Russian plane crash: investigation begins into cause of A321 crash

Russian and Egyptian investigators have been trying to establish the cause of the crash of a Russian airliner in the Sinai peninsula, after an Islamist group claimed to have “brought it down” on behalf of Islamic State. All 224 passengers, including 17 children, on board the plane died after it crashed 23 minutes into its flight from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg. Most of those on board were Russian tourists.

Airbus A320 safety record in spotlight after Russia plane crash

A group that said it was speaking on behalf of Isis later posted an online statement claiming: “Soldiers of the caliphate were able to bring down a Russian plane above Sinai province.”
Several radical Islamist groups have called for attacks on Russian targets since it began airstrikes on Isis forces in Syria in late September, but experts were sceptical that militants had weapons able to reach the plane, which was flying at an altitude of more than 30,000ft.
Russia’s transport minister, Maksim Sokolov, said that the claim Isis militants brought down the plane “can’t be considered accurate”. Mohamed Samir, Egypt’s army spokesman, also disputed the claim, saying: “They can put out whatever statements they want but there is no proof at this point that terrorists were responsible for this plane crash. We will know the true reasons when the Civil Aviation Authority in coordination with Russian authorities completes its investigation. But the army sees no authenticity to the claims.”

Somalia threatened by illegal fishermen after west chases away pirates

Five years ago, the isolated outpost of Eyl was Somalia’s most notorious pirate lair. Perched above the crashing waves of the Indian Ocean, the ramshackle town played host to wheeling and dealing pirate kingpins who would roar through the rutted streets in tinted 4x4s as captured ships languished in the shallow waters.
Eyl had become a byword for everything that was wrong with Somalia: a place of anarchy where a civil war and two decades of fighting had destroyed even the most basic institutions of a functioning state, a place where the gun and ransom dollars ruled. The lawless and deadly mayhem was captured in the 2012 film A Hijacking in which a Danish freight vessel was captured by pirates and its captain murdered.
Pirate-hunting western warships belatedly dispatched to the region as part of Nato, US and European Union forces to pacify the pirates and end the hijacking and hostage-taking of western ships and their crews, seem to have won the battle.
Five years later, Eyl is a very different place. The pirates have gone, leaving the outpost to its fate. As with pretty much everywhere else in Somalia, there is an air of neglect with its historic buildings in disrepair. A tiny fort on the beach serves as a reminder that Eyl was once famous for something else – Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the revered 19th-century jihadi and national poet, better known to British forces fighting him in the early 20th century as the Mad Mullah.
Unfortunately for the local population, as the pirates have departed, other aggressors have returned. While the world has shifted its attention elsewhere, marauding flotillas from countries such as Yemen, Iran and South Korea – in flagrant breach of international maritime law – have begun to plunder Somalia’s rich fishing grounds, plunging the local fishermen who hold up the town’s economy into financial ruin.
Overfishing, which devastated the livelihoods of coastal communities a decade ago, is regarded as the principal reason for the initial outbreak of piracy. The waters off Somalia’s 1,880-mile coastline are among the richest fishing grounds in the world, teeming with shark, tuna, sardines, snapper and lobster. The illegal fishermen, their rusty tubs flying flags of convenience and protected by armed Somali brigands from further up the coast, chase off local fishermen who come too close – ramming their boats, shooting at them or sabotaging their gear. It’s a deadly fight that has raged largely unseen and unreported.
Among fishermen on Eyl’s sweeping beach, the mood towards the foreign fishing fleets is bitter. Musa Mahamoud, a lithe and fit-looking 55-year-old, points to the latest provocation – his fishing nets, slashed at sea.
Many Somalis want Nato and EU frigates to do more to tackle the illegal fishermen in the absence of any Somali capability to do so. While the Gulf-funded Puntland Maritime Police Force, based in Bosaso, has notched up some successes against unlicensed boats in the Red Sea, an Eyl detachment is still awaiting speedboats.
“Nato came because of the piracy, but the cause of piracy is the illegal fishing,” says Wa’is, the Eyl official. “If Nato can chase away the pirates, then why not the illegal fishermen?”
It is a view echoed by Abdullahi Jama Saleh, Puntland’s counter-piracy minister, who accuses the west of having “a mandate to catch the little thief, but not the big one”.

Still the refugees are coming, but in Europe the barriers are rising

Thousands of refugees stream across the Croatian border just a few hundred metres from Jurja’s small shop each day, but in her sleepy hillside village the passing strangers are invisible.
“They are taken on trains from the south into Slovenia, we never see them,” she says, as she packs up milk and chocolates in a country where the continent’s refugee crisis has been more a question of travel logistics than resettlement.
The hundreds of thousands of travellers who arrived in Greece without documents since the start of this year almost all want to travel north to countries they believe offer a better chance of safety and a new life. So officials in countries along the way have focused on helping them travel as quickly and safely as possible, providing food, shelter, medical help and transport before handing them across borders towards their final destination.

