Asia
Modi holds talks with visiting Maldivian President
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began high-level talks with visiting Maldivian President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in the national capital on Tuesday.
"Talks are currently underway between the two top leaders. On the agenda are various issues, including maritime ties, and both India and the Maldives are expected to sign a number of pacts, post-talks," sources said.
President Solih arrived in Delhi on Monday on a four-day visit to India. A high-level business delegation is accompanying him.
"A warm welcome to a close friend and maritime neighbour! President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih of Maldives arrives in New Delhi for an official visit," Indian External Affairs Ministry tweeted after his arrival.
Read: Attack on interns: Osmani Medical College students suspend strike
"An opportunity to nurture the unwavering friendship between our two countries and lend further momentum to the multifaceted partnership,” the Ministry wrote.
On Monday itself, President Solih held a meeting with Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who later said that "India's 'Neighbourhood First' policy and the Maldives' 'India First' policy are complementary".
President Solih's visit comes barely a week after India gave its nod to a pact for judicial cooperation between the two countries. The Maldives is one of India's key maritime neighbours.
Al-Zawahri's path went from Cairo clinic to top of al-Qaida
The doors of jihad opened for Ayman al-Zawahri as a young doctor in a Cairo clinic, when a visitor arrived with a tempting offer: a chance to treat Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
With that offer in 1980, al-Zawahri embarked on a life that over three decades took him to the top of the most feared terrorist group in the world, al-Qaida, after the death of Osama bin Laden.
Already an experienced militant who had sought the overthrow of Egypt’s “infidel” regime since the age of 15, al-Zawahri took a trip to the Afghan war zone that was just a few weeks long, but it opened his eyes to new possibilities.
What he saw was “the training course preparing Muslim mujahedeen youth to launch their upcoming battle with the great power that would rule the world: America,” he wrote in a 2001 biography-cum-manifesto.
Also read: Biden: Killing of al-Qaida leader is long-sought 'justice'
Al-Zawahri, 71, was killed over the weekend by a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden announced the death Monday evening.
The strike is likely to lead to greater disarray within the organization than did bin Laden’s death in 2011, since it is far less clear who his successor would be.
Al-Zawahri was crucial in turning the jihadi movement to target the United States as the right-hand man to bin Laden, the young Saudi millionaire he met in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Under their leadership, the al-Qaida terror network carried out the deadliest attack ever on American soil, the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy.
While bin Laden came from a privileged background in a prominent Saudi family, al-Zawahri had the experience of an underground revolutionary. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world.
“Bin Laden always looked up to him,” said terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University.
Also read: Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri killed in US missile attack
When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s safe haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions.
He also became the movement’s public face, putting out a constant stream of video messages while bin Laden largely hid.
With his thick beard, heavy-rimmed glasses and a prominent bruise on his forehead from prostration in prayer, he was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics within the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his videos. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central leadership were put off, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive — a contrast to bin Laden, whose soft-spoken presence many militants described in adoring, almost spiritual terms.
Yet he reshaped the organization from a centralized planner of terror attacks into the head of a franchise chain. He led the creation of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and Asia.
In the decade after 9/11, al-Qaida inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in all those areas as well as Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London. More recently, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen has proven itself capable of plotting attacks on U.S. soil with an attempted 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an attempted package bomb the following year.
After Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, al-Qaida proclaimed al-Zawahri its paramount leader less than two months later.
The jihad against America “does not halt with the death of a commander or leader,” he said.
The 2011 Arab Spring uprisings around the Mideast threatened a major blow to al-Qaida, showing that jihad was not the only way to get rid of Arab autocrats. It was mainly pro-democracy liberals and leftists who led the uprising that toppled Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, the longtime goal al-Zawahri failed to achieve.
But al-Zawahri sought to co-opt the wave of uprisings, insisting that they would have been impossible if the 9/11 attacks had not weakened America. And he urged Islamic hard-liners to take over in the nations where leaders had fallen.
Al-Zawahri was born June 19, 1951, the son of an upper-middle-class family of doctors and scholars in the Cairo suburb of Maadi.
From an early age, he was enflamed by the radical writings of Sayed Qutb, the Egyptian Islamist who taught that Arab regimes were “infidel” and should be replaced by Islamic rule.
