July 2011

Egyptians voice frustrations in Tahrir Square

Protesters gather in Cairo's Tahrir Square, venting anger at the government for its lack of speedy political reform.

Egyptians have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square as anger and frustration mounts due to the lack of significant changes in the country since the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak.
The rally, which followed Friday prayers in the capital, comes after the government fired more than 600 senior police officers, pushed parliamentary elections to the end of the year and imposed limits on the committee set to create a new constitution.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Tahrir Square on Friday, said the crowds were growing in number.
"As the sun went down and the tempratures became manageable, more and more people filled up the square. what they lacked in terms of numbers at the beginning of the day, they have certainly made up for with energy at the end of the day," she said

Protesters are calling for a week-long sit-in that will begin on Friday. Among their key demands are an end to the military trials of civilians and the open and speedy trials of former regime officials.
Although the government has taken some measures to instill change, many Egyptians feel they have not gone far enough, she said.

"The main demand that people have here ... is that they want to see all those who have been accused of killing protesters during the revolution - whether they are former regime officials, lower ranking police officers, or even higher ranking police officers - they want to see them all on trial immediately."
"They don't know why it's taking so many months to get to this point. They feel still that the only way to make their voices heard is to come to Tahrir Square."

Demanding change
Tahrir Square in central Cairo was the epicentre of Egypt's 18-day anti-government uprising, which culminated in Mubarak's eventual resignation in February.
Hundreds of people camped out in the square on Thursday to press Egypt's military rulers to punish corruption and brutality under Mubarak's regime.
"As the days go past and that demand is not met, people are calling louder and louder for the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and his entire cabinet," our correspondent said.
Tadros said Sharaf had promised a cabinet reshuffle within the next few days, where all former members of the ruling regime would be moved out of their positions.
"But that seems to be too little too late for these people," she added. Protesters are expecting big crowds to attend, but not all factions within Egyptian society will be present at the demonstration.
"There are some groups that are not taking part in the protests today, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafi groups," Tadros said.

'Battle of the camel' assault
On Thursday, a fact-finding judicial committee ruled that Safwat al-Sharif - a former speaker of Egypt's upper house of parliament - masterminded the "battle of the camel" assault on February 2 that left left several protesters dead.
On the day, government loyalists rode horses and camels through the protest camp in Tahrir Square, in what was one of the bloodiest events in the uprising.
The investigation concluded that Sharif and other parliamentarians had hired thugs to attack crowds and that he urged them to "kill the protesters if they had to", the state-run MENA news agency reported.
Egyptian prosecutors have also been investigating corruption allegations made against former officials and
businessmen connected with his 30 years in power.
Also on Thursday, authorities detained former prime minister Atef Obeid for 15 days to investigate
allegations he illegally sold land well below market value, judicial sources said.
Mubarak, who is at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, is due to go on trial on August 3 over the deaths of more than 840 protesters.

Deadly blasts target Iraqi cities

Explosion during Shia pilgrimage in Karbala kills three, while another blast wounds six in Baghdad.

Saturday's attack is Karbala's third in the last two days, amid annual Shia pilgrimage to the holy city

Several bombs have gone off in Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, killing at least five people and wounding several.
A parked car bomb targeting a night club killed two people and wounded nine others in central Baghdad on Saturday, police and hospital sources quoted by the Reuters news agency said.

A sticky bomb attached to a policeman's car went off near a checkpoint killing at least three people and wounding 15 others, mainly policemen, in eastern Kerbala, 80km south west of Baghdad, police and provincial council officials said.

Sources at the Karbala general hospital who spoke to Al Jazeera confirmed one death.

An annual pilgrimage has been going on Kerbala.

In other bombing news, armed men in a speeding car using weapons equipped with silencers shot at a police checkpoint and wounded three people, including two policemen, in Baghdad's southeastern Zaafaraniya district, an interior ministry source said.

Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Baghdad, said the attack in the capital was aimed at the general public without specific targets.
Saturday's blast in Karbala was the third attack in the past two days on the holy city, as Shia pilgrims headed to visit the Imam al-Hussein shrine there to commemorate the birth of Imam Mohammed al-Mahdi.
The anniversary has become one of the annual pilgrimages that show strength for Iraq's majority Shia since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Saddam Hussein banned Shia religious rites during his rule. Since his toppling, Sunni Islamists have frequently targeted Shias.
Unlike in previous years, the Shia pilgrimages in recent months have largely gone by without incident. But this year's pilgrimage in Karbala has been the target of repeated attacks.
On Friday, a car bomb exploded in a garage near a hospital west of Karbala, killing four people and wounding 20, police said.
Separately, a bomb placed under a parked car killed two people and wounded four others in northern Karbala on Friday, according to an army commander. A hospital source said the blast killed three people and wounded 23 others.
Last year, car bombs killed and wounded scores of people during the Imam Mahdi observance.

