Putin: Turkey shot down jet to protect ISIL oil supply

War of words continues over downing of Russian warplane near Syrian border, as Turkish PM again refuses to apologise.

 

Turkish authorities claim the Russian jet crossed into Turkey's airspace prior to being shot down - a claim Russia denies [AP]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ankara of shooting down a Russian warplane to protect supplies of oil from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group to Turkey.
"We have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect the oil supply lines to Turkish territory," Putin said during a news conference on Monday on the fringes of UN climate talks near Paris.
"We have received additional information which unfortunately confirms that this oil, produced in areas controlled by [ISIL] and other terrorist organisations, is transported on an industrial scale to Turkey."
Putin's strongly worded statement came hours after Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu again refused to apologise for the downing of the plane near the Syrian border last Tuesday.

Moscow and Ankara have been at loggerheads over last Tuesday's incident when Turkish jets shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border.
Turkish authorities claim the Russian jet crossed into Turkey's airspace prior to being shot down, while Russian authorities vehemently denying those claims.
Turkey has released a number of recordings which it claims prove that the warplane was warned repeatedly prior to being shot down.
Turkey has been backed by its allies NATO and the United States, with the US state department reiterating on Monday that its data "corroborated" Turkey's version of events.
But Russia has hit back hard, slapping Turkey with a series of sanctions over the weekend - including bans on Turks' labour contract extensions, chartered flights from Russia to Turkey and tourism packages to Turkey.
Despite the sanctions, however, Davutoglu said on Monday that Turkey would not apologise for "protecting its borders".
"No country should ask us to apologise," Davutoglu told reporters following a meeting with NATO's secretary-general at alliance headquarters in Brussels.

"The protection of our land borders, our airspace, is not only a right, it is a duty," he said. "We apologise for committing mistakes, not for doing our duty."
Monday was not the first time that Putin has claimed that Turkey buys oil from ISIL.
Last Thursday, the Russian leader said ere was "no doubt" oil from "terrorist-controlled" territory in Syria was making its way across the border into Turkey - a claim immediately denied by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Moscow's surprise intervention in the nearly five-year-old Syrian civil war in September wrong-footed the West and put Turkey, which shares a long border with Syria, directly at odds with Russian support for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The downing of the Russian warplane has wrecked both Turkish-Russian relations and the French-led diplomatic effort to bring Moscow closer into the fold of nations seeking to destroy ISIL through military action in Syria.
While Russia says it is targeting ISIL, many of its air strikes have been against other Assad opponents, including groups actively supported by Turkey.

Deadly 'Russian airstrike' hits market in Syria's Idlib

At least 44 people killed and scores wounded in air attack on popular marketplace in town of Ariha, activists say.

 

Local news channel Ariha al-Youm reported cluster bombs were used in the raid [Ariha al-Youm]

At least 44 people were killed and scores wounded on Sunday in a suspected Russian air strike on a crowded marketplace in Idlib province, activists have told Al Jazeera.
The strikes hit the town of Ariha, which is controlled by the Army of Conquest, a rebel alliance which includes the Nusra Front, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
In addition to the market, several other areas of the town were hit, the group said.
Local news channel Ariha al-Youm reported cluster bombs were used in the raid by a Russian fighter jet.
The pro-opposition Orient TV reported an initial death toll of 40.
However, Rami Abdulrahman, director of the observatory, put the death toll much higher, saying at least 60 people were killed and wounded in the attack.
Officials at the Russian defence ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Army of Conquest alliance seized Ariha in May after heavy fighting with forces loyal to the Syrian army, in an offensive that resulted in the entire province falling into rebel hands.
The Russian air force has conducted air strikes in support of President Bashar al-Assad since September 30.
Moscow says it targets the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and other "terrorists," but critics accuse it of targeting other rebel groups more than ISIL.
Russian air strikes have previously hit several Army of Conquest positions in Idlib province.
The province is not a stronghold of ISIL, which controls wide areas of eastern Syria.

Erdogan expresses 'sadness' over Russian jet shot down

Turkey's president voices "sadness" over downing of Russian jet on Syria border, saying he wishes it had not happened.

 

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan voiced "sadness" on Saturday over the downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkish forces, saying he wished it had not happened.
Addressing supporters, Erdogan again defended Turkey's action and criticised Russia for its moves in Syria before expressing his regrets.
"We wish it hadn't happened, but it happened. I hope something like this doesn't happen again," Erdogan said.

The Turkish president said both sides should approach the issue in a more positive way.

Erdogan renewed a call for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the UN's climate change conference in Paris that starts on Monday.
Travel warning

Earlier on Saturday, Turkey issued a travel warning urging its nationals to delay non-urgent trips to Russia.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said it issued the warning because Turkish travellers were facing "problems" in Russia. It said Turks should delay travel plans until "the situation becomes clear".

