Gazette 06-17-14

Tuesday June 17th 2014

-------------------------

Iraq conflict: Clashes on approaches to Baghdad

Iraqi government forces are engaged in heavy clashes with Sunni insurgents who have made major advances in the past week.

Parts of the city of Baquba - just 60km (37 miles) from Baghdad - were briefly taken over by the rebels.
Reports say 44 prisoners were killed during fighting at a police station in the city.
The US is deploying up to 275 military personnel to protect staff at its huge embassy in the capital.
The prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, Nechirvan Barzani, has told the BBC he thinks Iraq may not stay together as Sunni areas feel neglected by the Shia-dominated Iraqi government.
He said it would be very hard for Iraq to return to the situation that existed before the Sunni militants, spearheaded by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), took control of the northern cities of Mosul and Tikrit in a rapid advance last week, and Tal Afar on Monday.
Related: Iraq Militants Push Battle Closer To Baghdad, Detainees Killed

Britain sends military assistance to Iraq as ISIS execute Iraqi soldiers amid escalation of violence

The Iraqi government is set to retaliate as black-masked Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham gunmen may soon be at the gates of Baghdad

An elite British military team has been sent to Iraq as the Middle East braces itself for an horrific escalation in sectarian violence.
The development comes as ISIS advanced towards Baghdad and the UK moved to outlaw the group in the UK.
Heavily-armed militants from the feared Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham have smashed through weak defences of the town of Tel Afar, overrunning the mixed community.
It followed ferocious fighting between ISIS and Iraqi forces who turned and fled from the black-masked gunmen who may soon be at the gates of Baghdad.
Today Foreign Secretary William Hague told MPs the “liaison and reconnaissance team” was providing “consular assistance” to Britons caught up in the violence.
And he is also set to announce a huge U-tun over Iran on Tuesday amid speculation Tehran will cooperate with the US to halt the ISIS violence and possibly reopen Britain’s embassy in Tehran.
Mr Hague spoke to foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif over the weekend and said today: “He said there is a case for further steps forward in our bilateral relations... a UK MoD operational liaison and reconnaissance team arrived in Baghdad on Saturday to help assess the situation on the ground and assist the embassy on contingency planning.”
And he stressed that many of the 400 suspected British fighters in Syria, some of whom may have crossed into Iraq, face losing their right to return.

Syria, Iraq on brink of regional war, UN panel says

GENEVA –  A U.N. commission on Syrian war crimes is sounding the alarm that the entire region is on the brink of war.
In its latest report Tuesday to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the commission said "a regional war in the Middle East draws ever closer" as Sunni insurgents advance across Iraq to control areas bridging the Iraq-Syria frontier -- drawing in Washington and Tehran.
That, plus the fourth year of civil war in Syria, threatens to topple the region, according to the four-member commission. The panel is investigating war crimes and other abuses in Syria, where President Bashar Assad was re-elected to another seven-year term in a highly contentious vote held amid fighting that has killed more than 160,000 people.
"The conflict in Syria has reached a tipping point, threatening the entire region," said the head of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry, Brazilian diplomat and scholar Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, in a speech to the 47-nation rights council in Geneva.
Violence has reached unprecedented levels, people commit crimes with no fear of being punished and "impunity has made its home" in the warring country, Pinheiro said.
"Syrians live in a world where decisions about where to go to the mosque for prayers, to the market for food and to send their children to school have become decisions about life and death," he said.
In its report, the commission said Iraq's turmoil also will have "violent repercussions" in Syria, most dangerously the rise of sectarian violence as "a direct consequence of the dominance of extremist groups."

Israel detains dozens more in search for missing teens

Israel's military has arrested 41 more Palestinians as it expands the search for three Israeli teenagers believed kidnapped in the West Bank.

The total number of people detained since the Jewish seminary students went missing last Thursday now exceeds 200.
Most of them are members of Hamas, which Israel suspects of involvement.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes bombed weapons manufacturing and storage sites in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire, the Israeli military said.
Soldiers also shot a Palestinian who tried to set fire to a fence surrounding a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, it added. Palestinian medics said he was being treated at a hospital in Ramallah.
'Ticket to Hell' The latest arrests took place in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction were reportedly among those detained on Tuesday. Several were Palestinian security forces personnel who were previously active in a militant offshoot of Fatah, according to the Associated Press.

