At least 10 hurt in southern Turkey blast: report

ANKARA - At least 10 people were hurt in a blast Tuesday at a car park in an office building in the southern Turkish city of Antalya, local media reported.

City mayor Menderes Turel told the broadcaster NTV that "10 to 12 people were slightly injured by flying glass" in the explosion at the Antalya Chamber of Commerce and Industry building. The blast occurred at 8.50am (0550 GMT).

Turel told CNN Turk channel the blast was being investigated and it was "too early" to make assumptions as to the cause.

"The blast may not be a terror attack... we must wait for official information," Turel said.

Over the past year, Turkey has suffered a series of attacks blamed on the Islamic State jihadist group and Kurdish militants.

TV images showed a wrecked, burned-out car and smashed glass nearby. At least four cars nearby were also damaged, Dogan news agency said.

The incident occurred 11 days after three rockets hit a roadside fishmonger in the popular tourist region, but without causing casualties.

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Assad says civil war has cost Syria USD200 billion

MOSCOW - The brutal five-year conflict in Syria has cost the country over $200 billion (176 billion euros), President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview released Wednesday, insisting Damascus would look to Russia, China and Iran to rebuild the nation.

"The economic damage and the damage to infrastructure exceeds $200 billion," Assad told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

"Economic issues can be settled immediately, when the situation stabilizes in Syria, but rehabilitating the infrastructure will take a long time," Assad said in comments translated into Russian.

The Syrian strongman said any future contracts to help rebuild the country would be handed out to companies from nations that had backed Damascus during the bloody conflict.

"Of course we expect that this process will be based on three main countries that supported Syria during this crisis -- Russia, China and Iran," Assad said.

Russia has deployed its military to Syria to back up troops loyal to longstanding ally Assad with a bombing campaign, and the Syrian leader said Moscow's forces would be needed in the country for some time to come.

"We need their presence as they are effective in the fight against terrorism even if the situation in terms of security in Syria is stabilizing," Assad said, adding that Russia's bases were also required to maintain "balance in the world".

Moscow announced it was withdrawing part of its forces from Syria on March 14 after a ceasefire between Damascus and moderate opposition saw fighting drop.

Russia has, however, continued air strikes against Islamic State jihadists and played a key role in helping Assad's forces reclaim the ancient city of Palmyra at the weekend.

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ISIS bombings near Syria Shiite shrine kill 71

BEIRUT - Bombings claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group killed 71 people and wounded dozens more on Sunday near a revered Shiite shrine outside the Syrian capital Damascus, a monitor said.

The blasts, which came as the UN's Syria envoy struggled to convene fresh peace talks in Geneva from which IS is excluded, tore a massive crater in the road, overturning and mangling cars and a bus and shattering windows.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said 71 people were killed in two blasts near the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, including five children.

The first blast was a suicide car bomb, followed by a second suicide bomber who detonated his explosive belt when a crowd gathered, the monitoring group said.

Syrian state media earlier reported more than 50 people killed and over 100 injured in what it described as three blasts.

Official news agency SANA said the first blast was caused by a car bomb that detonated at a bus station near the shrine, which both Iran and Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah have vowed to defend.

It said two suicide bombers then set off their explosive belts when people gathered at the scene.

An AFP photographer said the explosions damaged the facade of a nearby building, scorching all of its six storeys.

Sayyida Zeinab, south of Damascus, contains the grave of a granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed and is particularly revered as a pilgrimage site by Shiite Muslims.

It has continued to attract pilgrims from Syria and beyond, particularly Shiites from Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq, throughout Syria's nearly five-year brutal conflict.

Sunni Muslim extremist groups such as IS consider Shiites to be heretics and have frequently targeted them in attacks.

In the aftermath of Sunday morning's attack, smoke rose from the twisted carcasses of more than a dozen cars and a bus, as ambulances ferried away the wounded and firefighters worked to put out blazes.

In a statement circulated on social media, IS claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying two of its members had detonated suicide bombs.

"Two soldiers of the caliphate carried out martyrdom operations in a den of the infidels in the Sayyida Zeinab area, killing nearly 50 and injuring around 120," it said.

The area around the shrine has been targeted in previous bomb attacks, including in February 2015 when two suicide attacks killed four people and wounded 13 at a checkpoint.

- UN envoy meets opposition -

Also that month, a blast ripped through a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims headed to Sayyida Zeinab, killing at least nine people, in an attack claimed by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

The area around the shrine is heavily secured with regime checkpoints set up hundreds of metres (yards) away to prevent vehicles from approaching.

