Monday, August 25, 2014

Ferguson

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Israeli airstrike levels 7-story building in Gaza


Israeli airstrikes leveled a seven-floor office building and severely damaged a two-story shopping center in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, signaling a new escalation in seven weeks of fighting with Hamas.
The strikes in the southern town of Rafah came just hours after Israel bombed a residential tower in Gaza City, collapsing the 12-story building with 44 apartments.
A total of eight people were killed in Sunday's airstrikes. Israel said one of the dead was a Hamas official involved in handling the group's finances.
The targeting of large buildings appears to be part of a new tactic by Israel. Over the weekend, the army began warning Gaza residents in automated phone calls that it would target buildings harboring "terrorist infrastructure" and that they should stay away.
A senior military official confirmed that Israel has a policy of striking at buildings containing Hamas operational centers or those from which military activities are launched. The official said each strike required prior approval from military lawyers and is carried out only after the local population is warned.
However, he said, there was now a widening of locations that the military can target. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to discuss the matter with reporters.
Speaking ahead of Israel's weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Gaza residents to keep their distance from Hamas militants.
"I call on the people of Gaza to immediately evacuate any structure that Hamas is using to commit acts of terror," he said. "Every one of these structures is a target for us."
In the 12-story apartment tower, the target was a fourth-floor apartment where Hamas ran an operations center, according to Israeli media. In the past, Israel has carried out pinpoint strikes, targeting apartments in high-rises with missiles, while leaving the buildings standing.
The military declined immediate comment when asked why it collapsed the entire building instead of striking a specific apartment.
Meanwhile, Gaza militants continued to fire rockets and mortar shells at Israel, including at least 10 on Sunday, one of which wounded three people on the Israeli side of the main Gaza crossing, the military said.
Israel's Defense Ministry said the three wounded were civilian drivers waiting to transport wounded Gazans who had been brought into Israel for treatment in hospitals. The Erez crossing is used by journalists, aid workers and Palestinians with Israeli permits to enter or leave Gaza.
In southern Israel, hundreds of people attended the funeral of 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman, who was killed Friday in a mortar attack. The mourners included Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin.
Elsewhere, five rockets were fired from Syria and fell in open areas in northern Israel. It was not immediately clear whether they were fired by pro-government forces or rebel groups.
Amid persistent violence, Egypt has urged Israel and the Palestinians to resume indirect talks in Cairo on a durable cease-fire, but stopped short of issuing invitations.
Several rounds of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas have collapsed, along with temporary cease-fires that accompanied them. The gaps between Israel and the Islamic militant group on a new border deal for blockaded Gaza remain vast, and there's no sign either is willing to budge.
The Israeli military said it had carried out some 20 strikes on Gaza since midnight Saturday. Gaza police and medical officials reported eight fatalities.
The seven-story Zourab building bombed by Israeli aircraft early Sunday housed an office of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry. Witnesses said the building in Rafah was leveled and that the strikes caused severe damage to nearby shops, homes and cars. It was not immediately clear if anyone was wounded or killed.
Another strike hit a nearby shopping center with dozens of shops, sparking a fire that gutted the two-story building and wounding seven people. After daybreak Sunday, smoke was still rising from the site as shop owners inspected the damage. Windows and doors had been blown out in nearby buildings.
The military said the two buildings were attacked because they housed facilities linked to militants, but did not provide details. Twenty-two people were wounded in Saturday's strike on the tower in Gaza City.
Palestinian health official Ashraf al-Kidra, who confirmed the casualty figures for the strikes, said two people were killed in a pair of airstrikes near a coastal road on Sunday, including one on a group of people coming out of a mosque after morning prayers.
Two more fatalities were registered when a motorcycle following a car evacuating the wounded from the strikes was targeted, he said.
Another man was killed in an airstrike on a car, and an 18-month-old infant and a 17-year-old were killed in an airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza City. Three people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, police said.
Palestinians identified the man traveling in the car as Mohammed al-Ghoul. Israel said al-Ghoul was responsible for Hamas' financial transfers for "terror funds." It did not elaborate, and the claim could not immediately be verified.
The U.N. estimates that more than 17,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged beyond repair since the war began on July 8. In some of the attacks, family homes with three or four floors were pulverized.
However, the weekend strikes marked the first time large buildings were toppled.
Since the fighting began, Israel has launched some 5,000 airstrikes at Gaza, while Gaza militants have fired close to 4,000 rockets and mortars, according to the Israeli military.
More than 2,100 Palestinians, including close to 500 children, have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials and U.N. figures. Israel has lost 64 soldiers and four civilians.
Israel says it is targeting sites linked to militants, including rocket launchers, command centers and weapons depots. The U.N. says about three-fourths of the Palestinians killed have been civilians.
With the war showing no signs of winding down, educational officials in Gaza said they were delaying the start of both U.N. and government-run schools. Classes in both were supposed to begin Sunday.
The U.N. said it would begin a gradual back to school program this week "to help students and teachers start to transition into a new school year."
The nearly two-month Gaza war stems from the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teens in the West Bank by Hamas operatives in June, which triggered a massive Israeli arrest campaign in the West Bank, followed by an increase in rocket fire from Gaza.

