France begins Syria surveillance flights ahead of possible strikes

France carried out its first surveillance flights over Syria on Tuesday to prepare possible attacks on Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

"These surveillance flights will determine what action can be taken when the time comes," Fabius told reporters.

The reconnaissance flights were carried out by two of France’s Rafale fighter jets equipped with photo and video cameras, a French military source told the AFP news agency.

“Two Rafales left the Persian Gulf this morning and have just returned,” the source said.

It follows President François Hollande’s announcement Monday that France would soon begin surveillance flights over Syria, saying the intelligence gained from the flights would be used to determine if France would go ahead with airstrikes against IS group targets in the country.

Hollande said he wanted to find out "what is being prepared against us and what is being done against the Syrian population".

The move represents a major shift in France’s strategy in Syria. The country is part of a coalition of nations carrying out airstrikes against the jihadist group in neighbouring Iraq, but Paris has so far shied away from extending its bombing mission to Syria.

The fight against terrorism needs to be carried out at home, but also in the places where it is entrenched,” Hollande said.

However, he ruled out sending ground forces to Syria, saying such a move would be “ineffective and unrealistic”.

Cantona urges French families to take in refugees

French football legend Eric Cantona has weighed in on Europe’s migrant crisis with characteristic verve by urging French households to welcome refugees.

In an interview with French daily Le Parisien on Thursday, the former footballer-turned-actor said he was “of course” ready to host people fleeing war and persecution in their home countries.

“And I hope we are all ready to do so, all 65 million Frenchmen,” he said, blasting those who “close borders and watch people die”.

Cantona said he didn't mean every single household should welcome a refugee, conceding that it would mean "a lot of migrants".

France has promised to take in 24,000 refugees over the next two years, thereby meeting the target set by the European Commission. The first groups of Syrians and Iraqis arrived from Germany onWednesday.

Critics on the left of the ruling Socialist Party say the government should have been swifter and more generous in its response to the refugee crisis, pointing to Germany’s activism on the issue and its decision to welcome some 800,000 people this year.

But Hollande’s government appears weary of giving ammunition to the far-right National Front party, which is fiercely opposed to welcoming refugees.

Last week, an opinion poll published by French daily Le Parisien said that 55 percent of people surveyed were opposed to softening rules for migrants seeking refugee status in France.

Libyan 'mayhem'

Cantona, 49, said the government’s cautious approach was “unworthy of the left”.

“We’re keeping immigration at a minimum because 55 percent of the French are against it and the far right is on the rise,” said the man Manchester United fans still call “The King”.

Cantona said France had a particular duty to help refugees because of its role in the 2011 military intervention in Libya, which in toppling Colonel Muammar Gaddafi also triggered the country’s implosion and pushed hundreds of thousands of desperate people across the Mediterranean.

“We go to war for economic reasons, then people flee their country because we caused mayhem and now we’re not even capable of welcoming them,” he railed.

Since his retirement from football in 1997, Cantona has been a vocal campaigner for a number of French charities. His provocative statements regularly make headlines, including in the English press.

In 2010, he urged French citizens to trigger “a new revolution” by withdrawing all their bank savings in order to destroy a political system “built on the power of the banks”. His call spawned a social media campaign that attracted tens of thousands of people, but the bank run never materialized.

Two years later he landed another PR coup by announcing a surprise bid for the French presidency. The move soon turned out to be a publicity stunt designed to raise awareness of France’s shortage of social housing. 

Srebrenica massacre

Eight charged in Serbia's first court ruling

War crimes prosecutors in Serbia have charged eight people over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

They are accused of killing hundreds of Bosnian men and boys in a single day at a warehouse near Srebrenica.

It is the first time a Serbian court has charged anyone over the massacre of 8,000 people by Bosnian Serb forces.

The authorities in Bosnia and an international court in the Hague have carried out all previous prosecutions.

The men charged on Thursday belonged to a special Bosnian-Serb police unit that was operating in the eastern village of Kravica when the killings took place just over 20 years ago.

'The butcher'

They herded the mainly Muslim victims into a warehouse where they were killed with machine guns and grenades in an assault that lasted all night, the prosecutor's statement said.

Those charged included the unit's commander, Nedeljko Milidragovic, also known as Nedjo the Butcher, who was accused of giving the order for the killings and saying that "nobody should get out alive".

Mr Milidragovic is already facing genocide charges in Bosnia but has been able to live freely in Serbia because of the lack of an extradition treaty, says the BBC's Guy De Launey in Belgrade.