According to the Observatory, members of Lebanon's powerful Shiite group Hezbollah are among those deployed at the checkpoints.

Hezbollah is a staunch ally of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and has dispatched fighters to bolster his troops against the uprising that began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

Early on, the group cited the threat to Sayyida Zeinab as the motivation for its intervention in Syria's conflict.

More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which has also displaced upwards of half the country's population internally and abroad.

It has evolved into a complex, multi-front war involving rebels, jihadists, regime and allied forces, Kurds and air strikes by both government ally Russia and a US-led coalition battling against IS.

In a new effort to find a political solution to the conflict, UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has invited regime and opposition delegations to Geneva for fresh talks.

But while the opposition agreed to travel to Geneva after days of delays, it has so far refused to engage in indirect talks with the government.

It is demanding that UN Security Council resolutions on ending sieges and protecting civilians be implemented first.

On Sunday, the UN envoy held informal talks with the main opposition delegation, saying afterwards that he remained "optimistic and determined".

The Damascus delegation's chief negotiator, Syria's UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari, accused the opposition of being "not serious" about the talks.

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Austria police step up security amid terror warning

VIENNA - Austrian police said Saturday they stepped up security in Vienna and other cities after receiving a warning of possible attacks during the holiday season.

"In the lead-up to Christmas, a friendly intelligence service sent a warning to numerous European capitals saying potential bomb or gun attacks could take place in areas with large crowds between Christmas and New Year," Vienna police said in a statement.

The warning included "several names of potential attackers" but investigations have so far yielded no concrete results, the statement said.

In response to the alert, police officials said they would increase security at public events and tighten controls on roads in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria.

The warning comes after jihadist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks in Paris on November 13.

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British toll in Tunisia attack to rise to 'around 30'

LONDON, United Kingdom - The number of Britons killed in a gun massacre in Tunisia is expected to rise to "around 30", officials said on Monday, as a British military plane evacuated some of the injured.

Prime Minister David Cameron promised to mount a "full investigation" into Friday's attack on a beach resort near the city of Sousse with 16 British detectives already in Tunisia to aid the police there.

Hundreds more British police were sent to interview tourists who have been returning to Britain from Tunisia, some of whom might have witnessed the beach massacre claimed by the Islamic State group.

"We will not give up our way of life and cower in the face of terrorism," Cameron said, underlining the need both to fight IS jihadists in Iraq and Syria and to tackle non-violent extremists in Britain.

Britain is to hold a minute's silence on Friday for the one-week anniversary of the attack, the worst for the country since four suicide bombings in London on July 7, 2005 killed 52 people.

US President Barack Obama expressed condolences in a phone call to Cameron, and said his country "stood firmly by" Britain, a spokeswoman for the prime minister said.

Flags were flown at half mast over Cameron's Downing Street office in sympathy with the victims, and amid fears of a heightened risk of attack, Britain is to hold a major emergency response exercise in London over the next two days.

The confirmed death toll of Britons is currently at 18 out of the 38 foreign tourists who were mowed down by a Kalashnikov-toting gunman, identified as 23-year-old student Seifeddine Rezgui.

Tunisia says four other victims have been identified as tourists from Germany, Portugal, Ireland and Belgium. Ireland said Sunday three of its citizens were killed.

A Royal Air Force (RAF) Boeing C17 plane evacuated four injured Britons on Monday and all 25 of the British wounded -- out of a total of 39 hurt -- will have been brought back by Tuesday, officials said.

Among the Britons killed was former Birmingham City footballer Denis Thwaites, 70, and his wife Elaine, the club announced on Twitter, saying it was "deeply shocked and saddened".

The RAF is ready to repatriate victims' bodies using in accordance with families' wishes using C17 and C130 military transport planes, according to the prime minister.

The government is pressing Tunisia to allow access for British experts to speed victims' identification.

Cameron said he shared the "frustration" of families waiting for news but noted the difficulty of the process as many tourists had not been carrying identification or were too disfigured.

Tour operators have laid on flights to evacuate tourists and the Association of British Travel Agents said about half of an estimated 20,000 British tourists in Tunisia at the time of the attack were now home.

British interior minister Theresa May travelled to Tunisia on Monday along with junior foreign minister Tobias Ellwood, who himself lost his brother in a terror attack on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002.

