We did not seal-up convention venue but providing security – Rivers CP

Food vendors lament loss from abortion of convention BY JIMITOTA ONOYUME PORT HARCOURT : As early as 230 am am armed to the teeth Policemen, men of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps , NSCDC and plain cloth security men took over Sharks stadium, Port Harcourt, venue of the national convention of the Peoples Democratic Party. The state Police Commissioner, Mr Francis Odesanya told newsmen that he merely complied with a court order to provide security around the venue, stressing that his men did not seal up the place.”We did not seal up the place, we are only providing security”, he ended. The Commissioner when asked to say the court order he complied with he said he was not in a position to interprete court order. “It is not my duty to interpret court order “, he added. He said further enquiries on development around the venue of the place should be made to the Force spokesman in Abuja or the spokesman of the Rivers State Police command Police patrol vehicles were used to block all roads leading to the stadium. Vehicles were politely told to make u turns away from all roads leading to the stadium. Workers forced to trek distance Workers around Moscow, Hospital and adjourning roads leading to the stadium were forced to trek long distance to their offices. “A lady who works on Moscow road said it was unfortunate that she could be subjected to the stress she went through to get to her office “, Food vendors lament impact of abortion of the convention Some of the food vendors who bought spaces around the Sharks stadium lamented their lose. They told the Vanguard that they acquired spaces for seven thousand naira each for their business.” “I sell food. I came out to sell food in this rented space I paid seven thousand. Now I can I can’t get the patronage I wanted.”, a lady food vendor said, Convention may hold There were speculations that the convention may still hold. At press time governors and other leaders of the party were in Government House, Port Harcourt

Houthi shelling kills civilians in Saudi border city

Houthi shelling kills civilians in Saudi border city

Projectiles land in industrial area of Najran city, killing four Saudi citizens and three expatriate workers.

Four Saudi citizens and three expatriate workers were among the dead [File: Hasan Jamali/AP]

Projectiles fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels have killed seven civilians in the southern Saudi city of Najran, Saudi state television has reported.

The Houthis targeted a crowd on Tuesday at an industrial area of Najran, close to the Yemeni border, Ekhbariya television channel said.

Four Saudi citizens and three expatriate workers were among the dead, it said.

An Arab military coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, has been conducting air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen since March 2015 in support of the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The coalition stepped up the raids this month after UN-mediated peace talks between the rebels and the internationally backed government were suspended.

On Tuesday, the coalition launched an investigation after international condemnation of an air raid that Doctors Without Borders (MSF) saidkilled 14 people at a hospital in Yemen.

Another 24 people were wounded in the strike that hit the hospital on Monday in Abs in the rebel-held northern province of Hajja, the Paris-based aid agency said.

An MSF staffer was among the dead, it said, naming him as Abdul Kareem al-Hakeemi.

A team from coalition "has seen the UN Secretary General's call for an investigation" into MSF's claim and is initiating a probe, said the group known as the Joint Incidents Assessment Team.

"This investigation will be independent and will follow international standards. The JIAT will make the results of its investigation public," it said.

Syria's civil war: Russian jets bomb rebels from Iran

Syria's civil war: Russian jets bomb rebels from Iran

The fighter jets took off from western Iran and conducted air strikes in Aleppo, Idlib and Deir el-Zor provinces.

Russian jets based in Iran on Tuesday struck targets inside Syria, the Russian defence ministry said, after Moscow deployed aircraft to an Iranian air force base to widen its campaign in Syria.

The ministry said the strikes, by Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 fighter bombers, were launched from the Hamadan airbase in western Iran.

It is thought to be the first time Russia has struck targets inside Syria from Iran since it launched a bombing campaign to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in September last year.

The ministry said the strikes had targeted the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) and fighters affiliated with the group previously known as the al-Nusra Front in the Aleppo, Idlib and Deir el-Zor provinces.

OPINION: Rojava - A libertarian myth under scrutiny

Both groups have been designated as "terrorists" by the United Nations. Last month, al-Nusra Front changed its name to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and said it had severed a relationship with al-Qaeda. 

The United States said it was still assessing the extent of Russian-Iranian cooperation but described the new development as "unfortunate".

