pamelagellerreport--2019-11-06--Terror in Thailand: Muslims slaughter 15 people in endless bloody jihad

Racked by Islamic terror and violence, this peaceful Buddhist country cannot sustain this relentless campaign of terror and carnage. Where are the news reports on this horror? The cries of buddhaphobia?  What do they want? An Islamic state, of course, here the everywhere. The Muslim south has been waging a bloody jihad that has killed more than 7,000 people over the last decade.  According to the 2000 census, 94.6% of the country’s population self-identified as Buddhist and Muslims comprise 4.9% of the population.  Here again, anywhere Muslims immigrate, eventually but always, conflict gives way to war. Show me one country or region where this is not the case. What are the Muslims killing for? An Islamic state, of course. Where aren’t they killing for an Islamic state?   Big C is the “Walmart” of Thailand. • Thailand: Devout Muslims murder three and wound 22 with jihad bomb at pork stall • Thailand Mass Muslim Terror Attacks involved OVER 50+ BOMBS and hundreds of pounds of explosive, schools, bridges bombed, widespread outages • Jihadis Declare War on Thailand on Eve of New Constitution: Scores of Mass Attacks, ‘Biggest Attack in Years’ • Jihadis plant CAR BOMB in Thailand on day of “peace talks’ with jihadisWave of Islamic Terror Hits Thailand: Rocked by 11 bombs in ONE DAY in Resort Areas  YALA, THAILAND – At least fifteen people were killed in attacks by suspected Muslim militants in Thailand’s violence-racked south, an army spokesman said on Wednesday, the latest incident in the 15-year bloody insurgency. Thailand’s three southernmost provinces have been in the grip of a conflict that has killed more than 7,000 people, as Malay Muslim militants fight for more autonomy from the Thai state. The region is under martial law, heavily policed by the military and sometimes staffed with trained civilian volunteers, with residents and rights groups accusing them of heavy-handed tactics. Late Tuesday militants struck two checkpoints in Yala province manned by civil defense volunteers, opening fire on them as a group of villagers stopped to talk, southern army spokesman Pramote Prom-in told AFP. In the largest death toll in years, “12were killed at the scene, two more (died) at the hospital, and one died this morning,” said Pramote, adding that five others were injured. The attackers took M-16 rifles and shotguns from the checkpoints, he said. “These acts were by militants.” Nails were also scattered on the roads in an apparent effort to slow the security forces, the army said in a separate statement. The areas surrounding the checkpoints have been closed off and are currently under forensic investigation. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha said the perpetrators must “be brought to justice,” according to Defense Ministry spokesman Kongcheep Tantravanich. Rebels seeking autonomy for the culturally distinct region bordering Malaysia have been fighting the Buddhist-majority Thai state, which colonized the area over a century ago. The conflict is characterized by tit-for-tat attacks that usually target symbols of the Thai state and its security forces but civilians from both Muslim and Buddhist communities often get caught in the crossfire. The violence has bled into tourist destinations, like in 2012 when a series of car bomb in Songkhla province’s Hat Yai killed 13 people. The incidents have been fewer in recent years, but the hits have been “more intense,” said Don Pathan, an expert on the so-called Deep South. Tuesday’s attack marked the largest coordinated effort “in a very long time,” he added. It comes days after Bangkok hosted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which brought head of states from all over the world — along with hundreds of foreign press media, said Pathan. “It (the attack) is a reminder that they are still here,” he said. The rebels accuse the state of railroading their distinct culture as well as carrying out routine abuses which go unpunished. The latest incident stoking outrage in the region was the death of Abdulloh Esormusor, a Muslim man who was detained by the military and left in a coma after being interrogated at a notorious Thai detention center. Suspects are routinely taken for interrogation and held under emergency laws in detention centers where rights groups have documented torture. Days after Abdulloh’s detention, four people were killed in a late-night attack on a military outpost, fueling speculation of a retaliatory operation. A week later several small bombs exploded in Bangkok, injuring four people as the city hosted a major summit attended by top diplomats, including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Thailand has linked the bombs to southern insurgents and said the devices used were similar to those found in the south — though no group ever claimed responsibility for the attacks.  The Truth Must be Told Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more. Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible. Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too. Please contribute to our ground-breaking work here.    Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best.


pamelagellerreport--2019-12-12--Islamic Terror in Africa: Jihadis Slaughter 70 Soldiers in Ambush in Niger

Another unimaginable massacre in an unending war that will get little to no press for fear of offending the hypersensitivities of the Muslim world.  More than 70 soldiers feared killed in ambush in Niger  Islamist extremists suspected of attack that underlines growing insecurity in region  More than 70 soldiers are thought to have been killed in an ambush by suspected Islamist militants at a military post in western Niger.  The strike in In-Atès near the border with Mali on Tuesday night emphasises the growing insecurity in a wide belt of poor and anarchic territory in west Africa and, if the death toll is confirmed, is the deadliest on Niger’s forces in recent memory.  It came just days before a summit in France where President Emmanuel Macron is expected to meet regional leaders to discuss the future of the French military’s deployment in the Sahel, which stretches across Africa, south of the Sahara.  The Nigerien military has not released casualty figures, but a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the provisional toll to reporters.  Local media reported that the attackers, who have not yet been identified, first targeted communications equipment at the remote base before over-running its defences.  A tweet sent from the account of the president, Mahamadou Issoufou, late on Wednesday said that he was returning early from an overseas trip in Egypt following the reported attack.  The violence was only 30 miles (48km) from Ouallam, where four US service members died along with four Nigerien soldiers two years ago when their joint patrol came under fire in a massive ambush.  Islamic extremists with links to both Islamic State and al-Qaida have long carried out attacks across the vast desert region. The French military mission and a regional Sahel force have failed to stem the violence. This year has also seen extremist groups increase their presence in neighbouring Burkina Faso.  In 2015, 46 soldiers and 28 civilians were killed in an attack by Boko Haram, the Islamist extremist group, on a military post on Lake Chad.  Last month, gunmen in Burkina Faso killed nearly 40 civilians in an ambush on a convoy transporting workers for a Canadian goldmining company.  Two hundred and fifty British troops are scheduled to be deployed in a UN peacekeeping mission in neighbouring Mali in 2020.  Weapons have flooded the region in recent years, many of which were brought from Libya into Mali after the death of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, enabling various groups to pursue different agendas.  The Truth Must be Told Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more. Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible. Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too. Please contribute to our ground-breaking work here.    Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best.


sottnet--2019-01-15--After Israel slaughtered Gaza during Cast Lead Obama admin met with Israeli generals to counterac

After Israel slaughtered Gaza during 'Cast Lead', Obama admin met with Israeli generals to counteract damning Goldstone Report and get Israel's story out

But there is nothing to show for that  That investigation two years later  So in 2014 Israel undertook Operation Protective Edge, and killed 2200 in Gaza over 51 days - 500 of them children.  This is the tenth anniversary of "Cast Lead," Israel's three-week-long onslaught on Gaza that took nearly 1,400 lives, 318 of them children, and that as much as anything helped shift the American view of the conflict, causing young progressives to side with Palestinians.During those three weeks of horrifying images, President-elect Obama had nothing critical to say and Israel did him a favor in return: it ended the bombing/invasion two days before he was inaugurated.Then in September the UN Human Rights Council issued a bombshell of its own,, which documented what it calledduring the onslaught, chiefly the Israeli pattern of deliberately striking civilian targets, including schools, mosques, homes, and a flour mill and a chicken farm.The Obama administration worked to stymie the report at international bodies, and in the end the report went nowhere (defused by its author, Judge Richard Goldstone, who under huge pressure from his own community retracted the allegation that civilians were intentionally targeted).The greatest impact the Goldstone report had was on international opinion. Now a State Department cable has been leaked in which US diplomatic officials The cable is remarkable because it shows how closely Obama officials were working with alleged war criminals to counter Israel's bad press and help Israel "tell its story" and show the "lessons learned" from the massacre. Also because the cable reveals what a crisis the Goldstone Report was to Israel's reputation."It shows how vulnerable Israel can be to public opinion," Norman Finkelstein, the author of Gaza: An Inquest into its Martyrdom , writes to me. "It's not been noticed that Israel ceased using white phosphorus after Cast Lead because of the bad p.r... They do worry about public opinion. That's why I'm skeptical when people say, 'Israel can do whatever it wants.' Not true."Finkelstein also notes the role of an Obama aide as a general-whisperer: Michael Posner, then assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor.Indeed, throughout the cable, Israeli generals admit that mistakes were made and promise that there will be consequences. And the Israeli air force general even says bluntly that the artillery and tank units were careless when it came to hurting Palestinian civilians. The American officials urge the Israelis to do independent investigations so as to salvage the country's reputation.The Goldstone Report was in the news for two full years. But apart from a storm of fury against the report, Israeli officials never had to account. The cable shows that this meeting was as much of a trial as the top Israeli brass ever got: discussions with a handful of American State Department officials who were concerned about the report's conclusions, including Posner who had met with Goldstone . That was all. And they got off the hook!Here are some excerpts from the cable, which was leaked by Wikileaks It begins by saying that Posner and the US ambassador, James Cunningham, met with seven Israeli generals (Chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Yoav Galant, Amir Eschel, Avishai Mandelblit, Yossi Heymann, Ido Yuval, and Yuval Halamish, a former general now heading the "Goldstone committee" for the army) and the Israelis promised there was going to be accountability!Posner was very sympathetic:The Israeli generals insisted that they had not targeted civilians, but it was asymmetric warfare in which terrorists worked in civilian settings. One general gave Posner a lesson in terrorism.One of the headings in the cable is, "Getting the Israeli Story Out."But the world wasn't really listening.The officials discussed several atrocities, including the targeting of a house where a large number of members of the al-Samouni family had taken refuge.Mandelblit was the chief investigator for the Israeli army as head of the Military Advocate General (MAG) Corps.. B'Tselem, the human rights group, condemned the finding, sayingand it had been undertaken too late. "The investigations were all opened at a very late stage - the first, to B'Tselem knowledge, in October 2009, a full ten months after the operation had ended." I.e., after the Goldstone Report came out and embarrassed Israel.Israel Air Force Commander Major General Ido Nehushtan went further than the other generals in his meeting with Posner, saying that the air force took precautions not to hurt civilians that the army did not.The Israeli generals also emphasized what was widely reported at the time: that the Israeli public was all for the Gaza massacre. Notice the generals don't say what the news reports do say (here in 2012, and in 2014 ) that it's Israeli Jews who are so overwhelmingly in support.Here is the pressure that the U.S. applied:Again, Norman Finkelstein states that the white phosphorus concession is an important point.Finkelstein goes on:Let me emphasize that there was no accountability: the Israelis did nothing under Posner's gentle suasion. B'Tselem reported five years on that " Israeli authorities have proven they cannot investigate suspected violations of international humanitarian law by Israel in the Gaza Strip" and said there had been three indictments in all for Cast Lead.Posner is now a professor of ethics and finance at NYU's Stern School of Business now a fellow at the Atlantic Council with an expertise in Israel, democracy development, and terrorism. They are hardly alone as Obama officials who pooh-poohed the Goldstone Report. Hillary Clinton did so as secretary of state, Samantha Power as ambassador to the United Nations, and Suzanne Nossel, a State Department human rights official. In fairness, this is a story about the power of the Israel lobby; and Power had to get the absurd rabbi Shmuley Boteach as her sherpa to the lobby in order to gain her U.N. job; and Nossel is now the head of PEN America and has lately taken a worthy action re Israeli human rights abuses.


