Yaoundé (AFP) - Cameroon has condemned 89 suspected Boko Haram operatives to death for "terrorism" since the start of 2015, a judicial source said Friday.

The sentences come after Cameroon adopted a controversial anti-terror law in December 2014 allowing capital punishment for those found guilty of carrying out terror attacks or complicity in terrorism.

Those convicted were mostly arrested on Cameroon's border with Nigeria, the birthplace of the extremist group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group.

Cameroon already had the death penalty for murder, but there have been no executions since the mid-1980s.

Almost 850 people suspected of links to Boko Haram are being held in prison in Maroua, capital of the far north of Cameroon.

They include Nigerians and Chadians as well as Cameroonians, according to regional newspaper L'Oeil du Sahel.

Boko Haram violence has left at least 17,000 dead and forced more than 2.6 million from their homes since 2009.

And nearly 1,200 people have been killed since the Nigerian fighters took their offensive into Cameroon in 2013, according to government figures.

In recent years, Boko Haram fighters slipped back and forth across the frontier, often using Cameroon's remote north as a rear base, acquiring arms, vehicles and supplies there.

But since late November, the Cameroon army has carried out operations in several border areas aimed at weakening the Nigerian jihadists.

As a result, the insurgents turned away from direct confrontation with the military in favour of suicide attacks, increasingly carried out by women and girls.

The United States has significantly stepped up its bombing campaign in Afghanistan to roll back the Daesh terrorists who have expanded their territory outside of Iraq and Syria, according to a report.

US drones and warplanes carried out about three times more strikes in January and February in Afghanistan– dropping a total of 251 bombs and missiles - than they did during the same period last year, the New York Times reported, citing Air Force data.

The widening campaign has been in response to a decision by US President Barack Obama to give military commanders more leeway to launch airstrikes against Daesh positions in several Afghan provinces.

It also comes a little more than a year after Obama declared an end to all combat missions in Afghanistan, sparking a debate in Washington whether the administration should respond to every emerging Daesh threat.

American and Afghan commanders say the strikes have dealt a blow to the terror organization, but they are more concerned about a resurgent Taliban that is stronger now than at any point since 2001.

Under the existing rules of engagement, US commanders can order airstrikes against the Taliban only when the militants pose a direct threat to US forces or Afghan troops.

The US military, however, has been given more latitude in targeting Daesh forces.

General John Campbell, who commanded American forces in Afghanistan until earlier this month, said that broader authority has enabled him to take more aggressive measures against Daesh.

Campbell has in recent weeks asked the White House to give him similar authority to strike the Taliban.

The top general recently told soldiers at a US base in Afghanistan that Taliban militants believe “they are operating from a position of strength” in the absence of a robust US military presence in the country.

“So the only thing I can affect is my authority to strike different groups and my authority to provide different enablers to the Afghans,” he said in a recent interview with the Washington Post.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Friday that President Obama has told him and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford that he wanted to see Daesh defeated by the end of his term in office.

“That’s what he said he wants,” Carter said at an event hosted byPolitico. “He said, ‘Get this done as soon as possible. I’d like to not leave this to my successor.’”

Carter and Dunford are in the process of making recommendations to Obama that would expand the US military’s authority in Afghanistan.

Retreating from a major campaign pledge to end the war in Afghanistan, Obama announced late last year that he would keep thousands of US troops in the country past 2016.


(PRESS TV)

America behind countries like China: Trump

Sat Mar 19, 2016 1:47PM

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Infinity Event Center on March 18, 2016 in Salt Lake City, Utah. (AFP)

US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has criticized America’s standing as a ‘third world country’ which is ‘behind China.’

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Beirut (AFP) - A wave of Russian air strikes killed at least 39 civilians on Saturday in Raqa, the main stronghold of the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria, a monitoring group said.

At least five children and seven women were among the dead in IS's de facto capital in the north of the war-ravaged country, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It said the attacking aircraft were Russian.

Five members of IS's self-styled police force were also killed and 60 people were wounded, some critically, according to the monitor, which relies on a network of sources on the ground.

The air raids came a day after 16 civilians were killed in strikes on the same city.

"What is clear is that their goal is to try to paralyse IS and to stop it from deploying reinforcements from Raqa to the Palmyra area," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

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Islamic State group fighters established the capital of their self-declared caliphate in Raqa after …

IS seized Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the "Pearl of the Desert", last May.

In September, satellite images confirmed that Palmyra's famed Temple of Bel had been targeted by IS as part of a campaign to destroy pre-Islamic monuments, tombs and statues it considers idolatrous.

UN experts said the main building of the temple as well as a row of columns had been destroyed.

In recent weeks, Syrian troops backed by the Russian air force have been pressing an advance to try to reclaim the ancient city.

- 18 IS fighters killed -

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Russian air force pilots walk on the tarmac upon their arrival from Syria at an airbase in southern …

On Saturday alone, at least 18 IS fighters were killed in at least 70 strikes on the Palmyra area, the Observatory said, as clashes pitted loyalist troops against jihadists on the ground.

Russia, a key backer of the Syrian regime, on Monday ordered the withdrawal of most of its armed forces from Syria, but continues to strike jihadist targets, particularly around Palmyra.

Senior Russian commander Sergei Rudskoi on Friday said Russian jets were flying around two dozen bombing sorties daily to back up the Syrian government's bid to recapture Palmyra.

"Government troops and patriotic forces with the support of the Russian air force are carrying out a large-scale operation to liberate Palmyra," he told journalists in Moscow.

Roughly 1,800 Syrian civilians including more than 400 children have been killed in Russian air strikes since Moscow launched its aerial campaign on September 30, according to the Observatory.

Moscow has denied claims that its air force has repeatedly hit civilian and non-jihadist rebel targets.

More than 270,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

An unprecedented ceasefire negotiated by Russia and the United States has largely held since February 27 but the truce does not apply to jihadists.

UN mediator Staffan de Mistura has urged Damascus to make concrete proposals in the coming days on a political transition, following a week of peace talks in Geneva.

But a source close to the regime said Saturday there had been "no progress" at the meetings and criticised the UN envoy for putting pressure on the Syrian government.