Tension rises as Turkey sends troops to Syria's Afrin

Agencies
January 22, 2018

Jan 22: The US has urged Turkey to use restraint in its ongoing military operation in northern Syria as Turkish ground forces pressed ahead against the Syrian Kurdish group YPG in the enclave of Afrin.

Washington considers the YPG its closest ally in Syria, viewing it as the most effective ground force in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Heather Nauert, spokeswoman for the US State Department, said on Sunday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with his Turkish and Russian counterparts on the phone and called against an escalation in fighting in northern Syria.

"We urge Turkey to exercise restraint and ensure that its military operations remain limited in scope and duration and scrupulous to avoid civilian casualties," said Nauert.

The statement on Sunday came just hours after Turkey said its ground troops had crossed into northern Syria.

Ankara considers Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, "terrorist groups" with ties to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long fight inside Turkey.

It fears the establishment of a Kurdish corridor along its border.

Speaking in Istanbul earlier on Sunday, Binali Yildirim, Turkey's prime minister, said Turkish forces had  crossed into the YPG-controlled region in Syria at 08:05 GMT from the Turkish village of Gulbaba.

He said Turkey intended to establish a 30km "safe zone" in Afrin.

"Throughout the day we've heard the sound of jets in the sky, intense artillery and machine gun fire," Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from the Turkey-Syria border, said.

The Turkish army has said it is targeting only "terrorist" positions and "utmost importance" was being given to not harm civilians.

'Well-trained' force

According to estimates, there are between 8,000 to 10,000 Kurdish YPG fighters in the Afrin area.

"Turkey says it will continue its operation until it has pushed the YPG away from its borders," our correspondent said.

No one knows how long this will take or what the implications may be.

"The YPG are extremely well trained. They know the terrain in Afrin but Turkey has superiority in the skies and that is a huge advantage."

Reacting to Turkey's ground advance into Syria, France called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

"Ghouta, Idlib, Afrin - France asks for an urgent meeting of the Security Council," Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said on Twitter on Sunday.

Le Drian said he had talked to his Turkish counterpart in the day and called for a complete ceasefire in Syria.

France's request for the emergency meeting comes one day after the Turkish operation against the YPG began.

On Saturday, Turkish jets carried out air strikes against targets in Afrin.

Russia, which controls the airspace over Afrin, withdrew hundreds of its soldiers deployed near the city before Turkey's operation began.

Several diplomats and mission chiefs of the permanent members of Security Council - the US, Russia, the UK, France and China - were brought up to speed on the developments in Afrin.

Erdogan's warning

For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday he hoped the military operation will be completed "in a very short time".

But Erdogan also warned pro-Kurdish opposition supporters in Turkey not to hold protests.

"Know that if you go out on the streets, authorities are on your necks," he told thousands of supporters in Bursa.

"This is a national struggle and we will crush anyone who opposes our national struggle."

Earlier, Anadolu news agency reported that Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters had advanced towards Afrin in the early hours of Sunday, supported by Turkish troops.

The YPG confirmed the advance, saying two villages in Afrin's Bilbil district near the Turkish border came under attack.

About 25,000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels were joining the Turkish military operation in northern Syria with the goal of recapturing Arab towns and villages held by the YPG, a Syrian rebel commander told Reuters news agency on Sunday.

As early as Friday, thousands of FSA fighters had already been mobilised in Turkey's Hatay province and Syrian locations east of Afrin.

Major Yasser Abdul Rahim, who is also the commander of Failaq al-Sham, a main FSA rebel group in the operations room of the campaign, said the rebels did not seek to enter Afrin but encircle it and expel the YPG.

"We have no interest in entering the city only the military targets inside the city and the villages around it. We aim to encircle the city and ensure the militias are evicted. We won't fight in the city as we have no problem with civilians," he said.

A main goal of the military operation was to recapture Tel Rifaat, a town southeast of Afrin, and a string of Arab villages the YPG captured from rebels in February 2016, driving out tens of thousands of inhabitants, Abdul Rahim said.

"The task of the Free Syrian Army is first to regain sixteen Arab towns and villages occupied by the foreign militias [YPG] with the help of the Russian air force," Abdul Rahim told Reuters in a phone interview from inside Syria.

The fighting Abdul Rahim was referring to forced at least 150,000 residents of these villages to flee to Azaz.

They are sheltering in camps at the Turkish border and rebels say they have not been allowed to go back to their homes.

