Penjaga Perbatasan AS Tewaskan Remaja Meksiko

Pihak berwenang Meksiko telah mengutuk penembakan mati seorang remaja Meksiko oleh penjaga perbatasan Amerika Serikat dan menuntut penyelidikan.

Kementerian luar negeri Meksiko mengatakan pada hari Selasa bahwa anak usia 14 tahun meninggal setelah petugas patroli perbatasan Amerika Serikat melepaskan tembakan dari sisi perbatasan Amerika Serikat pada suatu kelompok yang "melemparkan batu".

"Penggunaan senjata api untuk mengusir serangan dengan batu merupakan penggunaan kekuatan yang tidak proporsional," kata kementerian itu.

Al Jazeera Mariana Sanchez, pelaporan dari Mexico City, kata kementerian luar negeri Meksiko ingin penyelidikan menyeluruh dan transparan dan hukuman bagi mereka di belakang penembakan itu.

Lou Patch, agen patroli perbatasan di El Paso, Texas, dari mana tembakan dilepaskan, menegaskan bahwa setidaknya satu agen melepaskan tembakan dalam insiden Senin dan mengatakan, penyelidikan FBI yang dipimpin sedang berlangsung.

'Assaulted dengan batu'

Patch mengatakan kepada kantor berita AFP bahwa agen adalah "tugas melakukan patroli sepeda" pada sebuah jembatan yang menghubungkan kedua negara ketika mereka "diserang dengan batu oleh sejumlah orang tak dikenal".
"Selama serangan setidaknya satu agen senjata api habis," kata dia

Agen ditempatkan cuti administratif dan "penyelidikan multi-lembaga menyeluruh yang sedang berlangsung", tambahnya.

Departemen luar negeri Amerika mengatakan agen AS menanggapi "sekelompok imigran ilegal diduga dari Mexico".

"Para agen dilaporkan diserang dengan batu oleh sejumlah orang tak dikenal Selama serangan, agen senjata api nya habis, menewaskan salah satu tersangka.. Kami menyesal atas hilangnya nyawa," kata departemen.

Para pejabat Meksiko mengatakan bahwa menurut laporan saksi, para agen AS di sepeda mengejar para pemuda menuju Meksiko dan bahwa dua dari mereka melepaskan tembakan.

kepolisian negara bagian Meksiko sebelumnya telah menyediakan versi yang berbeda dari kejadian, mengatakan anak itu bermain dengan dua pemuda lainnya di jembatan Puente Negro mencakup Rio Grande, menghubungkan Ciudad Juarez ke El Paso.

Ciudad Juarez kantor pengacara-jenderal juga mengatakan para pemuda sedang bermain ketika mereka tersesat ke wilayah AS secara tidak sengaja, dan berlari kembali ke sisi Meksiko setelah terkejut oleh agen-agen AS.

Orangtua korban mengatakan putra mereka tewas di dalam Mexico dan bahwa dia tidak berniat menyeberangi perbatasan.

Yesus Hernandez, sang ayah, mengatakan kepada W Radio bahwa putranya pergi ke jembatan untuk makan siang dengan saudaranya, yang bekerja di dekatnya. Pada satu titik, "lanjutnya ke tepi sungai untuk melihat ke sisi lain".

"Ada banyak anak-anak dan polisi patroli perbatasan ... mulai menembakkan tembakan dan memukul anak saya, bayi saya, dua kali di kepala."

'Kekuatan berlebihan'

kematian remaja datang pada tumit penyelidikan AS ke kematian pemukulan minggu terakhir Hernandez Rojas, ayah Meksiko 42 tahun lima dalam tahanan patroli AS perbatasan di San Diego, California, untuk deportasi penyeberangan perbatasan secara ilegal.

Kementerian luar negeri Meksiko mengatakan kasus orang Meksiko tewas atau terluka dalam insiden yang melibatkan penggunaan kekerasan oleh pihak berwenang AS telah meningkat, "dari lima tahun 2008 hingga 12 tahun 2009 dan 17 sejauh tahun ini".

