Seven life sentences for woman in Istanbul bombing

Istanbul: A court has sentenced a Syrian woman to life in prison for an explosion in a Turkish shopping district in 2022 that killed six people, including two children, and wounded 99 others.

Alham Albashir was given seven consecutive life sentences after being convicted on terrorism charges.

The blast on November 13, 2022 tore through Istiklal Avenue, a street in Istanbul lined with shops and restaurants.

Albashir and a man named as Bilal el-hacmaus were intelligence operatives of the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia group, and its political branch, the PYD, according to an indictment prepared by prosecutors last year.

Turkey regards the YPG as the Syrian arm of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency within Turkey to establish an autonomous region in southeastern Turkey.

Albashir and el-hamaus were given special training by the YPG and PYD and sent to Turkey along with explosives, where they travelled to Istanbul with the help of a network established by the organisation, the indictment said.

El-hacmaus managed to flee the country.

The fight between the PKK and Turkey has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s and Turkey and its Western allies have labelled PKK a terrorist organisation.

Ouagadougou: Burkina Faso has suspended the BBC and Voice of America radio stations for their coverage of a report by Human Rights Watch on a mass killing of civilians carried out by the country’s armed forces.

Speaking in the capital Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso’s communication spokeswoman, Tonssira Myrian Corine Sanou, said both radio stations would be suspended for two weeks, and warned other media networks to avoid reporting on the story.

The Human Rights Watch report said the army killed some 223 civilians, including 56 children, in villages accused of cooperating with militants.

Belem: The bodies of nine migrants found on an African boat off the northern coast of Brazil’s Amazon region were buried in a solemn ceremony in the Para state capital of Belem.

Fishermen off the coast of Para found the boat adrift on April 13, carrying the bodies that were already decomposing.

Brazilian officials later said documents found in the vessel indicated the victims were migrants from Mali and Mauritania and that the boat had departed the latter country after January 17.

Brazil’s federal police said later the bodies were of adults or teenagers whose exact age could not be determined.

The deceased migrants were buried in a secular ceremony organised by a number of groups involved in their recovery, such as the UN Refugee Agency, the Red Cross and the International Organisation for Migration, as well as Brazilian police, navy and civil defence agencies.

Baltimore: The first cargo ship has passed through a newly opened deep-water channel in the US city after being stuck in the harbour since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed four weeks ago.

The Balsa 94, a bulk carrier sailing under a Panama flag, passed through the new 35-foot channel, headed for St John’s, Canada. It is expected to arrive in Canada on Monday.