News 1

Official: 31 dead, 200 rescued after ship capsizes near Lampedusa

Rome (CNN) -- The death toll from a ship that capsized Friday in international waters near the Italian island of Lampedusa climbed to 31, according to the Maltese military. More than 200 survivors were pulled from the water, but the search continued for more than a dozen people still believed missing after the ship carrying hundreds of migrants sank, the Rescue Center of Malta, a branch of the Armed Forces of Malta, told CNN. "We are trying to save as many people as we can," said Maltese military spokesman Keith Caruana. Italian and Maltese military forces using helicopters and boats pulled 206 of the 250 people believed to be on board the ship, authorities said. The shipwreck occurred in international waters about 60 nautical miles south of Lampedusa, an island south of Sicily, Italian navy spokesman Alessandro Busonero said. According to a statement released by the Armed Forces of Malta, the ship was being followed at about 4 p.m. local time by military chase planes when it "appeared unstable." "A few minutes later, the aircraft reported that the boat had capsized and that numerous persons were in the water. Initial assistance was provided by the aircraft, which dropped a life raft in close proximity of the persons in distress," according to the statement posted on the agency's Facebook page. A significant number of the survivors were rescued from the life raft, Maltese authorities said The Italian navy sent helicopters and two boats to the scene. Its sailors have rescued at least 50 people, Busonero said. An Italian navy patrol vessel, the Libra, rescued 56 people, including nine children, the Maltese authorities said. Another 150, including 17 children, were rescued by the Maltese navy patrol vessel, P61, the Maltese military said. It was not immediately known where the ship began its journey, and the Italian and Maltese military have not released the identities of the migrants. Island a destination for refugees Lampedusa, not far from Sicily and the closest Italian island to Africa, has become a destination for tens of thousands of refugees seeking to enter European Union countries -and such deadly shipwrecks are all too common. On October 3, a boat carrying more than 500 African migrants sank off the coast of Lampedusa, killing 309 people in what Lampedusa Mayor Giusi Nicolini called "the biggest sea tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea since World War II."

That ship originated in Libya, caught fire off the Italian coast and sank. Survivors, many of them from Eritrea, told CNN they used bodies to keep themselves afloat until they were rescued. The incident sparked calls for efforts to reform migration policies in the region. A week ago Friday, the United Nations' human rights office urged the European Union to work to prevent another such incident. The agency called on authorities to work to reduce migrant trafficking and address economic and security issues that have driven thousands of African residents to make the risky voyage to Europe in search of a better life. Just under 115 kilometers (70 miles) from Tunisia, Lampedusa has been the first point of entry to Europe for more than 200,000 refugees and irregular migrants who have passed through the island since 1999. In recent years, the Italian coast guard says it has been involved in the rescue of more than 30,000 refugees around the island.

News 2

UK police make new push for leads in Madeleine McCann's disappearance

(CNN) -- It's been more than six years since Madeleine McCann vanished while on holiday with her parents in Portugal. But neither her parents nor the detectives investigating her case are giving up on one day finding the little girl from Leicestershire, England. Her disappearance is set to get renewed attention Monday when investigators make another appeal to the public on BBC's "Crimewatch," releasing two computer-generated sketches of a man spotted around the resort town of Praia da Luz on the day then-3-year-old Madeleine went missing. The sketches are based on descriptions from two separate witnesses. "Today I am asking the public for their help. Whilst this man may or may not be the key to unlocking this investigation, tracing and speaking to him is of vital importance to us," Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said in a statement Monday before the program, which will air in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany. "We have witnesses placing him in the resort area around the time of Madeleine's disappearance." The man is described as white, between 20 and 40 years old, with short brown hair and a medium build. Additionally, investigators believe they have a better understanding of when Madeleine may have been abducted, Redwood said. The "Crimewatch" program Monday night will

reconstruct the events of May 3, 2007 -- the night Madeleine disappeared from her family's villa while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant. She was just days shy of her 4th birthday. "The timeline we have now established has given new significance to sightings and movements of people in and around Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine's disappearance," Redwood said. Police announced in July that they have identified 38 "people of interest" in connection with the case. Twelve of them are UK nationals who the police believe were in Portugal at the time the girl went missing. All the others are European nationals. Metropolitan Police officers are talking to authorities in other countries to get more information about them and their potential involvement, the statement said. Meanwhile, Madeleine's parents continue to keep hope that their daughter will be returned to them, explaining on their website: "We still worry about her, we miss her as much as we ever did, we remain as determined as ever to find her and to know what has happened."