Peningkatan frekuensi kejadian seperti "mencerminkan peningkatan mengganggu dalam penggunaan kekerasan berlebihan oleh beberapa pihak berwenang di daerah perbatasan" kata kementerian itu.

Sekitar setengah juta orang mencoba untuk menyeberang perbatasan 3.200 km dari Mexico ke Amerika Serikat setiap tahun, menurut angka resmi.

Ketegangan meningkat dalam beberapa bulan terakhir setelah negara-AS dari Arizona melewati imigrasi hukum anti-ilegal yang memberikan kekuasaan otoritas untuk menahan orang, dengan kecurigaan mereka di negara itu secara ilegal. Hukum telah dikritik karena pelanggaran atas hak-hak imigran '.

Afghan Girls Sick in 'Gas Attack'

Up to 45 schoolgirls have been taken to hospital after a suspected gas attack at their high school in Ghazni, a province in eastern Afghanistan.

Police said some of the teenage girls from the Jahan Maleka high school had fallen unconscious after smelling poison gas on Saturday.

"Some of the enemies sprayed poison gas from outside into the high school compound," Ghani Khan, a Ghazni police official, said.

The girls were vomiting and could not stand on their feet when they arrived at the hospital, according to hospital staff, but they were in stable condition after treatment.

"Most of the patients we have received are not in critical condition," Ibrahim Monib, a doctor at the hospital, said.

There have been similar cases of illnesses at girls' schools around Afghanistan.

In separate incidents in Kunduz province in April and May, at least 80 school girls reported symptoms such as headaches, vomiting and shivering after suspected poisoning.

Some suspect groups which oppose education for girls are spraying schools with poison gas.

During Taliban rule, from 1996-2001, girls were banned from attending school.

In parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, particularly in Taliban strongholds, schools for girls still remain closed.

Iraq Disarms Sunni Tribal Militias

Authorities in Iraq have refused to renew weapons permits for thousands of Sunni fighters belonging to Awakening Councils.

A spokesman for the Iraqi military in Diyala province said members of the Awakening Councils, also referred to as the Sahwa, were considered civilians, and "so it is not reasonable to authorise around 10,000 personnel to carry weapons in this province".

But Zuhair al-Chalabi, an Iraqi official in charge of integrating the fighters into the government, said the permits had expired, rather than being withdrawn.

"The Diyala command gave the militiamen special authorisation [to carry arms]," he said. "Those authorisations expired and were withdrawn by the command."

Chalabi said the expiration issue only applied to Sahwa members in Diyala.

Angry reaction

Leaders of the councils, which started in 2006 and helped US-led forces to fight al-Qaeda, responded angrily to the ban.

They threatened to stop co-operating with security forces in Diyala, a mostly Sunni province and one of the most volatile in Iraq.

Khalid al-Luhaibi, head of the Sahwa movement in Diyala, said the order withdrawing weapons permits must be cancelled. He threatened to withdraw his men from checkpoints around the province.

"These weapons are necessary to protect ourselves and to protect the regions under our control," he said. "We will be forced to withdraw to avoid being an easy target for Al-Qaeda if this decision is upheld."

But Luhaibi later denied those reports: He told Al Jazeera's Omar al-Saleh in Baghdad that he "didn't threaten to stop cooperating," and said his men have a "good relation[ship]" with the Iraqi government.

Fighting al-Qaeda

The Awakening Councils formed after tribal leaders decided to join US and Iraqi forces in fighting al-Qaeda and other groups opposed to the government.

Iraqi leaders promised to give government jobs to some 90,000 Sahwa members, but only about 42,000 of the fighters have been offered jobs, according to government officials.

Thousands of other Sahwa fighters were asked to stay with their neighbourhood security patrols through Iraq's March 7 parliamentary election and until a new government is formed.

The vote produced no clear winner. A cross-sectarian coalition led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi won a narrow victory with strong support from minority Sunnis, but no bloc won enough seats to form a majority government.

