One killed in clashes in Lebanon's Tripoli

 

Debris is seen scattered on the road in front of graffiti (L) that reads ''Down with Bashar'' in the Sunni Muslim Bab al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, on the second day of heavy gunfire and clashes, that has left at least one dead, February 11, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Omar Ibrahim

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - One person was killed and several soldiers wounded in street battles in Lebanon's northern city of Tripoli Saturday, a security source said, in a second day of violence involving supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The coastal city is dominated by Sunni Muslims who support the 11-month uprising against Assad in neighboring Syria, but is also home to members of Assad's Alawite minority.

Residents said rocket-propelled grenades were fired from the Sunni Muslim district of Bab al-Tabbaneh toward the Alawite district of Jebel Mohsen, but caused no injuries.

Saturday, Reuters Television footage showed gunmen taking cover on street corners and firing volleys of automatic gunfire.

"We are the supporters of the Syrian revolution in Lebanon, and we are going to (fight) the shabbiha," one of the gunmen said, referring to pro-Assad militias blamed by Syrian opposition activists for much of the killing in Syria.

A Lebanese army statement said troops had deployed in the Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jebel Mohsen districts to restore order and were "carrying out raids on sites that took part in the clashes," making arrests and seizing weapons.

Several soldiers were wounded, one seriously, it said.

There are frequent clashes in Tripoli between rival sects, but tensions have heightened sharply since the outbreak of unrest in Syria. Friday's violence came after hundreds of people demonstrated against Assad following weekly Muslim prayers.

(Reporting by Nazih Siddiq, Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Iran sends rare letter to U.S. over killed scientist

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks Mehrabad airport with journalists Tehran after his visit to Latin America 14 January 2012.

IMG credit: Reuters/Raheb Homavandi

By Parisa Hafezi

Tehran (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it had evidence Washington behind the latest killing, a nuclear scientist was, State television reported, at a time when tensions with regard to the country's nuclear program have escalated at their highest level ever.

In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb at the door of the 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan designed car during the Wednesday morning rush hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.

US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton denied responsibility and Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Israel had no role in the attack to the best of his knowledge.

"We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was designed, led and supported by the CIA," the Iranian Foreign Ministry in a letter to the Swiss Ambassador to Tehran, said passing State TV reported. The Swiss Embassy represents the interests of the United States in a country where Washington has no diplomatic relations.

The spokesman of Iran joint armed forces staff Massoud Jazayeri, said: "Our enemies, especially America, Great Britain and the Zionist regime (Israel), must be liable for their actions."

Iran in the past has accused caused a number of spectacular and sometimes bloody breakdowns Israel its nuclear programme. Israeli officials comment on any involvement in these events, although publicly expressed some satisfaction with the setbacks.

Does feel of the warmth of unprecedented new sanctions, Iran's clerical establishment the sword swung by threat, the most important Mid-East route block oil, start to enrich uranium to an underground bunker and sentenced an Iranian-American citizens to death espionage charges.

State TV said that a "Declaration of the sentence" also had been sent, United Kingdom, say that the Iranian nuclear scientists started killing after the head of British MI6 spy service intelligence operations against the States announced nuclear weapons.

The West says that Iran's nuclear programme is aimed at building a bomb. Tehran says that it has the right to peaceful nuclear energy.

The UN Security Council and Secretary-General asked Ban Ki-moon Tehran to condemn the latest killing.

After years of international sanctions, which had little effect on the Iran, signed President Barack Obama new measures on new year's Eve, which, if fully implemented, it would make it impossible for most countries for Iranian oil to numbers.

Washington is where the countries gradually reduce their purchases of Iranian oil to get temporary relief from the sanctions.

The European Union should reveal similar measures next week, and terminate one gradually between their Member States, which buy about one-fifth of Iranian exports oil embargo.

The combined measures mean that Iran will fail to sell 2.6 million barrels per day of exports, which it uses its 74 million people to feed all. Even if it finds a buyer, must these steep discounts, cut offer much-needed revenue into the.

On Tuesday, shipping sources said Reuters Iran was less than 8 million barrels - storage an increasing supply of oil at sea - and was likely to more as they battle to sell it to save.

Iran denies it problems: "there was no interruption of Iran's crude oil exports through the Persian Gulf..." We have oil in the Gulf because of the sanctions as some foreign media reported not stored "Oil official Pirouz Mousavi said more on Friday the semi-official news agency."

The sanctions cause real hardship on the roads, where prices for basic imported goods soar, currency is the Rial fell and the Iranians have been have stream in Rial, dollars, to protect their savings, buy sell.