thedailybeast--2019-09-05--The US in Afghanistan Talking Peace and Waging War Doesnt Count All The Civilians It Slaughters

The U.S. in Afghanistan, Talking Peace and Waging War, Doesn’t Count All The Civilians It Slaughters

LOY MANDA, Afghanistan–Bloodied and broken, 13 members of an extended family were lifted, one by one, from a minibus and placed in wheelchairs and on hospital beds with clean white sheets. The out patient department at Emergency Hospital in Helmand’s capital Lashkar Gah was soon beyond capacity. Nurses from throughout the building rushed to assist.  The victims ranged in age from four to fifty. They’d been at home on the afternoon of November 24, 2018, when two Taliban fighters entered their compound in the village of Loy Manda, in Helmand’s Nad-i Ali District. Obaidullah, the patriarch of the family, pleaded with the fighters to leave, but before they did, they fired over a wall at a passing Afghan and American military convoy.  In response, an American warplane—an A-10 ”Warthog”—made two strafing runs over the house. Hundreds of rounds of ammunition—bullets the size of large carrots—fired by a weapon designed to disable armoured tanks, poured out of the plane’s Gatling gun. The two Taliban fighters had fled. Instead, Obaidullah and his 15-year-old son Esmatullah were killed; 13 others suffered broken bones and shrapnel injuries from head to toe. One boy, 14-year-old Ehsanullah, lost both his eyes.  In May this year, The U.S. Department of Defense released its Annual Report on Civilian Casualties. In table format, an entry for Helmand on the same date states: “Operation Type: Air. Killed: 0. Injured: 4.”  The war in Afghanistan will soon enter its 19th year. In Qatar, U.S. and Taliban representatives have been hashing out a preliminary agreement that would see a withdrawal timeline for international troops in return for a Taliban guarantee that it would disavow terrorist groups with transnational aspirations seeking to use Afghanistan as a base.  In contrast, on the battlefield, both sides are ramping up their military campaigns in an effort to strengthen their negotiating positions. As a result, the number of civilians caught in the crossfire is increasing, too.  In its latest report on civilian casualties, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) found that this year, for the first time since it began counting, pro-government forces, including international forces, were responsible for more civilian deaths than the Taliban and the so-called Islamic State’s Afghanistan branch combined. The primary reason for this is an escalation of the U.S. air war in Afghanistan.  In a conflict that has been unpopular with the American public—and now its president—for years now, the downplaying of the number of Afghan civilians killed in the crossfire is one way the U.S. military—which one senses is more committed to Afghanistan than its political leaders—can mitigate opposition at home.  Today, the rented house Obaidullah’s family was in when it was struck by the warplane last November, is empty. During the day, columns of sunlight pour through a dozen watermelon-sized holes in the roof: evidence of the missile-like bullets that also tore holes through its inhabitants.  After they were discharged from hospital, Obaidullah’s two wives and their surviving children moved to the village of Shawal, which is under Taliban control, further north in the same district, with Obaidullah’s brothers.  Day to day security in most rural parts of Afghanistan isn’t so much dictated by who controls the area as by how far it is from the front line. Nor does the side of a front line one chooses to live on necessarily indicate sympathy for one faction or the other.  Loy Manda, where the family lived when their house was struck, was the front line. They hoped moving farther from it, even though that meant going deep into Taliban territory, would be safer. The escalation of the air war, however, means that calculation is no longer a reliable measure of safety.  Ehsanullah was 14 when he was brought into the emergency hospital last November. His face was a mess of raw flesh and dried, rusty blood. He had already lost one eye; the other was ruptured and would later be removed by surgeons. The rest of his body was bruised, broken, burned and punctured by debris thrown out as the rounds impacted around him.  Without sight, his hearing has become increasingly sensitized, and the sound of aircraft terrifies him. Air strikes are even more common in Shawal now than they were in Loy Manda. “I’m always scared of the aircraft now,” he says. “I’m scared they’re going to target us again.”  On top of this, Ehsanullah requires help with even the simplest of tasks. “Now I can’t do anything; I can’t even find my way,” he says. “Even when I want to move I need the help of someone.” That job has fallen to his younger brother, Rahmatullah, who never leaves his brother’s side. Rahmatullah himself arrived in the emergency room that day with his intestines resting on his stomach.  The U.S.-led Resolute Support military mission in Afghanistan refused to respond to several recent enquiries about the incident and the DOD’s accounting of civilian victims. The U.S. military maintains that it makes condolence payments to civilian victims of its operations, but a Resolute Support spokesperson was unable to confirm whether such a payment had been made to Obaidullah’s family. The family says they received nothing.  The DoD report states its “assessments seek to incorporate all available information... DoD updates existing assessments if new information becomes available, including new information received from NGOs or other outside organizations.”  The details of this and The Daily Beast’s January report were both supplied to Resolute Support’s public affairs office, which again refused to address the issue.  UNAMA, which has sparred with both Resolute Support and the Taliban over methodologies concerning the assessment of civilian casualty figures, issued an unusually biting statement in an August 3 press release: “ ... all parties to the conflict have a poor track record on investigating, publicly reporting their findings and taking appropriate follow-up measures to address incidents in which civilians are killed or injured.” The statement continued: “UNAMA recognizes that in the context of the war in Afghanistan, all parties are prone to issue tendentious pronouncements.”  Andrew J. Bacevich, professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University told The Daily Beast, “The U.S. military is deeply invested in a self-image that is undermined by evidence that it has caused civilian casualties. U.S. forces want to be seen as using violence with great precision–killing only those they intend to kill.  Evidence to the contrary damages the prestige of the armed services and can undercut their standing in the eyes of the American people. In that sense, the issues here go well beyond Afghanistan per se.”  When Obaidullah’s family moved to Shawal after leaving the hospital, in the very same village was another family who had also been bombed.  On October 10 last year, six weeks before the Loy Manda strike, Abdul Ahad was at home with his family in the farming village of Shawal when the sounds of fighting began nearby. Shawal was on the northern—Taliban-controlled—side of a wide irrigation canal that still marks the front line in Nad-i Ali district today, so while airstrikes were common, ground engagements like this were rare.  He told the story under the shade of a tree outside Shawal recently; it was so hot that steam didn’t rise from his cup of boiling green tea. The jet engines of American bombers could be heard wavering on the wind miles above.  Ahad’s house was one point of a triangle, with American and Afghan special forces on a second point and Taliban fighters on a third. Both groups were shooting across, but not toward his house. The soldiers were a quarter mile away, the Taliban, he said, about twice that distance. Some 70-80 yards away was another large compound, inside which four families lived in separate houses. Haji Salaam was in one of them with two of his brothers and their wives and children. When he sensed the fighting getting close he told everyone to stay inside.  Out of nowhere, Abdul Ahad felt the thump of two almost simultaneous explosions. But the airstrikes hadn’t hit the compound from which the Taliban were firing. They’d struck Haji Salaam’s house, where he and his family had been sheltering, and it was now engulfed in a cloud of smoke and dust.  Ahad waited until the fighting finished and then made his way quickly across the field to his neighbor’s compound. The outer walls were still intact but once inside he saw that at least one of the houses had been completely levelled.  Afghan and American soldiers arrived in more than a dozen armoured vehicles within minutes, as did other neighbors. Haji Salaam had survived. “ When they came to the house,” he says, “they claimed there was Taliban in the house firing at us. I told them we are not Taliban, we are all civilians.”  The Americans and their Afghan counterparts stayed for almost an hour. Some helped while others stood guard in case of a Taliban ambush. By the time they’d left, 11 dead bodies had been pulled from the rubble. Seven of them were less than nine years of age. Five under the age of 15 were injured but survived.  According to the DOD report, no one was injured in the strike, and only one civilian was killed.


