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Tag: insurgents
Suicide Bomber Kills 48 High School Students At Nigeria School

Suicide Bomber Kills 48 High School Students At Nigeria School

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

Dozens of schoolboys were killed Monday in a suicide bomb attack on a high school in the town of Potiskum in Nigeria’s Yobe state, Nigerian police confirmed Monday.

Monday’s attack happened at about 8 a.m. as students gathered for school assembly, according to local media.

Dozens were killed and injured, with 48 killed in the attack, carried out by an attacker disguised in a school uniform, according to AP. A police spokesman, Emmanuel Ojukwu, said 47 were dead and 79 injured.

“Many bodies of students are presently on the ground in pools of blood. We are running home now,” an unnamed witness told Nigeria’s Premium Times newspaper.

“We were waiting for the principal to address us, around 7:30 a.m., when we heard a deafening sound and I was blown off my feet, people started screaming and running, I saw blood all over my body,” 17-year-old student Musa Ibrahim Yahaya told AP, speaking in a hospital.

Since 2013, multiple attacks on schools and colleges in Yobe state in Nigeria’s troubled north-east have targeted schoolboys, students and teachers, often killing dozens at a time. The attacks are believed to be the work of the extremist Islamist militia, Boko Haram, which is bitterly opposed to Western-style secular education.

Boko Haram emerged about a decade ago, fighting for an Islamic state, but has stepped up attacks in recent years, killing thousands of Nigerians in the north east. Nigeria’s military, often accused of fleeing attacks or abandoning its posts, has been criticized for failing to halt the insurgency.

In north eastern Nigeria, extremists have also abducted hundreds of women and girls, including 279 abducted from a school in Chibok town earlier this year.

Nigerian authorities have repeatedly claimed progress in the fight against insurgents in the northeast of the country, only to be proven wrong. Boko Haram, or Islamist militia splinter groups have seized control of dozens of towns and villages in neighboring Borno and Adamawa states in recent months.

Last month, Nigerian authorities claimed to have reached a ceasefire deal with Boko Haram, but attacks and abductions have continued. A video purporting to be from the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau recently repudiated any deal and said the Chibok girls had been married off to fighters. (The authenticity of the video hasn’t been established.)

In June last year, gunmen suspected to be from the extremist Islamist militia, Boko Haram, invaded a government high school in Damaturu, the Yobe state capital, shooting down eight boys and a teacher in the dining room. A month later, gunmen attacked a boys boarding school in Mamudo village, Yobe state, killing 42 people. The victims were shot to death or burned alive in their dormitories.

In September last year, gunmen invaded a dormitory at an agricultural college in the Gujba district of Yobe state, in the early hours of the morning and shot dozens of students in their beds, killing at least 42 students.

In February this year, gunmen attacked a school in Buni Yadi, Yobe state. They sent female students away, before killing 59 boys. The attackers threw petrol bombs into dormitories were students were sleeping, and sprayed the rooms with gunfire. Some students had their throats cut as they tried to flee.

Monday’s attack follows a suicide attack last week in Potiskum on a Shiite religious procession, killing 30 people.

AFP Photo

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Ukraine Ratifies Landmark EU Pact, Offers Rebels Self-Rule

Ukraine Ratifies Landmark EU Pact, Offers Rebels Self-Rule

Kiev (AFP) — Ukrainian lawmakers ratified a landmark EU pact Tuesday that steers the ex-Soviet state closer to the West, and pledged autonomy for pro-Russian rebels waging war in the east.

But Russia signaled it had no intention of backing down in the most serious East-West standoff since the Cold war, with the announcement it plans to boost its troop presence in annexed Crimea.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said it was a “priority” to send reinforcements to the Black Sea peninsula because of what he described as the escalating Ukraine crisis and the buildup of foreign troops on its border.

The European and Ukrainian parliaments earlier held simultaneous votes to approve the political and economic association agreement that lies at the heart of the country’s worst crisis since independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Lawmakers in Kiev voted to grant self-rule to the separatist east and offer amnesty to rebel fighters under a peace plan drawn up 11 days ago to halt the bloody five-month conflict.

– ‘First decisive step’ –

Insurgent leaders reacted cautiously to the moves, although they insist they want nothing less than full independence in the industrial regions that have been outside Kiev’s control since April.

