Category Archives: News

#Syrian defector: #Assad poised to #torture and murder 150,000 more

The Daily Beast reports: The regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is holding 150,000 civilians in custody, all of whom are at risk of being tortured or killed by the state, the Syrian defector known as “Caesar” told Congress on Thursday.

According to a senior State Department official, his department initially asked to keep this hearing—in which Caesar displayed new photos from his trove of 55,000 images showing the torture, starvation, and death of over 11,000 civilians—closed to the public, out of concerns for the safety of the defector and his family. Caesar smuggled the pictures out of Syria when he fled last year in fear for his life. Caesar’s trip had been in the works for months.

There was no audio or video recording allowed at the hearing; the House Foreign Affairs Committee said that decision was made in consideration of Caesar’s safety. He sat at the witness table disguised in a baseball cap and sunglasses, with a blue hoodie over his head. “We recommended to Congress a format for today’s briefing that would have allowed press access while addressing any security concerns,” said Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman. A committee staffer alleged State had tried to prevent the hearing from happening at all.

The packed committee room sat in silent horror as new examples of Assad’s atrocities were splashed on the large television screens on the wall and displayed on large posterboards littered throughout the hearing room. Caesar spoke softly to his translator, Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian American Task Force, a Washington-based organization that works with both the Syrian opposition and the U.S. State Department.

“I am not a politician and I don’t like politics,” Caesar said through his translator. “I have come to you honorable Congress to give you a message from the people of Syria… What is going on in Syria is a genocidal massacre that is being led by the worst of all the terrorists, Bashar al Assad.” [Continue reading…]

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#ISIS ‘seize #Iraq’s biggest dam’ in defeat for #Kurdish forces

Reuters reports: Sunni insurgents have reportedly seized control of Iraq’s biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping across much of northern Iraq in June.

Capture of the electricity-generating Mosul Dam, which was reported by Iraqi state television, could give the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) the ability to flood Iraqi cities or withhold water from farms, raising the stakes in their bid to topple prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shia-led government.

“The terrorist gangs of the Islamic State have taken control of Mosul dam after the withdrawal of Kurdish forces without a fight,” said Iraqi state television of the claimed 24 hour offensive.

Kurdish officials conceded losses to Isis but denied the dam had been surrendered. A Kurdish official in Washington told Reuters the dam was still under the control of Kurdish “peshmerga” troops, although he said towns around the dam had fallen to Isis. [Continue reading…]

Reuters also reports: A major Kurdish militant group called Monday for all Kurds to rise up against Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) fighters in northern Iraq, after the Sunni militants seized Kurdish territory in a dramatic advance.

“All Kurds in the north, east, south and west must rise up against the attack on Kurds in Sinjar (in northern Iraq),” the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a 30-year insurgency against Turkey, said in a statement on it website.

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Two Christian nuns from Mosul describe being kidnapped by #ISIS

Matthew Barber writes: The two nuns were well-known for their many years of work among Mosul’s needy. Though they were not harmed while being held, their unexplained disappearance was unnerving for the Christian population, and added to the number of factors that terrorized Christians before their final mass departure on Jul. 17.

Sister Miskinta al-Dosaky Myko and her superior, Sister Atur Joseph had initially fled to Kurdistan province when ISIS took over Mosul, as had many other Christians. And as many others had also done, they ventured back into Mosul after ISIS offered pledges of safety to minorities.

On June 27, the two nuns, along with three orphans in their care, drove from Kurdistan Province to Mosul, to check on the orphanage that they were in charge of, and to check on a number of poor families to whom they frequently gave assistance. In their car they carried food and money that they planned to deliver to needy families. The children were brought along to gather their things from the orphanage, as they were going to relocate to Kurdistan.

They were apprehended by ISIS fighters while in one of the neighborhoods where they often distributed food. Two jihadists spoke to them, a Syrian and an Iraqi. The nuns had the impression that the Iraqi was reluctant to give the nuns a hard time, but the Syrian pulled rank somehow and said that they had to come with them, “to answer questions.” He demanded their keys, saying he would drive their car, but the nuns refused, whereupon the jihadists allowed them to drive, and escorted their vehicle with their own vehicles. [Continue reading…]

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Thousands flee as #Lebanon battles #Syrian militants

The Associated Press reports: Thousands of Lebanese civilians and Syrian refugees crammed into cars and pickup trucks fled Monday as Lebanese artillery pounded a border town that had been overrun by militants from neighboring Syria.

The civilian exodus came in the early morning hours during a relative lull in fighting and just a few hours later the bombardment around the town of Arsal had reached an intensity of three shells every minute.

The fighting is the most serious spillover of violence from Syria’s civil war into Lebanon, compounding fears that tiny Lebanon is fast becoming a new front in its neighbor’s conflict, now in its third year. The government has rushed reinforcements to scene, including dozens of armored personal carriers and tanks.