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Islamic State claims attack in Texas

The Islamic State jihadist group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for its first attack on US soil, a shooting at an event in Texas showcasing cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed that left the gunmen dead.

"Two of the soldiers of the caliphate executed an attack on an art exhibit in Garland, Texas, and this exhibit was portraying negative pictures of the Prophet Mohammed," the jihadist group said.

"We tell America that what is coming will be even bigger and more bitter, and that you will see the soldiers of the Islamic State do terrible things," the group announced.

It marked the first time the extremist group, which has captured swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq, claimed to have carried out an attack in the US.

US police said two men drove up to the conference centre Sunday in Garland, where the right-wing American Freedom Defense Initiative was organising the controversial cartoon contest, and began shooting at a security guard, who was wounded in the ankle.

Garland police officers then shot and killed both men.

According to US media reports, the two suspected jihadists were Elton Simpson, 31, and Nadir Soofi, 34, who shared an apartment in Phoenix, Arizona.

Simpson was being investigated by the FBI over alleged plans to travel to Somalia to wage holy war, court records show.

Many Muslims find drawings of the prophet to be disrespectful or outright blasphemous, and such cartoons have been cited by Islamists as motivation in previous attacks.

According to court records seen by AFP, Simpson was sentenced to three years' probation in 2011 after FBI agents presented a court with taped conversations between him and an informant discussing travelling to Somalia to join "their brothers" waging holy war.

The prosecution was unable to prove that Simpson had committed a terror-related offense, but did establish he had lied to investigators when he denied having discussed going to Somalia.

The White House said that President Barack Obama had been briefed on the investigation, which Texas police said was ongoing.

"There is no form of expression that justifies an act of violence," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

'Bad choice'

The American Freedom Defense Initiative, a group listed by civil rights watchdog the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group, had organized the event, which drew about 200 people.

At the event, attended by Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders and AFDI co-founder Pamela Geller, supporters held an exhibition of entries to a competition to draw caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

AFDI had offered a $10,000 prize for the winner of the contest, which was billed as a "free speech" event.

Commentators were quick to draw parallels to the January mass shooting at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris that killed 12 people and wounded 11 more.

But the magazine's film critic, Jean-Baptiste Thoret, the magazine's film critic who only avoided the attack because he had been late for work said "there is absolutely no comparison."

"You have a, as you said, a sort of anti-Islamic movement (in Texas)... the problem of Charlie Hebdo is absolutely not the same," Thoret told Charlie Rose on PBS, according to an advance transcript released on Monday.

Gerard Biard, chief editor of the magazine, added: "We don’t organize contests. We just do our work. We comment on the news. When Mohammed jumps out of the news, we draw Mohammed.

"But if he didn’t, we didn’t. We don’t... We fight racism. And we have nothing to do with these people."

On Twitter, jihadist Abu Hussain Al-Britani, who extremist monitoring group SITE identified as British IS fighter Junaid Hussain, described the gunmen as "two of our brothers."

But Simpson's father Dunston told ABC News that his son, who he said worked in a dentist's office, simply "made a bad choice."

"We are Americans and we believe in America," Dunston Simpson said. "What my son did reflects very badly on my family."

'Just shocked'

Wilders told AFP in an e-mail that he was concerned he may have been targeted because he, like one of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed in January, is on a hit list circulated by Al-Qaeda supporters.

"I am shocked. I just spoke for half an hour about the cartoons, Islam and freedom of speech and I had just left the premises," he said.

"This is an attack on the liberties of all of us."

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Europe on high terror alert

Europe remained on high alert Sunday as the suspected mastermind of a jihadist cell in Belgium remained at large and anti-Islamist rallies were blocked by nervous authorities in Germany and France.

Amid the heightened tensions, the second gunman in the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack was given a secretive burial in an unmarked grave near Paris late on Saturday, designed to ensure it did not become "a pilgrimage site" for radical Islamists.

Meanwhile, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, considered the brains behind the cell plotting to kill Belgian police, was still on the run days after the group was busted by intelligence services.

DNA tests showed the 27-year-old was not among suspects arrested in Athens and is still at large, Belgium's Justice Minister Koen Geens told VRT television.

German police banned a rally by the anti-Islamic PEGIDA movement and other open-air gatherings planned for Monday in the eastern city of Dresden, saying there was a "concrete threat" of an attack against its leadership.

The PEGIDA marches have grown steadily since they began in October and drew a record 25,000 people last Monday in the wake of the Paris attacks that left 17 people dead.

