World

SRINAGAR, India — More than 40 days of clashes between protesters and security forces have overwhelmed the main hospital in Indian-administered Kashmir, where some patients with severe injuries said they had been beaten in their homes by troops.

House-to-house searches continued on Friday, authorities said, for suspected ringleaders of street protests sparked by the killing on July 8 of a popular field commander of a Pakistan-based separatist group.

At least 65 people have been killed and 6,000 injured in the ensuing clashes, many of them wounded by shotgun rounds fired by security forces enforcing a curfew across the Muslim-majority region.

Pictures taken by a Reuters photographer at Srinagar’s main SMHS Hospital on Thursday showed men with weals across their backs and buttocks that they said had been caused by beatings.

Another showed a crying boy, his head swathed in bandages, as he was comforted by his family, who said he had been wounded by shotgun pellets.

Doctors at the hospital were exhausted, with one saying they had performed more eye operations in the past month than they had over the last three years.

“We have here less number of beds and staff. We are in physical and mental stress,” said Nisarul Hassan, the senior consultant at SMHS hospital who was forced to use an ambulance to get back home.

The Indian army has admitted to, and apologised for, the death of a college lecturer in one beating. A senior army officer said on Friday the forces were trying not to react to acts of provocation.

“Militants are hiding behind the stone pelters and are trying to provoke security forces into firing on them, but we are exercising restraint to avoid civilian casualties,” Lieutenant General SK Dua told a news conference in Srinagar.

“They want us to fire on them and we will not do it. We are exercising restraint to avoid collateral damage.”

 Hospital overwhelmed

Dozens of volunteers received the injured at SMHS Hospital as ambulances brought them in from rural areas.

Paramedics and ambulance drivers said government forces attacked them on the way. The curfew restricts movement, severely disrupting daily life.

“India and Pakistan are fighting over my homeland but in the end it’s is only our blood that they manage to secure,” said Faizal Wani, 24, whose father was being treated for pellet wounds suffered in the clashes.

Another doctor said patients have been brought in with abdominal injuries from rifle bullets. “Our operating theatres are working non-stop,” the doctor told Reuters.

Troops have resorted to firing rifles and shotguns to quell stone-throwing protests sparked by the death of Burhan Wani, a field commander of the Hizbul Mujahedeen separatist group.

India’s Central Reserve Police Force, which deploys a large contingent of paramilitaries in Kashmir, told a regional court that more than 100 people had been partly or completely blinded by shotgun pellets.

Kashmir is at the centre of a decades-old rivalry between India and Pakistan, which rules a northwestern section of the divided region, and backed an insurgency in the late 1980s and 1990s that Indian security forces largely crushed.

A top UN human rights official has expressed “deep regret” at the failure of both India and Pakistan to grant access to the separate parts of Kashmir that each runs to investigate allegations of serious human rights violations.

ISLAMABAD — The world’s largest bloc of Muslim countries expressed concern Saturday over alleged human rights violations in Indian-controlled Kashmir, which has seen weeks of deadly clashes between Muslim protesters and police.

Iyad Madani, the secretary general of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, said at a news conference in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad that the situation in Kashmir was deteriorating and urged the international community to act.

“The situation is getting worse rather than better and this cannot continue,” Madani said after meeting with Sartaj Aziz, the foreign affairs adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister.

Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim region, is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both. Most Kashmiris want an end to Indian rule and favour independence or a merger with Pakistan, which has long called for a referendum on the region’s future. Hindu-majority India has refused to hold such a vote.

“We should not be afraid of referendum,” Madani said, adding that it was up to the Kashmiri people to decide their future.

Standing next to him at the news conference, Aziz accused Indian forces of using lethal force against Kashmiris protesting peacefully over extrajudicial killings. He said a peaceful solution to the dispute over the region “is an imperative for regional peace and stability”.

DIMONDALE, Michigan — Republican Donald Trump again made a direct appeal to black voters on Friday night, urging them to abandon the Democratic Party and give him a chance.