Turkey's downing of the Russian military jet on Tuesday - the first time in half a century that a NATO member shot down a Russian plane - has drawn a harsh response from Moscow, which Erdogan has dismissed as emotional and indecorous.
Russia has since restricted tourist travel, left Turkish trucks stranded at the border, confiscated large quantities of Turkish food imports, and started preparing a raft of broader economic sanctions.
Russia was set to announce further sanctions against Turkey later on Saturday, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
Peskov, who is a close confidant of Putin, accused Turkey of having manipulated the evidence of Tuesday's incident.
The Russian Su-24 bomber had not crossed Turkish airspace as Ankara claimed, Peskov said, adding the map presented by Turkey to show that it did was manipulated.
'Playing with fire'
Erdogan told supporters during a speech in Bayburt in northeast Turkey on Friday that Russia "is playing with fire to go as far as mistreating our citizens who have gone to Russia".
"We really attach a lot of importance to our relations with Russia... We don't want these relations to suffer harm in any way."

Putin has so far refused to talk to Erdogan because Ankara has not yet apologised for the downing of the jet, a Putin aide said.
Erdogan has said Turkey deserves the apology because its airspace was violated.
The nearly five-year-old Syrian civil war has been complicated by Russian air strikes in defence of President Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey and regional powers have accused Russia of targeting moderate armed groups fighting Assad.
The frayed relations could also impact two major planned projects - a TurkStream gas pipeline and the Akkuyu nuclear power plant - between the two countries.
Turkey and Russia have also sparred over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, with each side accusing the other of being soft on "terrorism".

France holds memorial for Paris attacks victims

Some victims' families and survivors snub event, accusing government of negligence that led to attacks.

 

French President Hollande called on all French citizens to hang the tricolour national flag from their windows [Reuters]

France mourns the 130 people killed in the November 13 Paris attacks, with President Francois Hollande leading a solemn ceremony in honour of the victims.
Families of those killed in the attacks, claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, joined some of the wounded at ceremonies on Friday at the Invalides, the gilded 17th-century complex in central Paris that houses a military hospital and museum and Napoleon's tomb.
The tribute will be "national and republican", an official at the Elysee presidential palace said, referring to the French republic's creed of liberty, equality and fraternity.
"It will take place in sobriety and solemnity, reflected by the beauty of the surroundings."
Some victims snub event
Hollande will break from a whirlwind diplomatic bid to build a broad military coalition to defeat ISIL. The marathon has taken him from Paris to Washington to Moscow in just a few days.
He is expected to make a 20-minute address at the one-hour ceremony, which will be shown live on television.
In the run-up to the commemoration, Hollande called on the French to hang out the Tricolour: "Every French citizen can take part [in the tribute] by taking the opportunity to deck their home with a blue, white and red flag, the colours of France," government spokesman Stephane Le Foll quoted Hollande as saying.

Some victims' families and survivors, however, said they would snub the event.
"At least two families said they won't be coming, as well as one survivor," Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Paris, said.
"In all three cases, they said the authorities had not learned security lessons after the Charlie Hebdo attacks back in January. Back then, the government had made lots of promises about improving security and intelligence gathering in order to make the public safe. But these people say that the government did not deliver on those promises, and cite how the attackers were able to move freely between France and Syria."
As the memorial is under way, France and its allies have continued a manhunt for two key suspects - Salah Abdeslam, who allegedly played a key logistical role in the attacks, and Mohamed Abrini, who French and Belgian authorities claim was seen with Abdeslam two days before the November 13 attacks.
Meanwhile, France has stepped up its air strikes on ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq, where the group controls large areas of territory, and wants to create a more coordinated, concerted international effort to destroy the armed group.

'No more hostages' as Mali hotel stormed

Mali state television reports that 22 dead bodies have been found inside the Radisson Blu Hotel.

 

People run for cover from the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako on Friday [Reuters]

Correction: 20/11/2015: An earlier version reported that Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote had been in the hotel. That was incorrect. He is not in the hotel.

Malian, French and US special forces have ended a rescue operation at a five-star hotel in Mali's capital Bamako after gunmen stormed it and took at least 170 people hostage.
Mali state television reported later on Friday that 22 dead bodies had been found inside the Radisson Blu Hotel, and the security minister said that the gunmen were "holding no more hostages".
The state broadcaster had earlier reported that 80 of the hostages had been released with commandos going floor to floor inside the building.
Some gunmen were still holding out against security forces even after the evacuation of all civilians from the building, a security ministry spokesman told Reuters.
US special forces helped in the rescue of at least six Americans, a military spokesman told reporters in Washington. Footage also showed French security forces at the scene and witnesses also saw UN troops.

