Weekly News Wrap: Monday, July 21, 2014

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• Suspected Islamists raided the remote northeast Nigerian town of Damboa over the weekend, shooting dead more than 40 residents and burning down houses in a familiar pattern of killing that has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes this year.
• South Sudanese rebels and government soldiers clashed in the northern town of Nasir on Sunday, adding to fears that a shaky ceasefire agreement signed in May could totally collapse.

Asia

• A US drone attack has killed at 11 people in the Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.
• The U.N. Security Council on Thursday condemned recent ballistic missile launches by North Korea describing the three rounds of Scud short-range missiles fired in June and July as a violation of council demands on Pyongyang.

Europe

• U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laid out what he called overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as international horror deepened over the fate of the victims’ remains.
• Britain’s new Foreign Secretary Philip Hammonds reiterated his position from two years ago that if Britain does not get good renegotiation, it should leave the European Union.
• A former Libyan Islamist commander who says he suffered years of torture by Muammar Gaddafi’s henchmen after British and U.S. spies handed him over to Libya will try this week to overturn a ruling blocking legal action against the British government.
• The remains of 284 victims of the Bosnian war were laid to rest on Sunday having been unearthed from what is believed to be the largest mass grave of Europe’s worst conflict since World War Two.
• Spain summoned the British ambassador to complain about Britain’s handling of an incident on Wednesday involving the Spanish Navy near the disputed territory of Gibraltar.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Saturday, the army said, as the Palestinian death toll from the conflict rose above 300 with no diplomatic solution in sight. 
• Italian rescuers have found 18 bodies on a boat carrying hundreds of asylum-seekers and another died while being evacuated, the ANSA news agency reports.

Americas

• Central American leaders will ask U.S. President Obama to support a regional development and security plan to stem the tide of illegal child migrants to the U.S. at a meeting next week, a Honduran minister said on Saturday.
• Pope Francis called for justice to be served in his native Argentina on Friday, the twentieth anniversary of the deadly bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish commuity center that local courts blamed on Iran.
• The CIA station chief in Berlin who was told to leave by Germany due to new allegations of U.S. spying has now left the country, a spokesman for Germany’s foreign ministry said on Thursday.

UN/Other

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned the killing of dozens of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by Israeli shelling as an “atrocious action” and called for an immediate end to almost two weeks of fighting.
• According to the IAEA, Iran has turned all of its enriched uranium closest to the level needed to make nuclear arms into more harmless forms.
• The U.N. Security Council is due to vote today on a resolution that would condemn the downing of a Malaysian passenger plane in Ukraine and demands that those responsible be held accountable and that armed groups don’t compromise the crash site integrity.
• The United Nations accused Islamic State fighters in Iraq of executions, rape and forced recruitment of children during a campaign to seize much of northern Iraq, part of a conflict it said has killed almost 5,600 civilians this year.
• The International Monetary Fund expects to decide within weeks on issuing the second tranche of a $17-billion bailout to Ukraine, whose economy is likely to contract by 6.5 percent this year, its Kiev mission chief said on Friday.