Russia’s day of mourning for 224 dead in Sinai air crash

Soon after the St Petersburg-bound airliner went down in Egypt on Saturday, Russians began reposting social media photographs of happy beachgoers that had suddenly taken on tragic new meaning.
One of them showed Viktoria Sevryukova, 24, who had worked at a St Petersburg restaurant chain, posing in the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. Her name was on the list of 224 people who were lost with the plane. Several of her friends reposted the photo with messages of disbelief and grief.
Sevryukova’s friend, Yevgenia Beryozina, told the Observer that she felt “emptiness” and couldn’t believe what had happened. “She was my best friend. She had waited for this trip like I don’t know what,” Beryozina said. “And now she’s gone. Just like that, she’s gone.”
The Kogalymavia Airbus A321 had been carrying holidaymakers back from the Red Sea resort when it crashed on the Sinai peninsula. It was flying at 31,000ft before air traffic control lost contact with it 23 minutes after takeoff. At least 150 bodies had been recovered, including those of the 17 children on board. Both the Russian and Egyptian authorities said there were no survivors.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, expressed his deepest condolences to passengers’ relatives and declared a day of mourning for those killed, the Kremlin press service said.
Relatives gathered at a hotel near Pulkovo airport in St Petersburg. Yulia Zaitseva said her friends, newlyweds Elena Rodina and Alexander Krotov, were on board. “We were friends for 20 years,” she told AP at the hotel. “To lose such a friend is like having your hand cut off.” She said Rodina’s parents felt “like their lives are over”.
Ella Smirnova, 25, said she was due to meet her parents who were on the flight. “I spoke to them last on the phone when they were already on the plane, and then I heard the news. I will keep hoping until the end that they are alive, but perhaps I will never see them again,” she said.
Russian investigators and emergency workers were flying to the crash site, where Egyptian teams were already working, and searched the offices of Kogalymavia and the St Petersburg-based Brisco tour company that had contracted the flight. Putin ordered prime minister Dmitry Medvedev to create a special commission on the disaster.
Kogalymavia planes have been involved in accidents before, including a Tu-154 that caught fire on the runway in Surgut, killing three and injuring 43. The Russian state transport regulator found safety violations during an inspection of Kogalymavia in 2014, but the airline remedied the discrepancies, Interfax news agency reported.
The crash is the latest in a long line of Russian air tragedies. Russia became the most dangerous country for air travel in 2011 after several disastrous crashes, including one that claimed the lives of most of the Yaroslavl Lokomotiv hockey team. Many of the incidents involved ageing aircraft and were blamed on mechanical breakdowns or pilot error. The Russian authorities later began trying to reduce the number of small airlines, which often employ older planes and can lack the maintenance and staffing capabilities of larger companies, in a bid to improve safety.

Stability and security dominate Turkish election debates

Earlier this month, Imran Kurt, a 22-year-old university student and activist, was preparing to take part in a peace rally in Ankara when an explosion sent a tremor through the group. Seconds later, another hit.
“When I raised my head, I saw bodies on the floor,” says Kurt. “Our bodies were covered in blood and pieces of flesh and we ran away for 50 metres. Then I ran back to look for my mother who was with me.” She was alive, inspecting the bodies around her, looking to see if her son was among those who perished. “When she saw me she started crying,” he says.
On the eve of snap elections taking place on Sunday, banners throughout Istanbul are emblazoned with the professorial face of the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, and the slogan istikrar (stability). Yet the last few months of rule by the Justice and Development party (AKP) have been anything but stable, with the country suffering bouts of violence and renewed tensions with Kurdish insurgents that could spell more civil conflict in coming months.
Security has emerged as a key flashpoint in the elections, with AKP officials arguing a vote for them means a vote for stability and security. Their opponents, on the other hand, argue that the AKP has failed to protect the country and the opposition from terrorism and that militancy in the country has been nourished by its policy of backing rebels in neighbouring Syria and offering them refuge while failing to adequately defend the border.
“This is precisely the dilemma of this election,” says Ahmet Hakan, a television host and prominent columnist in the mainstream daily Hurriyet.
Parliamentary elections in June whittled away at the AKP’s majority, forcing it to enter negotiations to form a coalition government with its opponents, but the failure of the talks contributed to political uncertainty. In August, the Turkish president and AKP founder, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called snap elections.
Meanwhile, a series of terrorist attacks have targeted the opposition – a bombing in Diyarbakir struck at a rally for supporters of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP) in June, moments before the charismatic party leader Selahattin Demirtas was scheduled to speak. A suicide bombing against a gathering of mostly Kurdish activists in the border town of Suruç prompted small-scale violence and, in turn, a crackdown against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), a campaign that risked inflaming the Kurdish insurgency and increasing violence in the country’s east.
And then came the double suicide bombing in Ankara on 10 October, which Kurt and his mother survived but which killed dozens of others. It was the worst terrorist attack in Turkey’s history. “I can’t say I’m good, psychologically,” says Kurt. “Even on social media I still see my comrades who died and I see them when I listen to music or when I read a poem.”
Turkish experts say the formation of a coalition government in the aftermath of Sunday’s elections could help reduce tensions and polarisation in the country. But some worry that the AKP may seek yet another election if they believe a single-party government is within reach.

“Security is the most urgent issue now, it feeds him [Erdogan],” says Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the dissident newspaper Cumhuriyet. “People ask for an authority to control the chaos. I guess he trusts that psychology. He waits for people to say ‘come and save us’. Another single party government would be a disaster.”
Observers say a third round of elections would be destabilising for the country’s security and economy, extending political uncertainty. Turkey has been through an extended election cycle since local elections in March 2014, which were followed by a presidential election in August, then the first parliamentary polls in June this year.

Beset by terror and crisis at home and war abroad, Turks prepare for a fateful choice

AKP supporters charge that the instability is a consequence of the prospect that the party, which bills itself as being strong on counter-terrorism, may lose its dominance over government. They say the attacks that have occurred are plots aimed at embarrassing the party and striking at its popularity.
“I think these attacks aim to prevent AKP from coming to power as a one-party government again,” says Fatima, a 42-year-old longtime party volunteer at an election tent in Istanbul. “It is a trap against us.”
Kurt, however, says he will vote for the HDP and blames the government for the instability in the country. Many members of the opposition have accused the government of failing to protect the demonstrators at the peace rally and police of assaulting those who came to help the wounded.
“There was no stability in Turkey,” he says. “They have been inside the state for 13 years, strengthening their own position. Their only aim is to hold on to power. That is their stability.”

Russian plane crash: investigation into cause begins – as it happened

• All 224 on board, including 17 children were killed, when a Metrojet flight from Sharm el-Sheikh bound for St Petersburg when the Airbus A321 crashed into the Sinai desert.
• Images of the wreckage show that the plane was almost completely destroyed.
• The cause of the crash remains unknown and claims of responsibility from Islamic State have been dismissed by Russian authorities.
• Families of the passengers have gathered at St Petersburg airport as bodies begin to arrive back in Russia.

Mokhtar Awad, an analyst with the Center for American Progress, tells the Guardian that the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility is quite vague.

“It doesn’t state how they were able to ‘down’ the plane allegedly. Even the most sophisticated of portable surface-to-air missiles cannot reach that high an altitude and are only a threat during periods of take-off or landing, but the plane had already climbed to its target altitude (from what we know thus far) when it began to likely experience technical failures.
The local affiliate, Wilayat Sinai, has been under some pressure over the past few months and may have jumped the gun on taking credit. Although there isn’t a precedent for such a spectacular lie about something they claim to have done, Islamic State itself has recently been embellishing more and more. For instance it claimed that the recent prison raid by Kurdish and US special forces were a total failure, when in fact video evidence surfaced showed them freeing the hostages. So this may be an instance of the rooster taking credit for the dawn.”