Gunman shouting "Allahu Akbar", or "God is great", in the morning opened fire outside the luxury hotel in the centre of the capital before rushing inside.
Al-Mourabitoun, an Algeria-based radical group that has had ties to al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack - a claim that has not yet been independently confirmed.
Reports said the attackers drove up to the hotel in vehicles bearing diplomatic licence plates, thereby gaining easy access.
"About 10 gunmen arrived early in the morning and shot all the guards in front of the Radisson," business owner Garba Konate told Al Jazeera.
Another witness said he helped a wounded guard to safety.
"I started hearing gunshots coming from the hotel," said Ibrahim, 28, who works at a cultural centre 40 metres away.
"Soon after I saw one of the guards running out, injured... The security guard told me the shooters were so quick that he doesn't even know how many came in," he told Al Jazeera.
Heavy gunfire could be heard from outside the 190-room hotel where security forces had set up a cordon.
A well-known Guinean singer who was in the hotel told Reuters he heard the gunmen speaking English.
"I heard them say in English 'Did you load it?', 'Let's go'," Sékouba 'Bambino' Diabate, who was freed by Malian security forces, said. "I wasn't able to see them because in these kinds of situations it's hard."
Idrissa Sangare, a local journalist at the scene, told Al Jazeera that UN officials were holding a function at the hotel.
"There are a lot of injured people inside the hotel, I'm being told - more than 40 people," he said.

Malian security forces evacuate two women from the area surrounding the Radisson Blu hotel on Friday [Habibou Kouyate/AFP]

Sangare said he saw more than a dozen hostages exiting the Radisson in groups of two and three. Some witnesses told the media that several hostages were released by the attackers after reciting verses from the Quran.
About 20 Indian nationals were inside, India's foreign ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said in a tweet, but they were later freed. Seven Chinese nationals were being held, state news agency Xinhua said.

Turkish Airlines staff were also among those captured. The company said in a statement that six crew members have been freed, but one employee remained inside the hotel, AP reported.
French nationals were among those caught up in the siege, a source in the French president's office said. Air France tweeted that 12 crew members who were inside escaped and were safe.
Both the US and French embassies told their citizens to take cover and stay indoors.

Armed groups have continued to wage attacks in Mali despite a June peace deal between former Tuareg rebels in the north of the country and rival pro-government armed groups.
Northern Mali fell in March-April 2012 to al-Qaeda-linked groups long active in the area, before being taken by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013.
Despite the peace deal, large swathes of the country remain beyond the control of government forces.

Attack victims' families 'living a nightmare'

Standing before a makeshift memorial to the dead, strewn with candles, flowers and scribbled notes, Caroline Pallut hid her tears behind dark glasses.Her cousin, 37-year-old Maud Serrault, died on Friday night when Islamist gunmen attacked a Paris rock concert in a coordinated series of strikes across the city that killed 129 people and injured a further 352.
"We are living a nightmare," Pallut said. "It is all so senseless. She had only just got married." Her husband managed to flee the assault, but lost his wife in the confusion. The family's frantic searches eventually led to a city morgue.
Two days after the worst attacks in France since World War Two, the names of many victims are starting to emerge, their smiling faces shining out from an array of social websites -- a cameraman, a foreign exchange student, lawyers, an artist, a journalist, tourists, two sisters at a birthday party.
Because the killers struck on a Friday night, targeting a packed concert hall, bars and a soccer stadium, many of the dead were young, their lifes and loves openly posted on the Internet, which has now been used to mark their passing.
Friends of a young couple from eastern France, Marie Lausch and Mathias Dymarski, announced their deaths on Youtube. French music magazine, Les Inrocks, announced the death of one of their journalists, Guillaume Decherf, on its website, saying the 43-year-old was the father of two children.
All three died at the Bataclan concert hall, alongside 86 other victims killed when gunmen opened fire on a crowd watching the U.S. rock band Eagles of Death Metal.
The musicians all escaped, but their merchandise manager, a 36-year-old Briton named Nick Alexander, died.
"Nick was not just our brother, son and uncle, he was everyone's best friend, generous, funny and fiercely loyal," his family said in a statement.
"BAD LUCK"
Paris is one of the most visited cities in the world and the dead came from Congo to California and from Mexico to Morocco.
Two Romanians -- Ciprian Calciu and his girlfriend Lacramioara Pop -- were shot dead at the Belle Equipe bar. "The two had the bad luck to be in the wrong place," Romanian government official Anton Rohian said in a statement.
One of the oldest victims was Patricia San Martin Nunez, 61, from Chile, who died alongside her daughter Elsa Delplace.
Many of those killed were young students drawn to Paris's renowned centers of higher education.
Valeria Solesin, 28, was a PhD student from Italy studying demographics at the Sorbonne University. She died at the entrance to Bataclan, shot as she was trying to enter.
"This sort of thing usually happens to other people," her father, Alberto Solesin, told Italy's SkyTG24. "She had a scholarship and she would have finished her degree next year."
Other students included Elodie Breuil, 23, a French woman who was following a course in design at the Conde School, and U.S. citizen Nohemi Gonzalez, also 23, a student from California State University, Long Beach, who was on an exchange program.
Desperate for news of missing loved ones, relatives and friends used the #rechercheParis hashtag on Twitter immediately after the attack, but by Sunday new postings had dwindled and the authorities said they had identified 103 of the dead.
Flowers lay heaped at the sites of all the killings, with visitors and locals alike coming to pay their respects.
Hundreds also gathered at the central Place de la Republique, which has became an enduring shrine to 17 people killed when Islamist gunmen hit the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Kosher supermarket in January.
Among the crowds were two friends from Colombia, who moved to France this year and knew a man who was shot and injured at Bataclan. Lighting candles, they brushed away their tears.
"We had seen so much barbarity and violence back home that we felt we had to leave and see something new. We never thought we would see this here too," said Caroline Roatta Acevedo.