In the 1970s, as he earned his medical degree as a surgeon, he was active in militant circles. He merged his own militant cell with others to form the group Islamic Jihad and began trying to infiltrate the military — at one point even storing weapons in his private clinic.
Then came the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat by Islamic Jihad militants. The slaying was carried out by a different cell in the group — and al-Zawahri has written that he learned of the plot only hours before the assassination. But he was arrested along with hundreds of other militants and served three years in prison.
After his release in 1984, al-Zawahri returned to Afghanistan and joined the Arab militants from across the Middle East fighting alongside the Afghans against the Soviets. He courted bin Laden, who became a heroic figure for his financial support of the mujahedeen.
Al-Zawahri followed bin Laden to his new base in Sudan, and from there he led a reassembled Islamic Jihad group in a violent campaign of bombings aimed at toppling Egypt’s U.S.-allied government.
The Egyptian movement failed. But al-Zawahri would bring to al-Qaida the tactics that he honed in Islamic Jihad.
He promoted the use of suicide bombings, to become al-Qaida’s hallmark. He plotted a 1995 suicide car bombing of Egypt’s embassy in Islamabad that killed 16 people — presaging the more devastating 1998 al-Qaida bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200, attacks al-Zawahri was indicted for in the United States.
In 1996, Sudan expelled bin Laden, who took his fighters back to Afghanistan, where they found a safe haven under the radical Taliban regime. Once more, al-Zawahri followed.
Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri killed in US missile attack
As the sun was rising in Kabul on Sunday, two Hellfire missiles fired by a U.S. drone ended Ayman al-Zawahri's decade-long reign as the leader of al-Qaida. The seeds of the audacious counterterrorism operation had been planted over many months.
U.S. officials had built a scale model of the safe house where al-Zawahri had been located, and brought it into the White House Situation Room to show President Joe Biden. They knew al-Zawahri was partial to sitting on the home's balcony.
They had painstakingly constructed “a pattern of life," as one official put it. They were confident he was on the balcony when the missiles flew, officials said.
Also read: Indonesia arrests key leader in al-Qaida linked group
Years of efforts by U.S. intelligence operatives under four presidents to track al-Zawahri and his associates paid dividends earlier this year, Biden said, when they located Osama bin Laden’s longtime No. 2 — a co-planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. — and ultimate successor at the house in Kabul.
Bin Laden's death came in May 2011, face to face with a U.S. assault team led by Navy SEALs. Al-Zawahri's death came from afar, at 6:18 a.m. in Kabul.
His family, supported by the Haqqani Taliban network, had taken up residence in the home after the Taliban regained control of the country last year, following the withdrawal of U.S. forces after nearly 20 years of combat that had been intended, in part, to keep al-Qaida from regaining a base of operations in Afghanistan.
But the lead on his whereabouts was only the first step. Confirming al-Zawahri’s identity, devising a strike in a crowded city that wouldn’t recklessly endanger civilians, and ensuring the operation wouldn’t set back other U.S. priorities took months to fall into place.
That effort involved independent teams of analysts reaching similar conclusions about the probability of al-Zawahri’s presence, the scale mock-up and engineering studies of the building to evaluate the risk to people nearby, and the unanimous recommendation of Biden’s advisers to go ahead with the strike.
“Clear and convincing,” Biden called the evidence. "I authorized the precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once and for all. This measure was carefully planned, rigorously, to minimize the risk of harm to other civilians.”
The consequences of getting it wrong on this type of judgment call were devastating a year ago this month, when a U.S. drone strike during the chaotic withdrawal of American forces killed 10 innocent family members, seven of them children.
Also read: Pentagon chief: al-Qaida may seek comeback in Afghanistan
Biden ordered what officials called a “tailored airstrike,” designed so that the two missiles would destroy only the balcony of the safe house where the terrorist leader was holed up for months, sparing occupants elsewhere in the building.
A senior U.S. administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the strike planning, said al-Zawahri was identified on “multiple occasions, for sustained periods of time” on the balcony where he died.
The official said “multiple streams of intelligence” convinced U.S. analysts of his presence, having eliminated “all reasonable options” other than his being there.
