World

BARCELONA — Police in Catalonia had already sealed over half of the 2,315 polling stations in the region mid-Saturday to stop an independence referendum from taking place, the Spanish government said, as separatists remained determined to fight for their right to vote.

Teachers, parents, students and activists in this wealthy northeastern region have leapt into action to defend the vote slated for Sunday, defying Madrid's warnings of repercussions by occupying more than 160 schools designated as polling stations, it said.

Enric Millo, the central government representative in Catalonia, told reporters 1,300 polling stations had already been sealed off. 

He said that 163 of those had already been occupied when they were sealed off, which meant those inside were allowed to leave but no one could go in. 

AFP reporters, however, visited several schools occupied by parents, students and locals where people could go in and out freely, indicating there may be more occupied buildings that have yet to be sealed off.

The standoff between the central government and Catalan leaders over an independence referendum opposed by Madrid has morphed into one of the biggest crises to hit Spain since democracy was restored after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

As such, it has Spaniards the country over worried.

In Spain's major cities, Madrid, Barcelona, Sevilla, Santander, Alicante, Valencia and Malaga, thousands protested for Spanish unity.

"We shouldn't have got to this point. We've arrived at a point of no return," said Fernando Cepeda, a 58-year-old engineer, a Spanish flag tied around his waist in front of Madrid's city hall.

Call to remain peaceful 

Catalan separatist leaders and organisers of "committees to protect the referendum" stressed that everyone must remain peaceful.

In one incident, though, someone fired a pellet gun on Friday night at a group of people standing in front of an occupied high school in the Catalan town of Manlleu, lightly injuring three people, police said.

The referendum has sown divisions among Catalans themselves, with the region deeply split on independence, even if a large majority want to be allowed to settle the matter in a legal vote.

Authorities in Madrid have instructed police to ensure no votes are cast in a referendum that the courts have ruled unconstitutional.

For days, they have been seizing electoral items such as ballot papers, while prosecutors have ordered the closure of websites linked to the vote and the detention of key members of the team organising the referendum.

But those for the vote have mobilised.

On Friday, tractors paraded through Barcelona, some decked with the "Estelada", the separatists' flag of red-and-yellow stripes with a white star on a blue chevron.

They and firefighters have pledged to protect polling stations.

From district to district, people gathered to form "Committees to protect the referendum", using the Telegram messaging app to get organised and urging everyone to remain peaceful, said an AFP correspondent who saw some of the messages. 

The move appeared to be partly coordinated by a platform of "schools open for the referendum".

Mobilisation will continue 

Carles Riera, a lawmaker in the regional parliament for the radical CUP Party, part of Catalonia's separatist coalition, vowed that mobilisation would continue after Sunday's vote — if the "yes" camp won but Madrid opposed the result, as is almost certain.

"We're in a process of popular mobilisation that is going to last a while," he told reporters.

"This democratic wave, this level of auto-organisation will have to keep going for a long time to defend the republic."

 On Friday, Spain's education ministry said in a statement that head teachers in Catalonia "were not exempt from liability" if they cooperated and allowed their schools to remain open for the vote.

Some schools have imagined innovative ways to circumvent an order that public spaces cannot be used for the referendum by organising leisure activities all over the weekend, from pyjama parties for the kids to volleyball games.

Barcelona's Joan Brossa high school, for instance, advertised a series of activities for Friday and Saturday, including film screenings, football matches and Zumba dance fitness classes.

It remained unclear though how people would be able to enter sealed-off schools on Sunday to vote, even if they are occupied.

The Mossos d'Esquadra Catalan police have warned about the risk of "disruption of public order" if efforts are made to prevent people from casting ballots.

Madrid has sent thousands of extra police officers from other forces to Catalonia — which accounts for one fifth of Spain's economy — to stop the referendum from happening.

Catalan Vice President Oriol Junqueras has said that there are alternatives for citizens to vote, without saying what they are.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — US President Donald Trump temporarily lifted restrictions on foreign shipping from the US mainland to Puerto Rico on Thursday to help get fuel and supplies quickly to the US territory as it reels from the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

Puerto Rico's government had sought a waiver of the Jones Act, which limits shipping between US ports to US owned-and-operated vessels, to ensure there was no impediment to getting supplies to the Caribbean island.

Puerto Rico's 3.4 million people are facing severe shortages of water, food and fuel, as well as power outages.