Speaking at a rally in Dimondale, Michigan, an overwhelmingly white suburb outside of Lansing, the GOP nominee argued that Democrats, including his rival Hillary Clinton, have taken advantage of African-American voters and taken their votes for granted.

“Tonight, I’m asking for the vote of every single African-American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future,” Trump told the crowd.

“What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump?” he asked them. “You’re living in your poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 per cent of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?”

 He also made a bold prediction: “At the end of four years, I guarantee you that I will get over 95 per cent of the African-American vote. I promise you.”

 Most polls show Trump trailing Clinton significantly among black voters. President Barack Obama won roughly 93 per cent of black voters in his re-election campaign in 2012.

But Trump once again accused Clinton of “bigotry”, claiming she sees African-Americans “only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future”.

 And he painted a dismal role of life for African-Americans in the workforce, declaring that, in cities like Detroit, they “have become refugees in their own country”.

 On Twitter, the Clinton campaign responded, “This is so ignorant it’s staggering.”

 The Clinton campaign’s Marlon Marshall added in a statement: “Donald Trump asks what the African-American community has to lose by voting for him. The answer is everything from a man who questions the citizenship of the first African-American president, courts white supremacists, and has been sued for housing discrimination against communities of color.”

Marshall said, “Trump painting the entire community as living in poverty with no jobs continues to show he is completely out of touch with the African-American community.”

KIEV — Ukraine on Thursday reported the heaviest rebel shelling attack in the separatist east for a year in what the president said could be a prelude to a full-scale Russian invasion.

Military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said insurgent strikes had doubled from the previous day as tensions between Kiev and Moscow soar over Kremlin charges that Ukraine plotted to make armed incursions into Russian-annexed Crimea this month.

 "The rebels launched more than 500 mortar and over 300 artillery shells at our positions," Motuzyanyk told reporters in Kiev.

 "The last time we witnessed a similar intensity of fire using heavy armaments was a year ago."

 Motuzyanyk said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed and six wounded in clashes across the 30-kilometre-wide buffer zone splitting government forces from the pro-Russian militias.

 Kiev and its Western allies accuse Moscow of trying to escalate a 28-month conflict in Ukraine's rust belt that has claimed more than 9,500 lives and began just weeks after Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March 2014.

 Petro Poroshenko responded to the reported violence by sending his top army commander into the war zone and warning that he "does not exclude a full-scale Russian invasion along all fronts".

"The likelihood of the conflict's escalation remains very high," he said in televised remarks from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

 Poroshenko has issued similar warnings on previous occasions.

 But he added on Thursday that a further escalation may force him to introduce "martial law and a mobilisation" of reserve troops.

Remembering
a forgotten war 

The Crimea episode has thrust back into the spotlight a conflict that has effectively ground to a stalemate but remains one of Europe's bloodiest since the 1990s Balkans wars.

French President Francois Hollande warned on Tuesday against any "escalation" of the conflict after telephone talks with Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

 EU President Donald Tusk on Wednesday said he and the Ukrainian leader both believed Russia's account of recent events in the battle-scarred east and Crimea was "unreliable".

And Ukraine has even become an issue in the US presidential race, with Republican candidate Donald Trump's campaign chief embroiled in allegations of receiving secret payments from Kiev's Russian-backed leaders prior to the former Soviet republic's 2014 pro-EU revolt.

Analysts remain divided about whether Ukraine is about to enter an even deadlier phase of the war or if Russian President Vladimir Putin is simply adopting a tough posture that could give him the upper hand in any final peace deal.

 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Moscow remained committed to a stalled European-brokered truce deal that was signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk in 2015.

 But he also warned that Russia would take "comprehensive measures to make sure any attempts to make incursions into our territory are nipped in the bud".

Kiev and the West accuse Russia of supporting the rebels and deploying troops across the border — claims Moscow denies — in order to keep at least a part of its western neighbour within its geopolitical orbit.

Poroshenko attended a summit of NATO leaders in Warsaw last month in which the alliance agreed to bolster its eastern flank in order to calm fears of Russia in both Ukraine and among other east European states.