The group claimed the threat came from the Islamic State group based in Syria and Iraq, with local media reporting that PEGIDA's most prominent leader Lutz Bachmann was the target.

Also on Sunday, a French court prevented a rally by anti-Islamist groups in Paris on the grounds that they were promoting Islamophobia.

Discreet burials

Cherif Kouachi, one of two brothers who killed 12 people in the attack on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7, was buried in a cemetery in Gennevilliers, a day after the funeral of his older brother Said in the northeastern city of Reims.

Cherif's family, including his widow, kept away from the funeral, the mayor's office said.

The brothers were shot dead by police after a three-day manhunt following their attack on Charlie Hebdo, which had enraged many Muslims around the world with its repeated publication of cartoons lampooning Islam's Prophet Mohammed.

Anger erupted in a string of majority Muslim countries after the magazine responded to the decimation of its staff by running another caricature last week, showing the prophet under the headline "All is forgiven".

The worst unrest was in Niger, where at least 10 people were killed and eight churches torched over two days of rioting.

Around 1,000 youths wielding iron bars, clubs and axes rampaged through the capital on Saturday, hurling rocks at police who responded with tear gas.

Charlie Hebdo's chief editor has defended the cartoons.

"Every time we draw a cartoon of Mohammed, every time we draw a cartoon of prophets, every time we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of religion," Gerard Biard told NBC's "Meet the Press" programme.

The weekly has sold 2.7 million copies of the post-killings "survivors' issue" in France alone and said it would extend its print run to seven million copies -- up from only 60,000 normally.

President Francois Hollande said France was committed to "freedom of expression" and people should not change their habits since "to do so would be to yield to terrorism".

But a poll published in Le Journal du Dimanche found 42 percent of French people thought publications should avoid running cartoons of Mohammed, and 50 percent favoured limiting freedom of expression on the Internet and social networks.

A memorial rally was due to be held in Paris on Sunday for policewoman Clarissa Jean-Philippe, who was gunned down by Amedy Coulibaly, another Islamist gunman who claimed to be working with the Kouachi brothers and was also shot dead by police.

He had killed four Jews in a siege at a kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9.

French investigators were focusing on 12 people detained Friday and being questioned over "possible logistical support" they may have given to the Paris gunmen, sources said.

Britain will hold a meeting on Thursday of the coalition against the Islamic State group, which one of the Paris gunmen claimed to represent, hosted by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

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Belgium foils 'terrorist' plot; dozens arrested

European nations arrested dozens of Islamist suspects Friday as Belgium said it had smashed a "terrorist" cell planning to kill police officers and France pursued fresh leads on last week's Paris attacks.

The raids renewed fears about the thousands of young Europeans believed to have gone to the Middle East to fight with the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda-linked groups before coming home to launch attacks.

Two suspected jihadists were shot dead in a fierce gunbattle with police during an anti-terror raid in the eastern Belgian town of Verviers, near the German border, on Thursday night, prosecutors said.

Police arrested 13 people during a series of raids across Belgium, five of whom were later charged with "participating in the activities of a terrorist group", federal prosecutors' spokesman Eric Van der Sijpt told AFP.

He earlier told a news conference that the group, some of whom had recently returned from Syria, was "on the verge of carrying out terrorist attacks to kill police officers on public roads and in police stations."

Police found four Kalashnikov rifles, explosives, ammunition and communications equipment during the raids, along with police uniforms.

Jihadist Twitter accounts later identified the two dead men as Radwan Haqawi and Tareq Jadoun and published what it said was a photo of them in Syria. Belgian authorities did not confirm their identities.

Two other Belgians were arrested in France after allegedly fleeing the raids and were headed towards Italy, police sources said. Belgium has asked for their extradition.

Belgian prosecutors said there were no immediate links with last week's Islamist attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, in which 17 people died.

French police separately arrested 12 people overnight and questioned them about "possible logistic support" they may have given to the Paris gunmen -- Islamist brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, sources said.

In Germany an alleged leader of a Turkish and Russian group planning to carry out an attack in Syria and the man in charge of financing were arrested in raids on suspected Islamist sites in and around Berlin by more than 200 police officers, officials said.

Security boost
The tide of arrests came as politicians pledged to boost security in the face of what they said was a growing Islamist threat.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said he was ready to call up the army to ensure security in the wake of the raids. He raised the country's terror alert to three on a scale of four.

