COLU @ CONCEPTS

MOSUL, Iraq (AP) — Iraqi officials demanded compensation from the U.S.-led coalition following an investigation into a March 17 airstrike in which the Pentagon acknowledged a U.S. bomb targeting Islamic State group fighters in Mosul set off a series of explosions that killed more than 100 civilians. However, several residents of the Mosul neighborhood told The Associated Press on Friday there were no IS fighters or explosives inside the house struck by the U.S. bomb. “We call upon the international community and especially the United States to compensate the victims,” said Nuraddin Qablan, the deputy president of the Nineveh provincial council. The U.S. should rebuild the homes of all the victims affected by the strike, he said, “so that the psychological damage will be mitigated.” The Pentagon released the March 17 findings Thursday, reporting the airstrike targeted two IS snipers in a single building, setting off a series of explosions that killed 105 civilians. The Pentag...

BEIRUT (AP) — A fresh wave of airstrikes in eastern Syria killed at least 35 civilians including women and children, state media and an observer group reported Friday, and the U.N. human rights chief said civilians are increasingly paying the price of escalating attacks against the Islamic State group in the country. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein’s comments came hours after airstrikes on the eastern Syrian town of Mayadeen, where airstrikes Thursday night killed 35, many of them family members of IS fighters. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrikes were conducted by the U.S.-led coalition fighting IS. It added that the airstrikes happened at sunset Thursday as people were heading to mosques for evening prayers. “The same civilians who are suffering indiscriminate shelling and summary executions by ISIL, are also falling victim to the escalating airstrikes, particularly in the northeastern governorates of” Raqqa and Deir el-Zour, al-Hussein said in a stat...

TAORMINA, Sicily (AP) — The Latest on the G-7 summit in Taormina, Sicily (all times local): 3 p.m. Residents of the hilltop Sicilian town of Taormina are cheering and waving as the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies pass by — a rarity for global summits, where ordinary people are usually kept far away for security reasons. Crowds lined the route as Donald Trump and the other six G-7 leaders made their way from Taormina’s famed ancient Greek theater, where they took the traditional G-7 photo, to the five-star San Domenico Palace, where meetings were taking place The leaders made a brief stop along the way to take in a breathtaking view of the sea. While most people were kept far from the summit site, residents of Taormina, a town of 11,000, were given accreditation passes to wear around their necks, allowing them to stay at home during the two-day summit. One man toted his groceries through the crowd, and two little girls in white T-shirts were waving at th...

TAORMINA, Sicily (AP) — The differences are well-known: climate change, trade and migration threaten to throw a summit of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies off its consensus game, with President Donald Trump cast as the spoiler-in-chief. But it may not play out exactly that way, according to long-time G-7 observers. “It is a forum made for Donald Trump’s particular style. It is highly informal, highly interactive and they speak in very colloquial language to each other,” said John Kirton, director of the G-7 Research Group at the University of Toronto. “It is the ultimate lonely hearts club. No one understands how tough it is to have the top job except the peers with the top job in other countries.” While Trump has met all of the leaders one on one, this will be the first time all seven are around the same table, including also newcomers Emmanuel Macron of France, Theresa May of Britain and the Italian host, Paolo Gentiloni — forging a new dynamic after a year of global p...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The key findings on AP’s investigation into the U.N.’s sexual abuse and exploitation controversy: 1. No Sri Lankan peacekeeper has ever been jailed for sexual assault or sexual misconduct despite a child sex ring in Haiti involving at least 134 soldiers that was discovered in 2007. 2. In 2013, Sri Lanka sent a top military general to investigate the alleged rape of a Haitian teenager. The general, who has been dogged by war crimes allegations himself, never talked to the alleged victim and cleared the soldier. 3. The United Nations has expanded individual vetting for Sri Lankan recruits who may have been involved in human rights abuses during the country’s civil war. Some have already been turned away. 4. Women who were raped during Sri Lanka’s generation-long war have begun speaking about how they were held and gang-raped at military camps. One woman said that she was raped by a soldier who later went on to become a U.N. peacekeeper. 5. Since t...

Sri Lanka participated in years of U.N. peacekeeping operations while the country was embroiled in a brutal, generation-long civil war. Yet, even as Sri Lanka refused to investigate alleged war crimes by its troops during that conflict, the U.N. continued to deploy thousands of Sri Lankan peacekeepers to guard some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Key dates in Sri Lanka’s recent history of conflict and contributions to U.N. peacekeeping: 1948 — The United Nations deploys its first-ever peacekeeping mission to the Middle East. 1960 — Sri Lanka makes its first U.N. peacekeeping contribution, sending six soldiers to the U.N. mission in Congo. 1983 — Civil war breaks out in Sri Lanka, with rebels of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam fighting government forces for an ethnic Tamil homeland in the island’s north and east. 1987 — Indian peacekeepers begin a three-year deployment in Sri Lanka. 2004 — Sri Lanka opens a U.N. peacekeeper training camp in the hillside ...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — The general sat on a plastic lawn chair in the garden of his mother’s home, the scent of tropical blooms filling the air as he talked about the alleged rape and sodomy of a Haitian teenager by a Sri Lankan peacekeeper. There was no rape, insisted Maj. Gen. Jagath Dias, who was dispatched to Haiti to investigate the 2013 case. He may not have been the best choice for that job — Dias had been accused of atrocities in his own country’s vicious civil war. Dias didn’t talk to the accuser, he told The Associated Press, nor did he interview medical staff who examined her. But he did clear his soldier, who remained in the Sri Lankan military. It wasn’t the first time that Sri Lankan soldiers were accused of sexual abuse: In 2007, a group of Haitian children identified 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers in a child sex ring that went on for three years, the AP reported in April. In that case, the Sri Lankan military repatriated 114 of the peacekeepers, but none wa...

CAIRO (AP) — Masked militants riding in three SUVs opened fire Friday on a bus packed with Coptic Christians, including many children, south of the Egyptian capital, killing at least 26 and wounding 25, the Interior Ministry said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, the fourth to target Christians since December, but it bore the hallmarks of the Islamic State group. Islamic militants have for years been waging an insurgency mostly centered in the restive northern part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, although a growing number of attacks have recently also taken place on the mainland. The assault happened while the bus was traveling on a side road in the desert leading to the remote monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Maghagha, in Minya governorate, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) south of Cairo. Security officials quoted witnesses as saying they saw between eight and 10 attackers, dressed in military uniforms and wearing masks. The victims were e...