Poroshenko said the adoption of the 1,200-page association agreement with the European Union was Ukraine’s first step towards membership of the 28-nation bloc.

“Tell me, who will now dare to shut Ukraine’s doors to Europe?” he said before the unanimous vote by all 355 MPs present.

“Who will be against our future membership of the EU, towards which today we are taking our first but very decisive step?”

European parliament president Martin Schulz described the ratification as a “historic moment” that met the “dreams of the people who fought for democracy” in Ukraine.

But the occasion was muted by a decision to bow to Russian pressure and delay until 2016 the implementation of a free trade deal that would pull Ukraine out of a rival Kremlin-led customs union.

The rejection of the broad EU pact by Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych in November triggered the bloody chain of events that led to his ouster in February, Russia’s subsequent seizure of Crimea and the unleashing of the revolt in the east.

The conflict has now claimed almost 2,900 lives and sent at least 600,000 people fleeing their homes, according to U.N. figures.

Russia’s denials of involvement have not spared it from waves of punishing Western sanctions that have left President Vladimir Putin more isolated and acting less predictably than at any stage of his dominant 15-year reign.

It was not immediately clear what prompted Shoigu’s announcement, although U.S.-led war games began in western Ukraine on Monday that are meant to send a blunt message to Russia about having any thoughts of pushing its troops deeper into the former Soviet state.

NATO earlier this month also unveiled plans to boost its forces in eastern Europe in response to Russia’s “aggression”.

Russia already has tens of thousands of soldiers in Crimea but denies NATO charges it sent more than 1,000 elite troops to help the militias launch a surprise counter-offensive in August.

– Glimmer of hope –

But a European-mediated truce that Kiev and Moscow clinched on September 5 has offered the first significant glimmer of hope that the crisis in Ukraine may be abating.

However, both sides accuse the other of repeated violations and officials said Tuesday that five civilians and three Ukrainian soldiers had been killed around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk in the past 24 hours.

Under the terms of the truce, lawmakers adopted “special status” legislation that offers three years of limited self-rule to the coal and steel belt known as the Donbass that generates a quarter of Ukraine’s exports.

– Amnesty for fighters –

Poroshenko argued Monday that his plan offered the best way out of the crisis because it guarantees “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of our state”.

But some political leaders in Kiev and especially members of right-wing groups that played a small but instrumental role in the protests that forced out the old regime, have questioned whether Poroshenko is ceding too much to Moscow.

The legislation calls for local polls in Donetsk and Lugansk in December and allows local legislatures to set up their own police forces and name judges and prosecutors.

Crucially, it also guarantees the right for Russian to be used in all state institutions — a particularly sensitive issue in the mainly Russian-speaking regions.

Another law also grants an amnesty to both the insurgents and Ukrainian government forces over their actions during the conflict.

Amnesty International has accused fighters on both sides of abuses that might be classified as war crimes.

Andrei Purgin, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, responded to the legislation saying bluntly that Donbass “no longer has anything to do with Ukraine”.

But he also said the rebels would “carefully study” the legislation, describing it as a “positive signal because it marks Kiev’s return to reality”.

AFP Photo/Anatolii Stepanov

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Ukraine President Says 1,200 Captives Held By Rebels Now Free

Ukraine President Says 1,200 Captives Held By Rebels Now Free

Mariupol (Ukraine) (AFP) — Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced on Monday that 1,200 captives held by pro-Russian rebels had been freed.

“In the past four days, we have managed to free 1,200 of our prisoners,” Interfax-Ukraine quoted Poroshenko as saying as he made a visit of solidarity to the flashpoint southeastern port city of Mariupol.

It was not immediately clear if the release was related to a prisoner swap the warring parties agreed to under a truce deal hammered out on Friday aimed at ending five months of bloody conflict.

Poroshenko tweeted on his arrival in Mariupol that the insurgents began shelling checkpoints outside the city after learning that he intended to visit for the first time since the fighting erupted in April.

“They thought they would frighten me. But no-one is afraid of them!” said Poroshenko, dressed in military fatigues for his visit to the only major city in the eastern conflict zone still under government control.

“It is our land. We will not give it up to anyone.”

Mariupol, a major port and heavy industry hub on the Sea of Azov, has been in the sights of rebels apparently seeking to carve out a land corridor between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula.

