Some suspended for deadly Afghan hospital attack
Some suspended for deadly Afghan hospital attack
WASHINGTON (AP) — American soldiers and airmen who killed and wounded dozens of civilians in a strike on an Afghanistan hospital violated U.S. rules of engagement and were suspended as they await disciplinary action that could include criminal charges, military officials said Wednesday.
Briefing reporters about the results of two investigations, Gen. John Campbell, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, described an egregious series of human and technical failures that led a U.S. warplane to destroy a medical charity’s hospital in northern Afghanistan last month. Campbell and other officials would not say how many people were removed from their jobs or whether anyone higher in the chain of command would be subject to discipline.
Schools reopen, maximum threat alert still in place
(AP) When Brussels resident Annelaure Leger dropped off her two children at school Wednesday, she said the task felt like nearly every other day — save perhaps for the machine gun-toting policeman and camera crews capturing the moment.
After a four-day shutdown sparked by a threat alert across the Belgian capital, Leger was relieved classes were back in session, even though she had to take her bike since the subway still wasn’t running in her neighborhood.
Though the Belgian capital continues to be under the highest-level threat alert, meaning an attack is serious and imminent, schools and subways began reopening across the city Wednesday.
Pope Francis urges Kenyans to work for peace
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Brushing aside security concerns, Pope Francis arrived Wednesday in Kenya on his first-ever trip to Africa and urged Kenyans to work for peace and forgiveness amid a wave of extremist violence on the continent that threatens to disrupt his trip.
Francis was received upon arrival at Nairobi’s airport by President Uhuru Kenyatta and a throng of traditional dancers and singers at the start of a six-day pilgrimage that also will take him to Uganda and the Central African Republic, a country wracked by fighting between Christians and Muslims.
Asked en route if he was concerned about his own safety, Francis responded with his typical wry humor: “I’m more worried about the mosquitoes.”
But he sounded a far more serious note in his speech to Kenyatta and the country’s diplomatic corps at Nairobi’s State House, urging all Kenyans to work for peace and forgiveness to heal ethnic, religious and economic divisions.
“Ultimately, the struggle against these enemies of peace must be carried on by men and women who fearlessly believe in, and bear honest witness to, the great spiritual and political values which inspired the birth of the nation,” Francis said.
Russia crackdown on Muslims fuels exodus to IS
(AP) Security forces keep devout Muslims under surveillance in places such as Komsomolskoye, raiding their homes and hauling them in to provide DNA samples and fingerprints. Many in Dagestan, however, see the heavy-handed security presence as not only fueling an exodus to Syria of Islamic State recruits, but also serving to rid this part of predominantly Muslim southern Russia of potential militants by encouraging them to flee.
The two decades of Russia’s war on Islamic insurgency in the North Caucasus, mainly in Chechnya and Dagestan, fostered a generation of cut-throat Islamist fighters and given rise to a culture of violence and police profiling that pushed conservative religious groups to the margins of society and into the jaws of the IS.
However, few if any efforts are made to stem that flow. Almost everyone in Komsomolskoye knows someone who has left for Syria.
One of them was Rashid Magomedov.
A devout Muslim, he had been detained several times by security police, who his family claims planted grenades and ammunition at his home as a pretext to arrest him. Magomedov once spent two months in jail before the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. It was no surprise when he fled to Syria to join the Islamic State group, leaving behind his pregnant wife and two children.