Two senior national security officials were first briefed on the intelligence in early April, with the president being briefed by national security adviser Jake Sullivan shortly thereafter. Through May and June, a small circle of officials across the government worked to vet the intelligence and devise options for Biden.
On July 1 in the White House Situation Room, after returning from a five-day trip to Europe, Biden was briefed on the proposed strike by his national security aides. It was at that meeting, the official said, that Biden viewed the model of the safe house and peppered advisers, including CIA Director William Burns, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and National Counterterrorism Center director Christy Abizaid, with questions about their conclusion that al-Zawahri was hiding there.
Biden, the official said, also pressed officials to consider the risks the strike could pose to American Mark Frerichs, who has been in Taliban captivity for more than two years, and to Afghans who aided the U.S. war efforts who remain in the country. U.S. lawyers also considered the legality of the strike, concluding that al-Zawahri’s continued leadership of the terrorist group and support for al-Qaida attacks made him a lawful target.
The official said al-Zawahri had built an organizational model that allowed him to lead the global network even from relative isolation. That included filming videos from the house, and the U.S. believes some may be released after his death.
On July 25, as Biden was isolated in the White House residence with COVID-19, he received a final briefing from his team.
Each of the officials participating strongly recommended the operation’s approval, the official said, and Biden gave the sign-off for the strike as soon as an opportunity was available.
That unanimity was lacking a decade earlier when Biden, as vice president, gave President Barack Obama advice he did not take — to hold off on the bin Laden strike, according Obama's memoirs.
The opportunity came early Sunday — late Saturday in Washington — hours after Biden again found himself in isolation with a rebound case of the coronavirus. He was informed when the operation began and when it concluded, the official said.
A further 36 hours of intelligence analysis would follow before U.S. officials began sharing that al-Zawahri was killed, as they watched the Haqqani Taliban network restrict access to the safe house and relocate the dead al-Qaida leader’s family. U.S. officials interpreted that as the Taliban trying to conceal the fact they had harbored al-Zawahri.
After last year’s troop withdrawal, the U.S. was left with fewer bases in the region to collect intelligence and carry out strikes on terrorist targets. It was not clear from where the drone carrying the missiles was launched or whether countries it flew over were aware of its presence.
The U.S. official said no American personnel were on the ground in Kabul supporting the strike and the Taliban was provided with no forewarning of the attack.
In remarks 11 month ago, Biden had said the U.S. would keep up the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries, despite pulling out troops. “We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.”
“We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities," he said.
On Sunday, the missiles came over the horizon.
Japanese video journalist detained at Myanmar protest march
A Japanese video journalist has been detained by security forces in Myanmar while covering a protest against military rule in the country’s largest city, pro-democracy activists said Sunday.
Toru Kubota, a Tokyo-based documentary filmmaker, was arrested on Saturday by plainclothes police after a flash protest in Yangon, according to Typ Fone, a leader of the group Yangon Democratic Youth Strike, which organized the rally. Like many activists, he uses a pseudonym for protection against the military authorities.
Myanmar’s army seized power in February last year by ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, and has since cracked down hard on dissent.
According to a detailed tally compiled by Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, at least 2,138 civilians have been killed by the security forces and 14,917 arrested since the military takeover.
Last week, the military government drew sharp international criticism after announcing that it had hanged four activists convicted of terrorism in secret trials.
Typ Fone told The Associated Press that two protesters in Saturday’s march were also arrested and detained in a township police station. The arrests were also reported by several other anti-government groups.
Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara on Monday said “a Japanese male citizen in his 20s” was arrested Saturday while filming a demonstration in Yangon and that he has since been detained by local police. Kihara said Japanese embassy officials have been requesting his early release, while “doing utmost” for his safety and information gathering.
An official from the Japanese Embassy told The Associated Press earlier that a Japanese national was reported detained, but declined to reveal details. The man is being held for questioning at a police station in Yangon and the embassy was taking action to release him, said the official, who asked not to be identified because was not authorized to share information with the media.
Read: Widespread condemnation of Myanmar's execution of prisoners
State-run daily newspapers, which usually report on arrests of pro-democracy protesters, did not mention it.
However, pro-military accounts on the Telegram messaging app said the Japanese man was arrested not for taking pictures but for participating in the protest by holding a banner. Typ Fone said that photos of Kubota with the banner uploaded to the Telegram channels were taken after he had been arrested, indicating they were done under duress.
