The Nation Newspaper

Tag: rebels

  • Assad extends rebel amnesty for three months

    Assad extends rebel amnesty for three months

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday extended an amnesty for three more months for rebels to disarm and surrender themselves, a news report said.

    The extension of the pardon, first issued in July, offered more time for rebels to clear their “criminal records’’ by laying down their weapons and surrender to the government.

    The amnesty also offered kidnappers a chance to clear their records by releasing their captives unharmed and without ransom.

    An unspecified number of rebels around Damascus have benefited from the amnesty, while others chose to leave for rebel-held areas in the northwestern province of Idlib.

    The government renewed its calls recently for rebels to surrender in the northern city of Aleppo, where the Syrian army and Russia declared a unilateral cease-fire earlier October.

    However only seven rebels took advantage of the brief truce and left eastern Aleppo, as the cease-fire was largely rejected by rebel groups who tried to prevent rebels and civilians from leaving.

    The Syrian army and Russia have since renewed a broad offensive against rebels in eastern Aleppo.

     

  • Al-Bashir offers rebels two- month ceasefire

    Al-Bashir offers rebels two- month ceasefire

    Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, has proposed a two-month ceasefire with rebels fighting to overthrow his government and set a date for a new national reconciliation process which collapsed in January.

    Bashir also repeated his offer of amnesty for rebels who agreed to drop their arms and join the national dialogue between the government and opposition parties.

    The renewed dialogue will take place on Oct. 10, he said at a meeting to plan the future of the process with handful of parties that expected to participate.

    Eighteen of the 21 opposition parties that had initially agreed to participate in the dialogue at its inception in early 2014 pulled out in January, leaving the future of the reconciliation process in jeopardy.

    “We announce our readiness for a ceasefire for the two months until the dialogue…to ensure the success of dialogue,” said al-Bashir.

    Al-Bashir was re-elected with 94 per cent of the vote in April in an election largely boycotted by the opposition.

    The armed groups could not immediately be reached for comment on the ceasefire or amnesty but the rebels have rejected previous amnesty offers.

    Sudan’s government has faced a rebellion in its Darfur region since 2003, and a separate but linked insurgency in Blue Nile and South Kordofan since the secession of South Sudan in 2011.

    The government has rebuffed opposition and rebel demands to link political negotiations with peace talks

  • ‘How rebels shot down Malaysian jet’

    ‘How rebels shot down Malaysian jet’

    Indications emerged yesterday how Pro-Russia rebels in Eastern Ukraine might have shot down the Malaysian airline MH17 last Thursday, killing 298 people on board.

    The plane was travelling to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, Holland before it was shot in Eastern Ukraine airspace.

    A motorist captures military truck carrying BUK M1 in border town.

    He filmed a military truck on main road for two kilometres in ‘border area’ of Russia at 8.45pm on Saturday

    Ukrainian sources have seized the footage and branded it ‘film of the BUK, the one that shot the Boeing’

    A BUK launcher was pictured rumbling into pro-Russian rebel-held Torez just two hours before crash

    Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU, has released recordings of intercepted phone calls, claiming they prove Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a group of Russian-backed Cossack militants

    Neither recording – which allegedly includes a Russian military intelligence officer – could be independently verified

    Laughing rebels filmed the plane as it crashed, gleefully bragging ‘that was a blast – look at the smoke!’

    Is this the BUK missile system back home in Russia after shooting down flight MH17?

    A driver followed the military truck on a main road for two kilometres in a ‘border area’ of Russia before uploading the footage, filmed with a dashboard camera, on the internet.

    The cargo had no escort and Ukrainian sources have seized on it, captioning the footage: ‘A Russian blogger filmed the BUK M1 in Russia, the one that shot the Boeing.’

    ‘For two kilometres, a blogger from Russia has been driving behind covered BUK 1M which, according to his words, had been driving from the Ukrainian border. His opinion is that it is exactly that BUK that made the shot,’ said one version spreading on the web.

    The driver is heard saying: ‘No kidding.’

    While the footage is visibly in Russia rather than Ukraine, the exact location is not given.

    A second truck is also evident in some frames.

    It was filmed at around 8.45pm on Saturday.

    Reports from Ukraine suggested the BUK had been smuggled in the dead of night into Russia soon after the plane was blasted out of the sky last Thursday.

    It came after images were released of a launcher rumbling through Torez, held by pro-Russian separatists, just two hours before the Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down.