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the US was looking into whether the move violated UN Security Council resolution 2231, which prohibits the supply, sale and transfer of combat aircraft to Iran.

"It's unfortunate but not surprising," Toner told reporters. "It speaks to a continuation of a pattern we've seen of Russia continuing to carry out air strikes, now with Iran's direct assistance, ... that predominantly target moderate Syrian opposition forces."

'A sizeable military presence'

Earlier on Tuesday, Russia's state-backed Rossiya 24 channel said the deployment would allow the Russian air force to cut flight times by 60 percent and increase bombing payloads.

Russian media said the Tupolev-22M3 bombers, which had already conducted many strikes on fighters in Syria from southern Russia, were too large to be accommodated at Russia's airbase inside Syria.

The Tupolev-22M3 is "a fairly large, supersonic, long-range, strategic bomber. It needs a bigger air field than Russia already has in Syria. The previous sorties that this plane has been on have been flown from an airfield in southern Russia, but the problem with that is that it’s 2,000km away from the targets that its striking in Syria. This airfield in Iran is only 900km away," Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said.

"The advantage in reducing flight-time, costs, and what the Russians say is the effectiveness of the strikes, makes this a pretty clear tactical decision to make."

WATCH: Witness - Syria's White Helmets

The Iranian airbase near Hamadan, sometimes also called Hamedan, is located in north-west Iran and the Russian bombers would have to over fly Iraq to conduct strikes in Syria.

Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer called Moscow's transfer of heavy bomber planes to Iran a "major move". 

"It’s not just Russian planes touching down in Iran. To establish an operational base, they’d have to move hundreds of servicemen as well. Thousands of tonnes of munitions, fuel, [and] other equipment to operate heavy bombers from an Iranian base. So this is actually Russia establishing a rather sizeable military presence inside Iran," he told Al Jazeera from Moscow.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday that Iraq, which lies between Iran and Syria, had granted Russia permission to use its air space, on the condition the planes use corridors along Iraq's borders and refrain from flying over Iraqi cities.

Abadi told a press conference the same permission has been given to air forces of a separate U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State flying to Syria from Kuwait.

Russia also gave advance notice to the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, complying with the terms of a safety agreement meant to avoid an accidental clash in the skies, said U.S. 
Army Colonel Christopher Garver, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the U.S-led coalition.

Incendiary weapons

Separately on Tuesday, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused Syrian government forces and their Russian allies of using incendiary weapons, which burn their victims and start fires, in rebel-held civilian areas of north and north-western Syria. 

"Incendiary weapons have been used at least 18 times over the past six weeks, including attacks on the opposition-held areas in the cities of Aleppo and Idlib on August 7, 2016," the rights group said.

Photographs and videos recorded by Human Rights Watch at the time of the attacks indicated there were incendiary weapon attacks on opposition-held areas in the Aleppo and Idlib provinces between June 5 and August 10.

"Countries meeting at the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) in Geneva on August 29 should condemn the use of air-dropped incendiary weapons ... and press Syria and Russia to immediately stop using incendiary weapons in civilian areas," HRW said.

Fighting in Aleppo intensified in early July when government forces captured the last supply route to the rebel-held eastern sector of the city, raising fears that its estimated 250,000 to 300,000 remaining residents could suffer a lengthy siege.

Man in US killed in suspected 'anti-Muslim hate crime'

Man in US killed in suspected 'anti-Muslim hate crime'

Neighbour shoots dead Lebanese-American man after years of alleged violence and racial slurs against Arab family.

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours & Zena Tahhan

Anti-Muslim hate crimes have risen alongside anti-Muslim rhetoric [Courtesy of the Jabara family]

Arab communities in the United States are in shock after a Lebanese-American man was shot and killed by a neighbour who had allegedly used violence and racial slurs against the family for years.

Khalid Jabara, 37, was shot and killed on his front porch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Friday.

The family's neighbour, 61-year-old Stanley Vernon Majors, was arrested and he is expected to be charged with first-degree murder later this week, Tulsa police said in a press release.

