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MAIDUGURI, Nigeria: An estimated 200 people or more have been killed in villages in the northwestern Nigerian state of Zamfara during deadly reprisal attacks by armed bandits following military air strikes on their hideouts this week, residents said on Saturday.
Residents gained access to the villages on Saturday after the military captured the communities to organize mass burials, they told Reuters. The state government said 58 people had been killed during the attacks.
Ummaru Makeri, a resident who lost his wife and three children during the attack, said around 154 people had been buried including several vigilantes who were killed. Residents said the total death toll was at least 200.
Reuters reported on Friday that at least 30 people had been killed in the Anka local government area in Zamfara, when more than 300 armed bandits on motorbikes stormed eight villages and started shooting sporadically on Tuesday.
The military said it had conducted air strikes in the early hours of Monday on targets in the Gusami forest and west Tsamre village in Zamfara state, killing more than 100 bandits including two of their leaders, following intelligence reports.
One resident who declined to be identified told Reuters the attacks on the villages could be linked to the military strikes.
There have been a series of attacks in northwest Nigeria, which has seen a sharp rise in mass abductions and other violent crimes since late 2020 as the government struggles to maintain law and order.
In a separate incident, 30 students abducted from their college in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi were freed on Saturday, a spokesman for the Kebbi governor said, without providing details.
President Muhammadu Buhari said in a statement on Saturday the military had acquired more equipment to track down and eliminate criminal gangs that have been subjecting people to a reign of terror, including through the illegal imposition of taxes on communities under siege.
“The latest attacks on innocent people by the bandits is an act of desperation by mass murderers, now under relentless pressure from our military forces,” Buhari said.
Buhari added that the government would not relent in its military operations to get rid of the bandits.
LONDON: A Syrian refugee seeking asylum in Britain has been told by the UK Home Office that he is safe to return to his war-torn country, The Guardian reported on Sunday.
The 25-year-old refugee sought sanctuary in the UK in May 2020 after fleeing mandatory enlistment into Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army in 2017. “He said that if he is forced back to Syria, he will be targeted as a draft evader, arrested, detained and killed,” the newspaper reported.
It would be the first time that the UK returns a refugee to Syria, which the UN Refugee Agency said in October was still “unsafe.”
The agency reiterated an appeal from Human Rights Watch that “all countries should protect Syrians from being returned to face violence and torture, and halt any forced returns to Syria.”
A refusal letter sent to the asylum seeker by the Home Office last month said: “I am not satisfied to a reasonable degree of likelihood that you have a well-founded fear of persecution.
“It is not accepted that you will face a risk of persecution or real risk of serious harm on return to the Syrian Arab Republic due to your imputed political opinion as a draft evader.”
His lawyers are now appealing the Home Office’s unprecedented decision.
The asylum seeker, who has not been named for his own protection, said: “I escaped from Syria in 2017 and I am looking for safety.
“I hope I will not be forced back to Syria. I am so tired of trying to find somewhere that I can be safe.”
LONDON: Britain’s fight against terrorism has become more challenging than ever before, a senior police official has told The Independent newspaper.
Changing methods in planning, targeting and execution meant that authorities were struggling to detect potential attacks, said Dean Haydon, senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing.
Lone attackers have carried out the majority of terror incidents in Britain since 2017.
And although the majority of incidents, including failed attacks, are carried out by Islamists, a growth in the number of far-right terrorists has concerned police.
“The main threat we currently see is from people within this country that are being self-radicalised,” he added. “The timelines have been shortened. You can go out and buy a kitchen knife in a supermarket and decide, ‘This afternoon I’m going to commit an attack’ in the name of whatever ideology, and it’s a terrorist attack.
“Would we see that coming? That’s really difficult to detect. Our collective challenge is far more difficult than it has ever been. The profile of a terrorist has completely changed, and that comes back to how the threat has changed.”
He said the radicalization leading up to an attack had altered significantly since the 1990s. Then, it was terrorists typically allied with a single group or individual. But now radicals “mix and match” content from a range of sources, Haydon said.
“You’ve got no command and control, mostly, so you’ve got people in their head who have decided, after looking at material, that ‘I’m going to go and commit an attack.’ They’re not waiting for some kind of direction or approval from above.
“People can access literally anything online. Where previously you had to go to a training camp in a desert somewhere, now you just have to look online to make an IED.”
These changes, as well as the reduced costs of carrying out attacks, had made it more difficult for authorities to detect potential attacks.
“If you put all five of the 2017 attacks in Britain together — all of their planning, the weapons they brought, the vehicles they hired and the precursor chemicals — it came to less than £5,000 ($6,800). People are looking at everyday items and stuff you can access legitimately online – you don’t need vast amounts of money to commit an attack now.
