ISIS

FRANCE24 reports: Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told FRANCE24 in an exclusive interview broadcast on Thursday that he is open to allowing Russia to carry out air strikes against Islamic State group militants in Iraq.

“Not yet. It is a possibility. If we get the offer, we will consider it,” Abadi told FRANCE24.

“It is in our interest to share information with Russia. Russia has a lot of information. The more information we gather the more I can protect the Iraqi people,” Abadi added. [Continue reading…]

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How Russia bombed a UN Heritage Site in Syria

NOW reports: An area of over six square kilometers ignited all of a sudden. The whole region was ablaze in seconds. Kafranbel-based Raed Fares said he has seen the town being bombed by the Syrian regime before. “But I have never seen anything like this in my life,” he told NOW, minutes after the Russian jets had bombed the outskirts of his town. “I don’t know what kind of missile this was, but the impact was huge, scary.”

The Russian jets showed up around noon on Thursday and the bomb hit an archeological Byzantine complex in the vicinity of Kafranbel. “It used to be a refugee camp until recently, but the Free Syrian Army brigades returned the civilians to their homes in the towns in the area so that the historical monuments wouldn’t be damaged,” he said.

Kafranbel is a small town in Syria’s Idlib Governorate. Before the war it was home to roughly 15,000 people, mostly Sunni Muslims. It was Syria’s largest producer of figs and a major producer of olives. It also sits on a dead Byzantine city and is surrounded by some of the famous Forgotten Cities, the 700 abandoned settlements in northwest Syria between Aleppo and Idlib that were abandoned between the 8th and 10th centuries. Serjilla, Shanshrah, and Al-Bara are close to modern-day Kafranbel. The Russians bombed Shanshrah, a UN World Heritage Site, twice on Thursday. [Continue reading…]

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As Saudis block a human rights inquiry in Yemen, America stays quiet

Vice News reports: A Dutch-led effort to create a human rights mission for Yemen was abandoned Wednesday amid intense Saudi opposition at the UN, but human rights experts are laying blame in part at the feet of the United States, which failed to vigorously back the Netherlands — and may have worked behind the scenes to head off the independent investigation.

A Saudi-led coalition has bombed Yemen since late March in an attempt to push back Houthi rebels and their allies and reinstate the government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The US (and UK) offers logistical support for the coalition, in addition to selling billions of dollars in weapons to its members, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. US officials say American personnel are also involved in providing targeting assistance for airstrikes, which the UN says are responsible for the majority of the more than 2,300 civilian deaths in the conflict in the past six months.

In September, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein called for an independent, international inquiry into crimes committed in Yemen in the preceding year. Shortly after, the Netherlands, supported by several European countries, presented a draft resolution to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). Among other elements, it called for a human rights mission, commissioned by Zeid, to be sent to Yemen, and for that team to be allowed access to all areas of the country.

Multiple sources familiar with negotiations in Geneva, where the HRC is located, said the Dutch initially encountered objections from the Yemeni government, as well as from the Saudis, Qataris, and Emiratis — all three of whom currently sit on the council.

The Saudis and other Arab members of the council then introduced an alternative text, which called for the UN to only assist an existing national inquiry in Yemen, established by the government in exile in Riyadh, which supports the Saudi-led intervention. Human rights and civil society groups considered it unacceptable, both due to its content and because it was introduced by a belligerent in Yemen’s war. They offered public support to the Dutch.

Largely quiet on the matter was the United States. After multiple requests for comment on whether the American government supported an international, independent human rights inquiry for Yemen, US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power released an ambiguously worded statement on September 24. [Continue reading…]

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‘Another mass shooting in America’: Oregon killings a grim familiarity for U.S.

The Guardian reports: The US is reeling from another school shooting, the 45th this year, after a 26-year-old gunman murdered as many as nine people and wounded seven more at a community college in Oregon before he was killed.

The gunman was named as Chris Harper Mercer, a 26-year-old man who lived near Umpqua college in the rural town of Roseburg. He is thought to have been born in England before moving to the US as a young boy.

Investigators were focusing on reports from survivors that Mercer told students to state their religion before he opened fire.

The police were also looking at reports that hours before the attack he posted messages on an internet chat site warning people to stay away from school. Investigators said they were attempting to trace people on the site who discouraged him while others urged him on. It does not appear anyone reported the messages to the authorities before the shooting. [Continue reading…]

Quartz reports: A study this summer from Arizona State University found “significant evidence” that school shootings and other mass shootings were far more likely if there had been reports of a similar shooting in the previous two weeks.

And last year, after analyzing 160 mass shootings in the U.S. from 2000 to 2013, Andre Simons of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit concluded, “The copycat phenomenon is real.”

“As more and more notable and tragic events occur, we think we’re seeing more compromised, marginalized individuals who are seeking inspiration from those past attacks,” Simons said at the time.

The reporter’s typical mandate—to paint the clearest, most accurate picture of an event using all available information—may, in this case, be unintentionally encouraging further crime, sociologists and psychologists say. [Continue reading…]

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Foreign intervention escalates: Iranian troops arrive in Syria for ground offensive backed by Russia – sources

Reuters reports: Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria in the last 10 days and will soon join government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in a major ground offensive backed by Russian air strikes, two Lebanese sources told Reuters.

“The (Russian) air strikes will in the near future be accompanied by ground advances by the Syrian army and its allies,” said one of the sources familiar with political and military developments in the conflict.

“It is possible that the coming land operations will be focused in the Idlib and Hama countryside,” the source added.

The two sources said the operation would be aimed at recapturing territory lost by President Bashar al-Assad’s government to rebels.

It points to an emerging military alliance between Russia and Assad’s other main allies – Iran and Hezbollah – focused on recapturing areas of northwestern Syria that were seized by insurgents in rapid advances earlier this year.

“The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria: soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisors … we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more,” the second source said. Iraqis would also take part in the operation, the source said. [Continue reading…]

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Why Putin gambled on airstrikes in Syria – and what might come next

By Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

For those watching closely, the signal for Russia’s first airstrikes came in a statement early on September 30 by Kremlin spokesman Sergei Ivanov, just after the upper house of the parliament authorised military operations:

To observe international law, one of two conditions has to be met – either a UN Security Council resolution or a request by a country, on the territory of which an airstrike is delivered, about military assistance.

In this respect, I want to inform you that the president of the Syrian Arab Republic has addressed the leadership of our country with a request of military assistance.

Within hours, witnesses were reporting that Russian jet fighters were bombing parts of Hama and Homs Provinces in western Syria. Activists said scores of people – almost all civilians – had been killed, disseminating videos and photographs of slain or injured children.

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