Maria struck on September 20 as the most powerful hurricane to hit Puerto Rico in nearly 90 years, knocking out electricity to the entire island, causing widespread flooding and major damage to homes and infrastructure.

The waiver, which will be in force for 10 days and will cover all products being shipped to Puerto Rico, was signed on Thursday morning by acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke, the DHS said in a statement.

The waiver aimed to "ensure we have enough fuel and commodities to support lifesaving efforts, respond to the storm, and restore critical services and critical infrastructure operations," Duke said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders used Twitter to announce that Trump had authorised the waiver at the request of Puerto Rican Governor Ricardo Rossello. The governor retweeted her post with a "Thank you @POTUS" — referring to Trump's official Twitter handle.

The US government has periodically lifted the Jones Act for a temporary period following violent storms, including after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which hit Texas and Florida in late August and earlier this month.

Even as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the US military have stepped up relief efforts in Puerto Rico, many residents have voiced exasperation at the prolonged lack of electricity, reliable supplies of drinking water and other essentials.

Critics have said the island is not getting the same response from the federal government as it would if it were a US state, even though its residents are US citizens.

Defends trump response

Rossello has strongly defended the Republican president's response. 

"The president has been very diligent, he has been essentially talking to us every day," the governor said in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday. 

Outlining some of the problems facing the island, Rossello said:, "Really our biggest challenge has been the logistical assets to try to get some of the food and some of the water to different areas of Puerto Rico.

"We need truck drivers," he said, adding he had asked the Department of Defence to send troops to help with transportation.

"The food is here, the water is here. We welcome more help. But critically, what we need is equipment," and people, either national or state troops, Rossello said.

Brigadier General Rich Kim, who is the deputy commanding general of US Army North, arrived in Puerto Rico on Wednesday to take charge of coordinating military efforts. Military assistance includes assessing the needs of the island's hospitals, trying to set up communications with each of the 78 municipalities and establishing a plan for distributing food and water, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Rossello referred to the parlous state of Puerto Rico's economy, which even before the destruction of Maria was grappling with $72 billion in debt. The island filed the largest-ever US government bankruptcy in May.

Puerto Rico would ask the US Federal Reserve and Treasury for lines of credit at reasonable rates as it struggles to rebuild, Rossello said.

"We are not going to have revenues in the next couple of months so that puts us in a bind," he said, noting a number of emergency sources of funding the island would make use of. 

A group of Puerto Rico creditors said on Wednesday they hoped the island receives the government assistance necessary to allow it a "speedy recovery", after Maria threw the island's financial future into even greater limbo.

YANGON — Myanmar is committing crimes against humanity in its campaign against Muslim insurgents in Rakhine state, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, calling for the UN Security Council to impose sanctions and an arms embargo.

The UN refugee agency called for a redoubling of international aid for the 480,000 refugees — 60 per cent of them children — who have fled to Bangladesh since August 25 to escape the violence.

A Myanmar government spokesman rejected the accusation of crimes against humanity, saying there was no evidence.

The US government, which has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmar’s civilian government in the face of competition from strategic rival China, did not comment directly on the Human Rights Watch charge.

However a spokeswoman said: “We are closely monitoring the situation and the facts on the ground as they continue to unfold.

“We are deeply troubled by reports of extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, and burning of Rohingya villages by security forces and non-Rohingya individuals.”

 US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told the US House Foreign Affairs Committee that the US ambassador to Myanmar would visit the border of Rakhine, to look into the crisis “within the next two days”.

 Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi invited foreign diplomats to visit the area in a speech last week.

Myanmar has also rejected UN accusations that its forces are engaged in ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims in response to coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents on the security forces on August 25.

Refugees arriving in Bangladesh have accused the army and Buddhist vigilantes of trying to drive Rohingya out of Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

“The Burmese military is brutally expelling the Rohingya from northern Rakhine state,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at New York-based Human Rights Watch.

“The massacres of villagers and mass arson driving people from their homes are all crimes against humanity.”

Myanmar, also known as Burma, says its forces are fighting insurgents responsible for attacking the police and the army, killing civilians and torching villages. 

The International Criminal Court defines crimes against humanity as acts including murder, torture, rape and deportation, “when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.

Human Rights Watch said its research, supported by satellite imagery, had found crimes of deportation, forced population transfers, murder and rape.

