At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack

At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack
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Supporters of a military junta that seized power in Niger in July demonstrate on Sept. 28, 2023, near a French military base in Niamey to call for the departure of the French military contingent in the West African country. Amid the distraction, militants have stepped up attacks on the thinly dispersed Nigerien army. (Reuters photo)
At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack
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A Nigerien National Police officer stands guard as supporters of Niger's military junta protest outside the Niger and French airbase in Niamey on August 30, 2023 to demand the departure of the French army from Niger. (AFP)
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Updated 29 September 2023
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At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack

At least ten Niger soldiers killed in militant attack
  • Islamist militants have stepped up their attacks amid the power struggles in some countries in the Sahel region, with Niger as the latest to be hit by a coup

NIAMEY: At least ten Niger soldiers were killed in an attack by militants in the country’s southwest on Thursday morning, three security sources told Reuters.

The attack took place about 190 km (118 miles) from the capital Niamey in Kandadji, near the tri-border zone of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger that has been the epicenter of Islamist insurgencies in the Sahel region in the last few years.
The sources including a senior military officer, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, did not say which group was responsible. Local affiliates of Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are active in the region and wage frequent attacks on soldiers and civilians.
Two security sources said the army responded to the attack with ground troops as well as helicopters, one of which was hit but was able to return to its base.
Niger is run by a military junta that seized power in a coup in July, partly out of discontent at the worsening security situation. Neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have each had two coups in the last three years.
However, security analysts say attacks had been falling in Niger under ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, who had tried to engage with Islamists and the rural communities where they are rooted.
At least 17 soldiers were killed in another attack in southwestern Niger in mid-August.
France said on Sunday it would withdraw its 1,500 troops from Niger before the end of the year, after weeks of pressure from the junta and popular demonstrations against the former colonial ruler, which had forces there to fight the insurgents.
On Thursday, several hundred pro-junta supporters gathered again in front of the French military base in the capital Niamey to demand that the troops leave.


Liz Magill, University of Pennsylvania president, resigns as antisemitism testimony draws backlash

Liz Magill, University of Pennsylvania president, resigns as antisemitism testimony draws backlash
Updated 9 sec ago
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Liz Magill, University of Pennsylvania president, resigns as antisemitism testimony draws backlash

Liz Magill, University of Pennsylvania president, resigns as antisemitism testimony draws backlash
  • Calls for Magill’s resignation exploded after her testimony in a US House committee on antisemitism on college campuses
  • Universities across the US have been accused of failing to protect Jewish students amid fallout from Israel’s intensifying war in Gaza

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania’s president has resigned amid pressure from donors and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say under repeated questioning that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.

The departure of Liz Magill, in her second year as president of the Ivy League school, was announced by the school late Saturday afternoon. The statement said Magill will remain a tenured faculty member at the university’s Carey Law School. She has agreed to keep serving as Penn’s leader until the university names an interim president.
Calls for Magill’s resignation exploded after Tuesday’s testimony in a US House committee on antisemitism on college campuses, where she appeared with the presidents of Harvard University and MIT.
Universities across the US have been accused of failing to protect Jewish students amid rising fears of antisemitism worldwide and fallout from Israel’s intensifying war in Gaza, which faces heightened criticism for the mounting Palestinian death toll.
The three presidents were called before the committee to answer those accusations. But their lawyerly answers drew renewed blowback from opponents, focused particularly on a line of questioning from Rep. Elize Stefanik, R-N.Y., who repeatedly asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Penn’s code of conduct.
“If the speech turns into conduct it can be harassment, yes,” Magill said. Pressed further, Magill told Stefanik, “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”
Criticism rained down from the White House, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, members of Congress and donors. One donor, Ross Stevens, threatened to withdraw a $100 million gift because of the university’s “stance on antisemitism on campus” unless Magill was replaced.
A day later, Magill addressed the criticism, saying in a video that she would consider a call for the genocide of Jewish people to be harassment or intimidation and that Penn’s policies need to be “clarified and evaluated.”
Magill had been under fire from some donors and alumni this fall over the university’s handling of various perceived acts of antisemitism.
That included allowing a Palestinian literary arts festival to be held on its campus in September featuring speakers whose past statements about Israel had drawn accusations of antisemitism.
A former US Supreme Court law clerk, Magill, 57, is the daughter of a retired federal judge and was dean of Stanford University’s law school and a top administrator at the University of Virginia before Penn hired her as its ninth president last year.
Earlier Saturday, New York’s governor called on the state’s colleges and universities to swiftly address cases of antisemitism and what she described as any “calls for genocide” on campus.
In a letter to college and university presidents, Gov. Kathy Hochul said her administration would enforce violations of the state’s Human Rights Law and refer any violations of federal civil rights law to US officials.
Hochul said she has spoken to chancellors of the State University of New York and City University of New York public college systems who she said confirmed “that calling for genocide of any group” or tolerating antisemitism violates codes of conduct on their campuses “and would lead to swift disciplinary action.”
The governor’s letter doesn’t address any specific incidents. Her office didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
A popular chant at pro-Palestinian rallies at Penn and other universities has been falsely misrepresented in recent months as claiming to call for “Jewish genocide.”
Experts and advocates say the chant, “Israel, we charge you with genocide,” is a typical refrain heard at pro-Palestinian rallies. Jewish and Palestinian supporters both acknowledge protesters aren’t saying “We want Jewish genocide.”
 


