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Uyghurs in China
Mehbube Abla, a 38-year-old Uyghur from Ghulja, a city in western Xinjiang. In 2004, she left China to study abroad and has never returned. All the members of her family who stayed in Xinjiang have been imprisoned.
There are 11 million Uyghurs, a Muslim Turkich nation, living in the western province of Xinjiang in China. Widely portrayed as “motherland separatists” or simply “terrorists” in Chinese mainstream media, this group has been targeted more systematically since Xi Jinping became president of China in 2012.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Uyghurs have been deprived of basic human rights, including freedom of religion, of movement, and also of using their native language. And according to various testimonies and sources, over 1 million Uyghurs – as well as other Muslim minorities are in internment camps. Some camp detainees are also sent to Xinjiang’s vast prison system.
Given the secrecy surrounding these internment camps, which China describes as “vocational training centers“, the exact number of people currently detained is difficult to ascertain, but hundreds are believed to have died in internment. More detailed information is available in the Xinjiang Victims Database.
Abla is active on social media, where she advocates for Uyghurs’ human rights.
Russian military lashes out at UN over aid to Aleppo
The Russian military is criticizing the United Nations for dragging its feet on delivering humanitarian aid to the areas of Aleppo, which have been recently seized by Syrian government forces.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that the Russian military has been the only source of food, medicine and other supplies for 90,000 residents of Aleppo's neighborhoods seized by the Syrian army this week.
In Friday's statement, Konashenkov called on Jan Egeland, a senior U.N. aid official for Syria, to move faster to provide aid to the area.
Russian-backed Syrian government troops have made significant gains in the rebel-held eastern part of the city since the weekend.
Afghan official says Taliban militants kill 23 civilians
An Afghan police official says that Taliban militants have killed 23 civilians in Kandahar Province in the last 48 hours.
Gen. Abdul Raziq Kandahar said Friday that the killings took place in different areas of the Nash district. He did not provide further details.
Raziq said that around 29 Taliban fighters and six members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in ongoing battles in the district in recent days.
2 Filipino militants who left bomb near US Embassy captured
Philippine police say they have captured two local sympathizers of the Islamic State group who they alleged tried to detonate a bomb near the U.S. Embassy and prompted authorities to raise a terror alert.
National police chief Ronald de la Rosa says the militants, who were arrested Wednesday, left the homemade bomb made from an 81mm mortar round in a trash can near the embassy after failing to detonate it at the nearby Rizal Park, their initial target. The bomb also failed to explode near the embassy.
Dela Rosa said Thursday that Rashid Kilala and Jiaher Guinar, who belong to a small Muslim armed group called Ansar Al-khilafa Philippines, wanted to impress the Islamic State group and divert the military's focus from an offensive against fellow militants in the south.
Syrian government presses on in Aleppo, thousands displaced
Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in Aleppo as pro-government Syrian forces press on with their campaign to reclaim the divided city.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said Wednesday more than 50,000 out of an estimated quarter-million inhabitants have been displaced by attacks on rebel-held eastern Aleppo over the past 4 days. Many of them fled to safer ground in areas under government or Kurdish control.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says around 20,000 people have fled.
The Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel reported from the Aleppo countryside that pro-government forces were advancing in the southern portion of the city's rebel enclave.
The government has seized much of the northern half of the enclave in a swift advance that began Saturday.
7 injured by turbulence as China airliner approaches Sydney
Officials say seven people were injured when a Chinese airliner hit turbulence at it approached Sydney airport.
China Eastern Airlines general manager Kathy Zhang said five passengers and two crew members were taken to a hospital after Flight 777 from Kunming in China landed Tuesday. She said all are in stable condition.
The Ambulance Service said in a statement that three complained of neck pain and the others suffered back pain, a minor head injury, a jaw laceration and a wrist injury.
Lufthansa pilots on strike again, 816 flights canceled
Pilots at German airline Lufthansa are on strike again after a two-day break in their campaign of walkouts.
The company has canceled 816 short-haul flights scheduled for Tuesday. The walkout by the Cockpit union is to be followed Wednesday by a strike hitting both short-haul and long-haul services.
Lufthansa has canceled 890 flights scheduled Wednesday.
The strikes follow four consecutive days of walkouts last week. Lufthansa and Cockpit are far apart in a pay dispute that has dragged on for more than two years.
