Per la protezione e la promozione dei diritti umani, della democrazia, dello stato di diritto e della giustizia internazionale
29 June 2015 - NPWJ News Digest on Middle East and North Africa Democracy
Articles
Gaza-bound flotilla vessel seized by Israeli navy
By Al Jazeera, 29 Jun 2015
Israel has boarded and taken over a vessel attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, officials said. In a statement the Israeli army said on Monday that it did not use force in redirecting the main boat Marianne to the Israeli city of Ashdod. Petros Stergiou, a spokesperson for the flotilla, told Al Jazeera that organisers lost contact with the Marianne at around 2am local time on Monday morning, as three military boats approached. "What we learned is that the Israeli navy attacked the Marianne around 100 nautical miles from the shore of Gaza," Stergiou said. "They said they could see three military boats approaching them that had identified themselves as being military. "Once again, the Israeli government and its military has acted like state pirates and attacked our boat in international waters." Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said the seizure of the ship was "uneventful" and it would now be escorted to Ashdod in southern Israel.
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Iran nuclear talks 'to go beyond 30 June deadline' - US
By the BBC news, 28 Jun 2015
Iranian nuclear talks are set to go on beyond Tuesday's formal deadline for a deal, a senior US official says. The admission came as Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif prepared to fly back to Tehran from Vienna, Austria, where talks are taking place. Observers said Mr Zarif probably needed to seek guidance over a stumbling block in negotiations - how much access Tehran will grant to nuclear monitors. Six world powers and Iran are taking part in the talks. The negotiations aim to see limits placed on Tehran's nuclear programme in exchange for international sanctions on Iran. The so-called P5+1 - the US, UK, France, China and Russia plus Germany - want to limit Iran's sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it could not build a nuclear weapon quickly. The negotiators were a few days late agreeing a framework agreement, which was reached in early April, and it now appears likely that Tuesday's deadline for a comprehensive deal may also not be respected. But the US official - who spoke on condition of anonymity - insisted there would be no long-term extension, tweeted the BBC's state department correspondent Barbara Plett. Mr Zarif told Mr Kerry of his return to Tehran on Saturday, and he is expected to return on Monday, the US official said. As well as the details of the proposed UN monitoring regime on Tehran's activities, disagreements are also reported to exist over the timing of sanctions relief. US negotiators are being closely watched by critics both at home and in Israel - including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country is understood to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal. On Sunday he decried "this bad agreement, which is becoming worse by the day".
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Kuwait mosque attack: suicide bomber identified as Saudi citizen
By The Guardian, 28 Jun 2015
Kuwaiti authorities have identified the suicide bomber behind an attack on a Shia mosque that killed 27 people as a Saudi citizen who arrived in the country just hours before he blew himself up. The interior ministry named the bomber as Fahad Suleiman Abdulmohsen al-Gabbaa and said he was born in 1992. It said in a statement carried by the official Kuwait News Agency that he arrived on a flight to Kuwait International airport at dawn on Friday. Police have begun making arrests in connection with Friday’s bombing, which took place at one of Kuwait’s oldest Shia mosques during midday prayers. An affiliate of the Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the blast in the normally peaceful oil-rich nation. Authorities also said they had arrested a 25-year-old from Kuwait’s Bidoon community, identified as Abdulrahman Sabah Eidan Saud, who they say drove the car that brought the bomber to the mosque.
