Kurds claim Turkish airstrike targeted refugee camp in Iraq

December 8, 2017 By administrator

A mysterious explosion near a refugee camp harboring thousands of displaced Turkish Kurds has killed five members of a Kurdish militia and injured three others amid claims that Turkey was responsible for the alleged attack.

The administrative council for the Makhmour camp, southwest of Erbil, claimed late Wednesday’s blast was caused by an airstrike carried out by Turkey. The council, which is believed to have close ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), said, “It is significant that a camp under the protection of the United Nations, located in the middle of Iraqi territory was attacked. The Federal Iraqi State, the Kurdistan Regional Government and the UN will be clearly implicated until they issue convincing explanations on the matter.” But the statement failed to specify by what means Turkey had conducted the alleged aerial attack.

Kurdistan 24, an Iraqi Kurdish media outlet, claimed the camp had been struck by a rocket but also did not explain how it may have been launched. Earlier reports suggested the explosion was caused by a car bomb.

Turkey and Iraq have not responded to any of the accusations so far. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which provides assistance to the camp, has not commented either.

Leyla Arzu Ilhan, a former co-chair of the Makhmour Council, backed the claims of an airstrike. She told Al-Monitor, “Residents saw a flash in the sky then heard a loud explosion, so this points to an aerially launched device.” Ilhan said a structure housing local self-defense forces that were established after Islamic State militants attacked Makhmour as they swept across Iraq in the summer of 2014 had been targeted.

“Much of the building collapsed and we have been clearing debris to rescue two of our friends who were stuck under the rubble,” Ilhan said. “Now that we have buried our dead we will undertake a further exhaustive search of the debris for evidence.”

Ilhan acknowledged that an initial search around the site of the blast had yielded no material evidence that could help determine its source. She agreed that IS may have been responsible.

IS militants have used armed drones to attack Iraqi forces and the Kurds, be they in Iraq, Syria or Turkey, are among their archfoes. But Ilhan insisted that Turkey was the more likely culprit. She speculated that the alleged Turkish attack was meant to pressure the PKK into freeing two Turkish intelligence operatives who were netted in a sensational sting operation in September as they met with their moles near the town of Dukhan in Iraqi Kurdistan. “We can’t be sure but it’s a distinct possibility,” she told Al-Monitor. The men remain in PKK captivity despite protracted efforts on the part of MIT chief Hakan Fidan to secure their release.

A Kurdish-Turkish politician living in self-imposed exile in Europe took a different view. He argued that the attack was part of a broader pattern of emerging cooperation between Turkey, Iraq and Iran against the Kurds. The politician, who spoke on condition of strict anonymity, told Al-Monitor, “Ever since the referendum [on Kurdish independence] we have seen signs of these three countries reverting to their old ways of ganging up against the Kurds.” The politician predicted that “it is only a matter of time before Turkey and Syria reconcile and do the same,” pointing to last month’s wave of Turkish airstrikes against Asos Mountain on the Iraq-Iran border.

Turkey periodically rains bombs on PKK bases in the Qandil Mountains but the attack against Asos was a first. The pro-PKK Firat news agency claimed the strikes occurred after Iranian drones scouted the area and then passed on target coordinates to Turkey.

Makhmour has long been a Turkish bugbear because of PKK entrenchment there and every so often rumors surface of an imminent Turkish attack against the camp.

Many of Makhmour’s residents began fleeing military brutality in Turkey in the early 1990s, when the blood-soaked PKK-led Kurdish insurgency was at its peak. The militants have a firm grip over the camp, where giant images of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan are commonplace.

Some Western aid workers caustically refer to the place as a rest and recreation center for PKK fighters pausing from their ongoing battle against Turkish forces for self-rule inside Turkey. With its sand-colored cinderblock dwellings, multiple schools and convenience stores, the dusty settlement looks more like a small town than a camp.

Repatriating an estimated 14,000 Turkish Kurds who live in the desolate desert outpost was envisaged under now stalled peace talks between the Turkish government and the PKK. With few prospects of them resuming, it seems they will be stuck there for the foreseeable future.

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Over 200 Daesh terrorists killed in airstrike in Dayr al-Zawr: Russia

August 20, 2017 By administrator

Russia’s Defense Ministry says the country’s aircraft have eliminated more than 200 Daesh terrorists on their way to the eastern Syrian city of Dayr al-Zawr.