Russian aviation regulator Rosaviatsia said it has not yet found any reason to blame the crash of the Russian airliner in Egypt on a technical failure, an error by the crew or external actions, RIA Novosti reports.

Until there is reliable evidence about the circumstances of what happened, there is no sense in putting forward and discussing any versions.

The Guardian’s reporter in Cairo Jahd Khalil analyses the burgeoning relationship between Russia and Egypt.

Tourists enjoy the beach in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

Russians make up 19.7% of tourist arrivals to Egypt, the largest of any single country and 1.7 million were forecast to arrive in 2015 alone.
The Egyptian government has cancelled visa costs for Russian tourists to encourage more visitors, and there is also a currency deal between Russia and Egypt being discussed.
Since President Sisi took power, relations between Russia and Egypt have grown closer and been lauded in Egyptian press.
Biltaeral agreements included developing nuclear power in Egypt and a $3.5 billion arms deal, as Egypt seeks to diversify its arms suppliers beyond the United States.
Egypt also welcomed Russia’s latest intervention in Syria to support even as its Gulf allies, which have kept the Egyptian economy afloat with aid, vehemently opposed the Russian intervention.

Islamic State claim 'not accurate' - Russia

Russia’s transport minister Maksim Sokolov has said that the claim Islamic State militants brought down the plane “can’t be considered accurate”.

Now in various media there is assorted information that the Russian [plane]... was supposedly shot down by an anti-aircraft missile, fired by terrorists.
This information can’t be considered accurate.

Shadi Bushra, reporting for the Guardian in Cairo, has also spoken to Mohamed Samir, Egypt’s army spokesman, who also refuted the claim.

They can put out whatever statements they want but there is no proof at this point that terrorists were responsible for this plane crash.
We will know the true reasons when the civil aviation authority in coordination with Russian authorities completes its investigation.
But the army sees no authenticity to their claims or their video.

Egypt’s prosecutor general has agreed to allow a Russian government agency to participate in investigating what caused the Russian passenger plane to crash, according to state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram.
The North Sinai prosecution office has reportedly summoned air and ground traffic control officials for questioning over the incident, and ordered a technical team from the Civil Aviation Ministry to analyse the contents of the plane’s black box.
Meanwhile, Russian investigators are searching the Moscow offices of Metrojet, the company that chartered the plane.
The Investigative Committee is questioning both Metrojet employees and also the St Petersburg-based Brisco tour agency that had contracted for the flight from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, said spokesman Vladimir Markin.

This is the statement from a group claiming to be speaking on behalf of Islamic State, posted on their affiliate site, translated by our correspondent in Cairo, Jahd Khalil. It offers no evidence that the group brought down the plane, apart from their word.

Breaking: Downing of Russian airplane, killing of more than 220 Russian crusaders on board.
Soldiers of the Caliphate were able to bring down a Russian plane above Sinai Province with at least 220 Russian crusaders aboard.
They were all killed, praise be to God. O Russians, you and your allies take note that you are not safe in Muslims lands or their skies.
The killing of dozens daily in Syria with bombs from your planes will bring woe to you. Just as you are killing others, you too will be killed, God willing.

US officials: troops to only fight Isis, Russia risks fueling Syrian quagmire

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday American special operations troops being sent to Syria would only fight Islamic State militants and would not become involved in the country’s long-running civil war. As he did so, US-backed rebels attacked Isis in the north-east of the country.

Analysis After Obama changes tack on Syria, what would the presidential candidates do?

Experts warned of mission creep after the president ordered US special forces to take a more active role but most White House hopefuls back greater intervention

Deputy secretary of state Antony Blinken, meanwhile, told a policy conference in Bahrain Moscow’s intervention in the Syrian conflict would have the unintended consequences of drawing Russia into a quagmire and alienating Sunni Muslims across the region.
Russia began airstrikes a month ago, changing the balance of forces in the war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad and against rebel groups that include both jihadists and non-militants backed by the West, Turkey and Gulf countries.
In Syria, a newly formed US-backed rebel alliance launched an offensive against Isis in the north-eastern province of Hasaka. It was the first declared operation by the Democratic Forces of Syria, which joins a US-backed Kurdish militia and several Syrian Arab rebel groups, since it announced its formation earlier this month.
Fighting in Hasaka had begun after midnight, a spokesman for the alliance said. A group monitoring the war reported fighting and coalition air strikes in the area. A video posted earlier on YouTube announced the offensive in southern Hasaka, and showed several dozen men in fatigues standing outdoors with yellow flags and banners carrying the name of the Democratic Forces of Syria in Arabic and Kurdish.
The campaign would “continue until all occupied areas in Hasaka are freed from Daesh,” a spokesman for the alliance’s general command said in the video, using an Arabic name for Isis. He urged residents to stay away from Isis-controlled areas of Hasaka. Another spokesman later said alliance forces had already attacked Islamic State fighters.