The pain comes less than two months before the parliamentary elections, Iran only since the year 2009 by eight months of demonstrations was followed a presidential election.

The revolt by force successfully put Iranian authorities, but since then she "Arab spring" has shown fueled by anger over economic difficulties the vulnerability of the authoritarian governments in the region to protest.

ZUSAMMENSTOß threat

Iran has threatened, blocking the Strait of Hormuz leads to the Gulf when its oil exports imposed sanctions and threatened, take unspecified action if Washington an aircraft carrier through the Straits, international waterway sails.

Military experts say Tehran can do little to the massive US-led fleet to fight, which protects the road, but increase the threats could lead the chance of a misunderstanding, to a military conflict and a global oil crisis.

The Pentagon said on Friday that small Iranian boats close to U.S. ships in the Strait last week had indeed said that they believed not, that it was "hostile intent."

The United States and Israel have ruled out non-military action diplomacy fails, the nuclear dispute. Iran says that it would take revenge if attacked.

The tension has spikes in global oil prices in recent weeks, caused, although prices facilitate trade on the prospect of lower demand in economically affected European countries last week at the end. Brent crude oil fell to pay 82 cents to $110.44 per barrel on Friday.

The chances of an immediate relaxation seek to set away on the nuclear further deadlock due to the refusal of Iran, the sensitive nuclear work.

Last week Iran uranium enrichment began u-Bahn - the most controversial part of its nuclear programme - a bunker deep under a mountain near the Shi Shi'ite Holy City of Qom.

Nuclear talks with powers collapsed a year ago. Iran says it wants to resume the talks, but in the West says that unless no point in it, it is ready, a setting of uranium enrichment, to discuss, that can be used, make material for a bomb.

(Additional reporting by Mitra Amiri;) Writing by Parisa Hafezi. (Editing by Peter Graff)

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Mexican interior minister killed in helicopter crash

AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota 
1 of 2. People stand outside Mexico's Interior Ministry which bears a black ribbon in a sign of mourning in Mexico City November 11, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Claudia Daut
By Cyntia Barrera and Manuel Rueda
MEXICO CITY | Fri Nov 11, 2011 10:32pm EST
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican Interior Minister Francisco Blake was killed in a helicopter crash on Friday, a blow to the government as it fights powerful drug cartels.
Television images showed the scattered wreckage of the helicopter on a green hillside south of the capital where Blake and the seven others on board were killed.
President Felipe Calderon said conditions were cloudy when the helicopter came down so that an accident looked probable.
But in a televised address, he said no explanations for the crash could be ruled out as he paid tribute to Blake, calling him "a great Mexican".
"The investigations will be exhaustive and will consider all the possible hypotheses," Calderon said.
Mexico is locked in a brutal conflict against drug cartels that has killed 45,000 people in the last five years and Blake was a key member of Calderon's security team.
Locals near the crash site, a remote area only accessible by dirt roads, said the weather was poor when Blake's helicopter fell from the sky on Friday morning.
"We could hear the motor, which didn't sound good," said farmer Humberto Ramirez from the village of Caserio de Cortez, about 1.5 km (1 mile) away. "We couldn't see where it came down."
Blake is the second interior minister under Calderon to be killed in an air crash. The previous one three years earlier was declared an accident. Ironically, Blake lauded that very predecessor in the last tweet from his Twitter account.
Another top security official died in a helicopter crash in 2005, prompting one analyst to question security protocols for government aircraft and say the string of deaths could be down to more than just bad luck.
As interior minister, Blake was responsible for helping Calderon implement his strategy against drug gangs, as well as negotiating with opposition parties in Congress. Lawmakers held a minute's silence as a mark of respect for Blake.
LAST TWEET
Mexico's peso and its IPC stock index lost ground after Blake's death, although the peso firmed again after Calderon said an accident looked likely.
Calderon's presidency has been dominated by his decision to send in the army against drug gangs shortly after he took office in December 2006.
He canceled his appointments for the day and called off a planned trip to Hawaii where he was due to take part in an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
U.S. President Barack Obama, himself on the way to Honolulu for APEC, called Calderon from Air Force One to express his shock and sorrow at Blake's death.
The soaring death toll has battered support for the ruling National Action Party (PAN) ahead of a presidential election next July, and this year dragged down Calderon's approval ratings to their lowest levels of his term.
Born in Tijuana on Mexico's border with the United States, Blake trained as a lawyer and served as a deputy for his home state of Baja California. He became interior minister in 2010.
"There is great sadness, firstly for the loss of a great friend, but also because this is a very severe blow in the midst of a war against criminals inside Mexico," said Socrates Bastida, a leader of the PAN in Baja California.
On November 4 2008, then interior minister Juan Camilo Mourino and several others died when their small plane crashed near a major Mexico City boulevard. Investigators concluded the plane was flying too close to a much bigger jet plane ahead of it.
In his last tweet on November 4, Blake said: "Today we remember Juan Camilo Mourino three years after his passing, a human being who worked toward the creation of a better Mexico."
In 2005, Ramon Martin Huerta, public security minister in the previous PAN administration, was killed in a helicopter crash just outside the city. It was declared an accident too.
"Statistically, it is starting to become very difficult to blame these accidents on human error," said Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, a Mexico expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"The Mexican government has to review its security protocols for all aircraft and vehicles ... and you have to be open to the idea that this was not a random accident."
The government's website lists a fleet of eight planes and nine helicopters, which are used frequently by officials.
(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Michael O'Boyle, Veronica Gomez and Rachel Uranga, writing by Dave Graham, Editing by Kieran Murray and Sandra Maler)

