CANBERRA, Australia: Australia’s prime minister said on Thursday he won’t put officials in danger by retrieving extremists from the Middle East after an Australian Daesh group widow asked to bring her children home from a Syrian refugee camp.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s response came after the Australian Broadcasting Corp. interviewed the woman in one of the refugee camps in northern Syria where she has lived with her toddler son and malnourished 6-month-old daughter since they fled the Syrian village of Baghouz where the Daesh group has been making its last stand.
ABC said the 24-year-old woman refused to confirm her identity and wore a veil during the interview, but it identified her Thursday as Zehra Duman.
The woman said her daughter needs hospital treatment and she wanted to bring her back to Australia.
“Nobody really cares about us here, and I understand the anger that they have toward a lot of us here,” the woman told ABC, referring to the Kurdish authorities’ treatment of tens of thousands of her fellow Daesh supporters in the camps.
“But the kids don’t need to suffer,” she added.
Morrison said Australians who take their families to war zones to fight with the Daesh movement had to take responsibility for their actions.
“The great tragedy of those who went and joined up with terrorists — to support terrorist causes through Daesh and have taken their families into warzones where they’re basically fighting against Australia — is they have placed their children in this horrendous position.” Morrison told reporters.
“I’m not going to put any Australian at risk to try to extract people from those situations,” he added.
Deakin University security expert Greg Barton said the government could no longer use the excuse of risk for failing to repatriate Australian extremists as Australia rightly did when the extremists were in territory controlled by Daesh fighters.
“Care would need to be taken bringing her back, but it’s entirely do-able,” Barton said. “We more than most countries can deal with this.”
Western countries were reluctant to bring their nationals home from the Middle East since the Daesh caliphate collapsed because most countries struggled to gather evidence to prove them guilty of an offense, Barton said.
But Australia got around that burden of evidence in 2014 when a new law made simply being inside IDaesh-held territory in Syria and Iraq a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. The onus is on Australians who visit designated Islamic State-held areas to prove they had reasonable excuses.
No one has yet been prosecuted under the law.
Barton said Morrison wouldn’t bring the family home before elections due in May because the prime minister thought that would be politically unpopular.
Morrison said any Australian citizen who returned from supporting Daesh fighters would “face the full force of Australian law.”
Opposition leader Bill Shorten, whom opinion polls suggest will likely be prime minister after the May elections, said his party would work constructively with the government on repatriating Australian children from Syria without “political point-scoring.”
“We’ll work it through. Do you separate kids from their parents? Who’s going to look after them?” Shorten said to reporters.
Duman said on social media she gave up her middle-class life in the Australian city of Melbourne where she was part of a Turkish-Australian family for the battlefields of Syria in late 2014.
She had followed Daesh soldier Mahmoud Abdullatif who had left Melbourne months earlier for the Raqqa, the Daesh movement’s center in Syria.
The couple announced their wedding online in December 2014, with a photograph of her dowry that included an assault rifle.
Duman, who began calling herself Zehra Abdullatif or Umm Abdullatif, said her 23-year-old husband died five weeks after their wedding.
The former private school student became an avid online recruiter for the movement and urged other women to join her.
When asked on Twitter in early 2015 what she missed about Australia, her reply was simple and numeric: “0“
Australia won’t risk lives returning Daesh refugees from Syria
Australia won’t risk lives returning Daesh refugees from Syria
- An Australian Daesh group widow earlier asked to bring her children home from a Syrian refugee camp
- PM Scott Morrison said Australians who take their families to war zones to fight with the Daesh group had to take responsibility for their actions
Uruguay votes for next president in closely fought runoff race
- Final opinion polls suggest the Nov. 24 runoff promises to be razor tight
- Fewer than 25,000 votes potentially separating the frontrunners
MONTEVIDEO: Voters in South America’s laid-back Uruguay, known for its beaches, legalized marijuana and stability, will head to the polls on Sunday in a second-round presidential race between moderates that closes out a bumper year of elections.
The vote in the small nation of 3.4 million people sees opposition center-left candidate Yamandu Orsi take on continuity conservative runner, Alvaro Delgado, who has the backing of a third-placed ally.
Final opinion polls suggest the Nov. 24 runoff promises to be razor tight, with fewer than 25,000 votes potentially separating the frontrunners.
Unlike sharp right-left divides in recent elections in Argentina, Brazil or Mexico, Uruguay’s political arena is relatively tension-free, with significant overlap between the conservative and liberal coalitions vying for office, taking some of the sting out of Sunday’s final result.
Ballot stations open at 8 a.m. (1100 GMT) and close at 7:30 p.m. local time, with first results expected two hours later.
Orsi, who has pledged a “modern left” policy approach, won 43.9 percent of the October vote for the Broad Front and will face Delgado, who secured 26.8 percent but also has the backing of the conservative Colorado Party that together with his National Party made up almost 42 percent of votes. The two parties did the same in 2019, winning the election.
Orsi has sought to reassure Uruguayans that he does not plan a sharp policy shift in the traditionally moderate and relatively wealthy nation.
