e_Paper 7-11-2016

World
Iraq forces gain ground in Mosul
despite fierce resistance
• AFP, Mosul, Iraq
Iraqi forces battled jihadists inside
Mosul for the third day running
Sunday while civilians risked their
lives dodging bombs and snipers
to slip out of the city.
The Islamic State group put up
fierce resistance to defend the city
it seized more than two years ago
and also claimed responsibility
for deadly suicide attacks further
south.
The elite Counter-Terrorism
Service has been spearheading
the attack on the eastern front of
the three-week-old offensive on
Mosul, Iraq’s largest military operation
in years.
The jihadists have given up
some of its bastions in Iraq and
Syria with barely a fight in recent
months but its men began the defence
of their last Iraqi hub with
anger.
They first entered the streets
of Mosul on Friday and were met
with what one officer described
as stiffer than expected resistance
from IS jihadists.
Perilous escape
The assault allowed some civilians
to flee the city, most of whose
million-plus residents remained
trapped inside, sheltering both
from their jihadist rulers and incoming
fire from government forces
and US-led coalition aircraft.
Some of the first civilians to
manage to escape the city proper
arrived at a camp near Khazir in
Kurdish-controlled territory on
Saturday.
Abu Sara dodged gunfire,
bombs, mortar rounds and coalition
strikes to flee his neighbourhood
of Al-Samah, such was his
desperation to leave what many
civilians who escaped IS rule describe
as an open-air prison.
While the corridors called for
by aid groups to allow the safe
passage of civilians have yet to
materialise, arrivals in the displacement
camps dotting the area
have increased markedly.
The government said it had
taken in 9,000 displaced people in
the past two days.
The International Organisation
for Migration said a total of about
34,000 people had been displaced
since the start of the offensive on
October 17.
Relief organisations were fighting
the clock to build up their shelter
capacity ahead of the feared
mass exodus from Mosul.
Despite IS leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi giving his fighters a
pep talk on Thursday, urging them
not to retreat from Mosul in a rare
audio message, the outcome of
the battle was in little doubt.
Suicide bombings
The jihadists, with an estimated
3,000 to 5,000 fighters in Mosul,
could hold out for weeks and inflict
heavy casualties on government
forces but they are outnumbered
about 10 to one.
The group’s ability to hit back
with ground offensives elsewhere
appears to be gone and IS has responded
with a string of diversionary
attacks, including spectacular
operations in Kirkuk and
Rutba.
On Sunday, it claimed responsibility
for three suicide attacks in
Tikrit and Samarra, the two main
cities in Salaheddin province
north of Baghdad.
Iraqi officials spoke of only two
bombers, one who detonated an
explosives-rigged vehicle at the
southern entrance to Tikrit, and
another who blew up an ambulance
in Samarra.
Jassem al-Jbara, the head of Salaheddin
province’s security committee,
said that the Tikrit attack
killed 12 people and wounded 20,
while six died and 12 more were
injured in Samarra. •
UK PM: Parliament must accept Brexit vote
• Reuters, London
British Prime Minister Theresa
May said on Sunday she would deliver
a full exit from the European
Union, hitting back at critics of her
Brexit strategy who have threatened
to try to block the process in
parliament.
The government’s plans to
launch a two-year divorce process
by the end of March next year
were thrown into disarray last
week when a court ruled that parliament
must be consulted on the
decision. May has said she is confident
of overturning the ruling.
Nevertheless, the prospect of
a parliamentary vote has enraged
eurosceptic lawmakers who fear
the ‘hard Brexit’ they want will be
watered down, and emboldened
political opponents who want a
less radical split from the bloc.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph
newspaper, May signalled
she would resist any attempt to
force her to change her approach
Displaced people who had fled from Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul, head to safer territory on Sunday
to leaving the EU, a historic break
that was approved by 52% of Britons
in a referendum in June.
“The people made their choice,
and did so decisively. It is the responsibility
of the government to
get on with the job and to carry
out their instruction in full,” May
wrote.
Half-Brexit
Arch-eurosceptic Nigel Farage,
who led the influential UK Independence
Party’s Brexit campaign,
said there was a growing
movement to keep Britain within
the EU’s tariff-free single market
- a scenario he called a “half-Brexit”
that went against the referendum
result.
“If the people in this country
think that they’re going to be
cheated, they’re going to be betrayed,
then we will see political
anger the likes of which none of
us in our lifetimes have ever witnessed
in this country,” he said.
Parliament could in theory
Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May
block Brexit because most members
supported staying in the EU in
June’s referendum. But many lawmakers
have signalled they would
be willing to reverse their position
to reflect the referendum result.
“I think it is highly unlikely that
parliament would not, in the end,
back a decision to trigger Article
50,” health minister Jeremy Hunt
REUTERS
REUTERS
said, referring to the EU treaty
mechanism for launching divorce
proceedings.
Last week’s court ruling could
allow lawmakers to temper the
government’s approach, however,
making a “hard Brexit” - where
tight controls on immigration are
prioritised over remaining in the
single market - less likely. •
9
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2016
DT
USA
Trump rushed off stage in
false gun scare
Republican presidential nominee
Donald Trump was hustled off
the stage by security agents at a
campaign event in Reno on Saturday
after a perceived threat in the
crowd. Two security agents grabbed
Trump by the shoulders and rushed
him back stage. The threat was
unclear, but a man near the front of
the crowd was pounced on by other
security agents. REUTERS
THE AMERICAS
Nicaragua vote set to
cement Ortega rule
Former Marxist guerilla leader Daniel
Ortega is expected to easily clinch
a third consecutive term as president
of Nicaragua on Sunday. Ortega and
his running mate, his wife Rosario
Murillo, have nearly 70% support,
according to a recent poll, tapping
into strong voter approval for a drop
in poverty in one of the poorest
countries in the Americas since he
took office in 2007. REUTERS
UK
Scotland expected to join
Brexit legal challenge
Scotland’s devolved government is
expected to join a legal challenge
against the British government’s
plans to trigger an exit from the
European Union, the lead claimant
in the court case said on Sunday.
The government said it would appeal
against the High Court ruling
and Britain’s Supreme Court is
expected to consider the case early
next month. AFP
EUROPE
Clinton distantly related to
French president
US presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton is distantly related to
French President Francois Hollande,
according to a new book
that claims they share royal blood
from doomed kings of the 14th
century. Clinton, whose maiden
name is Rodham, descends on
her mother’s side from families
from Canada’s French-speaking
province of Quebec, according to
French genealogist Jean-Louis
Beaucarnot. AFP
AFRICA
Boko Haram razes village,
kill 2 soldiers
Boko Haram jihadists killed
two soldiers and razed a village
adjoining the northeast Nigerian
town of Chibok. The Nigerian army
meanwhile said it had retaken
some villages from the Islamist
group in the Lake Chad region in
operations on Friday and Saturday
and rescued 85 people, including
women and children. It also
claimed nearly 40 Islamists were
killed in other operations. AFP