Friday, May 28, 2021

Six In The Morning Friday 28 May 2021

 

How a deadly raid shows al Qaeda retains global reach under Taliban 'protection'


Updated 0551 GMT (1351 HKT) May 28, 2021

A raid on a remote village in Afghanistan kills an ageing al Qaeda leader wanted by the FBI. Messages to the group's cells around the world are seized. Two drone strikes on militants in northwest Syria swiftly follow.

Details of a little-publicized October raid targeting a senior al Qaeda militant, Husam Abd-al-Rauf, in the Afghan province of Ghazni have revealed how the terror group continues to thrive in Afghanistan under Taliban protection, and remains connected to its other franchises across the globe, according to accounts provided by Afghan intelligence officials to CNN.


Number of EU citizens refused entry to UK soars despite Covid crisis

Post-Brexit rules allow travel without visas, but border officials have wide powers to exclude visitors

The number of EU citizens being prevented from entering the UK has soared over the past three months despite the reduction in travel because of Covid, according to Home Office figures.

A total of 3,294 EU citizens were prevented from entering the UK, even though post-Brexit rules mean they are allowed to visit the country without visas. That compares with 493 EU citizens in the first quarter of last year, when air traffic was 20 times higher.

Visitors, however, can be stopped or detained and expelled if they are suspected of travelling to Britain to work or settle without meeting the new visa requirements.


The doctors ordered to battle Covid in silence


Possibly enduring the toughest lockdown anywhere in the world, Kashmir’s doctors and patients give a rare look into the buckling healthcare system of the most heavily militarised region on Earth. Namita Singh reports in the first of a series of dispatches from Srinagar

I don’t want to die right now,” were the last words of 28-year-old Sheikh Sumaira as she gasped for air in a Covid ward in Kashmir’s Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital. On 21 May, after her oxygen levels dipped below 40 and with her family still scrambling to find her an ICU bed, she took her final breath.

Sumaira’s family say she was admitted to one of the biggest and best-equipped government hospitals in Srinagar, the largest city in India’s Jammu and Kashmir, just two days after testing positive for the virus. Yet as her condition sharply deteriorated, doctors said there were no ventilators left and told the family it would be up to them to secure one.


Germany officially recognizes colonial-era Namibia genocide

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany had caused "immeasurable suffering" to the Herero and Nama people, in what is now Namibia, in the early part of the 20th century.

Germany on Friday formally recognized as genocide the crimes committed by its colonial troops at the beginning of the 20th century against the Herero and Nama people in what is now Namibia.

It's the first time that Berlin has recognized the attrocities committed, with the declaration coming after five years of negotiations.

What did Germany say?

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) said in a statement that as a "gesture of recognition of the immeasurable suffering" Germany caused, it would set up a fund amounting to €1.1 billion (US $ 1.34 billion).

Nigeria: Surviving Boko Haram

By:Moïse GOMIS|Yann OLLIVIER|Pierre-Olivier FRANÇOIS

Borno state, in northeastern Nigeria, has been ravaged by a deadly conflict between the military and Boko Haram jihadists for more than a decade. Last autumn, the authorities announced that they wanted to close the Borno refugee camps as they claimed the insurgency was almost eradicated. However, in recent months, deadly attacks have taken place on the outskirts of the regional capital Maiduguri. Our team met some of the two million displaced people who have fled the fighting.

Fatima, 26, was forcibly married to a Boko Haram commander. She did so to prevent her son from being turned into a child soldier by the Islamist sect. But since then, her family has disowned her and called her a "Boko Haram wife". Falmata, 50, saw Boko Haram put a price on her head simply for being a businesswoman. She barely survived, but lost everything in her hometown of Bama, and doesn't know how she will feed her five children and three orphaned nephews. As for 70-year-old Mala, he survived a recent massacre of peasants but hasn't dared to go back to the fields since.


‘Terrorising a generation’: Israel arresting Palestinian children

Palestinians, legal experts and activists note a worrying shift in the number of children being arrested as police announce ‘Operation Law and Order’.

Thirteen-year-old Mohammed Saadi was kidnapped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with a gun to his head by five men in his hometown of Umm al-Fahem.

It was May 20 and Saadi was among thousands who gathered for a funeral procession held for Mohammed Kiwan, a 17-year-old boy who was shot by Israeli police a week earlier.

At the time, tensions escalated in occupied East Jerusalem over Israel’s planned forced expulsion of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and Israel’s military assault on Gaza, leading thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel to protest on a near-daily basis across towns and cities in Israel.





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