Airstrikes in Syria displace thousands

BEIRUT -- Suspected Russian airstrikes pounded villages on the edge of the last rebel enclave in northwestern Syria, sending thousands of civilians fleeing, activists reported Tuesday.

The violence at the edge of Idlib province is the most serious breach of the cease-fire in place since early March, when an agreement between Turkey and Russia halted the Syrian government's three-month air and ground campaign into rebel-held Idlib.

The Syria Response Coordination Group, a team of aid workers, said the military escalation displaced more than 5,800 civilians in the past 24 hours from areas in southern Idlib and western Hama countryside. Many of the displaced had only recently returned to their villages after the cease-fire, the group said.

On Monday, insurgents opened a limited offensive against government-held positions, briefly seizing a couple of villages. Government troops, backed by Russian air support, responded, repelling the insurgents but also widening their area of operations, targeting 10 villages, said Mohamed Rasheed, a Syrian media activist documenting the offensive.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights recorded 15 airstrikes Tuesday, also saying they were believed to be Russian. The Observatory and other local networks said at least one civilian was killed in Kansafra village.

Meanwhile, Syrian state media outlets said government forces repelled an offensive by the insurgents, and that a soldier was killed.

Border labor lawyer arrested in Mexico

MEXICO CITY -- Border state authorities have arrested a crusading labor lawyer who led a wave of 2019 walkouts for higher wages at border assembly plants known as maquiladoras.

Detectives arrested Susana Prieto on Monday in the border city Matamoros on charges including inciting riot, threats and coercion. Prieto taped her own detention and posted it on social media, saying she had been expecting the arrest.

A volunteer collects turtle eggs Tuesday at a hatching center in Bali,Indonesia.About100newlyhatchedLekangturtleswere released during a campaign to save the endangered sea turtles. (AP/Firdia Lisnawati)

The state prosecutor's announcement of the arrest did not specify the incident that led to it.

Prieto claims that officials in the border states of Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, where she was arrested, are persecuting her because she affected the economic interests of maquiladora operators.

Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, was the city where Prieto led a wave of successful strikes in early 2019 at 48 export-oriented maquiladoras that won workers 20 percent pay increases and $1,650 bonuses.

Prieto also recently campaigned against policies at maquiladora plants in Ciudad Juarez that she claimed put workers at risk of catching the new coronavirus.

Sudanese war-crimes suspect in custody

BANGUI, Central African Republic -- Sudanese militia leader Ali Kushayb, who is charged with 50 crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Darfur conflict, has been arrested more than 13 years after a warrant was issued for him and transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, authorities said Tuesday.

Kushayb surrendered to authorities in a remote corner of northern Central African Republic, International Criminal Court spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said.

In the Darfur conflict, rebels from the territory's ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.

The government responded with a scorched-earth assault of aerial bombings and unleashed militias known as the janjaweed, who are accused of mass killings and rapes. As many as 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes.

According to the court's arrest warrant, Kushayb is accused of commanding thousands of janjaweed militia in 2003-04 and acting as a go-between for the militia and the Sudanese government. The criminal court says he "personally participated in some of the attacks against civilians" and allegedly "enlisted fighters, armed, funded and provided food and other supplies to the janjaweed militia under his command."

Turkish soldiers sought in failed coup

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish prosecutors issued warrants Tuesday for the detention of 191 suspects -- including 181 on-duty servicemen -- who are suspected of involvement in a scheme that allegedly recruited followers of the U.S.-based Muslim cleric blamed for a failed coup in 2016 into air force training schools, the state-run news agency reported.

The Anadolu Agency said the suspects are accused of cheating during air force schools' entrance examinations between 2004 and 2016 that favored candidates with links to cleric Fethullah Gulen. At least 145 of the suspects were detained in raids in western Izmir province and 22 other provinces.

The suspects include 173 sergeants, six lieutenants, two first lieutenants, eight former sergeants and two former cadets, Anadolu said.

Turkey is still chasing alleged members of Gulen's network, four years after the coup attempt.

Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999, denies any involvement in the coup attempt, which left 250 people dead.

-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports

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