Lufthansa on Monday failed to persuade a Munich court to issue an injunction blocking the latest strike. The company says that around 82,000 passengers will be affected by Tuesday's walkout and 98,000 by Wednesday's.
Spain: Police arrest 4 suspected of IS armed group links
Spain's Interior Ministry says police have arrested four people suspected of having links to an illegal migration network believed to have been used by the Islamic State group to move militants to Europe, including those involved in last year's Paris attacks.
A ministry statement said the four had links with the so-called "Syrian refugee route" that the Islamic group is thought to have used to get the Paris attackers to Europe via the Greek island of Leros in October 2015.
Police believe the four arrested Monday had contacts with two extremists arrested in Salzburg, Austria, shortly after the November 2015 attacks.
Two were arrested in towns in northwestern Spain and two others in the southeastern city of Almeria.
No details on their identities were released.
Israel bombs suspected Islamic State militant hideout in Syria
The Israeli military says it has carried out an air strike in Syria on a building used by Islamic State militants to attack Israeli forces.
The overnight air strike Monday targeted an abandoned United Nations building that Israel says was used as a base by the militants. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
In Sunday's clash militants affiliated with the IS group opened fire at an Israeli patrol on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights. Israeli aircraft quickly responded, killing four militants in an air strike on a machine gun-mounted vehicle.
No Israeli troops were hurt, but it was a rare attempt by IS-affiliated militants to ambush Israeli forces.
Syrian troops capture major Aleppo neighborhood
Syrian state media is reporting that government forces have captured the eastern Aleppo neighborhood of Sakhour, putting much of the northern part of Aleppo's besieged rebel-held areas under state control.
State news agency SANA says government forces captured the Sakhour neighborhood early Monday in the latest blow to rebels in Syria's largest city.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Syrian government forces have captured some 10 neighborhoods over the past few days, putting nearly 30 percent of Aleppo's formerly rebel-held neighborhoods under government control.
Government forces captured the Hanano district on Saturday, the first time they had pushed this far into eastern Aleppo since 2012.
Thousands of east Aleppo residents have fled to safety in government and Kurdish-controlled areas of the city.
Turkish president threatens to reopen borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned the European Union that if it continues threatening his country he will open the border gates and allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to flood into EU countries.
Erdogan, in a speech Friday, reacted furiously to a non-binding resolution approved the previous day by the European Parliament demanding that the bloc freeze membership negotiations with Turkey over the government's heavy-handed crackdown following a failed coup in July.
"We are the ones who feed 3-3.5 million refugees in this country. You have betrayed your promises," Erdogan told the EU. "If you go any further those border gates will be opened."
The EU struck a deal earlier this year to return migrants to Turkey in return for a package including aid for the refugees and accelerated membership talks.
Death toll in Iraq car bombing claimed by ISIS rises to 73
The officials said Friday that 65 people were wounded in the attack. Earlier, they had put the death toll from the Thursday night bombing at 56.
The attack took place at a gas station on a major highway near the city of Hilla. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
IS claimed the attack in a statement, saying it was a suicide truck bomb.
The bombing appears to have targeted a bus with Iranian pilgrims heading home after a major Shiite religious observance in the holy city of Karbala.
Cold weather kills 20 in north Afghanistan; 2 die in attacks
Afghan officials say cold weather and freezing temperatures have killed 20 people, mostly children in a remote northern Afghan province bordering Turkmenistan.
Provincial police chief Rahmatullah Turkistani says the deaths occurred this week in Jawzjan province's district of Darzab, which has seen heavy snowfall, with half a meter, or almost two feet of snow on the ground.
The area has no electricity or medical facilities and the road has been cut off by the Taliban. Authorities are waiting for the weather to clear up before delivering aid by air.
Elsewhere, a roadside bombing on Friday in Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar killed a policeman while a mortar shell struck a weeding party the previous night in Laghman province, killing a child.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for those attacks.
Israel battles fires for third day; 4 Palestinians arrested
Israeli police have arrested four Palestinians in connection with one of several large fires that damaged homes and prompted the evacuation of thousands of people over the past few days.
Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Thursday that police are investigating all possible causes, including arson. Windy and hot weather have helped fan the flames.
He says the blazes started three days ago at the Neve Shalom community near Jerusalem where Israelis and Arabs live together.
