Lima Charlie’s MENA News Briefing – 1st June

1st of June – ‪#‎LimaCharlie‬’s ‪#‎MENA‬ News Briefing:
Heavy fighting continues between the ‪#‎Kurdish‬ and ‪#‎IslamicState‬ fighters. The Iraqi Kurdish ‪#‎Peshmerga‬ forces in the early hours of the past Sunday launched an attack to dislodge Islamic State fighters from villages located about 20 km (13 miles) east of Mosul on the road to the regional capital, Erbil. U.S. Intelligence and Military sources describes the fighting as “heavy”, and that casualty figures are very high for all sides. Reuters correspondent, Hassan Shami, describes the battle as “Pick up trucks raced back from the frontline with wounded people in the back, and two of the U.S.-led coalition servicemen helped haul one man onto a stretcher. Gunfire and airstrikes could be heard at a distance, while Apache helicopters flew overhead. One of the villages, Mufti, was captured by mid-day, the Kurdistan Region Security Council said in a statement.”

At the time of the writing, the offensive is still going on – but at the present, the Kurdish forces have seemingly the upper hand. However, it is worth pointing out that historically, the ISIS forces have done poorly in responding to direct offenses by opposition forces, instead relying on falling back to safe ground only to circumvent the opposition by opening a rear front.

An estimated 5,500 Kurdish Peshmergas have taken part in the new offensive in northern Iraq, with the support of U.S. advisers and air support, that aims to retake a handful of villages from Islamic State east of their Mosul stronghold. The U.S. lead coalitions spokesperson, U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, was quoted as saying that “U.S. and coalition forces are conducting advise and assist operations to help Kurdish Peshmerga forces”. He could not confirm nor deny if any U.S. Special Forces advisers were directly engaging in direct actions activities, stating that “They may be Americans, they may be Canadians or from other nationalities,” he said, when told that some forces were reported to be wearing maple leaf patches, the emblem of Canada.

The Iraqi army prepares to retake Fallujah. The Iraqi army has entered the city limits of Fallujah as part of an operation that started on May 23. Fallujah is presently a stronghold of the Islamic State, and is located 50 kilometers (32 miles) west of Baghdad, in central Iraq. The Iraqi army is backed by Shi’ite militias on the ground and airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition. As the Iraqi army advance on Fallujah, the civilian population of the city is attempting to flee the city in the thousands. Hundreds have been detained by the Iraqi government under suspicion of having been part of the ISIS elements in the city.

Six Iraqi army and police personnel killed this past Thursday in an attack north of Baghdad, Major General Nadir al-Janabi told the Media during a press conference.The personnel were members of a joint force from both security branches, and were attacked by a sniper while searching a home in Basatin al-Tarmia district, located around 29 kilometers (18 miles) north of Baghdad. Sniper fire resulted in the death of a police captain and another policeman.

Turkey Foreign Minister accuses U.S. of being two-faced. The Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu called the U.S. and the West, “Two-faced” for refusing to call the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia terrorists on Friday, reflecting Ankara’s growing irritation at Washington’s backing of the group in their fight against ISIS. Turkey launched an offensive earlier this year against YPG and other Kurdish military units that has resulted in over 5,000 casualties in both sides. Many of the reported casualties are civilians. Some of these Kurdish military units are at the present engaged in a large U.S. supported offensive to push ISIS forces back from their strongholds across North Iraq.

UN to Syria: This war is reprehensible. The United Nations humanitarian chief on Friday demanded that the Syrian government and militant groups stop interfering with the delivery of food and medicine for civilians trapped in besieged and difficult-to-reach areas in war-ravaged Syria. “The continued use of siege and starvation as a weapon of war is reprehensible,” UN Undersecretary General Stephen O’Brien told the 15-nation Security Council. “Based on the latest information, we now estimate that some 592,700 people are currently living in besieged areas,” he said, adding that most of those were surrounded by government forces. The five-year-old civil war in Syria has killed at least 250,000 people. Millions have been displaced and many of those are now refugees living abroad.

ISIS forces Doctors Without Borders to evacuate. ISIS is making gains near Syria’s border with Turkey, seizing a string of villages and trapping tens of thousands of civilians, according to the French aid/NGO organization Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, and a Syrian monitoring group. ISIS offensive has forced the aid organization to evacuate key Syrian hospitals in the Azaz area. On Friday the aid organization announced the emergency evacuation of the Al Salamah hospital because of the ISIS offensive, leaving behind a basic team with a doctor and nurses.“We are terribly concerned about the fate of our hospital and our patients, and about the estimated 100,000 people trapped between the Turkish border and active front lines,” Pablo Marco, the aid group’s operations manager for the Middle East, said in a statement. Regional reports indicate that Syrian Government Air assets were deployed to help aid the emergency evacuation. “For some months, the front line has been around seven kilometers away from the hospital. Now it is only three kilometers from Al Salamah town. There is nowhere for people to flee to as the fighting gets closer.” Mr Marco of the MSF stated. A Syrian airstrike hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo in April, killing at least 50 people.

Riots in Syrian Prison. “A new riot started in the central Hama prison appearing to be more serious than the previous one as the prisoners were able to detain the director of the prison, the head of police in Hama city and nine policemen,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. This makes for the second time in under a month that the prison sees a riot. “The regime promised to release 491 detainees and now they are denying the amnesty agreement.” the spokesperson of the prisoners stated. This week, the prisoner release ground to a halt with the warden blaming the delay on Damascus authorities. Many detainees have also been rearrested shortly after leaving jail.