theguardianuk--2019-08-04--Dont call them Syrias child casualties This is the slaughter of the innocents

Don’t call them Syria’s child casualties. This is the slaughter of the innocents

Murdered children are no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, where [child deaths](https://www.stripes.com/news/un-american- airstrikes-contribute-to-record-number-of-children-civilians-killed-in- afghanistan-1.570188) reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least [85,000 under- fives](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/yemen-young-children- dead-starvation-disease-save-the-children) have died of starvation since 2015, a figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count because [children are being killed almost every day](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/syrias-war-child-casualties- rise-190727104715534.html) – and who is really counting?  Harrowing images briefly capture public attention. One of the more recent showed [five-year-old Riham struggling amid the rubble of her bombed home in Ariha](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/year-riham-killed-idlib- airstrike-190725165654917.html), in Syria’s north-western Idlib province, to save her baby sister, Tuqa. Riham died later in hospital along with her mother and another sister. Thanks to her efforts, and White Helmet rescuers, Tuqa survived.  But the following day, at least another 10 civilians, including three children, were killed in air raids on villages and towns in rebel-held areas of Idlib, Aleppo and Hama. According to [Save the Children](https://www.savethechildren.org/us/about-us/media-and-news/2019 -press-releases/more-children-killed-in-idlib), more children have been killed in the past month than in the whole of 2018. Monitors say there have been 800 deaths since the Syrian regime’s Russian-backed offensive in Idlib began in April, 200 of them children. Most of these murders were not captured on video.  There are more comfortable ways to describe child deaths. The word “casualty” suggests the killings might even be accidental. But murder is what it is, and what it should be called. These are war crimes and crimes against humanity, ultimately carried out at the behest of two leaders – Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – who must one day face justice, or else international law is meaningless. “Intentional attacks against civilians are war crimes, and those who have ordered them or carried them out are criminally responsible for their actions,” [Michelle Bachelet](https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/07/1043241), the UN’s human rights chief, declared last week. Earlier in Syria’s eight-year war, she said, the world had shown considerable concern. “Now, airstrikes kill and maim significant numbers of civilians several times a week and the response seems to be a collective shrug.”  The Russian and Syrian leaders [deny that they are deliberately targeting civilians](https://www.dw.com/en/syria-russia-denies-responsibility-for- deadly-air-strikes/a-49703098). They lie, just as they repeatedly lied about [chemical weapons attacks](https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2018-09-23/what- you-need-know-about-chemical-weapons-use-syria). Accumulating evidence from the past three months points to a premeditated policy of pulverising Idlib’s civilian population in order to isolate and root out rebels and jihadists.  In a tactic previously used around Damascus and in Aleppo city, dozens of hospitals, clinics, schools, markets and public places in Idlib have been bombed. “The violence has escalated over the past month, leading to more people killed or wounded than at any time so far this year,” [Doctors Without Borders](https://www.msf.org/increasing-numbers-dead-and-wounded-situation- idlib-deteriorates-syria) reported last week. “Bombing and shelling ... has forced more than 450,000 people to flee north,” the charity said.  Now a new refugee crisis looms as [displaced families](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-idlib/rebels-say- russia-led-raids-target-cities-in-syria-northwest-idUSKCN1UO23P) head for Turkey and, perhaps, Europe and the UK. Governments may soon be forced to pay closer attention.  The western allies insist they are desperately concerned about Syria’s civilians. But at a security council meeting last week[ Mark Lowcock](https://www.france24.com/en/20190731-un-lowcock-warns-worst- humanitarian-disaster-century-syria-idlib), the UN’s chief aid and emergency relief coordinator, lambasted them (and Russia and China) for “doing nothing for 90 days as the carnage continues in front of your eyes”. Were they finally prepared, he asked, “to listen to the children of Idlib?”  The answer Lowcock got was not the one he wanted. In a bid to bypass the usual Russian veto, a majority of council members prevailed on the UN secretary- general to [launch an inquiry](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria- security-un/two-thirds-of-u-n-security-council-ask-u-n-chief-for-syria- hospital-attacks-inquiry-idUSKCN1UP29U) into the destruction of Idlib’s hospitals and other UN-supported facilities. But, like similar inquiries, it will probably be boycotted by the regime and its findings ignored. Of urgent, forceful action to stop the killing there was none.  Possibly reacting to this storm of criticism, Assad’s regime, backed by Moscow, [offered a limited truce](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/08 /syria-agrees-conditional-ceasefire-rebel-held-idlib-190801180202440.html) on Friday, conditional on opposition forces quitting a buffer zone created last September and repeatedly violated by both sides. That’s a big ask. Ceasefires typically do not last long in Syria. Assad’s forces, unsuccessful so far in their bid to overrun Idlib, may simply want time to regroup.  The battle for Idlib goes to the heart of what governments on all sides really do care about: the future balance of power in Syria. A closely related issue, for example, is who controls post-Islamic State areas of north-east Syria. US troops are still there, despite Donald Trump’s vow to withdraw them. So, too, are the Turks. US cooperation with Syrian Kurdish forces, whom Turkey regards as terrorists, has brought renewed threats of a [Turkish military land grab](http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/top-military-brass-assesses-potential- turkish-op-into-eastern-syria-145262) east of the Euphrates, akin to last year’s operation in Afrin. Meanwhile, [anti-refugee sentiment ](https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-in-turkey-and-lebanon- syrian-refugees-met-with-growing-hostility-1.7606715)inside Turkey appears to be surging – another problem for fleeing Idlib residents.  Iran, too, is jockeying for position. Its militias have reportedly sat out the Idlib offensive, but its support for Damascus is undiminished, as shown by its continuing oil deliveries to Syria’s Baniyas refinery. In June, offshore underwater pipelines there were [blown up by mystery attackers](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2019/07/31/iranian-oil-spills- on-syrias-shores-a-brief-osint-overview-of-an-environmental-incident/), according to the Bellingcat investigatory website.This coincided with limpet mine attacks on tankers in the Gulf that were blamed on Iran (which denied involvement). And it shortly preceded Britain’s seizure, apparently on US orders, of a fullyloaded [Iranian tanker off Gibraltar](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/20/britain-lured-into- deadly-trap-on-iran-by-trump-hawk-john-bolton).  Is it possible Trump and his neighbourhood friends are more interested in pursuing their vendetta with Iran than saving saving Syrian children’s lives? The only-too-obvious answer to that question – a grim question of priorities – holds the key to the universally shaming, unfinished tragedy of Idlib.


theguardianuk--2019-09-06--Britain is behind the slaughter in Yemen Heres how you could help end it David Wearing

Britain is behind the slaughter in Yemen. Here's how you could help end it | David Wearing

