From Washington, this is VOA news. I'm David DeForest reporting. Angry protests in Turkey.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Ankara Sunday, many of them chanting slogans against the Turkish government. The demonstrators were reacting to the Saturday bombing of a peace rally that killed at least 95 people and wounded many others. Dorian Jones reports. Thousands of protesters chant Sunday in the capital, Ankara, saying the state and government will be held to account. Mourning is fast giving way to anger in the aftermath of Turkey's worst terrorist attack. Some organizers of Saturday's peace rally claim there was little security even though there had been increasing fears of a possible attack. Interior Minister Selami Altinok has denied negligence. The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, Selahattin Demirtas, has accused the government and security forces of collusion in the bombings. Dorian Jones, Istanbul. Iran's parliament Sunday gave preliminary approval to a bill that allows the government to implement the nuclear agreement [reached] recently reached with other nations. Final approval of the measure is expected later this week. Iran says a verdict has been issued in the trial of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. Rezaian was arrested 15 months ago on espionage and other charges. Reuters, quoting Iran's ISNA news agency, is reporting that Rezaian has been convicted and that he has 20 days to appeal the verdict, but that has not been confirmed. Rezaian, who has dual citizenship, has been working for The Washington Post since 2012. Two suicide bombings have killed at least nine people and wounded 29 in northern Cameroon. Officials have blamed Boko Haram militants for the attack, which was carried out by two teen-age girls. This is VOA news. Two exit polls show Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko won a landslide fifth term in Sunday's election. The vote was boycotted by most of the opposition. Russia has launched new aerial bombardments of Syrian rebels. The Russian government says it hit 63 targets, destroying 53 of them. It says many of the attacks Sunday wee in Tal Skik, a highland area (of) Idlib province that had been controlled by rebels. The Iraqi military claims to have struck the convoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in an air raid in Western Anbar province near the Syrian border. The fate of the leader is unknown. Baghdadi had declared himself the head of a caliphate in areas his group controls in Iraq and Syria. The conflict between Palestinians and Israel heated up Sunday. An Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip made in response to Palestinian rocket fire killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and her daughter. Medics say the two died when a building in which they were taking cover collapsed. Several other people were hurt. Later Sunday, Israeli gunfire killed a 13-year-old Palestinian boy at a checkpoint outside Ramallah on the West Bank. Israeli solders say the demonstrators were attacking them with rocks and firebombs. Palestinians were also wounded during violent demonstrations in Gaza. And an Israeli-Arab struck four people with his car before jumping out of his vehicle and stabbing them outside a kibbutz in northern Israel. Also, a Palestinian woman was seriously wounded when a gas cylinder blew up in her car at a checkpoint outside a West Bank Jewish settlement. The United States will offer "condolence payments" for those injured or killed in the U.S. airstrike that mistakenly hit a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, October 3. A U.S. Defense Department spokesman says U.S. forces in Afghanistan will work with those affected to determine appropriate payments. The leader of Rwanda's main opposition party, the Green Party, [says his next] says next week his organization will officially appeal to President Paul Kagame not to seek another term. A recent court ruling paves the way for Kagame to amend the constitution and seek another seven-year term in office. Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump continues to lead the crowded field of U.S. Republican presidential candidates, according to a new CBS news survey. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has a substantial lead in the race for the Democratic nomination. Two outside investigations have found a white Ohio police officer was justified in the fatal shooting of a black 12-year-old boy who was carrying a toy pellet gun. In Washington, I'm David DeForest. That's the latest world news from VOA. |