The operation also destroyed around 20 SUVs laden with large-caliber weapons and mortars, as well as armored vehicles, including tanks, the Ministry said in a statement on Monday.

The city contains relatively large concentrations of the Takfiri group’s terrorists and is subject to offensives by both the Syrian Army and its allies, and the Russian warplanes.

The Ministry said the city was now witnessing “international terrorists…trying to regroup and equip their last base in Syria.”

“The defeat of ISIS (Daesh) in the Dayr al-Zawr region will be a strategic defeat for the international terrorist group in the Syrian Arab Republic,” the statement said.

Earlier in the month, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said if the group lost the city, it would potentially mean it had suffered an ultimate defeat.

“This is perhaps the main point at the Euphrates, which will in many ways indicate the end of the fight against ISIS,” he said.

Dayr al-Zawr, however, still contains some 125,000 civilians, a fact that could slow down the military operations targeting the city.

Bouthaina Shaaban, the political and media adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said in an interview on Friday that the six-year-old foreign-backed militancy in her country was nearly over as foreign states had cut their backing for Takfiri terrorist groups.

On Sunday, Assad said the assistance provided by main allies, Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement to the country’s counter-terrorism operations, had enabled the Syrian Army to make battlefield gains and reduce the burden of war.

US missile strike in Syria: What is known so far about target, victims & reactions

April 7, 2017 By administrator

Syrian army airbase that was hit by a U.S. strike near the city of Homs, Syria, 7 April, 2017. © Mikhail Voskresensky / Sputnik

The US launched a missile strike on a Syrian airbase, killing at least six people, including civilians, and wounding several others. Reactions to the operation continue to roll in, with Russia condemning it while EU countries and others express support.

US President Donald Trump ordered the military strike on an airfield in Shayrat, near Homs, which resulted in a Friday pre-dawn strike in which 59 Tomahawk missiles were deployed.

Six MiG-23 fighter jets were destroyed in the operation, along with a material storage depot, a training facility, a canteen and a radar station, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense (MoD).

However, the airfield’s runway remained intact, according to the MoD, which described the operation’s efficiency as “quite poor.”

Syrian officials have so far confirmed that six people were killed and several others wounded in the operation.

However, the governor of Homs told RT that at least five people had been killed, three of whom were Syrian soldiers. He also stated that at least seven people had been wounded.

Meanwhile, Syria’s SANA news agency has reported nine civilian deaths, including four children.

Global reaction

The office of Syrian President Bashar Assad called the US strike “reckless”,“irresponsible” and “shortsighted,” claiming the motives the strike weren’t based on true facts.

However, the airfield’s runway remained intact, according to the MoD, which described the operation’s efficiency as “quite poor.”

Syrian officials have so far confirmed that six people were killed and several others wounded in the operation.

However, the governor of Homs told RT that at least five people had been killed, three of whom were Syrian soldiers. He also stated that at least seven people had been wounded.

Meanwhile, Syria’s SANA news agency has reported nine civilian deaths, including four children.

Global reaction

The office of Syrian President Bashar Assad called the US strike “reckless”,“irresponsible” and “shortsighted,” claiming the motives the strike weren’t based on true facts.

source: https://www.rt.com/news/383895-us-airstrike-syria-reactions/

Air strikes on Isis-held Mosul ‘leave 230 civilians dead’, reports local media

March 23, 2017 By administrator

Iraqis displaced by fighting flee to the Al-Sumoud neighbourhood of Mosul on March 22, 2017 AFP/Getty Images

US Central Command says it is researching reports of extensive loss of civilian life in third such alleged incident in fight against Isis in recent weeks

Bethan McKernan Beirut

Approximately 230 people are reported to have been killed in what is thought to have been a US-led coalition air strike on an Isis-held neighbourhood of Mosul.

A correspondent for Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency operating in northern Iraq, said that 137 people – most believed to be civilians – died when a bomb hit a single building in al-Jadida, in the western side of the city. Another 100 were killed nearby.

“Some of the dead were taking shelter inside the homes,” Hevidar Ahmed said from the scene.

A daily assessment report from Central Command, which coordinates US military action in Iraq, stated that five strikes near Mosul on Thursday had destroyed five Isis units and a sniper team, as well as 11 fighting positions, vehicles and artillery equipment.