BEIJING — The increase in people dying in India from air pollution will outpace the rate of such deaths in China, as India drags its heels over environmental rules while opening more coal mines, the head of a US research group said on Thursday.

"India's situation is getting worse at a much faster speed than China," Dan Greenbaum, president of Boston-based Health Effects Institute (HEI), told Reuters in Beijing.

"It is definitely the case because India has not taken as much action on air pollution."

HEI and a group of Chinese and Indian universities recently said that over half of world's air pollution-related deaths were in China and India. In China, coal-fired plants have been the worst source of pollution. But India has lagged behind in implementing stringent environment policies for coal emission.

From now until 2020, China aims to cut coal output by 500 million tonnes, or about 19 per cent of its current annual output, and reduce emission of major pollutants in the power sector by 60 per cent. By contrast, India has just only launched an emission standard for coal-fired power plants this year.

India is also ramping up coal production as Prime Minister Narendra Modi races to meet election promises to provide electricity to a population of 1.3 billion.

"Chinese actions to control emissions from coal power plants and from industries are considerably more strong than the ones in India," Greenbaum said.

Indian Coal Secretary Anil Swarup did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has previously said India is setting a higher target for renewable energy and growing more trees than are being uprooted by coal mining.

He has also said coal cannot be wished away because it is the cheapest form of energy in a country where millions of people still go without electricity.

Research from HEI and Tsinghua University in Beijing released this week shows coal burning caused 366,000 premature deaths in China in 2013, out of a population of 1.35 billion. Comparable HEI data for India is due out next year.

In China, coal will remain the biggest contributor to mortality related to the super-fine particulate matter PM2.5, according to the latest HEI-Tsinghua study.

Chinese coal consumption more than tripled between 1990 and 2013, while air pollution deaths jumped 67 per cent during the same period, the research showed.

The study says the death rate will drop by 2030 if China strictly controls coal combustion and emissions. 

ISTANBUL — Turkey on Wednesday began freeing the first of some 38,000 prisoners not linked to the failed coup who are to be released in a move aimed at relieving pressure on prisons overcrowded with putsch suspects.

The parole decision came as Turkey presses on with the biggest purge in its modern history after the July 15 bid by rogue elements in the military to oust President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from power.

Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the release was "not an amnesty", but the measure could eventually apply to almost half of the Turkish prison population which has swelled to over 200,000 since the attempted coup.

It will not apply to convicts guilty of murder, terrorism or state security crimes, or the thousands detained after the putsch.

"The regulation refers to crimes committed before July 1, 2016. The crimes committed after July 1, 2016 are outside its scope," Bozdag said on Twitter.

"As a result of this regulation, approximately 38,000 people will be released from closed and open prisons at the first stage."

According to Turkish officials, over 35,000 people have been detained since the coup attempt although almost 11,600 of them have since been released.

'Prisons jam-packed' 

The state-run Anadolu Agency said the first convicts began to be released from Istanbul's Silviri Prison hours after the announcement. 

One of the freed prisoners Turgay Aydin, was quoted as thanking Erdogan and saying: "I am very happy because I am released from prison. I was not expecting it."

Bozdag said in an interview with A-Haber television that the parole could in the end apply to 99,000 out of Turkey's current total prison population of 214,000.

According to Anadolu, the total capacity of Turkey's prisons is for 187,351 people.

Hurriyet columnist Akif Beki wrote on August 11 that "prisons are jam-packed" amid the post-coup purge and asked: "How can that many be arrested without making any space?"

Turkey is in the throes of a three-month state of emergency imposed after the coup, which the authorities describe as an attempt by the US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen to overthrow the existing order.

Gulen vehemently rejects the charges but Turkey has embarked on a relentless drive to expel what Erdogan calls his "virus" from all public institutions.

In the latest move Wednesday, the authorities fired another 2,692 civil servants mostly from the police, the official gazette announced. Some 75,000 people have already been dismissed from their jobs over alleged links to Gulen.