AFP Photo/Philippe Desmazes

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Ukraine And Pro-Russian Rebels Agree Ceasefire

Ukraine And Pro-Russian Rebels Agree Ceasefire

By Tatiana Kalinovskaya and Amelie Herenstein

Minsk (AFP) — Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels signed a ceasefire Friday in their five month conflict, which has plunged relations between Russia and the West into their worst crisis since the Cold War.

“A preliminary protocol to the ceasefire agreement has been signed in Minsk. This protocol should enter into force on Friday,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on his official Twitter account.

OSCE representatives mediating the talks in the Belarussian capital said the deal would take effect at 1500 GMT. Rebels confirmed this.

The deal hammered out in Minsk, Belarus, followed a lightning rebel counter-offensive in southeastern Ukraine that Western powers say was spearheaded by regular Russian troops, raising fears of a wider confrontation on Europe’s eastern flank.

It was not immediately clear whether the truce would be enough to stave off a threatened new round of Western sanctions against Russia over claims — which Moscow denies — that it is stirring up war in the former Soviet state.

In the tense hours leading up to the deal, fighting raged on the edge of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, the latest flashpoint in a conflict that has claimed around 2,600 lives since mid-April and driven more than half a million people from their homes.

There are also numerous questions that remain unanswered over the longterm viability of a peace deal.

The ceasefire could leave the political status of Ukraine’s economically-vital east uncertain and expose Poroshenko to charges from some in Ukraine that he has surrendered to Russian pressure.

Rebel leaders who have been battling Kiev’s rule since April — soon after Russian troops seized control of the Crimea region in Ukraine — also say they remain set on their goal of splitting from Kiev’s rule.

Another stumbling block to resolving the conflict is that Kiev insists on Russian troops withdrawing from Ukrainian territory, while Moscow denies it has any troops in the country.

“The peace plan must include a ceasefire, the withdrawal of the Russian army, bandits and terrorists, and the re-establishment of the border,” Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting.

Yatsenyuk also said the deal would have to be supported by the United States and European Union as Kiev could “not manage with Russia on our own.”

– Rapid reaction force –

According to a seven-point ceasefire plan unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week after telephone talks with Poroshenko, both sides must halt “offensive operations,” while government troops must retreat from much of the eastern industrial regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The deal came as NATO leaders reaffirmed unanimous backing for Ukraine at a two-day summit which has focused largely on Russia’s new expansionist threat.

They agreed to set up a rapid reaction force as part of efforts to reassure allies rattled by the Ukrainian crisis and rising Islamic extremism.

EU and U.S. officials had earlier said that further sanctions would be announced in response to a major escalation of Moscow’s military support for the rebels.

But British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said that the West could “look at lifting sanctions off” if the truce is sustained.

Poroshenko had vowed after his May election to crush the rebellion. That plan appeared to be on the brink of success until late last month when rebels — or what NATO reports were at least 1,000 Russian soldiers with tanks — began to deal a series of bloody defeats to Ukrainian forces.

The Kremlin accuses the Western military alliance of concocting the evidence of Russian troop movements in order to expand its own presence along Russia’s western frontier.

On the ground, “the situation is quite tense,” said a fighter with the pro-Kiev volunteer Azov Battalion who identified himself only as “Zhivchick.” He said there had been attacks by rebels on several checkpoints early Friday.

– ‘Safe zone’ –

AFP correspondents also reported overnight shelling that killed five civilians in the main rebel bastion of Donetsk, a city that government forces had all but encircled until being beaten back by separatists last week

The deal could leave the rebels — fighting what they claim is anti-Russian discrimination by Poroshenko and his more nationalist government — in effective control of an economically important region that accounts for one-sixth of Ukraine’s population and a whopping quarter percent of its exports.

The Kremlin account of the ceasefire plan said it requires both sides to halt offensive actions and for “Ukrainian armed forces units to withdraw to a distance that would make it impossible to fire on populated areas.”

The blueprint also establishes a “safe zone” that one rebel negotiator said should enable the militias to hold on to territories stretching to the very edges of the two separatist districts.

It also calls for a prisoner swap and for observers from the OSCE European security group to monitor the porous border.

This story has been updated.

AFP Photo/Francisco Leong

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