Dozens of civilians dead in rebel assault on Aleppo

Rebel fighters from the Jaish al-Fatah (or
Army of Conquest) brigades manoeuver a
T-55 tank as they take part in a major assault
on Syrian government forces West of Aleppo
city on October 28, 2016. Syrian opposition
fighters launched a major assault on
government forces to break a months-long
siege of rebel-held neighbourhoods of the
battered city of Aleppo. Rebel groups
including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham faction
and former Al-Qaeda affiliate Fateh al-Sham
Front fired waves of rockets into government-
held western Aleppo, killing at least 15
civilians, a monitor said. The rebels also
targeted government positions east of Aleppo
city and in the coastal province of Latakia.
Omar haj kadour / AFP
Syria’s regime and rebels were locked in
fierce fighting Sunday on Aleppo’s western
edges, where 38 civilians have been killed
in a two-day opposition offensive to break
the government siege.
Rebels and allied jihadists launched a major
offensive on Friday to break through
government lines and reach the 250,000
people living in the city’s east.
Since then, they have unleashed a salvo of
rockets, artillery shells, and car bombs
around the western government-controlled
districts.
Syria’s second city, Aleppo has been
devastated by some of the heaviest fighting
of the country’s five-year civil war, which
has killed more than 300,000 people.
Much of the once-bustling economic hub
has been reduced to rubble by air and
artillery bombardment, including barrel
bombs — crude unguided explosive devices
that cause indiscriminate damage.
“Rebel fighters have launched hundreds of
rockets and shells onto the western districts
from positions inside the city and on its
western edges,” said Rami Abdel Rahman,
head of the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights.
Two days of such heavy rebel bombardment
have killed 38 civilians, including 14
children, and wounded another 250.
Fighting has also killed 30 regime and
allied fighters, as well as 50 Syrian rebels,
according to the Observatory.
The monitor did not have an immediate
death toll for foreign anti-regime fighters,
many of whom have joined jihadist
factions.
About 1,500 rebels have massed on a 15-
kilometre front along the western edges of
Aleppo since Friday, scoring quick gains in
the Dahiyet al-Assad district but struggling
to push east since then.
“The advance will be from Dahiyet al-Assad
towards Hamdaniyeh,” said Yasser al-
Youssef of the Noureddin al-Zinki rebel
faction.
Hamdaniyeh is a regime-held district
directly adjacent to opposition-controlled
eastern neighbourhoods.
Missiles, car bombs
Fighting lasted all night and into Sunday,
with air strikes and artillery fire along the
western battlefronts heard even in the
eastern districts, an AFP correspondent
there said.
Plumes of smoke could be seen snaking up
from the city’s skyline.
A pro-regime military source told AFP that
the rebel assault was “massive and
coordinated” but insisted it was unable to
break into any neighbourhoods besides
Dahiyet al-Assad.
“They’re using Grad missiles and car bombs
and are supported by foreign fighters in
their ranks,” he said.
Those waging the assault include Aleppo
rebels and reinforcements from Idlib
province to the west, among them the
jihadist Fateh al-Sham Front, which
changed its name from Al-Nusra Front after
breaking ties with Al-Qaeda.
Aleppo’s front line runs through the heart
of the city, dividing rebels in the east from
government troops in the west.
In late September, government troops
launched their own assault to recapture all
of the eastern rebel-controlled territory.
It was backed by fierce air strikes from
Russia, which launched its own air war in
2015 to back President Bashar al-Assad’s
forces.
That onslaught spurred massive
international criticism of both Moscow and
Damascus.
Last week, Russia implemented a three-day
“humanitarian pause” intended to allow
civilians and surrendering rebels to leave
Aleppo’s east, but few did so.
Moscow says it will continue a halt on air
strikes over Aleppo, in place since October
18.
The Russian military said Friday it had
asked President Vladimir Putin for
authorisation to resume the raids.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
Putin “considers it inappropriate at the
current moment”, adding that the president
thought it necessary to “continue the
humanitarian pause” in Aleppo.

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Iraqi militiamen battle IS southwest of Mosul

