Four children were killed and five injured alongside their teacher as an explosion hit while they collected firewood in an area of Myanmar’s Rakhine state beset by fighting between the military and Arakan Army (AA) rebels.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blast or who was behind it.
The conflict has seen scores of civilians killed, hundreds wounded and some 100,000 displaced in the past year as the AA fights for more autonomy for ethnic Rakhine Buddhists.
The blast happened Tuesday morning in Htaikhtoo Pauk village in Buthidaung township, deputy administrator Hla Shwe told AFP.
A nurse attends to a boy injured by a blast in Buthidaung township, in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, Jan. 7, 2020. (Photo provided to VOA by source who requested not to be identified)
Local media posted a graphic video on Facebook showing people retrieving the victims’ bodies and carrying the bloodied injured away as distressed crowds gathered.
“They were looking for firewood on the mountainside,” Hla Shwe said by phone, adding the wounded had been taken to nearby hospitals in Buthidaung and Maungdaw.
He declined to say who he thought had been behind the blast.
Military spokesman Zaw Min Tun confirmed the incident and number of victims, accusing the AA of planting a landmine.
The rebels could not be reached for comment but one local village leader, who asked not to be named, told AFP the number of casualties and lack of blast crater made him doubt it had been a mine.
“Some people say a mine explosion, some say this was from heavy shelling.”
The rebels have carried out a series of brazen kidnappings, bombings and raids against the military and local officials in recent months.
The army has hit back hard, deploying thousands of soldiers to the conflict-ridden region.
U.S. officials said Tuesday that Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian general the U.S. killed in a drone strike, posed a distinct threat to Americans in the Middle East, but again publicly offered no specific evidence of any attack he was about to carry out.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that “multiple pieces of information” from intelligence sources were given to President Donald Trump before Trump made the decision to target Soleimani in last week’s attack that killed him in Iraq at the Baghdad airport.
National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said Soleimani was plotting to attack American facilities where he would have killed American “diplomats, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines.” But similar to Pompeo, O’Brien offered no specifics on the timing of what Trump administration officials have called an “imminent threat” that Soleimani posed.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper, in an interview on CNN, characterized the evidence of Soleimani’s malign activities in the Middle East as “more than razor thin,” saying Soleimani “was caught red-handed” meeting with a “terrorist leader. This is not an innocent man.”
Later, at a Pentagon news conference, Esper said he believed an attack planned by Soleimani was days away. He encouraged Iran to de-escalate tensions with the U.S. and open negotiations, “where they behave more like a normal country.”
O’Brien said the case against Soleimani was based on “strong evidence and strong intelligence,” while adding, “Unfortunately we’re not going to be able to get into (the) sorts of methods at this time, but I can tell you it was very strong.”
Pompeo said, “We could see clearly that not only had Soleimani done all the things that we have recounted, like hundreds of thousands of massacres, enormous destruction of countries like Lebanon and Iraq, where they denied…people in those two countries what it is they want, sovereignty, independence and freedom. This is all Soleimani’s handiwork. Then we would watch as he was continuing the terror campaign in the region….”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks about Iran at the State Department in Washington, Jan. 7, 2020.
“If you’re looking for imminence, you need look no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken against Soleimani,” Pompeo said, including the late December attack that killed an American contractor working in Iraq.
Pompeo added that there were “continuing efforts on behalf of this terrorist to build out a network of campaign activities that were going to lead potentially to the death of many more Americans.”
The top U.S. diplomat concluded that the drone attack “was the right decision, we got it right. The Department of Defense did excellent work. The president had an entirely legal, appropriate basis, as well as a decision that fit perfectly within our strategy on how to counter the threat of malign activity from Iran.”
Iran has vowed to exact revenge for Soleimani’s killing, with O’Brien saying, “We take those seriously and we’re watching and monitoring them.” But with Trump threatening to respond to any new Iran attack, O’Brien said, “We hope that they’re deterred, and that they think twice about attacking America and its interests.”
Even as threats and counter-threats ricocheted between Washington and Tehran, O’Brien said he believes the world is a safer place with the killing of Soleimani.
“Look, over, over the past four months, the two greatest terrorist threats in the world, (Islamic State leader Abu Bakr) al Baghdadi and Soleimani, have both been taken off the battlefield,” O’Brien said outside the White House. “I think that makes us safer, and in fact we’ve been congratulated and told that privately by world leaders from every region in the world who’ve reached out to congratulate us for this activity.”
In Iran, officials delayed Soleimani’s burial, state media reported, after more than 50 people were killed in a stampede of mourners and more than 200 others injured.
Coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and others who were killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike, are carried on a truck surrounded by mourners during a funeral procession, in the city of Kerman, Iran, Jan. 7, 2020.
