Afghan National Army soldiers outside a military compound after a car bomb blast on the outskirts of Ghazni city. Mustafa Andaleb/Reuters Afghan National Army soldiers outside a military compound after a car bomb blast on the outskirts of Ghazni city. Mustafa Andaleb/Reuters 29 Nov 2020 At least 34 people have been killed in two separate suicide bombings that targeted a military base and a provincial chief.
In eastern Ghazni province, 31 soldiers were killed and 24 others wounded on Sunday when an attacker drove a military vehicle full of explosives onto an army commando base before detonating it, according to an official in Afghanistan’s national security council, who spoke anonymously because he was not permitted to speak directly to the media.
KEEP READING Will Biden stay on the course set by Trump in Afghanistan? Australia finds evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan inquiry Remembering Afghanistan’s narrator of hope and war The attack was also confirmed by interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian, though he did not provide details on casualties.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, when contacted by Reuters news agency, did not confirm or deny responsibility.
Afghanistan has seen a spate of car bombings over the last few months, despite peace talks currently under way between the Kabul government and the Taliban in Qatar.
This is the first time the two sides hold face-to-face talks to try to end the country’s decades-long war.
Afghan National Army soldiers keep watch outside the military compound on the outskirts of Ghazni [Mustafa Andaleb/Reuters] Taliban talks In southern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber targeted the convoy of provincial council chief Attajan Haqbayat in Zubal, killing at least three people and wounding 12 others, including children.
Haqbayat survived the Sunday attack with minor injuries, though one of his bodyguards was among those killed, said provincial police spokesman Hikmatullah Kochai.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility.
Attacks have killed more than 50 people in the capital Kabul in recent weeks, including two assaults on educational centres and a rocket attack.
The three Kabul attacks were claimed by the armed group ISIL (ISIS), but Afghan officials blamed the Taliban – which has denied any involvement.
People attend a funeral for those killed in the attack [Jossy Ola/AP Photo]
A “gruesome” massacre against farmers in northeastern Nigeria killed at least 110 people, the United Nations has said, raising tolls initially indicating 43 and then at least 70 dead.
The killings took place in the early afternoon of Saturday in the village of Koshobe and other rural communities in the Jere local government area near Maiduguri, the capital of the conflict-hit Borno state.
“Armed men on motorcycles led a brutal attack on civilian men and women who were harvesting their fields,” Edward Kallon, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Nigeria, said in a statement on Sunday.
“At least 110 civilians were ruthlessly killed and many others were wounded in this attack,” he added, noting that several women are believed to have been kidnapped.
“The incident is the most violent direct attack against innocent civilians this year. I call for the perpetrators of this heinous and senseless act to be brought to justice,” Kallon said.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, but the armed group Boko Haram and its splinter faction, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP), have carried out a series of deadly assaults in the area in recent years.
Both groups are active in the region, where fighters have killed more than 30,000 people in the past decade during an armed campaign that has displaced some two million and has spread to neighbouring countries including Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office in 2015 promising to fix the security crisis, denounced the latest massacre.
“I condemn the killing of our hard-working farmers by terrorists in Borno state. The entire country is hurt by these senseless killings,” the president said via his spokesman.
But security analyst Sulaiman Aledeh said many in the country are growing frustrated with the authorities’ inability to contain the conflict.
“If you’ve seen [what happened to] Niger, President Mahamadou Issoufou had to sack his security chiefs when 89 soldiers were killed. So Nigerians are asking why are you keeping these people,” he told Al Jazeera from Lagos.
“The problem here has to do with the government of the day seems to be rewarding loyalty over professionalism. They [Nigerians] think by now the government should’ve tried a few good other men to get them out of this mess.”
‘So much suffering’
Earlier on Sunday, Borno Governor Babaganan Umara Zulum told journalists that at least 70 farmers were killed. He was speaking in Zabarmari village after attending the burial of 43 people whose bodies were recovered on Saturday.
Zulum urged the federal government to recruit more soldiers, Civilian Joint Task Force members and civil defence fighters to protect farmers in the region.
Bulama Bukarti, an analyst at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said the failure to control Boko Haram has devastated lives and the economy.
“The security forces are obviously losing this war,” he told Al Jazeera, describing 2019 as “the deadliest year” for Nigerian security forces since Boko Haram’s armed campaign started in 2009.
“About 800 security forces were killed, mostly in the first half of last year, and the Nigerian military responded by changing its strategy introducing what they called the ‘super camp strategy’ by which they withdrew soldiers from remote communities and rural areas and consolidated them in what they call ‘super camps’ in order to reduce military fatalities,” Bukarti said.
“The strategy succeeded in reducing military fatalities but the side-effect of that is that the Nigerian military has effectively surrendered control of rural Nigeria to Boko Haram fighters.
“You have Boko Haram ruling northeastern Nigeria and criminal gangs ruling the rural communities of northwestern Nigeria; this has a devastating effect on Nigeria’s economy and the future of the country entirely.”
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Maiduguri, Vincent Lelei, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Nigeria, said people in the region “live in extreme fear” amid the prolonged crisis “which has led to so much suffering, so much displacement and destruction of livelihoods”.
“Borno state is a state with very good soil, there is a lot of water on the ground, and a lot of crops grow very quickly,” he said. “Given the opportunity, the livelihoods of the people could recover so quickly – but this insecurity, this problem of violence against unarmed civilians is reducing those opportunities.”