Iraqi army soldiers patrol outside a refugee
camp in Qayyarah, south of Mosul, on
October 29, 2016. Iraqi paramilitary forces
launched an operation to cut the Islamic
State group’s supply lines between its Mosul
bastion and neighbouring Syria, opening a
new front in the nearly two-week-old
offensive.
BULENT KILIC / AFP
Iraqi paramilitary forces battled the Islamic
State group south-west of Mosul on Sunday,
the second day of an operation to cut
jihadist supply lines between the city and
neighbouring Syria.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and
Kurdish peshmerga fighters have been
advancing on Mosul from the north, east
and south after the launch on October 17 of
a vast offensive to retake IS’s last
stronghold in the country.
After standing largely on the sidelines in
the first days of the assault, forces from the
Hashed al-Shaabi — a paramilitary umbrella
organisation dominated by Iran-backed
Shiite militias — began a push on Saturday
towards the west of Mosul.
The ultimate aim is the recapture of Tal
Afar, a town west of the city, and the
cutting of jihadist supply lines between
Mosul and Syria, but the Hashed still has
significant ground to cover.
In a series of statements on Sunday, the
Hashed’s media office said it had retaken
two villages, cleared another area and
entered several more.
Al-Imraini, one of the two villages the
Hashed said it recaptured, is 45 kilometres
(27 miles) from Tal Afar, according to the
media office.
The drive toward Tal Afar could bring the
fighting perilously close to the ancient city
of Hatra, a UNESCO world heritage site, and
the ruins of Nimrud — two archeological
sites that have previously been vandalised
by IS.
The involvement of Shiite militias in the
Mosul operation has been a source of
contention, though the Hashed’s top
commanders insist they do not plan to
enter the largely Sunni city.
Concerns over militias
Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab politicians have
opposed their involvement, as has Turkey
which has a military presence east of Mosul
despite repeated demands by Baghdad for
the forces to be withdrawn.
Relations between the Hashed and the US-
led coalition fighting IS are also tense, but
the paramilitaries enjoy widespread support
among members of Iraq’s Shiite majority.
The Hashed has been a key force in Iraq’s
campaign to retake areas seized by IS in
mid-2014, when the jihadists took control of
large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared a
cross-border “caliphate”.
But the paramilitaries have been repeatedly
accused of human rights violations during
the course of the war against IS, including
summary killings, kidnappings and
destruction of property.
Tal Afar was a Shiite-majority town of
mostly ethnic Turkmens before the Sunni
extremists of IS overran it in 2014, and its
recapture is a main goal of Shiite militia
forces.
The Sunday fighting came a day after Iraq
announced the recapture of Al-Shura, an
area south of Mosul with a long history as a
militant bastion that has been the target of
fighting for more than a week.
Iraq’s Joint Operations Command
announced “the complete liberation of Al-
Shura,” saying that security forces
advancing from four different sides had
linked up in the area, which is north of
Qayyarah base, the main hub for the
southern front.
Over 17,600 displaced
The US-led coalition — which has been
assisting federal forces and Kurdish
peshmerga with air strikes, training and
advisers for two years — said Friday that
Iraqi forces were observing a pause in the
two-week-old offensive.
In Bartalla, a Christian town just east of
Mosul, army and counter-terrorism forces
were consolidating their positions,
unloading cases of weapons from trucks
and organising their ammunition stocks.
More than 17,600 people have fled their
homes toward government-held areas since
the Mosul operation began, the
International Organization for Migration
said on Sunday.
Numbers are expected to soar as Iraqi
forces close in on the city, which is home
to more than a million people.
The UN says there have been credible
reports of IS carrying out mass executions
in the city and seizing tens of thousands of
people for use as human shields.
IS’s “depraved, cowardly strategy is to
attempt to use the presence of civilians to
render certain points, areas or military
forces immune from military operations”,
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.
The jihadists are “effectively using tens of
thousands of women, men and children as
human shields,” he said.
The UN cited reports indicating IS has
forcibly taken civilians into Mosul, killing
those who resist or who were previously
members of Iraqi security forces.
It said more than 250 people were executed
in just two days earlier this week.

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Boko Haram recruiting youth to supply fuel in Borno – NSCDC

The Borno command of the Nigeria Security and
Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) on Sunday raised
alarm that youths in Maiduguri are now being
recruited by Boko Haram to supply fuel in
Gamboru Ngala area of the state.
The Commandant of the NSCDC, Mr Ibrahim
Abdullahi made the revelation in an interview with
the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Maiduguri.
Abdullahi said the command had intercepted a
reasonable quantity of fuel packaged in a carton
of groundnut oil, bound for Gamboru Ngala local
government area in the state.
He said since Boko Haram are running out of food
and other supplies, they have employed all sorts of
means to replenish stock.
“The command had so far arrested a suspect, who
confessed that he did not know the owner of the
consignment that he was asked to deliver to the
insurgents trapped in Gamboru Ngala.
“He later confessed that each of the five litres of
fuel is sold at N15,000 to the insurgents.
“You will recall we raised the alarm that some
agents of Boko Haram were transporting stolen
cows from Mafa, Kalabalge and Bomboshe axis in
the state to cattle market in Maiduguri.
“The Boko Haram usually send the cows to their
agents in the city who will then sell them and
repatriate either cash or fuel to the terrorists.
“We are therefore warning the people especially
drivers not to accept or convey any form of
message that looks suspicious to any one, especially
along the Gamboru axis.
“We are also warning the drivers, park owners and
union groups to always check their passengers and
their luggages to avoid transporting bad elements
that would cause havoc in the society.
According to him, the command is working with
other relevant security agencies to bring all the
collaborators of terrorists to book.

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Ondo guber: Jimoh Ibrahim is INEC’s candidate, not PDP –

The Senator Ahmed Makarfi-led faction of the
Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has rejected the
list released by the Independent National Electoral
Commission, INEC, which recognized Jimoh Ibrahim
as the flag bearer of the party in the
forthcoming guber election.
The faction said that it would only work with Mr.
Eyitayo Jegede (SAN) as its candidate in the
November 26 governorship election in Ondo State.
Spokesperson for the faction, Prince Dayo
Adeyeye, in a statement in Abuja on Friday said
Jimoh was representing INEC while Jegede
represents the party.
Adeyeye alleged that the process that threw up
Ibrahim was illegal.
He said, “We reject in its totality the
announcement of INEC of the list of candidates
for the Ondo State governorship election on which
the names of Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim and Alabi
Omotayo as candidate and running mate of our
party were published respectively.

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