The UN Security Council and concerned countries should impose targeted sanctions and an arms embargo, it said.

Government spokesman Zaw Htay said no Myanmar government had ever been as committed to the promotion of rights as the current one.

“Accusations without any strong evidence are dangerous,” he told Reuters. “It makes it difficult for the government to handle things.”

 A coordinating group of aid organisations said the total number of refugees who have fled to Bangladesh since August 25 had been revised up to 480,000 after 35,000 people in two camps were found to have been missed out of the previous tally.

“The massive influx of people seeking safety has been outpacing capacities to respond, and the situation for these refugees has still not stabilised,” Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said in Geneva.

“UNHCR is calling for a redoubling of the international humanitarian response in Bangladesh.”

Little sympathy

The violence and the refugee exodus is the biggest crisis the government of Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi has faced since it came to power last year in a transition from nearly 50 years of military rule.

Myanmar regards the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and bouts of suppression and violence have flared for decades. Most Rohingya are stateless.

Suu Kyi has faced scathing criticism and calls for her Nobel prize to be withdrawn. 

She denounced rights violations in an address to the nation last week and vowed that abusers would be prosecuted. She also said the government was trying to determine why so many people fled.

Seven UN experts, including Yanghee Lee, special rapporteur on rights in Myanmar, called on Suu Kyi to meet Rohingya to hear for herself the reasons for their exodus.

“No one chooses, especially not in the hundreds of thousands, to leave their homes and ancestral land, no matter how poor the conditions, to flee to a strange land to live under plastic sheets and in dire circumstances, except in life-threatening situations,” they said.

They called on Myanmar to provide humanitarian access to Rakhine state, where the military has been restricting entry.

Suu Kyi has little, if any, control over the security forces under a military-drafted constitution that also bars her from the presidency and gives the military veto power over political reform.

Myanmar has seen a surge of Buddhist nationalism in recent years, and the public is supportive of the campaign against the insurgents.

Since Sunday, the army has unearthed the bodies of 45 members of Myanmar’s small Hindu community who authorities say were killed by the insurgents soon after the violence erupted.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which has claimed attacks on the security forces since October, denied killing the villagers.

Some Hindus have fled to Bangladesh. Others have taken refuge in Myanmar towns, accusing the insurgents of attacking them on suspicion of being government spies.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron set out his vision Tuesday for a “profound transformation” of the European Union, unveiling a series of proposals to deepen the bloc politically and harmonise rules across the continent.

“The Europe that we know is too weak, too slow, too inefficient,” he said as he began the closely-watched address at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris.

“But Europe alone can give us the ability to act in the world faced with big contemporary challenges.”

 Macron’s proposals for a post-Brexit shake-up include plans to give the 19-member eurozone a finance minister, budget and parliament, as well as creating a Europe-wide “rapid reaction force” to work with national armies.

He also called for a new tax on technology giants like Facebook and Apple — accused of paying too little corporate tax on their businesses in Europe — and an EU-wide asylum agency to deal with the migrant crisis.

He even raised the prospect of major changes to the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU’s giant farm subsidy programme, which has historically been defended by France and its powerful agricultural lobbies. 

Macron is desperate for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s endorsement of his reform agenda, but his plans were dealt a blow by shock election results that saw the anti-immigration, eurosceptic Alternative for Germany  emerge as the country’s third-largest party.

Merkel must now try form a government that is likely to include the Free Democratic Party (FDP), whose leader is an outspoken critic of Macron’s European agenda and has said a eurozone budget would be a “red line”.

Macron appeared to respond to FDP chief Christian Lindner directly on Tuesday, saying: “I don’t have red lines, I only have horizons.”

 Macron used the Sorbonne speech to argue the case for institutional changes, initiatives to promote the EU, and new ventures in the technology, defence and energy sectors.

Along with Brexit and the German elections, Macron’s proposals are likely to top the agenda at a two-day summit of all 28 EU members in Estonia from Thursday.

Cooperation from Germany — the other half of the so-called “Franco-German motor” at the heart of the bloc — is essential, though Macron will also need to convince other European partners.

Over the next few months, analysts say they expect Merkel will try to form a coalition led by her conservative CDU/CSU with the pro-business FDP and the ecologist Greens.

French officials considered that now was the best time to intervene in the German debate, before a coalition contract is drawn up between the different parties setting out their roadmap for the four-year term.

