1. Art and Diseño

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WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2015
I N T E R N AT I O N A L
Iran warns of ‘consequences’ for Israeli attack
TEHRAN: Iran has told the United States
that Israel should expect consequences
for an attack on the Syrian-controlled
Golan Heights that killed an Iranian
general, a senior official said yesterday.
Revolutionar y
Guards
General
Mohammad Ali Allahdadi died alongside six fighters from Lebanon’s
Hezbollah group in the Januar y 18
attack on forces supporting President
Bashar Al-Assad in Syria’s civil war.
Israel has not officially acknowledged carrying out the attack, but was
already warned last week of an eventual
response. “We have sent a message to
the United States through diplomatic
channels telling the Americans that the
Zionist regime crossed Iran’s red lines by
this action,” said Deputy Foreign
Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
“In this message, we said those
responsible should wait to suffer the
consequences of their act,” he added, in
remarks carried by the official IRNA
news agency. Amir-Abdollahian was
speaking on the sidelines of a memorial
service for Allahdadi also attended by
General Ghassem Souleimani, head of
the Guards’ elite Quds Force, which is
responsible for operations outside Iran.
Retaliation eventual
Last week, the defense minister,
Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan, said
“this action of Zionists will not be left
without a response. The important
thing is the question of the time and
place of this response.” And Mohsen
Rezaie, secretary of Iran’s Expediency
Council, added that Hezbollah would
eventually retaliate against “this recent
atrocity,” but that the group was “pru-
dent and has a long term plan and will
not be infuriated.”
Shiite Iran is Assad’s main regional
ally in his war against the mainly Sunni
rebels seeking to over throw him.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television said the
group’s six fighters were killed on a
reconnaissance mission. But an Israeli
security source said the strike was on
“terrorists” who were preparing an
attack on the Jewish state. The incident
came days after Hezbollah Chief Hassan
Nasrallah threatened to retaliate against
Israel for its repeated strikes on targets
in Syria, and boasted the movement
was stronger than ever.
He touted a sophisticated arsenal,
including Fateh-110 missiles, which
have a range of 200 kilometers or more
and are capable of hitting much of
Israel. At least two rockets fired from the
Syrian side hit the Israeli side Tuesday,
prompting return ar tiller y fire, the
Israeli army said. In 2006, Israel fought a
war against Hezbollah that killed more
than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly
civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. — AFP
Boko Haram raids resume
killing in northeast Nigeria
KANO: Scores of people have been killed and
many others forced to flee to the mountains
following a renewed series of Boko Haram
raids in northeast Nigeria, a lawmaker and a
relief agency official said yesterday. The
reported attacks by the Islamists targeted the
Michika area in northeastern Adamawa state,
where bodies reportedly littered the streets in
several villages. The bloodshed in northeast
Nigeria has reached unprecedented levels in
recent weeks, raising questions about security for general elections set for February 14.
The head of a European Union election
monitoring mission, Santiago Fisas, said staff
deployed to observe polling in Africa’s most
populous country would not even attempt to
travel to the northeast. Separately, police in
the northeastern town of Potiskum said they
had arrested a bomb-maker linked to several
recent Boko Haram suicide attacks-a welcome
development for Nigeria’s security services
which have struggled to protect civilians.
‘Beyond insurgency’
Adamu Kamale, who represents the
Michika district in the Adamawa state government, also in the northeast, said Boko Haram
gunmen had been going “door-to-door,
killing people, including the old” for the past
two weeks. It was not immediately clear what
sparked the latest alleged atrocities.
The insurgents, who are blamed for more
than 13,000 deaths since 2009, have been in
control of Michika for roughly five months.
Women and children had been abducted and
countless homes destroyed, according to
Kamale, who said roughly 70 percent of the
population had fled their homes. Many had
escaped to Adamawa’s capital Yola, where
hundreds of thousands have previously
sought refuge, while others have been hiding
in the mountain range that borders
Cameroon.
“Dead bodies litter villages... The attackers
slaughter people like animals,” he said. In other areas under Boko Haram’s control, however, the attacks had abated and Kamale struggled to understand that latest unrest. “To us,
it has gone beyond insurgency. Something
very strange is taking place in Michika,” he
said. Mohammed Kanar, northeast coordinator for the National Emergency Management
Agency, confirmed the raids in Michika, without discussing details of the violence. “People
are trapped in the mountains but they are
inaccessible,” he told AFP. “The security situation is a challenge.”
