New blog post : 3 Killed in Afghan Blast http://bit.ly/Hxwp4l
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Rebels Make Advances on Timbuktu in Mali
Witnesses in Mali say rebels are making advances at the historic town of Timbuktu. Gunfire have been heard within the area Sunday.
Timbuktu is the last of 3 key northern cities targeted by Tuareg rebels.
The rebels secured town of Gao late Saturday after the Malian army ceased an afternoon-long gun battle with rebels, expressing concern for civilian safety.
Mali's military leader, Captain Amadou Sanogo, released a press release on state TV saying that given the placement of the populations near the battle zone, the forces decided to not fight.
The army pulled troops out of the world, making Gao the second one town Tuareg rebels have taken within the previous couple of days, once they seized the provincial capital, Kidal.
A VOA reporter in Mali said earlier Saturday eyewitnesses first spotted Tuareg rebels in vehicles entering Gao, carrying their Azawad flags. At the moment, heavy gunfire could possibly be heard, and witnesses said army troops launched a response using helicopters. The rebels also fought near the town's military camps.
Tuareg rebels began their insurgency in mid-January, armed with weapons brought into the rustic following the autumn of neighboring Libya. Tuareg separatists has been seeking autonomy for many years. Â
Their most up-to-date advances came during confusion following an army coup in Mali's capital, Bamako. Mid-ranking soldiers overthrew the democratically elected government of President Amadou Toumani Toure on March 22 after accusing leaders of not providing adequate resources to fight the Tuareg rebellion inside the north.
Malian coup leader Sanogo told VOA Friday that Mali needs international support to offer protection to its territorial integrity against the rebels, especially because Mali is a part of the regional cooperative group referred to as the commercial Community of West African States, ECOWAS. Â
Coup leaders are facing growing international pressure to surrender power. ECOWAS has given Sanogo until Monday to revive the country's constitutional order or face harsh economic sanctions.
Three representatives of the army junta met in Ouagadougou Saturday with Burkina Faso's president, Blaise Compaore, to invite for help repelling Tuareg fighters in northern Mali. Their appeal apparently went unanswered. The envoys from Bamako told journalists that the Burkinabe leader's position mirrored that of ECOWAS.
Junta chief of staff Colonel Moussa Coulibaly told reporters Saturday after talks in Ouagadougou that leaders of the junta do agree at the ought to swiftly restore constitutional order. However, details on how they plan on establishing such order remain unclear.
Sanogo said he's now head of state in Mali, with the entire support of Mali's people. The coup that he led came just weeks before elections and the scheduled end of President Toure's term.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
From WhatNewsToday.net
Syria Opposition Backers Meet in Istanbul
More than 70 foreign ministers from Western and Arab nations backing the Syrian uprising are meeting in Istanbul for talks geared toward pressuring Damascus to implement a right away cease-fire and urging the opposition to unify its scattered ranks.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called at the international community to support the Syrian people's "right to self-defense" if the United Nations fails to behave to forestall President Bashar al-Assad's bloody crackdown on an anti-government uprising.
Kofi Annan's Six-Point Peace Plan
- A Syrian-led political process to deal with the aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people.
- A U.N. supervised end to armed violence by all parties in Syria.
- Timely humanitarian assistance in all areas laid low with fighting.
- Increasing the pace and scale of release of arbitrarily detained people.
- Ensuring freedom of movement for journalists.
- Respecting freedom of association and the best to illustrate peacefully.
Significantly, China and Russia should not represented at Sunday's gathering. The 2 countries have twice protected the Assad government from censure by the U.N. Security Council, fearing this type of step could lead on to foreign military intervention. Iran, a detailed Syrian ally, was not invited.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials attending the "Friends of Syria" conference are expected to insist that Assad abide by the peace plan proposed by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
President Assad, whose foreign ministry has declared the revolt crushed, has said he accepts Annan's six-point proposal. But his comments were treated with skepticism by Western and Arab governments as fighting at the ground continues.
Syria's political opposition, which remains divided, has not yet formally endorsed the Annan plan, and rebel fighters say they won't put down their arms until government troops and heavy weapons are withdrawn from populated areas.
On Saturday, Clinton attended a "strategic forum" between the us and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Saudi Arabia to debate bringing an end to Syria's crackdown and countering the growing threat of Iran.
The U.S. remains against arming Syria's rebels, like some Gulf states have proposed, and is instead working to unify the country's splintered opposition and find methods to get humanitarian aid into the rustic.
Ahead of Sunday's meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Annan plan is the "minimum" of what Syria must do "urgently and right now."
The United Nations says greater than 9,000 people was killed since unrest in Syria began greater than a year ago. Â
In a letter to the U.N. Friday, Syria said acts by "armed terrorist groups" had brought about the deaths of greater than 6,100 people in Syria because the start of the uprising.
Â
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
| Join the conversation on our social journalism site - Middle East Voices. Follow our Middle East reports on Twitter and discuss them on our Facebook page. |
From WhatNewsToday.net
Saturday, March 31, 2012
New blog post : BMW adds extra sportiness to its i-series lineup, unveils i8 Concept Spyder http://bit.ly/H3YMMZ