“It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to miss,” an official from the French presidency told a briefing on Monday.

The closest attention will be paid to the most sensitive parts of his plans from Berlin’s perspective — his desire for a common eurozone budget to which Germany would be one of the main contributors.

Macron proposed introducing a tax to finance the budget.

Merkel has given tentative backing for a small common budget, but the FDP is staunchly opposed to German taxpayers sending any more money abroad to support weaker members of the eurozone such as Greece or Italy.

Macron’s past support for common eurozone bonds enabling the bloc to raise money collectively — member states currently raise their own cash — is also a highly sensitive issue in Germany.

“The debate launched by the French president is being followed with some exasperation in the chancellor’s office,” the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper wrote at the weekend.

“He talks about solutions before the question has even been properly discussed,” the paper added, accusing him of “putting the cart before the horse”.

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday she would talk with all mainstream parties about trying to form a “good, stable” government after Germany’s watershed election, and vowed to try to win back voters who supported an upstart nationalist force.

Sunday’s election saw the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party poach 1 million votes from Merkel’s conservatives, leaving her without an obvious coalition to lead Europe’s largest economy.

“We had hoped for a better result,” she admitted, referring to her CDU/CSU bloc’s 33 per cent score, its worst outcome since 1949.

Merkel, 63, said she would now seek exploratory talks on an alliance with two smaller parties, the pro-business Free Democrats and the ecologist Greens.

And she said she would extend an olive branch to the Social Democrats, her junior partners for eight of her 12 years in power, who suffered a crushing 20.5 per cent share of the vote and pledged to go into opposition.

The poll marked a breakthrough for the anti-Islam AfD, which with 12.6 per cent became the third strongest party and vowed to “go after” Merkel over her migrant and refugee policy.

She admitted that she had been a “polarising figure” to many people who ultimately gave their vote to the AfD.

Merkel acknowledged that the AfD’s strongholds in depressed corners of the ex-communist east felt “left behind”. 

She said she believed that not all were diehard supporters of the AfD and that at least some could be won back “with good policies that solve problems”. 

News weekly Der Spiegel said Merkel had no one but herself to blame for her election bruising.

“Angela Merkel deserved this defeat,” the magazine’s Dirk Kurbjuweit wrote, accusing her of running an “uninspired” campaign and “largely ignoring the challenges posed by the right”.

‘Invasion of foreigners’ 

The entry of around 90 hard-right MPs to the glass-domed Bundestag chamber breaks a taboo in post-World War II Germany.

While joyful supporters of the AfD — a party with links to the far-right French National Front and Britain’s UKIP — sang the German national anthem at a Berlin club as the results came in late Sunday, hundreds of protesters outside shouted “Nazis out!”

 The AfD’s top candidate in the election, Alexander Gauland, told reporters Monday that the party was the one true defender of a Germany for the Germans.

“I don’t want to lose Germany to an invasion of foreigners from foreign cultures,” he said.

He refused to back away from recent comments urging Germans to be proud of their war veterans, and calling for a government official who is of Turkish origin to be “dumped in Anatolia”.

But just hours after its triumph, the party’s long-simmering infighting between radical and more moderate forces spilled out into the open at a dramatic news conference.

AfD co-leader Frauke Petry stunned her colleagues by saying she would not join the party’s parliamentary group and would serve as an independent MP. She then abruptly left the room in a move Gauland criticised as “excessively feisty”.

Political scientist Suzanne Schuettemeyer of Halle University in eastern Germany said despite it remaining an opposition party with marked internal divisions, the AfD’s presence in parliament would harm the country’s image abroad.

“It’s Germany and it will change the way we are perceived, because AfD will speak a language that we thought... was outside of our political consensus,” she told AFP.

‘Bitter disappointment’ 

All other political parties have ruled out working with the AfD, whose leaders call Merkel a “traitor” for allowing in more than 1 million asylum seekers since 2015.

Merkel said Monday that while she was not seeking a repeat of the influx, she stood by her decision made on “humanitarian” grounds.

But the leader of her Bavarian CSU allies, Horst Seehofer, a vocal critic of Merkel’s asylum policy, called the poll outcome a “bitter disappointment” and vowed to close the “open flank” on the right before state elections next year.

The Social Democrats’ leader Martin Schulz, putting a brave face on his defeat, vowed Monday that the 150-year-old traditional workers’ party would be “a strong opposition force in this country, to defend democracy in this country against those who question it and attack it”.