Tens of thousands of people had gathered to honor Soleimani in his hometown of Kerman before his planned burial, following similar ceremonies this week in Tehran, Qom and Ahvaz.
Many of the mourners screamed for retaliation against the United States for the killing of Soleimani. “No compromise, no submission, revenge!” they shouted.
Soleimani’s killing has sparked fears of a wider conflict as the United States and Iran threatened strong responses to each other’s actions.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif contended in a CNN interview that the U.S. killing of Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, constituted “state terrorism.”
“This is an act of aggression against Iran, and it amounts to an armed attack against Iran, and we will respond,” Zarif said. “But we will respond proportionately – not disproportionately…we are not lawless like President Trump.”
With heightened tensions between the United States and Iran, Washington has denied Zarif a visa to travel to New York for upcoming United Nations meetings. Pompeo refused to spell out the reasons behind the denial of the visa.
Following the airstrike, Iran announced it was further cutting its compliance with the 2015 agreement that restrained its nuclear program. That prompted Trump, who withdrew from the deal and applied new sanctions against Iran, to tweet Monday, “IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”
Trump also vowed late Sunday that the U.S. will strike “very hard and very fast” at as many as 52 Iranian targets if Iran attacks U.S. personnel or assets. The number 52 represents the number of Americans Tehran took hostage in 1979 for 444 days.
“They’re allowed to kill our people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way.” Pompeo said the U.S., in any new attacks on Iran, would act according to international legal constraints on warfare, under which attacks on cultural sites are considered a war crime.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani rebuffed Trump’s threat on Monday, tweeting, “Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655. Never threaten the Iranian nation.”
It was a reference to the U.S. mistakenly shooting down an Iranian passenger jet flying over the Persian Gulf in 1988, killing all 290 people aboard the aircraft. Then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan expressed deep regret over the incident and the U.S. paid nearly $62 million in reparations to the victims’ families.
Rising tensions between Washington and Tehran are testing whether Joe Biden can capitalize on his decades of foreign policy experience as he seeks to challenge a president he derides as “dangerous” and “erratic.”
Biden is expected to deliver lengthy remarks Tuesday in New York about President Donald Trump’s decision to approve an airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The event, which would follow several days of campaigning in which Biden inconsistently highlighted his foreign policy credentials, would be among his most high-profile efforts to articulate his vision for world affairs. It would come less than a month before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses begin Democrats’ 2020 voting.
But the moment presents challenges for a two-term vice president who was elected to six Senate terms. While his resume is longer than any Democratic presidential rival’s, it comes with complications.
Progressives hoping to make American foreign policy less militaristic point to Biden’s 2002 vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, suggesting that muddies his recent warning that Trump could push the U.S. into another endless war. Alternately, Trump and Republicans cast Biden as indecisive or weak, seizing on his opposition to the 1991 U.S. mission that drove Iraq out of Kuwait and his reluctance about the raid that killed Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in 2011, when Biden was President Barack Obama’s No. 2.
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a Vermont senator who voted against President George W. Bush’s Iraq war powers request, calls it “baggage.” In a quote that Republicans recirculate frequently, former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his memoir that Biden, though a “man of integrity,” has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Biden himself has been inconsistent in his pitch to voters, seemingly confident that searing criticism of Trump and implicit contrasts with less-seasoned Democratic rivals are enough to earn another stint in the West Wing.
“I’ve met every single world leader” a U.S. president must know, Biden tells voters at some stops. “On a first-name basis,” he’ll add on occasion. On Chinese President Xi Jinping: “I spent more time with him face to face than any other world leader.” On Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who helped persuade Trump to withdraw U.S. special forces from Syria over widespread opposition in Washington and elsewhere: “I know who he is.”
The Biden campaign’s most viral moment was a video last month, titled “Laughed At,” showing world leaders mocking Trump at a Buckingham Palace reception held during a NATO summit in London. Biden says world leaders, including former British Prime Minister Theresa May, have called him to ask about Trump.
He told reporters last month that foreign policy isn’t in his Democratic opponents’ “wheelhouse,” even if they are “smart as hell” and “can learn.” Demonstrating his knowledge, Biden veered into explaining the chemistry and physics of “SS-18 silos,” referring to old Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. “It’s just what I’ve done my whole life,” he said.
He’s since touted endorsements from former Secretary of State John Kerry and members of Congress with experience in the military and intelligence community.
Yet Biden doesn’t always connect the dots with an explicit appeal to voters.
In Iowa last weekend, Biden called the Iran crisis “totally of Donald Trump’s making,” tracing Soleimani’s killing back to Trump withdrawing from a multilateral deal in which Iran had agreed to curtail its nuclear program. The pact “was working, serving America’s interests and the region’s interests,” Biden said, questioning whether Trump “has any plan for how to handle what comes next.”