Jewish schools in Brussels and the port city of Antwerp closed Friday. The raid comes less than a year after four people were shot dead in an attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A Frenchman who fought in Syria has been charged with the murders.

With France still reeling from the attacks which targeted its cherished traditions of free speech, US Secretary of State John Kerry laid wreaths on Friday at both the Charlie Hebdo offices and the Jewish supermarket during a visit to Paris.

French President Francois Hollande meanwhile urged the world to offer a "firm" and "collective" response to the attacks, which drew 1.5 million people into the streets in Paris in their wake along with dozens of world leaders, although the US was not among them.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said during a visit by Prime Minister David Cameron that the United States and Britain would help France "seek the justice that is needed" after the attacks.

Charlie Hebdo, which inflamed Muslims in many countries by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, also laid to rest its editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier, alias cartoonist Charb, on Friday.

International anger over Charlie Hebdo's printing of a new image of Mohammed in its sold-out comeback issue this week continued to rage, with protesters clashing with police outside the French consulate in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

AFP photographer Asif Hassan was shot in the back while covering the protest but appeared to be out of danger following surgery.

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Obama doubles US troops in Iraq in expanding war on IS

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama unveiled Friday plans to send 1,500 additional troops to Iraq to help Baghdad government forces strike back at Islamic State jihadists, roughly doubling the number of US soldiers in the country.

The move extends the US training and advising mission to new areas as Iraqi and Kurdish forces prime themselves to recapture ground lost to the IS group, including in the volatile Anbar province in the west -- where the Iraqi army has been on the retreat against the militants.

The reinforcements were "part of our strategy for strengthening partners on the ground" but would have a "non-combat role," the White House said in a statement.

The United States is already carrying out air strikes against the IS group in Iraq and Syria but officials insisted the decision did not signal "mission creep" towards another all-out ground war.

"They will not be introduced into combat," a senior administration official told reporters.

The US forces will be carrying out the same mission that has been outlined from the start -- to help the Iraqi forces on the ground, backed up by coalition warplanes in the air, the official said.

"The mission is not changing at all for our service members," the administration official said. "We are adding personnel to better carry out the mission."

- Iraq request -

The 1,500 troops will include advisors to help Iraqi forces plan operations and a group of trainers who will be deployed across the country, as Washington steps up the pressure on IS militants who have grabbed large areas of Iraq and Syria in a brutal campaign.

"What these numbers really allow us to do is to have greater reach into different parts of the country to carry out the train and assist mission," the official said.

To funding the growing war effort, Obama also planned to request $5.6 billion from Congress, including $1.6 billion to train and arm the Iraqi forces, officials said.

The additional troops would not deploy until Congress approved the funding.

The White House presented the troop plan only days after Obama's fellow Democrats suffered a sweeping defeat in midterm elections with Republicans gaining full control of Congress.

Republican Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, responded to Obama's funding request by voicing doubts that the president was doing enough to counter the IS group and other extremists.

"I remain concerned that the president’s strategy to defeat ISIL (IS) is insufficient," McKeon said.

Obama opted to send more troops after discussions with commanders and aides over the last several weeks, officials said.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recommended the reinforcements based on a request from the Iraqi government and advice from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, and the head of US Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, who is overseeing the air war against the IS militants, the Pentagon said.

- More to come? -

Officials said they were hopeful that a new Iraqi defense minister would reinvigorate the army, which virtually collapsed earlier this year against the onslaught of the IS group.

The US training will focus on 12 Iraqi brigades -- nine army and three Peshmerga brigades, with training sites located in northern, western, and southern Iraq.

Other countries in the anti-IS coalition would also send troops to help train and advise the Iraqi forces, possibly as many as 700, officials said.

There are now about 1,400 American troops in Iraq, including 600 advisors in Baghdad and Arbil, and 800 troops providing security for the US embassy in the capital and the Baghdad airport.

Obama had previously authorized up to 1,600 troops in Iraq and his decision Friday will raise the maximum troop footprint to 3,100.

US officials would not rule out sending more troops beyond those announced on Friday, but said the prohibition against combat would remain in place.

The US president had resisted keeping troops in Iraq earlier in his term, vowing to end the American presence that began with the 2003 invasion and continued as an occupation through 2011.

Officials had weighed keeping several thousand troops in Iraq after 2011, but talks with the Iraqi government, then led by prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, broke down over the issue of legal immunity, which Washington insisted on and Baghdad declined to provide.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com