News 3

Syrian war's brutality isn't going away

(CNN) -- A gruesome snuff video that has garnered more than 180,000 views on YouTube underlines just how grim the Syrian conflict has become. This video appears to document one of the worst kinds of war crimes: The summary executions of wounded men. (Warning: The scenes are extremely graphic.) Several paramilitaries in battle fatigues armed with automatic weapons -- some speaking Arabic in distinctive Lebanese accents -- pull wounded men out of the back of a van and drop them on to the ground, then shoot them in their heads at point-blank range.

Peter Bergen

As they shoot their victims, some of the paramilitaries seem almost giddy with excitement. A man who appears to be their commander admonishes his men, "Come on guys, we are here to carry out our duties not to seek revenge on our own. This is unacceptable." One of the paramilitaries smilingly replies, "But we are killing them in God's cause, only in God's cause." The wounded men lying on the ground awaiting their deaths repeat religious phrases that are commonly said just before death. They all appear to be civilians. There has been much analysis of the al Qaeda-aligned groups in Syria fighting the Assad regime that have recruited thousands of foreign fighters from around the Arab world and a smaller number from the West, but there has been far less discussion of the Shiite militias

in Syria that have recruited foreign fighters from Iraq as well as from Lebanese Hezbollah, all of whom are fighting to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Barak Barfi, an American journalist who is a fellow at the New America Foundation and who has reported inside Syria for many months, says that one of the executioners in the videotape is wearing a distinctive yellow armband that Hezbollah fighters wear. Barfi says, "This appears to be a Hezbollah video, though we cannot conclude this with high confidence." Similarly, Augustus Richard Norton, professor of international relations at Boston University and the author of an authoritative study of Hezbollah, says, "The only identifying marks on the uniforms are yellow ribbons, which, in theory, would identify them as Hezbollahis." Randa Slim, also a fellow at the New America Foundation and a scholar at the Middle East Institute who is writing a book about Hezbollah, says that based on the accents of the Arabic-speaking executioners the video shows Syrians as well as fighters from Iraq and Lebanon. Slim cautions, however, that the paramilitaries conducting the executions could well be members of an Alawite militia made up mostly of Syrians who have been trained by Hezbollah, but that are not part of Hezbollah itself. Phillip Smyth, a researcher at the University of Maryland who specializes in Shiite militias operating in Syria, says that the fighters are likely from Hezbollah as they speak in a Lebanese accent and when they perform the executions they mention a religious edict handed down by a key Hezbollah religious guide. Oubai Shahbandar is a Syrian-American who worked at the Pentagon for much of the past decade as a Middle East analyst, including a stint on General David Petraeus' staff during the Iraq War, and is now a vice president at the Syrian Support Group, which supports "moderate elements of Syria's armed opposition." Shahbandar has been tracking Hezbollah since 2007 and he asserts that the executioners in the video are definitely from Hezbollah and that the video itself was shot in Homs province in western Syria. An analysis done by CNN's International desk confirms that the dialect spoken by the executioners in the videotape is Lebanese Arabic and they can be heard shouting "Fi Sabil Allah," an Arabic phrase that means "in God's cause," an expression commonly used by Hezbollah fighters on the battlefield. The international desk's analysis points out that the yellow and green ribbons tied to the fighters' uniforms appear to mark them as Hezbollah fighters. As is now well known, many of the players in the Syrian conflict, including most prominently the Assad regime itself, have committed war crimes against civilians.

On Friday, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting a massacre on August 4 that was perpetrated by two al Qaeda-aligned Sunni militant groups, the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra. The massacre took place in the coastal region of Latakia in a number of Alawite villages supportive of the Assad regime. According to the report "Eight survivors and witnesses described how opposition forces executed residents and opened fire on civilians, sometimes killing or attempting to kill entire families who were either in their homes unarmed or fleeing from the attack, and at other times killing adult male family members, and holding the female relatives and children hostage. " Human Rights Watch collected the names of 190 civilians who were killed in these attacks, including 57 women and at least 18 children and 14 elderly men. While the world in the past few weeks has been distracted by the U.S. government shutdown and the brutal attack on the mall in Kenya by an al Qaeda affiliate that left at least 67 dead, the Syrian war has ground on. It is a war that has now claimed as many as 120,000 lives. Four of those deaths are documented in the appalling videotape of the Shiite paramilitaries gleefully executing wounded men who appear to be civilians. And the deaths of 190 civilians killed by Sunni militias in August are documented in great detail in the Human Rights Watch report that was released Friday. Just when you thought the Syrian civil war couldn't get any worse, it does.