US ready to evacuate Egypt embassy: Analyst

Source : islamicinvitationturkey.com

As tensions rise in Egypt over clashes between the supporters and opponents of President Mohammed Morsi, the U.S. is prepared to evacuate its embassy in the capital Cairo, if the situation spirals out of control, Press TV reports.

Violence escalated in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on Friday and three people, including a young American journalist, were killed.

“The death of an American is an indication that the situation in Egypt is increasingly getting out of control,” said Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon official, in an interview on Saturday.

“ [The fact that] U.S. Marines are on standby and ships are in the Red Sea would indicate that they are preparing more to evacuate the embassy in the event of total unrest and the inability of the Egyptian government to protect the embassy and the American personnel there,” he added.

Meanwhile, the United States is deploying about 400 troops to Egypt. The troops have been training for months at Fort Hood, Texas.

“I doubt that the U.S. has any further designs other than to use the Marines to protect the evacuation of U.S. personnel,” Maloof noted.

The U.S. State Department has warned Americans to put off unnecessary trips to Egypt and has allowed some diplomatic staff to leave the North African country.

President Barack Obama said in South Africa on Saturday that U.S.’s “immediate concern” was with protecting its embassy and consulates, and their staff.

An “unprecedented exodus” has been reported from Egypt. Officials say that all flights leaving for Europe, the U.S. and the Gulf are fully booked.

Egypt’s opposition groups have rejected Morsi’s recent invitation for national reconciliation and called for demonstrations on Sunday, the first anniversary of Morsi’s inauguration.

Six people, including a former MP from Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, have been killed in the renewed violence in Egypt this week.

Turkish police break up demonstration in Ankara

Source : Strategic-Culture.org

Police in Turkey have used water cannon and smoke grenades to disperse hundreds of anti-government demonstrators in the capital, Ankara.

On Tuesday night, several people were injured in the clashes between the protesters and the police in Turkish capital.

Also in Istanbul, thousands of people, who were chanting slogans against the government, marched toward now-iconic Taksim Square to denounce a court decision that freed a police officer accused of killing an anti-government demonstrator in Ankara.

The police surrounded the square and blocked the protesters’ from reaching it.

At least 20 people were detained during the rally.

Meeting in Luxembourg earlier in the day, European Union foreign ministers supported a German proposal to delay the new round of Turkey’s membership negotiations, which had been scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, among other EU member states, blocked the talks in criticism of the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for its handling of the anti- government protests.

The unrest in Turkey began on May 31 after police broke up a sit-in held at Taksim Square to protest against a proposal to redevelop Gezi Park, which is a traditional gathering point for rallies and demonstrations as well as a popular tourist destination.

The demonstrators say the park is also one of Istanbul's last green public spaces.

Four people, including a police officer, have died in the recent clashes between the Turkish protesters and security forces, and more than 5,000 protesters and 600 police officers have been injured

Protests in Egypt Denounce Qatar Interference

Source :  http://www.almanar.com.lb

Demonstrators in Egypt have burned Qatari and Israeli flags in protest against what they described as the Gulf state’s interference in their country’s internal affairs.

Protesters gathered outside the Qatari Embassy in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, and chanted anti-Doha slogans.

Demonstrators believe that Doha and Tel Aviv are meddling in Egypt’s domestic affairs after the 2011 revolution that toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak.

On January 10, Doha said it had offered Egypt a lifeline of $.5-billion to help the North African country tackle its currency crisis.

“There was an initial package of $2.5 billion, of which $0.5 billion was a grant and two billion dollars a deposit,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani said in reference to the financial aid Qatar has provided Egypt with since the revolution.

“We discussed transferring one of the deposits into an additional grant so that the grants became one billion dollars and the deposits doubled to around four billion dollars,” he added.

The Egyptians have also held several massive protests across the country since the revolution, calling on the government to sever all the existing ties with the Zionist entity

1000s of Bahrainis protest against F1

Source  :  Tehran Times

Thousands of anti-government demonstrators in Bahrain have joined a march that included breakaway protests against the scheduled Formula One race later this month, The Associated Press reported.

