Yemen conflict: UN criticises Saudi civilian bombings
- 10 May 2015
- Middle East
The United Nations representative in Yemen has said that the Saudi-led coalition is bombing "effectively, trapped civilians".
Civilians in the northern city of Saada are struggling to flee Saudi-led coalition air strikes targeting Houthi rebels, reports and aid workers say.
The UN also warned that the indiscriminate bombing of populated areas is against international law.
Air strikes have killed at least 1,400, more than half civilians, the UN says.
Air strikes also targeted the home of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the capital, Sanaa, early on Sunday. The former president is said to be unharmed.
Mr Saleh is allied with the Houthi rebels - who overran Sanaa from their base in north Yemen last year and now control much of the country.
EU considers military attacks on targets in Libya to stop migrant boats
Member states drawing up strategy to hit vessels used by human traffickers for dash across Mediterranean as Brussels pushes for EU-wide refugee deal
The European Union has drawn up plans for military attacks in Libya to try to curb the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean by targeting the trafficking networks. It is to launch a bid on Monday to secure a UN mandate for armed action in Libya’s territorial waters.
Britain was drafting a UN security council resolution to mandate the mission, said senior officials in Brussels, which would fall under Italian command, have the participation of around 10 EU countries and could also drag the Nato alliance in.
On Monday Federica Mogherini, the EU’s chief foreign and security policy co-ordinator, is to brief the UN security council on the plans which aim to “destroy the business model of the traffickers” by targeting the vessels used to send tens of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East on the short but highly risky voyage from the Libyan coast to the shores of southern Italy.
Last great regions of pristine wilderness from Asia to Amazon under threat from massive road-building projects, scientist warns
Waiting to get out — and in
Migrants from Africa and the Middle East usually aim not for the first port of call in Europe, but for the wealthy economies of northern Europe. For many, the intention to reach the UK stalls at the key illegal entry point of Calais.
by David Styan
Though immigration, and the UK’s economic dependence on it, is a main concern in this month’s election, it does not extend to the safety of clandestine migrants trying to enter and cross Europe, or the long-term future of European asylum and refugee legislation. Rhetoric on migration is dominated by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), with its campaign to severely restrict all immigration and leave the European Union. There are already tighter border checks, more security and associated violence, with EU and French authorities implementing Britain’s frontline controls. Such measures will increase, whoever wins the election.
Although, after over 1,000 migrant deaths last month, the UK government may reconsider its responsibility for saving lives at sea (1), it believes the EU should police its Mediterranean borders; and British politicians insist it is France’s job to repel migrants congregating en route to the UK.
Crime-bashing ex-police chief on Mexico border gunned down
McClatchy Foreign Staff
MEXICO CITY — A gunman Friday shot and seriously wounded a renowned former police chief who battled organized crime in two of Mexico’s most violent border cities, most recently in Ciudad Juarez on the Texas border where Friday’s attack occurred.
Gunmen in a trailing vehicle pulled alongside the parked white Jeep Commander of retired army Lt. Col. Julián Leyzaola shortly after noon, and one of them opened fire on the retired chief, spokesman Arturo Sandoval of the Chihuahua state attorney’s office said. Leyzaola was hit once in the neck and once in the back, Sandoval said in a telephone interview. His wife was in the vehicle but was not hurt.
Leyzaola, who brought a successful law and order campaign to both Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, was in “delicate but stable condition” at the city’s Angeles Hospital, Sandoval said.
The victim and his wife were parked outside a money exchange house in central Ciudad Juarez, preparing to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, when the attack occurred, Chihuahua state deputy prosecutor Jorge González Nicolás told reporters outside the hospital.West Bank village challenges Israel's iron grip on planning
By Hazel Ward
AD-DEIRAT (Palestinian Territories) It was a large house with three floors and freshly painted pale blue shutters that had just been built for a family of 17.
But within a few hours of work by a pair of Israeli bulldozers, all that was left was a mountain of rubble and twisted metal.
Like more than half of the homes in Ad Deirat-Rifaiyya -- a village of 1,800 residents on a windswept hillside in the southern West Bank -- the house was built on land owned by the villagers but without Israel's approval.
Left without a roof over their heads and unwilling to try building again, the family moved away to rented accommodation in a nearby town.
It is a scenario that plays out hundreds of times a year across most of the West Bank, where Israel has made it all-but-impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits.
The result is wide-scale "illegal" construction, which is then demolished by Israel in a policy that has drawn widespread condemnation.
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