Bahraini woman dies during protest

Bahraini woman dies 'during protest'

Rights group says her death occurred due to tear gas fired by police on Friday, as national dialogue falters.

Anti-government protesters shout slogans during a gathering held by the opposition Wefaq party on Friday [Reuters]

A Bahraini rights activist has said a woman died during clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in the Gulf kingdom.
Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said on Saturday that 47-year-old Zainab Hasan Ahmed al-Jumaa suffocated after inhaling tear gas fired by riot police during a demonstration on Friday near her home in Sitra, the hub of Bahrain's oil industry.
Her death brings to 33 the number of those who have died since February when Bahrain's Shia majority started protests for greater freedoms in the Sunni-ruled island kingdom.
Bahrain's interior ministry denied al-Jumaa's death was linked to a police operation and said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late on Friday that the woman died of natural causes.
Friday protests
On Friday, tens of thousands of people took part in a gathering of Bahrain's main Shia opposition bloc, which is considering withdrawing from the ongoing national dialogue.
The Wefaq party rally in the Bilad al-Qadim area of Manama was attended by "around 50,000 people", Khalil al-Marzouk, a resigned member of parliament and head of its delegation at the national dialogue, told the AFP news agency.
In a speech, Wefaq chief Sheikh Ali Salman reiterated the demand for "radical reform centring on a government elected by the people and a parliament with full legislative powers".
He said the movement was not calling for the fall of Bahrain, which is ruled by the Sunni Muslim Al-Khalifa dynasty.
Since the 2 July debut of the national dialogue, which is aimed at forwarding political reforms after Shia-led protests were crushed in a bloody crackdown in March, Wefaq has called for a government led by the parliamentary majority.
The group won 18 of 40 seats in the most recent parliamentary elections, but its MPs resigned to protest against violence against demonstrators.
The Wefaq delegation at the national dialogue has said it may withdraw from the talks, and is to announce its decision on Sunday.
The bloc decided only at the last minute to participate in the dialogue, encouraged by the international community, including the US, whose Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain.

Yemen protesters form council to run country

Coalition of anti-government protesters says presidential council to manage affairs when Saleh's government is toppled.

Protesters have been holding rallies since January calling for Saleh, Yemen's long-time president, to quit office [AFP]

A coalition of protest groups in Yemen has announced the formation of a transitional presidential council it says will prepare to run the country when President Ali Abdullah Saleh is fully and finally toppled.

The council "is charged with leading the country during a transition period not to exceed nine months and with forming a government of technocrats," Tawakul Karman, one of the leaders of the protest movement against Saleh, said on Saturday.
Saleh, who has been in power since 1978, was wounded in a bomb attack on his palace in Sanaa on June 3, and was admitted to hospital in Saudi Arabia the following day.

Protesters have since January been calling for him to quit office.
The council will also announce a 501-member "national assembly" that will draft a new constitution, and seeks to "protect the unity of the country before it completely collapses", Karman said.

For more on Yemen, visit our Spotlight page

The council consists of 17 Yemeni figures of different political affiliation from both inside Yemen and abroad.

They include Ali Nasser Mohammed, the ex-president of formerly independent South Yemen; a former prime minister, Haidar Abu Bakr al-Attas; and Abdullah al-Hakimi, an exiled long-time opponent of Saleh.

The new body highlights the gap between Yemen's protesters and Yemen's official opposition parties, who protesters say were late in joining the anti-government rallies inspired by those in Tunisia and Egypt.

Many protesters have criticised the parties for seeking to negotiate Saleh's exit instead of trying to bring down his entire government.
Abdu al-Janadi, a spokesman for Saleh's government who is also Yemen's deputy information minister, said the move "pours gas on the fire".

He said that Saleh is "the legal, democratically elected president, and an alternative will only come though elections, not through an illegal coup".

Opposition party officials declined to comment.
Al-Janadi also said that Saleh, who is currently receiving treatment for blast wounds, will return home "soon" from Saudi Arabia.
"The president is in good health. He will return to Yemen soon, but is awaiting the decision of his doctors," he said without specifying a date.