During the march, about a dozen protesters chanted slogans opposing the military takeover, and shortly after, scattered into the crowds in the surrounding streets.
“He was taking a picture with his camera from a short distance from our strike yesterday,” Typ Fone said of Kubota. “When we finished the strike and dispersed, he was arrested by the security forces in plainclothes and put into a Probox car.” The vehicle is typically used by taxis in Yangon, and Typ Fone said the car in question also had the markings of a taxi.
According to a portfolio of Kubota’s work online, his primary focus was on ethnic conflicts, immigrants and refugee issues, and he has tried to highlight the conditions of “marginalised, deprived communities.”
It says he has worked with media companies such as Yahoo! News Japan, VICE JAPAN and Al Jazeera English.
Virtually all independent journalism in Myanmar is carried out underground or from exile.
The military government has arrested about 140 journalists, about 55 of whom remain detained awaiting charges or trial. Kubota is the fifth foreign journalist to be detained, after U.S. citizens Nathan Maung and Danny Fenster, who worked for local publications, and freelancers Robert Bociaga of Poland and Yuki Kitazumi of Japan, all of whom were eventually expelled.
Most of those still detained are being held under the charge of causing fear, spreading false news, or agitating against a government employee. The charges carry up to three years in prison.
Bollywood singer Babul Supriyo to become minister in Bengal govt?
Speculation is rife that Bollywood singer Babul Supriyo may be made a minister in Bengal government, as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rejigs her Cabinet on Monday in the wake of the cash-for-jobs scam.
Mamata on Thursday sacked Partha Chatterjee, one of her senior ministers, from her Cabinet as well as from all posts of her ruling Trinamool Congress party, days after he was arrested for his alleged involvement in the school teachers' recruitment scam.
Chatterjee held several portfolios in the state Cabinet, including Commerce and Industry, IT and electronics, and Industrial Reconstruction. He was also the Trinamool Congress party's general secretary.
Read: Bollywood singer Babul Supriyo joins Mamata's party
"Supriyo and two other new faces are likely to be inducted as ministers into the Cabinet by Mamata later in the day. A few serving Ministers may be axed too. Mamata may also keep some portfolios with her," sources close to the ruling party told UNB.
Supriyo joined the Trinamool Congress party in September 2021, two months after he was dropped as a federal minister by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The 50-year-old joined politics and India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) some eight years ago. He served as junior Urban Development Minister and Minister of State for Heavy Industries in BJP government's first tenure. He was the junior Environment and Forest Minister in the second term.
Born Supriya Baral, he entered Bollywood as a playback singer in the mid-nineties and has sung for many films since then. He has also done playback singing in 11 Indian languages during his musical career.
India reports first monkeypox death
India reported its first monkeypox death in the southern state of Kerala on Sunday, the Indian Express quoted the state's Health Minister Veena George as saying.
The 22-year-old man who died on Saturday afternoon had returned from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last week. The state government has launched a probe into his death.
The deceased, a native of Kerala's Thrissur district, showed no symptoms of monkeypox on his return from abroad and his relatives had handed over the positive test result conducted abroad only on Saturday, said the report.
Subsequently, the health department sent his samples to the National Institute of Virology (NIV), the result of which is awaited.
Read:New York City declares monkeypox a public health emergency
"The youth had no symptoms of monkeypox. He had been admitted to a hospital with symptoms of encephalitis and fatigue ... A high-level probe would be held into the death as monkeypox has a very low fatality rate."
Following his death all his primary contacts have been placed under observation.
India has so far confirmed four cases of monkeypox, three in Kerala and one in Delhi. On Saturday, the country's first monkeypox case, which was detected on July 14, was successfully treated and tested negative. The rest are also reportedly responding well to the medical treatment, said health authorities.
10 dead as van gets electrocuted in Bengal
At least 10 people died and 16 others sustained injuries after a van carrying a group of Hindu pilgrims got electrocuted in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal in the small hours of Monday.
The tragedy occurred around 12.30am on Dharla Bridge in the state's Cooch Behar district, some 700 kms from West Bengal capital Kolkata, police said.
"Preliminary probe has revealed that the van got electrocuted due to a short-circuit in the diesel generator set fitted in the vehicle to power a music system," a police officer told the local media.
