Iraq Isis Crisis: Al-Baghdadi's Top Aide 'Killed' in US Airstrike

Abu Hajar al-Sufi, a top lieutenant of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed in a US airstrike.

Iraq's defence ministry announced the killing of al-Sufi along with two other senior Sunni insurgents in the Isis-controlled northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

One of them was said to have been an explosives expert and the other a military strategist.

Pentagon spokesperson Colonel Steve Warren could not confirm the death of the Isis commander but told NBC News that the senior figures could have been killed if they had been "inside troop formations".

Speculation in the Iraqi social media suggested that al-Baghdadi himself may have been killed in the attack but the Iraqi defence ministry clarified that it was his suspected right-hand man who was killed.

The fallout of the death of al-Sufi, if confirmed, is still unclear as analysts are yet to get a clearpicture of the organisational structure of the Isis.

In another development, the Sunni insurgents are said to have abducted dozens of men in northern Iraq.

The abductions took place in Tal Ali village, about 240kms north of the capital Baghdad, reports quoting residents said.

At least 50 men were believed to have been rounded up before being loaded onto cars and trucks and taken to a secret location.

The abductions took place after the residents set Isis flags on fire as the militants were retreating in the face of the Iraqi offensive.

Detroit-Area Man Gets 17 Years in Porch Shooting of Renisha McBride: Race was hardly mentioned at all

A suburban Detroit man was sentenced Wednesday to at least 17 years in prison for killing an unarmed woman who appeared on his porch before dawn.

Theodore Wafer was convicted of second-degree murder in the Nov. 2 death of 19-year-old Renisha McBride. Before he was sentenced, the Dearborn Heights man apologized to McBride's family, saying he killed a woman who was "too young to leave this world."

"I will carry that guilt and sorrow forever," said Wafer, often pausing to control his emotions.

Wafer was convicted last month after a nine-day trial that centered on whether the 55-year-old had a reasonable and honest belief that he was in peril. He testified that he was awakened by pounding on his doors and shot McBride because he feared for his life. A jury rejected his claim of self-defense.

Prosecutors recommended at least 17 years in prison for Wafer, the low end of the guidelines, including two years for unlawful use of a gun. Defense attorney Cheryl Carpenter asked for as few as six years in prison.

Noting Wafer's age, Carpenter told Judge Dana Hathaway that anything more than 10 years in prison would be a "life sentence." The judge declined to go below the guidelines.

No one knows why McBride ended up at Wafer's home about 4:30 a.m., though prosecutors speculated she may have been seeking help. She had crashed her car into a parked car about a half-mile away in Detroit around 1 a.m. An autopsy found she was extremely drunk.

Wafer opened the front door and shot McBride in the face, firing through a screen door. He first suggested to police that it was an accident but later admitted to intentionally pulling the trigger.

The judge said McBride had made "some terrible choices" but that she didn't deserve to be killed.

Hathaway described the case as "one life gone and one life ruined."

The jury convicted Wafer of murder, manslaughter and a gun-related charge on Aug. 7. His maximum sentence is 32 years in prison, although he'll be eligible for parole after serving the minimum of 17.

Wafer is white and McBride was black, and some wondered in the aftermath of the shooting whether race was a factor, likening it to the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. But race was hardly mentioned at trial.

US Justice Dept. to conduct independent autopsy of Missouri shooting victim

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Sunday ordered the Justice Department to conduct an autopsy of Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a spokesman said.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon said Holder ordered the federal autopsy "due to the extraordinary circumstances involved in this case and at the request of the Brown family."

The autopsy, to be performed by a federal medical examiner, would be in addition to an autopsy by Missouri state medical examiners.

Fallon said federal investigators would take into account the results of the autopsy carried out by the state during their investigation into the shooting of Brown. (Reporting By Julia Edwards; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)

One person was shot and critically wounded and seven arrested early on Sunday as police in  , clashed with protesters when a curfew was imposed following days of unrest over a black teenager being shot dead by a white police officer.

Scores of demonstrators had remained in the streets after the curfew took effect at midnight Law enforcement officials used loudspeakers to warn protesters to disperse immediately. Officers, equipped with gas masks and full-length shields, stood among and on top of armored vehicles.

Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and announced the five-hour curfew after a week of racially charged protests and looting over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, 28, in the suburban St. Louis community in the Midwest U.S. state on Aug. 9.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson said the person shot at a restaurant was in critical condition. Police were unable to identify the victim, who he said was not shot by police, and that the alleged shooter was still at large.