Al-Shabab militants attack village in Kenya, leaving at least 9 dead

NAIROBI, Kenya –  Extremists attacked a coastal area of Kenya for the second night in a row, killing at least nine people a day after the deaths of nearly 50, an official said Tuesday.
Police spokesman Masoud Mwinyi said that al-Shabab militants attacked Majembeni village. The Somali militant group also claimed responsibility for the Sunday night attack in nearby Mpeketoni that killed 48 people.
The back-to-back attacks underscore the weak security around the Lamu area, which lies just south of the Somali border. Lamu once attracted swarms of foreign visitors but its tourist sector has been suffering in recent years because of increasing violence.
On Sunday night the gunmen went door to door demanding to know if the men inside were Muslim and if they spoke Somali. If the extremists did not like the answers, they opened fire.
The U.S. ambassador made Kenya's entire coastal region off-limits for embassy employees after the attack.
The merciless tactics recalled al-Shabab's attack on an upscale mall in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, last September in which at least 67 people were killed, some of them after not being able to answer questions about Islam.
Al-Shabab later said it carried out the attack because of Kenya's "brutal oppression of Muslims in Kenya," including the killings of Muslim scholars in Mombasa. The group said that such attacks would continue "as you continue to invade our lands and oppress innocent Muslims."

Islamists launch second night of deadly attacks on Kenyan coast

Somali-linked Islamist militants have killed at least eight people in a second night of attacks on Kenya's coast, after a raid on the town of Mpeketoni left at least 50 dead, the Kenya Red Cross and the Somali rebel group have said.
The Red Cross co-ordinator for the coast, Mwanaisha Hamisi, told Reuters that on Monday night gunmen had attacked the Poromoko area near Mpeketoni, which lies on the coast between Mombasa and the Somali border in the north, killing at least eight people.
"We raided villages around Mpeketoni again last night," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, the spokesman for al-Shabaab's military operations, also told Reuters, saying the group had killed as many as 20 people, mostly police. "Our operations in Kenya will continue."
-

Ukraine crisis: Deadly attack on Russian TV crew

A Russian state TV journalist has been killed in a mortar attack near a village outside the east Ukrainian city of Luhansk, Russian media report.

Igor Kornelyuk died in hospital after the attack near Metalist while a colleague, sound engineer Anton Voloshin, was reported missing.
Initial reports said Voloshin had been killed on the spot.
An Italian photojournalist and his Russian fixer were killed by mortar fire in eastern Ukraine last month.
Hundreds of lives have been lost in fighting in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, where pro-Russian rebels are battling government forces after declaring independence just over a month ago.
Reports of three civilians killed overnight by a bombardment near the rebel-held town of Sloviansk, in Donetsk region, could not be verified independently. 

Afghan official: 2,558 fraud complaints filed in Afghan runoff vote

KABUL, Afghanistan –  An Afghan official says that 2,558 complaints of ballot box stuffing and other irregularities in last weekend's presidential runoff vote have been registered with the panel investigating them.
Nadir Mohsini, spokesman for the Electoral Complaint Commission, gave the total Tuesday after the deadline to file complaints expired at midnight.
The announcement comes as both candidates have said monitors they deployed to the polls recorded significant fraud, raising the prospect of a fight over the results.
Former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah emerged as the front-runner with 45 percent of the vote in the first round held on April 5, but analysts have predicted that Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an ex-World Bank official and finance minister was likely to garner more support from majority Pashtuns with the field narrowed to two.

Security official: Hamas 'sustaining a series of blows' 

A senior military source from the Judea and Samaria Division said the raid on Balata caught the area's armed terrorists by surprise, adding that future raids may not pass off as peacefully.

The source said three Nahal battalions and additional support units entered the Balata refugee camp, home to 23,000 people, and operated in a "very challenging environment" to carry out a larger than normal, complex series of raids.

As a result, Hamas in Samaria sustained a blow in the area, he added.

"If we go to another area [in Samaria], it might look different," the source said. "These are highly skilled IDF units. The company commanders on the ground are fully able to deal with all manner of challenges, including gun attacks," he added. "These operations can be expanded significantly," the source said.