Iranian-American businessman detained in Iran, family and friends say

A businessman based in Dubai has reportedly become at least the fourth Iranian American to be detained in Iran, family and friends say.
People close to consultant Siamak Namazi have told media outlets that he was taken into custody by Iran’s security forces around 15 October while visiting family in Iran.
“We’re aware of recent reports of the possible arrest in Iran of a US citizen,” said US Department of State spokesman John Kirby. “We’re looking into these reports and don’t have anything further to provide at this time.”
His friends told the Wall Street Journal that Iranian intelligence agents ransacked his family home in Tehran and confiscated his passport.
Namazi, who supports improved diplomatic relations between the US and Iran, is the head of strategic planning at Crescent Petroleum. He previously worked as an energy consultant at the Dubai-based Access Consulting Group and at numerous thinktanks.
The National Iranian American Council, which also supports the easing of relations between the two countries, said in a statement that it was “deeply troubled” by the unconfirmed reports.
It also disputed claims by other websites that said Namazi and his family have leadership roles in the organization. “While Mr Namazi has known members of NIAC’s staff, neither he nor his family have had any leadership or any other significant role with NIAC,” the statement said.
While Iran’s moderate president Hassan Rouhani has expressed interest in easing US-Iran relations, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made clear that he does not think improved relations should come with the historic nuclear deal reached in July.
Namazi’s affiliates told the Wall Street Journal that he was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence arm, which is under the supervision of Khamenei, not the government.
Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said that the detention feeds into an emerging pattern of the Revolutionary Guard targeting the Rouhani government’s economic policies in the wake of the historic nuclear deal reached in July.
This also comes ahead of the February parliamentary election in Iran.
“I read this as an attempt to undermine Rouhani’s policy of jumpstarting the economy through interactions with the diaspora,” said Ghaemi. “And of course this will politically weaken him in light of the upcoming election because he will not have much economic benefit to show to the people.”
At least three other Americans – Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini and Jason Rezaian– are being held in Iranian prisons. Their families hoped that a release could be secured with the nuclear deal, but officials have said they deliberately kept those negotiations separate from the nuclear talks in case the deal fell through.
Iran does not recognize dual citizenship, and those that hold it are viewed with suspicion.
US secretary of state John Kerry mentioned the detained Americans in a meeting with Iran foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier this week in Vienna, where he is in discussions with Iranian diplomats about the Syrian war.
The state department on Friday said Kerry raised the issue of detained and missing US citizens in the country but did not provide further details on the conversation.
Kerry and Zarif’s meeting in Vienna came just two weeks after Rezaian, a Washington Post correspondent, was convicted in a secret espionage trial in Iran. He has been imprisoned in Iran for more than 450 days.
Former US marine Amir Hekmati has been held in Iran since his arrest there in August 2011 and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini is also jailed in an Iranian prison. The US is also looking for former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in the country in 2007.
IranWire first reported the arrest of an unnamed Iranian American earlier this month and on Wednesday edited the story to say the person they referenced is Namazi.
The reports came as Washington-based group IJMA3-USA, an internet freedom advocacy group, said its secretary general, Lebanese citizen Nizar Zakka, disappeared in September while attending a conference in Tehran.
“We have filed several requests with the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs asking assistance in locating him, without success,” the group said in a statement signed by lawyer Antoine Abou Dib. “We therefore respectfully ask the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese Embassy in Tehran and the Iranian authorities to assist us in locating Mr Zakka, and to confirm that he is safe and will soon be permitted to return home.”
Zakka was last seen in a taxi bound for the airport for a flight to Beirut. Abou Dib said that he did not board the flight.

Syria decision the latest blow to Obama's Middle East legacy

The decision to deploy US troops to Syria is seen in Washington as one of profound political consequence – both for the credibility of Barack Obama’s presidency and possibly for new peace talks aimed at ending the five-year war – but yet of limited military significance.
Administration officials were left squirming on Friday to explain how sending special forces to work alongside Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State was compatible with Obama’s earlier promises not to “put boots on the ground” in Syria or “engage in combat operations” against Isis.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest claimed there was still a difference of “night and day” compared with the Bush administration’s invasions, but in the space of a few short weeks a central promise of Obama’s presidential campaign has been undermined: first by conceding that he will not meet his pledge of removing troops from Afghanistan before he leaves office and now by acknowledging a long-term ground presence is necessary not just in Iraq, but Syria too.
Earnest would not say whether the deployments were permanent or would be bolstered, insisting: “I don’t want to try to predict the future here.”
Yet arguably that was exactly what Obama claimed he could do when he ran for office promising to bring US troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the president first contemplated intervention in Syria two years ago, in an effort to deter President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Obama went further still, making a clear-cut pledge not to escalate US involvement.
“Many of you have asked, won’t this put us on a slippery slope to another war?” said Obama in an address to the nation in September 2013. “My answer is simple: I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan.”
That mission against Assad was ultimately dropped in the face of opposition from Congress, and the White House claims critics are taking the “boots on the ground” quote out of context by using it now.

Syria talks focus on ceasefire hopes as missile barrage kills 40

International talks on the Syrian crisis are to resume within two weeks after a first round in Vienna on Friday was overshadowed by mass casualties in a government attack on an opposition-held area near Damascus. UN efforts are to concentrate on implementing a country-wide ceasefire.
Tensions between Iran, a staunch supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, and its rival Saudi Arabia, which insists Assad must step down or face military defeat, were evident at the meeting. Crucially but predictably, no agreement was reached on Assad’s fate, so agreement to continue discussions was probably the best possible outcome.
John Kerry, the US secretary of state, accentuated the positive after the seven-hour meeting in the Austrian capital: “The US position is that there is no way that Assad can unite and govern Syria, but we cannot allow that difference to get in the way of diplomacy to find a solution.”
Kerry referred to the announced deployment of US special forces in Syria as part of a “two-pronged” approach. “We are intensifying our counter-Daesh [Isis] campaign and intensifying our diplomatic efforts to end the conflict,” he said. “We believe these steps are mutually reinforcing.”
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said Moscow was determined to fight terrorism in accordance with international law.

Baby dies in West Bank after inhaling teargas, says Palestinian ministry

An eight-month-old Palestinian baby has died after inhaling teargas in a village near Bethlehem, the Palestinian ministry of health has said, on another day of killings and clashes in the West Bank.
The baby, named as Ramadan Mohammad Faisal Thawabta, suffocated inside his family home in Beit Fajjar, a village south of Bethlehem. 
Abu Anan, a medic with Red Crescent, said Israeli forces had fired teargas into the house during clashes between the army and Palestinians. “We went to the family house and we tried to save his life, but we failed. He was dead,” he said.
It was not immediately clear if a teargas grenade had entered the house or if the baby had been exposed to gas that had seeped in from outside. Thawabta’s body was being transported to Beit Jala governmental hospital. The Israeli defence forces said they were looking into the incident.
The teargas was fired as Israeli soldiers faced off against stone-throwing Palestinian youths in one of a series of clashes that swept the West Bank on Friday.
While Muslim prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque – the focus of recent tensions – passed peacefully, elsewhere the unrest of recent weeks, which has left 60 Palestinians and 11 Israelis dead, continued.
Israeli and Arab media reported that a Palestinian youth had been shot dead and another injured after an attempted knife attack on border guards in an incident at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus. Clashes were also reported from the Ramallah area further north and Hebron to the south.
Elsewhere in East Jerusalem another Palestinian stabbed an Israeli and was quickly shot and critically injured by border police close to the light railway line that links Jewish and Arab areas of the city – unilaterally united and annexed by Israel after the 1967 war. An Israeli was also injured in the shooting.