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Explosion of infectious disease in #Gaza threatens public health

Gaza Ministry of Health: The people of Gaza face enormous barriers to accessing primary health care, with only 10 of the government’s 56 Primary Health Care clinics operational, eight of UNRWA’s 22 clinics open, and most NGO clinics closed.

The majority of displaced persons have no access whatsoever to primary health care services. This is at a time when there are urgent public health problems arising from the Israeli offensive threatening the health of the entire population.

The destruction of the sole Gaza power plant leaves sewage pumps incapacitated. The lack of electricity combined with the destruction of at least 16 water wells has left 1.8 million people without access to water, according to the latest OCHA report.

It also reports that some 10,000 homes have been completely annihilated, and 450,000 people forcibly displaced, with 250,000 of them seeking shelter in UN facilities only able to cope with a fifth of that number, and another 30,000 in government schools and institutions.

The over-crowding and lack of adequate water and sanitation facilities has seen the incidence of viral meningitis skyrocket from five per day, to 53 cases today.

Diarrhoea and scabies are rampant in the overcrowded shelters, with clean drinking water all but impossible to obtain. [Continue reading…]

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#Israel withdraws troops from #Gaza

Yossi Melman writes: After 27 days and 63 Israeli Defense Forces fatalities, the war is over. At least as far as Israel is concerned. The unilateral withdrawal is a political decision informed by military considerations. The IDF has set up a line of defense within the buffer zone of three kilometers from the Gaza border, parallel with moving its troops out of the Hamas-controlled enclave. Granted, should Hamas keep firing rockets, the IDF will return to operational mode and bomb Gaza from air, with the repeat of the ground incursion very much on the table.

All these moves are coordinated with Egypt. Israel’s security coordination with Egypt during the operation has been unprecedentedly close; from Israel’s viewpoint, the special relation with the north-African ally is its most important strategic asset in the region, and the main achievement from this war.

In an interview with CNN, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said: We the Palestinian people have, since 1948, have listened to the international community and U.N. and international regulations, in the hope they end the aggression against us. But the international community failed in ending the Israeli occupation and failed in helping our people to have self-determination and have its own state. Even the latest (peace) negotiations, between (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud) Abbas and (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu with Kerry as the broker, were sabotaged by Netanyahu.

Reuters reports: Israel said it would unilaterally hold fire in most of the Gaza Strip on Monday to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and allow some of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by an almost four-week-old war to go back to home.

The announcement, made first to Palestinian media, met with suspicion from Gaza’s dominant Hamas Islamists and followed unusually strong censure from Washington at the apparent Israeli shelling on Sunday of a U.N.-run shelter that killed 10 people.

An Israeli defence official said the ceasefire, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (0700 to 1400 GMT), would apply everywhere but areas of the southern town of Rafah where ground forces have intensified assaults after three soldiers died in a Hamas ambush there on Friday.

“If the truce is breached, the military will return fire during the declared duration of the truce,” the official said.

The official said east Rafah was the only urban area in which troops and tanks were still present, having been withdrawn or redeployed near Gaza’s border with Israel over the weekend.

Israel is winding down its offensive in the absence of a mediated disengagement deal with Hamas. It says the military is close to completing its main objective of destroying cross-border infiltration tunnels from Gaza and prepared to resume strikes in response to any future attacks by the Palestinians.

Hamas, whose envoys are in Egypt for truce negotiations that Israel has shunned in anger at Friday’s lethal ambush in Rafah, saw a possible ruse in the humanitarian truce announcement.

“The calm Israel declared is unilateral and aims to divert attention away from the Israeli massacres. We do not trust such a calm and we urge our people to exercise caution,” said the group’s spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri. [Continue reading…]

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#Israel eavesdropped on John Kerry in Mideast talks

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel.

During the peak stage of peace talks last year, Kerry spoke regularly with high-ranking negotiating partners in the Middle East. At the time, some of these calls were not made on encrypted equipment, but instead on normal telephones, with the conversations transmitted by satellite. Intelligence agencies intercepted some of those calls. The government in Jerusalem then used the information obtained in international negotiations aiming to reach a diplomatic solution in the Middle East.

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#UN warns of ‘humanitarian tragedy’ as #ISIS seizes #Iraq’s Sinjar

France24 reports: The capture of the Iraqi town of Sinjar by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS or ISIL) has displaced up to 200,000 people and created a “humanitarian tragedy”, the UN said on Sunday.

“A humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in Sinjar,” the top UN envoy in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, said in a statement after ISIS militants had captured the northern town, which lies near the Syrian border. Thousands of previously displaced families had fled to Sinjar to seek safety.

