DT_20190713

Saturday, 13 July 2019
Daily Tribune
U.S., ALLIES START TALKS
Naval oil tanker
escorts set
WORLD
B13
WASHINGTON — The United States and its
allies are discussing plans to provide naval
escorts for oil tankers through the Gulf, a
top US general said Thursday after Iranian
military vessels menaced a British tanker.
General Mark Milley, nominated to become
the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a
Senate hearing that the US has a “crucial role”
in enforcing freedom of navigation in the Gulf.
I think that that will be developing
over the next couple weeks.
He said the US was attempting to put
together a coalition “in terms of providing
military escort, naval escort to commercial
shipping,” he said.
“I think that that will be developing over
the next couple weeks.”
Milley, currently chief of staff of the army,
confirmed less specific remarks by current
Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford
earlier this week.
Dunford told media that the Pentagon was
working to identify possible partners in an
effort to protect navigation in the Straits of
Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab on either side
of the Arabian peninsula where much of the
world’s crude oil traffic passes.
Milley’s remarks came after London said
Thursday that armed Iranian boats tried to
block a supertanker before being warned off
by a British warship in a dramatic escalation
in the Gulf.
The British defense ministry said three
Iranian boats tried to “impede the passage”
of the British Heritage, a 274-meter (899-foot)
tanker owned by BP that can carry a million
barrels of oil.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards denied
involvement but also cautioned both the
United States and Britain that they would
“strongly regret” the British detention of a
tanker carrying Iranian crude oil off Gibraltar
last week.
AFP
SIBERIAN tigers, just some of the 300 born at the China Hengdaohezi Feline Breeding Center in
Hailin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, at end of February this year.
XINHUA
Sudan military foils coup
Officers and soldiers from the army and National Intelligence and
Security Service, some of them retired, were trying to carry out a coup
KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudan’s ruling
military council foiled a coup attempt, a
top general announced on state television
Thursday, saying that 12 officers and four
soldiers had been arrested.
The announcement came as the ruling
military and civilian protesters agreed
last week to end a political impasse after
the army in April ousted longtime ruler
Omar al-Bashir on the back of a popular
uprising.
“Officers and soldiers from the army and
BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than 100 fighters were
killed in clashes between regime and jihadist-led
forces in northwest Syria, a war monitor said
Thursday, as violence raged on the edge of an
opposition bastion despite a September truce deal.
Eight civilians also died in the latest violence,
the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Six
of them, including a child, were killed in regime air
strikes on the town of Jisr al-Shughur.
A car bombing killed 13 people in nearby Afrin,
the city that Turkey-backed rebels seized last year
from Kurdish fighters.
Syria’s civil war has killed a total of more
than 370,000 people and spiraled into a complex
conflict since starting in 2011 with the repression
of anti-government protests.
Russian and regime aircraft have since late April
ramped up deadly bombardment of the Idlib region
of some three million people in northwest Syria,
despite a deal to avert a massive government assault.
Regime forces have also been locked in battle
with jihadists and allied rebels on the edges of the
bastion held by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), including the north
of Hama province.
Syria’s civil war has killed a total of more
than 370,000 people.
Clashes raged since Wednesday night in northern
Hama after a small advance by jihadist-led forces,
the Syrian Observatory said.
Fighting and bombardment since the launch of the
attack late Wednesday killed at least 57 regime forces
and 44 jihadists and allied rebels, the Britain-based
war monitor said, giving a revised death toll.
“The fighting is ongoing as regime planes and
artillery pound the area,” Observatory head Rami
Abdel Rahman said.
HTS spokesman Abu Khaled al-Shami said the
jihadist and rebel fighters attacked after dark, taking
control of the village of Hamameyat and a hilltop.
In air raids Thursday, a civilian was killed in
a Russian strike on the Idlib town of Latamneh,
the Observatory said, while rebel shelling cost the
life of a woman in regime-held outside the jihadist
stronghold.
Elsewhere in Syria, eight civilians were among
the 13 people killed in a car bomb near a checkpoint
outside Afrin, the Observatory said.
Turkish troops and Syrian proxies took control of
National Intelligence and Security Service,
some of them retired, were trying to carry out
a coup,” General Jamal Omar of the ruling
military council said in a statement broadcast
live on state television.
“The regular forces were able to foil the
attempt,” he said, but did not say when the
attempt was made.
Omar said of the 12 officers arrested,
five of them were retired, and that security
forces were looking for the mastermind of the
attempted coup.
AFP
BRITISH Royal Marines member training his sight on an Iranian oil tanker off the Gibraltar strait.
Taliban welcomes women, now
DOHA, Qatar — An Afghan campaigner who took part
in breakthrough talks with the Taliban said Thursday
that she saw subtle improvements in the attitude towards
women of the insurgents, who severely curtailed their
rights while in power.
In a meeting earlier this week in Qatar, the Islamist
militants sat down with Afghan representatives and issued
a joint statement that called for assuring women’s rights
“within the Islamic framework of Islamic values.”
