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At least 10 killed as gunmen storm hotel in Somali capital
At least 10 people were killed in an attack by Islamic militants who stormed a hotel in Somalia’s capital late Friday, police and eyewitnesses said.
Several other people were injured and security forces rescued many others, including children, from the scene of the attack at Mogadishu’s Hayat Hotel, they said.
The attack started with explosions outside the hotel before gunmen entered the building.
Gunfire could still be heard early Saturday as security forces tried to contain the last gunmen, who were thought to be holed up in the hotel. It was unclear how many militants remained on the hotel’s top floor.
Also read: Somali forces kill 20 al-Shabab militants in central region
The Islamic extremist group al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest of its frequent attempts to strike places that are often visited by government officials.
There was no immediate word on the identities of the victims.
“We were having tea near the hotel lobby when we heard the first blast followed by gunfire. I immediately rushed toward hotel rooms on the ground floor, and I locked,” eyewitness Abdullahi Hussein told the AP by phone. “The militants went straight upstairs and started shooting. I was inside the room until the security forces arrived and rescued me.”
He said that on his way to safety he saw “several bodies lying on the ground outside hotel reception.”
Market blast in north Syria kills 15 people, wounds dozens
A rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters in northern Syria killed 15 people on Friday and wounded dozens, an opposition war monitor and a paramedic group said.
The attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, blamed Syrian government forces for Friday’s shelling, saying it was in apparent retaliation for the Turkish airstrike.
The Observatory said three children were among the 15 killed, and that there were more than 30 wounded. The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, had the same death toll but said 28 people were wounded. The paramedic group said its members evacuated some of the wounded and the dead bodies.
“This is the worst massacre committed by regime forces since the battles stopped between the regime and the opposition,” said the Observatory’s chief Rami Abdurrahman, referring to a cease-fire in March 2020 that ended a wide Syrian government offensive on rebel-held areas.
The U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a statement that its fighters did not shell al-Bab. There was no comment from the government.
Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some Syrian territory in the north.
Although the fighting has waned over the past few years, shelling and airstrikes are not uncommon in northern Syria — the last major rebel stronghold in the country.
Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. President Bashar Assad’s forces have regained control of most parts of Syria over the past few years, with the help of their allies, Russia and Iran.
Also read: Market blast in north Syria kills at least 9, wounds dozens
In other developments, the Observatory and the U.S. military said a drone strike late on Thursday night in northeastern Syria killed four women and wounded several others.
The Observatory blamed Turkey for the strike, saying it targeted a facility where Syrian Kurdish women were doing sports. A female Syrian Kurdish commander with the U.S.-backed forces was visiting at the time of the attack, the Observatory said.
A U.S. military commander, Maj. Gen. John Brennan, condemned the attack and said the drone struck a group of teenage girls playing volleyball under a U.N. education and outreach program.
“Such acts are contrary to the laws of armed conflict, which require the protection of civilians,” Brennan, commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, said in a statement.
Brennan also said the “increase in military hostilities in northern Syria is creating chaos in a fragile region” and called for immediate de-escalation from all sides in the conflict, citing the still-present threat of the Islamic State group in the area.
Public health emergency declared over monkeypox in WA county
King County, which includes Seattle, on Friday officially declared the local monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency as infections continue to increase in the city and other parts of the state.
“We are fortunate to have one of the best public health organizations in the nation right here in King County, and today’s action ensures they will have all the tools needed to take on the challenge of monkeypox,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said in a written statement.
The local emergency proclamation will free up needed resources for Public Health — Seattle & King County, as well as give the department more flexibility with hiring and contracting protocols, according to the statement. The proclamation will support efforts to contain the virus, which can cause a rash, fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and fatigue.
Washington has reported 333 monkeypox infections, 275 of which were confirmed in King County, according to the state Department of Health. Two weeks ago, the state had confirmed 166 cases, The Seattle Times reported.
Public health officials have recorded 21 cases in Pierce County, seven in Snohomish County, five in Spokane County, five in Clark County and four in Yakima County, state health officials said.