Biden told an audience that Americans need “a president who provides a steady leadership on Day One,” but during a 20-minute soliloquy, Biden never discussed his role in the Iran deal or Obama’s foreign policy generally. Days before, prior to the Soleimani strike, Biden didn’t mention the embassy attack at all as he campaigned in Anamosa, Iowa.
The former vice president laments that lack of foreign policy emphasis in a Democratic primary contest that has revolved around the party’s internal ideological tussle over domestic issues including health care, a wealth tax and college tuition assistance. The international arena “isn’t discussed at all” on the debate stage, he told reporters last month, despite what he said is a deep concern among voters.
“Foreign policy, commander in chief is a big deal to people,” he said, less because of a single issue and more because of Trump generally. “They just know something’s not right. It’s uncomfortable.”
Biden in July offered perhaps his most sweeping foreign policy declaration to date, with a speech touting the U.S. as the preeminent world power but one that must lead international coalitions and focus on diplomacy. He pledged to end “forever wars” but did not rule out military force. He made clear he values small-scale operations of special forces while being more skeptical of larger, extended missions of ground forces.
His advisers believe that reflects most Americans. “They don’t want the United States to retreat from the world … but they also don’t want us overextended without any rational strategy or exit plan,” said Tony Blinken, Biden’s top foreign policy adviser, who has worked with him since he was Democratic leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
As vice president, Biden was at Obama’s side for every major national security decision during their eight years in office. Biden led the administration’s efforts to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression. He also took the lead on Iraq as the Democratic administration moved to bring the war it inherited there to an end.
But Biden wasn’t always in lockstep with Obama on major issues. He was among the advisers who argued against the attack on al-Qaida mastermind bin Laden. Biden’s explanation of those debates has changed over the years, varying from saying he recommended that Obama wait for clearer identification of bin Laden at the Pakistan compound where he was killed to later saying he privately told Obama to go ahead. Blinken said Biden was never against pursuing bin Laden, as some Republicans say. Recalling how Biden immediately relayed his final private conversation with Obama, Blinken said Biden told Obama to “trust your instincts.”
Biden also lost an initial debate during lengthy deliberations on Afghanistan shortly after Obama took office. Biden was opposed to the idea of sending surge forces, pushing instead for a focus on counterterrorism that would have required a smaller military footprint on the ground. Obama ultimately ordered 30,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan.
That could be viewed as a lesson learned after Biden initially voted to support Bush’s 2002 request to use force in Iraq. Blinken said, though, that didn’t necessarily mean Biden ever changed philosophy. His 2002 vote, Blinken said, was based on the president arguing he needed war power only as leverage for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to accept international weapons inspectors. That worked, Blinken said, then Bush decided to “go to war anyway.”
Ultimately, Biden and his team believe voters are more interested in candidates’ overall profiles than in litigating old debates. They point to the 2004 Democratic primary.
Howard Dean held momentum for much of 2003. Weeks before Iowa caucused, the U.S. captured Saddam. Dean declared that the military victory had “not made America safer,” after having spent months blistering Kerry for backing the same Iraq resolution Biden supported. Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who praised Saddam’s capture, went on to win Iowa and steamrolled to the nomination.
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido entered the country’s legislative building Tuesday, two days after the ruling Socialist Party installed its own parliamentary leadership, the latest development in an effort to gain control of Venezuela’s last democratic institution.
Guaido and a handful of opposition lawmakers forced their way into the National Assembly after a standoff with President Nicolas Maduro’s security forces initially prevented them from entering.
After the half-hour confrontation with troops, Guaido made his way toward his seat and led lawmakers in the singing of the national anthem. Shortly thereafter, the electricity went out, dimming the building and rendering microphones unusable.
Lawmakers were forced to shout as they declared Guaido the legitimate president of the legislature, prompting opposition accusations of a “parliamentary coup.”
Just minutes before Guaido gained entry, a brief parliamentary session led by Luis Parra had already ended. Parra was sworn in as the head of Parliament on Sunday by Maduro’s allies.
Parra claims to have captured 81 votes, an assertion refuted by the opposition, which says 100 lawmakers, a majority, voted for Guaido in a legislative session that was held later Sunday at the offices of a Venezuelan newspaper. There are 167 seats in the legislature.
Guaido, who has served as National Assembly president for the past year, has tried to oust Maduro from the presidency during that period. Serving as head of the legislature has been the foundation of Guaido’s claim to be Venezuela’s legitimate interim leader.
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said Monday he intends to modify the constitution ahead of an October presidential election seen as a test of the country’s stability.