Joint Chiefs chairman says ISIS not a direct threat to US, won't recommend Syria strikes yet


The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that he would not recommend U.S. military airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria until he determines that they have become a direct threat to the U.S.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, speaking to reporters on board a military plane traveling to Afghanistan, said Sunday that he believes the Sunni insurgent group formerly known as ISIS is more of a regional threat and is not currently plotting or planning attacks against the U.S. or Europe.
ISIS has repeatedly made threats to attack the U.S. through social and conventional media. Earlier this month, in a Vice News documentary, a spokesman for the group vowed to "raise the flag of Allah in the White House." The group took over Iraq's second largest city, Mosul, in June, and has since declared an Islamic state, or caliphate, in a swath of territory covering northeastern Syria and northern and western Iraq. U.S. airstrikes and a new policy of direct military aid to Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have served as a check on a threatened ISIS advance toward Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. 
On Sunday, Dempsey contrasted ISIS to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has plotted and attempted attacks against the U.S. and Europe. As a result, the U.S. has conducted counterterrorism strikes against the group within Yemen.
Dempsey said that so far, there is no sign that the Islamic State militants are engaged in "active plotting against the homeland, so it's different than that which we see in Yemen."
"I can tell you with great clarity and certainty that if that threat existed inside of Syria that it would certainly be my strong recommendation that we would deal with it," said Dempsey. "I have every confidence that the president of the United States would deal with it."
Dempsey also told reporters that he believes that key allies in the region -- including Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia -- will join the U.S. in quashing the Islamic State group.
"I think ISIS has been so brutal, and has wrapped itself in a radical religious legitimacy that clearly threatens everybody I just mentioned, that I think they will be willing partners," said Dempsey, who added that those regional partners could come together and squeeze the Islamic State group "from multiple directions in order to initially disrupt and eventually defeat them. It has to happen with them, much less with us."
Up to now, when asked about airstrikes inside Syria, Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have said all options remain on the table. But so far there has been no broader authorization for such operations.
The Obama administration has authorized airstrikes within Iraq to protect U.S. personnel and facilities and to help Iraqi and Kurdish forces assist refugees driven from their homes by the Islamic State. Most of the recent strikes have been around the Mosul Dam, which Islamic militants had taken, but it is now back in the hands of the Iraqi and Kurdish troops.
Senior U.S. leaders, from the White House to the Pentagon, have said the key to success in Iraq is the formation of an inclusive government that will include disenfranchised Sunnis.
As the Islamic State militants moved across Iraq, some Sunnis -- including some members of the Iraqi security forces -- either threw down their weapons or joined the group.
The U.S. has been encouraged as new Iraqi leaders, including Shiite prime minister-designate Haider al-Abadi, begin to take steps to form a new government and reach out to Sunnis.
Officials have suggested that any additional military assistance from the U.S. to Iraq is contingent on those political and diplomatic steps by the government.
One possibility, said Dempsey, would be to have U.S. forces provide more expanded advice and assistance to the Iraqi force.
He said military assessment teams looked at about 50 Iraqi brigades and a number of the Kurdish units and have a good idea which ones have appropriate training and equipment and have not been infiltrated by militia.
So far, Dempsey said the U.S. has not sought or received permission to put advisers into Iraqi brigades or headquarters units and accompany them into combat.
To date, U.S. forces have conducted a total of 96 airstrikes across Iraq. Of those, 62 have been around the Mosul Dam.
The strikes have helped to break the insurgents' momentum, said Dempsey, and strip away some of the mythology that the Islamic State is impregnable or overwhelming.
Dempsey is on his way to Afghanistan to attend a change of command ceremony Tuesday. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford is stepping down as the top commander there; Army Gen. John Campbell will take over.