The Washington State Department of Health reported the state’s first pediatric monkeypox case in a 17-year-old on Thursday, KING5 reported. Oregon identified its first pediatric monkeypox case on Wednesday.
Also read: Monkeypox cases cross 35,000: WHO
“It’s an important time for public health to have the flexibility it needs to be able to respond and reach the communities most impacted, including ensuring equitable access to vaccine,” Dennis Worsham, interim director of Public Health — Seattle & King County, said in the statement.
Monkeypox vaccines have been scarce, and while Constantine’s proclamation won’t bring more doses to the state in the near term, it will help public health teams more quickly deliver vaccines when larger quantities become available, according to the executive’s office.
Currently, those considered at highest risk and who are eligible for a monkeypox vaccine in King County include anyone who has had sexual or close, intimate contact with someone who has tested positive for monkeypox, among other criteria.
San Francisco and New York City were the first cities in the country to declare a health emergency over the outbreak in late July. The federal government gave a similar announcement in early August and the World Health Organization issued a global health emergency in July.
6 killed, 20 injured in India road crash
Six people have been killed and 20 others injured in a head-on collision between a tractor-trolley and a speeding truck in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, police said on Saturday.
The accident occurred in the Sumirpor area of Pali district, nearly 300 kms from state capital Jaipur late on Friday night.
"The tractor-trolley was carrying pilgrims from Jaisalmer district when the speeding truck coming from the opposite direction crashed into the vehicle at high speed," a police officer told the local media.
While six of the pilgrims died on the spot in the impact of the collision, those injured have been admitted to a nearby hospital. "The condition of some of the injured is said to be serious," the officer said.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office tweeted to express his grief over the tragedy.
"The accident in Pali, Rajasthan is saddening. In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. I pray for a speedy recovery of those injured," Modi said.
Also read: Five relatives of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput die in India accident
"A probe has been ordered into the accident," the police officer said.
Road accidents are common in India, with one taking place every four minutes. These accidents are often blamed on poor roads, rash driving and scant regard for traffic laws.
The Indian government's implementation of stricter traffic laws in recent years has failed to rein in accidents, which claim over 100,000 lives every year.
Mexico arrests ex-attorney general in missing students case
Federal prosecutors said Friday they have arrested the attorney general in Mexico’s previous administration on charges he committed abuses in the investigation of the 2014 disappearances of 43 students from a radical teacher college.
Jesús Murillo Karam served as attorney general from 2012 to 2015, under then President Enrique Peña Nieto. The office of the current attorney general, Alejandro Gertz Manero, said Murillo Karam was charged with torture, official misconduct and forced disappearance.
In 2020, Gertz Manero said Murillo Karam had been implicated in “orchestrating a massive media trick” and leading a “generalized cover-up” in the case.
The arrest came a day after a commission set up to determine what happened said the army bore at least partial responsibility in the case. It said a soldier had infiltrated the student group involved and the army didn’t stop the abductions even though it knew what was happening.
Corrupt local police, other security forces and members of a drug gang abducted the students in the city of Iguala in Guerrero state, although the motive remains unclear eight years later. Their bodies have never been found, though fragments of burned bone have been matched to three of the students.
Murillo Karam, under pressure to quickly solve the case, announced in 2014 that the students had been killed and their bodies burned at a garbage dump by members of a drug gang. He called that hypothesis “the historic truth.”
But the investigation included instances of torture, improper arrest and mishandling of evidence that has since allowed most of the directly implicated gang members to walk free.
The incident occurred near a large army base, and independent investigations have found that members of the military were aware of what was occurring. The students’ families have long demanded that soldiers be included in the investigation.
On Thursday, the truth commission looking into the case said one of the abducted students was a soldier who had infiltrated the radical teachers’ college, yet the army did not search for him even though it had real-time information that the abduction was occurring. It said the inaction violated army protocols for cases of missing soldiers.
The defense ministry has not responded to a request for comment.
The Institutional Revolutionary Party, which both Murillo Karam and Peña Nieto belonged to, wrote in its Twitter account that Murillo Karam’s arrest “is more a question of politics than justice. This action does not help the victims’ families get answers.”
