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Defense army of the Artsakh Republic (Nagorno Karabakh Republic) shot down an Azerbaijani ORBITER type drone detected flying over the eastern direction of the Line of Contact between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan on Saturday at around 12:15.
According to the release, issued by the Defense Army, frontline units of Karabakh Army ‘’continue to watchfully control the Artsakh air and land borders and resort to preventive measures upon necessity.’
A picture taken from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on September 10, 2016 shows smoke rising from the Syrian village of Jubata al-Khashab after Israeli airstrikes against Syrian army positions. (By AFP)
The Syrian army says it has shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone inside Syria following an Israeli attack on Syrian army positions in the south, state media report.
Syria’s official SANA news cited the Syrian military as saying that the intruding aircraft had been detected and targeted by the country’s air defense system while they were striking Syrian military positions. The warplane, it said, was downed in western Quneitra and the drone in an area called Sa’sa’ and located on the Damascus Reef.
Soon after the report, the Israeli military denied that any of its aircraft had been shot down in Syria, claiming that two missiles were fired at them during the airstrike on Quneitra but missed.
Israeli fighter jets had attacked two Syrian army cannons in the Golan Heights, where Quneitra is located, early on Tuesday morning. It was the fifth such attack in just over a week.
Israel seized parts of the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
source; http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/09/13/484460/Syria-army-downing-Israeli-jet-drone
STEPANAKERT. – Antiaircraft units of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR/Artsakh) Defense Army have downed in Artsakh skies, on Thursday at around 11pm, yet another Azerbaijani unmanned combat air vehicle, informed the Defense Army press service.
Incidentally, the Armenian News-NEWS.am video camera captured that moment.
At that time, NKR President Bako Sahakyan’s talk with the visiting Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group Co-Chairs was still in progress, in capital city Stepanakert
Reports have emerged that Kurds have shot down a helicopter over Iraqi Kurdistan, which they say was used in airstrikes against them. Turkish officials have made no comment, but a source confirmed to RT that the incident took place.Previously Ankara acknowledged conducting airstrikes on alleged PKK targets in Iraq. Turkish military is also targeting Kurds inside the country and shelling Kurdish militias in northern Syria.
One sortie apparently went wrong for a Turkish assault helicopter as Iraqi Kurdish militia claim they shot the aircraft down.
Kani Xulam, from the American Kurdish Information Network, told RT that official Ankara would refrain from reporting any losses in operations against the Kurds, striving to portray the Turkish military as “an invincible power that cannot be beaten.”
The Turkish authorities are aiming to make the Kurds submit to them and “come down on their knees,” he said.
Xulam said “scores of Turkish soldiers” were taken prisoner by the Kurds with the Turkish government never acknowledging such facts.
In the case of the allegedly downed helicopter, there is no reference about the incident in Turkish media, yet the story is now emerging in Kurdish media, Xulam said.
No Turkish military losses ever make it into national mainstream media, Middle East political analyst Shwan Zulal told RT.
The Kurdish PKK militia, which may be responsible for the alleged downing of the Turkish helicopter, traditionally remains idle during the harsh winter months. However, it will be active from the beginning of spring, which explains why Turkey has recently been shelling Kurdish positions in the mountains, Zulal said.
With the military operation against the Kurds ongoing in Turkey for months now, the violence is likely to escalate further, Zulal predicted.
The Turkish military has been operating against Kurdish PKK militia in northern Iraq since the early 1990s.
In September 2015, the Turkish parliament prolonged a mandate allowing the deployment of its military in neighboring Syria and Iraq to fight Kurdish militants.
Early last December, Ankara started carrying out airstrikes targeting Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) forces in northern Iraq.
Tensions have recently spiked between Ankara and Baghdad after Turkey deployed more than 100 troops equipped with tanks and artillery to Iraq’s northern Nineveh governorate, saying they will train forces battling Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).
The shops are closing one by one, prices are rising, wages are being delayed and people are panicking. This is how Azerbaijan, the Caspian Sea nation and ex-Soviet republic of nearly 10 million people, is ringing in the New Year.
The manat, Azerbaijan’s national currency, is plummeting with the price of oil — which accounts for 94 percent of the exports of the nation and 73 percent of the budget. The currency has lost most of its value against the dollar after the government dropped its support for the manat, but not before burning through half of the nation’s hard currency reserves, Reuters reported.
The first protests against price hikes and salary delays have began in the cities of Lankaran, Agjabady and Siyazan. In Lankaran, local residents closed the Baku-Astara road despite police attempts to prevent the protest, according to Meydan.TV.
And Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, the nation’s dictator, doesn’t seem to have a plan to rescue the nation beyond saying he will impose price controls.
Economic expert Natig Jafarly called president’s attitude to the current situation “Soviet-administrative”.