"My family lived in fear of this man and his hatred for years," read a family statement shared online by Jabara's sister, Victoria Jabara Williams, on Monday.

Majors was awaiting trial for aggravated assault after allegedly hitting Jabara's mother, Haifa, with his car last September, which caused her numerous injuries. He was released on bond in May.

"Only 30 minutes prior to my brother's shooting, Khalid called the police stating this man had a gun and that he was scared for what might happen. The police came and told him there was nothing to be done," the family’s statement said.

The family said Majors repeatedly used anti-Arab slurs against them, including calling them "dirty Arabs", "filthy Lebanese", "Aye-rabs", and "Mooslems".

A spokesperson for the Tulsa police department told Al Jazeera it was too early in the investigation to say whether Majors will be charged with a hate crime.

Police confirmed in a statement that officers had responded to a call from Jabara the evening he was killed. "Officers arrived at the location and were unable to locate any criminal activity. Officers then left the scene," the police said.

Tulsa police also confirmed that Jabara's mother had a protective order out against Majors, which ordered him to stay away from her and her home, and that he had "a criminal history" with his neighbours.

"Today, in our pain, we are also keenly aware that this is not just another murder to be added to crime statistics. Our brother's death could have been prevented. This man was a known danger," the family’s statement read.

'Not the first time'

Veronica Laizure, civil rights director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) Oklahoma chapter, said the shooting was probably motivated by anti-Arab bigotry and it is indicative of a larger problem of anti-Arab xenophobia in the United States.

"This isn't even the first time that anti-Muslim sentiment has resulted in this kind of tragic loss of life," Laizure told Al Jazeera on Tuesday.

"A year and a half ago, there were three young Muslims who were brutally murdered by their own neighbour after a series of incidents where their neighbour said similar hateful things about what he perceived to be their religion and their ethnicity."

In February 2015, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were shot and killed in their home near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Over the weekend, an imam and his friend were shot and killed in broad daylight in New York City as they left a  mosque after mid-afternoon prayers.

Anti-Muslim hate crimes have also risen alongside anti-Muslim rhetoric linked to the US presidential election campaign, according to a recent report put out by The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has advocated a ban on all Muslims entering the country, for instance.

'Rising Islamophobia'

Last year, 174 instances of anti-Muslim violence were reported across the US, signaling that "the 2016 US presidential season began against a backdrop of already rising Islamophobia", the report found.

Laizure said the Jabara case raised serious questions about how someone like Majors "was able to continue to harass and threaten" the family and others in the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, she said CAIR-Oklahoma was respecting the family's request for privacy and was working to mobilise community groups to support them at this difficult time.

An online fundraiser, launched on Monday in support of the Jabaras, had raised $2,500 by midday on Tuesday.
The family, meanwhile, said their "world was shattered" when Khalid was killed.

"He was a kind spirit, loving brother, uncle and son. Khalid's heart was big. He cared for our entire family, our friends and people he didn't even know. He created every Jabara family joke and filled our lives with love and laughter," the family’s statement reads.

"All of that has been taken away from us by this hateful man and a system that failed to protect our community."

wounded as at least half a million protest against alleged government corruption.

wounded as at least half a million protest against alleged government corruption.

Opposition says 700,000 people joined the rally, 200,000 more than the number given by security forces [AFP]

A man has been shot dead by police at an anti-government rally in Guinea's capital, according to officials, as more than half a million people protested against alleged state corruption.

At least 12 others were injured in Tuesday's demonstration in Conakry, and six were taken for questioning, government officials told the AFP news agency

Opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo said 700,000 people had joined a 15km procession from the suburbs to the 28 Septembre stadium in the west African nation's capital.   

Security forces said the number was closer to 500,000, according to AFP.

The dead man, named as Thierno Hamidou Diallo, 21, was shot in the chest by a police officer "as he was sitting on the balcony of his apartment" in the suburb of Bambeto, his brother Mamadou Dian Diallo said.

Security Minister Abdoul Kabele Camara said that violence had broken out in late afternoon, leading to a police intervention in which "gunshots caused one serious injury and one fatality".  

The police captain suspected of firing the shots had been identified and questioned, the minister said.

