#korbani

রক্তাক্ত ফেসবুক, রক্তাক্ত ঈদ মোবারক

চারিদিকে শুধু রক্ত আর রক্ত। রক্তে রক্তে একেবারে রক্তাক্ত। শুধু রাস্তাঘাট না, ফেসবুকে ফিডও। কোরবানির পশু জবাই করার ছবি, কেউ ছোরা হাতে ছবি, কেউ রক্ত হাতে ছবি, কেউ কোরবানির পশুর গলায় ছুরি চালানো অবস্থায় ছবি – কি নেই! অবশ্য প্রতিবারই কোরবানির ঈদে আমাদের স্যোশাল মিডিয়াগুলো এভাবেই রক্তাক্ত হয়ে যায়। ফেসবুকে কোরবানির পশুর রক্তাক্ত ছবি দিলে কি এক্সট্রা পূন্য পাওয়া যায়? এ ব্যাপারে বিশদ কোন ধারনা নেই। তবে…

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2015/01/28/battles-continue-outside-syrias-kobani-kurds-claim-victory/

Battles continue outside Syria's Kobani after Kurds claim victory

BEIRUT, Jan 28, 2015:

Kurdish forces battled Islamic State fighters outside Kobani on Tuesday, a monitoring group said, a day after Kurds said they had taken full control of the northern Syrian town following a four-month battle.

Known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, the mainly Kurdish town close to the Turkish border has become a focal point in the international fight against Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot that has spread across Syria and Iraq.

There were clashes to the southeast and southwest of Kobani, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, although it added the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) had managed to recapture a village outside the town.

The YPG said on Monday Kobani had been “completely liberated” from Islamic State, which it referred to using the pejorative Arabic acronym “Daesh”.

“The defeat of Daesh in Kobani will be the beginning of the end for the group,” a statement on its website said.

Islamic State still has fighters in hundreds of nearby villages. The Observatory reported air strikes around Kobani on Tuesday, and on Monday the Pentagon said the fight for the town was not yet over.

Islamic State supporters denied the group had been pushed out.

Television footage aired on Tuesday from Kobani showed entire blocks levelled by bombardment, tangled steel and chunks of cement sprawled along muddy streets. Roads were littered with unexploded ordnance and mortar casings.

The militant group launched an assault on Kobani last year using heavy weapons seized in Iraq and forcing tens of thousands of locals over the border into Turkey. US-led air strikes and Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters have backed up the YPG, which called for international help during the siege.

Turkey is hosting around 1.5 million refugees from across Syria.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called for more international attention to the besieged city of Aleppo.

“When it is about Kobani, the whole world stands up and cooperates. Those who flee Kobani come to us, 200,000 people.

“We tell them about Aleppo, nobody listens. 1.2 million people live there, there is economy, history and culture, why aren’t you interested?” he said.

Ankara is wary of support for Syrian Kurds because of their links to the separatist PKK in Turkey, currently holding a ceasefire in a conflict that began in 1984.

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2014/10/15/us-led-air-strikes-intensify-syria-conflict-destabilises-turkey-video/

US-led air strikes intensify as Syria conflict destabilises Turkey (video)

MURSITPINAR, Oct 15, 2014:

American-led forces have sharply intensified air strikes in the past two days against Islamic State fighters threatening Kurds on Syria’s Turkish border after the jihadists’ advance began to destabilise Turkey.

The coalition had conducted 21 attacks on the militants near the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani over Monday and Tuesday and appeared to have slowed Islamic State advances there, the US military said, but cautioned the situation remained fluid.

US President Barack Obama voiced deep concern on Tuesday about the situation in Kobani as well as in Iraq’s Anbar province, which US troops fought to secure during the Iraq war and is now at risk of being seized by Islamic State militants.

“Coalition air strikes will continue in both of these areas,” Obama told military leaders from coalition partners including Turkey, Arab states and Western allies during a meeting outside Washington.

The fight against Islamic State will be among the items on the agenda when Obama holds a video conference on Wednesday with British, French, German and Italian leaders, the White House said.

War on the militants in Syria is threatening to unravel a delicate peace in neighbouring Turkey where Kurds are furious with Ankara over its refusal to help protect their kin in Syria.