Since the election, Iraq's two major Shia coalitions have announced plans to form the largest bloc in parliament. Allawi in turn has warned that a Shia alliance that attempted to exclude his bloc from government could trigger renewed violence.

Curbing violence

The Awakening Councils were credited with helping to significantly cut violence since the worst of the sectarian bloodshed in 2006-07, when tens of thousands of people were killed.

Diyala, a mixed province with a Sunni majority just east of Baghdad, has seen more violence in recent months than other areas of Iraq.

On May 12, a minivan packed with explosives blew up at a crowded market in the town of Khalis, killing at least 30 people and wounding 80 others.

Before joining the fight against al-Qaeda, members of the Awakening Councils were accused of killing American and Iraqi soldiers. Some of their former leaders and fighters were arrested by Iraqi security forces to face those accusations, forcing others into hiding.

Sahwa members have also been the targets of a recent campaign of assassinations and bombings in which more than 100 people have died

Multiple bombings rock Baghdad

At least six people have been killed in a wave of bombings in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Four police officers and one civilian were killed when a suicide bomber blew up a car outside a police station in the southern al-Amil district on Sunday morning.

About a dozen of others were injured when the attacker drove a vehicle packed with explosives into a gathering of police during a shift change.

Just 10 minutes before the attack, a bomb stuck to the underside of a car in the city's central Allawi al-Hillah area blew up the vehicle, killing the driver and wounding three passengers, according to police and hospital officials.

In another incident, two bombs went off on Sunday in eastern Baghdad, without any deaths reported.

A car bomb exploded near a police patrol, wounding six policemen, and a roadside bomb exploded near a car carrying the judge of an appeals court, injuring two people.

Although overall violence in Iraq has has dropped dramatically across Iraq since its peak in 2006 and 2007, attacks remain frequent.

Iraqi authorities have said 275 civilians were killed in bomb blasts and other attacks in May and 274 in April, up from 216 in March and 211 in February.

Tensions have been high since the March 7 parliamentary election that produced no clear winner, forcing negotiations between Iraq's Shia Muslim, Sunni Muslim and Kurdish political factions to agree a new government.

The Iraqiya bloc of Iyad Allawi, a former prime minister, narrowly won elections in March, beating the coalition led by Nouri al-Maliki, the incumbent prime minister.

Multiple explosions rock Baghdad

At least 16 people have been killed and 45 others wounded after gunmen exploded a series of bombs in rapid succession across Baghdad, the interior ministry has said.

Security officials said that at least five bombs rocked Iraq's central bank in the capital within one hour on Sunday, as employees were leaving.

The first bomb blast caused a local electricity substation to explode, which in turn led black smoke to rise over the surrounding neighbourhood.

The gunmen were continuing to occupy the building and the attackers had posted snipers on the roof of the bank in an attempt to deter police and soldiers from wrestling back control, according to the defence official.

Major General Qassim Atta, a spokesman for the security forces in Baghdad, said soldiers and police were "besieging" the attackers whom he described as "a terrorist group."

He said it was unclear if they had intended to rob the bank, target its employees and take hostages, or destroy the building.

'Forward steps'

The bomb blasts came one day before the opening of the second parliament since the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

The opening session of the Council of Representatives marks one of the few tangible forward steps taken by Iraq's politicians since a general election on March 7 resulted in deadlock between rival parties.

Diplomats and politicians, warned ahead of Monday's opening that a new government continues to appear some way off, and that it may be several months before the fine detail on the country's new leaders takes shape.

The Iraqiya bloc, led by former prime minister Iyad Allawi, won most seats, 91, in the election, followed closely by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law Alliance, which won 89, but both have failed to build a coalition government.

In a sign that the political tempo may be speeding up, Allawi and Maliki held a long-awaited meeting on Saturday, which was described as "friendly and positive," according to a brief statement released by the prime minister.

