The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Thai protesters start Bangkok 'shutdown' in bid to topple PM
- Magnitude 6.5 quake strikes off Puerto Rico - USGS
- Al Qaeda Syria unit executes dozens of rivals in Raqqa - activists
| Thai protesters start Bangkok 'shutdown' in bid to topple PM Posted: 12 Jan 2014 08:35 PM PST BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thousands of anti-government protesters began a blockade at major intersections in Bangkok on Monday as they sought to paralyse Thailand's capital, stepping up pressure on Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to resign. Police and soldiers kept watch as the city of some 12 million people ground to a halt, but there were no signs that the government was preparing to resist the protesters with force. The upheaval is the latest chapter in an eight-year conflict pitting Bangkok's middle class and royalist establishment against the mostly poorer, rural supporters of Yingluck and her self-exiled brother, billionaire former premier Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin was ousted by the military in 2006 and sentenced to jail in absentia for abuse of power in 2008, but he still looms large over Thai politics and is the dominant force behind his sister's administration from his home in Dubai. Eight people, including two police officers, have been killed and scores wounded in violence between protesters, police and government supporters since the campaign against Yingluck's government started in November. Shootings were reported overnight near a government administrative complex the protesters began to blockade late on Sunday and at the headquarters of the opposition Democrat Party, which has thrown in its lot with the protest movement. The protesters have set up permanent barricades and encampments at seven big intersections, but others are being blocked, too. At one, near the American and Japanese embassies, around 100 protesters sat on the road to halt traffic. Som Rodpai, 64, said they would leave after nightfall, amid fears their citywide protest could spark a violent reaction. "I'm not scared," said Som. "We came here unarmed." In a bid to end the campaign, Yingluck, who has a commanding majority in parliament, has called a snap election for February 2. But her Puea Thai Party would probably win again and protest leader Suthep Thaugsuba has rejected the poll. His stated goal is to eradicate the influence of the Shinawatra family on Thai politics. Suthep however said he would call off the protests if, as some fear, violence escalates into civil war. "If it becomes a civil war, I will give up. People's life is precious for me," he told the Sunday Nation newspaper. Pro-Thaksin groups started rallies in several provincial regions on Sunday but are steering clear of Bangkok for now. The government has deployed 10,000 police to maintain law and order, along with 8,000 soldiers at government offices. "We don't want confrontation with the protesters ... In some places we will let them into government buildings," Foreign Minister Surapong Tovichakchaikul said on Sunday. "SIT AND MEDITATE" National security chief Paradorn Pattanathabutr said around 20,000 protesters had joined a march from what has been the movement's main camp at Democracy Monument in the old quarter. Among them was Prasert Tanyakiatpongsa, a small business owner, who backed Suthep's plans for electoral reforms. "I'm not sure if we can achieve what we want in a day but maybe we can after a week ... We are not out to clash with police. We will sit and we will meditate," Prasert said. Although rumours of a coup are rife, the military, which has staged or attempted 18 coups in 81 years of on-off democracy, has tried to stay neutral this time and army chief Prayuth Chan-ocha has publicly refused to take sides. But some fear extremists or agents provocateurs could instigate violence to provoke military intervention, leading to a repeat of 2010 when more than 90 people, many of them Thaksin supporters, were killed in an army operation to put down a rally that had closed parts of central Bangkok for weeks. "The government will let Suthep play the hero tomorrow ... It will be his show," Labour Minister Chalerm Yoobamrung said on Sunday. "There won't be a repeat of 2010 because the government will not use that strategy. There are no plans to use force." The latest protests took off in November, when the government tried to push through a political amnesty that would have let Thaksin return home without serving jail time for corruption. The bill was ultimately withdrawn but the protests gathered pace. Thaksin, a former telecommunications tycoon who redrew Thailand's political map by courting rural voters to win back-to-back elections in 2001 and 2005, gained an unassailable mandate that he then used to advance the interests of major companies, including his own. He is opposed by the elite and establishment, who feel threatened by his rise, and regard his sister as a puppet. Thaksin's opponents include unions and academics who saw him as a corrupt rights abuser, and the urban middle-class who resented, as they saw it, their taxes being used as his political war chest. Nevertheless, Yingluck's party would probably win the February poll thanks to support from voters in the north and northeast. But a smooth election looks increasingly unlikely, with the protesters determined to install an appointed "people's council" to change the electoral system and bring in other reforms to weaken Thaksin's sway. The unrest has hurt tourism and further delayed huge infrastructure projects that had been expected to support the economy this year at a time when exports remain weak. Consumer confidence is at a two-year low. City officials told 140 schools to close on Monday and universities near the protest sites have suspended classes. Protest leaders want to stop ministries functioning but say they will not shut down public transport or the city's airports. Anti-Thaksin protesters shut the airports for several days in late 2008, causing chaos for tourists and exporters. (Editing by Alan Raybould, John Chalmers and Raju Gopalakrishnan) |