Read: 28 people dead, 60 sick in India from drinking spiked liquor
While the 10 pilgrims, mostly young men in their early 20s, were electrocuted to death on the spot, the injured have been admitted to Jalpaiguri hospital, the officer said. "The condition of two of the injured is serious."
The bodies have been handed over to the family members of the victims, police said.
"A probe has been ordered into the tragedy that will also ascertain if the vehicle had the required permission to install and use the music system on board," the officer added.
India & Oman to hold joint military exercise from Monday
India and Oman will hold a fortnight-long joint military exercise in the deserts of the western state of Rajasthan, aimed at bolstering bilateral defence ties.
"The fourth edition of India-Oman joint military exercise 'AL NAJAH-IV' between contingents of Indian Army and the Royal Army of Oman is scheduled to take place at the Foreign Training Node of Mahajan Field Firing Ranges from August 1 to 13," India's Defence Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
A 60-member team from the Royal Army of Oman will represent the Gulf state in the exercise, where the 18 Mechanised Infantry Battalion of the Indian Army will take part, according to the Ministry.
Also read: Mamata sacks tainted Bengal Minister over school jobs scam
"The joint exercise would focus on counter-terrorism operations, regional security operations and peacekeeping operations under United Nations charter apart from organising joint physical training schedules, tactical drills, techniques and procedures," it said.
Oman is India’s closest strategic and defence partner in the Gulf and provides key support to Indian warships deployed in the Arabian Sea. And the last edition of the joint military exercise was held in Oman's capital Muscat in 2019.
Also read: 28 people dead, 60 sick in India from drinking spiked liquor
Hostel fire kills 8 in Moscow
A fire broke out in a hostel in southeastern Moscow, killing eight people and injuring three others, Sputnik reported Friday.
An acting head of the city department of the Russian Emergencies Ministry said the fire was caused by the lattices installed on the windows.
Read: Russia attacks Kyiv area for the first time in weeks
The fire has since been extinguished.
An emergency services spokesperson noted that the victims had died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
357 killed, over 400 injured as monsoon rains continue to batter Pakistan
At least 357 people were killed and over 400 were injured as heavy monsoon rains continued to batter Pakistan for more than five weeks, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said Thursday.
Besides human loss, infrastructure, road networks and houses have also been damaged due to the heavy monsoon rains and flash flooding across Pakistan since June 14, official sources from the NDMA told Xinhua.
A total of 23,792 homes have been fully or partially damaged, making thousands of people displaced, according to the NDMA statistics, adding that the heavy downpours have also damaged dozens of bridges and shops.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif tweeted Thursday that Pakistan is facing the challenges of climate change and stressed the need to address the problem of current flash flooding.
"Climate change is an undeniable reality of our times and has serious consequences for developing countries like Pakistan ... The government is aligning its development goals with the climate change requirements," he said.
Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province remained one of the most hard-hit areas, where 106 people died in rain-related incidents and subsequent flooding, followed by 90 dead in the southern Sindh province.
There have been 76 fatalities in the eastern Punjab province, 70 in the northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, while 15 people were killed in other parts of the country, said the NDMA.
Read: 19 women drowned as boat capsizes in Pakistan's Indus River: media
Meanwhile, civil administrations in respective cities along with the Pakistani army are carrying out rescue and relief efforts in affected areas. The authorities are shifting stranded people to safer places, providing food and water to affected people, whereas doctors and paramedics are in the field to provide medical care.
Taking notice of the huge losses across Pakistan, the prime minister has constituted a committee to assess the damage caused by monsoon rains and floods, while announcing to enhance monetary compensation for the affected citizens.
Farzana Bibi, a 48-year-old resident of the southern port city of Karachi, said that her family members cannot leave the house as streets in her neighborhood are submerged in knee-deep muddy flood water.
"The flood water has entered my house and damaged all of my furniture which I bought recently ... I am so upset. Rains are considered a blessing from God, but the recent heavy rains and floods have brought us a lot of inconveniences," Bibi told Xinhua.
Predicting more rains during the ongoing week, the Pakistan Meteorological Department said that monsoon currents are continuously penetrating the country and are likely to shift and intensify in upper and central parts of Pakistan.