Deadly violence continues in Syria,Syria Revolution

Deadly violence continues in Syria

Armed men under the watch of Syrian security forces fire on protesters in central city of Homs, witnesses say.

Armed men under the watch of Syrian security forces looted shops and fired on crowds in the central city of Homs, killing at least one person and wounding many others, a witnesses have said.
The fresh violence on Saturday night follows what is reported to have been one of the deadliest crackdowns on protesters since the anti-government uprisings began in Syria four months ago.
"Armed thugs are randomly shooting at locals in various districts of Homs. One is reported killed and more than 20 others are injured," Majed, a resident from Homs, told Al Jazeera.

"The thugs are looting local shops under the watch of Syrian security forces. Random shooting is still going on at the moment."

Police also killed four people in the south near the Jordanian border, the Reuters news agency said, quoting witnesses and activists.

Three protesters were shot dead in the northern city of Idlib, they said.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Syrians took to the streets, shouting "We want freedom" while carrying caskets of of some of the protesters killed during protest rallies on Friday.

Activists said at least 32 people were killed when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protested against the government of Bashar al-Assad, the president, following Friday prayers.

About 23 people were killed in Damascus, which until now had seen only scattered protests, and its suburbs - the highest death toll for the city so far, Mohammad Abdullah, a spokesman for the Local Co-ordination Committee (LCC), said on Saturday.
The LCC tracks anti-government demonstrations in the country.

Civil disobedience

Exiled Syrian dissidents met in Turkey on Saturday to urge their countrymen to launch a campaign of civil disobedience to try to force Assad from power.
At least 400 members of the opposition, comprising conservative Islamists and liberals, attended the so-called National Salvation Congress in Istanbul on Saturday to try to unite behind the goal of ending 41 years of Assad family rule.
"We want to raise the intensity of the peaceful confrontation by civil disobedience and to choke the regime
economically and paralyse the state with the least damage," Wael al Hafez, an opposition figure, told the Istanbul gathering.

Reports from the conference suggest the different factions have struggled to agree on whether to form a shadow government.

"We will build our council here in Istanbul with some branches to help the people's movement in the streets by money for example. And by meeting responsible people in Turkey to put pressure on the regime to stop attacking the people demonstrating on the streets," Haytham Al Maleh, a senior opposition leader, told Al Jazeera from Istanbul.
Activists in Damascus also took part in Saturday's meeting by telephone. Organisers had planned to hold a conference in Damascus in tandem with the Turkey meeting, but it was cancelled after Friday's bloodshed.
Addressing the conference by phone from the capital, Mashaal Tammo, an opposition figure, said Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule and called on him to step down.
In an emotional speech, he said the "the existence of the regime was no longer justified" and called for a peaceful transition to a civil, pluralistic and democratic state.

'Brutality has to stop'
The government crackdown has led to international condemnation and sanctions.
"What's happening in Syria is very uncertain and troubling because many of us had hoped that President Assad would make the reforms that were necessary," Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said in Turkey on Saturday.
"The brutality has to stop, there must be a legitimate sincere effort with the opposition to try to make changes.''
Activists say the government's crackdown on dissent has killed about 1,600 people since March, most of them unarmed protesters.
But the regime disputes the toll and blames a foreign conspiracy for the unrest, saying religious extremists-not true reform-seekers-are behind it.

Gaddafi to face new attacks from rebels

Opposition fighters in eastern Libya poised to launch major offensive in their campaign to topple Libyan leader.

Opposition fighters in rebel-held eastern Libya say they are preparing to launch another major offensive against Muammar Gadaffi's regime.

They plan to push along the coastal front within days, perhaps even hours, with the aim of recapturing Brega, a strategic oil town that has already changed hands many times.
Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reports from Ajdabiya.

Lebya News,Key Libyan village back in rebel hands

Key Libyan village back in rebel hands

Opposition forces dig in to defend recaptured Qwalish, south of the Libyan capital, and plan new offensive in the east.

Libyan rebel fighters are digging in to defend a village south of Tripoli following a see-saw battle for control with government forces that seen control of the village change hands several times.

Rebel fighters took Qwalish, a staging post on the way to the capital about 100km north, a week ago, then lost it to government troops on Wednesday morning. But by nightfall they were back in control.
Scores of fighters manned defensive positions throughout Qwalish on Thursday, supported by trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on the back.