Nothing can diminish the threat of a disorderly Brexit, or the significance of Boris Johnson’s recent anti-democratic prorogation of parliament. That those stories lead the news is no surprise. But when our government provides crucial support to a campaign of indiscriminate killing in [Yemen](https://www.theguardian.com/world/yemen) that has claimed the lives of thousands of people, and this is treated as a footnote in our politics rather than a national scandal, it is plain that something has gone badly wrong.  This week a [report by UN experts](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/03/uk-us-and-france-may- be-complicit-in-yemen-war-crimes-un-report) warned that Britain could be complicit in war crimes through its arming of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervening in Yemen’s civil conflict. [The report](https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/YemenGEE/Pages/Index.aspx) is the latest in a long line from the UN and the world’s most respected NGOs documenting a consistent pattern of violations. The experts note that leading arms providers like the UK “have a specific influence” on the belligerents “and may be held responsible for providing aid or assistance for the commission of international law violations”.  About [100,000 people](https://www.theguardian.com/global- development/2019/jun/20/human-cost-of-yemen-war-laid-bare-as-civilian-death- toll-put-at-100000) have met violent deaths since March 2015, and the blockade imposed by the Saudi-UAE coalition is the primary cause of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, pushing millions to the brink of famine. Save the Children estimates that [85,000 infants](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/yemen-young-children- dead-starvation-disease-save-the-children) have died from starvation or preventable disease. The UN experts raise the real possibility that starvation is being employed as a war tactic. British complicity in that ought to be unthinkable.  Aerial bombing by the Saudis – [frequently indiscriminate](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/16/yemen-school- bus-bombing-one-of-50-strikes-on-civilian-vehicles-this-year) – is responsible for most of the civilian deaths, and that bombing is [completely dependent](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/britain-war- in-yemen) on British and American support. The US and UK supply the bombs, the planes that drop the bombs, training for the pilots, and the spare parts and maintenance that keep the planes in the sky. Any idea that these complex weapons systems would simply be replaced by Russia or China were Britain to refuse to provide this support is a myth. The reality is that Washington and London could have stopped the Saudis’ war any time they liked.  This indefensible situation has continued for so long partly because it has not received a level of political attention commensurate with the magnitude of the catastrophe. Our government is to blame for its own policies, but the failure to put sufficient pressure on it to end those policies is something the rest of us are responsible for.  Yemeni children attend class in a bomb-damaged school in Taez on the first day of the new academic year on 3 September. Photograph: Ahmad Al-Basha/AFP/Getty Images  Politicians of the centre, for example, are never shy of flaunting their supposed internationalist credentials, but many of these same figures [either support or have nothing to say about](https://novaramedia.com/2019/04/05/on- foreign-policy-the-independent-group-will-offer-nothing-but-the-elite- consensus/) British arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, most of the British- built planes now pulverising Yemen were sold to the Saudis by [New Labour](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/sep/16/money1). The Jeremy Corbyn leadership has the correct stance on Yemen in opposing the current British role, but it is hard to believe that the official opposition could not have done more to push the issue up the agenda, given the depth of British complicity in the suffering of that country’s people.  The media also have questions to answer. Academic observers like myself owe a debt to brave journalists like [Iona Craig](https://theintercept.com/staff /iona-craig/), [Bel Trew](https://www.independent.co.uk/author/bel-trew), [Nawal al-Maghafi](https://www.middleeasteye.net/users/nawal-al-maghafi) and [Orla Guerin](https://rts.org.uk/article/orla-guerin-making-middle-east-home), whose reporting from Yemen is invaluable to our research. But collectively, this story is not given the sustained prominence it needs if the government is going to be held to account. Too much of the commentariat, while enthused by the prospect of Britain staging a “humanitarian intervention” when an official enemy is committing atrocities, appear unable to comprehend a situation where the atrocities are being committed by Britain’s allies with Britain’s help.  These failures extend to wider civil society too. Leading NGOs have done indispensable work in [documenting](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/09/the-ugly-truths- of-yemens-war-must-not-stay-buried-in-the-rubble/) the war’s costs and attempting to raise the alarm. Campaign Against Arms Trade launched a judicial review of UK arms sales whose [recent court success](https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/20/uk-arms-sales-to-saudi- arabia-for-use-in-yemen-declared-unlawful) has caused a big headache for Downing Street. But large swathes of the left have simply not done enough. It is tragic that the major demonstrations we saw over the invasion and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have never materialised to end the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia.  These collective failings have let the government and its Gulf allies off the hook, and Yemeni civilians have paid the price. For a nation that talks endlessly about its place in the world, much of Britain’s political culture remains intensely parochial, self-absorbed, and remarkably casual about the huge humanitarian costs of its behaviour in the global south. This mixture of chauvinism and unconscious racism is of course a legacy of empire. And it is by no means limited to the Brexiteers.  There are, however, competing traditions to be found in Britain, of genuine internationalism and solidarity. [Two-thirds of the public](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/05/most-britons-believe- selling-arms-to-saudis-is-unacceptable) oppose arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including [half of Conservative voters](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-civil-war- uk-saudi-arabia-arms-sales-bombing-emergency-debate-stephen- twigg-a8532191.html). There is enormous potential for civil society and the political class to give voice and force to these passively-held opinions. Britain is more than capable of doing right by the Yemeni people. But first we will need to take a long, honest look in the mirror.  • David Wearing is a specialist on UK foreign policy in the Middle East


wakingtimes--2019-10-15--Mainstream Media Propaganda – ABC Uses KY Gun Range Video As Evidence Of Turk Kurd ‘Slaughter In Syr

Mainstream Media Propaganda – ABC Uses KY Gun Range Video As Evidence Of Turk Kurd ‘Slaughter In Syria’

As the Western corporate media becomes apoplectic with rage over the fact that the United States appears to be withdrawing from Northern Syria and the Syrian government is reclaiming territory in the same area, the propaganda coming from those outlets is increasing. Along with catcalls of Syria being “Trump’s Saigon” from war criminals like Susan Rice, MSM is also attempting to frame the narrative of “abandoning the Kurds” in order to pressure the Trump administration into remaining in an unjust and unwinnable war.  Perhaps an act of brazen propaganda or perhaps an oversight, ABC recently ran a propaganda piece regarding the “Slaughter In Syria,” a phrase used to denote Trump’s apparent betrayal of the Military-Industrial Complex and to paint a withdrawal as an act of complicit genocide.  Alongside the report, however, was an accompanying video, that appeared to show the firefight taking place in that “slaughter.” The problem is that this video was apparently taken in 2017 inside the United States at a place called Knob Creek Gun Range, in West Point, Kentucky.  As Becket Adams writes for the Washington Examiner in their article, “ABC News’ ‘Slaughter In Syria’ Footage Appears To Come From A Kentucky Gun Range,’  ABC aired supposedly shocking footage Monday and Sunday purporting to be from the frontline battle between the Syrian Kurds and the invading Turks. The only problem is: The footage appears to come from a nighttime machine gun demonstration at the Knob Creek Gun Range in West Point, Kentucky. After seeing a comment from Wojciech Pawelczyk, I began making some calls. As of this writing, it appears ABC indeed aired footage recorded in the Kentucky and claimed it was from Syria. The network has since pulled the video. “We’ve taken down video that aired on World News Tonight Sunday and Good Morning America this morning that appeared to be from the Syrian border immediately after questions were raised about its accuracy,” a network representative told the Washington Examiner. “ABC News regrets the error.” A representative for the gun range also told the Washington Examiner that they are still investigating ABC’s reporting, adding further that the images aired by the network “look to be” from their Kentucky property. “As of right now,” the representative added, “it seems to be our footage.” Note that the sequence and shape of explosions is identical in the following ABC and Kentucky videos, as are some of the features of the terrain amid the explosions. But we might actually be dealing with two different videos of the same Kentucky live-fire event from slightly different angles. In the independent film of the live-fire event in Kentucky, you can clearly see taller objects in the foreground that seem to appear as silhouettes in the ABC footage:  As he spoke, ABC aired footage showing undisclosed gunmen firing tracer bullets at undisclosed targets, causing massive, fiery explosions. Furious stuff indeed. Earlier, on Sunday, ABC News anchor Tom Llamas also aired the allegedly shocking footage, claiming it showed a fierce Turkish attack on Kurd civilians. “The situation rapidly spiraling out of control in northern Syria. One week since President Trump ordered U.S. forces out of that region, effectively abandoning America’s allies in the fight against [the Islamic State],” he said. Llamas then described the video as it aired on-screen. “This video right here appearing to show Turkey’s military bombing Kurd civilians in a Syrian border town. The Kurds, who fought alongside the U.S. against ISIS. Now, horrific reports of atrocities committed by Turkish-backed fighters on those very allies,” he added. The intro to the show he anchored,ABC World News Tonight, also claimed of the footage: “A border town, bombarded by Turkey’s military!” The footage would indeed be stunning were if actually from northern Syria. It would be horrific were it actually to show a Turkish assault on Kurd civilians. But it does not show that. The footage, which appears to be from 2017, shows American gun enthusiasts putting on a terrific pyrotechnic show for an audience in Kentucky. In fact, the Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show, which involves the very popular night shoot, is a bi-annual event at the Kentucky gun range. People love the show. They love it so much, in fact, that they record it and post footage of it to social media.  This isn’t the first time major media corporations have posted incorrect video/audio reports regarding the Syrian crisis. In 2017, CNN was caught faking statements coming from a Syrian witness who was talking of starvation. CNN, however, changed the quotes to read that he was afraid of Assad’s bombs. CNN was also famous for the “Syrian Danny” fiasco where a firefight was coordinated with CNN producers in order to make it appear that democracy-loving peaceful protesters were being murdered by the Syrian government. This propaganda piece was only topped in comedic value by “Gay Girl In Damascus” of NPR fame, which later turned out to be a straight man in England.  You can enjoy some of the Knob Creek Videos here below if you like. You may also feel good in the knowledge that no Kurds were abandoned during the making of these videos:  Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies,Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria,and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 1,000 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.


globalresearch--2019-01-28--Israeli General Mounts Challenge to Netanyahu by Flaunting Gaza Carnage