This will likely force Merkel to team up with two smaller, and very different, parties to form a lineup dubbed the “Jamaica coalition” because the three parties’ colours match those of the Caribbean country’s flag.

One is the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which scored a 10.7-per cent comeback after crashing out of parliament four years ago.

The other is the left-leaning Greens Party, which won 8.9 per cent on campaign pledges to drive forward the country’s clean energy transition.

But with marked differences on issues ranging from EU integration to immigration, months of horse-trading could lie ahead to build a new government and avert snap elections.

BERLIN — Germans voted on Sunday in a general election expected to hand Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term while the hard-right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party was expected to make history by winning its first seats in parliament.

Europe’s most powerful woman appears all but assured of winning another term, matching the 16-year reign of her mentor Helmut Kohl.

Surveys suggest her conservative CDU/CSU alliance has a double-digit lead over its nearest rivals, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Martin Schulz.

Polling stations in Europe’s top economy will close at 1600 GMT, with exit polls due out immediately afterwards.

With four other parties predicted to clear the 5-per cent threshold to enter the Bundestag, the highest number since the 1950s, it could take months of coalition wrangling before the next government takes shape.

But mainstream parties have already ruled out talking to the anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD, which is polling at 11 to 13 per cent and could emerge as Germany’s third-strongest party.

Alarmed by the prospect of what Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel branded “real Nazis” entering the Bundestag for the first time since World War II, politicians used their final days of campaigning to urge voters to reject the AfD.

“This Alternative for Germany is no alternative. They are a shame for our nation,” former European Parliament chief Schulz told a rally on Friday.

The latest surveys put support for Merkel’s conservative block at 34-36 per cent, with the SPD trailing at 21-22 per cent — which would translate into a historic low for the party.

Despite bracing for a drubbing, Schulz was all smiles as he and his wife cast their ballot in his western hometown of Wuerselen.

Preliminary figures indicated that turnout was up compared to the 2013 election in major cities including Berlin, Munich and Hamburg. 

Bombshell 

Merkel, 63, whose campaign events were regularly disrupted by jeering AfD supporters, said at her final stump speech in the southern city of Munich that “the future of Germany will definitely not be built with whistles and hollers”.

Observers say a strong showing by the AfD, which has capitalised on anger over the influx of a million migrants and refugees since 2015, would hit Germany like a bombshell.

“If the AfD becomes the leading opposition party, they will challenge key themes,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. “It will very much change the tone of debate in parliament.”

Aside from the populist noise, the past two months of campaigning have been widely criticised as lacklustre, with few hot-button issues dividing the main contenders.

Commentators say Merkel’s reassuring message of stability and prosperity has resonated in greying Germany, where more than half of the 61 million voters are aged 52 or older.

Schulz, on the other hand, has struggled to gain traction with his calls for a more socially just Germany at a time when the economy is humming and employment is at a record low.

The SPD has also found it hard to shine after four years as the junior partner in Merkel’s left-right “grand coalition”, marked by broad agreement on major topics, from foreign policy to migration.

‘Sleeping-pill politics’ 

In the final stretch, the more outspoken Schulz told voters to reject Merkel’s “sleeping-pill politics” and vote against “another four years of stagnation and lethargy”.

Germany’s best-selling daily Bild at the weekend said 61-year-old Schulz found his voice as he neared the finish line, and praised him for “fighting until the end”.

“Germany doesn’t just need a chancellor. It also needs an opposition leader. Schulz has started to sound like one,” the newspaper wrote. 

The CDU and the SPD have signalled they are not keen to continue their loveless marriage, and many rank-and-file SPD members believe the traditional working-class party would benefit from a stint in opposition to rekindle its fighting spirit.

This would leave the presumed winner Merkel in need of new coalition partners — possibly the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats, who are hoping for a comeback after crashing out of parliament four years ago.

Another potential partner would be the ecologist and left-leaning Greens Party, which, however, starkly differs with the FDP on issues from climate change to migration policy.

Pundits have pointed out that a significant number of voters remained undecided until the last minute, suggesting the final outcome could throw up some surprises depending on turnout.

In the western city of Frankfurt, 66-year-old Harald said he was still unsure who to vote for as he headed home from his night shift as a security guard in the leafy Westend suburb.