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U.N. council told sound of helicopters has Syrians 'watching for death'
By Reuters, 27 Jun 2015
The sound of whirring helicopter blades fills Syrians with fear that "hell and fire" is about fall in a barrel bomb, a rescue worker told the United Nations Security Council on Friday as pressure mounts for the body to take action to stop civilian killings in Syria. "This sound means watching for death," said Raed Saleh, head of the Syrian Civil Defence, an organisation of rescue workers known as white helmets who rush to the site of bomb and mortar attacks to dig through rubble for survivors. In the past week U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, 71 U.N. states and some 80 aid and human rights groups have urged the Security Council to act on the killing of civilians. France and Spain organised Friday's informal council meeting on barrel bombs. Saleh said barrel bombs - steel drums of shrapnel and explosives - were the most lethal weapon. He told the Security Council that rescuers were camouflaging ambulances and fire engines to avoid being targeted. "As a patriotic Syrian I would never have thought of myself asking one day for a foreign intervention," Saleh said. "However, the souls of innocent women and children who die every day call us to ask for any intervention possible to put an end to the barbaric killing machine led by (President) Bashar al-Assad." Assad has denied that his air force uses barrel bombs. In a video message shown to the 15-member Security Council, U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said that while opposition forces used equally indiscriminate "canons of hell" - improvised mortar bombs made of cooking gas canisters - barrel bombs were "more atrociously effective in killing civilians." "They are dropped by helicopters and the only ones who have helicopters is the government," de Mistura said. In February last year, the Security Council demanded that the warring parties cease attacks against civilians, including the use of barrel bombs. It threatened to take further steps in the case of non-compliance. But Russia, backed by China, has shielded its ally Syria from any threats of council action during the four-year war. Russian diplomat Andrey Listov told the council on Friday that any moves by the council should not "undermine attempts by the Syrian government to legitimately fight terrorism." U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said the words of the council were being mocked by the continued use of barrel bombs and that "governments that are supporting this regime are supporting this practice." A Syrian government crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in 2011 led to an armed uprising. Islamic State militants have used the chaos to declare a caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The United Nations has said that some 220,000 people have been killed in Syria and 12.2 million people need help, including more than 5 million children. About 7.6 million are internally displaced and more than 4 million have fled Syria.
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Dozens killed in Tunisia beach resort attack
By Al Jazeera, 26 Jun 2015
At least 37 people have been killed after a gunman disguised as a tourist opened fire at a Tunisian beach hotel with a weapon he had hidden in an umbrella. Witnesses of Friday's attack in the resort town of Sousse said the assailant took his time, targeting people at point blank range first on the beach and then around the swimming pool, reloading his weapon several times and tossing an explosive. British, German and Belgian tourists were among the dead at the Imperial Marhaba hotel, the health ministry said. The gunman was shot dead by police. Rafik Chelli, a senior interior ministry official, said he was a student, unknown to authorities and not on any watchlist. Local radio said police captured a second gunman, but officials did not immediately confirm the arrest or his role in the attack. It was the worst attack in Tunisia's modern history and the second major massacre this year following the assault on Tunis Bardo museum when gunmen killed 22 mostly foreign visitors.
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Islamic State attacks Kobani and pro-regime troops in Syria's north
By The Guardian, 24 Jun 2015
Islamic State militants killed dozens of people in and around the Syrian border town of Kobani on Thursday after launching a counter-offensive under the cover of darkness. The militants - disguised as fighters from the Free Syrian Army - drove five vehicles into the town in the early hours of Thursday and used a suicide bomber to blow up a border crossing with Turkey. A civilian inside Kobani said: “No one can go out of their home, the streets are not safe … Isis fighters are getting inside houses and killing everyone [they find].” At least 35 civilians and Kurdish fighters were killed along with eight IS militants, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. A further 23 Syrian Kurds, among them women and children, were shot dead in the nearby village of Barkh Butan, the group said. Isis withdrew from the village after US-led coalition strikes on its outskirts of the village and the arrival of Kurdish forces, but fighting continued in Kobani through Thursday. Around the same time as the Kobani attack, the group launched an assault on the north-eastern city of Hasakah, aided by militias previously aligned with the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. Western districts were seized and the Syrian army pushed into the city centre. The surprise, two-pronged offensive came as Isis reels from several high-profile defeats near Raqqa, the capital of its self-declared caliphate and its seat of power in Syria.