“The United Nations has grave concerns for the physical safety of these civilians,” the statement said.

It said it was particularly concerned by the fate of civilians who fled into the Jabal Sinjar mountains and could be trapped inside an area completely surrounded by the militants.

“The humanitarian situation of these civilians is reported as dire, and they are in urgent need of basic items including food, water and medicine,” the statement said.

Sinjar had been controlled by Kurdish troops but they withdrew on Sunday, the second consecutive day of losses for the peshmerga fighters, who also lost the town of Zumar and two nearby oilfields to ISIS jihadists on Saturday. [Continue reading…]

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Tweets from #Gaza contradict official U.S.-Israeli claims about collapse of ceasefire

Mondoweiss reports: The PLO and Palestinian Authority both insisted to Mondoweiss that Hamas fighters engaged Israeli soldiers inside Gaza well before the ceasefire took effect – and during an Israeli assault on Rafah leading up to the 8 AM ceasefire.

“They aborted the ceasefire from the beginning,” said Nabil Shaath from the PLO’s Central Committee. A veteran negotiator, Shaath has become the de facto liaison between the PLO and Hamas. He confirmed to Mondoweiss that PA President Mahmoud Abbas received a briefing from Hamas this morning on the incident near Rafah. Shaath’s account reflects details provided directly by Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip.

According to Shaath, at after 6 AM, Hamas fighters engaged Israeli forces in Rafah. He maintained that it was then — almost two hours before the ceasefire went into effect — that the two Israeli soldiers were killed and the other went missing.

Shaath’s account was supported by dispatches published before the ceasefire went into effect by the official Twitter account of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades military wing. In a tweet published at 7:34 AM on August 1, the Qassam Brigades stated, “At 7 AM a group [of Hamas fighters] clashed with [Israeli] forces east of Rafah and caused many injuries and death to them.” [Continue reading…]

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The war in #Gaza is a war against civilians

Martin Lejeune writes: I am in the Gaza Strip since the 22nd of July and still cannot believe what is happening here. I am experiencing the worst days of my life. All people in Gaza experience the worst days of their lives. Such massive attacks on Gaza are without precedent. Behind these words hide human tragedies. The humanitarian catastrophe has reached its peak.

The war in Gaza is a war against civilians. I am not the only one saying this, but also the people in Gaza alongside all the journalists that I speak to, who have covered all the wars of the past 10 years (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc…). What is happening here has a new quality. [Continue reading…]

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#Hamas denies taking missing #Israeli soldier

Al Jazeera reports: The al-Qasaam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, has denied capturing a missing Israeli soldier after Barack Obama, the US president, called for his release as a precondition for further ceasefire talks after the latest Gaza truce fell apart after just a few hours.

The Israeli army said Hadar Goldin, 23, went missing when its soldiers, two of whom were killed, were attacked while trying to destroy a Hamas tunnel in southern Gaza.

Obama’s comment at a White House news conference on Friday suggested the limited impact that diplomacy is having as the violence continues in the besieged strip.

“If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible,” he said.

The al-Qasaam Brigades said: “We have no idea about where the Israeli soldier is or what is the situation.

“We lost contact with the group who made the suicide mission near Rafah after it was done.

“And we believe everyone in this group was killed by an Israeli airstrike including the Israeli soldier who the Israelis are talking about having disappeared.” [Continue reading…]

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Senate blocks aid to #Israel

Politico reports: In the end, the Senate couldn’t even agree to deliver emergency aid to one of the United States’ closest allies.

A last-ditch effort to deliver aid to Israel during its war with Hamas died on the Senate floor, as Republicans blocked the proposal over concerns that it would increase the debt.

After Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ $2.7 billion border aid package, which also included $225 million for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and $615 million to fight Western wildfires, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid tried to split off the Israel and wildfire money as a standalone bill, hoping to put aside the dispute over border funding and appeal to Republicans’ deep ties to Israel.

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Sen. Mark Udall calls for #CIA director John Brennan to resign

Huffington Post: Following reports that Central Intelligence Agency employees improperly accessed computers used by U.S. Senate staff to investigate the agency, Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) on Thursday called for the resignation of John Brennan as CIA director.

“After being briefed on the CIA Inspector General report today, I have no choice but to call for the resignation of CIA Director John Brennan,” he said in a statement. “The CIA unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking into Senate Intelligence Committee computers. This grave misconduct not only is illegal, but it violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of separation of powers. These offenses, along with other errors in judgment by some at the CIA, demonstrate a tremendous failure of leadership, and there must be consequences.”