A British Palestinian surgeon gave testimony to a UK war crimes unit after returning from Gaza

A British Palestinian surgeon gave testimony to a UK war crimes unit after returning from Gaza
Updated 13 min 12 sec ago
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A British Palestinian surgeon gave testimony to a UK war crimes unit after returning from Gaza

A British Palestinian surgeon gave testimony to a UK war crimes unit after returning from Gaza
  • Human rights groups have alleged that Israeli forces have dropped shells containing white phosphorus on densely populated residential areas in Gaza and Lebanon during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war

BEIRUT: A British Palestinian surgeon who spent weeks in the Gaza Strip during the current Israel-Hamas war as part of a Doctors Without Borders medical team said he has given testimony to a British war crimes investigation unit.
Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon specializing in conflict medicine, has volunteered with medical teams in multiple conflicts in Gaza, beginning as a medical student in the late 1980s during the the first Palestinian uprising. He has also worked in other conflict zones, including in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Abu Sitta crossed from Egypt into Gaza on Oct. 9, two days after the war began and remained in the besieged enclave for 43 days, working mainly in the Al-Ahli and Shifa hospitals in northern Gaza.
The war was triggered by a deadly Hamas-led incursion on Oct. 7 into southern Israel in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Since then, Israel has launched a punishing air and ground campaign that has killed more than 17,700 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory.
Abu Sitta told The Associated Press in an interview during a visit to the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut on Saturday that the intensity of other conflicts he experienced and the war in Gaza is like “the difference between a flood and a tsunami.” Apart from the staggering numbers of killed and injured, he said, the health system itself has been targeted and destroyed in Gaza.
“The worst thing was initially the running out of morphine and proper strong analgesics and then later on running out of anesthetic medication, which meant that you would have to do painful procedures with no anesthetic,” Abu Sitta said.
He said that when he returned to the UK, he was asked by the war crimes unit at the Metropolitan Police to give evidence in a possible war crimes investigation, and did so.
The police had issued a call for people returning from Israel or the Palestinian territories who “have witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity” to come forward.
Abu Sitta said much of his testimony related to attacks on health facilities.
He was working in Al-Ahli hospital in northern Gaza on Oct. 17 when a deadly blast struck the hospital’s courtyard, which had become a shelter for displaced people, killing hundreds. Israeli authorities, along with US and French intelligence agencies, have said the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.
Hamas maintained that it was an Israeli strike. Abu Sitta said many of the injuries he saw were more consistent with damage caused by an Israeli Hellfire missile which he said “disintegrates into shards of metal that cause amputations.”
The international group Human Rights Watch said the fragmentation pattern around the impact crater lacked the pattern typical of the Hellfire missile or others used by Israel.
Abu Sitta said while in Gaza he also treated patients who had burn wounds consistent with white phosphorus shelling, which he had also seen during the 2009 war.
Phosphorus shells cause a “chemical burn that ... bursts into the deep structures of the body rather than a thermal burn, which starts at the outside and (covers a) much larger surface area,” he said.
Human rights groups have alleged that Israeli forces have dropped shells containing white phosphorus on densely populated residential areas in Gaza and Lebanon during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Israel maintains it uses the incendiaries only as a smokescreen and not to target civilians.
Abu Sitta, who rotated between Al-Ahli and Shifa hospital, had left Shifa when Israeli forces encircled the hospital, eventually storming it in search of what they described as a Hamas command center. Israeli officials released visuals of an underground tunnel and rooms that they said were used by Hamas, but have not provided further evidence.
Abu Sitta, like other medical workers in the hospital, denied the allegations.
He said he had complete access to Shifa and there “was never, ever even any military presence.” He said policemen whose job was to control the crowds in front of the emergency department only carried truncheons.
The physician said he hopes the UK war crimes investigation will lead to prosecutions, locally or internationally.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, said after a visit to the West Bank and Israel last week that a probe by the court into possible crimes by both Hamas militants and Israeli forces is a priority for his office.
 