France searches for suspects

Belgium seen central to Paris attack plans, France launches manhunt

Police investigating a wave of attacks in Paris launched an international hunt on Sunday for a man they believe might have helped organize the deadly assaults with two of his brothers in Belgium.The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for Friday's coordinated suicide bombings and shootings, which have re-ignited a row over Europe's refugee crisis and drawn calls for a halt to the ongoing influx of Muslim asylum-seekers.
France said the death toll had risen to 132 from a previous total of 129, with 349 people injured, of whom around 42 were still in intensive care.
Two of the attackers who brought carnage to Paris were French nationals living in neighboring Belgium, officials said on Sunday. One of them blew himself up in the assault, while the other was arrested on Saturday as he tried to cross the border.
Police said they were seeking a Belgian-born man, Abdeslam Salah, in connection with the attack, describing him as "dangerous". The judicial source said he was a brother of the other two men, who have not been named.
"The abject attacks that hit us on Friday were prepared abroad and mobilized a team in Belgium that benefited ... from help in France," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told reporters after meeting his Belgian counterpart in Paris.
Stunned by the carnage, thousands of people thronged to makeshift memorials at four of the sites where the attacks took place, laying flowers and lighting candles to remember the dead.
"We are living a nightmare," said Caroline Pallut, whose 37-year-old cousin Maud Serrault died when the Islamist gunmen attacked Paris's Bataclan concert hall, killing 89 people -- the bloodiest single incident on Friday night.
"It is all so senseless. She had only just got married."
Belgian officials said they had arrested seven people in Brussels after two Belgian-registered cars were discovered in Paris, both suspected of being used by attackers.
"I do not want any preachers of hatred on Belgian soil! There is no place for them in Belgium," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said on Twitter.
A judicial source said Salah, a 26-year-old French national, had rented out one of the two cars, a Volkswagen Polo, that was found not far from the Bataclan hall.

In a sign that at least one gunman might have escaped, a source close to the investigation said a Seat car believed to have been used by the attackers had been found in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil with three Kalashnikov rifles inside.
Only one of the attackers has been named -- Ismael Omar Mostefai, a 29-year-old who lived in the city of Chartres, southwest of Paris. He was identified by the print from one of his fingers that was severed when his suicide vest exploded.
PANIC IN PARIS
France has said it is in a state of war and has vowed to defeat the Islamic State in its bases in Iraq and Syria, which French warplanes have been targeting for months as part of a U.S.-led campaign against the self-declared caliphate.
Museums and theaters remained closed in Paris for a second day on Sunday, with soldiers patrolling the streets and metro stations alongside police after French President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency.
Hundreds of people attending a spontaneous rally in the central Place de la Republique on Sunday night fled the square in a moment of raw panic, with some reporting hearing shots. Police said it was a false alarm.

French authorities found the bodies of seven killers on Friday, six of whom blew themselves up while one was shot by police. Islamic State said there were eight attackers.
Police said they found a Syrian passport near one of the dead men. Greece said the passport holder crossed from Turkey to the Greek Islands last month and then sought asylum in Serbia before heading north -- following the route taken by hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers fleeing war in the Middle East.
The news revived a furious a row within the European Union on how to handle the flood of refugees. Top Polish and Slovak officials poured cold water on an EU plan to relocate asylum seekers across the bloc, saying the violence underlined their concerns about taking in Muslim refugees.
Bavarian allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a reversal of her "open-door" refugee policy, saying the attacks underlined the need for tougher controls.
"The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can't continue just like that. Paris changes everything," Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder told Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