Reuters: Lucas Jackson

A protester holds a sign aloft in front of police officers before a midnight curfew meant to stem ongoing demonstrations in reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown takes effect in Ferguson, Missouri August 16, 2014.

Seven people were also arrested for failing to disperse after the curfew took effect.

Johnson said canisters of smoke and later teargas were fired as part of police attempts to reach the victim of the restaurant shooting, "and not in relation to the curfew." The shooting victim was taken to hospital by bystanders before police could reach him.

Johnson also said someone had shot at a passing police car but was not apprehended, adding "I was disappointed in the actions of tonight," noting "the crowds we've had for the last two nights (were) citizens obeying, protesting."

The smoke and teargas canisters largely dispersed the crowd, some of whom had been chanting "No justice, no curfew, no peace", while others implored the crowd not to move forward towards police.

On Saturday evening the mood among the protesters on a main road in Ferguson had been tense and defiant following days of demonstrations and some looting.

"The curfew is going to make things worse," said protester Phones Scott, 24. "I think the cops are going to get violent tonight, but they can't lock us all up."

Tensions had been running high over the past week but escalated on Friday, pitting mostly black protesters against mostly white police as the demonstrators overran a residential and retail district that has become a center of the unrest.

Brown's family and supporters have demanded that the officer who shot Brown be held accountable. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the shooting for any civil rights violations, and the St. Louis County Police department has also launched a probe.

The police version of how Brown was shot differs from witness accounts, including that of the friend who was walking with Brown at the time, Dorian Johnson, 22.

Police say that after Wilson asked Brown to move out of the road onto a sidewalk, Brown reached into the patrol car and struggled with Wilson for the officer's service gun. Wilson, who sustained a facial injury, then shot Brown a number of times.

Carnage at U.N. school as Israel pounds Gaza refugee camp

GAZA/JERUSALEM, July 30 (Reuters) - Israeli shelling killed at least 15 Palestinians sheltering in a school in Gaza's biggest refugee camp on Wednesday, the Health Ministry said, as Egyptian mediators prepared a revised proposal to try to halt more than three weeks of fighting.

Some 3,300 Palestinians, including many women and children, were taking refuge in the building in Jabalya refugee camp when it came under fire around dawn, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said.

Israeli artillery that hit our school," UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl said in a statement after representatives of the agency visited the scene and examined fragments, craters and other damage.

Blood splattered floors and mattresses inside classrooms at the Jabalya Girls Elementary School and survivors picked through shattered glass and debris for flesh and body parts to bury.

"I call on the international community to take deliberate international political action to put an immediate end to the continuing carnage," Krahenbuhl said.

The Gaza Health Ministry put the number of dead in the attack at 15 after a local UNRWA official said 19 had been killed. Krahenbujl, however, said it was premature to give an official death toll.

"But we know that there were multiple civilian deaths and injuries, including of women and children and the UNRWA guard, who was trying to protect the site," Krahenbujl said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said militants had fired mortar bombs from the vicinity of the school and troops shot back in response. The incident was still being reviewed.

The army said it would hold fire unilaterally in limited areas of the Gaza Strip where soldiers were not operating for four hours from 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) as a "temporary humanitarian window". It was not clear whether that included Jabalya.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Hamas Islamist movement which controls Gaza, dismissed the partial, temporary ceasefire as a "media stunt", saying it would not allow rescue workers to retrieve casualties in combat zones Israel had excluded.

Israel has been shelling in Jebalya, where some 120,000 people live, since Tuesday, in what the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brigadier-General Motti Almoz, described as a slight broadening of its campaign against militants in the Hamas Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip.

UNRWA said on Tuesday it had found a cache of rockets concealed at another Gaza school - the third such discovery since the conflict began. It condemned unnamed groups for putting civilians at risk.

Krahenbuhl said the Jabalya school's precise location and the fact that it was housing thousands of displaced people had been communicated to the Israeli military 17 times, with the last notification just hours before the fatal shelling.

BLOCKADE

Israeli tank fire also struck the main market in Jabalya on Wednesday, killing at least three people and wounding 40 others, the health ministry said. Seven members of one family died in an Israeli attack in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.

The ministry said 1,287 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since Israel began its offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket fire.