Delgado meanwhile has asked voters to “re-elect a good government,” seeking to capitalize on the popularity of President Lacalle Pou, who constitutionally cannot run for immediate re-election.
Neither coalition has an absolute majority in the lower house following October’s elections. But Orsi’s Broad Front won 16 of 30 Senate seats. He argues his senate majority places him in a better position to lead the next government.
Both contenders on Sunday are hoping to attract the roughly 8 percent of first-round voters who went for smaller, unaligned parties, as well as those who failed to turn out in October.
But neither has made new pledges in the final weeks to appeal to them, and pollsters say a televised debate on Nov. 17 appears to have had little effect.
“I don’t know who I’m voting for,” said Rosario Gusque, 42, from the region of Canelones where Orsi was previously mayor. “Even less so after seeing the debate.”
One question as the biggest year for elections in history comes to an end is whether Uruguay will buck a global trend of incumbent parties losing vote share compared with the previous election. Voters hurt by inflation and high living costs have punished parties in power, including in Britain, Japan and the United States.
A robust Uruguayan economy though could help Delgado on Sunday: “There are few indications that voters are clamoring for significant political change,” said Uruguayan analyst Nicolas Saldias of the Economist Intelligence Unit.
82 killed in three days of Pakistan sectarian violence: official
Peshawar: Three days of bitter sectarian gunfights in northwestern Pakistan have killed at least 82 people and wounded 156 more, a local official said Sunday.
“Among the deceased, 16 were Sunni, while 66 belonged to the Shia community,” said a local administration official in Kurram district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country but Kurram district — near the border with Afghanistan — has a large Shiite population and the communities have clashed for decades.
The latest bout of violence began on Thursday when two separate convoys of Shiite Muslims traveling under police escort were ambushed, killing at least 43 and sparking two days of gunbattles.
“Our priority today is to broker a ceasefire between both sides. Once that is achieved, we can begin addressing the underlying issues,” provincial Law Minister Aftab Alam Afridi said Sunday.
Pakistan partially stops mobile and Internet services ahead of pro-Imran Khan protest
- Sunday’s protest is to demand Khan’s release
- The government is imposing social media platform bans and targeting VPN services, according to monitoring service Netblocks
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Sunday suspended mobile and Internet services “in areas with security concerns” as supporters of imprisoned former premier Imran Khan geared up for a protest in the capital.
The government and Interior Ministry posted the announcement on social media platform X, which is banned in Pakistan. They did not specify the areas, nor did they say how long the suspension would be in place.
“Internet and mobile services will continue to operate as usual in the rest of the country,” the posts said. A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Khan has been in prison for more than a year and has over 150 criminal cases against him. But he remains popular and his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or PTI, says the cases are politically motivated.
His supporters rely heavily on social media to demand his release and use messaging platforms like WhatsApp to share information, including details of events.
Pakistan has already sealed off the capital Islamabad with shipping containers and shut down major roads and highways connecting the city with PTI strongholds in the provinces of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The government is imposing social media platform bans and targeting VPN services, according to monitoring service Netblocks. On Sunday, Internet-access advocacy group, Netblocks said live metrics showed WhatsApp backends are restricted in Pakistan, affecting media sharing on the app.
Last month, authorities suspended the cellphone service in Islamabad and Rawalpindi to thwart a pro-Khan rally. The shutdown disrupted communications and affected everyday services such as banking, ride-hailing and food delivery.
Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
- Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed in the blaze
- The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department
MANILA: Raging orange flames and thick black smoke billowed into the sky Sunday as fire ripped through hundreds of houses in a closely built slum area of the Philippine capital Manila.
Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were burned in the blaze that is thought to have started on the second floor of one of the homes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Drone footage shared online by the city’s disaster agency showed houses in Isla Puting Bato village of Manila razed to the ground.
The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department.
Village resident Leonila Abiertas, 65, lost almost all her possessions, but managed to save her late husband’s ashes.
“I only got the urn with the ashes of my husband,” a crying Abiertas said.
“I really don’t know how I can start my life again after this fire.”
Fire and disaster services deployed 36 trucks and four fire boats while the country’s airforce sent in two helicopters to help extinguish the fire.
“That area is fire-prone since most of the houses there are made of light materials,” firefighter Geanelli Nunez said.
Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will discuss the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday during his visit to Ankara, a Turkish official said on Sunday.
Russia struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile on Thursday in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia, marking an escalation in the war that began when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
NATO member Turkiye, which has condemned the Russian invasion, says it supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and it has provided Kyiv with military support.
But Turkiye, a Black Sea neighbor of both Russia and Ukraine, also opposes Western sanctions against Moscow, with which it shares important defense, energy and tourism ties.
On Wednesday, Erdogan opposed a US decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, saying it would further inflame the conflict, according to a readout shared by his office.
Moscow says that by giving the green light for Ukraine to fire Western missiles deep inside Russia, the US and its allies are entering into direct conflict with Russia. On Tuesday, Putin approved policy changes that lowered the threshold for Russia to use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons.
During their talks on Monday, Erdogan and Rutte will also discuss the removal of defense procurement obstacles between NATO allies and the military alliance’s joint fight against terrorism, the Turkish official said.