IRAQI WARNING
The only gunman named to date, Mostefai, was French-born and of Algerian descent. Police said he had a security file for Islamist radicalization and a criminal record but had never been in jail. His father, brother and five others believed to be close to him were held for questioning, a judicial source said.
He lived in Luce, a quiet residential area of Chartres, for several years until about 2012. "No-one knew him here. There is no trace of him," Karim Benayed, a senior member of the local mosque, told Reuters.
Many of the victims were young people out enjoying themselves on a Friday night. The dead came from around the world, including one U.S. citizen, a Swede, Briton, German, Italian, two Belgians, two Romanians and two Mexicans.
Speaking in Vienna, Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said his country's intelligence services had shared information they had which indicated that France, the United States and Iran were among countries being targeted for attack.
At a G20 summit in Turkey, U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to step up efforts to eliminate Islamic State and prevent it from carrying out attacks like those in Paris. EU leaders urged Russia to focus its military efforts on the radical Islamists.
France was the first European state to join U.S. air strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq in September 2014, while a year later it extended its air strikes to Syria. Russia began its own air campaign in Syria in October, but has been targeting mainly areas controlled by other groups opposed to its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's critics say.
France had been on high alert since Islamist gunmen attacked the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris in January, killing 17 people.
Those attacks briefly united France in defense of freedom of speech, with a mass demonstration of more than a million people. But far-right populist Marine Le Pen is now making gains by blaming France's security problems on immigration and Islam.
"By spreading out migrants through the villages and towns of France, there is a fear that terrorists will take advantage of these population flows to hit out at us," she said after meeting the French president on Sunday.

Riot at Australian detention camp after refugee's death

Controversial facility on Christmas Island rocked by standoff between detained asylum seekers and immigration officers.

 

 A riot has erupted at a controversial offshore refugee-detention facility in Australia following the death of an asylum seeker.

Immigration officers and refugees confirmed on Monday a standoff between detainees and officers at the detention camp on Christmas Island, located more than 2,000km northwest of Perth in the Indian Ocean, after a Kurdish Iranian refugee died there.
Fazel Chegeni, in his 30s, was reportedly found at the bottom of a cliff.
"On Saturday morning [November 7] the department was advised of the escape of an illegal maritime arrival from Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre [CI IDC] by service provider staff.

"The matter was referred to the Australian Federal Police who commenced a search and discovered a deceased person today [November 8]," the Australian government said in a news release.

The Department of Immigration said staff and security have been withdrawn for security purposes and denied a large scale riot was taking place.

"The protest action began when a small group of Iranian detainees took part in a peaceful protest following the escape from, and death outside the centre, of a detainee on Sunday," its news release said.
'Character test'
Currently, there are about 285 asylum-seekers at the Christmas Island camp. Section 501 of Australia's Migration Act permits the deportation of a non-Australian citizen who fails the "character test", the portal for which includes any prison sentence longer than 12 months.
A member of RISE, a rights group campaigning for refugee rights in Sydney, said refugees heard the Iranian man screaming for help, then later saw him in a body bag.

"The detention centre detains asylum-seekers under administrative detention methods, just like Guantanamo and just like Palestinian prisoners in Israel," she told Al Jazeera over the phone.
"These cases cannot be taken to court and the refugee him or herself sometimes does not know what they are doing there.
"They could claim they are investigating the asylum seeker, but in the end it is punishment.
"Those who arrive by boat are not allowed to have mobile phones with them, but those who arrive by plane are.
"And if they manage to sneak in mobile phones, security does random checks where they take them away.
"In 2011, there were five deaths in eight months in a detention centre in the suburbs of Sydney.
"Two detention centres were destroyed following that.
"The government does not learn from its past experiences."
Unsafe food
Last week, human teeth were found in a meal served to an asylum seeker in the Manus Island detention centre, just a few days after almost 100 asylum seekers reportedly suffered from food poisoning.
Speaking to Al Jazeera over phone on Saturday, Ian Rintoul, an Australian refugee advocate who is in touch with asylum-seekers on the island, said asylum seekers managed to call activists and inform them human teeth were found in a lunch meal served to a refugee.
The Australian government's Department of Immigration announced on Twitter that it is investigating the reports.

"A few days ago over 100 asylum-seekers and staff members were poisoned from the food at the Manus detention centre," Rintoul said.
"There has been constant problems with the food there. Refugees have complained about the quality of the food such as the smell from the meat provided.
"Refugees have also found flies and insects in their food several times.
"There are constant problems in these detention centres. Water is one of them. The sewage goes out to the bay and, if it rains, it washes up on the compound.
"The toilets are mostly non-functional too."
Rintoul said asylum-seekers find ways to contact refugee advocates and inform them of these issues, but of late attacks and raids on the centres have been mounted to confiscate the refugees' phones.
"Nothing will change. The problems are created by the detention centres themselves," he told Al Jazeera.
"Tensions have not been resolved since Reza Barati was killed in 2011. The Australian government has embarked on a brutal system."
Appalling conditions
Sarah Hanson-Young, an Australian Greens senator for South Australia, who has been to the Manus camp, told Al Jazeera that conditions at the detention centres are appalling.
"The hygiene and safety standards in the Manus and Nauru camps are profoundly subpar," she said.
"The Nauru camp is built in the middle of a disused phosphate mine and, as though that wasn't bad enough, multiple unexploded World War II munitions have been found buried in the family compound.
"More people have died inside the Manus camp than have been resettled in PNG [Papua New Guinea]. One of those who passed away was Hamid Kehazaei, who died after a small cut to his foot became septic."

