War News

Children of War Photos

We won’t be able to change what grew inside the brains and hearts  of the children of War.

Damn The war criminals, Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Powell 

The McGlynn:

NYT: UN: 1 in 4 Children Live in Country of Conflict or Disaster

UNITED NATIONS — A quarter of the world’s children — about 535 million — are living in a country affected by conflict or disaster, the head of the U.N. children’s agency said Monday.

Henrietta Fore told a Security Council meeting on children and armed conflict that it is “almost beyond comprehension” that one of every four young people are caught in that situation.

She pointed to children and young people whose lives are being shattered by conflicts, including in Yemen, Mali and South Sudan. She also cited youngsters recruited to fight, killed by a land mine or an attack on their school, and “losing hope not only in their futures, but in the futures of their countries.”

Sweden, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, organized the open meeting on the theme “Protecting Children Today Prevents Conflict Tomorrow” and sponsored a resolution unanimously adopted by the 15 members to strengthen U.N. actions to ensure the care and safety of youngsters………Virginia Gamba, the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict, said she is “profoundly shocked” by the more than 21,000 violations of children’s rights in 2017 recently reported by the U.N., a significant increase from 2016.

“The majority of these despicable acts were perpetrated by armed groups although government forces and unknown armed actors played an important part,” she said. “Each and every one of them led to unspeakable suffering for children, families and entire communities.”

Gamba said the level and severity of the latest violations demonstrate the need for united action “to change the tide of history,” including by focusing on prevention and reintegration “to break cycles of violence” against children.

Read full story

AP: Yemen demands Emirates shut down prisons where abuses rife

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemen’s interior minister on Monday demanded the United Arab Emirates shut down or hand over secret prisons that The Associated Press reported are under the control of the UAE and its allied militias.

At least 80 detainees have been freed from the facilities in recent weeks since an AP investigation detailed sexual abuse and torture at the sites.

It was the first time Interior Minister Ahmed al-Maysari has gone public with the demand in talks with an Emirati official, seeming to contradict the UAE’s repeated denials that it has authority over any prisons in Yemen.

The AP first reported in an investigation last year that the UAE and its allied militias were running a network of secret detention facilities around southern Yemen, beyond the control of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government.

Former prisoners and security officials described widespread torture at the facilities, which are housed in locations ranging from Emirati-run military bases to a former nightclub run by a UAE-backed security chief and his anti-terrorism squad. Thousands of Yemenis swept up in the U.S.-backed campaign against al-Qaida have been held in the prisons without charges or trials. Some have been interrogated by U.S. personnel inside the facilities, the AP found.

In June, the AP revealed that hundreds had been subjected to sexual abuse, including one incident in the Beir Ahmed prison in the southern city of Aden, where detainees were lined up naked as guards probed their anal cavities. Sexual abuses were filmed as a way to turn suspects into informants, detainees reported.

Read full story

REU: Saudi-led coalition faces stalemate in Yemen’s main port city

DUBAI (Reuters) – A Saudi-led coalition has made no major gains in its offensive to wrest control of Yemen’s Hodeidah port from the Iran-aligned Houthis, leaving it without the decisive increase in leverage it had sought against the group in U.N.-sponsored peace efforts.

The alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched the offensive on the heavily defended Red Sea city on June 12 in the largest battle of the three-year war, which the United Nations fears risks triggering a famine.

The Arab states pledged a swift operation to take over Hodeidah’s air and sea ports, without entering the city center, seeking to minimize civilian casualties and avoid disruption of the port, a lifeline for millions in the impoverished state where 8.4 million are believed to be on the verge of starvation.

But they have made little progress in the campaign which Riyadh and Abu Dhabi say aims to cut off the Houthis’ main supply line and force the group to the negotiating table.

The coalition announced on June 20 that it had seized Hodeidah airport, but local military and aid sources told Reuters that neither side has complete control of the airport and its surrounding area, which spreads over 20 km (12 miles).

Read full story

REU: Syrian rebels say army besieging their enclave in southern city Deraa

AMMAN (Reuters) – The Syrian army and allied troops laid siege to the rebel-held enclave in Deraa on Monday and were poised to gain complete control of the city where the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s rule first erupted, insurgents said.

With its advance on rebel-held parts of Deraa city, the government appeared to be piling military pressure on the insurgents even after they agreed to surrender terms last week, in a major victory for Assad.

The army was also consolidating its grip over the border area with Jordan to the east of Deraa city on Monday. Free Syrian Army rebels (FSA), once backed by the West and Jordan, have mostly handed over the area along with their heavy arms to the government since the surrender deal clinched last Friday.

Backed by Russian air power, the Syrian army and its militias scored a strategic victory in a 20-day offensive after they captured Nassib crossing, a vital trade route that insurgents held for three years..

The United Nations said on Monday it would immediately start providing humanitarian assistance to thousands of civilian families affected by the fighting in the Deraa, Sweida and Quneitra areas of southern Syria, after the Syrian government asked it to do so.

“The living conditions of the civilians affected by the conflict in the Syrian south are currently dire,” said United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Syria Ali Al Zaatari, and he welcomed the government’s request to mobilize aid.

The offensive in southern Syria has displaced more than 320,000 people, the United Nations said last week.

Read full story

NYT: Iraq Says Airstrike Has Killed 20 IS Militants Outside Mosul

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi military spokesman says an airstrike has killed 20 Islamic State militants outside the northern city of Mosul.

In a statement issued on Monday, Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool says the slain militants were hiding inside a tunnel in Badoush area northwest of Mosul.

Rasool says the strike was carried out by the U.S.-led coalition. He didn’t give a date for the strike.

In the early days of IS’ onslaught in June 2014 in northern Iraq, the militants killed some 600 male Shiite inmates from Baduosh prison.

Over the past three years, IS has gradually been driven out of nearly all the territory it once held in Syria and Iraq. But the group still maintains a presence in the Syrian desert and remote areas along the Syria-Iraq border.

REU: Militants kill three militia fighters near Iraq’s Baiji refinery: police

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) – Islamic State militants killed three government-backed militia fighters on Monday near Iraq’s biggest oil refinery in the northern city of Baiji, police and militia sources said.

Iraq declared victory in December over Islamic State, which had seized control of nearly a third of the country in 2014, but it continues to carry out attacks and bombings in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq.

Police sources said at least seven militants opened fire on the militia forces in Baiji. Four of the attackers were killed and at least two others were still at large, they said.