China executes 13 people in Xinjiang as violence grows

Hong Kong: The Chinese government executed 13 people in the Xinjiang region Monday, part of an intensifying response to growing violence in the region that is spreading to other parts of the country.
The 13 people had been found guilty of organising and leading terrorist groups, as well as murder, arson, theft and other crimes, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, whose report cited courts in three cities in Xinjiang.
"The 13 criminals had planned violent terrorist attacks and ruthlessly killed police officers, government officials and civilians, which took innocent lives, caused huge property loss and seriously endangered public security, according to local courts," Xinhua said.
The report did not give the names of the people who were executed. But the agency said three of them were involved in an attack in June 2013 on a police station and government offices in Turpan prefecture. News reports at the time of the attack said 26 people were killed, including nine police officers and security officials; 10 of the attackers were killed.
A court in Xinjiang sentenced three more people to death Monday, in connection to an audacious attack in October near the entrance to the Forbidden City in Beijing that left five people dead and another 40 injured.
Since that attack, there has been a surge in reports of deadly violence, and the government has said it would strike harder at Uighur separatists in Xinjiang. Several attacks in Xinjiang and elsewhere have been attributed to Uighurs, including one in March by knife-wielding assailants at a train station in Kunming, which left 29 dead and 143 injured. In late April, a bomb went off outside a train station in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, killing three people, including two attackers, in another incident attributed to terrorists. Last month an attack at an outdoor vegetable market in Urumqi killed 43 people and injured more than 90. On Monday, state media reported that Urumqi's morning and night markets were closed because of the threat of terrorism.
Uighurs are a Turkic people and are mainly Muslim; they make up more than 40 percent of Xinjiang's 22 million people. Many Uighurs feel alienated in Chinese society because of large gaps in incomes and education between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese. Some Uighurs have turned to extremist Islamic ideologies, and some have called for an independent East Turkestan in Xinjiang.

More deadly riots flare in Sri Lanka resort

COLOMBO: More deadly violence flared in a Sri Lankan coastal resort where Buddhist hardliners set shops and homes alight for a second night running in defiance of a curfew, police and residents said on Tuesday.

Amid mounting international concern over the unrest, residents of a town which has borne the brunt said a security guard was killed in an attack outside a Muslim-owned farm, raising the overall toll to four.

"More than a dozen houses and shops have been burnt overnight," a police source told AFP from the mainly Muslim town of Alutgama after another night of mob violence by followers of the extremist Buddhist Force.

Hundreds of soldiers have been deployed to help police put a lid on the violence. Although the unrest on Monday was not as widespread as the previous night, it came despite the announcement of an indefinite curfew.

Residents said that several vehicles had also been set alight in Alutgama although there were no reports of fresh violence in the neighbouring town of Beruwala where property was also set on fire on Sunday.

Police said that the curfew would remain in force although residents would be given a four hour window to stock up on provisions till noon (0630 GMT).

The authorities say nearly 80 people have so far been seriously injured in clashes while many more have suffered minor injuries. Dozens of homes, shops and mosques have been partially or completely destroyed.

The most senior Muslim member of President Mahinda Rajapakse's government threatened Monday to resign at the decision to allow militant Buddhists to rally in the flashpoint region on Sunday. 
-

US opens Bowe Bergdahl investigation

The US military has opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Sgt Bowe Bergdahl's disappearance from an Afghan outpost.

The Army has appointed Maj General Kenneth Dahl, who served in combat in Afghanistan, to lead the investigation.
Sgt Bergdahl returned to the US after five years in captivity on Friday.
Shortly after his release, several commentators and soldiers came forward to brand him a deserter and call for him to be punished.
The Pentagon has previously concluded Sgt Bergdahl walked off base in Paktika province without authorisation, but officials have not determined whether he intended to desert.
Sgt Bergdahl, 28, was flown from a military hospital in Germany to Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas on Friday, where he will complete the final phase of the reintegration process.
He was released by the Taliban in late May in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees, a move that has been criticised by some lawmakers in the US.
In a statement, the defence department said Maj Gen Dahl would have access to evidence gathered in 2009 shortly after Sgt Bergdahl was captured.
But officials will not be able to interview him until a team working on his "reintegration" will allow it.
"We ask that everyone respect the time and privacy necessary to accomplish the objectives of the last phase of reintegration," the department said in a statement, adding there is no timeline for wrapping up the investigation.
On Friday, Maj Gen Joseph DiSalvo said the Army sergeant "looked good" as he returned to Texas and was in uniform and saluted.
At that time, he said, Sgt Bergdahl had not yet been in contact with his family, which officials described as his own choice.