With April’s elections looming, Benjamin Netanyahu has good reason to fear Benny Gantz, his former army chief. Gantz has launched a new party, named Israeli Resilience, just as the net of corruption indictments is closing around the prime minister.  Already, at this early stage of campaigning, some 31 per cent of the Israeli public prefer Gantz to head the next government over Netanyahu, who is only months away from becoming the longest-serving leader in Israel’s history.    Gantz is being feted as the new hope, a chance to change direction after a series of governments under Netanyahu’s leadership have over the past decade shifted Israel ever further to the right.  Like Israel’s former politician generals, from Yitzhak Rabin to Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, Gantz is being portrayed – and portraying himself – as a battle-hardened warrior, able to make peace from a position of strength.  Before he had issued a single policy statement, polls showed him winning 15 of the 120 parliamentary seats, a welcome sign for those hoping that a centre-left coalition can triumph this time.  But the reality of what Gantz stands for – revealed this week in his first election videos – is far from reassuring.  In 2014, he led Israel into its longest and most savage military operation in living memory: 50 days in which the tiny coastal enclave of Gaza was bombarded relentlessly.  By the end, one of the most densely populated areas on earth – its two million inhabitants already trapped by a lengthy Israeli blockade – lay in ruins. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed in the onslaught, a quarter of them children, while tens of thousands were left homeless.  The world watched, appalled. Investigations by human rights groups such as Amnesty International concluded that Israel had committed war crimes.  One might have assumed that during the election campaign Gantz would wish to draw a veil over this troubling period in his military career. Not a bit of it.  One of his campaign videos soars over the rubble of Gaza, proudly declaring that Gantz was responsible for destroying many thousands of buildings. “Parts of Gaza have been returned to the Stone Age,” the video boasts.  This is a reference to the Dahiya doctrine, a strategy devised by the Israeli military command of which Gantz was a core member. The aim is to lay waste to the modern infrastructure of Israel’s neighbours, forcing survivors to eke out a bare existence rather than resist Israel.  The collective punishment inherent in the apocalyptic Dahiya doctrine is an undoubted war crime.  More particularly, the video exults in the destruction of Rafah, a city in Gaza that suffered the most intense bout of bombing after an Israeli soldier was seized by Hamas. In minutes, Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment killed at least 135 Palestinian civilians and wrecked a hospital.  According to investigations, Israel had invoked the Hannibal Procedure, the code name for an order allowing the army to use any means to stop one of its soldiers being taken. That includes killing civilians as “collateral damage” and, more controversially for Israelis, the soldier himself.  Gantz’s video flashes up a grand total of “1,364 terrorists killed”, in return for “three-and-a-half years of quiet”. As Israel’s liberal Haaretz daily observed, the video “celebrates a body count as if this were just some computer game”.  But the casualty figure cited by Gantz exceeds even the Israel army’s self-serving assessment – as well, of course, as dehumanising those “terrorists” fighting for their freedom.  A more impartial observer, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, estimates that the Palestinian fighters killed by Israel amounted to 765. By their reckoning, and that of other bodies such as the United Nations, almost two-thirds of Gazans killed in Israel’s 2014 operation were civilians.  Further, the “quiet” Gantz credits himself with was enjoyed chiefly by Israel.  In Gaza, Palestinians faced regular military attacks, a continuing siege choking off essential supplies and destroying their export industries, and a policy of executions by Israeli snipers firing on unarmed demonstrators at the perimeter fence imprisoning the enclave.  Gantz’s campaign slogans “Only the Strong Wins” and “Israel Before Everything” are telling. Everything, for Gantz, clearly includes human rights.  It is shameful enough that he believes his track record of war crimes will win over voters. But the same approach has been voiced by Israel’s new military chief of staff.  Aviv Kochavi, nicknamed the Philosopher Officer for his university studies, was inaugurated this month as the army’s latest head. In a major speech, he promised to reinvent the fabled “most moral army in the world” into a “deadly, efficient” one.  In Kochavi’s view, the rampaging military once overseen by Gantz needs to step up its game. And he is a proven expert in destruction.  In the early stages of the Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000, the Israeli army struggled to find a way to crush Palestinian fighters concealed in densely crowded cities under occupation.  Kochavi came up with an ingenious solution in Nablus, where he was brigade commander. The army would invade a Palestinian home, then smash through its walls, moving from house to house, burrowing through the city unseen. Palestinian space was not only usurped, but destroyed inside-out.  Gantz, the former general hoping to lead the government, and Kochavi, the general leading its army, are symptoms of just how complete the militaristic logic that has overtaken Israel really is. An Israel determined to become a modern-day Sparta.  Should he bring about Netanyahu’s downfall, Gantz, like his predecessor politician-generals, will turn out to be a hollow peace-maker. He was trained to understand only strength, zero-sum strategies, conquest and destruction, not compassion or compromise.  More dangerously, Gantz’s glorification of his military past is likely to reinforce in Israelis’ minds the need not for peace but for more of the same: support for an ultranationalist right that bathes itself in an ethnic supremacist philosophy and dismisses any recognition of the Palestinians as human beings with rights.  Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.  A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.  Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Featured image is from The Jerusalem Post


theguardianuk--2019-06-02--Stop the carnage doctors call for an end to Syria hospital airstrikes

Stop the carnage: doctors call for an end to Syria hospital airstrikes

Dozens of prominent doctors have called for urgent action to halt the bombing campaign by Syrian and Russian planes that has targeted more than 20 hospitals in Syria’s north-west, putting many out of action and leaving millions of people without proper healthcare.  Coordinates for many of those hit had been shared with the regime and its Russian backers by the United Nations in an effort to protect civilians. The Syrian opposition were promised war planes would avoid identified sites on bombing raids; instead they have endured more than a month of fierce attacks.  Since late April, in defiance of a truce brokered by Moscow and Ankara last year, regular airstrikes on opposition-held territory in northern Idlib province have killed hundreds of civilians and displaced hundreds of thousands more, rights groups say.  They have also destroyed key parts of the healthcare system, says a letter from doctors around the world published in the Observer. “We are appalled by the deliberate and systematic targeting of healthcare facilities and medical staff,” they warned. “Their [the medical staff’s] job is to save lives, they must not lose their own in the process.”  Signatories include Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist who won the Nobel peace prize last year, Peter Agre, a physician who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 2003, MP and doctor Sarah Wollaston, and Terence English, former president of the Royal College of Surgeons, as well as David Nott, a surgeon who works in war zones, and Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian exile, doctor and founder of a medical charity. They urged the UN to investigate the targeting of listed hospitals and asked the international community to put pressure on Russia and Syria to stop targeting medical centres and reverse funding cuts to surviving hospitals and clinics that are now overwhelmed by refugees.  One paediatrician, Abdulkader Razouk, described to the Observer how he and his colleagues evacuated an entire hospital including dialysis patients, mothers in labour and premature babies in incubators, as airstrikes began in their town, at least 12 miles from the frontline. “After the airstrikes, but before the direct attack, we knew the hospital would be targeted,” he said in a phone interview about the Tarmala hospital, which was eventually hit on 10 May. “Only a few medical staff stayed to provide emergency response.”  The airstrike destroyed more than half the hospital and much of its equipment from beds and generators to the operating theatres, emergency services and pharmacy. Staff went back briefly to hunt through the rubble for any supplies that survived the onslaught but the building is now abandoned. “It would be impossible to rebuild and reopen now,” Razouk said. “The airstrikes are continuing and still targeting the hospital until this moment, even though it’s empty.”  The May bombing was not the first attack on the hospital. That came in 2015, first with the Syrian military’s wildly inaccurate barrel bombs, and later by Russian missiles, that destroyed a residential building next door but spared the clinic itself. In 2018 there was a direct hit on the clinic but then it was able to reopen after repairs.  However the damage after the latest attack was so severe that it is beyond repair, and anyway most of the civilians it served have fled, Razouk said.  “This was the worst attack, it has been very tough, there is no possibility whatsoever to continue work there,” he said. “Life can’t return to this area, especially under these brutal attacks. There are no people, not even animals, there’s nothing left in there, it’s like a doomed land. There is no hope to go back.”  He and other staff are opening a new temporary hospital near the Turkish border, where most of the residents of Tarmala have fled and are now living in refugee camps. It will have some of the neonatal incubators and dialysis machines evacuated before the strike, but there is a desperate need for more supplies.  Around 80 medical facilities – including clinics and hospitals – have been shut because of damage in attacks or because of fear they will be targeted, said Mohamad Katoub from the Syrian American Medical Society. The huge number of refugees displaced by attacks has left those that are still operating overwhelmed.  “The tactic of attacking health and other civilian infrastructure in Syria is not new, displacement is not new, these are all chronic issues. But this is the biggest displacement ever, and it is much further beyond our capacity as NGOs to respond,” he said.  Turkey, which backs Idlib’s rebel groups, is already home to 3.6 million Syrians and faces the dilemma of whether or not to absorb any of the newly displaced. A group were reportedly planning a protest march to the border at the weekend.  The de-escalation deal brokered last autumn saved Idlib and the surrounding countryside from an impending government assault. At the time, aid agencies warned that a military campaign would put the lives of 3 million civilians at risk, and trigger the worst humanitarian crisis of an already protracted and bloody war.  But the agreement has unravelled since January, when the hardline Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) wrested control of the area from more moderate rebels.  Damascus and Moscow have said the HTS takeover legitimises the current campaign against Idlib as they are targeting terrorists not covered by the ceasefire deal.  Many civilians in Idlib now feel they have been caught between the harsh rule of HTS and the intensified regime assault, and say that life has all but ground to a halt.  “I was studying at Idlib university but I’ve had to stop going. So has my sister,” said 22-year-old Raja al-Assaad, from Ma’arat al-Nu’maan, which has been under heavy attack.  “Some people have left to try to go to Turkey but the truth is that there is nowhere to go. Nowhere in Idlib is safe. And in my town we already have lots of people who have been displaced from lots of other areas of Syria.”  “All normal life has shut down and there is nothing for us to do except wait for death.”

