Mali: French-led soldiers 'in control of Gao'

French-led troops in Mali have taken control of the northern town of Gao, the French defence ministry has said.

The town was previously a stronghold of Islamist fighters after it was seized by an alliance of Tuareg rebels and Islamists last April.

French-led troops moved into Gao itself after earlier securing the airport and a strategic bridge to the south.

French officials said troops from neighbouring Niger and Chad would now move into the town to help secure it.

They also suggested that government control was already being restored, with the mayor of Gao's returning on Saturday after being ousted by the Islamist takeover.

There was no official death toll from the offensive, but the French army said "dozens" of Islamist fighters were killed in the overnight operations, without any casualties on the French and Malian side.

After a punishing series of air strikes on jihadist positions in Gao, Malian and French forces took first the airport and then the bridge over the river Niger, before being able to confirm they had taken control of the whole of the town.

Malian officials spoke of scenes of joy on the streets of Gao, but also of some looting.

Gao's mayor, who has been in the capital Bamako since the town fell to the Islamists early last year, has been flown back in.

Chadian and Nigerian forces, meanwhile, are poised to pushed up from the Nigerien border - about 200km to the south - in order to reinforce the French and Malians.

French-led troops are also reported to be advancing on the town of Lere to the west.

It all appears to confirm a picture of rolling successes for the French and Malians, as they retake the main population centres of the north, says the BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris.

Air-strikes

The fall of Gao, northern Mali's most populous town, marks a significant advance for French and Malian troops.Islamists seized a vast area of northern Mali last year and have imposed strict Sharia, or Islamic law, on its inhabitants.

France intervened militarily on 11 January to stop them advancing further south.

It has already deployed 2,500 soldiers on the ground in Mali as well as launching air strikes.

With the capture of Gao, the French are increasingly confident of pushing the Islamists out of all the major population centres in the north, says our correspondent.

The other major northern towns of Kidal and Timbuktu remain in Islamist hands. But, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the historic town of Timbuktu - an important symbol which has also been under Islamist control for most of the last year - should also soon be retaken.

The French are confident that this phase of the campaign will soon be over, adds our correspondent, though of course the vast desert hinterland offers the Islamists endless opportunities to retreat and regroup.

The UN refugee agency says more than 7,000 civilians have fled to neighbouring countries since 10 January to escape the fighting.

In a statement earlier, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian confirmed that 3,700 French troops were engaged in Operation Serval, 2,500 of them on Malian soil.

Gao was one of the first rebel-held areas to be targeted by air-strikes after France decided to intervene in its former colony, a decision which took many by surprise.

Aid pledged

A UN-backed international force had not been expected in the west African state until the autumn.

Several African countries have pledged military aid to help the Malian government win back control of the north.

On Friday the African Union asked the UN Security Council to authorise immediate logistical help to allow the 6,000-strong force to deploy quickly.

It also recommended civilian observers to monitor the human rights situation in the areas which have come back under the control of the Malian government. Human rights groups have accused the Malian army of committing serious abuses.

N Korea 'to boost nuclear programme' after UN sanctions

North Korea says it will boost its military power and "nuclear deterrence" programme after the UN imposed new sanctions over a rocket launch.

North Korea also ruled out any further nuclear talks.

The country would "take physical actions" to strengthen its military force, the state news agency KCNA said.

The UN Security Council approved new sanctions over the December test launch of what it said was a long-range missile banned by UN resolutions.

article source: BBC.co.uk

Google Earth puts North Korea labour camps on the map

Gates, guard houses, coal mines and crude burial grounds have all been identified

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's visit to North Korea this week has been met with sharp criticism, but the global Internet search giant indirectly is helping to make history by revealing one of the reclusive country's darkest secrets.

Google Earth, the company's popular satellite imagery product, might be the last thing Mr Schmidt will want to showcase for his hosts, because it presents a bird's eye view of many things that secretive North Korea wants to keep hidden.