The conference, co-organized by Germany, came as the
United States negotiates with the Taliban to pull troops
from Afghanistan — with women’s rights not explicitly
on the agenda.
Asila Wardak, a women’s rights campaigner who works
for the Afghan foreign ministry, said she was surprised
at the positive atmosphere in Doha as women mingled
directly with the Taliban over dinner and tea breaks.
“It was interesting to me as an Afghan woman as they
didn’t shake hands but they warmly welcomed us,” she
told a symposium at Georgetown University on the peace
process, speaking by video from Kabul.
Two Taliban delegates even showed flashes of humor,
telling the Afghan women that they heard they would be
coming and saying, “’Please don’t give us a hard time,’”
she said.
BENGHAZI, Libya — A car bomb exploded during the
funeral of an ex-army commander in the Libyan city of
Benghazi on Thursday, killing at least four people and
wounding more than 30 others, hospitals said.
A security official said the attack, the first in over a year
in the bastion of Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar,
targeted servicemen at the funeral of Khalifa al-Mesmari,
a special forces chief under Libya’s ousted leader Moamer
Kadhafi.
The Mediterranean city’s hospitals, giving a revised
casualty toll of four dead and 33 wounded, said two of those
killed were civilians.
The attack, the first in over a year in the
bastion of Libyan military strongman Khalifa
Haftar, targeted servicemen at the funeral of
Khalifa al-Mesmari, a special forces chief under
Libya’s ousted leader Moamer Kadhafi.
The other two were special forces members, Haftar’s
Bodies pile up as fight rages
Afrin from Kurdish forces they consider “terrorists”
in March last year after a two-month air and ground
offensive.
Those killed also included four fighters.
“Among the victims, at least six are originally
from Eastern Ghouta,” a former rebel bastion near
Damascus retaken by the regime last year, Abdel
Rahman said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility
for the blast, but a commander with a pro-Ankara
faction accused Kurdish fighters.
Since the Turkish-backed rebel takeover, the
UN and human rights groups have documented
widespread abuses in Afrin.
The UN and Amnesty have also reported patterns
of house appropriations by fighters and civilians
bussed to Afrin during the surrender last year of
Eastern Ghouta.
Half of the Kurdish enclave’s 320,000 residents
have fled, according to a report by the UN
Commission of Inquiry, and most are unable
to return.
Also on Thursday, several people were
wounded in a car-bomb blast near a church
in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli
in northeast Syria, an AFP journalist
PEOPLE gather at the scene of a car bomb explosion outside the Syriac Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary in northeast Syria.
AFP
“Maybe I’m wrong but their attitude has totally changed
towards women, towards government employees,” she said.
Ghizaal Haress, a constitutional scholar at the American
University of Afghanistan, said it remained unclear what
the Taliban were saying by signing the declaration in Doha.
“The term ‘Islamic regime’ is very vague, it’s very
broad and there is a fear of what it will mean under the
interpretation of the Taliban,” she said.
“Do we mean an Islamic regime like the one in Malaysia
or Indonesia? Do we mean an Islamic regime like Saudi
Arabia or Iran? Or do we mean one like Pakistan?” she
said, referring to governments with varying degrees of
openness toward women.
The Islamist militants sat down with Afghan
representatives and issued a joint statement
that called for assuring women’s rights “within
the Islamic framework of Islamic values.”
The Taliban were notorious for their harsh treatment
of women during their five-year rule of Afghanistan, which
ended with the US-led invasion after the 11 September
2001 attacks.
The insurgents forced women to cover themselves
completely under burqas, banned them from working
and restricted most education for girls. AFP
Car bomb kills four
and state media said.
The metal gate of the church was slightly dented
by the blast, but the building otherwise emerged
intact.
Endless rounds of UN-led peace talks have failed
to stem the bloodshed in Syria.
UN peace envoy Geir Pedersen, however, is
pushing ahead with a 17-month-old effort to form a
committee to write a post-war constitution.
Both he and Damascus on Wednesday expressed
spokesman General Ahmad al-Mesmari, who was among the
mourners at the funeral, told a press conference.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the
attack.
Benghazi, Libya’s second city and the cradle of the 2011
uprising that overthrew Kadhafi, was hit by years of violence
targeting diplomatic offices and security forces after his fall.
An attack on the US consulate on 11 September 2012,
killed US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other
Americans.
The last attack in Benghazi in May 2018 left seven
people dead.
In 2017, Haftar drove hardline Islamists and jihadists out
of Benghazi after a brutal three-year battle.
He went on to seize Derna, the last city in eastern Libya
outside his control.
In early 2019, Haftar ordered his self-styled Libyan National
Army to purge the south of what he called “terrorist groups
and criminals.”
AFP
“progress” towards forming the panel, whose
composition has been the subject of dispute.
Shored up by a series of Russian-backed victories
since 2015, the regime wants to amend the current
constitution, but the opposition wants an entirely
new one.
A September deal between Moscow and Ankara
was supposed to avert a massive regime offensive
on Idlib, but it was never fully implemented and
HTS took full administrative control in January. AFP
AFP