“We do need parents, family members, we need the whole of the system to be flagging people that are a concern. The terrorism threat and the challenge that we all face trying to stop attacks has become ever more difficult.”
Haydon warned that the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns had added to the terror threat, creating a “perfect storm” of isolation and radicalization.
KABUL: An infant boy handed in desperation to a soldier across an airport wall in the chaos of the American evacuation of Afghanistan has been found and was reunited with his relatives in Kabul on Saturday.
The baby, Sohail Ahmadi, was just two months old when he went missing on Aug. 19 as thousands of people rushed to leave Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban.
Following an exclusive Reuters story published in November with his pictures, the baby was located in Kabul where a 29-year-old taxi driver named Hamid Safi had found him in the airport and took him home to raise as his own.
After more than seven weeks of negotiations and pleas, and ultimately a brief detention by Taliban police, Safi finally handed the child back to his jubilant grandfather and other relatives still in Kabul.
They said they would now seek to have him reunited with his parents and siblings who were evacuated months ago to the United States.
During the tumultuous Afghan evacuation over the summer, Mirza Ali Ahmadi — the boy’s father who had worked as a security guard at the US embassy — and his wife Suraya feared their son would get crushed in the crowd as they neared the airport gates en route to a flight to the United States.
Ahmadi told Reuters in early November in his desperation that day, he handed Sohail over the airport wall to a uniformed soldier who he believed to be an American, fully expecting he would soon make it the remaining 5 meters (15 feet) to the entrance to reclaim him.
Just at that moment, Taliban forces pushed the crowd back and it would be another half an hour before Ahmadi, his wife and their four other children were able to get inside. But by then the baby was nowhere to be found.
Ahmadi said he searched desperately for his son inside the airport and was told by officials that he had likely been taken out of the country separately and could be reunited with them later.
The rest of the family was evacuated — eventually ending up at a military base in Texas. For months they had no idea where their son was.
The case highlights the plight of many parents separated from their children during the hasty evacuation effort and withdrawal of US forces from the country after a 20-year war.
With no US embassy in Afghanistan and international organizations overstretched, Afghan refugees have had trouble getting answers on the timing, or possibility, of complex reunifications like this one.
The US Department of Defense, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.
On the same day Ahmadi and his family were separated from their baby, Safi had slipped through the Kabul airport gates after giving a ride to his brother’s family who were also set to evacuate.
Safi said he found Sohail alone and crying on the ground. After he said he unsuccessfully tried to locate the baby’s parents inside, he decided to take the infant home to his wife and children.
Safi has three daughters of his own and said his mother’s greatest wish before she died was for him to have a son. In that moment he decided: “I am keeping this baby. If his family is found, I will give him to them. If not, I will raise him myself,” he told Reuters in an interview in late November.
Safi told Reuters that he took him to the doctor for a check-up after he was found and quickly incorporated the child into his family.
They called the baby Mohammad Abed and posted pictures of all the children together on his Facebook page.
After the Reuters story about the missing child came out, some of Safi’s neighbors — who had noticed his return from the airport months earlier with a baby — recognized the photos and posted comments about his whereabouts on a translated version of the article.
Ahmadi asked his relatives still in Afghanistan, including his father-in-law Mohammad Qasem Razawi, 67, who lives in the northeastern province of Badakhshan, to seek out Safi and ask him to return Sohail to the family.
Razawi said he traveled two days and two nights to the capital bearing gifts — including a slaughtered sheep, several pounds of walnuts and clothing — for Safi and his family.
But Safi refused to release Sohail, insisting he also wanted to be evacuated from Afghanistan with his family. Safi’s brother, who was evacuated to California, said Safi and his family have no pending applications for US entry.
The baby’s family sought help from the Red Cross, which has a stated mission to help reconnect people separated by international crises, but said they received little information from the organization.
A spokesperson for the Red Cross said it does not comment on individual cases. Finally, after feeling they had run out of options, Razawi contacted the local Taliban police to report a kidnapping.
Safi told Reuters he denied the allegations to the police and said he was caring for the baby, not kidnapping him.
The complaint was investigated and dismissed and the local police commander told Reuters he helped arrange a settlement, which included an agreement signed with thumbprints by both sides.
Razawi said the baby’s family in the end agreed to compensate Safi around 100,000 Afghani ($950) for expenses incurred looking after him for five months.
“The grandfather of the baby complained to us and we found Hamid and based on the evidence we had, we recognized the baby,” said Hamid Malang, the chief area controller of the local police station.