‘Don’t lose Turkey’ 

Turkey has pressed the United States to extradite Gulen to face trial back home, with prosecutors already demanding a symbolically tough punishment of two life sentences and 1,900 years in jail.

US Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Ankara next week, the White House announced, in the highest ranking visit to Turkey by any Western official since the coup.

Turkey has been deeply upset by what it has described as the lack of solidarity shown by Western leaders in the wake of the coup bid and is sure to press Biden on the extradition issue.

“If the US does not send him [Gulen] to Turkey, relations will not be the same as they were before July 15,” Bozdag said, warning Washington not to “lose” the Turkish people.

And in the latest dispute between Berlin and Ankara, the Turkish foreign ministry reacted angrily to a leaked German government document that described Turkey as a “platform” for Islamists. 

With concern also surging over the authorities’ attitude on press freedom, security forces sealed and raided the premises of the pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Gundem following a court order to shut it down.

A Turkish official said the closure had nothing to do with the state of emergency but was because the court found the paper was acting as a mouthpiece for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Ozgur Gudem said in a statement on its website that two dozen people were detained in the police raid. 

Meanwhile, one of the paper’s board members Asli Erdogan — a prominent writer — was detained in a police raid on her home, Turkish media said. 

However the paper still managed to distribute a four-page edition, with the headline “We will not give in.”

MOSCOW — Heavily-armed Russian special forces on Wednesday raided an apartment building in Saint Petersburg in an operation targeting North Caucasus militants, killing four suspects.

The FSB security service said in a statement quoted by Russian agencies that the raid was part of an operation to detain "wanted persons accused of participating in illegal armed groups in the North Caucasus".

"Criminals were destroyed by return fire when they attempted to resist," the FSB said.

Russia's Investigative Committee added that four suspects — all of them in the same apartment — were killed in the raid and their bodies were now being identified.

No ordinary civilians or law enforcement officials were injured, it said.

Three of the men killed were provisionally named by the National Anti-Terrorism Committee to Russian agencies as Zalim Shebzukhov, Astemir Sheriev and Vyacheslav Nyrov.

It said that these three were leaders of the "terrorist underground active in Kabardino-Balkharia" in the north Caucasus.

It said that no ordinary civilians or law enforcement officials were injured.

TV footage showed heavily-armed men in balaclavas cordoning off the multi-storey apartment block on the outskirts of the northwestern city famed for its tsarist-era palaces.

"I heard several explosions and then a series of what sounded like gunshots," a man who said he was a resident of a neighbouring apartment building told Rossiya 24 television.

Special operations against suspected Islamists are frequent in Russia's North Caucasus region but have been rare in Moscow and Saint Petersburg in recent years.

Russia has battled a simmering insurgency in the Caucasus ever since fighting two brutal separatist conflicts with Chechnya. 

Many Islamists have left for Syria and there has been little violence linked to the North Caucasus spilling out of the region in recent years, with the last such attacks in the southern city of Volgograd in 2013.

SEOUL — South Korea said Wednesday that North Korea's deputy ambassador to Britain had defected to Seoul, in a rare and damaging loss of diplomatic face for Pyongyang.

The unification ministry said Thae Yong-ho — the number-two at the North's mission in London — had defected together with his family and they were now in the South Korean capital.

"They are under government protection and are going through necessary procedures with related institutions," ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee told reporters.

Jeong declined to reveal Thae's defection route, citing the diplomatic sensitivities involved for the concerned countries.

"On his reasons for defection, Minister Thae cited disgust with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-un's regime, admiration for South Korea's free, democratic system and the future of his family," Jeong said.

Increasingly isolated internationally because of its nuclear weapons programme, North Korea maintains relatively few overseas embassies, and defections by diplomats of Thae's stature are extremely rare.

The last such case was that of the North Korean ambassador to Egypt who defected to the United States in 1997.

Elite discontent? 

Jeong said Thae's defection reflected the loss of faith among North Korea's elite in Kim Jong-un's leadership.

