Deadly violence flares in Beirut

Deadly clashes have erupted in the Lebanese capital Beirut and residents blocked roads in the country's northern region of Akkar near the city of Tripoli after soldiers there killed two members of a Syrian opposition alliance.
Gunmen fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns early on Monday in intense street battles in Beirut, killing two people and wounding at least 18 others.
"There is an uneasy calm.. streets are relatively empty," Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reported from Beirut.
"The situation overnight, the clashes that were witnessed in Beirut, were the worst since January 2001 when we saw people take to the streets in protest following the collapse of the government of the former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri.
"People who took to the streets were supporters of Saad al-Hariri's movement, mainly Sunnis. they were protesting the death and killing of a Sunni cleric and his bodyguard in northern Lebanon," Khodr said.
The clashes erupted hours after Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Wahid, a Sunni Muslim cleric, and Muhammed Hussein Miraib, both members of the March 14 alliance, were shot in their car near Tripoli on Sunday as they "sped through a Lebanese army checkpoint without stopping".
The fighting, some of the worst in Beirut in years, exacerbated deep political and sectarian divisions, as fears mounted that the conflict in neighbouring Syria was spilling across the border.
Our correspondent, reporting from Tripoli on Sunday, said that people in the area had already drawn their own conclusions about the incident and believed the army officer who carried out the shootings was allied with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Crisis in Syria
"The bottom line is this: Syria yet again is a dividing issue in this country. The rival groups are divided in their support and opposition to the Syrian government. And this is where the fear lies," Khodr said on Monday.
"The very fact that the Lebanese army is at the centre of the conflict makes the situation more dangerous. Because the army has always been seen as the neutral institution, the only institution that can hold this politically unstable country together."
Over the past week Alawites, the sect to which Assad belongs, and Sunnis have been fighting each other in Tripoli, Khodr said.
"What has become clear here is that Lebanon can no longer continue with its policy of disassociating itself with the turmoil just across the border," Kodr said.
"The Sunni cleric's funeral will be held later today [Monday] and already there are tensions in the north. It's not clear if we will witness more violence, but what is clear is that as long as there is no solution to the Syrian crisis, this country will be in danger."
Najib Mikati, the Lebanese prime minister, tried to quell growing tensions on Sunday.
"The government is determined to continue to shoulder its national responsibilities amid this critical period in Lebanon and the region, and it will take all measures necessary to preserve civil peace," he said in a statement.
The clashes in Beirut occurred in the neighbourhood of Tarek Jadidah. Sources said they pitted two Sunni factions against each other; one that opposes Assad, and another loyal to a Sunni political figure, Shaker Berjawi, who supports the Syrian president.
'Direct targeting'
Lebanon's army released a statement confirming the deaths at the checkpoint but did not give any information on who was responsible or what led to the shooting.
"The leadership of the army expresses deep regret for the death of the two victims ... It will immediately form an investigative committee comprised of senior officers and military police under the relevant court," the statement said.
Some troops had recently pulled out of Akkar to prevent tensions from escalating after sporadic fighting over the past week, a security source said.
Khaled Daher, a member of parliament from the Future Movement party, which is part of the March 14 alliance, said the two men were targeted.
"If shots were fired at the tyres, we would say there was a mistake. But we consider this a direct targeting from the army," he told Reuters news agency.
"Frankly, we do not want to see the army here because it works at the service of the Syrian regime," he said.
Many Sunni Muslims in Lebanon's north sympathise with Syria's uprising against Assad and say that the Lebanese army is taking orders from Damascus.
Syrian government troops were garrisoned in Lebanon until 2005.
Beirut-based political commentator Rami Khouri said the recent violence in Tripoli that killed at least eight people and wounded dozens had been linked to events in Syria.
"You have tensions in the area going back years but this has been exacerbated by the situation in Syria ... Syria is not the primary factor, but it is related," he said.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan key issue at NATO summit