The spike in bloodshed comes less than
three weeks before an election in which
President Goodluck Jonathan faces a tough
challenge from former military ruler,
Muhammadu Buhari. The EU yesterday said it
would deploy 90 observers across the country for the polls, excluding the northeast.
“The present situation (does not) allow us
to go to the northeast,” Fisas, the head of the
mission, told reporters. Nigerian election officials have already conceded that voting will
be impossible in much of the region, where
Boko Haram controls large swatches of territory, especially in its historic stronghold of
Borno state. — AFP
Sixth grade student killed
in Yemen drone strike
SANAA: A Yemeni rights group said yesterday a sixth grade student aged about 12
was killed in a US drone strike east of the
capital Sanaa, an assertion that could raise
fresh concern over Washington’s campaign
against suspected militants. The group said
Mohammed Saleh Qayed Taeiman was one
of three people reported killed in Monday’s
drone strike. It said his father and older
brother were killed in a 2011 drone strike,
and a third brother was wounded in another drone attack.
Yemeni officials said on Monday that
three men believed to be al Qaeda militants were killed in a car travelling in the
Hareeb region of Marib province, the first
drone strike since US-backed President
Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government quit last Thursday. Yemen is the main
stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula (AQAP), one of the Islamist militant group’s most active wings. The group
recently claimed responsibility for the
attack on French satirical newspaper
Charlie Hebdo.
The United States acknowledges using
drones to combat AQAP in Yemen but does
not comment publicly on attacks. A tribal
leader told Reuters that Taeiman was an
AQAP militant. Another tribal leader said he
was about 15 years old. But the Yemeni
National Organization for Drone Victims
(NODV) described him as “a normal kid”.
“He was in sixth grade, so his age was
between about 11-13 years old,” NODV
head Mohammed Al-Qawli told Reuters,
adding that Taeiman was recently treated
at a Yemeni government military hospital in
Sanaa after he was kicked by a camel.
NODV said that Taeiman’s 65-year-old
father, Saleh Qayed Taeiman, died along
with one of his sons called Jalal, 16, in the
2011 drone strike. A third brother, 17-yearold Ezz El-Deen, survived another drone
strike, but still has shrapnel in his body,
NODV said. NODV said that one of the other victims in Monday’s strike was identified
as Abdallah Khaled Aziz Al-Zindani, a farm
worker married to a woman from the
Taeiman clan, which was due to meet with
other tribes in the area to discuss their
response.
AQAP claimed responsibility for the
deadly Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris on
Jan 7 and American officials fear Al-Qaeda
will gain strength in Yemen’s current power
vacuum. Two US security officials had said
on Friday the collapse of Hadi’s US-backed
government left America’s counter-terrorism campaign “paralyzed”, but Monday’s
strike suggests the CIA-run drone campaign has not been dismantled. —Reuters
ADEN: Yemeni members of a local popular committee, which consists of a group of volunteers who maintain security in their region, stand in the street, some of them barefoot and one holding an anti-tank rocket launcher in the southern Yemeni city. —AFP
SURUC: Kurdish people attend a celebration rally near the Turkish-Syrian border. Kurdish fighters have expelled Islamic State group militants
from the Syrian border town of Kobanep.— AFP
Kurds push offensive
after driving out IS
Significant boost for both Kurds and US coalition
BEIRUT: Kurdish fighters expanded their offensive yesterday after driving Islamic State militants from the Syrian border town of Kobani the
previous day, to retake dozens of surrounding
villages still held by the militants, activists and
officials said. Pushing IS out of Kobani after a
bloody, four-month campaign was a significant
boost for both the Kurds and the US-led coalition, though the US Central Central Command
tempered Monday’s victory by saying it estimated that 90 percent of Kobani was now controlled
by Kurdish forces.
From Kobani, Kurdish troops took the fight
yesterday to the village of Shiran, southeast of
the town, said Mustafa Bali, a Kobani-based
activist. Earlier in the day, they captured the
nearby village of Qarah Hlanj. The Britain-based
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed
the capture of Qarah Hlanj and said the fighting
near Shiran has intensified. The victory in Kobani
came at a high cost. “The city has been fully liberated,” said senior Kurdish official Idriss Nassan,
speaking by telephone from inside the town. He
said Kobani is “nearly destroyed.”