Mexican federal prosecutors previously issued arrest warrants for members of the military and federal police as well as Tomás Zeron, who at the time of the abduction headed the federal investigation agency, Mexico’s detective agency.
Zeron is being sought on charges of torture and covering up forced disappearances. He fled to Israel, and Mexico has asked the Israeli government for help in his arrest.
Gertz Manero said that in addition to Zeron’s alleged crimes connected to the case, he is alleged to have stolen more than $44 million from the Attorney General’s Office budget.
Read: 4 dead after sheriff’s office helicopter crash in New Mexico
The motive for the students’ abduction remains a subject of debate.
On Sept. 26, 2014, local police from Iguala, members of organized crime and authorities abducted 43 students from buses. The students periodically commandeered buses for their transportation.
Murillo Karam claimed the students were turned over to a drug gang who killed them, incinerated their bodies at a dump in nearby Cocula and tossed the burned bone fragments into a river.
Later investigations by independent experts and the Attorney General’s Office, and corroborated by the truth commission, have dismissed the idea that the bodies were incinerated at the Cocula dump.
There has been no evidence that any of the students could still be alive.
Judge throws out Maine lawsuit against COVID vaccine mandate
A federal judge has dismissed a complaint from a group of health care workers who said they were unfairly discriminated against by Maine’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
The plaintiffs sued Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and other Maine officials along with a group of health care organizations in the state. The workers argued that the vaccine mandate violated their right to free exercise of religion because it did not provide an exemption for religious beliefs.
Jon Levy, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine, wrote Thursday that the vaccine mandate was “rationally based” and that “no further analysis is required.”
“Reducing the number of unvaccinated healthcare workers at designated healthcare facilities in Maine is rationally related to the government’s interests in limiting the spread of COVID-19, safeguarding Maine’s healthcare capacity, and protecting the lives and health of Maine people,” Levy wrote.
Read: UNICEF finds Bangladesh as Covid-19 vaccine success story
The workers had remained anonymous since filing the suit until July, when a federal appeals court in Boston said they must reveal their identities. The workers also argued it was their religious right to decline the vaccine over the belief that fetal stem cells from abortions are used to develop them.
Liberty Counsel, a law firm representing the health care workers, said in a statement on Friday that it would appeal the dismissal. The firm said in a statement that Levy’s dismissal was “critically flawed” and “contrary to recent Supreme Court precedent involving COVID restrictions on places of worship and many other Supreme Court decisions.”
The vaccine mandate went into effect in October. The plaintiffs hoped to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear arguments in the suit earlier this year. The high court did not explain its decision at the time.
The lawsuit named some of the largest health care networks in the state as defendants. One of those networks, Northern Light Health, said in a statement on Friday that it had been validated by the court’s ruling.
“Our health care organization continues to strive always to act in the best interests of our patients and our staff in these challenging times, and we’re gratified that the court completely validated our conduct in this matter,” the statement said.
California nuke extension challenged in legislative proposal
A proposal circulated Friday by California Democratic legislators would reject Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to extend the lifespan of the state’s last operating nuclear power plant — and instead spend over $1 billion to speed up the development of renewable energy, new transmission lines and storage to maintain reliable power in the climate change era.
The legislative plan obtained by The Associated Press reveals mounting tension between the Democratic governor and some members of his own party over a politically volatile issue.
The rift was revealed one week after Newsom proposed giving plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric a forgivable loan up to $1.4 billion as part of a plan to keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant running beyond its scheduled closing by 2025.
Newsom has argued that as hotter temperatures drive up the demand for power, the twin-domed reactors along the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco would provide a necessary buffer against electrical blackouts, as the state transitions to power from solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
The legislative plan drops the idea of keeping the decades-old reactors running. Instead, it would funnel the $1.4 billion Newsom proposed for PG&E into speeding up other zero-carbon power and new transmission lines to get the electricity to customers.
Read:Cold showers, no lights: Europe saves as Russian gas wanes
The legislative plan included a series of related, but separate, proposals for investing over $1 billion to install install energy-efficient cooling and lighting for low-income Californians, at no cost to qualifying residents. It would also place $900 million in an “electric ratepayer relief fund” to provide bill credits to offset ratepayer costs. Another $900 million would got toward funding solar and storage systems for low-income households, among other programs.