    In a tense phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Prime Minister David Cameron, said Russia would have to ‘present compelling and credible evidence’ that the Kremlin-backed separatists were not to blame for 298 people – including 10 Britons – being killed, despite the images and footage.

    He told Mr Putin that blocking international investigators and rescue teams from accessing the site was ‘indefensible’, a Downing Street spokesman said.

    Mr Cameron is furious that Mr Putin has kept him waiting despite the British death toll. A Downing Street source said Mr Cameron was expressing his anger that ‘ten of my citizens have just been killed with a plane that was brought down by a missile that was shot by Russian separatists’.

    A Downing Street source admitted there was ‘a sense of frustration that we have not been able to speak to him sooner’. Following the call, Mr Cameron wrote on Twitter: ‘I’ve just spoken to President Putin. I made clear he must ensure access to the crash site so the victims can have proper funerals.’

    Pro-Russian rebels yesterday said they had recovered the black boxes from MH17 and taken them to Donetsk where they will be handed over to international investigators.

    Rebel leader Aleksander Borodai told a news conference in Donetsk: ‘Some items, presumably the black boxes, were found, and they have been delivered to Donetsk and they are under our control. There are no specialists among us who could pinpoint the look of the black boxes, but we brought to Donetsk some technical items which could be the black boxes of the airliner.’

    However, Ukrainian security officials claimed yesterday that Russia has reinforced rebels with three multiple rocket launchers and four heavy tanks, while massing troops on the border.

    Pro-Kiev authorities released details of what they claimed to be a recording of a phone calls from Friday afternoon between a senior rebel commander and a number of his men at the crash site discussing MH17’s black boxes.

     

  • Mali army, rebels clash

    Three Malian soldiers were wounded in clashes with separatist Tuareg rebels, the army said, the first clashes since the two sides signed a ceasefire deal in June.
    The fighting took place near the western town of Lere and comes a week after President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was sworn in, highlighting simmering tensions as he seeks to end cycles of uprisings by northern rebels.
    Last year’s rebellion triggered a coup and the resulting vacuum was then hijacked by better-armed al Qaeda-linked Islamists, who seized northern Mali.
    France sent thousands of soldiers to its former colony in January to halt the Islamists’ march southward.
    A UN peacekeeping mission is now rolling out to ensure stability as French troops gradually withdraw.
    “An army patrol came across some gunmen in four-wheel drives. They refused to follow the army’s orders and opened fire on the troops,’’ said army spokesman Capt. Modibo Naman Traore.
    Traore said three soldiers were wounded.
    Attaye Ag Mohamed, one of the founders of the Tuareg-led MNLA rebellion, accused the army of starting the fighting by surrounding their position. He did not give any toll.
    According to the ceasefire deal signed to allow elections to take place in July and August, Keita has 60 days from the naming of his government last Sunday to start talks over a final deal with the rebels.

    Keita has promised national reconciliation but will be under pressure from southern Malians not to make major concessions to the Tuareg, whom many blame for sparking their country’s collapse last year

  • How rebels get arms, by UN

    How rebels get arms, by UN

    •Military retrieves weapons 

    Firearms amassed during the war in Libya and corrupt officials selling or renting out their guns have helped arm the rebels in Mali, a UN report showed Monday, saying most of the weapons used in the conflict initially came from licit sources.

    In a report on transnational organised crime in West Africa, the UN said “the primary source of arms appears to be official state stocks”, channelled onto the region’s black market through theft and bribed law enforcement officials.

    The report also said that an estimated 10 000 to 20 000 firearms from Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenal in Libya may have made their way to west Africa, since up to “2 000 Tuareg mercenaries recently returned from Libya, carrying at least their own weapons.”

    The UN said the influx of firearms represents “a serious threat to stability in the region, a threat that appears to have been realised in northern Mali”.

    In terms of financing the rebel movements, the UN said it is particularly concerned by cocaine trafficking, saying there is a “possibility that trafficking through the region could provide income to non-state armed groups, especially the various rebel forces in the Sahel and the terrorist group al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb”.

    Malian authorities have showcased a weapons stockpile seized from fleeing Islamists militants in Gao.

    “What we have here, it’s indicative of an army, or groups that have the capacity of an army,” AFP quoted Gao commander Laurent Mariko as saying.

    The reclaimed weapons included M-16 assault rifles, Czech-made sniper rifles, Russian-made rockets and army uniforms.