Emma Graham-Harrison and Bethan McKernan


21stcenturywire--2019-07-01--Israels Latest Attack on Syria Launched From Lebanese Airspace Killed Civilians

Israel’s Latest Attack on Syria Launched From Lebanese Airspace, Killed Civilians

Israeli warplanes carried out more attacks on Syria early Monday morning, using Lebanese airspace once again, and targeting alleged Syrian and Iranian-backed military positions in Homs and southwest of Damascus in the town of Sahnaya.  Multiple media outlets, inside and outside Syria, are reporting at least over a dozen civilians killed and many more wounded. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the dead included a baby and that other children were also wounded in the attacks.  What is still not clear is the true nature of Israel’s targets, specifically, the number of Hezbollah outposts it claims were targeted. This is not the first time Israeli jets violated Lebanese airspace and Syria’s sovereignty.  Kevork Almassian of Syriana Analysis provides a detailed breakdown of Israel’s latest attack on Syria. Watch:


channel4uk--2019-10-14--Dozens of civilians killed and injured in Turkish attacks in Syria

Dozens of civilians have been killed and injured in Turkish attacks and tens of thousands of people have fled their homes because of the danger.  Turkey’s so-called “safe zone” is proving anything but. Dozens of civilians have been killed and injured in Turkish attacks and tens of thousands of people have fled their homes because of the danger.  Our International Editor Lindsey Hilsum began the day in north-eastern Syria, but as the Assad regime’s forces spread across the Kurdish-administered region towards the team’s location, it became unsafe for them to stay.


fortruss--2019-10-10--UN Investigation Reveals May 5 US Air Attacks on Afghan Drug Labs Killed 30 Civilians

New York, USA – US air attacks on alleged Taliban drug labs in Afghanistan killed or wounded dozens of civilians in May, said a United Nations report, which has been rejected by the US military. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) conducted a four-month investigation into the May 5 air attacks that hit more than 60 sites the US and Afghan forces identified as drug-production facilities in the western provinces of Farah and Nimroz, Al-Jazeera reported.  UNAMA and the UN human rights office announced in a joint report released on Wednesday that there were at least 30 deaths among the 39 civilian casualties. The number included 14 children and five women killed or wounded in the air raids, which the UN said violated international humanitarian law as the victims were non-combatants.  “UNAMA has assessed that the personnel working inside the drug production facilities were not performing combat functions. They were therefore entitled to protection from attack, and could only have lost this protection if, and for such time, as they had been directly participating in hostilities,” the report added.  The US Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) issued a statement, rejecting the UN report and claiming there were no casualties.  “USFOR-A is fighting in a complex environment against those who intentionally kill and hide behind civilians, as well as use dishonest claims of non-combatant casualties as propaganda weapons,” the statement said. “USFOR-A took extraordinary measures to avoid the deaths or injuries of non-combatants,” Statement added.  Since late 2017, US forces have attacked sites believed to be used for processing drugs as part of efforts to cut off funds to the Taliban group. Facilities that help fund parties involved in the 18-year war are considered civilian objectives under international humanitarian law, and thus drug labs and their workers are unlawful targets, the report concluded.  Afghanistan’s security forces and US-led NATO forces have been heavily criticized for inflicting civilian casualties during their raids and air attacks. At least 3,812 civilians have been killed or wounded in the first half of 2019, UNAMA said in a report published in July, noting a big increase in the number of casualties caused by government and NATO-led troops. It added that 1,366 civilians were killed and another 2,446 wounded in the six months to June 30.  The report attributed 717 civilians killed and 680 wounded to pro-government forces, representing a 31 percent increase from the corresponding period in 2018. Taliban and fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS or Daesh) armed group killed 531 Afghans and wounded 1,437, according to the UNAMA report. The US formally ended its combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 but still provides extensive air and other support to local forces battling both the armed groups.


mintpressnews--2019-05-16--77 Civilians Killed or Wounded in Sanaa as Saudi Airstrikes Target Yemeni Capital

77 Civilians Killed or Wounded in Sana’a as Saudi Airstrikes Target Yemeni Capital

SANA’A, YEMEN —  “Where am I?” muttered 50-year-old Ahmed Sharf al Adeini, as neighbors pulled him from the rubble of his home after it was hit by a Saudi airstrike. Al Adeini lost his wife and children in the attack and later died after succumbing to his injuries at the al Thwarah General Hospital.  Al Adeini is among at least 77 civilians — including women and children, as well as two Russian citizens — who were killed or injured in a wave of Saudi-led Coalition airstrikes on various neighborhoods of Yemen’s capital, Sana`a on early Thursday. Dozens of civilians also sustained injuries in the attacks. The son of Abdullah Sabri, the president of the Union of Yemeni Journalists, was also among the dead. The Sabri home was destroyed in the attack.  The airstrikes that targeted the home of al Ahmed Sharf al Adeini killed his entire family, including four children. The six bodies of the al Adeini family were retrieved from the rubble — a soon-to-die father, his children and his wife, all buried together. Three mentally disabled people were also reportedly killed in the attack, including a child and his father as they walked through a populated residential neighborhood that was targeted.  The airstrikes leveled parts of one neighborhood in which seven more homes were destroyed, forcing families to flee in their pajamas. “We were asleep; it was 8 a.m. when a large explosion woke us up. Airstrikes bombed our neighbor,” a local resident told MintPress.  Under dim lights and amid panicked screams, rescuers struggled to retrieve bodies from the rubble. MintPress cameras documented the rescue efforts while bystanders filmed on their phones as a victim was being pulled out from under the rubble. “So far we’ve recovered more than 10 [bodies] including four disabled people and the family of al Adeini, all of them dead,” a local resident assisting in the rescue efforts told MintPress, drenched in sweat and wearing only his underwear.  The Ministry of Public Health and Population announced in a statement on Thursday that the number of casualtiesl had risen to 77, victims of the Saudi attacks on the Raqas residential neighborhood. “After operations to recover victims and wounded from the rubble was complete, 77 were counted among the killed and wounded,” Dr. Yousef al Hadheri, spokesman of the Ministry of Health, told MintPress.  The death toll could rise due to the intensity of the strikes and the number of those who have been seriously injured, while other civilians, dead or wounded, are still trapped under the rubble.  The situation for Yemen’s healthcare sector is especially dire given that the Coalition’s blockade of Yemen has prevented medicine and other critical commodities from reaching around 8.4 million people, many of whom are believed to be on the verge of starvation.  The attacks have enraged local residents, who took to the streets of Raqas to condemn the airstrikes and loss of civilian life, calling for counter-attacks on Coalition forces. Most here hold the United States responsible for the attacks, as the U.S. supplies Saudi Arabia with advanced weapons as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.  Saudi warplanes also struck a building housing Yemen’s Ministry of Information and more than 20 airstrikes struck targets in civilian areas across Sana`a on Thursday morning.  The official spokesman of Ansar Allah, the political wing of the Houthis, called the airstrikes in Sana`a a crime, and proof of the military and political failure of the Saudi forces.  The Saudi-led Coalition confirmed that its warplanes carried out airstrikes in Sana`a on Thursday. “We have begun to launch airstrikes targeting sites operated by the Houthis militia, including in Sana`a,” a Coalition official, who declined to be identified, told AFP.  So far the United States has not commented on the airstrikes.  Feature photo | Rubble peppers the streets of a heavily-populated residential neighborhood in Sana’a, Yemen following a wave of Saudi airstrikes on May 16, 2019. Photo | AMC  Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.


sottnet--2019-07-04--Rogue Israels latest attack on Syria launched from Lebanese airspace killed civilians

Rogue Israel's latest attack on Syria launched from Lebanese airspace, killed civilians

Israeli warplanes carried out more attacks on Syria early Monday morning, using Lebanese airspace once again, and targeting alleged Syrian and Iranian-backed military positions in Homs and southwest of Damascus in the town of Sahnaya.Multiple media outlets, inside and outside Syria, are reporting at least over a dozen civilians killed and many more wounded. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the dead included a baby and that other children were also wounded in the attacks.What is still not clear is the true nature of Israel's targets, specifically, the number of Hezbollah outposts it claims were targeted. This is not the first time Israeli jets violated Lebanese airspace and Syria's sovereignty Kevork Almassian of Syriana Analysis provides a detailed breakdown of Israel's latest attack on Syria. Watch:


sottnet--2019-09-19--30 civilians killed in accidental airstrike in Afghanistan 20 killed in Taliban car bombing - 140

30 civilians killed in 'accidental' airstrike in Afghanistan, 20 killed in Taliban car bombing - 140 wounded overall

At least 50 people have been killed in an air strike and a car bombing in Afghanistan, as U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad prepares to brief U.S. lawmakers on his peace talks with the Taliban.The September 19 incidents come after the collapse of negotiations between Washington and the militants and just days ahead of a presidential election.Officials said, in eastern Afghanistan, whilein the war-wracked country's south.The air strike was aimed at destroying a hideout used by Islamic State militants, but itnear a field, three government officials said.Sohrab Qaderi, a provincial council member in eastern Nangarhar Province, said a drone strike killed 30 workers in a pine-nut field and at least 40 others were injured.Attullah Khogyani, a spokesman for Nangarhar's governor, told RFE/RL the air strike occurred in the Khogyani district. "There are fears civilians are among the dead, and we are carrying out an investigation to identify the bodies," he said.The Afghan Defense Ministry confirmed the strike, but refused to share casualty details immediately. U.S. forces were not immediately available for comment.Meanwhile, officials said a Taliban car-bomb attack in Zabul Province killed at least 20 people and wounded 97 on September 19., Rahmatullah Yarmal, the provincial governor, told RFE/RL.Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Taliban, said his group was responsible for the attack.Officials told Tolo News that "ambulances have also been called from Kandahar city to transfer the wounded to hospitals in Kandahar Province. Most of the victims have been taken to private hospitals."Two recent attacks claimed by the militants killed at least 48 people in Afghanistan, although Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban's chief negotiator, told the BBC on September 18 that the "doors are open" to a resumption of talks to end the 18-year war.Taliban negotiators have refused to talk directly with the government in Kabul, labeling them as "puppets" of the West.Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, is due to brief a House of Representatives committee on peace negotiations.The House Foreign Affairs Committee said that Khalilzad will hold a classified briefing for the entire panel early on September 19.


sottnet--2019-09-23--At least 40 civilians including 12 children killed at Afghan wedding party during a US-backed mili

At least 40 civilians, including 12 children, killed at Afghan wedding party during a US-backed military raid gone wrong