A spokesperson for CentCom told The Independent they were aware of the loss of civilian life as reported by Rudaw and were “researching” the situation.

No other fighting force in the country has the capability to launch an aerial attack of such a scale.

Iraqi coalition ground forces, backed by a US-led coalition bombing campaign, began the gruelling Operation Inherent Resolve to remove Isis from Mosul in October 2016.

The jihadist fighters now hold onto approximately a quarter of the city on the western bank of the River Tigris that cuts through Mosul from north to south.

An estimated 400,000 Iraqis are trapped in the remaining Isis-held parts of the city, the UN’s refugee agency said on Thursday. Those caught up in the fighting face growing food shortages or being hit by crossfire if they try to leave.

Isis has used civilian homes to shelter fighters and weapons throughout the battle for the city, rigging buildings and streets with explosives to impede Iraqi troops’ progress.

The fighting has come at a heavy price for both Mosul’s residents and Iraqi soldiers: thousands of Iraqi civilians have died in the fighting, and a cumulative total of more than 200,000 displaced from their homes.

At least 6,878 civilians were killed in violence mainly inflicted by Isis around the country last year, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) has said.

Many Mosul residents report their loved ones have died as a result of friendly fire rather than Isis’s warfare tactics.

AirWars, a UK-based non-profit monitoring the effect of anti-Isis air strikes on civilians, said last week that they believed 370 civilians died in US-led coalition bombing in just the first week of March alone.

Over the border in Syria in the last week, the US has been accused of killing civilians in two separate bombing incidents: 33 died in a strike near Raqqa which was supposed to target Isis positions, and more than 50 after a strike hit a mosque in Aleppo province rather than an al-Qaeda meeting point.

Removing Isis from Mosul, which is Iraq’s second largest city, will effectively spell the end of Isis as a land-holding force in the country, driving the remnants of the group back to their de facto capital of Raqqa.

While losing the city will be a decisive blow, the jihadi organisation is expected to pose a renewed threat in the form of an insurgency war against Iraqi forces.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-air-strikes-mosul-230-civilians-killed-dead-isis-held-iraq-battle-islamic-state-a7646011.html

Turkish airstrikes leave dozens of Kurdish villages in Iraqi Kurdistan empty

April 11, 2016 By administrator

MERGA, Iraqi Kurdistan,— Dozens of Kurdish villages have been abandoned and hundreds of families displaced close to Iraqi Kurdistan border with Turkey as a result of Turkish air strikes targeting militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Of the 76 villages of the Barwari sub-district of Dohuk governorate, which lies along the Turkish border, between half and a third are empty, save for a few people occasionally returning to check on their property or work on their farms, according to Kurdish government officials.

On a recent trip into the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, long a refuge for the PKK that has fought a three-decade war against Turkey for Kurdish rights, Associated Press reporters visited the village of Merga, only a few kilometers from the Turkish border.

The village, a small hamlet of perhaps a dozen houses surrounded by oak, apple and almond trees and set in a green valley among the snow-peaked mountains of the Zagros mountain range, had no inhabitants left except for four old men who said they came there only occasionally to look after their gardens.

“The aircraft keep coming here continuously. They bomb the mountain, they bomb the edge of the villages,” said Fawzi Ali, a local farmer, who had just driven up from Dohuk, where he had moved with his family last year, to check on his property. “People cannot live here.”

He said none of the four villages nearby — Hassa, Yekmal, Kharaba, and Shilaza — had any people in them.

“There is nothing here. Nothing except the mountains,” he said.

Another man, Isho Iohanna, said of one airstrike that, “We had never seen such missiles before. These missiles shook the houses and the fruits were falling from the trees.”

It is not clear exactly how many villages have been affected. According to Ismail Mustafa Rashid, governor of the Amedi district, which includes Barwari, 35 villages have been abandoned. According to Aziz Mohammed Taher, head of the agricultural department in Barwari, 25 villages have been evacuated.

They had no exact information on how many people have left the area as most seem to have moved in with relatives or rented houses in nearby villages and towns. Both officials estimated that hundreds of families have been affected.

The airstrikes, which target PKK bases in the area, seem to have largely spared the villages themselves. No civilian casualties have been reported since last August when eight people were killed in the village of Zergele.