But this changed in March when he and the seven other suspects were arrested as a result of co-operation between the war crimes court in Belgrade and its counterpart in Sarajevo, our correspondent adds.

Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said the charges were a "message that there will be no impunity for war crimes and that the victims will not be forgotten".

The eight men could face a maximum sentence of 20 years if found guilty.

Fourteen people have been convicted at the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague in relation to the Srebrenica killings.

Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic are both on trial at The Hague, accused of crimes relating to the massacre.

The ICTY and the International Court of Justice have called the events genocide.

The Srebrenica massacre came amid the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia into independent states in the 1990s.

Serbia backed Bosnian Serb forces fighting the Muslim-led Bosnian government during the conflict.

In July 1995, in what was supposed to have been a UN safe haven, Bosnian Serb forces took control of Srebrenica. They rounded up and killed about 8,000 men and boys and buried them in mass graves.

Russia Building Military Base Near Ukraine Border

Russia building major military base near Ukrainian border

Russia has started to build a huge military base housing ammunition depots and barracks for several thousand soldiers near the Ukrainian border, a project that suggests the Kremlin is digging in for a prolonged stand-off with Kiev.

The base, when completed, will even have its own swimming pool, skating rink and barber shop, according to public documents. This week workmen were erecting a fence in a cornfield outside the village of Soloti to mark out the perimeter, and told a Reuters reporter to leave, accusing him of being an Ukrainian spy.

In almost the same spot there was a flurry of military activity in April last year that coincided with intense fighting across the Ukrainian frontier that lies about 25 km (15 miles) away. A squadron of Mi-24 attack helicopters was seen there at the time, as well as army tents and trucks.

NATO has accused Russia of using makeshift bases for sending soldiers and hardware into Ukraine to support pro-Russian separatists fighting Kiev.

Russia denies its military is in Ukraine. The defense ministry did not reply to written questions from Reuters about the purpose of the base it is building and whether there was any connection to the Ukraine conflict.

According to tender documents published on the Russian government website zakupki.gov.ru, the ministry is building the military base on a 300-hectare site near Valuyki, a small town not far from Soloti.

The ministry intends to build nine barracks for 3,500 soldiers, warehouses for rockets, artillery weapons, and other munitions with a total area of over 6,000 square meters.

The documents also stated there would be a large training complex, and an infirmary for 50 beds, which can be expanded in case of "massive influx of wounded".

They did not give the exact location of the base, but local residents in Soloti said they believed it would be on their doorstep. "They are building a military town," said Alexander Panchenko, a local resident whose house overlooks farmland where preparatory work is underway for a big construction project.

"SECRET FACILITY"

A Reuters reporter saw workers at the site on Monday installing a metal fence and paving the road to the construction site, in a large cornfield near the village. Also there were several construction trailers, an excavator and heaps of rubble behind the fence.

Russian Confirms Weapons on Flight to Syria

Russia confirms weapons on flights to Syria

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirms arms on flights, but spokesman declines to say whether troops have been sent.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has confirmed that the country's "humanitarian" flights to Syria carry military equipment as well as humanitarian aid - after the US and NATO warned Moscow over its involvement in the Syrian conflict.

"Russian planes are sending to Syria both military equipment in accordance with current contracts and humanitarian aid," Lavrov told reporters on Thursday.

Russia's Kommersant daily newspaper said earlier on Thursday that Moscow's advanced BTR-82A armoured personnel carriers were among arms supplied to Damascus.

Moscow has previously insisted in public that its flights to Syria were only for humanitarian purposes.

Al Jazeera's Peter Sharp, reporting from Moscow, said that nothing has changed and the Russians have been supplying the Syrian government for years now.

"Going back 60 years, Russia has been supplying Syria with arms, advisers, military equipment. Nothing much has really changed.

"Between 2009 and 2011 Russia was supplying 71 percent of Syria's military needs - everything from jets to military equipment to air defence systems.

"The Russian foreign minister says this continues to take place but he did make a distinction: There has been additional air traffic coming into Latakia's airbase and he says military equipment and humanitarian aid are being delivered," Sharp said. 

"As far as boosting up boots on the ground, he said Russian military specialists are working on training Syrians on using Russian weapons and no additional steps have been taken."

The Kremlin declined to comment on Thursday on whether Russian troops were fighting in Syria, after sources in Lebanon told the Reuters news agency that Russian forces had begun participating in military operations there.

