05 Dec 2016 - NPWJ News Digest on Middle East and North Africa Democracy

Articles

The battle for Mosul stalls: 'we are fighting the devil himself'
By The Guardian, 05 Dec 2016

Heaving on a huge, scorched metal door and covered in engine oil, Sgt Hussein Mahmoud was deep into a morning’s work. Twisted hulks of wrecked army vehicles sat incongruously in the coarse dust that was kicked up by still-moving trucks as they crept around Mosul’s urban fringe. Two other soldiers with industrial wrenches joined in, trying in vain to dislodge the door from its hinges. “We need it for humvees that still work,” said one of them. “We’re under pressure to provide them with parts.” Impromptu salvage yards have appeared all around the Gogali neighbourhood in Mosul’s outer east, the immediate hinterland of the war with Islamic State and the most visible reminder of how destructive, difficult – and long – this fight is likely to be. The startling progress of the first few weeks of the campaign to take Iraq’s second city, the terror group’s last urban stronghold in Iraq, has given way to a numbing reality: Isis will not surrender Mosul, and Iraq’s battered military will struggle to take it. Since Iraqi forces entered Gogali, a light industrial neighbourhood, in mid-November, the advance has slowed. “When we started, we were talking weeks,” said Hussein. “Now, we hope it will be by early in the new year. But these guys are not cowards. They kill as easy as they breathe.” Forces deployed beyond nominal frontlines, marked by heaped piles of dirt, are around five miles from the Nour mosque, where the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed himself the leader of a caliphate nearly 30 months ago. But every street and sector towards the mosque – a highly symbolic target of the fight – is claiming an increasing toll in blood and treasure.

Read More

Suspected Russian warplanes bomb Idlib, dozens killed
By Al Jazeera, 05 Dec 2016

At least 46 people have been killed in suspected Russian air strikes on several areas of Idlib province in northwest Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as government forces advanced in fierce clashes with rebels in east Aleppo. The Britain-based monitor said on Sunday at least three locations were bombed in the northwestern province and most of the casualties were civilians. At least 26 people, including three children, were killed in the town of Kafr Nabl, and another 18 people were killed in the town of Maarat al-Numan. A witness told AFP news agency "six strikes hit houses and a crowded local market" in the village of Kafr Nabl. In Maarat al-Numan, an AFP photographer saw local residents and White Helmets rescue workers trying to reach survivors in the rubble at a vegetable market hit in the strike. The monitor also reported two additional deaths, one in an earlier strike on Maarat al-Numan and another in al-Naqir, also in Idlib. And it said six civilians, four of them children, had been killed in a government barrel bomb attack on the town of al-Tamanah in the south of Idlib.

Read More

Somali forces kill seven in clash with faction loyal to Islamic State
by Reuters, 03 Dec 2016

Soldiers allied to the Western-backed Somali government said they killed seven insurgents from a faction loyal to the Islamic State group in a clash in northern Somalia on Saturday. The soldiers from the semi-autonomous region of Puntland are part of a force headed to the port town of Qandala, which has been under the control of the insurgents since November. The Puntland forces were attacked in the village of Bashaashin, which is 34 kilometers (21 miles) from Qandala. "We killed seven IS and took their guns - now we are in the village," Captain Mohamed Saiid, head of a Puntland military unit, told Reuters by satellite phone from the scene. "The IS fighters retreated into a hill outside the village. Three soldiers were injured from our side. We shall keep on pursuing the fighters till we eliminate them from Qandala." The insurgents are thought to number in the low hundreds and are led by Abdiqadir Mumin, who broke away from the main al Shabaab insurgency last year and swore allegiance to Islamic State.

Read More

Eastern Aleppo becoming 'one giant graveyard' says UN humanitarian chief
by The Guardian , 30 Nov 2016

The UN’s humanitarian chief has warned that eastern Aleppo was being turned into “one giant graveyard” as the rebel-held area was being overrun by Syrian regime and Russian forces. Stephen O’Brien told an emergency session of the UN security council that since Saturday 25,000 people had been forced from their homes in eastern Aleppo, more than half of them children, as the government offensive stormed into opposition districts. The council sat as what is left of the rebel enclave came under another day of intense bombing, with video footage showing the bodies of dead children being carried off the streets. The UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said nearly 40% of the opposition area had been captured by government forces, cutting the enclave in two. O’Brien said that those trying to flee the fighting faced new dangers, as rebel factions sought to stop them leaving, or they were caught in the crossfire and then faced being seized and “disappeared” at government checkpoints. “For the sake of humanity, we call on, we plead, with the parties, and those with influence, to do everything in their power to protect civilians and enable access to the besieged part of eastern Aleppo before it becomes one giant graveyard,” O’Brien said. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, rejected calls for an end to the offensive, which is being spearheaded on the ground by Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian-led units, with Russian air support.

Read More