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Colombia says the FARC rebel leader killed

 1 out of 2. Colombian rebel Alfonso Cano, Chief ideologue of the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia (FARC), del Caguán in this photo of 2 February 2001 file speaks to the media in the vicinity of San Vicente.Credit: Reuters/Eliana Aponte / files

Luis Jaime Acosta and Jack Kimball

BOGOTÁ | Saturday, 5th November 2011 1: 22 am EDT

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's armed forces top FARC rebel leader Alfonso Cano on Friday in the biggest blow yet to Latin America longest uprising and a triumph for President Juan Manuel Santos killed, the Defense Ministry said.

While unlikely, that a rapid end to almost five decades of war in the Andes nation to bring, will his death further damage of the rebels ability to collect and coordinate the high-profile attacks that it have brought worldwide fame.

There were few immediate details about the killing, which occurred during the fight, an official of the Ministry for.

"It is true that he is dead," he told Reuters.

Before his beheading the FARC or the revolutionary armed forces of Colombia, had broken was that of a U.S.-backed military campaign, which in 2002 and the decreasing uprising has lost several other key commanders in the past four years.

"This us closer to victory and peace, so that we can stop killing each other", said Jorge Cordero, 19-year-old soldier in the North of Bogotá

The death of Cano, 63, who took over as head of the rebels after the death of its founder, 2008, was a major strategic victory for Santos, who came into Office last year, to keep an uncompromising stance against the guerrillas promises.

The Government had offered up to $3.7 million for information leading to his capture.

The death of the bespectacled and bearded rebel commander, a former student and Communist Youth Member, followed the killing end last year of one of his main henchmen, Mono-Jojoy, in a bombardment and attack on his camp.

REBELLEN WEAKEST IN DECADES

"It's always hard for them to get over the next years," said Alfredo Rangel, an independent security analyst.

"There is no leader with the intensity, the Cano has and it will be difficult to replace someone around him." In the short term, there is a lack of leadership. "At the end of non-automatic or immediate but we come to the end of the FARC."

Cano went away, a middle-class youth in the capital, Bogota on the Supreme Leader of the FARC after taking part in peace talks in the neighbouring Mexico and Venezuela in the 1990s.

The strike, which killed him underlined how now the leader of the able to attack Colombia's military deep in the mountains and jungle. Once a powerful force is control large swaths of Colombia, the FARC the weakest in decades.

Violence, the bombings and the kidnapping of the conflict have greatly eased, Colombian forces, better intelligence and U.S. education and technology, use the fight to bring the rebels.

Foreign investment in Colombia has increased since the military crackdown in 2002, in particular began oil and mining. But the FARC and other armed groups continue to have a threat in rural areas, where the State presence is weak and trafficking cocaine to the rebels to finance their operations.

Leaves and military operations have cropped rebel ranks about 7,000 fighters, but the FARC has survived for more than 40 years, and has still a cadre of experienced mid-level commanders. Rebels rely increasingly on hit and-run tactics and ambushes in rural areas.

The FARC, whose Rebellen have made incursions into Venezuela and Ecuador at times to escape the Colombian army, are on the US list of terrorist organisations.

(Additional Nelson Bocanegra and Helen Murphy;) Written by Daniel Wallis. (Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Todd Eastham)

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Dozens killed in Syrian city of Hims, deal day after Arab

2. November 2011 1 out of 3. Regierungsfeindliche demonstrators at the funeral of Sunni Moslem villagers killed, participate on Wednesday, in Hula in the vicinity of Hims.

