Ukraine has put its armed forces on full combat alert and warned Moscow that military intervention will lead to war after the upper house of Russia’s parliament gave President Vladimir Putin the authority to invade.


After a more than three-hour meeting with security and defence chiefs, Oleksander Turchinov, Ukraine’s interim president, said there was no justification for what he called Russian aggression against his country.

Turchinov said that authorities had boosted security around the country’s nuclear facilities, airports and other “strategic facilities.”

Standing beside Turchinov, Arseny Yatseniuk, Ukraine’s prime minister, said he had urged Russia to return its troops to base in the Crimea region during a phone call with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister, and called for talks.

“I am convinced that Russia will not launch an intervention as this would mean war and the end of all relations between the two countries,” he said.

Putin and US President Barack Obama held a 90-minute telephone call on Saturday, in which the Russian president told his counterpart that Russia reserves the right to protect its interests and those of Russian speakers if there is violence in east Ukraine or Crimea, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported.

The Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to back a proposal by Putin to use “the armed forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine until the normalisation of the socio-political situation in that country”.

Summit boycott

The developments come after Sergiy Aksyonov, the pro-Russian prime minister of the Crimea region, appealed to Putin for help to ensure peace in the semi-autonomous region where unidentified gunmen believed to be Russian are guarding state buildings, including the local parliament.

The region has a majority of ethnic Russians and its administration is defying the new Kiev government that ousted Moscow-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.

The 15-member UN Security Council held emergency talks in New York on Saturday to discuss the crisis.

Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said that Russia’s parliamentary approval was “as dangerous as it is destabilising” and accused Moscow of acting without legal basis.

“The message is pull back your forces. Let us engage in political dialogue, engage with the Ukrainian government which is reaching out to you for that dialogue.”

In a statement, US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “The United States condemns the Russian Federation’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory, and its violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity … This action is a threat to the peace and security of Ukraine, and the wider region.”

Washington has said it will suspend participation in preparatory meeting for the G8 summit in Sochi, Russia, planned for this summer, the Reuters news agency reported.

In a statement issued after an emergency cabinet meeting on Saturday, Canada’s prime minister said he had also suspended his country’s participation.

Stephen Harper said: “Canada has suspended its engagement in preparations for the G-8 Summit, currently planned for Sochi, and the Canadian ambassador in Moscow is being recalled for consultations.”

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary general, said NATO ambassadors will meet in Brussels on Sunday to discuss the situation in Ukraine.

Rasmussen tweeted on Saturday: “North Atlantic Council will meet tomorrow followed by NATO-Ukraine Commission.”

A Kremlin statement quoted by RIA said that Putin has not yet taken a decision on sending troops to Ukraine.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Russia to refrain from deploying its armed forces in Ukraine and to abide by international law.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the immediate restoration of calm in Ukraine as the Security Council held emergency talks on the escalating crisis.

 by: THEWILL_
U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Russia against any military intervention in Ukraine after the country’s new leaders accused Moscow of deploying forces in the Crimea region.

A week after Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in Kiev, armed men took control of two airports in Crimea on Friday in what Kiev described as an invasion and occupation by Moscow’s forces in a region with an ethnic Russian majority.

Acting President Oleksander Turchinov said Russia, which has a naval base in Crimea, was following a scenario like the one before it went to war with fellow former Soviet republic Georgia in 2008 over two breakaway regions.

The crisis, which began after Yanukovich triggered protests by spurning a political and trade deal with the European Union, is stoking tensions in a geopolitical battle between East and West that has echoes of the Cold War.

“We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” Obama told reporters in Washington.

“The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.”

Any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be “deeply destabilizing,” he said.

Obama and European leaders would consider skipping a G8 summit this summer in the Russian city of Sochi if Moscow intervened militarily, a senior U.S. official said.

The G8 includes the world’s seven leading industrial nations and Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin considers hosting such events as a way to show how far Russia has come since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Washington’s relations with Moscow are already cool because of differences over the conflict in Syria, Putin’s record on human rights and Russia’s decision to harbor former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, dismissed the criticism, saying any movements of its forces in Crimea were in line with agreements with Ukraine.

YANUKOVICH DEFIANT

Gunmen have taken over the regional parliament in Crimea, and control the main international airport and a military airfield on the strategic Black Sea peninsula.

A representative of Acting President Turchinov said 13 Russian aircraft had landed with 150 personnel on each plane. The Ukrainian leadership also said more than 10 Russian military helicopters flew over Crimea, and Russian servicemen blockaded a unit of the Ukrainian border guard near the port city of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

A local television station reported that another military aerodrome had been taken over by armed men overnight, but the report was not independently confirmed.

Phone lines have been severed in some areas and witnesses say they have seen armored personnel carriers on the move.

There has been no bloodshed and no military clashes despite a warning by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry that “radical forces” planned to disarm Ukrainian military units in Crimea.

Ukraine’s leaders say about 100 people were killed, some of them by police snipers, during protests in the Ukrainian capital Kiev that began last November.