The conflict over Diablo Canyon reveals deep anxiety among some legislators that Newsom wants an abrupt, complex turnaround in state energy policy with less than two weeks left in the legislative session, which ends for the year at the end of August.
Newsom’s proposal also came with many unanswered questions and concerns, including how ratepayers across the state might be impacted, the risk of sidestepping environmental rules and whether continued power from the reactors for years to come might crowd out wind and other renewables expected to start production in the future.
It was not immediately clear how broadly the Democratic alternative was supported in the Legislature.
Newsom’s proposal to reverse course restarted a decades-long fight over seismic safety — several earthquake faults are near the nuclear plant, with one fault running 650 yards (594 meters) from the reactors. Critics said Newsom’s plan for the plant guts environmental safeguards while providing a huge financial giveaway to the investor-owned utility.
Newsom spokesperson Anthony York said the governor “wants California to go faster to meet our climate goals, while ensuring we can keep the lights on and safely transition to clean power.”
York said the proposal came out of the state Assembly and “feels like fantasy and fairy dust, and reflects a lack of vision and a lack of understanding about the scope of the climate problem.”
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s office declined comment.
The governor’s late-hour proposal amounts to an attempt to unspool a complex 2016 agreement among PG&E, environmentalists and plant worker unions to close the reactors by 2025, which Newsom supported at the time as lieutenant governor. The joint decision also was endorsed by California utility regulators, the Legislature and then-Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
With the state’s legislative session ending for the year at the end of the month, there is little time to work out a compromise on a vastly complex issue. PG&E CEO Patricia “Patti” Poppe told investors in a call last month that state legislation would have to be signed by Newsom by September to open the way for the utility to reverse course.
PG&E also would have to obtain a new operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to run the plant beyond 2025. The utility is following two tracks — assessing the possibility of a longer run, while simultaneously continuing to plan for closing and dismantling the plant, as scheduled.
In a statement, the utility said it was aware of continuing discussions to potentially extend Diablo Canyon’s lifespan and PG&E stands ready “should there be a change in state policy.”
Zimbabweans hit by 257% inflation: Will gold coins help?
After working as an overnight security guard at a church in Harare’s impoverished Mabvuku township, Jeffrey Carlos rushes home to help his wife fetch water to sell.
Prolonged water shortages mean most residents of the capital city of more than 2.4 million must source their own water. Carlos is lucky because the property he rents has a well and his family can haul up buckets of water to sell to neighbors.
“This is our gold,” he says of the well water.
“If we are lucky, we can sell up to 12 buckets of water (per day) for $2,” said the 50-year-old father of three. That’s about enough money to buy the family’s food for the day, he said.
Rising prices and a fast depreciating currency have pushed many Zimbabweans to the brink, reminding people of when the southern African country faced world-record inflation of 5 billion% in 2008. With inflation jumping from 191% in June to 257% in July, many Zimbabweans fear the country is heading back to such hyperinflation.
To prevent a return of such economic disaster, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government last month took the unprecedented step of introducing gold coins as legal tender. The country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, said that because the value of the one-ounce, 22-carat coins would be determined by the international price of gold they will help tame the runaway inflation and stabilize the nation’s currency.
The glitter of the gold coins is hard to see for Zimbabweans struggling each day to eke out a living. The government sees things differently and is pleading for time.
Although expensive at an average price of just below $2,000 per coin, central bank governor John Mangudya said the coin will have a trickle-down effect that will eventually help average folk.
“The ordinary man will benefit more from the stability (provided by) these gold coins. Where there is stability, money will have value and stability in prices,” said Mangudya ahead of the launch. He said the central bank plans to introduce smaller denominated gold coins in November to allow ordinary people to also use them as a saving mechanism. The smaller coins will be half an ounce, a quarter of an ounce and 10% of an ounce, he said.
But many such as Carlos say they can hardly afford a meal, let alone earn enough to save.
“Where will I get the money to buy the gold coins? It is for them, the rich. Poor people like me do not see any difference. Things continue to be hard in this country,” he told The Associated Press between trips to the well to pull up buckets of water.