A US-backed raid by the Afghanistan security forces on an Islamist militants' hideout in the Helmand province turned into a bloodbath when a nearby wedding party was hit as well and dozens of civilians were killed and injured.The raid on the hideout, located in the central Afghan town of Musa Qala, occurred late on Sunday. The targeted facility has somehow been used by both the Taliban and Al Qaeda to train suicide bombers, according to local officials.The operation, however, turned into carnage as a wedding party was being held next door with a large group of civilians in attendance."We were going to the bride's house for the henna ceremony, some of us were outside the home and some inside, [when] suddenly the battle began...We told the security forces that we were not members of the Taliban," Mohammad Salim, a survivor of the massacre and a relative of the victims, told Reuters.Colonel Sonny Leggett, a spokesman for US forces stationed in the country, said they participated in the raid, conducting "precision strikes against barricaded terrorists firing on Afghan and US forces." The majority of the killed civilians were struck by the militants' small arms fire and explosions of their munition cashes and suicide belts, he claimed.As the US-Taliban peace talks collapsed two weeks ago, violence in the war-torn country is on the rise and it has already taken a heavy toll on civilians.The bombing run targeted Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) militants, who seemingly happened to "hide" among the farmers.


sputnik--2019-03-16--At Least 4 Killed 36 Civilians Hurt as Mine Explodes in Deir ez-Zor - Reports

At Least 4 Killed, 36 Civilians Hurt as Mine Explodes in Deir ez-Zor - Reports

As a result of the blast in the village of Shoula, four local residents were killed and 36 people were injured, SANA reported.  The years-long armed conflict in Syria appears to be nearing its end, according to reports, although the country is still burdened with routine violent clashes and the presence of armed rebel and terrorist groups. Syrian military engineering units regularly carry out operations to clear mines and other types of explosive devices left throughout the country by retreating terrorists.  READ MORE: French Carrier Strike Group Joins Operations Against Daesh – US Central Command  According to United Nations data made public in January, the Daesh terror group continues to control parts of Deir ez-Zor in the middle Euphrates river valley, where some civilians remain trapped amid continued airstrikes.  UN assessments on Syria reportedly continue to cast doubt on a declaration by US President Donald Trump in December 2018 that Daesh had been defeated.  READ MORE: At Least 15 Killed, Dozens Injured in Terrorist Attack in Syria's Deir ez-Zor  Syria has been engulfed in a civil war since 2011, with government forces fighting numerous opposition factions and terrorist groups. The conflict has significantly worsened the humanitarian situation in the Arab republic, forcing an estimated 12 million people to flee their homes or flee the country, according to UN reports.  *Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist group banned in Russia and many other countries.


sputnik--2019-04-16--Six Civilians Five Syrian Troops Killed After Militants Shelled Aleppo

Six Civilians, Five Syrian Troops Killed After Militants Shelled Aleppo

"Over the past day terrorists have attacked Sanjeka in Latakia province and Aleppo. As a result of shelling at al-Hamdaniyah district in Aleppo six civilians and five Syrian servicemen were killed," the centre said.  In the meantime, Syrian authorities continue to work on amnesty for those "who evade from military service, including those among refugees and former members of illegal armed groups," the statement noted, adding that in total, over 57,000 people were granted amnesty.  Syria is recovering its infrastructure. According to the Russian military, over 31,000 houses, more than 800 educational facilities and over 150 medical centres have already been rebuilt in the country.  Also, a humanitarian corridor and the Jleb mobile checkpoint have been set up in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the Rukban refugee camp. Buses have been sent for "the voluntary and unimpeded return of temporarily displaced persons from the al-Tanf area to the places of their permanent residence," the statement added.  Damascus has been gradually regaining control over the crisis-hit country ravaged by terrorists as the war in the region enters its ninth year. Now the Syrian administration is trying to create favourable conditions for repatriating some 5.6 million refugees who, according to the UN Refugee Agency, have fled to neighbouring states.


sputnik--2019-05-02--US Military Killed 120 Civilians Abroad in 2018 - Pentagon

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — US military operations killed about 120 civilians and injured 65 others in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia in 2018, a new US Department of Defense (DoD) report revealed on Thursday.  “DoD assesses that there are credible reports of approximately 120 civilians killed and approximately 65 civilians injured during 2018 as a result of US military operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia," the report said.  The annual report showed the number of civilian casualties in 2018 decreased from the nearly 800 civilians killed and more than 200 injured in US military operations in 2017.  The Defense Department attributed the decline in civilian casualties to a reduction in military activities after the extensive operations undertaken in 2017 to liberate the cities of Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria from the Daesh* terror group.  READ MORE: Trump Vows US to Fight Daesh 'Whenever it Operates'  In late April, Amnesty International and the monitoring group Airwars reported that the US-backed military operation in Raqqa killed more than 1,600 civilians in 2017.  On 6 March, the White House announced President Donald Trump's decision to revoke an executive order that required the US administration to provide public reports on the number of civilians killed in military strikes outside war zones.  *Daesh (also known as IS/ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State) is a terrorist group banned in Russia.


sputnik--2019-08-02--US Killed More Civilians in Afghanistan Than the Taliban Shocking UN Report

US Killed More Civilians in Afghanistan Than the Taliban – Shocking UN Report

Although US troops are supposed to be no longer engaged in actual combat they are on the ground and provide arms, training and logistics to the fledgeling Afghan army. The US air force also provides air support and executes deadly airstrikes regularly.  At least 3,812 civilians have been killed or wounded in the first half of 2019, the United Nations said, noting a big increase in the number of casualties caused by government and NATO-led troops.  The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) called the toll "shocking and unacceptable", and urged parties to Afghanistan's 18-year war to heed a demand from Afghan delegates at a recent peace conference in Doha, the capital city of Qatar, to reduce civilian casualties to zero.  The United Nations report said 83 percent of casualties from airstrikes were attributed to “international military forces,” essentially pointing the finger at the United States military, which is the only member of the international coalition in Afghanistan that carries out airstrikes. The Afghan Air Force was responsible for about 10 percent.  In the first six months of the year, the conflict killed nearly 1,400 civilians and wounded about 2,400 more. Afghan forces and their allies caused 52 percent of the civilian deaths compared with 39 percent attributable to militants — mostly the Taliban, but also the Islamic State* [Daesh in Arabic]. The figures do not total 100 percent because responsibility for some deaths could not be definitively established. So 717 civilians have been killed by the US and its allies compared to 531 civilians killed by the Taliban or others.  Even the mainstream US paper, The New York Times, was compelled to state:  “Afghan security forces and their American-led international allies have killed more civilians so far this year than the Taliban have, the United Nations said in a report on Tuesday, once again raising alarm that ordinary Afghans are bearing the brunt of an increasingly deadly 18-year war”.  The United States has bombed and/or invaded: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, Cuba, Panama, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Grenada, Vietnam, Laos, Guatemala and Cambodia to name just a few of the examples we are aware of. Yet mainstream media discussions about 'threats to world peace' never mention the trigger happy US. Sure North Korea, Iran, Russia and Venezuela are mentioned and demonised constantly but never the country that is actually the most aggressive and dangerous on the planet. If you are looking for the single biggest threat to world peace look no further than the United States of America. A recent United Nations Report confirms that fact.  In the last few weeks the ratcheting up of hysteria and demonising of Iran has been put into full gear. A country that has not invaded another nation for 200 years and has itself been invaded twice in the last century, 1941 and 1980, is the biggest threat on the world stage according to US billionaire owned media outlets.  In 1980 Iran was attacked by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq whom the US and UK were supporting, encouraging and arming Hussein to the teeth. A bloody and brutal eight-year conflict ensued which claimed several million lives. Iran did not seek or start that war but accepted a United Nations-brokered ceasefire in 1988. They have no desire to start any new wars.  In the intervening period between 1980 and now, however, the US and UK not only switched from arming and supporting Saddam Hussein, they actually invaded Iraq in 2003 to illegally depose him and killed over one million Iraqi civilians in the process.  The Iraq war was based on a false premise of weapons of mass destruction possession. Dossiers were invented, grainy videos were created and a compliant press and media went into overdrive to propagandise on behalf of the US and UK.  President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair deliberately lied to their respective political chambers to justify an unnecessary and brutal ‘shock and awe’ strategy of carpet bombing followed by physical invasion. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and they both knew it. After all the US and UK possessed the receipts for all the weapons Saddam Hussain had. The US and UK had sold those weapons to him during his most tyrannical years in power. When he was gassing the Kurds and killing almost 5,000 mostly women and children in Halabja in March 1988 he was using US and UK supplied planes and materials. After the atrocity both the US and UK continued to supply Iraq and Saddam with arms.  Since the 2003 invasion, Iraq has been a basket case nation. Infrastructure decimated, political structures destroyed and over one million civilian lives extinguished. American media duped many Americans into believing Iraq was behind the horrible 9/11 attacks which devastated New York. They had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and al Qaeda or ISIS* Islamic terrorists had no presence or base in Iraq prior to 2003. Now the country is riven with ISIS sponsored terror attacks and religious and tribal civil wars. Only weeks ago the capital Baghdad witnessed a suicide bomb attack that claimed 250 civilian lives, the largest single civilian loss of life since 2003. American invasion and intervention has been a disaster for Iraq and its population.  The civilised world has to unite and muster the courage to expose the dastardly role of the US in destabilising so much of the world through deadly bombings and invasions and the economic terrorism of sanctions designed to cripple countries abilities to produce enough food to feed their populations and build the sanitary infrastructures to keep them safe from disease. The brutal economic sanctions imposed on Iran, Venezuela and Cuba right now are not only illegal they are also immoral. Despite scores of United Nations condemnations for such unilateral and illegal actions the US persists in its deadly cowboy actions.  America has now been informed it is killing more civilians in Afghanistan than the Taliban or other supposed terrorists. If facts like that don’t convince them to change tack and stop interfering militarily and economically in other countries uninvited what the hell will?  *al Qaeda, Taliban and Daesh (Islamic State, ISIL, ISIS, IS) are terrorist organisations banned in Russia and many other countries.  The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.