THE NATO ALLIANCE that has fought for a decade in Afghanistan is helping that nation shift toward stability and peace, but there will be “hard days ahead,” President Barack Obama said today.
Alliance leaders insisted the fighting coalition will remain effective despite France’s plans to pull its combat troops out early.
With a global economic crisis and waning public support for the war in the backdrop, world leaders opened a NATO summit confronted by questions about Afghanistan’s post-conflict future: money for security forces, coming elections and more. They were also papering over the crack in the fighting alliance with the planned French withdrawal.
“We still have a lot of work to do and there will be great challenges ahead,” Obama said. “The loss of life continues in Afghanistan and there will be hard days ahead.”
The end of the war is in sight, Obama said following a lengthy discussion with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on the sidelines of the NATO summit. The military alliance is pledged to remain in Afghanistan into 2014, but will seal plans Sunday and Monday to shift foreign forces off the front lines a year faster than once planned.
Afghan forces will take the lead throughout the nation next year, instead of in 2014, despite uneven performance under US and other outside tutelage so far. The shift is in large part a response to plummeting public support for the war in Europe and the United States, contributors of most of the 130,000 foreign troops now fighting the Taliban-led insurgency. A majority of Americans now say the war is unwinnable or not worth continuing.
Karzai said his nation is looking forward to the end of war, “so that Afghanistan is no longer a burden on the shoulder of our friends in the international community, on the shoulders of the United States and our other allies.”
Obama said NATO partners would discuss “a vision for post-2014 in which we have ended our combat role, the Afghan war as we understand it is over, but our commitment to friendship and partnership to Afghanistan continues.”
Newly elected French President Francois Hollande has said he will withdraw all French combat troops from Afghanistan by year’s end — a full two years before the timeline agreed to by nations in the US-led NATO coalition.
“There will be no rush for the exits,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. “Our goal, our strategy, our timetable remain unchanged.”
Rasmussen denied there were fresh cracks in the alliance. He suggested a deal will emerge for France to move into a noncombat role but continue to support the international mission.

Several killed in Italian earthquake

At least seven people have been killed and up to 50 others injured in a 6.0-magnitude earthquake near the northern Italian city of Bologna, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
The strong quake struck at 4:04am local time (02:04 GMT) on Sunday in the country's industrial heartland, while most people were sleeping, prompting thousands to run into the streets in panic.
Hospitals were evacuated as a precautionary measure.
Al Jazeera's Sabina Castelfranco, reporting from the worst affected town of Finale Emilia, said: "Scared people are out on the street and have refused to go back to their homes."
"There are apparently 13,000 people that have been displaced, and it is unclear whether there is going to be more victims found," she said.
"Authorities in the area have schools closed down until the situation stabilises," Castelfranco said.
"The new buildings are intact but mediaeval buildings, some of the bell towers and churches, have completely collapsed. You can see huge mountains of rubble in front of these beautiful buildings."
One person, believed to be a Moroccan man working a night shift in a polyester factory, died when he was hit by falling debris.
Two men, also working a night shift, were killed when part of a modern ceramics factory made of steel collapsed in the town of Sant'Agostino.
"He wasn't supposed to be there. He changed shifts with a friend who wanted to go to the beach," the mother of one of the victims told state television.
A woman was reported to have died after suffering a heart attack because of the quake, and several dozen people suffered minor injuries.
Rescue officials were checking reports that other people were buried under rubble and were preparing to house people
whose dwellings had been damanged or destroyed.
In the town of Finale Emilia, firefighters rescued a five-year-old girl who was trapped in the rubble of her house after a rapid series of phone calls between a local woman and emergency services.
"We were very afraid, all the village went out into the street after the first shock, after the second many took shelter in their cars, but fortunately the damage was fairly limited, above all affecting churches," Umberto Mazza, the mayor of Ostiglia, near Mantua, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
Heaps of rubble 
First television footage showed half-collapsed houses with heaps of rubble on the roads and serious damage to historic buildings and churches in the province of Modena.
One badly damaged building was the 14th century Estes Castle in the town of San Felipe Sul Pan, near the quake's epicentre.
There were fears that one of the towers of the famous mediaeval castle, the town's biggest attraction, could collapse. The town's main church was also severely damaged.
The quake also shook the major cities and towns of Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Rovigo, Verona and Mantua, though none reported serious damage.
A series of strong aftershocks hit the area, the strongest measuring 5.1, and local mayors ordered residents to stay out of doors.
The quake was centred 35km north-northwest of Bologna at a relatively shallow depth of 10km, the US Geological Survey said.
The epicentre of the quake, the strongest to hit Italy in three years, was in the plains near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of the Po River Valley, and the tremor was felt in nearby regions of Lombardy and Veneto.
The last major earthquake to hit Italy was a 6.3-magnitude quake in the central Italian city of L'Aquila in 2009, killing nearly 300 people.
In January, a 5.3-magnitude quake in northern Italy was felt in Genoa, Bologna, Turin and Milan.