Crash forensics to determine whether bomb downed Russian jet

With world powers divided over

the cause of a Russian jetliner crash, much rests on forensic teams as they scour a sandy trail of wreckage almost a week after 224 people died in Egypt's worst air disaster.Britain said on Thursday it believed Islamic State may have downed the jet, but Egypt said there was no evidence of a bomb and Russia said it was too early to draw conclusions.
That puts the onus on Egyptian-led investigators to prove or disprove the theory, with only scattered evidence and Egypt's tourist economy at stake.
Clues that might reveal whether the plane was deliberately brought down are flung across 10 miles of desert or potentially concealed in the dying microseconds of cockpit recordings.
With at least one of the black boxes reported to be damaged, and cockpit sensors likely to be silenced by any blast, the main focus will be on understanding the wreckage as well as any evidence gleaned from bodies of the mainly Russian victims.
To tackle their task an international team including Russia, France and Ireland is likely to draw on lessons from one of the bloodiest 12 months in aviation over a quarter of a century ago.
In December 1988, 270 people were killed when a bomb brought down Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
In September the following year, a DC-10 flown by French airline UTA blew up over the Sahara en route from the Chadian capital N’djamena to Paris, killing all 170 on board.
In both cases, investigators concluded that a device may have been smuggled aboard but drew a blank from 'black box' recorders whose power supply was severed by the explosions.
Investigators relied on debris, bags and clothes as well as chemical analysis to find the subtle imprints of an explosion, according to the report and people involved in the two probes.
"A first indication comes from distribution of the wreckage and then you look for potential reasons, and one would have to be a device on the aircraft,” a former investigator said.

"You are looking for traces of high-energy explosion, such as burns or scorching and penetration of material into bodies or the aircraft," he said.
“Close to the device itself you might get traces of gas washing over the surface.”
SCATTERED EVIDENCE
A UK report on the Lockerbie disaster said the bomb sent a double shockwave and supersonic shrapnel and gases through the Boeing 747, contributing to the plane's disintegration.
One of the earliest clues in that probe was evidence of fine "cratering and pitting" in the aircraft, which speeded up the criminal investigation, a person involved in the probe said.
Investigators in Egypt and Russia, where most bodies are now located, will be looking for lacerated clothing, deformed baggage and burn marks in places otherwise free of fire damage, indicating fire before the A321 plunged into the ground.
Russia has however started to bury some of the victims. Forensic experts say detailed examination of bodies would be vital in detecting evidence of any attack.
In harsh conditions such as the Sinai peninsula where the Airbus A321 broke up and fell, evidence can be fragile and end up scattered well beyond the main crash site.
In the UTA disaster, a team including 60 soldiers faced a 50-mile trail of tiny fragments, 10 times the size of the main wreckage field, according to an official French report.
They also had to cope with desert winds and move quickly to make sure vital evidence was found. Their breakthrough came when soldiers combing through 60 square km of Sahara found parts containing traces of explosion.

As with the recent Dutch probe into the downing of a Malaysian jet over Ukraine, investigators may reconstruct the recovered debris on a specially constructed frame.
That can help pinpoint an explosion's source by examining the impact of shockwaves and debris on the fuselage. Engines may be examined for shrapnel and even paint smears if a suspected blast is thought to have happened near the front of the plane.
Doubts meanwhile remain over what evidence the black boxes will supply. Egyptian officials said the voice recorder was damaged and previous disasters suggest the separate flight data recorder would have seen its power cut and produced little of value.
But science may help fill in some of the blanks.
On the UTA jetliner, as well as a TWA jet whose fuel tank blew up over the Atlantic in 1996, cockpit tapes ended immediately after the blast but still yielded vital clues thanks to a procedure called "spectrum analysis".
Scientists use such methods to examine the signature of any sounds picked up in the last microseconds of normal flight.
That helped investigators of the UTA disaster to identify a revealing sound: not of the blast itself but of the airframe transmitting shockwaves like a tuning fork.
Investigators may be able to compare any usable fragment of audio to the frequencies produced by those previous explosions to try to assess whether they are looking at evidence of a bomb.