Still no water, power
In September, Islamic State fighters captured
about 300 Kurdish villages and hamlets near
Kobani and thrust into the town itself, occupying
nearly half of it and sending tens of thousands of
residents fleeing into Turkey. The main Kurdish
militia, the People’s Protection Units, or YPG,
aims to “liberate” all villages near Kobani area
from IS fighters, the force’s commander,
Mohammed Barkhadan, told reporters yesterday.
The scope of the destruction will make it
hard for refugees to return anytime soon. “The
war in the town is over but the difficult task has
begun,” said Bali, the activist. “There is no water,
electricity or sewage system.” Across the border,
Turkish security forces fired tear gas yesterday
to prevent about 1,000 Kurds from crossing into
Kobani to celebrate, Turkey’s private Dogan
news agency reported. Earlier, several legislators from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party traveled to
Kobani. Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s
powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party,
urged the world to help. Kobani, he said,
“deserves international support for its reconstruction.” — AP
11 die in NATO training
fighter jet crash in Spain
LOS LLANOS MILITARY BASE: Officials investigated yesterday how a fighter jet crashed during
NATO training exercises at an air force base in
Spain, killing 11 military personnel leaving others with serious burns. Nine French and two
Greek personnel died and about 20 people were
injured after the two-seater F-16 crashed into
parked aircraft at the Los Llanos base in southeastern Spain.
The jet lost power as it took off and crashed
on Monday, damaging five other aircraft, the
Spanish defense ministry said. Firefighters
rushed to the scene and battled the flames as
black smoke billowed from the wreckage. Two
Greek pilots on board and eight French officers
were confirmed killed on Monday and the ministry said a ninth Frenchman died in hospital in
Madrid yesterday.
A judge in the eastern city of Valencia was
leading an investigation of the accident. A technical commission was also probing the causes
and was set to examine the wreckage and the
plane’s black box recorders, a defense ministry
source said. The base, near the city of Albacete,
hosts elite exercises run by NATO to train military
personnel from 10 nations to carry out joint
maneuvers. Two pilots, a navigator and five
mechanics were among the French personnel
killed, the head of the French air force chiefs of
staff Denis Mercier told BFM television.
Nine French personnel and 11 Italians were
injured, Spanish officials said. It was the highest
death toll in a single day for the French armed
forces since an ambush in Afghanistan in which
10 died in 2008. Of those injured, five of the
French were in “serious but stable condition” in
hospital and four had been discharged, said
defense ministry spokesman Manuel Vazquez.
French President Francois Hollande “expressed
his deep respect for the commitment” of the airmen who were preparing for air force missions
to fight “against terrorist groups” in Iraq and the
African Sahel region. Spain’s Defense Minister
Pedro Morenes and the chief of staff of Spain’s
air force, Francisco Javier Garcia Arnaiz, arrived
late Monday at the airbase, about 250 kilometers
southeast of Madrid. French Defence Minister
Jean-Yves Le Drian was expected to visit the site
of the accident on yesterday.
‘Tragedy for NATO family’
The Greek F-16 hit two Italian AMX planes
and three French jets-a Mirage 2000 and two
Alfa Jets-when it crashed. It was taking part in
NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program, which seeks
to improve multinational cooperation in air
operations. NATO Secretar y General Jens
Stoltenberg said he was “deeply saddened” by
the disaster.
“This is a tragedy which affects the whole
NATO family. I express my heartfelt condolences
to the loved ones and the nations of those who
lost their lives, and I wish a speedy recovery to
the injured,” he said in a statement. Britain,
Germany, the United States and Spain were also
taking part in the exercises but none of their
nationals were reported injured. The 10 NATO
countries that take part in the program are
Belgium, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany,
Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the
United States.
According to the French defense ministry’s
website, it is “the most renowned and most
demanding” program for fighter pilots. The base
has housed the training centre for NATO pilots
since 2010, according to its website. Some 750
personnel were taking part in the current course.
The F-16, manufactured by US company
Lockheed Martin, is the biggest-selling fighter
plane in the world with more than 4,500 made
for 28 countries.—AFP
ALBACETE: Captain Jose Guerreira speaks to the press outside the entrance to Los Llanos military after a Greek fighter jet crashed on takeoff yesterday. — AFP