The anger against the F1 event appears lower than last year but rights groups say security forces have expanded arrests and crackdowns near the track. Opponents of the race have vowed wider protests in the coming week.

The race is Bahrain's premier international event. It was cancelled in 2011. In 2012 it went ahead despite huge demonstrations.

Friday's protest, authorized by the government, included a line of marchers more than 2- kilometers (1.2-miles) long.

Meanwhile, companies who help to bankroll Formula One motor racing are limiting their involvement in the Bahrain Grand Prix from April 19 to April 21, saving some of their marketing dollars for less politically sensitive races, Reuters reported.

The grand prix was cancelled in 2011 following a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests, but sponsors were left squirming last year when the sport's rulers ignored calls by campaigners in Bahrain and abroad for teams not to race, while police and youths staged nightly clashes with teargas and petrol bombs.

The race will again draw attention to the human rights situation in the Persian Gulf island kingdom. Taking a pragmatic approach, many sponsors will make the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November the focus for their Formula One promotional activities in the Middle East this year.

"Abu Dhabi has taken a lot away from Bahrain. Notwithstanding the trouble in Bahrain, the Abu Dhabi race is more interesting for sponsors," said Jim Wright, a sponsorship consultant who worked in the sport for 18 years.

Bahrain was the first Middle East country to host a grand prix in 2004, but Abu Dhabi joined the calendar in 2009 with the Yas Marina circuit, lavish even by Formula One standards.

"The timing at the end of the year is also an advantage for Abu Dhabi," added Wright. "Now, it's starting to be spring (in Europe), and sponsors have an opportunity to take people to races in Barcelona and Monte Carlo next month," he added.

Since mid-February 2011, thousands of anti-government protesters have been staging regular demonstrations in the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.

On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded the country to assist the Bahraini government in its crackdown on the peaceful protesters.

According to local sources, scores of people have been killed and hundreds arrested in the crackdown.

Physicians for Human Rights says doctors and nurses have been detained, tortured, or disappeared because they have "evidence of atrocities committed by the authorities, security forces, and riot police" in the crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Man who set himself on fire in Tunisian capital dies

Source : Egypt Independent

A Tunisian cigarette vendor who set himself alight in a street of the capital Tunis has died from the severe burns he suffered, a medical official said on Wednesday.

Twenty-seven-year-old Adel Khadri, who torched himself on Tuesday, "died today at 5:30 am (0430 GMT) as a result of severe burns," Imed Toiuibi, the director of the Ben Arous Burns Centre, told AFP.

Officials said Khadri, from a very poor family in the northwestern locality of Jendoubam, had arrived in the capital a few months ago to look for work.

Witnesses quoted him as shouting: "This is a young man who sells cigarettes because of unemployment," before setting himself on fire on the steps of the municipal theater on Habib Bourguiba Avenue — epicenter of the uprising that toppled ex-dictator Zine al- Abidine Ben Ali more than two years ago.

The revolution was sparked by the self-immolation in the town of Sidi Bouzid of Mohamed Bouazizi 17 December 2010, in a drastic act of protest against police harassment.

Economic and social difficulties were the key factors that brought down Ben Ali's regime and in two years since he fled to Saudi Arabia, unemployment and poverty still plague the North African country.

Parliament was to meet on Wednesday to vote on a new government to pull the country out of its long-running political crisis, after premier-designate Ali Larayedh assured MPs on Tuesday his new team was up to the job.

Saudis hold demo in support of jailed female protesters

Via :  Tehran Times

Saudis have staged anti- regime demonstrations in the capital, Riyadh, and the eastern city of Qatif to express support for jailed female protesters.

The demonstrators called for the immediate release of a group of women who were arrested in the central city of Buraidah last week.

Activists say Saudi security forces arrested over 300 protesters, including scores of women and children, on March 1, after hundreds of Saudis gathered outside the investigation and prosecution bureau in Buraidah to demand the release of political prisoners.