Islamic State likely behind Russia plane crash

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday it was increasingly likely that a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt with the loss of 224 lives, setting him at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin.Britain, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands have suspended flights to and from Sharm al-Sheikh, leaving thousands of European tourists stranded in the Red Sea resort where the plane took off from. A spokesperson for Cameron later said flights from the resort destination to Britain would resume on Friday.
Egypt, which depends on tourism as a crucial source of revenue, said the decision to suspend flights was unjustified and should be reversed at once. It said there was no evidence a bomb was to blame.
A Sinai-based group affiliated to Islamic State, the militant group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the crash, which if confirmed would make it the first attack on civil aviation by the world's most violent jihadist organization.
Moscow, which launched air strikes against Islamist fighters including Islamic State in Syria more than a month ago, says it is premature to reach conclusions that the flight was attacked.
In a telephone call, Putin told Cameron it was important that assessments of the cause of the crash be based on information from the official investigation, Interfax news agency reported.
Cameron, who hosted Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday for a previously scheduled visit, said: "We cannot be certain that the Russian airliner was brought down by a terrorist bomb, but it looks increasingly likely that was the case."
His foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said it was "a significant possibility" Islamic State was responsible, given a range of information, including the claim of responsibility.
Britain said it was working with airlines and Egyptian authorities to put in place additional security and screening measures at the airport to allow Britons to get home. It hoped flights bound for Britain could leave on Friday.
If a bomb brought down the Airbus A321 (AIR.PA), that would devastate Egypt's tourism industry, still recovering from years of political turmoil. Shares in holiday companies Thomas Cook (TCG.L) and TUI Group (TUIT.L) fell.

U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said on Fox news that evidence so far indicated an Islamic State attack "with an explosive device in the airplane".
DOOMED FLIGHT
While Egypt has bristled at the suspensions of flights, Sisi said during his visit to London that he understood countries' concerns about safety. He said Cairo had been asked 10 months ago to check security at the airport in Sharm al-Sheikh.
"We understood their concern because they are really interested in the safety and security of their nationals," he added.
Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said Russian planes were still flying to and from Sharm al‐Sheikh.

"Theories about what happened and the causes of the incident can only be pronounced by the investigation," Peskov said.
Egypt's civil aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, said investigators so far had no evidence to support the explosion theory. Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia said investigators would examine whether there was any explosive material on the plane.
Security experts and investigators have said the plane is unlikely to have been struck from the outside and Sinai militants are not believed to have any missiles capable of striking a jet at 30,000 feet. Russia's Kogalymavia airline, which operated the crashed plane, said three of its four remaining A321 jets had passed Russian safety checks, while the fourth would be checked shortly.

FIRST FUNERALS
Russia on Thursday began burying some of those killed in the crash, which could affect strong public support for the Kremlin's air strikes in Syria.
In St Petersburg, the intended destination of the doomed flight, friends and loved ones bade farewell to 31-year-old Alexei Alexeyev, who worked for a heating and ventilation company and had been returning from a holiday.
Islamic State has called for war against both Russia and the United States in response to their air strikes in Syria. The hardline group, which also has a presence in Egypt's neighbor Libya, is waging a campaign of suicide bombings and shootings in Egypt designed to topple the government.
A senior Russian lawmaker said Britain's decision to stop flights from Sharm was motivated by London's opposition to Russia's actions in Syria.
"There is geopolitical opposition to the actions of Russia in Syria," said Konstantin Kosachev, a senior member of Russia's upper house of parliament, when asked about Britain's decision, in comments reported by RIA news agency.
At Sharm airport, security appeared to have been tightened on Thursday with security forces patrolling the terminals and not allowing drivers, tour agents or others to loiter while awaiting tourist arrivals, a witness said.
A spokesperson for Cameron said flights from Britain to Sharm al-Sheikh were still suspended but "the government has decided, in consultation with the airlines, that flights from Sharm to the UK will resume tomorrow".

Jet broke up mid air: official

A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula broke up in mid-air, an official of a Moscow-based aviation agency said on Sunday after visiting the disaster site, but stressed it was too early to draw conclusions from this.
Russian authorities also ordered Kogalymavia airline, operator of the Airbus A321 which came down on Saturday killing all 224 people on board, not to fly its jets of the same model until the causes of the crash are known.
The jet, which Kogalymavia flew under the brand name Metrojet, was carrying holidaymakers from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg when it crashed into a mountainous area of central Sinai shortly after losing radar contact near cruising altitude.
"The destruction happened in the air, and fragments were scattered over a large area of around 20 square kilometers," said Viktor Sorochenko, director of the Intergovernmental Aviation Committee. However, he warned against reading anything into this information. "It's too early to talk about conclusions," he said on Russian television from Cairo.
The Moscow-based committee represents governments of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which groups Russia and other former Soviet republics.
Egyptian analysts began examining the contents of the two "black box" recorders recovered from the airliner although the process, according to a civil aviation source, could take days. However, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russia 24 television that this work had not yet started.