The plight of the Syrian Kurds in Kobani provoked riots among Turkey’s 15 million Kurds last week in which at least 35 people were killed.

Turkish warplanes were reported to have attacked Kurdish rebel targets in southeast Turkey after the army said it had been attacked by the banned PKK Kurdish militant group, risking reigniting a three-decade conflict that killed 40,000 people before a cease-fire was declared two years ago.

Kurds inside Kobani said the US-led strikes on Islamic State had helped, but that the militants, who have besieged the town for weeks, were still on the attack.

“Today there were air strikes throughout the day, which is a first. And sometimes we saw one plane carrying out two strikes, dropping two bombs at a time,” said Abdulrahman Gok, a journalist with a local Kurdish paper who is inside the town.

“The strikes are still continuing,” he said by telephone, as an explosion sounded in the background.

“In the afternoon, Islamic State intensified its shelling of the town,” he said. “The fact that they’re not conducting face-to-face, close-distance fight but instead shelling the town from afar is evidence that they have been pushed back a bit.”

Asya Abdullah, co-chair of the dominant Kurdish political party in Syria, PYD, said the latest air strikes had been “extremely helpful”. “They are hitting Islamic State targets hard and because of those strikes we were able to push back a little. They are still shelling the city centre.”

It was the largest number of air strikes on Kobani since the US-led campaign in Syria began last month, the Pentagon said. The White House said the impact was constrained by the absence of forces on the ground but that evidence so far showed its strategy was succeeding.

 The Turkish Kurds’ anger and resulting unrest is a new source of turmoil in a region consumed by Iraqi and Syrian civil wars and an international campaign against Islamic State fighters.

The PKK accused Ankara of violating the cease-fire with the air strikes, on the eve of a deadline set by its jailed leader to salvage the peace process.

“For the first time in nearly two years, an air operation was carried out against our forces by the occupying Turkish Republic army,” the PKK said. “These attacks against two guerrilla bases at Daglica violated the ceasefire,” the PKK said, referring to an area near the border with Iraq.

Obama, who ordered the bombing campaign that started in August against Islamic State fighters, told the meeting of military leaders from 22 countries to expect a “long-term effort” in the battle against Islamic State militants.

“There will be days of progress and there are going to be some periods” of setbacks, he said.

A US military official told Reuters after the talks there was an acknowledgement that Islamic State was making some gains on the ground, despite the air strikes. But there was also a sense that the coalition, working together, would ultimately prevail, the official said.

“In the short term, there are some gains that they have been able to make. In the long term, that momentum will be reversed,” the official said, adding the coalition would adjust its tactics as Islamic State fighters increasingly blend into the population and become harder to target.

Washington has faced the difficult task of building a coalition to intervene in Syria and Iraq, two countries with complex multi-sided civil wars in which most of the nations of the Middle East have enemies and clients on the ground.

In particular, US officials have expressed frustration at Turkey’s refusal to help them fight against Islamic State. Washington has said Turkey has agreed to let it strike from Turkish air base. Ankara has said that is still under discussion.

Nato member Turkey has refused to join the coalition unless it also confronts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a demand that Washington, which flies its air missions over Syria without objection from Assad, has so far rejected.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday there was no discrepancy between Ankara and Washington over the strategy for fighting Islamic State in Kobani and that Ankara would define its role according to its own timetable.

The fate of Kobani, where the United Nations says thousands could be massacred, could wreck efforts by the Turkish government to end the insurgency by PKK militants, a conflict that largely ended with the start of a peace process in 2012.

The peace process with the Kurds is one of the main initiatives of President Tayyip Erdogan’s decade in power, during which Turkey has enjoyed an economic boom underpinned by investor confidence in future stability.

The unrest shows the difficulty Turkey has had in designing a Syria policy. Turkey has already taken in 1.2 million refugees from Syria’s three-year civil war, including 200,000 Kurds who fled the area around Kobani in recent weeks.

 Jailed PKK co-founder Abdullah Ocalan has said peace talks between his group and the Turkish state could come to an end by Wednesday. After visiting him in jail last week, Ocalan’s brother Mehmet quoted him as saying: “We will wait until Oct 15. … After that there will be nothing we can do.”