Syria’s horror shows the tragic price of western inaction

It is a rare thing for a high-level official to admit they got something completely wrong. Frederic Hof, the former special adviser on Syria to Hillary Clinton (as secretary of state), has had that temerity – or that kind of despair. He recently wrote an article (for Politico magazine) headlined “I got Syria so wrong”. It is a painful analysis of how early hopes, in 2011, of seeing Bashar al-Assad overthrown by a popular revolt were either naive or blind. It also contains stark criticism of the Obama presidency, which apparently never fully intended to do anything about Syria’s killing fields, preferring to let the problem fester, unaddressed.
It’s tempting to believe that the latest rekindling of international diplomacy over Syria will lead to a brighter outcome. But a few days before ministerial talks were to begin in Vienna, Hof seemed to dash these hopes at a meeting on Syria’s human rights catastrophe in the House of Commons. The walls were covered with photos of tortured bodies smuggled out of Syria two years ago by “Caesar”, a military photographer who believed that if the world could see the slaughter going on in Assad’s jails, it would act. Nothing happened. Now Hof says he can see “no evidence yet of a change of policy” from the US side. Basically, his warning is: don’t be fooled by the new round of talks.

Obama orders US special forces to 'assist' fight against Isis in Syria

Barack Obama has ordered up to 50 special operations troops to Syria, US officials announced on Friday, in an apparent breach of a promise not to put US “boots on the ground”, to fight Islamic State militants in the country.
The Pentagon has also been “consulting” with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to establish a special operations taskforce to fight Isis “leaders and networks” across the Syrian border in Iraq, a senior administration official told the Guardian on Friday.
But the White House insisted that its overall strategy to combat Isis remained the same and said the special forces troops would be helping coordinate local ground forces in the north of the country and other non-specified “coalition efforts” to counter Isis rather than engaging in major ground operations.
“The decision the president has made is to further intensify our support for our forces who have made progress against Isis,” the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said at a news conference.
The move came as diplomats worked in Vienna to restart talks on a political transition that would remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. At the discussions with leaders from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, framed the troop announcement as part of a shifting policy that included this major diplomatic push to initiate talks that would bring about a political transition in Syria.
“We are intensifying our counter-Daesh campaign and we are intensifying our diplomatic efforts to end the conflict,” Kerry said, using the Arabic acronym for Isis. “That is why President Obama made an announcement about stepping up the fight against Daesh.”
The injection of US special forces in Syria seemed at odds with earlier statements Obama has made about not placing troops in the country.

White House confirms US 'special operators' to fight Isis in Syria

White House press secretary Josh Earnest confirms that President Obama will be deploying ‘special operators’ to fight Islamic State on the ground in Syria. Earnest concedes to one reporter that the move is not likely ‘a game-changer’, but that the mission will intensify the overall strategy for building the capacity of local forces in Syria.

Diyarbakir prepares to vote: 'There is no joy in the runup to these elections'

A few months ago, the streets of Diyarbakir, in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish south-east, were alive with celebration. The leftist, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) had succeeded in entering parliament for the first time, granting Turkey’s 20 million-strong Kurdish minority unprecedented political representation. Now, though, only a few days before the country’s second parliamentary election this year, the streets are quiet and only a few posters advertising rival parties indicate upcoming polls.
“There is no excitement, no joy in the runup to these elections,” says Ziya Pir, Diyarbakir MP for the HDP and candidate in Sunday’s vote. “Before 7 June, it was incredible, everyone was working day and night. Now there is war, more than 100 civilians died, how could we feel any joy, or any excitement?”

Turkey election: ruling party loses majority as pro-Kurdish HDP gains seats

It is unclear if the apparent lack of enthusiasm will have an impact on Sunday, but most opinion polls indicate the results are likely to mirror those of national elections in June, when the Justice and Development party (AKP) of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan failed to win a parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002. That election result was inconclusive, and now Turks must go the ballot box again. But the mood among many HDP supporters is palpably different.
In September, angry mobs attacked Kurdish shops and HDP party offices all over the country, but these acts of violence have gone unpunished by Turkish courts. Many HDP politicians and activists have been arrested in the runup to the election, and leaflets promoting the party programme that includes greater regional autonomy for Kurds were banned by authorities in many places. After twin suicide bombs in the Turkish capital, Ankara – the worst terrorist attack in the country’s recent history – killed more than 100 people, many of them leftist activists, earlier this month, the party decided to cancel all election rallies.
“After so many deaths it would be inappropriate to run a joyful, active campaign,” Pir says. “But we also see that the government does not guarantee the safety of our party and of those who support us.”

Turkey election 2015: a guide to the parties, polls and electoral system

“I have not had a permanent address for two months,” he adds. “I cannot go anywhere without bodyguards anymore, and we now have to travel everywhere in armoured vehicles.” Does the risk ever tempt him to give up? “Never,” he says. “After all, people voted for me with certain expectations, and there is a lot of work ahead of us. I am simply too busy to be afraid.”
The AKP’s failure to secure a parliamentary majority in June was at least partly due to the HDP’s ability to surmount Turkey’s unusually high election threshold of 10%, thanks to its appeal not only among the country’s roughly 20% Kurdish population but also with centre-left and secular voters disillusioned with Erdoğan. In Diyarbakir, the AKP only managed to walk away with one out of 11 parliamentary seats, down from six in nationwide polls in 2011. Many in the city believe the latest government crackdowns are a punishment to Kurds for having voted the wrong way.
Since June, the government has restarted its war with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), abandoning embryonic peace talks that had been under way since 2012 to try to end a bloody conflict that has killed approximately 40,000 people since it began in 1984. Over the summer hundreds were killed on both sides, but civilians suffered the brunt of the violence as the clashes increasingly moved from the mountains into the cities of the southeast.