“With both sides in agreement, the baby will be handed over to his grandfather,” he said on Saturday. In the presence of the police, and amid lots of tears, the baby was finally returned to his relatives.
Razawi said Safi and his family were devastated to lose Sohail.
“Hamid and his wife were crying, I cried too, but assured them that you both are young, Allah will give you male child. Not one, but several. I thanked both of them for saving the child from the airport,” Razawi said.
The baby’s parents told Reuters they were overjoyed as they were able to see with their own eyes the reunion over video chat. “There are celebrations, dance, singing,” said Razawi. “It is just like a wedding indeed.”
Now Ahmadi and his wife and other children, who in early December were able to move off the military base and resettle in an apartment in Michigan, hope Sohail will soon be brought to the United States.
“We need to get the baby back to his mother and father. This is my only responsibility,” his grandfather said. “My wish is that he should return to them.”
MOSCOW: The office of Kazakhstan’s president said Sunday that about 5,800 people were detained by police during protests that developed into violence last week and prompted a Russia-led military alliance to send troops to the country.
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s office said Sunday that order has stabilized in the country and that authorities have regained control of administrative buildings that were occupied by protesters, some of which were set on fire.
The Russian TV station Mir-24 said sporadic gunfire was heard in Almaty, the country’s largest city, on Sunday but it was unclear whether they were warning shots by law enforcement. Tokayev on Friday said he had authorized police and the military to shoot to kill to restore order.
Almaty’s airport, which had been taken by protesters last week, remained closed but was expected to resume operating on Monday.
Protests over a sharp rise in prices of LPG fuel began in the country’s west on Jan. 2 and spread throughout the country, apparently reflecting discontent extending beyond the fuel prices.
The same party has ruled Kazakhstan since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Any figures aspiring to oppose the government have either been repressed, sidelined, or co-opted and financial hardship is widespread despite Kazakhstan’s enormous reserves of oil, natural gas, uranium and minerals.
Tokayev contends the demonstrations were ignited by “terrorists” with foreign backing, although the protests have shown no obvious leaders or organization. The statement from his office on Sunday said the detentions included “a sizable number of foreign nationals,” but gave no details.
It was unclear how many of those detained remained in custody on Sunday.
The former head of Kazakhstan’s counterintelligence and anti-terror agency has been arrested on charges of attempted government overthrow. The arrest of Karim Masimov, which was announced Saturday, came just days after he was removed as head of the National Security Committee by Tokayev.
No details were given about what Masimov was alleged to have done that would constitute an attempted government overthrow. The National Security Committee, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB, is responsible for counterintelligence, the border guards service and anti-terror activities.
Authorities say security forces killed 26 demonstrators in this week’s unrest and that 16 law-enforcement officers died.
At Tokayev’s request, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russia-led military alliance of six former Soviet states, authorized sending about 2,500 mostly Russian troops to Kazakhstan as peacekeepers.
Some of the force is guarding government facilities in the capital, Nur-Sultan, which “made it possible to release part of the forces of Kazakhstani law enforcement agencies and redeploy them to Almaty to participate in the counter-terrorist operation,” according to a statement from Tokayev’s office.
In a sign that the demonstrations were more deeply rooted than just the fuel price rise, many demonstrators shouted “Old man out,” a reference to Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was president from Kazakhstan’s independence until he resigned in 2019 and anointed Tokayev as his successor.
Nazarbayev retained substantial power as head of the National Security Council. But Tokayev replaced him as council head amid this week’s unrest. possibly aiming at a concession to mollify protesters. However, Nazarbayev’s adviser Aido Ukibay said Sunday that it was done at Nazarbayev’s initiative, according to the Kazakh news agency KazTag.
NICOSIA: Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides said on Sunday he had tendered his resignation, in an internal power struggle within the ruling right-wing conservatives on their candidate for presidential elections in 2023.
Christodoulides, appointed in March 2018, has long been viewed as harboring presidential ambitions, causing friction within his own Democratic Rally party. On Friday party leader Averof Neohytou, who is seeking his party’s nomination in the presidential race, urged Christodoulides to clarify his intentions.
In a statement, Christodoulides said he would be ‘interested’ in the presidential election next year but that he was not yet ready to take a definitive decision.
“I will make an announcement when I take my final decisions,” Christodoulides said.
The Rally party is to start the nomination process for its candidate on Monday. Christodoulides’s silence on persistent rumors he has been eyeing the presidency caused disquiet in the Rally party’s ranks that his potentially independent bid could be divisive.
Christodoulides said his resignation would take effect on Jan. 11. He said he had submitted his resignation to Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades ‘some days ago’ and it was accepted on Jan. 7.
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