MONTHS OF INQUIRIES
A militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt said in a statement that it brought down the plane "in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land", but Sokolov told Interfax news agency the claim "can't be considered accurate".
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said it could take months to establish the truth behind the crash though his country was cooperating with Russia to aid investigations.
"This is a complicated matter and requires advanced technologies and broad investigations that could take months," Sisi said in a televised speech on Sunday.
The wreckage was found in a desolate area of stony ground.
Rescuers had collected the colorful suitcases of the passengers into a pile. A pink child's sandal decorated with white flowers lay among the debris, a reminder that 17 children were among those killed as they headed home from their holidays.
Parts of the wreckage were blackened and charred, with one section forming heaps of twisted metal, although the blue Metrojet logo was still visible on its broken tail fin.
As the Russian investigators moved slowly across the site, Egyptian military helicopters buzzed overhead, combing the wider area for debris - or bodies - not yet found.

MORGUE
At least 163 bodies had already been recovered and transported to various hospitals including Zeinhom morgue in Cairo, according to a cabinet statement.
Airport security sources said Russian experts who arrived on Saturday brought with them refrigerators and DNA samples to help identify and take home the dead.
Russian experts had already visited the morgue on Saturday night and Moscow's ambassador to Cairo said the first 130 bodies were due to leave on Sunday evening bound for St Petersburg.
A source inside the morgue said the bodies had been numbered using bracelets, ready to be received by the Russians, and empty ambulances were arriving to pick them up.
Those on board the doomed flight included 214 Russians, at least three Ukrainians and one Belarusian, most returning from the Red Sea, popular with Russians seeking winter sun.
The Russian flag was flying at half-mast over the country's embassy in Cairo on Sunday morning. President Vladimir Putin has declared a day of national mourning in Russia.

Russia's transport regulator said in a statement that it had grounded Kogalymavia's Airbus A321s until the reasons for the crash became clear.
Russian transport prosecutors have already examined the quality of the fuel used by the airliner and found that it met necessary requirements, Russia's state-run RIA news agency said.
The crew had also undergone medical tests recently and no problems were detected, Interfax reported.
Experts from Airbus have begun arriving in Egypt to assist in the investigation, the civil aviation ministry said.

SEARCH RESUMES
Emergency services and aviation specialists resumed early on Sunday their search at the crash site which is spread over more than 15 square km, with 100 Russian emergency workers helping them recover bodies and gather evidence.

Russia's transport regulator said in a statement that it had grounded Kogalymavia's Airbus A321s until the reasons for the crash became clear.
Russian transport prosecutors have already examined the quality of the fuel used by the airliner and found that it met necessary requirements, Russia's state-run RIA news agency said.
The crew had also undergone medical tests recently and no problems were detected, Interfax reported.
Experts from Airbus have begun arriving in Egypt to assist in the investigation, the civil aviation ministry said.
SEARCH RESUMES
Emergency services and aviation specialists resumed early on Sunday their search at the crash site which is spread over more than 15 square km, with 100 Russian emergency workers helping them recover bodies and gather evidence.

Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched air raids against opposition groups in Syria including Islamic State on Sept. 30.
Islamic State, the ultra-hardline group that controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has called for a holy war against both Russia and the United States in response to airstrikes on its fighters in Syria.
Sinai is the scene of an insurgency by militants close to Islamic State, who have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police and have also attacked Western targets in recent months. Much of the Sinai is a restricted military zone.
Militants in the area are not believed to have missiles capable of hitting a plane at 30,000 feet.
Islamic State websites have in the past claimed responsibility for actions that have not been conclusively attributed to them. Officials say there is no evidence to suggest so far that a bomb could have brought down the plane.
Three carriers based in the United Arab Emirates airlines - Emirates [EMIRA.UL], Air Arabia AIRA.DU and flydubai - said on Sunday they were re-routing flights to avoid flying over Sinai. Two of Europe's largest carriers, Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) and Air France-KLM (AIRF.PA), have already said they would avoid flying over peninsula while awaiting an explanation of the cause.
Sherif Fathy, Chairman of EgyptAir, said the national carrier had taken no such action. "I heard some other companies may be doing this, but I don’t think it’s justified,” he said.
The A321 is a medium-haul jet in service since 1994, with over 1,100 in operation worldwide and a good safety record. It is a highly automated aircraft relying on computers to help pilots stay within safe flying limits.
Airbus said the A321 was built in 1997 and had been operated by Metrojet since 2012. It had flown 56,000 hours in nearly 21,000 flights.
The aircraft took off at 5:51 a.m. Cairo time (1151 EDT) and disappeared from radar screens 23 minutes later, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement. It was at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,400 meters) when it vanished from radar screens.
According to FlightRadar24, an authoritative Sweden-based flight tracking service, the aircraft was descending rapidly at about 6,000 feet (1,800 meters) per minute when the signal was lost to air traffic control.