Report: Pakistani ISI backs Taliban

A report by a leading British institution claims that Pakistan's intelligence service has a direct link with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Published on Sunday by the London School of Economics, the report said that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has an "official policy" of support for the Taliban.

It claims the ISI provides funding and training for the Taliban, and that the agency has representatives on the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban's leadership council, which is believed to meet in Pakistan.

The report is based on interviews with Taliban commanders in Afghanistan, and was written by Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.

US officials have long suspected a link between the ISI and the Taliban, but those suspicions are rarely confirmed.

"Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," the report said.

A Pakistani diplomatic source dismissed the report as "naive".

Asad Durrani, a former head of the ISI, told Al Jazeera that he does not believe the report, and that intelligence agencies are supposed to maintain relationships with groups like the Taliban.

Durrani also dismissed the claim that ISI representatives met with the Quetta Shura, calling it "nonsense".

'Apparent duplicity'

The report also links high-level members of the Pakistani government with the Taliban.

It claims Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani president, met with senior Taliban prisoners earlier this year and promised to release them. Zardari reportedly told the detainees they were only arrested because of American pressure.

Matt Waldman, the study's author, discusses his methodology in an interview with Al Jazeera

"The Pakistan government's apparent duplicity - and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment - could have enormous geopolitical implications," Waldman said.

"Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency."

Afghan officials have long been suspicious of the ISI's role.

Amrullah Saleh, the former director of Afghanistan's intelligence service, told Reuters last week that the ISI was "part of a landscape of destruction in this country". Saleh resigned last week over a dispute with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

Even Karzai himself has in the past accused the ISI of working with the Taliban.

"These allegations have been made so many times in the past," said Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from Kandahar.

"The debate is whether it's a formal involvement with Pakistani authorities, or whether these are just people left over in the Pakistani government who have their old connections [to the Taliban]."

The report comes as Nato and Afghan officials are preparing for a major offensive against the Taliban in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

US Soldier Arrested Over Iraq Video

A US soldier serving in Iraq has been arrested for allegedly leaking a classified combat video to a whistleblower website, Wikileaks, last year.

The video footage from a helicopter cockpit shows a deadly 2007 aerial strike in the Iraqi capital that killed 12 civilians including two journalists from the Reuters news agency.

US Army Specialist Bradley Manning, 22, was arrested last month after he reportedly bragged online about having leaked the information, including the video and US diplomatic cables.

The US military in a statement said Manning, who was deployed at a base near Baghdad, is in "pre-trial confinement for allegedly releasing classified information and is currently confined in Kuwait".

Manning's alleged action of supplying classified video and diplomatic communications to Wikileaks was first reported by Wired.com, the website of technology magazine Wired.

Pentagon probe

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said investigators were probing allegations that Manning supplied classified video and 260,000 secret diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.

"I think that's why the Criminal Investigative Division is taking a very scrupulous look at this," Whitman said in Washington.

Wired said Manning, from Maryland, was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the US Army's Criminal Investigation Division at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 64km east of Baghdad.

Philip Crowley, a US state department spokesman, said the department would take the leak of classified documents "seriously".

"It has particular impact in terms of revealing what we call sources and methods, compromising our ability to provide government leaders with the kind of analysis that they need to make informed decisions," Crowley said.

Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymously sourced documents, released what it called previously unseen footage of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad in April.

'Military whistleblowers'

At the time Wikileaks said only that it had obtained the video "from a number of military whistleblowers" but did not provide any further information on how it got hold of it.

In a Twitter feed Wikileaks said "allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect".

It said that "if" Manning was the "whistleblower then, without doubt, he's a national hero".

Manning reportedly said he had leaked other material to Wikileaks, including a separate video of a 2009 air strike in Afghanistan, a classified army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat and classified US diplomatic cables, according to Wired.

Wired said Manning had been in touch with former hacker Adrian Lamo, who contacted army investigators and FBI agents after being told of the leaks.

"I wouldn't have done this if lives weren't in danger," Lamo told Wired about turning Manning in to the authorities.

"He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air."