BEIRUT, March 25 (Reuters) – Strikes on Iranian-linked bases in Syria would draw a quick response, an Iranian security spokesperson said on Saturday, after the reported death of 19 people in one of the deadliest exchanges between the U.S. and Iranian-aligned forces in years. read more
“Any pretext to attack bases created at the request of the Syrian government to deal with terrorism and Islamic State elements in this country will be met with an immediate counter-response,” Keyvan Khosravi, spokesperson for Iran’s top security body, was quoted as saying by Iranian state media.
Iran says its forces and allied fighters are in Syria at the request of Damascus, and sees U.S. forces there as occupiers.
The death toll in U.S. air strikes on pro-Iran installations in eastern Syria has risen to 19 fighters, a Syrian war monitoring group said on Saturday.
The U.S. carried out strikes in eastern Syria in response to a drone attack on Thursday that left one American contractor dead and another wounded along with five U.S. troops. Washington said the attack was of Iranian origin.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air raids killed three Syrian troops, 11 Syrian fighters in pro-government militias and five non-Syrian fighters who were aligned with the government.
The monitoring group’s head Rami Abdel Rahman could not specify the nationalities of the foreigners. Reuters was unable to independently confirm the toll.
The initial exchange prompted a string of tit-for-tat strikes. Another U.S. service member was wounded, according to officials, and local sources said suspected U.S. rocket fire hit more locations in eastern Syria.
President Joe Biden on Friday warned Iran that the United States would “act forcefully” to protect Americans.
Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s 12-year conflict.
Iran’s proxy militias, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah and pro-Tehran Iraqi groups, hold sway in swathes of eastern, southern and northern Syria and in suburbs around the capital.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the latest U.S. strikes, accusing U.S. forces of targeting “civilian sites”.
“Iran’s military advisers have been in Syria at the request of the Syrian government to help this country fight terrorism, and shall remain by Syria’s side to help establish peace, stability and lasting security,” ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told state media.
Tehran’s growing entrenchment in Syria has drawn regular Israeli air strikes but American aerial raids are more rare. The U.S. has been raising the alarm about Iran’s drone program.
Reporting by Maya Gebeily; additional reporting by Dubai newsroom; editing by Frances Kerry, Bernadette Baum, Michael Georgy and Giles Elgood
JAKARTA, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Egianus Kogoya, the dreadlocked rebel behind the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot this month in the highlands of Indonesia’s Papua region, is at the vanguard of an increasingly dangerous and media-savvy insurgency for independence.
Separatist rebels kidnapped New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens, 37, after he landed his small plane in the remote Papuan highlands on Feb 7.
Sitting in the cockpit of the plane, Kogoya, wearing a denim jacket, bone necklace and mirror shades, with a hand draped over a rifle, appeared to relish posing as his men documented their most high-profile kidnapping to date.
In a series of videos, Kogoya demanded the resource-rich region’s independence in return for Mehrtens’ release.
Fighters in the Indonesian, western half of New Guinea island have for decades waged a low-level battle for independence, but Kogoya and his gang have emerged as especially dangerous and unpredictable.
“What we are seeing is younger, new leadership among local rebel groups that is more aggressive and not necessarily strategic in the long term,” said Deka Anwar, from the Jakarta-based think tank, the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC).
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The security ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the separatists but military spokesperson Kisdiyanto said attacks against Indonesian sovereignty by “a few” separatists were being handled.
The military has said it is preparing for a “law enforcement operation” but only as a last resort if negotiations to free Mehrtens fail.
Separatists say their fight is legitimate because former colonial power the Netherlands promised the region it could become independent before it was annexed by Indonesia in 1963.
Indonesia says Papua is its territory after a 1969 vote supervised by the United Nations, in which 1,025 handpicked people unanimously backed its integration.
More than a half a century later, rebels are still fighting the Indonesian republic.
An estimated 500 fighters identify as members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed wing of the Free Papua Movement (OPM).
Loosely organised and geographically fractured, the TPNPB lacks cohesion and a central leadership and command.
Instead, units in different areas operate under individual commanders, like Kogoya, who hails from a family with rebel connections – some relatives were behind the kidnapping of several foreign researchers in 1996.
For years, the separatists mounted small attacks with minimal casualties but Kogoya and his group opened a bloody new chapter in 2018 when they attacked a road-construction project killing 21 workers.
Indonesia launched a security crackdown in response, vowing to wipe out the rebels with hundreds of extra troops.
The violence forced thousands of villagers to flee, triggering a humanitarian crisis in which more than 160 people died of sickness and starvation. But in the rugged Papuan highlands, the security forces failed to track down Kogoya and his men.
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOL
Rebels who once brandished bows and arrows are now increasingly carrying guns, including automatic rifles seized in raids on the security forces or bought on the black market, and conducting more frequent and more lethal attacks, the IPAC said in a July report. Fifty-two members of the security forces and 34 fighters were killed between 2018 and 2021, it said.
The rebels are also taking advantage of modern communications.
Cahyo Pamungkas, a researcher from the National Research and Innovation Agency, said the separatists are using social media to get their message out.
“Social media is a tool of resistance to deliver the stories from Papua because national media is mainly dominated by perspectives from Jakarta,” he said.
“They are really media savvy,” said IPAC’s Anwar, “They want to show they are not a rag tag rebel group but have some structure, at least at the local level.”
TPNPB spokesperson Sebby Sambom said the New Zealand pilot was being well looked after and treated as “family”.