“Gold coins are a scheme for the elite. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer,” said Gift Mugano, an economics professor during an online roundtable debate titled: “Is there gold in the coins?”
With so many Zimbabweans scrambling to get food to eat each day, there are questions if the gold coins will help them.
“People are struggling. They are living from hand to mouth so most people may not actually have the money to save in the first place. Most people are in survivalist mode because of inflation,” said Prosper Chitambara, a Harare-based economist.
Read: 'It's a nightmare': Zimbabwe struggles with hyperinflation
To get by, many are forced to take up multiple jobs.
Carlos, in Mabvuku, says he gets about $100 dollars a month from his job as an overnight security guard for a church and the bar next door. That’s hardly enough to pay rent, school fees and other basic needs. Sometimes, he exchanges water for food items.
“If we fetch water for someone but they don’t have money, so we get tomatoes, vegetables, beans or maize. That’s how we get food,” he said.
His wife, Christwish, 43, prepares the day’s evening meal — the staple maize (corn) meal and vegetables plucked from a small home garden — over a wood fire. Because of Zimbabwe’s lengthy power cuts, the children do their homework by a candle, although their parents press them to use it sparingly.
“The firewood costs a dollar for a small bundle enough (to cook) for a single meal. The candles are also expensive,” lamented Christwish, who supplements the family income by doing household chores for better-off families in exchange for money or food items.
Items previously regarded as basics are now out of reach, she said.
“We last ate bread with margarine on Christmas Day,” she said. “Now we just see these things in the shops and leave them there.”
Iran deal tantalizingly close, but US faces new hurdles
Last week’s attack on author Salman Rushdie and the indictment of an Iranian national in a plot to kill former national security adviser John Bolton have given the Biden administration new headaches as it attempts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
A resolution may be tantalizingly close. But as the U.S. and Europe weigh Iran’s latest response to an EU proposal described as the West’s final offer, the administration faces new and potentially insurmountable domestic political hurdles to forging a lasting agreement.
Deal critics in Congress who have long vowed to blow up any pact have ratcheted up their opposition to negotiations with a country whose leadership has refused to rescind the death threats against Rushdie or Bolton. Iran also vows to avenge the Trump administration’s 2020 assassination of a top Iranian general by killing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Brian Hook, both of whom remain under 24/7 taxpayer-paid security protection.
Although such threats are not covered by the deal, which relates solely to Iran’s nuclear program, they underscore deal opponents’ arguments that Iran cannot be trusted with the billions of dollars in sanctions relief it will receive if and when it and the U.S. return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, a signature foreign policy accomplishment of the Obama administration that President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018.
“This is a tougher deal to sell than the 2015 deal in that this time around there are no illusions that it will serve to moderate Iranian behavior or lead to greater U.S.-Iran cooperation,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The Iranian government stands to get tens of billions in sanctions relief, and the organizing principle of the regime will continue to be opposition to the United States and violence against its critics, both at home and abroad,” he said.
Iran has denied any link with Rushdie’s alleged attacker, an American citizen who was indicted for attempted murder and has pleaded not guilty in the Aug. 12 stabbing at a literary event in Western New York. But Iranian state media have celebrated Iran’s long-standing antipathy toward Rushdie since the 1988 publication of his book “The Satanic Verses,” which some believe is insulting to Islam.
Media linked to Iran’s leadership have lauded the attacker for following through on a 1989 decree, or fatwa, calling for Rushdie to be killed that was signed by Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
And the man who was charged with plotting to murder Bolton is a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Justice Department alleges the IRGC tried to pay $300,000 to people in the United States to avenge the death of Qassam Suleimani, the head of its elite Quds Force who was killed by a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2020.
“I think it’s delusional to believe that a regime that you’re about to enter into a significant arms control agreement with can be depended on to comply with its obligations or is even serious about the negotiation when it’s plotting the assassination of high-level former government officials and current government officials,” Bolton told reporters Wednesday.
“It certainly looks like the attack on Salman Rushdie had a Revolutionary Guard component,” Bolton said. “We’ve got to stop this artificial division when dealing with the government of Iran between its nuclear activities on the one hand and its terrorist activities on the other.”