tass--2019-07-26--Over 100 civilians killed in Syria in past ten days UN

Over 100 civilians killed in Syria in past ten days — UN

"At least ten different locations (eight in Idlib and two in rural Aleppo) have experienced civilian casualties as a result of airstrikes in the past ten days alone, causing a minimum of 103 civilian deaths, including at least 26 children," she said.  GENEVA, July 26. /TASS/. More than 100 civilians have been killed in airstrikes in the Syrian provinces of Idlib and Aleppo in the past ten days, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement on Friday.  "These are civilian objects, and it seems highly unlikely, given the persistent pattern of such attacks, that they are all being hit by accident," Bachelet noted, pointing out that "intentional attacks against civilians are war crimes, and those who have ordered them or carried them out are criminally responsible for their actions."  Bachelet expressed concern that the war in Syria "is no longer on the international radar." "Now, airstrikes kill and maim significant numbers of civilians several times a week, and the response seems to be a collective shrug, with the Security Council paralyzed by the persistent failure of its five Permanent Members to agree to use their power and influence to stop the fighting and killing once and for all," she pointed out.  According to the UN high commissioner for human rights, "influential parties, including those that agreed to reduce hostilities as part of the de-escalation agreement, should urgently use their influence to halt the current military campaign and bring the warring parties back to the negotiating table." "It is essential that there is a cessation of hostilities in order to give the on-going political negotiations room to breathe. The alternative is just more mindless death and destruction in a war without end," Bachelet emphasized.  In accordance with a decision made by Russia, Iran and Turkey - the guarantors of the Syrian ceasefire - de-escalation zones were set up in Syria in May 2017. They include the Idlib Province, some parts of its neighboring areas in Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces, Eastern Ghouta, as well as some areas in the Daraa and al-Quneitra provinces in southern Syria. Damascus took control of three of the four zones in 2014, but the zone covering the Idlib province and certain parts of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces is still controlled by terrorists from the Jabhat al-Nusra terror group (outlawed in Russia).


theantimedia--2019-06-01--US Remains in Denial About How Many Civilians They Killed in Iraq and Syria

(CD) — The U.S.-led coalition that launched airstrikes against Iraq and Syria against ISIS admitted Friday that those attacks killed civilians, but the number they reported—1,302 deaths in a nearly five-year period—was immediately dismissed as too low by the human rights organization Amnesty International.  “While all admissions of responsibility by the U.S.-led coalition for civilian casualties are welcome, the coalition remains deeply in denial about the devastating scale of the civilian casualties caused by their operations in both Iraq and Syria,” the group’s senior crisis response advisor, Donatella Rovera, said in a statement.  The coalition, in a statement announcing the findings of its internal review, said that of the “34,502 strikes between August 2014 and the end of April 2019” it found that “at least 1,302 civilians have been unintentionally killed by coalition strikes.”  That number, while 1,302 people too many, is still far below projections from other organizations over the past.  “Even in cases where the coalition has admitted responsibility this has only happened after civilian deaths were investigated and brought to its attention by organizations such as Amnesty International and Airwars,” said Rovera.  In April, a study by Amnesty and Airwars projected that 1,600 civilians died in coalition airstrikes in the Syrian city of Raqqa alone from June to October 2017, a number that, in four months, is higher than the coalition’s total findings for over four years across two countries.  “We hope to finally see an honest assessment of the devastating impact that U.S. lethal strikes have had on the civilians in Raqqa,” Daphne Eviatar, director of Amnesty’s Security with Human Rights program, said at the time. “The public deserves to know how many civilian casualties our government is responsible for, and the survivors deserve acknowledgement, reparations, where appropriate, and meaningful assistance to rebuild their lives.”  Friday’s report indicates that despite calls for more detailed analysis and investigation, an honest assessment may not be a priority for the coalition.  This article was chosen for republication based on the interest of our readers. Anti-Media republishes stories from a number of other independent news sources. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect Anti-Media editorial policy.  Since you’re here… …We have a small favor to ask. Fewer and fewer people are seeing Anti-Media articles as social media sites crack down on us, and advertising revenues across the board are quickly declining. However, unlike many news organizations, we haven’t put up a paywall because we value open and accessible journalism over profit — but at this point, we’re barely even breaking even. Hopefully, you can see why we need to ask for your help. Anti-Media’s independent journalism and analysis takes substantial time, resources, and effort to produce, but we do it because we believe in our message and hope you do, too. If everyone who reads our reporting and finds value in it helps fund it, our future can be much more secure. For as little as $1 and a minute of your time, you can support Anti-Media. Thank you. Click here to support us


theguardianuk--2019-02-24--Afghanistan UN says record number of civilians killed in 2018

Afghanistan: UN says record number of civilians killed in 2018

A record number of civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year according to a UN report, which blames an increase in suicide bombings by Islamic State and airstrikes by US-led coalition forces.  In its annual report published on Sunday, the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said 3,804 civilians were killed in 2018, the highest toll since it began compiling figures in 2009. Another 7,189 were wounded.  The report comes as the US peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, intensifies efforts to find a peaceful solution to the 17-year war. Khalilzad, who was appointed in September, is to begin another round of talks with the Taliban on Monday in Qatar, where the group maintains a political office.  The UN envoy, Tadamichi Yamamoto, called the increase in civilian casualties “deeply disturbing and wholly unacceptable”. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans have also been displaced by the conflict, both within and beyond the country’s borders.  The reports blames insurgents for 63% of civilian deaths and injuries in 2018. It says the Taliban were responsible for 37%, Isis 20%, and other armed groups 6%.  The government and its US and Nato allies were blamed for 24%, a significant increase on 2017, with many the result of increased airstrikes.  “For the first time since 2009 when it began systematically documenting civilian casualty figures, UNAMA recorded more than 1,000 civilian casualties from aerial operations,” the report said.  The US military says it carried out 6,823 airstrikes in 2018, the highest figure in six years.  More than 32,000 civilians have been killed and 60,000 wounded since the UN began compiling figures 10 years ago.  “It is time to put an end to this human misery and tragedy,” said Yamamoto. “The best way to halt the killing and maiming of civilians is to stop the fighting. That is why there is all the more need now to use all our efforts to bring about peace.”  The US and the Taliban have openly embraced a strategy of talking while fighting, with the Taliban carrying out near-daily attacks on the Afghan security forces.  Afghan forces are fighting the Taliban throughout the country with support from their US-led allies. They have also been attacking Isis positions, particularly in eastern Afghanistan, where the group is based.


theguardianuk--2019-07-07--At least 544 civilians killed in Russian-led assault in Syria rights groups say

At least 544 civilians killed in Russian-led assault in Syria, rights groups say

At least 544 civilians have been killed and over 2,000 people injured since a Russian-led assault on the last rebel bastion in north-western Syria began two months ago, according to rights groups and rescuers.  Russian jets joined the Syrian army on 26 April in the biggest offensive against parts of rebel-held Idlib province and adjoining northern Hama provinces in the biggest escalation in the war between the Syrian president, Bashar al Assad, and his enemies since last summer.  The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), which monitors casualties and briefs various UN agencies, said the 544 civilians killed in the hundreds of attacks carried out by Russian jets and the Syrian army include 130 children. Another 2,117 people have been injured.  “The Russian military and its Syrian ally are deliberately targeting civilians with a record number of medical facilities bombed,” Fadel Abdul Ghany, chairman of SNHR,said.  Russia and its Syrian army ally deny their jets hit indiscriminately civilian areas with cluster munitions and incendiary weapons, which residents in opposition areas say are meant to paralyse everyday life.  Moscow says its forces and the Syrian army are fending off terror attacks by al-Qaida militants whom they say hit populated, government-held areas, and it accuses rebels of wrecking a ceasefire deal agreed last year between Turkey and Russia.  Last month the US-based Human Rights Watch said the Russian-Syrian joint military operation had used cluster munitions and incendiary weapons in the attacks, along with large air-dropped explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated civilian areas, based on reports by first responders and witnesses.  Residents and rescuers say the two-month-old campaign has left dozens of villages and towns in ruins. According to the United Nations, at least 300,000 people have been forced to leave their homes for the safety of areas closer to the border with Turkey.  “Whole villages and towns have been emptied,” said the Idlib-based Civil Defence spokesman Ahmad al Sheikho, saying it was the most destructive campaign against Idlib province since it completely fell to the opposition in the middle of 2015.  On Friday, 15 people, including children, were killed in the village of Mhambil in western Idlib province after Syrian army helicopters dropped barrel bombs on a civilian quarter, the Civil Defence group and witnesses said.  The heads of 11 major global humanitarian organizations warned at the end of last month that Idlib stood at the brink of disaster, with 3 million civilian lives at risk, including 1 million children.  “Too many have died already” and “even wars have laws” they declared, in the face of “multiple attacks by government forces and their allies on hospitals, schools and markets,” the UN-endorsed statement said.  Last Thursday an aerial strike on Kafr Nabl hospital made it the 30th facility to be bombed during the campaign, leaving hundreds of thousands with no medical access, according to aid groups.  “To have these medical facilities bombed and put out of service in less than two months is no accident. Let’s call this by what it is, a war crime,” Dr Khaula Sawah, vice president of the US-based Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations, which provides aid in the north-west, said in a statement.