Fox News is ready for Hillary

FOX NEWS IS READY FOR HILLARY
So here’s the scene - The Brits are ready to go back to regular relations with Iran in the latest sign that the Islamist country, still officially a pariah state in the eyes of the U.S. government, is going mainstream. Everyone is so chipper about the mullahs these days not because of an outbreak of moderation in Tehran, but because of what’s going on in Iraq. Across the border, a jihadi army is making yet new gains in its push to establish an Islamist state even more radical than the one in Iran. There’s more good news for hardliners in Iran: The Iraqi government, the same one midwifed by the United States, is out denouncing the longtime U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia as “responsible” for the siege. That’s a vicious charge and one that shows Iraq spinning farther into Iran’s orbit. It also contradicts a report to the State Department on Iran’s own longstanding efforts to destabilize Iraq. Not an ideal time to be out touting the foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration, right? But as Hillary Clinton would surely tell you, she’s not one to shy away from a challenge.
[The latest Fox News poll shows that voters disapprove of President Obama’s foreign policy 56 to 34 percent, from June 1-3.]
The deets – The interview, pegged to the rollout of Clinton’s foreign policy campaign tome “Hard Choices” begins tonight in “Special Report with Bret Baier” which airs 6 p.m. ET. The Clinton interview will carry over into “On the Record with Greta van Susteren” which begins at 7 p.m. ET.

Clinton pushes back against critics on Benghazi  

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fended off questions Sunday on the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, suggesting that no additional explanation she offered would satisfy her critics.
"There's a difference between unanswered questions and unlistened to answers,” Clinton told Jane Pauley in an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning.”
“There were a lot of confusing pieces of information flooding into us from the very first moment we heard about it,” Clinton said, referring to the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. “We did our best to sort it out."
"I did my best to fully cooperate with the Congress. I respect the Congress' oversight responsibility," she added, but suggested that Republican critics have seized on discrepancies that arose from “the fog of war” and have improperly tried to use them as evidence of a coverup.

Qatari: U.S. intervention in Iraq would be seen as war on Sunni Arabs

DOHA, Qatar — A former Qatari ambassador to the United States offered up a warning to the Obama administration Monday that any military intervention on behalf of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki would be seen as an act of “war” on the entire community of Sunni Arabs.
Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad al Khalifa also warned against the United States working with Iran to repulse the advance by the radical Sunni group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, something that Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday the United States would be willing to consider.
“For the West or Iran or the two working together to fight beside Maliki against Sunni Arabs will be seen as another conspiracy against Sunni,” Khalifa tweeted.
Khalifa’s comments via Twitter (@NasserIbnHamad) show the complicated calculations the Obama administration faces as it considers whether to come to Maliki’s aid while insurgents from ISIS consolidate their gains over much of northern and central Iraq and menace the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
Maliki’s Shiite Muslim government has angered Sunnis across the Arab world for being close to Shiite-ruled Iran and for what Sunnis describe as widespread mistreatment of their co-religionists in Iraq.
Khalifa retired from Qatar’s diplomatic service in 2007, but he remains an influential voice in Qatari foreign-policy circles.

White House Makes Big Admission About Obama’s Uncle

Remember back in 2011 when the White House said that “the President did not know his illegal immigrant uncle?” Well, they just retracted that story and replaced it with another one.
Surprised? I’m not either. But it is closer to the truth than we were before.
On Thursday, press secretary Jay Carney said that POTUS did stay with his immigrant uncle while attending Harvard Law school in the 1980s.
Back when this arose, folks looked at the record, including the president’s book, and there was no evidence that they had met and that was what was conveyed,” Carney told reporters. “Nobody spoke to the president.”
Sounds like another lie to cover up the old lie, even though Carney has told us the truth about Obama and his uncle knowing each other. Well, can you expect the 100% truth from these people?
Of course not!
Obama’s uncle did back up the story, and say that Barack did stay with him for a while. Onyango “Omar” Obama relayed this information at a deportation hearing this week. Onyango is Obama’s father’s half brother, says Carney. He faced DUI charges and deportation in 2011 after living in the United States for 50 years. But the judge had mercy on the Kenyan national, and let him stay.
“When Omar Obama said the other day, and there were reports that he said the other day, that President Obama, back when he was a law school student had stayed with him in Cambridge, I thought it was the right thing to do to go ask him,” Carney said. “Nobody had asked him in the past and he said that he in fact had met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school, that he stayed with him for a brief period of time, until his — the president’s — apartment was ready. After that, they saw each other once every few months while the president was in Cambridge and after law school they gradually fell out of touch. The president has not seen Omar Obama in 20 years and has not spoke with him in roughly 10 years.”
You know, I kind of wonder what caused this admission of the truth on the part of Carney? Did the President feel the need to clear things up? Did the Conservative press dig up something that made Obama come forward? Many people have been asking to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate, but it is impossible to find.
When Onyango was arrested for a DUI, he was asked who he’d like to talk to on the phone. He said he wanted to call the White House. He pleaded not guilty to the charge, and remained in the US.
Since Obama is keeping his family tree a secret, it is funny to see that some of the information is coming out, and I would love to see more. Maybe someday soon we’ll find out the real country of origin where POTUS came from.
-