“I will make up my mind once I’m in the polling booth. You can forget about the AfD,” he told AFP.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump gave a stark warning Saturday that cast growing uncertainty over whether a nuclear deal clinched with Iran would survive after the Islamic republic tested a new medium-range missile.

State television carried footage of the launch of the Khoramshahr missile, which was first displayed at a high-profile military parade in Tehran on Friday.

It also carried in-flight video from the nose cone of the missile, which has a range of 2,000 kilometres and can carry multiple warheads.

“Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North Korea. Not much of an agreement we have!” Trump tweeted.

The test comes at the end of a heated week of diplomacy at the UN General Assembly in New York, where US President Donald Trump again accused Iran of destabilising the Middle East, calling it a “rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed and chaos”.

 “As long as some speak in the language of threats, the strengthening of the country’s defence capabilities will continue and Iran will not seek permission from any country for producing various kinds of missile,” Defence Minister Amir Hatami said in a statement.

Previous Iranian missile launches have triggered US sanctions and accusations that they violate the spirit of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers.

An “extremely concerned” French foreign ministry, warned the launch violated the United Nations Security Council resolution that endorsed the accord.

“France demands that Iran halt all destablising activities in the region and to respect all provisions of Resolution 2231, including the call to halt this type of ballistic activity,” a statement read.

“France will consider ways, with its European and other partners, to get Iran to stop its destabilising ballistic activities.”

 Iran, which fought a war with neighbouring Iraq in the 1980s, sees missiles as a legitimate and vital part of its defence — particularly as regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Israel import huge amounts of military hardware from the West.

Trump has threatened to bin the nuclear agreement altogether, saying Iran is developing missiles that may be used to deliver a nuclear warhead when the deal’s restrictions are lifted in 2025.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman denounced the test as a “provocation” aimed at the United States and its allies, including Israel.

European support 

Trump is due to report to Congress on October 15 on whether Iran is still complying with the deal and whether it remains in US interests to stick by it. 

If he decides that it is not, that could open the way for US lawmakers to reimpose sanctions, leading to the potential collapse of the agreement.

Trump said Wednesday he had made his decision but was not yet ready to reveal it.

The other signatories to the deal — Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union — have all pushed for it to continue.

They point out that abandoning the agreement will remove restrictions on Iran immediately — rather than in eight years’ time — and that the International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly confirmed Tehran is meeting its commitments. 

Iran says all of its missiles are designed to carry conventional warheads only and has limited their range to a maximum of 2,000 kilometres, although commanders say they have the technology to go further.

That makes them only medium-range but still sufficient to reach Israel or US bases in the Gulf.

“The ballistic missile which Iran fired is a provocation of the United States and its allies, including Israel,” the Israeli defence minister said.

“It is also a means to test our reactions as well as new proof of Iran’s ambition to become a world power in order to threaten the countries of the Middle East and democratic states around the world.”

 In addition to carrying out missile tests, Iran has also launched a space satellite and fired missiles at Daesh extremist group targets in eastern Syria in recent months.

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh — Doctors treating some of the 429,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar in recent weeks have seen dozens of women with injuries consistent with violent sexual attacks, UN clinicians and other health workers said.

The medics' accounts, backed in some cases by medical notes reviewed by Reuters, lend weight to repeated allegations, ranging from molestation to gang rape, levelled by women from the stateless minority group against Myanmar's armed forces. 

Myanmar officials have mostly dismissed such allegations as militant propaganda designed to defame its military, which they say is engaged in legitimate counterinsurgency operations and under orders to protect civilians. 

Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, said the authorities would investigate any allegations brought to them. "Those rape victim women should come to us," he said. "We will give full security to them. We will investigate and we will take action." 

Suu Kyi herself has not commented on the numerous allegations of sexual assault committed by the military against Rohingya women made public since late last year. 

Violence erupted in Myanmar's northwestern Rakhine state following attacks on security forces by Rohingya militants last October. Further attacks on August 25 provoked a renewed military offensive the United Nations has called "ethnic cleansing".

Reuters spoke with eight health and protection workers in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district who between them said they had treated more than 25 individual rape cases since late August.

The medics say they do not attempt to establish definitively what happened to their patients, but have seen an unmistakeable pattern in the stories and physical symptoms of dozens of women, who invariably say Myanmar soldiers were the perpetrators.

It is rare for UN doctors and aid agencies to speak about rape allegedly committed by a state's armed forces, given the sensitivity of the matter.