Saudi authorities, however, claim that 161 people were arrested in connection with Buraidah protest and that they have so far freed some 100 of the detainees.

Protests against the ruling Al Saud dynasty have recently spread from the Eastern Province to other parts of the kingdom, with people of Buraidah threatening to stage a revolution against the regime.

In last week's protest in Buraidah, some protesters burned photographs of Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who is King Abdullah's nephew.

Saudi activists say there are more than 30,000 political prisoners, mostly prisoners of conscience, in jails across the Kingdom.

According to the activists, most of the detained political thinkers are being held by the government without trial or legitimate charges and have been arrested for merely looking suspicious.

Palestinian youth dies from Israeli rubber bullet shooting

Source :   Xinhua

RAMALLAH, March 7 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian youth died Thursday two weeks after an Israeli soldier shot him during a demonstration in the West Bank, medical sources said.

Mohammed Asfour, 22, died at an Israeli hospital, the sources added. He was hit with a rubber bullet that caused fracture to his skull.

The death of a Palestinian prisoner during interrogation sparked protests and clashes with Israeli forces across the West Bank over the past week.

Report: Israeli Army to Use Live Fire against Fireworks Protesters

Source : Fars News Agency

TEHRAN (FNA)- Israeli forces will respond to fireworks shot toward them with live ammunition at protesters, an army official said.

"Palestinian protestors are increasingly shooting fireworks recently," an army official told Israel's Maariv newspaper.

"We see these as dangerous weapons rather than toys," he said.

Maariv described the fireworks, adapted to be let off through metal pipes, as a new symbol in the latest wave of protests.

It said an incident at Qalandia checkpoint, in which a Palestinian protester was shot dead by Israeli forces, was the catalyst for the Israeli army's decision to respond to fireworks in the same way soldiers respond to Molotov cocktails, by shooting at protesters' lower bodies.

Soldiers thought the protester was firing a gun, but he was actually shooting fireworks, it said.

The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem plans to file a complaint against the Israeli army's increased use of live ammunition against protesters.

"We noticed an increase in critical conditions in the last few days, of which four cases were transferred to Hadassah hospital because of the use of live ammunition, which can be deadly or paralyzing," a representative of B'Tselem told Ma'an.

OCHA: 440 Palestinians wounded in one week of protests

Source : Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades

RAMALLAH - At least 440 Palestinians were injured in the West Bank in violent clashes with Israeli forces during protests held in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jail, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said in a new weekly report.

The report, which covered some of the Israeli violations against the Palestinians from 19 to 25 February, added that these clashes escalated following the death, on 23 February, of the Palestinian detainee Arafat Jaradat in Megiddo Prison.

His death angered the Palestinians whose protests were responded to by Israeli soldiers with tear gas canisters, rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition, the report said.

Over half of those injured were treated for tear gas inhalation, and one third for injuries sustained from rubber-coated metal bullets, while 16 Palestinians sustained injuries from live ammunition and the remaining from other means, according to the report.

In the gravest incident, a 16-year-old boy from Ayda refugee camp was seriously injured in the head by live ammunition fired by Israeli troops.

The report also pointed to the remarks made lately by the special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, saying that he called on Israel to fully respect the human rights of all Palestinian detainees and prisoners in its jails.

OCHA quoted him as saying that "those held in administrative detention should be charged and face trial with judicial guarantees in accordance with international standards, or promptly released."

"He also stated that the United Nations expects the autopsy to be followed by an independent and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Jaradat's death, the results of which should be made public as soon as possible," it added.

Its report also covered in detail the settler-related incidents, saying that at least 28 Palestinians were injured and different kinds of their property were destroyed in settlers' attacks during the reporting week.

Turkish demonstrators protest against Patriot systems

Source : Strategic Culture Foundation

Turkish people have once again protested against the presence of NATO forces and its Patriot missile batteries in Turkey, expressing solidarity with the people of Syria.

Anti-capitalist Muslim groups and activists took to the streets of Istanbul on Saturday and chanted anti-NATO slogans.

