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A Mournful Eid as Baghdad Suicide Bombing Death Toll Reaches 175

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Rare aerial footage shows unprecedented levels of suffering in Iraq and Syria


Mourners carry the coffin of a 22-year-old victim of the suicide bombing that ripped through Karada. Photograph Sabah Arar AFP Getty Images


More bodies have been recovered from the site of a massive Islamic State suicide bombing in central Baghdad, bringing the death toll to 175, The Guardian reported officials to have said.

The staggering figure – one of the worst bombings in 13 years of war in Iraq – has cast a pall on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month. Eid is likely to be on Wednesday, July 6.

An ISIS suicide bomber struck Baghdad’s bustling commercial area of Karada late, a predominantly Shia locality, on Saturday, when many residents were spending the night out before the start of their dawn fast. Despite battlefield losses in the country, this new face of ISIS has struck terror around the globe. Police and health officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to release the information, warned that there are still people missing and that the death toll could rise further.

On Tuesday morning, the residents of Karada held a funeral procession for a young man at the scene of the blast. An Iraqi flag draped over her shoulder, his mother led the mourners carrying his wooden casket and pounding their chests in grief. Others were seen throwing flowers on the casket, also wrapped in the Iraqi flag.

Meawnhile in a sensational end of Ramzan disclosure, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) released a video on July 1, that shows homes, schools and hospitals crumbled to rubble shown in dramatic scenes captured by an ICRC drone camera-Chilling aerial footage of Ramadi, a once bustling city in central Iraq, has captured the extent of destruction caused by war.

In late December, Iraqi forces, backed by US air strikes, announced the recapturing of Ramadi, which had been lost to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in May 2015. The US-led coalition carried out more than 600 air strikes in the area from July to December last year. 

A new six-minute clip, released by the International Red Committee of The Red Cross (ICRC) shows homes in Ramadi turned to rubble, along with flattened school, destroyed hospitals and damaged ambulances.

Click on the link for video: http://imedia8uk.http.internapcdn.net/imedia8uk/icrc/AV506N_Drone_Iraq_President_466.mp4


Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, was once home to half a million people [Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters]
 
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter Maurer, has said in the video that levels of suffering in Syria and Iraq have reached unprecedented levels. 
“Hundreds of thousands killed; millions on the move; families torn apart,” states Maurer. “Even as Ramadan comes to an end, many, many ordinary people are living in abject fear and terrifying uncertainty. A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding.”

Rare aerial footage gathered by ICRC shows the once prosperous Ramadi in central Iraq now in tatters – a ghost town. Explosive remnants of war are scattered across the city and most people are too afraid to return to homes. It will take months, if not years, to make the city safe again and to rebuild homes and damaged water and electric systems.

In both Syria and Iraq, an estimated 10 million are internally displaced and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. As the holy month of Ramadan comes to an end, president Maurer, called on those people with influence over the conflict to show vision and courage and a respect for the fundamental value of human dignity.

Maurer says: “The people need leaders who believe in humanity; who protect, homes, schools and hospitals; who protect civilians and treat people they capture with respect. And we stand ready to talk to anyone – or to act as an intermediary so that more help, more assistance, can be delivered. And more people protected from violence.”

The Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies have been providing aid to people on all sides of the conflicts. The ICRC has helped provide clean drinking water and improved sanitation for more than 6 million Syrians. In Iraq, food, drinking water and medical assistance has been delivered to more than a million people.
 

Justice for Perumal Murugan, Madras High Court Steps In

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The Madras High Court on Tuesday ruled in favour of Perumal Murugan, author of the novel 'Madhorubhagan', granting him relief from all the controversies that shrouded the work of fiction that compelled him to announce that he would withdraw his entire body of work from publication and never write again.

At the end of a year-long legal battle, First Bench of Chief Justice S. K. Kaul and Justice Puspha Sathyanarayana held that the settlement arrived in the peace-keeping meet held by the district administration would not be binding on the author. The bench also dismissed the plea moved by the residents to initiate criminal proceedings against him and consequently quashed an FIR filed against Mr. Murugan. The settlement arrived in the peace-keeping meet held by the Namakkal district administration would not be binding on the author, rules court.

The court further directed the State government to circulate a series of guidelines framed by the court to handle such situations among the State police and to form an expert committee to handle such issues.

The Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists Association president, S.Tamilselvan, had challenged the decision of a peace committee meeting held at Namakkal on January 12 organised by the district administration and expressed solidarity with the writer. The decision was that Mr. Murugan had agreed to issue an unconditional apology, delete the controversial portions from his book, and withdraw unsold copies from the market. Meanwhile, a group of people claiming to be residents of Tiruchengode approached the High Court to initiate criminal charges against the author.

On February 13, 2016, Sabrangindia had featured this video interview with Peerumal Murugan’s publisher completely standing by him and his work

I stand by Perumal Murugam: Kannan Sundaram, publisher

“I have always stood with all my writers”, says Kannan Sundaram, publisher, Kalachuvadu. Kalachuvadu was first begun as a magazine by his father, the Tamil writer, Sundara Ramaswamy. Kannan Sundaram wasthen  in Delhi to receive the Samanvay Bhasha Samman 2015 on behalf of Perumal Murugan when he spoke to Souradeep Roy.

The controversy over Madhurobhagan (One Part Woman), Murugan's book, is not the first Kalachuvadu has faced. There was significant opposition to Kalachuvadu’s publishing Tamil feminist literature in the 1990s.

At a time when publishers are increasingly reluctant to stand by their own writers, Sundaram maintains that he supports complete freedom of expression for all his writers.