Yanukovich, 63, resurfaced in southern Russia on Friday after a week on the run, defiantly telling a packed room of journalists that he was still leader of the sprawling former Soviet republic of 46 million.

He said he had not ordered police to open fire on the protesters in Kiev and that Russia should use all means at its disposal to stop what he described as chaos in Ukraine.

“Russia cannot be indifferent, cannot be a bystander watching the fate of as close a partner as Ukraine,” Yanukovich told a news conference. “Russia must use all means at its disposal to end the chaos and terror gripping Ukraine.”

He said he had not seen Putin since fleeing to Russia but had spoken to him by telephone and was surprised the Russian leader was not more vocal on the crisis.

Putin has said nothing in public about the crisis since Yanukovich was ousted a week ago.

A Kremlin statement offered conciliatory remarks about international cooperation over heavily indebted Ukraine but Russian officials have blamed the crisis on the West and accused it of meddling in what Moscow considers its back yard. Loss of influence in Ukraine is a bitter blow for Putin.

COOPERATION OVER FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

The Russian Foreign ministry said on its Facebook page that Russia’s Consulate General in Crimea would hand out Russian passports to the servicemen of Ukraine’s now-disbanded Berkut riot police. Protesters had accused the Berkut of firing the live bullets that killed dozens of protesters in Kiev.

Moscow has also promised to defend the interests of its citizens in Ukraine. It has said it will not intervene by force, but its rhetoric has echoed the run-up to its war in Georgia, where it said ethnic Russians in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia needed protection.

Any armed confrontation in Crimea would have major global repercussions.

Moves are under way, however, to prop up Ukraine’s faltering economy. The new Ukrainian leadership has said the country needs about $35 billion over the next two years to stave off bankruptcy. It said on Friday it hoped to get financial aid soon and was prepared to fulfill the reform criteria of the International Monetary Fund, which will visit Kiev next week.

The fate of a $15-billion Russian bailout package is unclear, with only about $3 billion of it released so far.

REUTERS

BY UMAR YUSUF

YOLA – Piqued by the incessant attacks by Boko Haram insurgents in the states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, Gov Murtala Nyako, has called for a more proactive measures to stem the tide.

Nyako told newsmen in Yola Thursday over recent attacks in the affected states, that the authorities needed to do more to allay the fears of the public who have started getting tired of excuses.
A survivor of the Yobe massacre. Courtesy: Sahara Reporters.

A survivor of the Yobe massacre. Courtesy: Sahara Reporters.

The Governor revealed that people were agitated and might start coming out to demonstrate their displeasure with the ways things were deteriorating in the affected areas.

According to him, the authorities needed to know the people funding the insurgents and why the steady attacks on the populace even with the state of emergency in place.

The names of the students who lost their lives in the Tuesday attack on Federal Government College, FGC, Bunu Yadi, Yobe State by Boko Haram militants have been revealed.
43 students were killed. Hostels, classrooms and more than 40 houses were burnt during the attack.
The attackers reportedly hurled explosives into student hostels, sprayed gunfire into rooms and hacked some students to death. Others were burned alive.
Adamu Garba, who teaches at a secondary school attached to the college, said the attackers first set ablaze the college administrative block and then moved to the hostels, where they locked students in and started firebombing the buildings.
At one hostel, he said, “students were trying to climb out of the windows and they were slaughtered like sheep by the terrorists who slit their throats. Others who ran were gunned down”. He said students who could not escape were burned alive.
Many of the students are still unaccounted for. Below are the names of 24 students confirmed dead.
Sale Mamiski, Musa Muhammad, Sani A. Audu, Usman Faltu, Garba Jibo, Hussani Mari, Mailam Ali, Goni Ali Babamai, Ali Ayuba, Peter John, Abba Mohammed, Aliyu Yala, Abba Adam, Hamidu Bala, Suleiman Lawan Guji, Abbas Ibrahim, Inusa Ali, Rukaya Gaji, Usman Saleh Idris, Auwal Adam, Usman Abba Kaku, Musa Yalti Buba, Sadisu Dauda, Aisha Audu Goni

By Ifreke Inyang
Barely 24 hours after gunmen suspected to be members of the Boko Haram sect killed over 43 students in Yobe State, the dreaded insurgents Thursday killed no fewer than 37 persons in three separate attacks in Adamawa State.

Chairman of the Madagali local government Area of Adamawa state, Maina Ularamu confirmed the sad incident. He said, “a large number of militants carried out three separate attacks on Shuwa and Kirchinga in my local government area and on Michika in neighbouring Michika (district)”.
“The gunmen divided themselves into three groups and separately attacked the three locations,” he told AFP.

It was gathered that in Shuwa, several buildings were razed, including a Christian theological college and a section of a secondary school.

A local resident, Kwaje Bitrus, told newsmen that three bodies were recovered from the seminary and a total of 20 were killed in and around the village.

In Kirchinga, a resident who gave his name as Samuel Garba said the gunmen were all dressed in military uniform.

“The gunmen killed eight people in our village and burnt many houses,” he added.