Thousands gather in Ankara to pay respects to activists killed in bombings

In the central Sur district in Diyarbakir, glaziers dispatched by the HDP municipal council are busy fitting windows, their apprentices flitting through the streets carrying squares of glass marked with the names of their new owners. Many buildings, including a 16th-century mosque, are riddled with bullet holes and traces of missiles.
“The state destroys it, and the municipality is left to pick up the bill,” says a 24-year-old barber, Osman Kiliçci, bitterly. His father’s sweet shop was smashed up during the latest security operation. Bullet holes pepper the ice cream machine, the freezer and the metal shutters; the shop windows are gone. “The police came into our building and threw everyone out in order to set up snipers on the roof,” Kiliçci recalls. “Even after no [Kurdish militants] were left, they kept shooting like madmen.”
Local Kurdish activists declared administrative autonomy for the old city district in August, one of several similar attempts at self-rule in other cities with a large Kurdish population. The government, unnerved by the threat of Kurdish autonomy similar to that which exists on its borders in Syria and Iraq, responded with a violent crackdown. Consecutive blanket curfews were imposed on the neighbourhood, during which hundreds of police clashed with armed militants of the YDG-H, the PKK’s urban wing, who dug trenches and set up checkpoints all over Sur.
Several people were killed, including a 12-year-old girl who, eyewitnesses say, was shot in the head by snipers on her way to the bakery to buy bread. Many more were wounded.
“So much hate only because we are Kurds!” recounts Tugba, 25, whose husband was arrested during the raid in October. She says her son, aged six, had to watch as masked policemen beat his father with their rifle butts. “I still cannot believe it. There was a condolence tent set up in our street, but the police came in saying that it was a PKK camp. What nonsense! They came and smashed up everything. They emptied my house and burnt all my things in the street. They even took my pickle jars and poured out each one. They went up on the roof to kill 90 of our pigeons. They wrung their necks one by one,” she says.

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Most of Tugba’s neighbours have since left, and many small business owners say that they, too, will have to shut up shop after the elections. “They have killed the neighbourhood,” says Mehmet Gezgin, 40, a small businessman whose family has lived in Sur for more than 60 years. “Shops cannot make any money because their customers have fled. Everyone is terrified.” Pointing at the damaged houses around him, he adds: “In June, we voted for peace, but this is what we got instead. We have never seen such violence before.”
Only a few metres from his home, he says, policemen have scrawled threatening graffiti on a house wall. “You will see the strength of the Turk,” says one, signed by “the team of the lions of God”, reminding locals of the killings and kidnappings of Kurdish dissidents by secretive paramilitary agents during the 90s. So far no investigations have been launched. “Does this not show that the government does not see us as equal citizens of Turkey?” Gezgin asks angrily. “But one thing is clear: the AKP is finished in Diyarbakir.”
Some of his customers say they will abstain from voting on Sunday, arguing that they have lost all hope for a peaceful solution of the conflict. Others claim the HDP’s June success only attracted the government’s ire and has produced little to show for it in return.
The lack of enthusiasm for the ruling party also makes it itself felt at an election rally held by Turkey’s acting prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, on the same square where five people were killed and many more wounded during a bomb attack on an HDP rally, days before the June vote. “Aren’t they tired of making fools out of themselves,” one shop owner close to the meeting square grumbles, commenting on the lack of participation. “When Selahattin [Demirtaş] came, there were 10 times as many. At least!”

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But not everyone shares his disdain. Filiz, 40, and her two daughters Fatma, 22, and Kübra, 16, are excited to see the acting prime minister on stage in their home town.
“We love him,” exclaims Kübra, a high school student who wears a baseball hat emblazoned with the lightbulb logo of the ruling party. “But we adore Recep Tayyip Erdoğan even more. If anyone can bring peace and prosperity to us, it is him and the AKP.” All three women say that they feel under pressure in Diyarbakir, and Filiz says that she tells others that she will cast her ballot for the HDP out of fear.
Nuri Özdemir, a 62-year-old farmer from a nearby village who will vote for the AKP, rebuffs the claims of abuse and excessive violence by security forces in the central Sur district. “Those gangs are to blame for the violence,” he says. “They terrorise people. If peace comes, it will come with the help of president Erdoğan.”
Reha Ruhavioğlu, member of the board for the human rights organisation Mazlumder, says he cannot afford to lose hope. “The most important thing is that the violence stops, that both sides realise the current situation is unsustainable. If Turkey is not to descend into war, all parties need to sit down at the table and talk again.”

Israel places heavy security in East Jerusalem before Muslim prayers

Heavy Israeli security measures were imposed in occupied East Jerusalem in preparation for Muslim prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque, which, despite being the focus of recent tensions, passed peacefully. But new killings and clashes were reported from the adjoining West Bank.
Israeli and Arab media reported that a Palestinian youth was shot dead and another injured on Friday after an attempted knife attack on border guards in an incident at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus. Clashes were also reported from the Ramallah area further north and Hebron to the south.
Elsewhere in East Jerusalem, another Palestinian stabbed an Israeli and was quickly shot and critically injured by border police close to the light railway line that links Jewish and Arab areas of the city – unilaterally united and annexed by Israel after the 1967 war . An Israeli was also injured in the shooting.
The speedy responses highlight the vigilance of Israeli police, whose presence is felt everywhere but especially in the Old City around the Haram al-Sharif [Temple Mount] as tens of thousands of worshippers stream through the narrow alleyways for noon prayers. Age restrictions previously enforced were lifted for the second week running.
Five weeks into this latest bout of unrest, in which 60 Palestinians and 11 Israelis have been killed, commentators and political figures on both sides agree it has not yet developed into a fully-fledged intifada [uprising] against the Israeli occupation, as was the case in 1987 and 2000. In the past few days, incidents have shifted away from Jerusalem and inside Israel proper to the West Bank. The intensity of the apparently unorganised and uncoordinated attacks waxes and wanes, but there is no sign the trouble is ending.