“The president and his team don’t understand or they don’t want to believe what is happening in Azerbaijan. We were waiting for the anti-crisis plan, but instead of that we saw kind of a Soviet-administrative attitude,” Jafarly said. “And this will cause a deeper crisis. It is more than clear that the present government is not able to save this country from the crisis, and the way of resolving of these problems is not the only economic reforms, but political reforms, the re-establishment of a management system – all these processes go through the parliament re-election as a first step,” Jafarly posted on his official Facebook account.
While waiting for Aliyev to come up with a plan, Azerbaijan will not have the benefit of civil society or an independent press, both long-repressed elements of society. Some of the main figures in civil society or journalism are in prison, including Intigam Aliyev, Anar Mammadov, Bashir Suleymanov, Khadija Ismayil and Rasul Jafarov.
And Aliyev’s poor human rights records mean it cannot count on help from the European Union, unlike other nations.
On Jan. 11, the price of oil fell to $31 a barrel, while Azerbaijan’s cost per-barrel of prodcution is $11.
Jafarly wrote that Azerbaijan’s state budget for 2016 counts on $50 a barrel for oil. But such a price rise is not expected this year. That means the government will have difficulty financing such projects as the the Baku-Tbilisi-Gars railway project.
The manat has tumbled by more than a third since the central bank abandoned its peg to the dollar last month. In the past week, the dramatic deterioration has sparked half a dozen protests in a country unaccustomed to widespread dissent.
“President Aliyev is in uncharted territory at the moment,” said Livia Paggi, central Asia and Caucasus analyst at risk consultancy GPW. “The government has been unable to stabilise the situation via conventional means. Now they are trying to restore currency stability by killing foreign exchange transactions.”
The wave of protests is unusual in a country where the government tolerates little opposition. In Siyazan, a small town north of the capital, 55 protesters were arrested last week. Further protests were reported in other towns this week in response to unemployment and rising prices, although the relatively affluent capital Baku has remained calm.
The government has announced measures to ease the impact of the manat’s fall, including a VAT exemption for bread and flour and a rise in pensions by 10 per cent.
Special Forces veteran Ben Griffin has called on military personnel and munitions workers to disobey and block the bombing of Syria ahead of a Downing Street protest in which ex-services personnel will throw down their medals in disgust at the war.“If you work in a bomb factory, walk out. If you fill up bombers with fuel, stop it. If you fly missions over Syria, don’t release your bombs,” Griffin, who served with the Parachute Regiment and SAS in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, told RT on Monday.
“Our attack on Syria will make things worse. You only need to look at the outcome of our attacks on Iraq and Libya to see that.”
“We have no confidence in the government of this country to do the right thing, so we call on the public to resist participation in the ongoing slaughter,” he added.
Griffin made his comments ahead of a planned protest by other decorated British military veterans of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and Libya.
https://youtu.be/tDYtnH_IuMs
According to a blog by ex-services group Veterans for Peace UK (VFPUK), four military veterans of recent wars will cast off their medals outside Downing Street on Tuesday in protest at MPs’ decision to bomb Syria.
The action is set to take place at 1:00pm GMT on Tuesday and aims to oppose what the group terms “yet another attack on a Middle Eastern country.”
MPs voted on Wednesday to extend UK airstrikes from Iraq into Syria, despite widespread public opposition to the move.
Writing on the VFPUK website, Daniel Lenham, a Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran of Iraq and Libya, said he was casting off his decorations “in protest at the decision to bomb Syria.”
“We will hand back medals given to us for participating in previous attacks on the Middle East,” he said.
David Smith, who served with the Royal Green jackets infantry regiment, said: “I want to express my utter disgust at the decision to unlawfully bomb Syria, god help all those who are likely to suffer as a result of this action.
“I renounce all forms of state sanctioned warfare and violence.”
VFPUK claims to have 265 members, some of whom served as along ago as D-Day. The group hopes “to convince people that war is not the answer to the problems of the 21st century,” according to its website.
A file photo of Saudi fighter jets (By AFP)
Presstv Reports from Yemen say a Saudi warplane has been downed by Yemeni forces in the province of Sana’a.
According to the reports, the Saudi warplane, an F-16, was shot down by Yemeni air defense in the city of Bilad al-Rus, in the western part of the province, on Thursday.
Reports also said that the pilot of the Saudi jet has been taken into custody.
Spy drone shot down
Also on Thursday, Yemeni forces downed a Saudi spy drone in Sa’ada Province. Unconfirmed video footage appeared online showing the wreckage of the unmanned aerial vehicle.
Yemeni forces have shot down several Saudi warplanes and drones over the past few months in various parts of the country.