“Four people have so far been confirmed dead in Michika,” another Abdul Kassim, a resident of the area said.

In a statement, the military confirmed the attacks on multiple communities in the state, but said that only one soldier and three civilians were killed. Troops repelling the raids also killed six suspected Islamists, according to the statement.

The military further claimed that the militants, “in desperation for money and food, looted and burnt banks (and) shops”, and were trying to escape across the Cameroon border.

by: foluso

In the early hours of Tuesday, Boko Haram militants stormed the Federal Government College in Buni Yadi, Gujba LGA of Yobe State, killing 29 students.


The police and military have confirmed the incident.

According to some reports, the militants did not use guns in order not to alert the security guards, but instead have slain the victims before burning the school to the ground.

“Some of the students bodies were burned to ashes,” said police commissioner Sanusi Rufai, adding 24 staff quarters, including the adminisstrative block of the college, were razed by the fire.

The exact number of casualties is yet unclear, but some sources say there are no less than 29 bodies of male victims.

Military spokesman in Yobe State Eli Lazarus disclosed that suspected Boko Haram insurgents attacked a students’ hostel at the Federal Government College in the town of Buni Yadi around 2:00 a.m.

The latest attack is the fourth recorded on schools in Yobe State. GSS Damaturu, GSS Mamudo and College of Agriculture, Gujba were attacked last year.

More details soon.



Source: Reuters

AP – Christian militiamen killed at least 70 people in the remote southwest of Central African Republic, at one point ordering a group of Muslims to lie on the ground and shooting them one by one, witnesses said Monday.
The militiamen, known as the anti-Balaka, slaughtered the Muslims in the village of Guen earlier this month, a Catholic priest, the Rev. Rigobert Dolongo, who helped bury the bodies, told The Associated Press. At least 27 people were slain in the first day of the attack, while 43 others were killed on the second day, he said.
Ibrahim Aboubakar, 22, said the anti-Balaka stormed Guen and killed his two older brothers after they were heard speaking in Arabic.
“Later that day they rounded up dozens of people and forced them all to lie down on their stomachs. Then they shot them one by one,” he said from the refuge of a Catholic church in Carnot, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away, where he is among 800 seeking shelter from attack.
At least two other families who survived the attack are here now, including Gisma Ahmed, who is now a widow at 18 with two young children. Sitting in the shade breastfeeding a 4-month-old while her 3-year-old daughter played nearby, she could only weep when asked about the killings. Relatives said that her husband was shot while trying to flee.
Hundreds of Muslims remain in Guen, hiding in the town’s Catholic church and also at the imam’s home.
Those Muslims still in Guen appealed by telephone for African peacekeepers in Carnot to rescue them, according to two Muslim residents who insisted on anonymity because they feared for their lives. They also confirmed that heavily armed anti-Balaka were still in control of the village Tuesday. The local commander for the peacekeeping mission said he needed permission from his supervisors in the capital, Bangui, to go to Guen.
Like much of the violence in Central African Republic, the true toll from the attack on Guen may never be known. Most survivors fled deep into the rural bush, hiking to safety in towns further west.
News of the massacre came nearly three months after Central African Republic’s political crisis erupted into violence between the country’s Christian and Muslim communities, leaving more than 1,000 dead in Bangui alone in a matter of days. Many hoped the crisis would stabilize after the Muslim rebel president agreed to step down and go into exile, clearing the way for elections by early next year.
However, both Muslim rebels and the Christian fighters are implicated in a growing number of attacks fanning out far from the capital all the way to the country’s southwest near the border with Cameroon. Human rights groups have documented hundreds of deaths since early January, when the Muslim rebel government crumbled and Christian fighters sought to avenge the regime’s abuses. Tens of thousands have fled for their lives to neighboring countries, leaving some towns in Central African Republic without any Muslim residents. Before the outbreak of violence Muslim’s made up about 15 percent of the country’s 4.6 million people.

-AFP

SAN FRANCISCO, (THEWILL) - The Borno State Police Command has cleared the air on Wednesday morning Boko Haram attack on Bama, saying not less than 47 persons were killed in the incident.

The Police however said that the death toll could rise further.

The attack came barely nine hours after Governor Kashim Shettima's convoy passed through the town while returning from Izge where about 106 persons were slaughtered by the Boko Haram on Saturday.

The State Commissioner of Police, Mr.
Lawan Tanko, who confirmed the casualty figure,however said 'that was what we have gotten so far as at afternoon.

' He added: 'Every landmark building, the Local Government secretariat, the State Low-cost Housing Estate, schools and several other buildings, as well as part of the Shehu's palace were destroyed.

'As at the last time I spoke to my DPO in Bama, we have had 47 dead casualty recorded, while several number of persons were confirmed injured, some already in hospitals there.

I have instructed my men to liaise with the hospital if we can have a figure on the dead casualties.

' The Boko Haram gunmen had stormed the town in the wee hours of Wednesday when the residents were still sleeping, attacking them with sophisticated weapons including Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and destroy all public structures including the palace of the Shehu of Bama.