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“The present wave of violence is not yet past,” wrote Amos Harel, military commentator for the Haaretz newspaper. “It has only been taking on a different shape in the past two weeks.”
Ziad Abu Ziad, a former minister with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, said: “No one knows where we are going. It’s like rheumatic pain. You never know where it will hit you. I count on the Israelis to make the violence continue.”
Hebron, where hundreds of armed Jewish settlers live among Palestinians, has emerged as the most volatile flashpoint. Six Palestinian youths have been shot dead by Israeli forces for attempting to stab soldiers and settlers since Tuesday. Of the total of 60 Palestinians shotby Israeli forces in October, 23 were from Hebron. The families of 17 of those have rallied for the release of their bodies and five were handed over on Friday. Israel describes 41 of the 60 as attackers.
On Tuesday, Amnesty International reported that it had documented in depth at least four incidents in which Palestinians were deliberately shot dead by Israeli forces when they posed no imminent threat. It called them “extrajudicial executions”.
On Thursday, 23-year-old Islam Obeidou was shot in the head and killed at a checkpoint near Hebron’s Old City. The Israeli military said he was trying to stab a soldier. But Palestinians and other witnesses say he was unarmed. Zaid, a neighbour, said: “I saw him cross the checkpoint and go through the metal detector, so how could he have had a knife?”
On 17 October, video footage circulating on social media showed another Palestinian, Fadel Qawasmi, 18, lying dead with an armed settler standing by his body and soldiers placing an object near him. Palestinians have dismissed reports Qawasmi tried to stab the settler.
“I saw two soldiers stopping a Palestinian youth near Beit Hadassah [a 19th century Jewish building] and turning him back toward the container checkpoint,” Zaid said. “A settler was standing next to the soldiers and he followed the Palestinian back towards where I was standing near the checkpoint.
“The settler was under 10 metres from him and he shot him in the back of the head and in the back. I went toward the shooting and I saw the army had run towards Qawasmi. The settler pointed the gun at me but the soldier grabbed his arm pulling it down. There is no way Qawasmi could have crossed through the container checkpoint with a knife. You can’t pass the checkpoint with a shekel [coin] let alone a knife. I didn’t see anything in his hands. I also didn’t see a soldier planting a knife.”

An Israeli Defence Force (IDF) spokeswoman told the Guardian that Qawasmi was shot because he was armed with a knife and approached a Jewish settler with the intent to attack and kill him. “Palestinian eyewitnesses, along with a video, purport to claim that an IDF soldier placed a knife at the scene. However, the object handled by the soldiers was a communications device,” she said.
On Thursday, another video was released showing a Palestinian man who had already been shot being shot again in the head by an Israeli soldier as he lies on the ground. The IDF said 23-year-old Mahdi Mohammed was shot near the Ibrahimi mosque after he attacked a soldier, who was lightly wounded.

Syria peace talks pin hopes for end to war on Iran and Saudi Arabia

The broadest peace talks since the start of the Syrian war are getting under way in Vienna, with Iran joining arch-rivals Saudi Arabia and the US to try to orchestrate an end to one of the most dangerous global conflicts in decades.
While all regional stakeholders appear set to take a seat at the table, neither the Syrian government nor opposition have been invited, with any hope of a solution riding mainly on their respective regional patrons: Iran for the Assad regime and Saudi Arabia for those who oppose him.
In the runup to the talks there was no discernible change to the intractable regional positions of either side and hopes of meaningful progress appear slim. In the past four years, Iran has not publicly shifted from its insistence that Assad remain as leader and more importantly, that its influence remain undiluted in Damascus, which is strategically vital to how the country projects its power, especially concerning Israel.

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Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has insisted that Assad must go and that, in the first instance, a transitional government agreed to by the regime and the opposition should pave the way for peace. It has been flatly opposed to Iran’s inclusion, maintaining that Tehran has done more than any other actor to fan the flames of the war and, in doing so, impose itself on the Sunni Arab world.
After its dramatic entry into the war in late September, Russia also looms as a decisive player. Moscow has said it agrees with a communique drafted after two earlier summits in Geneva failed to get the warring Syrian sides to agree a deal. However, Vladimir Putin earlier this week flatly rejected the suggestion that Assad should step down and, after inviting the embattled Syrian leader to Moscow, instead encouraged him to call early elections.
US secretary of state John Kerry struck a cautious tone on Friday morning, telling reporters: “I am hopeful that we can find a way forward [but] it is very difficult.”
At every turn, there is a lack of common ground. Even where there has been an overriding cause – fighting Islamic State – there is disagreement on how to do so and even on who, and where, it is.
Regional military officials continue to insist that Russia has focused at least 85% of its bombing raids on the armed opposition to Assad, instead of Isis further east.
Meanwhile, US attempts to re-enfranchise Iran as a good faith neighbour after the successfully negotiated nuclear deal have been roundly rebuffed by Riyadh, Qatar and the Gulf states, whose representatives are also travelling to Vienna. A senior Gulf diplomat said: “They are inviting the vultures to the banquet table. And they expect them to wear napkins and be nice to the waiters.”

Regional and global observers say the implacable positions have driven Syria to the point of disintegration. In the latest bloodshed, a conflict monitor and a local rescue group said on Friday that at least 40 people were killed and about 100 wounded after Syrian government forces fired missiles into a market place in a town near Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces fired 12 missiles at Douma, 10 miles north-east of Damascus.
More than half the country’s pre-war population of 20 million people has been displaced, with large numbers pushed outside its borders and more than 300,000 having joined a treacherous migration route to Europe since the summer.
Stopping the passage of refugees seems well beyond the capacity or will of officials to achieve. Even providing a safe haven for those who have yet to flee to Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon seems to be out of the question, especially since Russia’s intervention, which led to it setting up a no-fly zone over north-western Syria to protect Russian military interests, not fleeing refugees.
Ahead of the summit, Kerry said he and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov had agreed on a number of steps that could be made to take the heat out of the conflict. Kerry’s initiative may be central to whether these talks succeed in doing anything other than getting all stakeholders into one room for the first time.
US diplomacy has repeatedly fumbled in Syria and central to its impotence, according to senior Saudi officials, has been the fundamentally different way Barack Obama has chosen to project US power, with a preference for partnering up and mentoring from the rear at odds with the more muscular and assertive stances of previous US presidents.
Senior Saudi ministers in particular say this new posture, after decades of Washington having assumed a frontline role in the region, has been an extraordinary variable at a remarkably volatile time, empowering foes and undermining allies.
“If they can turn it around with even a communique in Vienna, then it’s a good thing,” one senior Saudi said. “But it doesn’t end here. It doesn’t end any time soon.”

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Cities are at the centre of the Syrian refugee crisis – so why are they being ignored?