Yemen’s official Saba news agency said earlier this month that Yemeni army forces shot down a Saudi fighter jet in the Ghamar district of Sa’ada Province.
The fighter jet had reportedly conducted a number of airstrikes against Yemeni forces in the region.
On October 9, Yemeni soldiers supported by popular committees’ fighters downed a Saudi spy drone in the Kitaf district of Sa’ada. The drone was later identified as a long-endurance Boeing Insitu ScanEagle.
In late May, Yemeni air defense forces took down a Saudi F-16 fighter jet in the Bayt Khayran area of the district of Bani Harith in the northern part of Sana’a.
On May 11 also, Ansarullah fighters brought down a Moroccan fighter jet violating the country’s airspace in the Noshour Valley of Sa’ada.
Yemen has been witnessing ceaseless attacks by Saudi Arabia since March 26. The military strikes are supposedly meant to undermine the Ansarullah movement and bring fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, back to power.
The Saudi aggression has reportedly claimed the lives of more than 7,100 people and injured nearly 14,000 others. The strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the impoverished country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for downing Moroccan F16 fighter that Saudi-led coalition earlier declared missing. A Houthi TV channel broadcast a video that Iran-allied fighters said showed the wreckage of an F-16 plane.
“The air defence of the tribes shot down a warplane over Wadi Nushur, in Saada,” Houthi news channel Al Maseera said. The channel broadcasted pictures showing local tribesmen celebrating a victory near the F-16 wreckage.
The Iran-backed Shia group claimed the Moroccan jet was downed by a surface-to-air missile in Wadi Nashour area in the northwestern province of Saada, a Houthi stronghold near the border with Saudi Arabia, while conducting airstrikes Sunda
Moroccan Royal Armed Forces, representing one of eight Arab states to have joined Saudi Arabia’s coalition, said that their F-16 fighter jet that took part in the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen had gone missing.
“One of the F-16s of the Royal Armed Force put at the disposal of the coalition led by Saudi Arabia to restore legitimacy in Yemen went missing on Sunday at 6pm local time,” the statement said.
The Royal Armed Force, however, would not confirm the video aired by Al Maseera.
“It is definitely inside Yemen and it is a single pilot on board,” the Saudi official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense later announced that the jet had been located. It added that pilot’s condition was unknown.
Source: RT
Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron was killed in action in Iraq.
Canadian commandos who were gunned down by Kurdish soldiers at a checkpoint in northern Iraq on Friday night had visited the same location earlier and arranged a series of code words to pave the way for their return that evening, a senior Canadian government official confirmed Sunday night.
The Canadians had already passed by a number of Kurdish locations using the codes without any problems. But when they came upon one checkpoint in the village of Bashiq, a Kurdish soldier instead opened fire on the group.
Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron, 31, was killed. Three other Canadian special forces members from Petawawa were injured in what is being described as a friendly fire incident. Report ottawa citizen
The details emerging Sunday night are in contrast to the version being told by the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, who have laid blame on the Canadians for the incident.
The Kurds claim the Canadians arrived unannounced at the checkpoint in an area that has seen heavy fighting the previous day with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
“When (the Canadians) returned, the Peshmerga asked them to identify themselves,” Peshmerga spokesman Halgurd Hekmat told The Associated Press. “They answered in Arabic. That’s when Peshmerga started shooting. It was their fault.”
Hekmat added that he doesn’t know why the Canadians were there. “I consider it an improper action by the Canadians and illogical,” he said.
Defence Minister Jason Kenney has disputed that account but has not provided many other details.
However, a senior government official said the visit was indeed co-ordinated with Kurdish forces in advance and had proceeded smoothly until the Canadians reached one specific area where they were attacked. “Only when they got to a specific area did one fellow open (fire) and that caused other (Kurds) to engage.”
Canadian special forces troops held a ramp ceremony Sunday in Erbil as Dorion’s body was loaded onto a plane for transport to Canada. His remains will be flown to the military base at Trenton, Ont., arriving sometime mid-week, then taken along Highway 401 — the Highway of Heroes — to the coroner’s office in Toronto. The highway was named in honour of the soldiers killed in Afghanistan whose bodies were also transported along that route.
On Sunday, Doiron’s family issued the following statement: “Our son gave all and through his loss, we gave all. We’ve lost our beloved son and we kindly ask the media to give our family space and privacy to grieve.”
Kurdish militia accusations that Canadian soldiers are to blame for the Kurds’ fatal “friendly-fire” shooting of a Canadian commando and the wounding of three others were speculative and not helpful, Kenny said.
“We would ask our allies in the Peshmerga militia to wait until there is an investigation and we can sit down and compare notes and see exactly what happened,” he said. “We’re going to wait for the inquiry. My understanding is the Canadian troops conducted themselves professionally (and) did what they were supposed to do in such a circumstance.