"Awareness that the North Korean regime has reached its limit is spreading and the solidarity of its ruling class is weakening," Jeong said.

It was a pointed comment that was clearly calculated to resonate — even if Thae's defection falls far short of signalling any imminent collapse of the regime in Pyongyang.

Since Kim succeeded his late father Kim Jong-il as supreme leader in 2011, he has carried out a series of high-level purges aimed at consolidating power and surrounding himself with loyalists.

But analysts say continued support is contingent on keeping the Pyongyang elite in the privileged lifestyle to which they are accustomed — a task made far tougher by tightened UN sanctions.

North Korean defectors have been making headlines recently, largely due to an unusual group defection in April by a dozen waitresses and their manager who were working at a North Korean-run restaurant in China.

A North Korean army colonel who had handled spying operations on South Korea was announced to have defected last year.

And, in July, an 18-year-old student, who was in Hong Kong for an international maths contest, reportedly sought asylum in the South Korean consulate in the city.

Thae was believed to have worked at the embassy in London for 10 years, with one of his main tasks being to counter the image of North Korea as a nuclear pariah state and notorious human rights abuser.

PR coup 

Apart from the obvious and extremely damaging PR victory his defection hands to South Korea, Thae is likely to prove a crucial source of up-to-date intelligence on the state of the North Korean leadership and its policy priorities.

All North Korean defectors who make it to Seoul undergo an intense, months-long de-briefing at the hands of South Korean intelligence — largely in an effort to root out any potential spies.

In Thae's case, the interrogation will be a lengthy one and he and his family will likely remain in sort of protective custody for some time to guarantee their safety. 

Over the years, nearly 30,000 North Koreans have fled poverty and repression in their country and settled in the South. 

But the number of defectors — who once numbered more than 2,000 a year — has nearly halved since Kim Jong-un took power after the death of his father and former leader Kim Jong-il in December 2011.

Those who still managed to flee in recent years often had families already settled in the South, or were relatively well-off and well-connected members of the elite in search of better lives.

The highest-ranking defector to come to the South was Hwang Jang-yop, the North's chief ideologue and former tutor to Kim Jong-il. He made a high-profile defection via the South Korean embassy in Beijing in 1997 and died in Seoul in 2010.

SEOUL (AFP) — North Korea on Wednesday labelled South Korean President Park Geun-hye a "psychopath" after she made a speech slamming Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions and defending the deployment of a US anti-missile system.

In her televised address on Monday, Park had stressed that deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system was an act of "self-defence" in response to the North's expanding nuclear weapons programme.

A spokesman for the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country said Park's argument was "preposterous" and unfounded.

"This is just a lame excuse and she should know that no one will be taken in by such sophism of a puppet that can do nothing without an approval of her US master," the spokesman said.

"This is no more than nonsense talked by a psychopath," he added in a statement carried by the North's official KCNA news agency.

North Korea has threatened to take "physical action" against the THAAD deployment, saying any South Korean ports and airfields hosting US military hardware would become a target.

Beijing is also opposed to the move, seeing it as a US bid to flex its military muscle in the region and undermine China's own missile capabilities.

US Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, addressed those concerns during talks on Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng in Beijing.

THAAD is "not a threat in any way to China", Milley told Li according to a US Army statement.

Deploying the system "is a defensive measure to protect South Koreans and Americans from the North Korean ballistic missile threat", he added.

Milley was due to hold talks with top South Korean military officials in Seoul on Wednesday.

The THAAD issue has also been a target of domestic criticism, particularly from those living in the rural South Korean county of Seongju where the first battery will be installed.

Several hundred protestors turned out in Seongju for a visit Wednesday by Defence Minister Han Min-koo, who sought to ease concerns that the system's powerful radar will pose health and environmental hazards and make the district a military target.

Han began by apologising for the lack of prior notice regarding the planned deployment but stressed that defending the South against North Korean aggression was the ultimate priority.

"Please understand [the government's] desperate resolve to protect people's lives," he said.