On Saturday, Erdogan said the operation in Afrin would be followed by a push in the northern town of Manbij, which the US-backed Kurdish forces captured from ISIL in 2016.

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News Network
January 19,2020

President Donald Trump gave a new justification for killing Qassim Suleimani, telling a gathering of Republican donors that the top Iranian general was "saying bad things about our country" before the strike, which led to his decision to authorise his killing. "How much are we going to listen to?" Trump said on Friday, according to remarks from a fundraiser obtained by CNN.

With his typical dramatic flourish, Trump recounted the scene as he monitored the strikes from the White House Situation Room when Suleimani was killed. The president spoke in a ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, at a Republican event that raised $10 million for Trump's 2020 campaign.

The January 3 killing of Suleimani prompted Iran to retaliate with missile strikes against US forces in Iraq days later and almost triggered a broad war between the two countries. "They're together sir," Trump said military officials told him. "Sir, they have two minutes and 11 seconds. No emotion. Two minutes and 11 seconds to live, sir. They're in the car, they're in an armoured vehicle. Sir, they have approximately one minute to live, sir. Thirty seconds. Ten, 9, 8 ...'"

"Then all of a sudden, boom," he said. "They're gone, sir. Cutting off, I said, where is this guy?" Trump continued. "That was the last I heard from him". It was the most detailed account that Trump has given of the drone strike, which has drawn criticism from some US lawmakers because neither the president nor his advisers have provided public information to back up their statements that Suleimani presented an "imminent" threat to US.

Trump's comments came a day after he warned Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to be "very careful with his words". According to Trump, Khamenei's speech on Friday, in which he attacked the "vicious" US and described UK, France and Germany as "America's lackeys", was a mistake.

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News Network
January 18,2020

New Delhi, Jan 18: Senior advocate Indira Jaising urged the mother of Nirbhaya to pardon the men on death row who were convicted for the 2012 gang rape of her daughter.

Jaising took to Twitter to make the request shortly after Asha Devi on Friday expressed her disappointment following a Delhi court postponed the date of the execution of the four convicts.

"While I fully identify with the pain of Asha Devi I urge her to follow the example of Sonia Gandhi who forgave Nalini and said she didn't not want the death penalty for her. We are with you but against the death penalty," Jaisingh tweeted.

Asha Devi lashed out at Jaisingh suggesting pardon for the convicts. "I can't believe how Indira Jaising even dared to suggest such this. I met her many times over the years in Supreme Court, not once she asked for my wellbeing and today, she is speaking for convicts. Such people earn livelihood by supporting rapists, hence rape incidents don't stop," Asha Devi told ANI.

Nalini was arrested and convicted for her role in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Earlier on Friday Asha Devi had lashed out at the courts and the government stating that "the same people who had in the year 2012 gone around participating in rallies and raised slogans for women's safety are playing with the death of my daughter for their political gains. They have stopped the execution for their political gains."

The death-row convicts who were earlier slated to be executed on January 22 at 7 am are set to be hanged on February 1 at 6 am.

Asha Devi rued that the convicts got what they wished for. "I will not be satisfied until they are hanged," she added.

Four convicts, Vinay, Akshay, Pawan and Mukesh were convicted and sentenced to death for raping a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in the national capital on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012.

The victim, who was later given the name Nirbhaya succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Singapore where she had been airlifted for medical treatment.

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Agencies
May 30,2020

New Delhi, May 30: The Congress on Friday described the first year of the Modi government as a "year of disappointment, disastrous management and diabolical pain".

Congress leader K C Venugopal said the six years of the Modi dispensation have seen fraying of bonds of empathy, fraternity and brotherhood with increase in acts of communal and sectarian violence.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that at the end of six years, it appears the Modi government is at war with its people and is inflicting wounds on them, instead of healing them.

"It is inflicting wounds on Mother India," he said.

"This government is trying to fill coffers of the select rich and is inflicting pain on the poor," Surjewala said.

On the BJP's charge of the Congress playing politics over the COVID-19 crisis, Venugopal said the opposition party did not indulge in any politics and gave suggestions instead.

"Being a responsible opposition, it is our duty to raise the problems faced by the common people. As opposition, we highlighted the failures of the government," he said.

Venugopal said the government "is totally insensitive" to the plight of migrant labourers and farmers.

Surjewala also demanded that a virtual session of Parliament be convened immediately to discuss pressing issues and the due process be set in motion for holding of meetings of various parliamentary committees.

Modi and his cabinet had taken oath on this day last year for a second term in office.

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