“This has nothing to do with accompaniment or combat,” Kenney added. “The Canadian troops were behind the forward line of our troops. They were not at what we would describe as the front.”
Kenney said the Canadians arrived at the observation post, about 200 metres from the front lines.
“It’s a tragic incident, at nighttime, of friendly fire. Regrettably, such incidents occur in all military deployments. It’s part of the inherent risk, unfortunately.”
Canada has around 600 military personnel committed to Operation Impact. Most are part of the air contingent based in Kuwait. But 69 special forces troops are in northern Iraq to help train and advise Kurdish forces.
Doiron’s death is the first in the mission.
In February, the Canadian Forces revealed that soldiers had exchanged fire with ISIL fighters in self-defence.
NDP defence critic Jack Harris has called for an independent investigation into Friday’s incident, noting that the circumstances raise questions about the Conservative government’s claims that Canadian troops are fulfilling a non-combat role and are only involved in training Iraqi forces.
Kenney, who told the Manning Networking Conference in Ottawa on Saturday that Canada has made a positive difference with its military mission in Iraq and that ISIL is “on its heels”, called Doiron a “true Canadian patriot” and said the incident will not affect the work of Canadian special forces on the ground in Iraq.
He also said it will not have any impact on any government decision on whether to extend the Iraq military mission in Iraq.
“We believe that Canada has an important role to play in international security, including confronting the very serious threat of ISIL, which has explicitly declared war on Canada, encouraged terrorist attacks against Canadian civilians and which we believe was at least partly responsible for inspiring terrorist attacks against this country last year.”
MOSCOW, WASHINGTON—Russia, together with other co-chairing countries of the mediating OSCE Minsk Group, will continue targeted efforts in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokesman said Thursday, a day after Azerbaijani forces shot down an unarmed Artsakh military helicopter, killing three people.“Russia calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to refrain from moves which could lead to the escalation of tensions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday, TASS reports.
“We are very concerned about the incident which has led to the deaths of people. We offer our deepest condolences to the families of the victims,” Lukashevich said, adding that Russia’s stance was reflected in the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group on November 12.
The spokesman said that Russia reminds the leadership of Azerbaijan and Armenia of their “responsibility towards complying with their commitments on searching for a peaceful resolution of the conflict which they took at the meeting in Sochi, Newport and Paris.”
The United States and the European Union similarly echoed international mediators’ concerns of an escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resulting from Wednesday’s incident.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, also called for an inquiry into the incident which could lead to another upsurge in fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) reports.
“It is essential that all sides show restraint and avoid any actions or statements which could escalate the situation. Furthermore, we call for an investigation into this incident,” read a statement issued by Mogherini’s office late on Wednesday.
“Both sides have to strictly respect the ceasefire, to refrain from the use of force or any threat thereof, and to resume efforts towards a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” added the statement.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki similarly said that the incident is “yet another reminder” of the need to reduce tensions in the conflict zone. There can be “no military solution to the conflict,” Psaki told reporters in Washington.
“We urge all sides to respect the ceasefire and not to take any actions to escalate the situation,” Kate Byrnes, the acting head of the U.S. mission to the OSCE, said on Thursday.
Byrnes spoke at a meeting of the OSCE’s governing Permanent Council in Vienna, which discussed the Karabakh conflict and the downing of the Armenian helicopter in particular. The U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group briefed the council on their ongoing efforts to revive the Karabakh peace process.
“A wider conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is in no one’s interest,” James Warlick, the U.S. co-chair tweeted ahead of the Vienna meeting.
NATO also warned against an escalation in violence. The incident “is absolutely not conducive to the peaceful resolution of this conflict,” NATO’s Liason Officer in the South Caucasus William Lahue told reporters on the sidelines of a workshop for reporters organized within the framework of NATO Week in Armenia.
“Military actions serve to inhibit the ability of the parties to resolve such a conflict,” he said, adding that “NATO would like to see the parties engaged in peaceful negotiations and discussions to resolve this conflict within the OSCE Minsk Group format.”
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to honor their 20-year-old truce on Thursday, Reuters reports.
The OSCE, which has led talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the war, said it should not lead to new violence.
“The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Swiss Foreign Minister, Didier Burkhalter … appeals to the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia to do their utmost to prevent such incidents and to honor the ceasefire regime,” the OSCE said in a statement.
Footage from the Azeri side showed the helicopter explode in the air over the neutral zone between the two sides and officials said the three crew members were killed.
Armenia promised “painful” consequences for Azerbaijan after it downed the helicopter, which had been carrying out training exercises.
The Azeri defense ministry said an army officer had been honored for shooting down the aircraft.