the parliamentary election in syria

the parliamentary election held in Syria is "ludicrous", the credible elections are not possible when the country is beset by continuing violence.
"It's not really possible to hold credible elections in a climate where basic human rights are being denied to the citizens and the government is continuing to carry out daily assaults on its own citizens," he said at a regular news briefing.
"So to hold a parliamentary election in that kind of atmosphere borders on ludicrous," he added.
The Monday election, the first of its kind in Syria under a new constitution that ends the monopoly on power of President Bashar al-Assad's Baath Party and allows a multi-party system, is part of the government's reform program aimed at quelling the bloody unrest that has raged across the country since mid-March 2011.
Syrian authorities said 7,195 candidates from 12 political parties were competing for the 250 parliamentary seats. However, the main opposition groups boycotted the vote amid fighting with the government security forces.
UN observers are being deployed in Syria to monitor a ceasefire brokered by Kofi Annan, the joint UN-Arab League envoy.

UN observers in syria

The United Nations has recruited only half the 300 military observers it needs to staff its unarmed monitoring force in Syria, a cease-fire mission that one Security Council diplomat said is designed to fail.

The UN is making repeated calls to member states seeking personnel as it tries to deploy the full force by the end of May, said Herve Ladsous, Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. The 24 monitors now deployed are tailed by Syrian police as they try to assess the cease-fire, which Ladsous said both sides are breaking.
The deployment is hindered by the acknowledgment of U.S. and other Security Council diplomats that the mission is likely to fail and that its purpose is to convince Russia and China that stronger measures, which they previously blocked, are needed to force President Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his opponents and civilians. The U.S. will not support extending the mission beyond an initial 90 days if Assad isn’t meeting his obligations, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said last month.
“The point of the mission is not for what the observers will see or do, but instead for what it will allow you to do in the coming months,” said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington.

mali coup

The situation in Mali remains tense as neighbors threaten sanctions against the country taken over by a military junta. The coup is just one of the many destabilizing results of what has been called the African Spring, experts believe.

The junta said it began the mutiny against its government because President Toure was unable to handle the uprising of Tuareg tribes in the north of the country.

The Mali Tuareg separatists’ National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) started a rebellion in January seeking independence. The group is rumored to have members who fought in the 2011 civil war in Libya, both in Muammar Gaddafi’s army and with rebel troops. Some of the arms from Gaddafi’s depots and NATO’s supply drops ended up in their hands, which may have triggered the insurgence.

“Many of the rebels were coming back from Libya very well armed with pickup trucks and machine guns and other ammunition. Essentially it’s the failed policy of President Obama and the West together with the economic crises which are the main causes for this rebellion,” The political expert says the West’s zeal in ousting Gaddafi is now backfiring on its ally Mali.

“Mali was an area which the US put a lot of military backing into. They were trying to fight the various sources known as ‘the al-Qaeda of the Maghreb’. And then you have a low-level officer carry out a coup. So you have to wonder how strong the government was,” he said.

Lawrence says the Tuareg uprising and the military coup in Mali signify the continuation of the turmoil in the African continent. The causes of the dissent, which include staggering poverty and people’s lack of control over their lives, are still there in many African countries, regardless of whether they are Western allies or not.

Meanwhile Mali was suspended from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), an eight country alliance, following the coup. ECOWAS and the African Union sent its delegations to Mali to assess the situation there on the ground.

ECOWAS has put its troops on standby and is ready to intervene, should the situation in Mali deteriorate. Mali’s capital Bamako saw some looting and violence following the coup, but apparently the junta led by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo has managed to whip up some public support. On Wednesday thousands of Babako residents walked its streets in support of the new leadership.

Mali’s ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure got in touch with AFP and said he was well and still in the capital.

 

china human rights

Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment, surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.

Detention Without Trial

The authorities frequently used administrative punishments, including Re-education through Labour (RTL), to detain people without trial. According to the government, 190,000 people were held in RTL facilities, down from half a million several years ago, although the real figures were likely to be much higher. Former RTL prisoners reported that Falun Gong constituted one of the largest groups of prisoners, and political activists, petitioners and others practising their religion outside permitted bounds were common targets. The authorities used a variety of illegal forms of detention, including "black jails", "legal education classes", "study classes" and mental health institutions to detain thousands of people.

Death Penalty

China continued to make extensive use of the death penalty, including for non-violent crimes. The death sentence continued to be imposed after unfair trials. Statistics on death sentences and executions remained classified as state secrets and, while executions numbered in the thousands, the government did not release actual figures.