VOA NEWS

October 10, 2015

From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David Byrd reporting. A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander has been killed in Syria.



General Hossein Hamedani was killed by Islamic State fighters earlier this week while advising Syrian troops in the northern region of Aleppo. That's according to a statement released by the Revolutionary Guards, an elite branch of Iran's military.

Shiite Iran is a key regional ally of Syria. It has provided military and political support for President Bashar al-Assad during his four-year-long fight against a wide range of Sunni rebel groups seeking to overthrow him.



Meanwhile, the Obama administration says it is "pausing" and "evolving" a $500 million Pentagon-led program to train and equip rebels fighting Islamic State militants.

The operation will shift away from vetting moderate Syrian rebels and training them in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Instead, the program will provide air support and basic equipment and training to vetted opposition group leaders.

In London, Defense Secretary Ash Carter says that the program will be similar to one carried out with Kurds in northern Syria.

"and so we're looking at different ways to achieve the -- basically, the same kind of strategic objective, which is the right one, which is to enable capable, motivated forces on the ground to retake territory from ISIL, and reclaim Syrian territory from extremism."

The Pentagon-led train and equip program had only trained a few dozen fighters. That's many less than the original goal of several thousand.



For more on these stories, log on to our website voanews.com. This is VOA news.



U.S. President Barack Obama met privately Friday with the families of eight students and one teacher gunned down at an Oregon community college last week.

After the meeting, Mr. Obama said the country will have to "figure out how we stop things like this from happening."

"I've got some very strong feelings about this because when you talk to these families, you are reminded this could be happening to your child or your mom or your dad or your relative or your friend."

A crowd of pro-gun protesters greeted the president as he arrived in Oregon.

Mr. Obama has been calling for stronger gun control laws in the aftermath of the massacre.



The U.N. Security Council has given the go-ahead to a European Union military operation targeting human traffickers and smugglers in international waters near Libya.

As Margaret Besheer reports from the U.N., the operation aims to stem the flow of migrants and refugees making the often deadly trip across the Mediterranean.

The European operation called Sophia, after a migrant baby, began Wednesday, but received near unanimous Council-backing on Friday. Only Venezuela broke the consensus, abstaining in the vote.

Under the British-drafted resolution, European naval forces are authorized for one year to stop and search vessels in international waters off the coast of Libya that they suspect of smuggling migrants and refugees.

They may also seize and dispose of empty boats to make it harder for criminal networks to repeat their illicit activities.

Refugees and migrants found on the boats will be taken to safety in Europe, while smugglers will be prosecuted.

Nearly 3,000 people have died making the perilous journey while thousands more have been abused, beaten, exploited and abandoned at sea by smugglers and traffickers.

Margaret Besheer, VOA news, the United Nations.



The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet for its "decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011."

The Nobel Prize committee in Oslo, Norway, credited the Quartet for stabilizing the country at a time when it had reached the brink of civil war.



A week of violence between Israelis and [pal] Palestinians, that is, spread to the Gaza Strip Friday. Israeli soldiers killed six Palestinians in border clashes and the Palestinian militant group Hamas called for more unrest.

Hundreds of Palestinians advanced on the Gaza border during a demonstration. They threw rocks and rolled burning tires toward Israeli soldiers stationed on the other side. The Israeli military said its soldiers opened fire on the "main instigators" to stop their advance.



For more on these stories, visit our website. I'm David Byrd in Washington.

That's the latest world news from VOA.