Ali said the guerrillas of the PKK were moving through the mountain valleys and it was clear that it was them that the aircraft were targeting.

“They are in the area but nobody knows where they are exactly. They are in the mountains. They are everywhere,” he said.

Going up to the village and back, a team of AP reporters passed by PKK patrols three times, driving on the mountain roads in their trucks.

In the village of Asey, the last populated settlement on the road toward the border, Mayor Serbes Hussein said people had started abandoning their villages in the summer of last year when the airstrikes first began.

He said the conflict was having a big impact on the area.

“It is an area very rich in agriculture, mostly famous for its apples, and people were producing huge amounts to sell them in the fruit market of Dohuk,” he said, adding that seasonal labor in his village was also suffering from lack of work caused by the evacuations.

According to Aziz Mohammed Taher, an entire harvest of apples has been lost last year.

Many of Barwari’s villages, including Merga, are populated by Assyrian Christians.

The PKK took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population.

A large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathise with PKK rebels.

The European Union has urged last week Turkey to restart the peace process with the Kurd.

Source: eKurd

Russian airstrike targets al-Qaeda prison in Syria’s Idlib

January 9, 2016 By administrator

Russian servicemen prepare a Sukhoi Su-30SM fighter jet before a departure for a mission at the Hmeimin military base in the Latakia province, in the northwest of Syria, on December 16, 2015. (AFP)

The Russian air force has carried out a strike on an al-Qaeda run prison killing around 60 people in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, a UK-based monitoring group says.

According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights(SOHR), a jail and a religious court belonging to the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front were hit in the town of Maarat al-Numan on Saturday.

SOHR claims that at least 29 terrorists and 21 civilians were killed as four missiles hit the buildings in the militant-held city.

Russia launched its first airstrikes against the Takfiri terrorists in Syria on September 30 at the request of the Syrian government.

Syrian forces have cut off foreign-backed militants’ key supply routes by taking control of several villages in the northern areas of Latakia Province.

Meanwhile, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported that the villages of Rweiset al-Qamoua, al-Mgheiriyeh, Hawsh al-Mgheiriyeh, Rweiset Bani Jazi and Kedin were liberated.

Syrian forces have been battling militants, particularly Daesh, on different fronts throughout Syria since March 2011, when the foreign-sponsored militancy began. Over 250,000 people have been killed over the past few years of turmoil.

Baghdad says would welcomes Russia strikes in Iraq

October 1, 2015 By administrator

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi (AFP Photo)

Shortly after Russia launched airstrikes against militants in Syria, Iraq announces that it would also welcome any such military measures by Moscow on its soil.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told France 24 television on Thursday that he had been receiving “massive information” from both Syria and Russia on the Daesh Takfiri militant group.

When asked if he had discussed with Russia airstrikes in his country, Abadi said, “Not yet,” adding, “It is a possibility. If we get the offer we will consider it and I would welcome it.”

Meanwhile, senior Russian foreign ministry official Ilya Rogachev said that his country would consider launching the strikes if it gets “such a request from the Iraqi government or a Security Council resolution that depends decisively on the will of the Iraq government.”

In summer 2014, Daesh expanded its militancy from Syria to Iraq by capturing some key urban areas in north and later in the west of the country.

The Iraqi army has managed to push back the group from some northern territories, including from Tikrit, the capital of the Salahuddin province. Military operations are under way to purge the militants from Ramadi and Mosul, two major bastions of Daesh in west and north.

Moscow announced earlier in the day that it has appointed Lieutenant General Sergei Kuralenko to represent Russia at a joint intelligence task force in Baghdad, which also includes Iran and Syria.

Rogachyov also ruled out Russia joining a US-led coalition purportedly targeting Daesh positions in the Iraq.

“Theoretically, it would look nice (to join the US-led coalition) from a political point of view, but I think that we have difficulty understanding the principles on which the coalition is acting,” Rogachyov said, adding, “On the basis that the coalition currently exists, we are unlikely to join.”

Russian defense ministry announced that it had sent more than 50 military aircraft as well as marines, paratroopers and special forces into Syria. It came just one day after it started to pound positions of Daesh across Syria.

Turkey ‘concerned’

Turkey’s foreign minister expressed concerns over Russia’s air strikes in Syria.

“We are very much concerned at reports that yesterday’s air operation by Russia is not targeting Daesh but some opposition positions and civilian casualties have also occurred during these operations,” said Feridun Sinirlioğlu.

