Twelve dead in ELN rebel attack on Colombian troops

Colombia's second-largest rebel group, the ELN, killed 12 members of the security forces in the central province of Boyaca on Monday, the government said, as the troops transported votes from the country's regional elections.

The National Liberation Army, or ELN, attacked the soldiers with explosives and shots in mountainous Guican municipality, in an area belonging to the Uwa indigenous group, Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas told reporters.

The 11 soldiers and one police officer who were killed were transporting votes from Sunday's gubernatorial and mayoral elections.

Three soldiers were injured. Two soldiers, a police patrolman, two election officials and one member of the Uwa tribe remain missing, the defense ministry said in a statement.

The 2,000-strong ELN is smaller than the country's more famous rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been in peace talks with the government for 3 years.

The ELN, founded by radical priests inspired by the Cuban revolution, has been engaged in closed-door talks with the government to draw up terms for a formal peace process. The preliminary negotiations were kept under wraps for months and first revealed in June 2014.

"This shows that the ELN has not understood that this is the time for peace and not for war," President Juan Manuel Santos said.

"If the ELN think that these acts will win them political space or strengthen them in an eventual negotiation, they are completely wrong," he said, adding that he had ordered the military to intensify its efforts against the rebels.

The group has battled a dozen governments since it was founded in 1964 and has continued kidnapping and attacks on infrastructure even amid the exploratory talks.

The ELN has sought peace before, holding negotiations in Cuba and Venezuela between 2002 and 2007. Experts say there was a lack of will on both sides to agree a final peace plan.

Colombia's five decades of conflict between leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and government troops has killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions.

Cobb, S. Julia. "Twelve dead in ELN rebel attack on Colombian troops." 26 Oct. 2015. Reuters. 27 Oct. 2015. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/27/us-colombia-rebels-idUSKCN0SL00B20151027>

This article is about the ELN rebel attack that happened very recently and the reactions of different people and groups to ELN. The article seems to provide one side's reaction and the other side's viewpoint. Since ELN is a radical group of people who do not agree with the government. Honestly I think that the ELN should recognize that things don't only have to be done by killing people who aren't really involved in what they are trying to do. What they are doing seems to be more of a terrorist rather than those who are trying to make things right because are killing innocent people who can't do anything to change what they are in. The author's goal seems to be pass on the information without a biased point of view.

Stranded in Serbia

Thousands of refugees and migrants are stranded in Serbia on Monday after Hungary sealed off a border for the second time this year.

Hungary has constructed razor-wire fences along its borders with Serbia and Croatia to prevent the entry of people who have fled their homes in the Middle East and Africa and entered Central Europe in record numbers. The fence along the border with Serbia went up in September, leading migrants and refugees to turn to Croatia to continue their journey northward. The barrier along the Croatian border went into effect early Saturday.

The latest closure has forced refugees west; on Saturday, 5,000 people entered Slovenia, which says it will accept 2,500 refugees per day. The closure has also created a huge bottleneck along Serbia’s border with Croatia.

“It is like a big river of people, and if you stop the flow, you will have floods somewhere,” Melita Sunjic, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told Reuters of the backlog. “

That’s what’s happening now.”

More than 10,000 people entered Serbia from Macedonia on Sunday, according to the UN refugee agency, Reuters reported. On Monday, 6,000 were stranded along the Serbia-Croatia border after a cold night of rains. UNHCR reports a shortage of food and blankets there. Reuters photos show some refugees burning shoes to create bonfires to warm themselves. Many are “out in the open, they cannot sleep on the ground because of knee-deep mud,” says Sunjic. One doctor in Serbia said some were suffering from hypothermia. “We don’t have a chance to treat; we don’t have the actual medicine to be given out; we don’t have any more raincoats,” he told the BBC. At least 2,000 people slept on a train held on the Croatian side of the border.

Central European countries are passing around the blame for the bottleneck. Slovenia says Croatia ignored its quotas for migrants and is transporting large groups of people to their border. Croatian officials say Slovenia has changed several times the number of migrants it says it is willing to accept, and accuse Greece of not doing enough to slow the flood of people entering the region. Serbia quarreled with Croatia last month over the latter’s border restrictions, which have since been lifted. And Hungary blames pretty much everyone.

The bottleneck is expected to only get worse. More than 5,000 people cross into the region from Greece every day.

 NA. "Stranded in Serbia." 19 Sept. 2015. The Atlantic. 19 Sept. 2015. <http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/serbia-croatia-hungary-crisis/411220/>.

Comment: The article is about the refugees and migrants that have been "stranded" in one country or other because countries would not take them in. There seems to be no bias in this article as to taking one side or the other but it does seem like the author is bringing out the viewpoints of the refugees more than the political reasons of each country. The article seems to lead its readers into the conclusion that something must be done about the current crisis because of the situations that the refugees are in even if a country can transport them into the country, due to the lack of sufficient space.  