Human rights activists and bloggers have taken a Google program used mostly for recreation, education and marketing and applied it to map a vast system of dozens of prison camps that span North Korea, a country slightly smaller in area than Greece and home to 23 million people.

As many as 250,000 political prisoners and their families toil on starvation rations in the mostly remote mountain camps, according to estimates by international human rights groups.

Mr Schmidt's trip to Pyongyang with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has been criticised by the US State Department as ill-timed - coming weeks after North Korea conducted a rocket launch in violation of UN Security Council sanctions.

Rights activists are sceptical that celebrity visits to Pyongyang can produce meaningful results, but they are inclined to give Google credit for living up to its informal motto of "Don't Be Evil" when it comes to how Google Earth sheds light on North Korea.

"What Eric Schmidt does or does not do in Pyongyang will probably be forgotten in a few weeks," said Joshua Stanton, a Washington lawyer who devotes his spare time to blogging and activism on North Korea human rights.

"The good that Google has done, however inadvertently, by helping people tell the truth about North Korea, will probably be reflected in the history of the country one day," he said.

Google has characterised Mr Schmidt's trip as "personal" travel, and Mr Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment before leaving for Pyongyang. The company declined to comment on the use of Google Earth in monitoring North Korea.

Mr Richardson said last week he hoped to win the release of Kenneth Bae, a US tour guide detained in the North since November.

Mr Stanton's blog carries satellite images from Google Earth and analysis of the features of six political prisoner camps - three of which he is credited with playing a role in confirming or identifying.

The blogger identifies images of gates and guard houses, and in some cases coal mines and crude burial grounds - corroborated through the work of experts and interviews with defectors from North Korea who lived or worked in the camps.

"The largest of the camps, if you don't know what you're looking at, look like towns or villages, and I suspect they are designed that way to fit into the countryside," said Stanton, whose readers trade tips on the camps and their landmarks.

Mr Stanton, who became interested in North Korea while serving in the US military in South Korea at the height of a deadly late-1990s famine in the North, built on the pioneering work of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, a US non-governmental organisation which unveiled the camps in a 2003 book, "The Hidden Gulag."

When a second edition of "The Hidden Gulag" came out in 2012, Google Earth received prominent acknowledgement.

"The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to identify their former barracks and houses, their former execution grounds, and other landmarks in the camps," said the study.

"Hidden Gulag" also credited Stanton and a second blogger, Curtis Melvin, whose blog www.nkeconwatch.com/ has been at the forefront of using Google Earth to catalog not only prison camps but also ordinary facilities like schools, factories and train stations.

"It opens up areas of North Korea that no foreigners are allowed to see at all," said Mr Melvin, who downloads the free program available to the general public.

Mr Melvin, an economist with an unfinished doctoral dissertation on North Korea's monetary system, verifies landmarks he finds on Google Earth by studying maps and documents and by sitting down in front of his computer in Virginia with North Koreans.

"I've also been watching North Korean television literally every day for about three years, so I have a list of thousands of names (of places) I can ask them specific questions about," he said of his interviews with defectors from North Korea.

North Korean defector Kim Sung Min, who escaped the country in 1997 by jumping off a train that was taking him to be executed, "told me the name of the train station where he jumped, and I pulled it up immediately and we were able to trace his actual escape path out of North Korea," said Mr Melvin.

Some of Google Earth's satellite imagery comes from DigitalGlobe, a 20-year-old Colorado firm that, under its previous name, EarthWatch Incorporated, was the first outfit to get a US government license to gather and sell satellite imagery commercially.

The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea receives imagery and analysis pro bono in a project with DigitalGlobe Inc, which has a record of supporting humanitarian causes, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the committee.

According to satellite technicians, the imagery available directly from DigitalGlobe is of finer resolution and is updated more frequently than the versions carried for free on Google Earth.

"Satellite imagery readily available through Google Earth has certainly enabled human rights experts to decisively confirm that these facilities do exist, despite the fact that the North Korean regime denies their existence," Scarlatoiu said.

article source: rte.ie