| Magnitude 6.5 quake strikes off Puerto Rico - USGS Posted: 12 Jan 2014 08:30 PM PST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A strong quake of magnitude 6.5 struck north off Puerto Rico on Monday but did not trigger a tsunami, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It said the quake, initially reported as a magnitude 6.4, was very shallow, at a depth of only 17.7 miles (27 km) below the seabed. It struck at 12:01 a.m. (0401 GMT), 35 miles (56 km) north of the town of Hatillo. The Tsunami Warning Center said there was no danger the quake had triggered a tsunami. (Reporting by Sandra Maler; Editing by Eric Walsh) |
| Al Qaeda Syria unit executes dozens of rivals in Raqqa - activists Posted: 12 Jan 2014 07:55 PM PST AMMAN (Reuters) - The al Qaeda-linked Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant executed dozens of rival Islamists over the last two days as the group recaptured most territory it had lost in the northeastern Syrian province of Raqqa, activists said on Sunday. One of the activists, who spoke from the province on condition of anonymity, said up to 100 fighters from the Nusra Front, another al Qaeda affiliate, and the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, captured by ISIL in the town of Tel Abyad on the border with Turkey, the nearby area of Qantari and the provincial capital city of Raqqa, were shot dead. There was no independent confirmation of the report. "About 70 bodies, most shot in the head, were collected and sent to the Raqqa National hospital," the activist said. "Many of those executed had been wounded in the fighting. The fact that Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham are ideologically similar to the ISIL did not matter," he added. ISIL's growth has alarmed Western nations, who are pushing the opposition to attend peace talks in Switzerland in 10 days' time, and has helped President Bashar al-Assad to portray himself as the only secular alternative to Islamist extremism. Fighting between the ISIL and rival Islamists and more moderate rebels have killed hundreds of people over the last 10 days and shaken the hardline militant group led by foreign jihadists. But the ISIL regrouped and recaptured much of its stronghold in Raqqa city on Sunday, activists said, dealing a blow to rival rebel groups backed by Gulf Arab and Western states. Among those reportedly executed on the weekend was Abu Saad al-Hadram, Nusra Front's commander for Raqqa province who was captured several months ago as tension mounted between the foreign-led ISIL and the more home-grown Nusra, opposition sources said. In Raqqa, the only provincial capital under rebel control, activists said ISIL fighters battled remnants of rival Islamist units including the Nusra Front in several neighbourhoods. To the north, ISIL recaptured the town of Tel Abyad on the border with Turkey over the weekend. As a result, Turkish authorities closed a border crossing near the town and pulled out the facility's staff, according to the Syrian Revolution Coordinating Union, an opposition monitoring group. There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials. Abdallah Farraj, a member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition from Raqqa, said rebels had been able to expel ISIL from parts of the neighbouring Aleppo province, but it would be hard to shake ISIL's hold on Raqqa and rural areas along key supply lines across the north. "The rebels lack the organisation and the firepower to win. It will be difficult to defeat ISIL without military strikes from someone like Turkey," he said. Abu Khaled al-Walid, an activist speaking from the border area, said many fighters from Ahrar al-Sham, one of the most powerful Islamist groups, chose not to confront ISIL because the combatants were local people with little enmity for each other. "Many did not see a point in fighting their own relatives. ISIL is now in control of 95 percent of Raqqa and its rural environs. Tel Abyad is also back with it," he said. "NUCLEUS OF THE CALIPHATE" Raqqa, on the Euphrates River 385 km (240 miles) northeast of Damascus, is the most significant city to have fallen completely to Assad's opponents since the revolt against his family's four-decade rule broke out in March 2011. An ISIL statement called on Raqqa tribes to pull out their members from anti-ISIL rebel units and said the attacks against the group were designed to "destroy the nucleus of the caliphate" and promote a "heathen" alternative. ISIL pulled out of Raqqa and other towns in northern Syria this month after an Islamist rebel alliance attacked its strongholds, taking advantage of growing popular resentment of the group's foreign commanders, their killing of other rebels and a drive to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law. But ISIL has regrouped in the last few days, using snipers, truck-mounted commando units and suicide bombers. Opposition sources said the expertise of its foreign commanders, including a senior figure known as Omar al-Shishani, had been crucial to its advance. In the province of Aleppo west of Raqqa, activists said ISIL had regained several rural towns, including Hreitan and Basraton, where ISIL killed a senior commander in the Nour al-Din Zanki brigades, a key unit in the newly-formed Mujahideen Army, which has been fighting ISIL in Aleppo. Fighting also raged on Sunday between Western-backed Free Syrian Army units around the town of Retayan near Aleppo and in Urum to the east, as rebel infighting made the city vulnerable to advances by Assad's forces, the sources said. Abdallah al-Sheikh, an activist in northern Syria, said Assad's forces had began bombarding areas from which ISIL had withdrawn, such as the town of Maarat Misreen and parts of Aleppo city. "ISIL have been doing Assad a huge favour by killing many of the formidable rebel commanders and the regime has chosen to help it by not touching many of the areas it had taken. As soon as it withdrew, the bombing resumed," he said. (Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Andrew Roche and Eric Walsh) |
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