“This was his idea but we are responsible for controlling the situation,” Sambom said by telephone, referring to Kogoya’s seizure of the pilot.
Sambom vowed more violence unless the separatists’ demands were met, saying the TPNPB planned a “total revolution” by 2025 with widespread destruction and bloodshed.
The government did not respond to requests for comment on the rebel threat of escalation.
Some rights activists criticise the government’s response to the insurgency.
A project to get satellite coverage over the area that would help the security forces pinpoint Kogoya’s location has become embroiled in graft, a lawmaker with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.
There are also questions about overall responsibility for policy with the government flagging a “softer approach” while the military has tended to deploy more troops in response to attacks.
“It’s not quite under the control of the civilian government there,” said Marzuki Darusman, a former attorney general turned human rights campaigner.
“It’s become military turf and that doesn’t help.”
(This story has been corrected to fix the name to Sebby Sambom, not Sebby Sambon, in paragraphs 24-26)
Additional reporting by Ananda Teresia; Editing by Robert Birsel
Ukraine official: religious dispute led to base shootings
Fighting rages in eastern Ukraine, southern Kherson region
Ukrainian forces damage administration building in Donetsk
KYIV, Oct 16 (Reuters) – Russia has opened a criminal investigation after gunmen shot dead 11 people at a military training ground near the Ukrainian border, authorities said on Sunday, as fighting raged in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Russia’s RIA news agency, citing the defence ministry, said two gunmen opened fire with small arms during a firearms training exercise on Saturday, targeting personnel who had volunteered to fight in Ukraine. RIA said the gunmen, who it referred to as “terrorists,” were shot dead.
The incident in the southwestern Belgorod region was the latest blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. It came a week after a blast damaged a bridge linking mainland Russia to Crimea, the peninsula it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
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Russia’s defence ministry said the attackers were from a former Soviet republic, without elaborating. A senior Ukrainian official, Oleksiy Arestovych, said the two men were from the mainly Muslim Central Asian republic of Tajikistan and had opened fire on the others after an argument over religion.
Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the comments by Arestovych, a prominent commentator on the war, or independently verify casualty numbers and other details.
“As a result of the incident at a shooting range in Belgorod region, 11 people died from gunshot wounds and another 15 were injured,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said, announcing the criminal investigation. It gave no other details.
Some Russian independent media outlets reported that the number of casualties was higher than the official figures.
The governor of Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said no local residents were among those killed or wounded.
Two witnesses later told Reuters they had seen Russian air defence systems repelling air strikes in Belgorod.
Putin said on Friday Russia should be finished calling up reservists in two weeks, promising an end to a divisive mobilisation in which hundreds of thousands of men have been summoned to fight in Ukraine and many have fled the country.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a strong Putin ally, said last week that his troops would deploy with Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, citing what he said were threats from Ukraine and the West.
The Belarusian defence ministry in Minsk on Sunday said just under 9,000 Russian troops would be stationed in Belarus as part of a “regional grouping” of forces to protect its borders.
RUSSIAN SHELLING
Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions on several fronts on Sunday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said, with the targets including towns in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions. Russian forces were trying to advance on Bakhmut in Donetsk region and in and around Avdiivka.
Intense fighting is taking place around Bakhmut as well as the town of Soledar, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday in his nightly video address.
FILE PHOTO – An instructor trains Russian newly-mobilised reservists at a shooting range in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Donetsk region, Russian-controlled Ukraine, October 10, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
“The key hot spots in Donbas are Soledar and Bakhmut,” Zelenskiy said. “Very heavy fighting is going on there.”
Bakhmut has been the next target of Russia’s armed forces in their slow move through the Donetsk region since taking the key industrial towns of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk in June and July. Soledar is located just north of Bakhmut.
Fighting has been particularly intense this weekend in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and the strategically important Kherson province in the south, three of the four provinces Putin proclaimed as part of Russia last month.
Shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged the administration building in the city Donetsk, capital of the Donetsk region, the head of its Russian-backed administration said on Sunday.
“It was a direct hit, the building is seriously damaged. It is a miracle nobody was killed,” said Alexei Kulemzin, surveying the wreckage, adding that all city services were still working.
There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine to the attack on Donetsk city, which was annexed by Russian-backed separatists in 2014 along with swathes of the eastern Donbas region.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday its forces had repelled efforts by Ukrainian troops to advance in the Donetsk, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, inflicting what it described as significant losses.
Russia also said it was continuing air strikes on military and energy targets in Ukraine, using long-range precision-guided weapons.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the battlefield reports.
In the city of Mykolaiv, residents queued on Sunday – as they do every day – to fill water bottles at a distribution point after supplies were severed by fighting early in the war.
“This is not war, this is a war crime. War is when soldiers fight with each other, but when civilians are being fought, it’s a war crime,” said Vadym Antonyuk, a 51-year-old sales manager, as he stood in line.
A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Military Command said Russian forces were suffering severe shortages of equipment including ammunition as a result of the damage inflicted last weekend on the Crimea Bridge.
“Almost 75% (of Russian military supplies in southern Ukraine) came across that bridge,” Natalia Humeniuk told Ukrainian television, adding that strong winds had also now stopped ferries in the area.
“Now even the sea is on our side,” Humeniuk said.
Putin blamed Ukrainian security services for the bridge blast and last Monday, in retaliation, ordered the biggest aerial offensive against Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, since the start of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by David Ljunggren, Matt Spetalnick, Gareth Jones and James Oliphant; editing by Michael Perry, Tomasz Janowski, Will Dunham and Nick Macfie
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