Syria crisis: Russia calls for coordinated resolution to Islamic State conflict

Monday, October 5, 2015

9:41 AM

Russia appeared to seize the initiative in international efforts to end the conflict in Syria on Sunday as Washington scrambled to devise a new strategy for the war-ravaged country and France sent warplanes to bomb Islamic State targets.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Moscow, which this month sent tanks and warplanes to a Russian military base in Syria, was itself trying to create a “coordinated framework” to resolve the conflict.

“We would welcome a common platform for collective action against the terrorists,” Putin said in an interview on Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes programme.

He derided US efforts to end the Syria war, which has driven a tide of refugees into neighbouring states and Europe.

It was announced in Baghdad that Russian military officials were working with counterparts from Iran, Syria and Iraq on intelligence and security cooperation to counter Islamic State, which has captured large areas of both Syria and Iraq.

The move was seen in the region as potentially giving Moscow more sway in the Middle East.

As leaders gathered in New York at the UN general assembly, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, discussed Syria with the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. He said that while it was vital to coordinate efforts against Islamic State militants this was not yet happening.

“I think we have concerns about how we are going to go forward,” Kerry told reporters. US officials said Kerry was working on a new political initiative in New York that would include Russia and key regional powers.

A senior State Department official told reporters: “It was a very thorough exchange of views on both the military and the political implications of Russia’s increased engagement in Syria.“

Kerry also discussed Syria with Iran’s foreign minister during a meeting at theUnited Nations on Saturday.

Putin, who will meet the US president, Barack Obama, in New York on Monday, branded US support for rebel forces in Syria illegal and ineffective and said Damascus should be included in international efforts to fight Islamic State.

He mocked US plans to train up to 5,400 Syrian rebels to fight the group. “It turns out that only 60 of these fighters have been properly trained, and as few as four or five people actually carry weapons,” he said.

Putin said Russia had no current plans to deploy combat troops. “Russia will not take part in any field operations on the territory of Syria or in other states; at least, we do not plan it for now,” he said.

Referring to the risk of radicalised fighters returning home after fighting for Isis, he said: “There are more than 2,000 militants in Syria from the former Soviet Union. Instead of waiting for them to return back home we should help President al-Assad fight them there, in Syria.“

Critics have urged Obama to be more decisive in the Middle East and Syria – where the UN has said 250,000 people have died after four years of conflict – and say lack of a clear American policy has given Islamic State opportunities to expand.

Divisions over the role of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, remain critical.

The president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, like Russia a big military supporter of Assad, told reporters any discussion of political reform in Syria should come only after the threat of “terrorism” had been removed.

The US, Britain and some other allies in recent days have softened demands that Assad immediately leave power, raising the possibility that he could stay during a transition.

The US under secretary of state ,Wendy Sherman, said on Friday: “We do not think it is credible for Assad to remain for any length of time as the leader,” but added: “We appreciate there may be a political solution here where Assad is there for some period of time in some capacity while a transition takes place.“

The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, however, told ARD television on Sunday that the formation of a transitional Syrian government should be kept separate from discussions on the future of Assad.

A senior State Department official said if the Russians were going to play a greater role in the fight against Islamic State, it was essential to have talks on “de-confliction” – measures to avert inadvertent clashes between the militaries.

“We are just at the beginning of trying to understand what the Russians’ intentions are in Syria, in Iraq, and to try to see if there are mutually beneficial ways forward here. We have got a long way to go in that conversation,” the official said.

France said it had launched its first air strikes in Syria, destroying an Islamic State training camp in the east of the country to stop the group from attacking French interests and to protect Syrian civilians.

France had until now struck Islamic State targets in neighbouring Iraq only.

France had feared strikes in Syria could be counter-productive and could strengthen Assad, but it was shaken by a series of deadly attacks by Islamic militants this year.

In addition, Paris has become alarmed by Islamic State gains in northern Syria and the possibility of France being sidelined in negotiations to reach a political solution in Syria.

A French diplomatic source said Paris needed to be one of the “hitters” in Syria – those taking direct military action – to legitimately take part in any negotiations for a political solution to the conflict.

Israel, which borders Syria and has previously attacked sites in Syria, carried out at least three air strikes against Syrian army targets on the Golan Heights on Sunday, rebel sources and a monitoring group said.

NA. "Syria crisis: Russia calls for coordinated resolution to Islamic State conflict."28 Sept. 2015. theguardian. 5 Oct. 2015.  <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/28/russia-syria-crisis-call-for-coordinated-resolution-conflict>

Comment: This article talks about the various political issues between multiple countries with the Islamic State. The author of this article seems to criticize the United States' actions on the matter of the expanding of the Islamic State and the "indecisiveness" of the US president.  Syria seems to be deeply involved with the Islamic State and it's "threats of terrorism." The author does not give further information about what the involved countries should do in order to stop the Islamic State's expansion, other than that President Barak Obama should be more "decisive" in dealing with the matter. The article is highly informational with a glimpse of bias of the author, but it is not apparent to the readers. I think that the stopping of the expansion of the Islamic State is needed because of the safety issues of the continuous threats of "terrorism" from the Islamic State.-Tiana Park