 


Iran begins trial of Swedish EU employee detained in 2022

Iran begins trial of Swedish EU employee detained in 2022
Updated 41 min 23 sec ago
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Iran begins trial of Swedish EU employee detained in 2022

Iran begins trial of Swedish EU employee detained in 2022
  • The Swedish charge d’affaires was at the court but was refused the right to participate in the trial

STOCKHOLM: An Iranian court has begun the trial of a Swedish national employed by the European Union who was detained last year, Sweden’s foreign minister said on Saturday.
“I have been informed that the trial of Johan Floderus has begun in Tehran,” Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom told Swedish news agency TT.
“The Swedish charge d’affaires was at the court but was refused the right to participate in the trial. Sweden has ... requested the right to be present when the trial resumes.”
Floderus was detained in April 2022 while on holiday in Iran for what his family said was alleged spying. Billstrom did not specify what Floderus had been charged with.
Floderus’ family has said he was detained “without any justifiable cause or due process.”
Rights groups and Western governments have accused the Islamic Republic of trying to extract political concessions from other countries through arrests on security charges that may have been trumped up. Tehran says such arrests are based on its criminal code and denies holding people for political reasons.
Relations between Sweden and Iran have been tense since 2019 when Sweden arrested a former Iranian official for his part in the mass execution and torture of political prisoners in the 1980s. Hamid Noury was sentenced to life in prison last year, prompting Iran to recall its envoy to Sweden in protest.
In May, Iran executed a Swedish-Iranian dissident convicted of leading an Arab separatist group Tehran blames for a number of attacks including one on a military parade in 2018 that killed 25 people.


Son of Somalia president flees Turkiye after crash

Somaliaís President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. (AFP file photo)
Somaliaís President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. (AFP file photo)
Updated 09 December 2023
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Son of Somalia president flees Turkiye after crash

Somaliaís President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. (AFP file photo)
  • The republic’s prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant on Friday after police went to the suspect’s home only to find “he had been gone since Dec. 2,” the channel said

ISTANBUL: The son of Somalia’s president, alleged to have knocked over and killed a delivery rider in Istanbul, has fled Turkiye despite an international arrest warrant, media reported.
Police had released Mohammed Hassan Sheikh Mohamud without any bail conditions after preliminary investigations into the accident, said daily newspaper Cumhuriyet.
“The suspect left Turkiye freely,” said Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The mayor — a leading opponent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — accused the authorities of “allowing this escape” and being “incapable of defending citizens’ rights in their own country.”
The son of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud had collided with a motorbike delivery man on Nov. 30, according to a police report quoted by A Haber television.
Father of two children, Yunus Emre Gocer, died in hospital six days later.
The republic’s prosecutor issued an international arrest warrant on Friday after police went to the suspect’s home only to find “he had been gone since Dec. 2,” the channel said.
The dead man’s lawyer told Cumhuriyet that a first traffic police report into the crash had blamed the victim for “negligence.”
A second expert’s report with video recordings showed that the Somali suspect was “100 percent responsible,” the lawyer said, but it added doubts he would “ever be caught.”
Turkiye has had close relations with Somalia for the last 10 years and is the Horn of Africa nation’s leading economic partner, notably in the construction, education and health sectors and in military cooperation.

 


Tens of thousands march in London calling for Gaza ceasefire

Tens of thousands march in London calling for Gaza ceasefire
Updated 48 min 10 sec ago
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Tens of thousands march in London calling for Gaza ceasefire

Tens of thousands march in London calling for Gaza ceasefire
  • Organizers vow to continue protests over attacks on Palestinian civilians as death toll climbs to 17,700

LONDON: Tens of thousands of people joined a pro-Palestinian march on Saturday in the British capital to demand a full ceasefire in Gaza, organizers said.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign said that marchers were voicing opposition “to the indiscriminate attacks on civilians which have claimed the lives of at least 17,000 Palestinians, including more than 7,000 children.”

People from across the UK gathered in central London for the ninth Saturday in a row after Israel launched its assault on Gaza.

“This has been one of the largest, sustained political campaigns in British history,” PSC, one of the six organizers of the march, said.

It added that on Nov. 25 more than 300,000 people marched in London, while last Saturday there were more than 100 events across the UK in a third “day of action.”

Speakers at Saturday’s rally included MPs, trade union leaders, and representatives from a wide range of civil society organizations.

Ben Jamal, PSC director, said: “We are witnessing unrelenting horror in Gaza. Palestinians have been bombed, displaced, and deprived of food, water, fuel, electricity and health services for 62 days and counting.

“The amount of destruction has been compared to that of German cities in the Second World War, except it’s happened in a far shorter time.”

He said a permanent ceasefire must be the starting point to address the underlying causes of the situation, including “decades of Israeli military occupation, and a system of oppression against the Palestinian people that is considered internationally to meet the legal definition of apartheid.”

Jamal called on the British government to end its “complicity in Israel’s crimes,” and work to stop the killing of civilians.

He condemned UK political leaders who have failed to call for a ceasefire.

“We will continue to march, demonstrate, and organize to demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and justice for the Palestinian people,” he said.

Meanwhile, police in London announced that they arrested 13 people on Saturday mostly for offensive signage, they said in a statement following the rally.