ISIS’ news agency, Amaq, announced on November 29 that the group’s terrorists had ambushed a military convoy of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the eastern Homs countryside.
The ambush took place a day earlier, west of the town of al-Sukhnah. The SAA’s convoy was targeted with a number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), according to Amaq.
“Two battle tanks and a 4×4 vehicle were destroyed,” a source in ISIS told Amaq. “20 soldiers of the Syrian military, who were with the targeted military convoy, were also killed.
After the ambush, ISIS cells targeted two other vehicles of the SAA with heavy machine guns and an IED in the vicinity of al-Sukhnah. Amaq claims that several soldiers were killed or injured.
The terrorists likely came from the Homs desert, which lays between eastern Homs and western Deir Ezzor. The desert is infested with terrorists’ hideouts. U.S.-backed fighters based in the nearby area of al-Tanf are allegedly providing the terrorists with supplies.
A day earlier, government forces kicked off a new combing operation in southern and western Deir Ezzor to limit ISIS’ activities there.
According to a recent report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, ISIS terrorists killed at least 95 Syrian service members in the central region over the last month.
The Russian Aerospace Forces are supporting Syrian government forces operations against ISIS in the central region. However, the situation there is not improving. The group has established itself in the region, likely thanks to the support of U.S.-backed fighters.
Yemen has been beset by violence since 2014, when the Houthis overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa [File: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters]
Yemen’s Houthi fighters have claimed the killing of at least eight Saudi soldiers.
Yahya Saree, a military spokesman for the Iran-aligned group, said late on Sunday that fighters attacked the Tadawin camp in the Marib governorate, where Saudi forces are stationed with a ballistic missile.
Several Saudi soldiers were also wounded, Saree said.
There has been no comment from Saudi Arabia on the attack in Marib but its media reported the death of a lieutenant colonel without specifying the circumstances and location of his death.
Yemen has been beset by violence since 2014, when the Houthis overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa.
The crisis escalated in 2015 as a Saudi-led military coalition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.
Yemen is facing “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” according to the UN, and many people do not have the essentials they need to survive such as food and water.
The UN children’s agency UNICEF has said that millions of children’s lives are at “high risk” as the country moves closer to famine.
On Sunday, pro-government forces said at least seven civilians had been killed in a shelling attack by the Houthis in the western coastal province of Hodeidah.
According to Yemen’s army brigade al-Amalika, 10 others were injured in the attack in a village south of the coastal city of the same name.
The Houthi rebels have not yet commented on the attack.
Hodeidah is the main entry point for Yemen’s commercial imports and aid.
The UN has called on Yemen’s internationally recognised government and the Houthi group to exercise restraint and stop the escalation in Hodeidah.
Confrontations between the forces of the two sides escalated in several areas of the governorate during the past several days, amid accusations of escalation.
“During the past week, air strikes, the use of improvised explosive devices and ground attacks were reported,” said the head of the UN mission in Hodeidah, Abhijit Goha, adding that the reports of civilian casualties, including children, are particularly disturbing.https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.426.0_en.html#goog_305642183Play Video
Officials halted operations at the Siniya refinery to prevent further damage [File: Essam al-Sudani/Reuters]
A rocket attack in northern Iraq has caused a large fire at an oil refinery, briefly halting operations, the country’s oil ministry said.
The fire hit a fuel storage tank at the small Siniya refinery in Salahuddin province on Sunday. There were no reports of casualties, the ministry statement said.
The fire was extinguished and operations resumed within few hours after the attack, the ministry said, citing the state-owned Northern Refining Company that runs the refinery.
The ISIL (ISIS) group claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. ISIL said on its website Amaq that two Katyusha rockets were used in the attack.
The Siniya refinery is near Iraq’s largest oil refinery, Baiji, which sustained considerable damage during the war against the ISIL group. The refinery was overhauled and eventually reopened in 2017 following the group’s defeat.
Although ISIL no longer holds territory in Iraq, the group maintains sleeper cells and frequently carries out attacks across parts of the country, including the north.
Iranian-supported armed groups are also believed to be behind a series of rocket and mortar attacks targeting US interests in Iraq, frustrating President Donald Trump’s administration, which in September threatened to close its embassy in Baghdad if they continue.https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.426.0_en.html#goog_305642182Play Video
Officials said halting operations at the Siniya refinery, which has refining capacity of 30,000 barrels per day, was a safety measure to prevent further damage.
“We completely shut down production units to avoid extensive damage that could result,” a chief engineer at the refinery said, speaking to Reuters News Agency on condition of anonymity.
Sunday’s attack signals that ISIL fighters may still be capable of launching attacks against security forces and vital energy sites, despite being defeated during a 2014-2017 United States-backed military campaign.
Earlier this month, the US announced it will further reduce the number of troops stationed in the Middle East, causing consternation among analysts who worried such a move may be to the detriment of countries like Iraq.
Acting US Secretary of Defence Christopher Miller said Trump had decided to reduce the US troop presence in Afghanistan and Iraq to 2,500 each by January 15, 2021.
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![Yemen has been beset by violence since 2014, when the Houthis overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa [File: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/47a207369407462fb0a6f654cab1697f_18.jpeg?resize=770%2C513)
![Officials halted operations at the Siniya refinery to prevent further damage [File: Essam al-Sudani/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-10-06T093732Z_1246662493_RC2XCJ9PRPBK_RTRMADP_3_IRAQ-ENVIRONMENT.jpg?resize=770%2C513)
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