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MONDAY APRIL 16, 2018 ˾ T H I S D AY
INTERNATIONAL
email:foreigndesk@thisdaylive.com
Syria Air Strikes: Trump Defends Claiming ‘Mission Accomplished’ Chemical probe to begin in Syria after Western strikes US President Donald Trump has defended his use of the term “mission accomplished”, accusing the “fake news media” of seizing on the term to demean the strikes, carried out in response to an alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack. His response came on the heels of the criticism that trails US, UK and French strikes on targets in Syria, BBC reported on Sunday. Ex-President George W Bush was widely ridiculed after appearing in front of a banner with the term in the Iraq war. Russia and Syria insist no chemical attack took place on 7 April. They have said the attack in Douma, in the Eastern Ghouta area near the capital, Damascus, was staged. Meanwhile, international inspectors began work Sunday at
the site near Damascus of an alleged chemical attack that prompted the unprecedented wave of strikes, AFP reported. US, French and British missiles destroyed sites suspected of hosting chemical weapons development and storage facilities, but the buildings were mostly empty and the Western trio swiftly reverted to its diplomatic efforts. Washington trumpeted the “perfectly executed” strike, the biggest international attack on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime during Syria’s seven-year war, but both Damascus and Syria’s opposition rubbished its impact. Assad on Sunday denounced a “campaign of deceit and lies at the (United Nations) Security Council” after a push by Moscow
to condemn the strikes fell far short. Syria and its Russian ally are “waging a single battle -- not only against terrorism, but also to protect international law based on the respect of the sovereignty of states and the will of their people”, Assad’s office quoted him saying during a meeting with Russian politicians. The inspectors, consisting of chemical experts from the
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, based in The Hague, arrived in Damascus hours after the strikes. They have been tasked with investigating the site of an April 7 attack in the town of Douma, just east of the capital Damascus, which Western powers said involved chlorine and sarin and killed dozens.
“The fact-finding team arrived in Damascus on Saturday and is due to go to Douma on Sunday,” Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ayman Soussan told AFP. But the Western powers, who had earlier signalled that they hadno further plans for further missile strikes on Syria, have vowed to assess their option should Damascus use chemical
weapons again, Reuters reported UK foreign minister as saying on Sunday. This was as debate raged over the legality and effectiveness of the raid. In Damascus, Syria’s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad met inspectors from the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW for about three hours in the presence of Russian officers and a senior Syrian security official.
Russia Spied on Skripal and Daughter for At Least FiveYears – UK Russia’s intelligence agencies spied on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia for at least five years before they were attacked with a nerve agent in March, Reuters reported the national security adviser to Britain’s prime minister as saying. Mark Sedwill said in a letter to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday that email accounts of Yulia had been targeted in 2013 by cyber specialists from Russia’s GRU military intelligence service. Yulia Skripal has, meanwhile, been discharged from a hospital in the English city of Salisbury on Monday, where, she said, she was treated “with obvious clinical expertise and with such kindness” while her father remains at the hospital.
She was taken to a location which has not been made public. Skripal said she was not yet strong enough to give a media interview and she said a cousin who had spoken to Russian media did not speak for her or for her father. Meanwhile, the lethal poison that struck down Skripal and her father have been confirmed to be a highly pure Novichok nerve agent, Reuters reported the global chemical weapons watchdog as confirming on Thursday, backing UK’s findings. Testing by four laboratories affiliated with the global chemical weapons watchdog confirmed Britain’s findings and showed that the toxic chemical was “of high purity”.
Mali Militants Attack Bases Disguised as UN Peacekeepers A rocket and car bomb attack on French and UN soldiers in Mali has left one person dead and many others injured, BBC reported on Sunday. Militants disguised as UN peacekeepers - in distinctive blue helmets and driving a vehicle marked with the UN logo - struck two bases near the airport in Timbuktu. The UN mission confirmed one of its peacekeepers had been killed. More than a dozen others, including many French soldiers, were wounded, according to the government. In a statement, the security ministry said the attack involved dozens of rockets fired by militants “wearing blue helmets”. Two vehicles were also packed with explosives. One of the vehicles exploded, the ministry said, while the other,
bearing the UN symbol, was stopped. The ministry said that while five people were seriously injured, the fighting had ended and the situation was under control. Attacks against UN peacekeepers and government forces are common in Mali, a former French colony which also has a French military presence. But one foreign security source told the AFP news agency the scale of the most recent assault was “unprecedented” in Timbuktu. “We’ve never seen an attack like this,” a separate official from the Timbuktu governorate said. The UN mission has been deployed in Mali since a 2013 Tuareg separatist uprising. It has more than 11,000 troops and 1,741 police, and is considered one of the UN’s most dangerous missions. Before Saturday’s rocket and car bomb attack, 162 UN personnel had been killed in the five years since the mission began. Seven peacekeepers have been killed this year.
POLICY DIALOGUE SESSION Site of the Western powers strike on Syria
THE DAILY BEAST
Israel Destroys ‘Longest and Deepest’ Gaza Tunnel The Israeli military has disabled a major tunnel dug by militants which reached into Israel from the Gaza Strip, BBC reported officials as saying. Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said it was the longest and deepest tunnel of its kind Israel had discovered. A military spokesman said it had been dug since the 2014 Gaza war, when Israel destroyed more than 30 tunnels which it said were meant for
attacks. Israel is using sophisticated measures to thwart tunnels dug by militants. Military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said the tunnel had been dug by Hamas and began in the area of Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip. He said it penetrated several metres into Israel in the direction of Nahal Oz, but did not yet have an exit. The tunnel stretched “several
kilometres” into Gaza and connected with other tunnels from which attacks could be launched, he said. Israel disabled the tunnel over the weekend, according to the military. “We filled the tunnel with material that renders it useless for a very long period of time,” Col Conricus said. It was the fifth Gaza tunnel to be destroyed by the Israeli military in recent months, Col
Conricus said. Some of the tunnels have been built by Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad and others by Hamas, the Islamist group which controls Gaza. Since last year, Israel has been using special equipment to detect the presence of tunnels, and is building a hi-tech barrier above and below ground along its border with Gaza to prevent new tunnels being dug.
Massive March in Barcelona against Jailing of Separatist Leaders Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Barcelona on Sunday to protest the jailing of nine Catalan separatist leaders facing trial on “rebellion” charges, according to AFP. Many chanted “Freedom for the political prisoners” as they marched along the Parallel Avenue, one of the city’s main streets, many waving the redand-yellow Catalan flag.
The protest comes six months after the first incarcerations of top Catalan separatist leaders for misuse of public funds, sedition and rebellion -- which carries a prison sentence of 30 years and implies that a “violent uprising” took place -- over their separatist push. “Since they could not decapitate separatism, they are trying to do it through
the courts,” Roser Urgelles, a 59-year-old teacher, told AFP at the protest. “They need to demonstrate that there was violence to execute the sentences that they want, so they invent it,” she said, adding: “But we will continue to protest peacefully.” Like thousands of others at the march, she wore a yellow ribbon to show solidarity
with the jailed leaders, whom Catalan separatists consider to be “political prisoners”. Spain’s justice minister, Rafael Catala, has called the use of yellow ribbons “insulting”, arguing that Spain has no political prisoners but “politicians in prison”. The Guardia Urbana, a Catalan municipal police force, said 315,000 people turned out.