‘Inhuman attack’

Doctors at a clinic run by the UN's International Organisation for Migration (IOM) at the Leda makeshift refugee say they treated hundreds of women with injuries they said were from violent sexual assaults during the army operation in October and November.

There have been fewer rapes reported among the influx of refugees since August, said Dr. Niranta Kumar, the clinic's health coordinator, but those they have seen have injuries suggesting "more aggressive" attacks on women.

Several health workers suggested that, whereas in October many women had initially remained in their villages believing the army sweeps were only targeting Rohingya men, this time most had fled at the first sign of military activity.

Doctors at the Leda clinic showed a Reuters reporter three case files, without divulging the identity of the patients. One said a 20-year-old woman was treated on Sept. 10, seven days after she said she was raped by a soldier in Myanmar.

Handwritten notes say she said soldiers had "pulled her hair" and a "gun used to beat her" before raping her.

Examinations often find injuries suggesting forced penetration, beating and even what looked like intentional cutting of the genitals, doctors said.

"We found skin marks, it showed a very forceful attack, an inhuman attack," said IOM medical officer Dr Tasnuba Nourin.

She had seen incidents of vaginal tearing, bite marks and signs that seemed to show a firearm was used to penetrate women, she said.

Among the new influx of Rohingya she had treated at least five women who appeared to have been recently raped, she said, adding that in each case the physical injuries observed were consistent with the patient's account of what had happened.

‘Fraction of the cases’

At Bangladesh government clinics supported by UN agencies in the Ukhia area, doctors reported treating 19 women who had been raped, said Dr. Misbah Uddin Ahmed, head of the main health complex there, citing reports from female clinicians.

"The evidence included bite marks, tearing of the vagina, these sorts of things," he said.

In one day alone, September 14, six women showed up at one of the clinics, all saying they were sexually assaulted. "They all said Myanmar army had done this."

 An IOM doctor who asked not to be identified, working at one of those clinics near the Kutapalong refugee camp, said a woman who crossed from Myanmar in late August said she was raped by at least seven soldiers.

BEIJING — A shallow 3.5-magnitude earthquake hit North Korea near the country's nuclear test site on Saturday, US seismologists said, in what Chinese experts said was a "suspected explosion", but Seoul deemed a "natural earthquake".

It came after days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's regime, as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck around 20 kilometres away from the North's nuclear test site, where earlier this month Pyongyang detonated its sixth and largest device, which it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb capable of being launched onto a missile.

"This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean nuclear tests. We cannot conclusively confirm at this time the nature [natural or human-made] of the event. The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5km by the seismologist," USGS said in a statement. 

Regional experts differed on their analysis of the tremor, with the China Earthquake Network Centre (CENC) service calling it a "suspected explosion" while Seoul's Korea Meteorological Agency (KMA) judged it a "natural quake".

"There is no possibility that this could be an artificial quake," Yonhap news agency quoted a KMA official as saying.

The North's last test, on September 3, was the country's most powerful detonation, triggering a much stronger 6.3-magnitude quake that was felt across the border in China.

A second tremor soon after that test was possibly caused by a "cave-in", CENC said at the time. 

The test prompted global condemnation, leading the United Nations Security Council to unanimously adopt new sanctions that include restrictions on oil shipments.

A UN-backed monitoring group said analysts were investigating Saturday's quake.

Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organisation, tweeted that the quake was "unlikely Man-made! Similar to ‘collapse’ event 8.5 mins after DPRK6", a reference to the second tremor that followed the September 3 test.

The strength of the quake was much lower than the tremors registered during any of North Korea's nuclear tests, including its first detonation in 2006, which triggered a 4.1-magnitude quake.

Social media users in China said they "felt nothing" when Saturday's quake hit, compared to the September 3 tremor.

Russia's weather forecasting service said that radiation levels were normal following the quake, according to a report by the Interfax news agency.

War of words 

The quake came at the end of a week that saw a blistering war of words between Kim and Trump, with the US leader using his maiden speech at the UN General Assembly to warn that Washington would "totally destroy" the North if America or its allies were threatened.

The North, which says it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself against the threat of invasion by a hostile US, responded on Friday with a rare personal rebuke from Kim, who called Trump "mentally deranged" and a "dotard" and threatened the "highest level of hard-line countermeasure in history".