Terror group Jabhat Al-Nusrah releases American hostage Peter Theo Curtis


American freelance journalist Peter Theo Curtis, held hostage for nearly two years by the terror group Jabhat Al-Nusrah in Syria, has been released, the State Department said Sunday.
“We are all relieved and grateful knowing that Theo Curtis is coming home,” Secretary of State John Kerry said.
Curtis, a resident of Massachusetts and Vermont, is also an author fluent in Arabic and French, according to his family.
“My heart is full at the extraordinary, dedicated, incredible people… who have become my friends and have tirelessly helped us over these many months,” said Curtis’ mother, Nancy Curtis, of Cambridge, Mass. “Please know that we will be eternally grateful.”
She also said that her son, while working as a journalist in Yemen, became interested in the stories of “the many disaffected young men from the West coming to study Islam” and that wrote about them in his book, “Undercover Muslim,” published in the United Kingdom.
The Obama administration said Curtis is now safely outside of Syria but provided no details about the circumstances of his abduction or his release.
However, the Curtis family said the government of Qatar was involved in the release, which was carried out on a humanitarian basis without ransom.
The family believes the 45-year-old Curtis was captured shortly after he crossed into Syria in October 2012.
What prompted Curtis’ release is unclear. However, the United Nations said it helped with the handover to U.N. peacekeepers in a village in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and that Curtis was released to American authorities after a medical checkup.
Curtis’ release comes after the militant group Islamic State recently beheaded American journalist James Foley, who was abducted while covering that country's civil war.
Kerry said the United States over the past 24 months had reached out to more than 24 countries to help secure Curtis’ release “and the release of any Americans held hostage in Syria.”
"Just as we celebrate Theo’s freedom, we hold in our thoughts and prayers the Americans who remain in captivity in Syria," National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice said in a statement. "Notwithstanding today’s welcome news, the events of the past week shocked the conscience of the world. As President Obama said, we have and will continue to use all of the tools at our disposal to see that the remaining American hostages are freed."
White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said: President Obama "shares in the joy and relief that we all feel now that Theo is out of Syria and safe. But we continue to hold in our thoughts and prayers the Americans who remain in captivity in Syria."
A cousin of Curtis', Viva Hardigg, declined to provide details on the circumstances of Curtis' release, but confirmed that he had been held by Jabhat Al-Nusrah, an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
Curtis’ mother also said her son was born Peter Theophilus Eaton Padnos in Atlanta, Ga. He graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont and has a doctorate degree in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts.
Islamic State militants released a video last week of Foley’s beheading, blaming his death on U.S. airstrikes against their fighters in Iraq.
Foley's captors had demanded $132.5 million from his parents and political concessions from Washington.
A senior Obama administration official said last week the Islamic State had made a "range of requests" from the U.S. for Foley's release, including changes in American policy.

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