Read: Iran submits a ‘written response’ in nuclear deal talks
Others agree.
“Granting terrorism sanctions relief amid ongoing terror plots on U.S. soil is somewhere between outrageous and lunacy,” said Rich Goldberg, a former Trump administration national security council staffer and longtime deal critic who is now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which has also lobbied against a return to the JCPOA.
While acknowledging the seriousness of the plots, administration officials contend that they are unrelated to the nuclear issue and do nothing to change their long-held belief that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be more dangerous and less constrained than an Iran without one.
“The JCPOA is about the single, central challenge we face with Iran, the core challenge, what would be the most threatening challenge we could possibly face from Iran, and that is a nuclear weapon,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week. “There is no doubt that a nuclear-armed Iran would feel an even greater degree of impunity, and would pose an even greater threat, a far greater threat, to countries in the region and potentially well beyond.”
“Every challenge we face with Iran, whether it is its support for proxies, its support for terrorist groups, its ballistic missiles program, its malign cyber activities — every single one of those — would be more difficult to confront were Iran to have a nuclear weapons program,” he said.
That argument, however, will be challenged in Congress by lawmakers who opposed the 2015 deal, saying it gave Iran a path to develop nuclear weapons by time-limiting the most onerous restrictions on its nuclear activities. They say there’s now even more tangible evidence that Iran’s malign behavior make it impossible to deal with.
Two of the most outspoken critics of the deal, Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have weighed in on what the Rushdie attack should mean for the administration.
“The ayatollahs have been trying to murder Salman Rushdie for decades,” Cruz said. “Their incitement and their contacts with this terrorist resulted in an attack. This vicious terrorist attack needs to be completely condemned. The Biden administration must finally cease appeasing the Iranian regime.”
“Iran’s leaders have been calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for decades,” said Cotton. “We know they’re trying to assassinate American officials today. Biden needs to immediately end negotiations with this terrorist regime.”
Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, or INARA, the administration must submit any agreement with Iran for congressional review within five days of it being sealed. That begins a 30-day review period during which lawmakers may weigh in and no sanctions relief can be offered.
That timeline means that even if a deal is reached within the next week, the administration will not be able to start moving on sanctions relief until the end of September, just a month from crucial congressional midterm elections. And, it will take additional time for Iran to begin seeing the benefits of such relief because of logistical constraints.
While deal critics in the current Congress are unlikely to be able to kill a deal, if Republicans win back control of Congress in the midterms, they may be able to nullify any sanctions relief.
Read: US-Iran tensions thrust foreign policy into Democrats' race
“Even if Iran accepts President Biden’s full capitulation and agrees to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, Congress will never vote to remove sanctions,” the GOP minority on the House Armed Services Committee said in a tweet on Wednesday. “In fact, Republicans in Congress will work to strengthen sanctions against Iran.”
Market blast in north Syria kills at least 9, wounds dozens
A rocket attack on a crowded market in a town held by Turkey-backed opposition fighters in northern Syria Friday killed at least nine people and wounded dozens, an opposition war monitor and a paramedic group reported.
The attack on the town of al-Bab came days after a Turkish airstrike killed at least 11 Syrian troops and U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, blamed Syrian government forces for the shelling, saying it was in retaliation for the Turkish airstrike.
The Observatory said the attack killed at least 10 and wounded more than 30.
Also read: Lebanon announces plan to repatriate Syrian refugees
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, had a lower death toll, saying nine people, including children, were killed and 28 were wounded. The paramedic group said its members evacuated some of the wounded and the dead bodies.
Discrepancies in casualty figures immediately after attacks are not uncommon in Syria.
Turkey has launched three major cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some territories in the north.
Also read: Syrians in desperate need of aid hit hard by Ukraine fallout
Although the fighting has waned over the past few years, shelling and airstrikes are not uncommon in northern Syria that is home to the last major rebel stronghold in the country.
Syria’s conflict that began in March 2011, has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
President Bashar Assad’s forces have regained control of most parts of Syria over the past few years, with the help of their allies, Russia and Iran.