According to a CIA Inspector General’s Office report first obtained by McClatchy, agency employees in 2009 hacked Senate computers being used to compile a report on the agency’s infamous detention and interrogation program — a move that some critics have characterized as a significant breach of the separation of powers. Brennan has apologized to Senate intelligence committee leaders, including Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who took the floor earlier this year to excoriate the agency for skirting the law and attempting to intimidate Congress. [Continue reading…]

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UN chief: #Israel responsible for ‘reprehensible’ school attack

Colum Lynch reports: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon directly accused Israel of shelling a U.N.-protected shelter housing more than 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza as part of what he said was an “outrageous” and “unjustifiable” strike that left at least 16 civilians dead and lent urgency to the need for an “immediate, unconditional cease-fire.”

In a scorching rebuke from the normally mild-mannered diplomat, Ban charged that Israel’s action constituted a “reprehensible” assault on civilians and demanded that those responsible for the strike be held accountable. The shelling of the Jabalia Elementary Girls School marked the fifth time since the conflict began on July 8 that a U.N.-protected shelter has been hit with incoming fire, but the incident is the first time that Ban has directly blamed Israel. That leaves open the possibility that some of the other facilities were hit by Hamas rockets. Israeli officials have said the militant group stores weapons in U.N. facilities and uses them to fire rockets into the Jewish state.

“This morning, yet another United Nations school sheltering thousands of Palestinian families suffered a reprehensible attack. All available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause,” Ban said during a stop-off in Costa Rica. “Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children.” [Continue reading…]

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#Syrian city of #Homs shows signs of life amid moonscape of devastation

Ian Black reports: Baba Amr, the rebel-held suburb where the journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were killed by government rocket fire in February 2012, is devastated and looks eerily deserted. A militia roadblock bars access. Other parts of the city are in surprisingly good shape. In Inshaat, where rows of gleaming white UN vehicles clog the car park of a state-run five-star hotel, the streets are clean and orderly, restaurants bustling for the Ramadan Iftar meal.

No one knows exactly how many Homsis have fled abroad, or how many are displaced inside Syria. But last month the UNHCR still counted more than 352,000 people from the city registered as refugees, the majority in neighbouring Lebanon – a quarter to a fifth of the prewar population. Rumours abound of abandoned property in pro-opposition areas being taken over by Alawite loyalists and looting by the widely disliked, Iranian-trained National Defence Army. Statistics are not available.

Opposition activists now living elsewhere reject the government’s upbeat narrative. “Homs is a city of horror,” said Razan, whose Sunni family was involved in the mass protests of April 2011 and suffered in the subsequent army offensive and repression. “If there had been a real solution people would be able to go back, but hundreds are still in prison. The government is removing some checkpoints and trying to show that everything is fine. But it’s crazy how they’ve managed to cover it all up and brainwash people just by saying, ‘Let’s move on.’”

Samer, a wealthy businessman, puts it bluntly: “The whole thing is designed to snuff out the rebellion.”

At al-Waer, a couple of miles to the west, a war of sorts continues. Like other rebel-held areas across Syria, this part of Homs is still under siege. The top flats of several tower blocks are burned out – hit by government artillery taking out snipers. But it is a mostly static and curiously intimate sort of conflict. Residents, including state employees, commute in and out of the suburb every day to work or study, going past army and rebel roadblocks that are just a couple of hundred yards apart. Skinny boys scamper to and fro earning a few pounds carrying shopping across the space between them. Negotiations on the terms of access, and perhaps an eventual old city-type evacuation deal, are continuing sporadically.

“It’s hard, especially for the children, and the main worry is their psychological welfare,” says Afra, a law student, glancing warily at the uniformed security officer loitering nearby as she describes the situation inside. “As an adult you can cope, but the little ones don’t understand what’s happening. They are afraid of sudden noises and if a door slams they jump.”

Omar, a middle-aged shop owner, says the fighters in al-Waer are Syrians, many of them locals – not the foreigners who are vilified in state media – and mostly keep themselves to themselves. “Two days ago they started shooting at each other. When that happens it’s scary and we want the army to go in. We are tired. I bought a new house and it’s lost its value. We want to get this over with.” That sense of weariness is widely shared – in Homs and beyond.

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U.S. resupplies Israel with munitions as Gaza offensive rages

Reuters reports: The United States has allowed Israel, waging an offensive in the Gaza Strip, to tap a local U.S. arms stockpile in the past week to resupply it with grenades and mortar rounds, a U.S. defense official said on Thursday.

The munitions were located inside Israel as part of a program managed by the U.S. military and called War Reserves Stock Allies-Israel (WRSA-I), which stores munitions locally for U.S. use that Israel can also access in emergency situations.

Israel, however, did not cite an emergency when it made its latest request about 10 days ago, the defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United States allowed Israel to access the strategic stockpile anyway to resupply itself with 40mm grenades and 120mm mortar rounds to deplete older stocks that would eventually need to be refreshed. [Continue reading…]

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