Six In The Morning Monday November 3

Islamic State militants again massacre fellow Sunnis in Iraq

By NABIH BULOS, LAURA KING contact the reporter

By all accounts, the killings have been summary, brutal and public: At least 200 members of a western Iraqi tribe that has defied the militants of Islamic State have been lined up and shot dead in recent days, including dozens whose executions came to light Sunday.

The victims of the spasm of killings — in apparent retribution for the Sunni Muslim tribe’s fight against Islamic State, which is also made up of Sunnis — are said to include women and children.

The latest mass killings came Saturday evening in the town of Ras al-Maa, north of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, tribal leader Naim Kaood said. He said 67 people had died.

For Iraq, Kobani reinforcements 'only temporary'

Iraqi Kurdish fighters hope to aid their fellow Kurds in preventing the "Islamic State" from capturing Kobani. But an Iraqi politician says the fighters' involvement in the besieged border city is on a short-term basis.

Iraqi Kurdish forces currently bolstering Syrian Kurds battling "Islamic State" militants in the city of Kobani will only stay temporarily, an Iraqi politician has said.

"Our role is to back up the people who are struggling on the ground in Kobani," said Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government. He added that the involvement of Iraqi Kurds in the fighting is aimed at the short-term goal of aiding fellow Kurds currently besieged by IS in the city.

"I don't…expect major changes in the political equation of the region as a whole," he said.

A Kurdish peshmerga fighter said Sunday that the Iraqi Kurds were involved in heavy clashes on the southeastern outskirts of Kobani in a village called Sheran. There was no word on potential casualties in the fighting.

Syrian rebels armed by US defect to jihadists

November 3, 2014 - 4:24PM

Ruth Sherlock

Gaziantep, south-east Turkey: Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.

The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State group.

For the past six months, the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including Grad rockets and Tow anti-tank missiles.

But on Saturday night, Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to the Nusra Front, when fighters from the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province. It came a day after the Nusra Front dealt a final blow to the SRF, capturing Deir Sinbal, the home town of the group's leader, Jamal Marouf.

Jerusalem lurches towards open conflict over Temple Mount (+video)

An assassination attempt of a rabbi, a provocative visit by an Israeli MP, and a Palestinian leader saying Israeli moves are tantamount to a "declaration of war" have Jerusalem at its most perilous moment since the end of the second intifada. 

By Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer

JERUSALEM — Today Moshe Feiglin walked on the holiest site in Judaism and posed for photos in front of the Dome of the Rock, a revered Muslim shrine that rests where many believe the Jewish Temple once stood. In doing so the Israeli member of parliament fueled growing Muslim-Jewish tensions around Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which in the past week saw an assassination attempt against a right-wing rabbi and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas call Israel's decision to temporarily close the site a "declaration of war."

Mr. Feiglin's action was a direct challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call this morning for parliament to exercise “responsibility and restraint" around the Temple Mount complex.

“The Temple Mount is the most sensitive kilometer on earth,” Mr. Netanyahu said, as tensions in Jerusalem reached an intensity not seen in a decade. “It is easy to start a religious fire, but much more difficult to extinguish it.”

Army clears protesters, fires warning shots in Burkina Faso

   

By Nadoun Coulibaly and Joe Penney

 Burkina Faso's army cleared thousands of protesters from the capital and opened fire at state TV headquarters on Sunday, killing one person, as it sought to restore order following the resignation of President Blaise Compaore two days ago.

Compaore's 27 years in charge of the landlocked former French colony ended abruptly on Friday after two days of mass protests aimed at thwarting his bid to change the constitution to extend his rule.

The army then selected Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida as transitional leader, overriding an earlier claim by the army chief of staff.

Is China's grand ethnic experiment working?

By David McKenzie, CNN

November 3, 2014 -- Updated 0219 GMT (1019 HKT)

In a gleaming classroom at Chong Hua High School in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin, students peer at onion slices under microscopes. Their biology teacher calls on Abdurrahman Mamat to explain what he sees.

"Plasmolysis," he replies in perfect Mandarin.

Mamat is Uyghur, a mostly Muslim minority from China's far-west Xinjiang region, and he is thousands of miles from home.

How he ended up in this mostly Han Chinese school is the largely untold story of a grand Communist Party experiment.