Later, fires erupted in the northern Israeli area of Zichron Yaakov and elsewhere near Jerusalem. In all, hundreds of homes have been damaged and thousands of people have been evacuated. About a dozen were treated for smoke inhalation.
Cyprus, Russia, Italy and other countries are assisting the Israeli firefighters with equipment as the fires continue.
2 gunmen, 2 security officers killed in gunbattle in Russia
Russia's counterterrorism agency says two suspected militants and two special forces officers have been killed in a gunbattle in the nation's volatile North Caucasus.
The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said that security services acting on a tip surrounded a house in Nazran in the province of Ingushetia where the two suspects were hiding. They refused to surrender and opened fire on security forces.
Both suspects were killed in Thursday's firefight, and two officers of the Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency, also died.
An Islamist insurgency has spread across the North Caucasus after two separatist wars in Chechnya. While Chechnya has become more stable under the watch of a Kremlin-backed strongman, violence has spilled into neighboring provinces where security forces clash frequently with gunmen.
Turkey: 3 Turkish troops in Syria die in government strike
The Turkish Armed Forces says three Turkish soldiers were killed and 10 were wounded in Syria by an airstrike allegedly fired by government forces.
A statement from the Armed Forces posted on its website says the attack took place at before dawn on Thursday.
One of the wounded soldiers was said to be in critical condition.
The casualties are likely to ratchet up tensions between Ankara and Damascus. In August, Ankara sent ground troops into northern Syria to support Syrian opposition forces in the fight against Islamic State militants and to curb Syrian Kurdish territorial gains
Ankara views Syrian Kurdish forces as an extension of the Kurdish insurgency in southeastern Turkey.
IS claims coalition airstrike disables fourth Mosul bridge
The Islamic State group's media arm says an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition has "disabled" the fourth bridge on the Tigris River in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
The Aamaq news agency says the strike happened on Wednesday but gave no details.
It's the second airstrike to target Mosul bridges this week and if the bridge is confirmed disabled, it would mean that there is only one bridge left functioning over the Tigris in Mosul.
There was no immediate confirmation available on the airstrike from the U.S.-led coalition.
Mosul had five bridges until shortly before the start last month of the Iraqi campaign to retake the city from IS.
Targeting the bridges appears designed to disrupt IS supply lines in Mosul, which is sliced in half by the Tigris.
Bomb kills 3 paramilitary officers in northwestern Pakistan
A Pakistani police official says a bomb blast has killed three paramilitary officers in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
Wajid Khan says the bomb, which was apparently detonated by remote control, exploded when a patrol of paramilitary police was passing by on Tuesday.
Khan says eight other people, including civilians, were wounded in the bombing.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Peshawar is a city sitting along the edge of Pakistan's tribal regions that have long been home to local and al-Qaida-linked militants and foreign Islamic fighters. For years, the city has been the scene of attacks by Islamic militants.
Pakistan has been fighting Islamic militancy for over a decade.
Turkey detains another 2 pro-Kurdish mayors
Turkey's state-run news agency says authorities have detained another two mayors belonging to the pro-Kurdish party on terrorism-related charges.
Anadolu Agency says Ahmet Turk, the mayor of the southeastern city of Mardin, and Emin Irmak, mayor of the nearby town of Artkulu, were both detained Monday.
The detention of Turk, who was a former head of a pro-Kurdish party that was shut down on terrorism-related charges in 2009, comes after he was dismissed from his post by the Interior Ministry last Thursday and his replacement by a government-appointed trustee.
The ministry also sacked and replaced the mayors of the southeastern provinces of Van, Siirt and Tunceli, all of whom were later arrested.
Several pro-Kurdish politicians have been arrested during the state of emergency declared after July's failed coup.
France: 7 arrested in anti-terror raids, attack thwarted
French anti-terrorism police have arrested seven people in Strasbourg and Marseille and thwarted what the interior minister called a new potential attack.
Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, announcing the arrests Monday, said six of the suspects arrested hadn't been known to intelligence services. Cazeneuve said that Sunday's arrests prevented "a terrorist act that had been envisaged for a long time."
Cazeneuve didn't identify the target of the planned attack.
The arrests came five days before the opening of the famed Christmas market in Strasbourg, which attracts tourists from across Europe and was the target of a failed extremist plot in 2000.
Cazeneuve said 43 people have been arrested in November alone as part of anti-terror operations following deadly Islamic State attacks on France over the past two years.
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