He said the Russian attacks will “lead to further escalation and this is the last thing we need in this very tragic and caustic situation in Syria.”

“This will add up to the problems in Syria, not will be helpful or finding solution to this now long overdue suffering of the Syrian people,” said Sinirlioğlu.

Turkey is among countries suspected of supporting the Daesh militants operating inside Syria.

Source: presstv

Backed by U.S.-led air strikes which broke the second IS siege of Mount Sinjar this year.

December 22, 2014 By administrator

By AFP, Mount Sinjar

US-led forces attacked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) targets on Sunday with 13 air strikes in Iraq and three in Syria, using fighters, bombers and other aircraft, the U.S. military said.

Four of the Iraq strikes were near Sinjar in the north of the country, which destroyed ISIS buildings, tactical units and vehicles, while other Iraqi cities targeted included Tal Afar, Ramadi, Mosul and Baiji, according to the Combined Joint Task Force quoted by Reuters.

Earlier, Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani hailed victories over ISIS during a visit to Mount Sinjar, which had been besieged by the militants for months.

Thousands of the autonomous Kurdish region’s peshmerga fighters launched a major operation on Wednesday backed by U.S.-led air strikes which broke the second IS siege of Mount Sinjar this year.

The operation threatens the links between the city of Mosul, the main ISIS stronghold in Iraq, and territory the militant group controls in neighbouring Syria.

“During the past 48 hours, the peshmerga opened two main routes to Mount Sinjar,” Barzani said, adding that “we did not expect to achieve all these victories.”

In addition to breaking through to the mountain, “a large part of the center of the town of Sinjar was also liberated,” he said, referring to an area to the mountain’s south.

The Kurdish regional president also said the peshmerga might participate in an operation to retake Mosul itself.

“We will take part if the Iraqi government asks us, and of course we will have our conditions,” he said, without specifying what they would be.

ISIS spearheaded a sweeping militant offensive that has overrun much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland since June, presenting both an opportunity for territorial expansion and an existential threat to the country’s Kurdish region.

Multiple Iraqi divisions collapsed in the early days of the offensive, clearing the way for the Kurds to take control of a swathe of disputed northern territory that they have long wanted to incorporate into their region over Baghdad’s objections.

But after driving south towards Baghdad, ISIS then turned its attention to the Kurds, pushing them back toward their regional capital Arbil in a move that helped spark U.S. air strikes against the jihadists.

Backed by the strikes, which are now being carried out by a coalition of countries, Kurdish forces have clawed back significant ground from ISIS.

The conflict seems set to redraw the internal boundaries of Iraq in favor of broader Kurdish control in the north.

In his remarks on Mount Sinjar, Barzani said: “We will not leave an inch of the land of Kurdistan for (ISIS), and we will strike (ISIS) in any place it is located.”

Tens of thousands of members of the Yazidi religious minority were trapped by ISIS on the mountain for days in the searing August heat in a first siege that sparked fears of genocide.

That siege was broken and many of the civilians evacuated, but others stayed behind and were again besieged by the jihadist group in October.

Syria urges UN to sanction Israel over Damascus airstrikes

December 8, 2014 By administrator

Syrian officials demanded that UN impose sanctions on Israel after Tel Aviv conducted airstrikes near Damascus Airport. They say the attack was a heinous crime against their sovereignty by a country which doesn’t hide its policy of supporting terrorism, Russia Today reported.

Tel Aviv committed a heinous crime against Syria’s sovereignty, said Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry in two identical letters to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and to the Chair of the UN Security Council, SANA news agency reported.

The attack aimed to support armed terrorist groups in Syria, especially after Damascus made some progress in the cities of Deir Ezzor, Aleppo and Daraa, say Syrian officials.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called for UN officials to impose sanctions on Israel, whose authorities“don’t hide their policies in supporting terrorism.” Damascus also urged UN to take all necessary procedures to prevent Israel from repeating such attacks in accord with UN Charter.
The letter asserts that Israel is trying to divert the world’s attention from the collapse of its own coalition government, which continues “its occupation of the Arab territories and violates the international legitimacy.”

Despite the Israeli attacks, Damascus will not stop its efforts to combat terrorism in all its forms, types and tools and on Syrian soil, added the letter