Washington announced tougher restrictions on Friday aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programme, building on tough new UN sanctions aimed at choking Pyongyang of cash.

Russia and China have both appealed for an end to the escalating rhetoric between Washington and Pyongyang. 

But on the fringes of the UN meeting this week, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho upped the tensions further, telling reporters Pyongyang might now consider detonating a hydrogen bomb outside its territory.

Monitoring groups estimate that the nuclear test conducted in North Korea earlier this month had a yield of 250 kilotonnes, which is 16 times the size of the US bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs, are thermonuclear weapons far more powerful than ordinary fission-based atomic bombs, and use a nuclear blast to generate the intense temperatures required for fusion to take place.

SITTWE, Myanmar — Buddhist protesters in Myanmar threw petrol bombs to try to block a shipment of aid to Muslims in Rakhine state, where the United Nations has accused the military of ethnic cleansing, before police fired in the air to disperse them.

The incident late on Wednesday reflected rising communal animosity, and came as US President Donald Trump called for a quick end to the violence that has raised concern about Myanmar's transition from military rule.

Myanmar's army chief, in his major speech on his plans for Rakhine State while on his first visit there since the strife erupted, called for internally displaced non-Muslims to go home.

But he made no mention of the 422,000 Muslims who fled to Bangladesh to escape his army's sweeping counter-insurgency operation.

Hundreds of protesters were involved in the attempt to stop Red Cross workers loading a boat with relief supplies bound for the north of the Rakhine State where insurgent attacks on August 25 sparked a sweeping military backlash.

The boat being was loaded with about 50 tonnes of aid at a dock in the state capital of Sittwe, a government information office said.

"People thought the aid was only for the Bengalis," the secretary of the state government, Tin Maung Swe, told Reuters, using a term that Rohingya find offensive.

Protesters, some carrying sticks and metal bars, threw petrol bombs and about 200 police eventually dispersed them by shooting into the air, a witness and the government information office said.

The witness said he saw some injured people. Eight people were detained, the office said. No aid workers were hurt, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

"All emergency support done by the organisation and in the movement is done in a neutral and impartial manner," the spokeswoman, Maria Cecilia Goin, citing what the workers had told the crowd before authorities intervened.

Trump calls for swift action

Tension between majority Buddhists and Rohingya, most of whom are denied citizenship, has simmered for decades in Rakhine, but it has exploded in violence several times over the past few years, as old enmities surfaced with the end of decades of harsh military rule.

The latest bout of bloodshed began with the August attacks by Rohingya insurgents on about 30 police posts and an army camp, in which about 12 people were killed.

Myanmar's government says more than 400 people, most of them insurgents have been killed since then.

Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Buddhist vigilantes have mounted a campaign aimed at driving out the Muslim population and torching their villages.

Myanmar rejects the charge, saying its forces are tackling insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army who it has accused of setting the fires and attacking civilians.

The crisis has drawn international condemnation and raised questions about the commitment of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi to human rights, and about prospects for Myanmar's political and economic development.

Suu Kyi addressed the nation on Tuesday and condemned abuses and said all violators would be punished, adding that she was committed to peace and the rule of law. 

However, she did not address the UN accusations of ethnic cleansing by the military, which is in charge of security.

Trump wants the UN Security Council to take "strong and swift action" to end the violence, US Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday, declaring the conflict a threat to the region and world.

Pence repeated a US call for the military to end the violence and support efforts for a long-term solution for the Rohingya.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Patrick Murphy is in Myanmar and met government officials and representatives of different communities in Sittwe on Thursday.

'Go back'

Military Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing said the military had handled the situation as best as it could and he urged the internally displaced, most of who are Buddhist, to go home.

"For the national races who fled their homes, first of all they must go back... that is their rightful place," he said in a speech in the Sittwe.

"National races" refers to officially recognised indigenous ethnic groups who make up the diverse nation. The Rohingya are not recognised as a "national race" and Min Aung Hlaing did not refer to their return.

On Wednesday, he visited an army camp that was attacked on August 25 and said Myanmar was still suffering the consequences of "reckless" British colonialism.

Britain has suspended a training programme for Myanmar officers because of the violence. Myanmar said five officers were being brought home and none would be sent to Britain again.

The Bangladesh government and aid groups are struggling with shortages of food, water, shelter and medical supplies for the refugees, who keep coming, though at a slower pace than over the past couple of weeks, officials say.