A pro-Kurdish party leader read out a statement from Ocalan in Parliament on Tuesday in which the PKK leader said Kurdish parties should work with the government to end street violence.

“Otherwise we will open the way to provocations that could bring about a massacre,” Ocalan said in the statement, which the party said he wrote last week.

Turkish attacks on Kurdish positions were once a regular occurrence in southeast Turkey but had not taken place for two years. The PKK said the strikes took place on Monday, although some Turkish news reports said they happened on Sunday.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Turkish military had retaliated against a PKK attack in the border area, without referring specifically to air strikes.

Hurriyet newspaper said the air strikes caused “major damage” to the PKK. “F-16 and F-4 warplanes which took off from (bases in the southeastern provinces of) Diyarbakir and Malatya rained down bombs on PKK targets after they attacked a military outpost in the Daglica region,” Hurriyet said.

 The battle for Kobani has ground on for nearly a month, although Kurdish fighters on Monday managed to replace an Islamic State flag in the West of the town with one of their own. The fighters, known as Popular Protection Units (YPG) want Turkeyto allow them to bring arms across the border.

In the Turkish town of Suruc, 10km  from the Syrian frontier, a funeral for four female YPG fighters was being held. Hundreds at the cemetery chanted: “Murderer Erdogan”.

At least six air strikes, gunfire and shelling could be heard from Mursitpinar on the Turkish side of the border on Tuesday, where Kurds, many with relatives fighting in Kobani, have maintained a vigil, watching the fighting from hillsides.

In Iraq, Kurdish forces and government troops have rolled back some Islamic State gains in the north of the country in recent weeks, but the fighters have advanced in the west, seizing territory in the Euphrates valley within striking distance of the capital, Baghdad.

Members of Iraq’s Shi’ite minority have been targeted by recent bomb attacks in Baghdad, some claimed by Islamic State. On Tuesday, 25 people were killed by a car bomb, including a Shi’ite Muslim member of Iraq’s Parliament.

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/world/2014/10/08/turkey-says-syria-town-fall-islamic-state-advances/

Turkey says Syria town about to fall as Islamic State advances

ANKARA, Oct 8, 2014:

Turkey’s president said on Tuesday the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani was “about to fall” as Islamic State fighters pressed home a three-week assault that has cost a reported 400 lives and forced thousands to flee their homes.

The prospect that the town could be captured by Islamic State, who are now within city limits, has increased pressure on Turkey to join an international coalition to fight against the jihadists.

Islamic State wants to take Kobani in order to strengthen its grip on the border area and consolidate the territorial gains it has made in Iraq and Syria in recent months. US-led air strikes have so far failed to prevent its advance on Kobani.

Turkey said it was pressing Washington for more air strikes, although President Tayyip Erdogan said bombing was not enough to defeat Islamic State, and he set out Turkey’s demands for additional measures before it could intervene.

“The problem of ISIS (Islamic State) … cannot be solved via air bombardment. Right now … Kobani is about to fall,” he said during a visit to a camp for Syrian refugees.

“We had warned the West. We wanted three things. No-fly zone, a secure zone parallel to that, and the training of moderate Syrian rebels,” he said.

He said Turkey would take action if there were threats to Turkish soldiers guarding a historic site in Syria that Ankara regards as its territory. But so far Turkey has made no move to get involved in the fighting across the border.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had spoken twice in recent days to discuss the situation, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said.

“Turkey is determining what larger role they will play,” Psaki told a daily briefing. “They have indicated their openness to doing that, so there is an active conversation about that.”

Retired US General John Allen, the envoy charged with building the coalition against Islamic State, and his deputy Brett McGurk will visit Turkey later this week for talks.

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said Turkey had been generous in receiving refugees from Kobani but the international community needed to protect the town. “What is needed now is concrete action,” he said, without elaborating.

France said it was vital to stop Islamic State’s advance on Kobani, and was discussing with Turkey what could be done. “A tragedy is unfolding, and we must all react,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told Parliament.

But some analysts doubt the will exists among Western allies to take further action.

“It’s the coalition of the unwilling, each country is doing the bare minimum, particularly in Syria,” said Fadi Hakura at theLondon-based think tank Chatham House.

From across the Turkish border, two Islamic State flags could be seen flying over the eastern side of Kobani.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said it had documented 412 deaths of civilians and fighters during the three-week battle for Kobani.