READ MORE: Deadly clashes flare ahead of Guinea election

The government of President Alpha Conde, who was re-elected last year, is blamed for mishandling the massive Simandou iron ore project in the south of the country managed by British-Australian firm Rio Tinto.

Inside Story - Can an election help Guinea's democracy?

Officials said in July that the challenges of getting the project off the ground during a global iron ore glut were considerable, but they would "do everything" to ensure it went on-stream.

Guinea's constitutional court in November 2015 formally confirmed Conde's re-election, dismissing opposition claims of vote-rigging and fraud.

It was only the second democratic presidential poll since Guinea gained independence from France in 1958.

In addition to focusing on the economy, rights campaigners have urged Conde to use his second term to intensify the fight against impunity, strengthen the judiciary and promote equal respect for the rights of all Guineans.

Despite the country being rich in minerals, most of the population in Guinea live in poverty and survive on less than one euro ($1.08) a day, according to the UN.

Malaysia says oil tanker 'not hijacked

Malaysia says oil tanker 'not hijacked'

Malaysian authorities say ship carrying 900,000 litres of diesel has not been hijacked as earlier reported.

A Malaysian oil tanker which was earlier reported to have been hijacked as it sailed into Indonesian waters has been 'taken' due to a commercial dispute, Malaysian authorities have said.

A spokesman for the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said on Wednesday that the ship, Vier Harmoni, which is carrying 900,000 litres of diesel, had been taken due to a disagreement between the ship's management and the crew.

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, said the captain and crew were believed to have no intention of selling the oil.

"Malaysian and Indonesian authorities are not calling this a hijacking or an act of piracy, they're calling this an internal dispute.

"The Indonesian crew on the Indonesian boat took the tanker - full of oil - back to Indonesia after not being paid for well over a month. It was a Malaysian company that chartered the boat but it's a dispute between the Indonesian owner and the Indonesian crew," she said.

Vaessen said the tanker was near the Indonesian island of Batam and the crew had "no intention of selling the oil."

The ship had sailed from the Tanjung Pelepas port, in Malaysia, on Monday.

In June last year, pirates hijacked the Orkim Victory, a Malaysian tanker, and pumped the oil from it into another tanker before releasing it.

Libyan forces retake central Sirte district from ISIL

NEWSLIBYA4 HOURS AGO

Libyan forces retake central Sirte district from ISIL

Soldiers advance on "District One", the city's last area held by ISIL, after capturing key neighbourhood, military says.

Libyan forces say they are closing in on 'District One', ISIL's last remaining stronghold in Sirte [Reuters]

Forces loyal to Libya's internationally backed government say they are close to retaking Sirte from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group after capturing a key neighbourhood in the heart of the coastal city.

The fighters, mainly from the nearby city of Misrata, said they were advancing on ISIL-held "District One", after seizing "District Two" on Tuesday.

Can US air strikes push ISIL out of Libya?

"District Two has been liberated," Reda Issa, a spokesman for the pro-government forces, told the Reuters news agency.

"The neighbourhood is now completely under control of our forces," he said, adding that his side had overcome fierce opposition from ISIL snipers and car bombs.

The advance came a day after loyalists cleared and demined areas captured in earlier clashes.

ISIL, also known as ISIS, seized control of Sirte, the birth place of Libya's overthrown leader Muammar Gaddafi, last year and controlled about 250km of the country's Mediterranean coastline before forces aligned to the nascent, UN-brokered Government of National Accord (GNA) began operations against it in May.

 

READ MORE: How serious is the ISIL threat in Libya?

Since August 1, their progress has been aided by US air strikes on ISIL vehicles, weapons and fighting positions.

US President Barack Obama said it was "in America's national security interest" to help the pro-government forces "finish the job" of ousting ISIL from Sirte.

The internationally backed government's forces and those of a rival authority in the east are currently engaged in a race to be the first to drive ISIL out of the city. 

But some analysts believe this could jeopardise efforts to defeat the armed group.

Libya has suffered from chaos since the 2011 overthrow of Gaddafi, with numerous revolutionary militias formed along regional and ideological lines vying for power.