"The threat coming from Islamic State [ISIL] is evident... The only force capable of resisting it is the Syrian armed forces," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reiterating Russia's position that its longtime ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, should be part of international efforts to combat ISIL.

Washington has put pressure on Greece and Bulgaria in recent days to deny Russia's requests to use their airspace for its Syria flights.   

During a press conference with the Slovakian prime minister, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced the country will close its airspace to Russian planes flying to Syria.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed his concern over reports of Russian military activities in Syria, warning that it could fan more violence, a state department spokesman said.

Al Jazeera's Parry Culhane, reporting from Washington, said officials in the White House have not yet commented.

"What officials here are saying is that it is simply wrong to help the government of President Bashar al-Assad because of what he has done to his people.

"There is also a big concern that there could be some sort of accident where the US-led coalition could somehow run into a fight with the Russians," Culhane added.

Aerial imagery indicated that Russia is focusing on Bassel al-Assad International Airport, south of Latakia on Syria's Mediterranean coast, and on the Russian naval facility in Tartus, the AFP news agency reported.

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary-general, expressed a similar reaction to Kerry, saying the move "will not contribute to solving the conflict".

"I think it is important to now support all efforts to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria. We support very much the efforts by the UN."

Chaotic Scenes at Hungary Migrant Camp

Footage has emerged of migrants being thrown bags of food at a Hungarian camp near the border with Serbia.

An Austrian woman who shot the video said the migrants were being treated like "animals" and called for European states to open their borders.

The emergency director of Human Rights Watch said the migrants were being held like "cattle in pens".

It comes as Central European ministers again rejected a mandatory quota system for sharing out migrant arrivals.

"We're convinced that as countries we should keep control over the number of those we are able to accept and then offer them support," Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek said at a press conference with his Hungarian, Polish and Slovak counterparts.

The European Commission, with Germany's backing, has proposed sharing out 160,000 asylum seekers a year between 23 of the EU's 28 members.

The Central European states had already rejected the plan, even though they would take in far fewer refugees than Germany if the EU backs it. European Council President Donald Tusk has said he will call an emergency summit later this month if a solutio

n is not found soon.

In recent weeks, tens of thousands of migrants have been desperately trying to make their way to Europe from war-torn

Syria and Libya. Many travel through Hungary to Germany, Austria and Sweden - wealthier EU nations with more liberal asylum laws.

Hungary has become a key point on the journey. The footage comes from a camp at Roszke, where large numbers of migrants have built up.

It was filmed by Michaela Spritzendorfer, the wife of an Austrian Green party politician who was delivering aid to the camp, and Klaus Kufner, a journalist and activist.

"These people have been on a terrible tour for three months," said Michaela Spritzendorfer.

'Cat And Mouse' For Migrants At German Town Police are hunting smugglers offloading migrants at a border town.

'Cat And Mouse' For Migrants At German Town

It is pitch dark and just after 5am. The blackness of night is lit up by the blue flash of a police car warning traffic of the impending checkpoint ahead. A sign at the side of the road gives a clue as to why vehicles are being marshalled to a near halt. It's telling motorists to slow down and watch out for people on the road.  This is where smugglers dump their human cargo as soon as they reach Germany. Passau, in the south of the country, is a popular dropping-off point because of its proximity to the Czech and Austrian borders. Germany has said all Syrians who make it here will be granted asylum - making Germany the number one destination of choice for many. And that's prompted a massive police operation to clamp down on people smugglers. As we approach the checkpoint we are waved on. But it's clear a daily game of cat and mouse is under way under a cloak of darkness.  The smugglers switch their drop-off points, trying to out-smart the authorities. Retired policeman Ali Krenn knows only too well how popular Passau has become for refugees. He regularly sees them abandoned on the flyover by his home. He found a group of 10 on his doorstep, hungry and thirsty. "I was shocked to see a group of people passing at 1am armed with flashlights," he said. "I started to help, they were thirsty, and had two little kids with them. I brought out the water, a big bottle." Overnight 300 people were picked up and brought to one registration centre in Passau alone. That's in spite of Hungary's restrictions on the movement of migrants by train within the EU. Among the new arrivals are a group of young boys - there's no mistaking their relief to have made it to Germany. Europe may be fighting over their futures but after weeks, probably months, in search of a place to call home they are just glad somebody is pleased to help them.

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