The US military said it and allied air forces launched strikes on Islamic State in Syria on Monday and Tuesday. In the Kobaniarea the raids destroyed armed vehicles, a tank and a vehicle carrying anti-aircraft artillery.

On the ground, a burning tank, apparently belonging to Islamic State, could be seen on the western edge of town. There were also clashes on the northern fringe and mortar explosions could be heard to the northeast.

Islamic State fighters were using heavy weapons and shells to hit Kobani, senior Kurdish official Asya Abdullah told Reuters from inside the town, estimated by the UN on Tuesday to contain possibly a few hundred remaining residents.

Islamic State, an al-Qaeda offshoot, has ramped up its offensive in recent days against the mainly Kurdish border town, despite being targeted by US-led coalition air strikes aimed at halting its progress.

“There were clashes overnight. Not heavy, but ISIS is going forward from the southwest. They have crossed into Kobani and control some buildings in the city there,” said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Observatory, a group that monitors the conflict with a network on the ground. ISIS is a former name for Islamic State.

“They are about 50 metres inside the southwest of the city,” Abdulrahman said.

An estimated 180,000 people have fled into Turkey from the Kobani region following the Islamic State advance. More than 2,000 Syrian Kurds including women and children were evacuated from the town after the latest fighting, a member of theKurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) said on Monday.

Before the offensive, Kobani, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, was home to refugees from the civil war that pits rebels against President Bashar al-Assad and has deteriorated into hundreds of localised battles between different factions.

The most powerful of the myriad militias fighting against Assad, Islamic State has boosted its forces with foreign fighters and defectors from other rebel groups. It gained additional heavy weaponry after its fighters swept through northern Iraq in June, seizing arms from the fleeing Iraqi army.

The group released a video showing dozens of men said to be from Ahrar al-Sham, a rival Islamist group that has clashed with it in the past, pledging allegiance to its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the SITE monitoring service said on Monday.

Westerners have also fought for the Kurds against Islamic State. A man describing himself as a US citizen and former soldier from Ohio said in a video interview with Reuters in Syria that he had come to join Kurdish fighters.

Identifying himself as Brian Wilson, he said other Americans had come to Syria to fight Islamic State.

The FBI asked Americans on Tuesday to help identify a masked man who speaks in what is believed to be a North American accent in a video that Islamic State militants released last month.

It also requested the public’s assistance “in identifying US persons going to fight overseas with terrorist groups or who are returning home from fighting overseas.”

The US has been bombing Islamic State positions in Iraq since August and extended the campaign to Syria in September. Arab states have joined both campaigns, while other Western countries are participating in Iraq but not Syria.

Canadian lawmakers on Tuesday approved government plans to send fighter jets to Iraq, where they will take part in US-led air strikes against Islamic State militants for up to six months.

Two months into the US campaign, the US military has added a new weapon to its arsenal in Iraq, using Apache helicopters for the first time, US officials said on Monday.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan called for more US action. “Our government and our related institutions have emphasised to US officials the necessity of immediately ramping up air bombardment in a more active and efficient way,” he said, according to the website of the television channel AHaber.

Turkey, a Nato member that shares a 900km border with Syria and has the most powerful military in the region, has so far refrained from joining the campaign, but the plight of Kobani has increased pressure to act.

Turkey says the scope of the campaign in Syria should be broadened to seek to remove Assad from power. It has sought a no-fly zone in northern Syria, which would require the coalition to take on Assad’s air force as well as Islamic State, a move Washington has not agreed to.

 At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded in demonstrations across Turkey on Tuesday as Kurds demanded the government do more to protect Kobani, local media reported.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters who burnt cars as they took to the streets mainly inTurkey’s predominantly Kurdish eastern and southeastern provinces. Clashes also erupted in the biggest city Istanbul and in the capital Ankara.

The victims included five people killed in Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish city in the southeast, which saw clashes between protesters and police.

In Geneva, angry Kurds held a protest at the United Nations, while in Brussels they invaded the European Parliament. They waved flags bearing the portrait of jailed Kurdish Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The brother of British aid worker Alan Henning, who was beheaded by Islamic State, said Britain should put troops on the ground in the Middle East to fight against the militants.