More than 900 Seongju residents had their heads shaved on Monday as a mark of protest, and many of those were among the demonstrators who greeted Han with anti-THAAD slogans and demands to scrap the deployment.

ISTANBUL — Turkish police searched the offices of a nationwide retail chain and a healthcare and technology company on Tuesday, arresting dozens of people in some of the biggest raids on private businesses since last month's failed coup.

More than 35,000 people have been detained in a massive purge since the July 15 attempted putsch, when a group of rogue soldiers commandeered tanks, warplanes and helicopters in an attempt to overthrow the government.

Around half of those  detained have been placed under formal arrest and tens of thousands more have been suspended in the military, police and civil service. The breadth of the probe has worried the West, which fears President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using it to quash dissent.

Private businesses have also been targeted in what the government describes as a crackdown on followers of Fethullah Gulen, a cleric based in self-imposed exile in the United States, who is blamed by Turkey for the coup.

Police targeted discount supermarket chain A101 and healthcare and technology group Akfa Holdings, on suspicion they gave financial support to Gulen's network, state-run Anadolu Agency said.

Gulen denies involvement in the coup. Washington says it will extradite him to Turkey only if presented with firm evidence. Turkey's foreign minister spoke to US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday about Gulen's extradition, foreign ministry sources said. Kerry is due to visit Turkey this month.

A101, which operates thousands of stores across Turkey, said financial crimes police searched its Istanbul headquarters for six hours on Tuesday morning. It had cooperated with police and its businesses continued to operate, the company said.

A101 said it had no "corporate, financial or trade links" to any illegal group, although it acknowledged that now-defunct Islamic lender Bank Asya had once been a shareholder. The bank was founded by Gulen's followers and later seized by regulators, and is now being wound down.

Private news agency Dogan said police detained A101's chairman, Turgut Aydin, at his home in the eastern Black Sea province of Trabzon. Aydin and his family are also majority owners of the Memorial hospitals group. Some 36,000 people work for his companies.

Anadolu said 50 people were detained in the separate raid at Akfa, including the company's chairman. No one was immediately available for comment at Akfa.

Courthouse raids

Police also searched offices at the main courthouse on the Asian side of Istanbul, according to a courthouse employee, a day after major raids on three courthouses on the European side of the city, which sits on the strait dividing the continents.

"Police are currently in the courthouse. They came in with a list of names. The names were of those who were ordered to be taken into custody, and they are searching the building," the employee told Reuters, declining to be identified.

Police had detention warrants for 83 people at the court, Anadolu reported. A day earlier police detained at least 136 court staff in the raids on courts on the European side of the city.

Erdogan accuses Gulen of harnessing an extensive network of schools, charities and businesses, built up in Turkey and abroad over decades, to infiltrate state institutions and build a "parallel structure" that aimed to take over the country.

Before the failed coup, in which more than 240 people were killed, the authorities had already seized Bank Asya, taken over or closed several media companies and detained businessmen on allegations of funding the cleric's movement.

In a speech to his ruling AK Party deputies in parliament on Tuesday, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim sought to calm public concerns about the purge.

He said it targeted only be those who maintained links to Gulen after December 17, 2013 — the date when police and prosecutors seen as sympathetic to the cleric launched a corruption probe into Erdogan and his inner circle. That event triggered a public rift between Erdogan and Gulen, who had previously been allies.

"Millions of our innocent citizens can relax. If you did not consciously support FETO after December 17, you should not be worried," Yildirim said, using the acronym for "Gulenist Terror Group", as Ankara refers to Gulen's movement. "After December 17 there is no excuse".

The government is also planning to shut down the TIB telecommunications regulator and transfer its powers to its parent, an umbrella regulatory body, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said this week.

The TIB has previously been targeted in the government crackdown against Gulen. In January 2015, police detained 23 of its employees in an investigation into allegations of illegal wiretapping targeting Erdogan and other top officials.

The government also plans further dismissals in the foreign and interior ministries, as well as the coastguard and military, Kurtulmus said.