My recent visit to Lesbos in Greece gave me a clear sense of just how much European towns and cities are struggling to cope with this refugee crisis. The capital of the Greek island has a population of 30,000 – and had just registered 15,000 refugees en masse in order to get them on to ferries heading to the mainland. Until then thousands of people, predominately refugees fleeing the war in Syria, had been sleeping rough in public parks, or in tents in parking bays at the main port.
The crisis in Europe pales in comparison to the experiences of towns and cities in the Middle East. There are more Syrian refugees in Istanbul alone than there are in the rest of Europe. In Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, the arrival of refugees has sometimes doubled the size of hosting towns. Despite this, municipal authorities are under intense pressure to carry on providing services that residents have come to expect, while also extending these to refugees, with little or no increase in resources.
In all the many column inches on the European refugee crisis, one point has barely received a mention: the overwhelming majority of Syrian refugees are not in refugee camps. Rows of white tents in an otherwise sparse landscape are often featured in the media, but the reality is that 80% of Syrian refugees have sought refuge outside of camps, and the majority of these are living in urban areas – whether in “informal tented settlements”, rented rooms, or half-finished buildings.
This is not just a characteristic of displacement in the Middle East. A recent review of protracted displacement by the Overseas Development Institute showed that 59% of refugees around the world are in urban areas, and this figure grows each year. More than half of all internally displaced people (ie. displaced in their own country) are also in towns and cities.

Syrian missile attack on market kills at least 40 people

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says government troops fired 12 missiles in Douma, near 

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces fired 12 missiles in Douma, 10 miles north-east of the capital.
The Syrian Civil Defence group, which posted a picture on its Facebook page showing about a dozen bloodied bodies, said more than 45 people had died in the attack.

In August, airstrikes on Douma were said to have killed around 100 people, provoking sharp rebuke from the UN and other officials. It has been held by anti-Assad rebels since the early days of Syria’s conflict.
Many of Douma’s residents have fled the four-year conflict, moving to nearby rural areas. Medics say they have struggled to cope with large numbers of wounded people in the intensified strikes.
The attack was a stark reminder of the enormous civilian suffering, on a marathon day of peace talks in Vienna, with Iran joining rivals Saudi Arabia and the US to try to orchestrate an end to the Syrian conflict.
What began in March 2011 as mostly peaceful protests escalated into a full-scale civil war after a massive government crackdown. The war has claimed more than 250,000 lives and displaced up to a third of Syria’s pre-war population.

Deso Dogg: Syria air strike killed Isis rapper from Germany, says US

A German rapper who joined the Islamic State group and publicly threatened President Barack Obama has been killed in a US air strike in Syria, according to the Pentagon.
Denis Cuspert, who called himself Deso Dogg, used to rap in Berlin before becoming one of the westerners who have gone to fight for Isis.

Why Isis fights

“I can confirm that an October 16 strike near Raqa killed Denis Cuspert,” said US defence department spokeswoman Elissa Smith.
Cuspert joined Isis in 2012 and went on to appear in numerous videos from the militant group, including one in November 2014 “in which he appears holding a severed head he claims belongs to a man executed for opposing Isil”, the State Department had previously said.
Another defence official said Cuspert “was not considered a high-value target [and] we were not specifically targeting him”. He noted that other Isis jihadists may have been hit.
Jihadist sources in April 2014 said Cuspert had been killed in Syria but they later retracted the claim. Cuspert, who later went by Abu Talha al-Almani, was listed as an al-Qaida supporter by the United Nations.
Cuspert was said to have pledged an oath of loyalty to Isis group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and was a chief recruiter of German fighters.
According to Smith, Cuspert threatened Obama and US and German citizens, and also encouraged western Muslims to carry out attacks in the name of Islamic State.
“Cuspert was a foreign terrorist fighter and operative for Isil who used social media to take advantage of disaffected youth and potential western recruits,” Smith said.
Isis prohibits music but singing is allowed and some of the jihadists’ grisly videos are set to a vocal soundtrack.

More than 20 dead after missile attack on Iranian exiles camp in Baghdad

More than 20 people are reported to have been killed after a barrage of rockets slammed into a former military base near Baghdad international airport that houses a group of Iranian exiles.
Officials said three Iraqi soldiers were killed, and Iranian exiles said at least 20 of their people died in the attack late on Thursday.

Chilcot report to be published next summer after security checks

Iraqi police said 16 rockets hit Camp Liberty, a former US base that now houses the exiled Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedin of Iran (MEK). They said at least 16 soldiers guarding the camp were also wounded while MEK said dozens of Iranian refugees were wounded as well.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The statement from MEK said that “due to darkness of the night, the exact number of dead and wounded has not been established”.
Police said that there may be casualties among the exiled group, but said numbers had not been reported to the local authorities so they could not determine how many civilians were hit in the attack.
The MEK statement on casualty figures could not be independently verified because of the late hour of the attack and the camp’s inaccessibility to media.
A police official added that the rockets landed far enough from the airport that they did not disrupt commercial traffic. A hospital official confirmed the casualty figures. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
This was not the first attack since Camp Liberty became home to the Iranian group, which is strongly opposed to Iran’s clerical regime. Last year, the Islamic State group was said to have fired rockets near to Baghdad International Airport as it attempted to destabilise the capital.
Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran, the parent organisation of MEK, blamed the attack on Iran.
“The Iranian regime’s agents within the Iraqi government are responsible for the latest assault,” she said in a statement. “The United States and the United Nations are fully aware of this reality.”
In Washington, US secretary of state John Kerry condemned the attack in statement issued on Thursday night.

Q&A: what is the MEK and why did the US call it a terrorist organisation?

“We are consulting with the government of Iraq to ascertain the full extent of this unprovoked attack,” the statement said.
“No matter the circumstances, on this point we remain absolute: the United States remains committed to assisting the UN high commissioner for refugees in the relocation of all Camp Hurriya [Liberty] residents to a permanent and safe location outside of Iraq.”
Members of the MEK were welcomed into Iraq by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s during the brutal war with neighbouring Iran. Their fortunes turned sharply with the Iraqi dictator’s toppling in the 2003 US-led invasion.
Iraq’s current Shiite-led Iraqi government, which has strengthened ties with Tehran, considers their presence in the country illegal.
The group regularly reports worsening health conditions within their isolated camp and accuses the Iraqi government of neglect and human rights abuses.