A rise in tensions in recent weeks between Ouattara and his political rivals has raised fears of election-related violence in Francophone West Africa’s largest economy, where a disputed 2010 vote set off a civil war that killed 3,000 people.
In remarks to foreign diplomats, Ouattara, who has not yet announced whether he will be a candidate in October, said the proposed revisions were intended to make the constitution “more coherent” but did not provide any details.
He did, however, seek to downplay opponents’ fears that he would try to impose age limits on presidential candidates that would prevent his main rivals, former presidents Laurent Gbagbo and Henri Konan Bedie, from running.
“I wish to make clear that this is not a maneuver to push anyone aside,” he said.
Modifying the constitution requires approval in parliament, which is controlled by Ouattara’s allies.
Ouattara came to power in 2011 after defeating Gbagbo at the polls and Gbagbo’s forces in the ensuing war. He says he wants to step down after a decade in power and turn over the reins to a new generation, but that he will run if Gbagbo and Bedie are candidates.
Some opposition leaders have speculated that Ouattara, who is 78, will reimpose the 75-year age limit for presidential candidates that was removed in a new constitution he championed in 2016. That would exclude himself; Gbagbo, who will turn 75 in May; and Bedie, who is 85.
Candidates uncertain
Ouattara was expected to step down in 2020 but unexpectedly declared in 2018 that the new constitution had reset term limits that would have barred him from running again.
Gbagbo and Bedie have not said whether they will run. Gbagbo was acquitted earlier this year of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court for his role in the war but remains in Europe pending an appeal by the prosecution.
Political tensions in Ivory Coast have risen since last month, when the public prosecutor issued an arrest warrant for presidential candidate Guillaume Soro, a former rebel leader whose forces swept Ouattara to power in 2011.
Soro, who is currently in Europe, denies the charges that he plotted a coup against Ouattara and says they are politically motivated.
If Ouattara does not run, he is widely expected to back his prime minister, Amadou Gon Coulibaly, in the election.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday he does not plan to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas in 2020, according to media reports.
Speculation has swirled for months over whether Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, would run for the seat in his home state.
“He loves doing the job he’s doing right now and feels that things are too volatile with the various situations around the world, particularly with Iran and Iraq, and he wants to make sure he’s in the best spot to serve his country,” a person close to Pompeo told the Wall Street Journal. “He believes that is secretary of state.”
Pompeo’s decision not to run was also reported by the New York Times.
Pompeo and McConnell did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
McConnell had urged Pompeo to run for the seat to help keep the party’s majority after Republican Senator Pat Roberts announced last year he would retire.
The Senate seat might also have been a good fit if Pompeo, who is believed to harbor presidential ambitions, chooses to run for the Republican nomination in 2024.
The deadline for filing to run for the Senate seat is in June.
America’s European allies have urged de-escalation on all sides following Iran’s pledge to retaliate for the U.S. killing of the country’s top general. Qassem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike at Baghdad’s airport Friday. Protests have erupted across the Middle East, and as Henry Ridgwell reports from London, NATO has suspended its training mission in Iraq as fears grow of an escalation in violence.
American Airlines Group Inc said on Monday it had reached a confidential agreement with Boeing Co to address damages the airline incurred in 2019 due to the ongoing grounding of its fleet of Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
American, the largest U.S. airline, said the compensation will be received over several years. The airline will use more than $30 million of the compensation for the airline’s 2019 employee profit-sharing program.
American said it does not expect any material financial impact of the agreement to be realized in its fourth-quarter 2019 earnings and it will continue talks regarding compensation for damages related to the Max grounding beyond 2019.
Boeing said it does not comment on discussions with airlines.
Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max has been grounded since two fatal crashes in five months killed 346 people. The company is halting production this month. A number of airlines have struck confidential settlements with Boeing in recent weeks.
At least 30 people were killed in the northeastern Nigerian state of Borno after an improvised explosive device detonated on a bridge, sources told Reuters on Monday.
The bomb detonated at roughly 5 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) on a crowded bridge in the market town of Gamboru that leads into neighboring Cameroon.
Witnesses in the market town said more than 35 injured people were taken to the local hospital following the attack.
“It is an unfortunate day for us to witness this frustrating and devastating incident in our community,” eyewitness Modu Ali Said told Reuters.
“I just heard a loud sound of explosions, before I realized I saw many of our friends and colleagues were killed,” Said added.
Two sources with the Civilian Joint Task Force, a group of citizens formed to fight Boko Haram, confirmed the attack and the early death toll estimates.
No group immediately took responsibility. Both Boko Haram and the regional offshoot of Islamic State, known as ISWAP, are active in the area.