Credit: Reuters/handout

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Mariam Karouny

AMMAN/BEIRUT | Wed, November 3, 2011 6: 03 pm EDT

Dozens died AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - in the Syrian city of Hims on Thursday, after reports of sectarian murders said activists, in an outburst of violence, this week, which threaten to ignite unrest between Sunni majority and the minority of Nusairier sect.

Tanks hit a major residential area in Homs for the second day, and there was no sign of troops leave cities under an Arab League agreement on bloodshed after seven months of protests against President Bashar al-Assad, whose Nusairier sect makes dominated.

A witness called rejected, said that he saw dozens of civilian facilities at the national hospital, which is under control of the security forces. The circumstances of her death were not clear.

"they were all men with gunshot wounds." A doctor told me that they came from all over Hims, ", he said."

Activists said another 19 people were killed, tank a bombardment of the District of Bab AMRO, hotbed of pro-democracy protests against President Bashar al-Assad and recordings by security forces in Homs.

There was no independent confirmation of the killings. They follow reports of local activists, the forces which held-loyal to Assad dead at least 11 Sunni Muslims to villagers at a roadblock province of Homs on Wednesday she is.

Nine Alawites have been pulled from a bus and killed the day before near the town of another activist said.

Harte Syrian media restrictions have made it hard to review the events on the ground, since a revolt against Assad began in March, inspired by other revolts in the Arab world.

Syria has killed more than 3,000 people, a plan of the Arab League decided army of towns, free political prisoners and talks with the opposition on Wednesday under pressure, a RAID set that says the United Nations.

The authorities blame the violence Islamic militants and armed gangs, they say, 1,100 soldiers and policemen have killed.

ISOLATION FEAR

Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby informed the members of the main opposition party National Council on the plan in Cairo.

"We do not speak with the Secretary General a dialogue with the regime" Council Member Samir Nashar by Egypt's MENA News Agency was quoted after the meeting.

"We discussed, moved in negotiations with the authorities of a totalitarian to a democratic system, and demanded, that President Assad makes can be."

Assad's critics have his past, the offers of dialogue, some words you first must stop bloodshed dismissed and others say that only his resignation can end the conflict.

Paris Burhan Ghalioun, a leading member of the National Council, doubted that Syria the plan would be.

"The regime has accepted the Arab initiative for fear of Arab isolation, his weakness and lack of options." He wrote "But the adoption not means that it respect its clauses".

In Syria, some demonstrators Arab League, which said the initiative, but residents and activists remained in cities and security operations on celebrated especially in Homs troops.

Tanks fired heavy machine guns and flak Bab AMRO district of the city, a hotbed of protests and scene operations by the military against insurgents hiding there.

In other districts shot a city with one million, army, the sniper of roofs and soldiers Homs fired from checkpoints.

"We slept late there was night road rallies, to celebrate the Arab initiative." This morning we woke up rain and peel "Samer, an activist in Bab AMRO, said by phone."

EXPLOSIONS ROCK CITY

Another said the sound of the explosions was rocking the city and activists called on people in and around the Centre of Homs donations of blood for provisional hospitals.

Activists and residents army posted reinforcements at roadblocks in cities in the southern Hauran plain, where the troops in the air to disperse overnight triggered protests.

Early in the morning, an armored column fired machine guns in the air after al-Madiq Castle near the Roman ruins of Apamea has seen in the Ghab plain, the protests and has established itself as a refuge for army deserters, local activists.

In Damascus suburb of Harasta at least 120 demonstrators were arrested overnight after the celebration of the Arab League offer, a resident said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Wednesday that it was Syria for better access to thousands of prisoners in pro-democracy protests arrested press.

Western sanctions and growing criticism from Turkey and Arab neighbors raised have pressure on Syria to stop the bloodshed.

"We are pleased, this agreement have and we will be even happier if she immediately implemented", said Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani of Qatar, leads a Committee of the Arab League behind schedule in Cairo agreed.

China, which has resisted sanctions against Syria along with Russia, u.n., welcomed the plan of the Arab League.

"This is an important step to the relaxation of the situation in Syria and the early start a political process with broad participation of all parties in Syria believe", said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei.

Despite the latest violence, Sami Baroudi, a political analyst at the Lebanese American University of Beirut, said it was too early to judge whether Syria would honor the agreement.

"It will take at least a few days to see if the intensity of violence is below or above going or staying at the same level", said Baroudi. "I would have not this initiative to the trash, because nothing happened immediately."

After the deal in Cairo was announced, the Syrian President to end again its call for the United States.

The Arab League has not exposed to Syria's membership or support international intervention, as it was overthrown against Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, the rebels supported by NATO.

(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut;) (Edit by Sophie hares)

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11:53 PM | 0 comments