Humanitarian organization accuses Russia of massacres. Syrian humanitarian organizations calls for the international community to review “The Syrian Archive” data over Syrian Government and Russian Government attacks against strictly civilian targets. The call includes the claim that the Syrian Archive database contains video evidence of over “1560 attack against civilians by Russian troops during the Syrian Civil War”.

Over a hundred people killed in Yemen. At least a hundred people have been killed in the ongoing civil disorder in Yemen this past week. The fighting in Yemen saw a surge last week, and over a 72 hour period well over 80 people were reported killed in fighting in central Yemen between rebels and forces loyal to the internationally recognized government, Yemeni security officials said on Sunday, and updated on Wednesday morning. The government-allied forces said that 22 of their fighters were killed and 25 were injured.

Aden police forces arrested 7 accused Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) members, including one French national, in al Mansoura, Aden on May 29. These arrests come after a security push to discover and apprehend those responsible for the recent wave of high-casualty ISIS attacks in Aden, including a May 23 suicide bombing outside an army recruitment center that killed more than 25 people. Seven suspected members of an Jihadi Militant group, including a Frenchman,

al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sees financial gains in the security vacuum. al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is thriving by joining diverse armed groups in taxing fuel delivered illicitly to remote beaches along the Arabian Sea coast, security, tribal and shipping sources say. Home to Yemen’s largest industrial project, a now-shut liquefied natural gas export facility at Belhaf, Shabwa is divided among al Qaeda, government troops loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Houthi forces and armed tribes. “There are five checkpoints in Shabwa between Bir Ali and Ataq leading to the (Houthi-controlled) interior … one by the army, one by a tribal militia and one by the acting governor. Al Qaeda maintains two at Azzan,” a local tribal leader said. Director of the Shabwa governor’s office, Muhsin al-Haj, defended the province’s role in the illegal trade when it is struggling to maintain security with limited outside help. “Shabwa is running on the most basic resources,” he told Reuters. “In a province of 42,000 sq km, we have just two security cars, and they’re not even armed.”

The White House blocks armory shipment to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has placed a hold on further deliveries of the CBU-105 cluster bombs manufactured by the U.S.-based firm Textron Systems to Saudi Arabia after continuous complaints throughout the past two years by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that Saudi Arabia has dropped CBU-105 munitions in multiple locations around Yemen, including Al-Amar, Sanhan, Amran, and the Al-Hayma port. The cluster bomb type of weapons were banned in a 2008 international treaty that arms sales giants, including the United States and Russia, refused to sign. The United States concluded a contract for the manufacture of 1,300 CBU-105 weapons to Saudi Arabia in 2013. The total value of the deal is placed at roughly $1.3 billion US Dollars, including the shipments that have already been delivered.

Missiles fired against Saudi Arabia. al Houthi forces fired a ballistic missile toward Najran district in southern Saudi Arabia on May 30. Saudi air defense systems intercepted the missile. This is the second ballistic missile fired over the border since the official ceasefire began in April. The Saudi state news agency released a statement following the attack, stating that the Saudi-led coalition is rethinking its policy of “self-restraint” in response to cross-border attacks.

8 sentenced to death in Egyptian Court. An Egyptian military court sentenced 8 alleged Muslim Brotherhood members to death on terrorism charges on Sunday, a security official and the website of Egyptian state newspaper Al-Ahram said. The court issued life sentences to 12 defendants and sentenced another six to 15 years in prison. Two defendants were acquitted, and two were convicted in absentia. Rights group Amnesty International condemned the verdict, describing it as a “grossly unfair military trial” and demanding that the defendants receive a fair hearing before a civilian court.

Iran may be about to recall its Ambassador, Mr Saheed Kozechi, to Nigeria over an incident where the Nigerian military killed an unconfirmed, but believed to be in the hundreds, number of Shiites in the Nigerian city of Zaria in Kaduna state last December and the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (ISM), Sheik El-Zakzaky, wounded and detained since then.

Israeli forces detained at least 10 Palestinians during a Saturday to Sunday overnight raids in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem on Saturday, Israeli and Palestinian sources said. The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said in a statement that Israeli forces raided the village of Beit Fajjar south of Bethlehem overnight, detaining Ahmad Yusif Taqatqa, 17, and Muhammad Mansour Thawabtah, 14. PPS also reported four detentions in the Ramallah-al-Bireh district, listing the detained as Ibrahim Diyaa, 25, Talha Abd al-Sattar Zibar, 26, Majid Faruq Hikmat, 22, and Zahir Huweij. Local sources stated that further detainments were carried out the city of al-Bireh adjacent to Ramallah in the central West Bank.

Oil prices declines. The past week saw the oil barrel valuation rise over $50 for the first time in seven months. Thursday last week marked the high point, with a peak of $50.21 on Thursday. By Friday it had fallen to $49.63, and by Wednesday we had seen the continued decline on the commodities trade market. At the present time, the price per barrel is at $48.42.

Lima Charlie, 1/06 1739 UTC/ZULU +1
Byline; John Sjoholm, john.sjoholm@limacharliemedia.com

Lima Charlie’s Middle East Bureau Chief

Follow John on Twitter: @JohnSjoholmLC

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