The protesters say they do not want Turkey to be a NATO member state. They are also opposed to a war in neighboring Syria.

The demonstration in Istanbul came a day after anti-US protesters outside the Turkish prime minister’s office in Ankara rallied against the official visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in the country to coordinate plans to support militants fighting the Syrian government.

In November 2012, NATO announced a plan to deploy six Patriot missile batteries to “protect Turkey” from potential Syrian missile strikes. The Patriots are deployed by the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, and they became operational in the southern cities of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, and Adana in February.

The Western alliance says the missiles are to avoid dangers caused by the crisis in Syria. However, countries like Iran, Russia and China have repeatedly voiced their opposition to the deployment. They say the move will only increase regional tensions.

126 injured across Egypt in clashes

Source : Shanghai Daily

At least 126 were injured yesterday in clashes between security forces and anti- government protesters in different parts of Egypt as protesters took to main streets and public squares nationwide.

"A total of 126 people were injured nationwide. Some 67 were injured in Gharbiya governorate, 80 km north of Cairo, with seven others in Alexandria, seven in Kafr el-Sheikh governorate, four in Sharqiya governorate and four outside the presidential palace in Cairo," health ministry spokesman Ahmed Omar told Xinhua.

Omar added that the injuries varied between cuts, burns, suffocations and fractures, noting some presidential security men were reportedly injured by birdshots but it had not yet been confirmed.

At el-Mahalla city in Gharbiya, violent clashes took place between security men and protesters who tried to break down the gate of the city council. The security men dispersed them with tear gas bombs but skirmishes were still going on, which paralyzed traffic and forced stores to shut down in the area.

On the other hand, a number of protesters attempted to attack the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and also the police directorate at Gharbiya governorate, around 80 km north of Cairo, but security forces managed to disperse them.

In Cairo, protesters attempted to remove barbed wires around the presidential palace in Cairo and climb the palace gate, while others hurled stones at the palace.

The presidential guards retreated and gathered inside the palace to avoid clashes with protesters, while protesters, mostly minors, attempted to hurl stones and fireworks inside the palace but fellow protesters prevented them to avoid clashes with security forces, Xinhua cameraman reported from the scene.

The situation escalated as some protesters set fire to one of the palace gates which led to burning a nearby tree inside the palace, according to official news agency MENA.

The demonstrations, dubbed "Friday of Dignity" or "Friday of Departure," condemned the recent police aggression against a protester who was beaten up and stripped before being dragged to a police vehicle.

(Xinhua)

Kuwait police fire tear gas on defiant protesters

Source : Fox News

Riot police in Kuwait have fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse more than 1,000 anti-government protesters, defying strict rules limiting political demonstrations in the Gulf nation.

Kuwaiti authorities have said rallies must receive written permission as part of efforts to quell growing unrest over last month's parliamentary elections.

But organizers of Sunday's protest used social media to mobilize crowds.

Opposition groups have accused Kuwait's ruler of overstepping his powers by changing voting rules that appeared to favor government critics, which span from Islamist factions and pro-reform liberals. They now seek to bring down the new parliament dominated by pro- government lawmakers.

Kuwaiti rights activist Mohammed Al-Humaidi says several protesters were arrested. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

EU calls on Muslim Governments to Protest Embassies

BRUSSELS, September 15 (RIA Novosti) Tags: "Innocence of Muslims", Christopher Stevens, Catherine Ashton Chief EU diplomat Catherine Ashton strongly condemned the attacks on Western diplomatic missions in several Muslim countries and urged the local authorities to ensure their security. "I have been following the development with great concern and urge the national authorities of the affected countries to quickly ensure the safety of diplomatic missions and to protect diplomatic personnel," she said in a statement to RIA Novosti. Riots erupted across the Muslim world this week in response to an American anti-Islam video, "Innocence of Muslims," posted to the Internet on Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three others were killed in Benghazi on Tuesday in one of the first of several such riots, which have since spread to Tunisia and Sudan, among other predominantly Muslim countries. About 5,000 rioters also attacked the Embassies of Germany and the U.K. in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.