Nation & World

The people there, the news network adds, are devastated by the accident that left the center of the town looking like a war zone. According to The Montreal Gazette, “the city’s downtown core was almost completely destroyed by the blast. It housed a mix of commercial and residential units in historic buildings.”

When Monday dawned, it was known that at least five people had been killed when freight tankers loaded with crude oil derailed and exploded in the small town near the Maine border. “The search for victims in the charred debris has been hampered by the fact two of the train’s cars continued to burn Sunday morning, creating concerns of other potentially fatal explosions,” the CBC says.

It’s hoped that some of those now counted as missing were away from their homes when the tanks exploded and haven’t yet gotten in contact with relatives or authorities.

As for how more than 70 tank cars detached from a locomotive after they were parked several miles from Lac-Mégantic — and then rolled into the town on their own — the investigation continues. There’s word of a fire aboard the locomotive before the tank cars separated and began rolling. The Gazette writes in an editorial that:

“Early reports that the conductor had left the freight train parked unattended — with brakes supposed locked in place — in the nearby town of Nantes, with another conductor expected to take over several hours later, are troubling. Preferable would be more simultaneous transfer of responsibility. As it turns out, five minutes after the conductor left, a fire broke out in one of the locomotives. But while firefighters in Nantes put out the flames and reports last night suggested someone representing the company arrived to inspect the train and found no damage, it still remains to be seen whether proper regulatory procedures were followed — and if they were, whether the inspection failed to detect brake damage possibly caused by the fire.”

The CBC is also live blogging here.

Here’s video from the fire:

Secretary of State John Kerry called the current situation in Syria “unacceptable by anyone’s standard” and lashed out at the government of President Bashar al-Assad for using Hezbollah in the fight against rebels.

“Assad chose to raise the stakes militarily,” Kerry said. “He chose to attack the Syrian people, but this time using Iranian supporters and using Hezbollah, which is a terrorist organization.

“Neither side is going to back off helping those they’ve chosen to help, we understand that,” he said of Russia’s military assistance to the Assad regime. “The key is for us to use the leverage with people that we’re helping to bring them to the table and achieve an appropriate negotiated solution.”

Kerry said the group of ministers had pledged an additional $300 million in humanitarian aid to the rebels.

Update At 10:20 a.m. ET:

Reuters reports that the “Friends of Syria” group of ministers has issued a joint statement in Doha saying they agree to “provide urgently all necessary materiel and equipment to opposition on the ground.”

Here’s our original post:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and representatives of 10 other countries are meeting in Qatar to coordinate military support to Syrian rebels vying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

The group, dubbed “Friends of Syria,” is meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha, and includes European powers and regional Sunni Muslim-dominated countries. It could provide Syrian insurgents with the anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons they say they need to defeat Assad’s military.

Quoting two Gulf sources, Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia has stepped up its lead role in arming the rebels.

“In the past week there have been more arrivals of … advanced weapons. They are getting them more frequently,” the source was quoted by Reuters as saying. Another source told Reuters that the latest supplies had the potential to top the balance in the rebels’ favor even as Syrian government forces have been making significant gains on the battlefield.

The White House announced last week that it would provide direct military support to Syria’s rebels after it said Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons against the insurgents.

On Friday, the U.S. said it would base another 700 combat-ready military personnel in Syria’s neighbor, Jordan, after already saying it would leave F-16 fighters and Patriot missiles there following the conclusion of a joint U.S.-Jordan military exercise.

NPR’s Deborah Amos, reporting from Amman, says Jordan, on the front line of the conflict, has more than a half-million Syrian refugees.

She says that “rebels have confirmed to NPR that Jordan hosts a covert military-training program overseen by Western intelligence agencies.”

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned the West against arming the rebels, saying their ranks included “terrorist” elements. The U.S. has said that one of the groups fighting Assad, al-Nusra, is a terrorist organization.

Putin, speaking on a panel in St. Petersburg, Russia, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel said if the U.S. already recognized al-Nusra as a terrorist group, “how can one deliver arms to those opposition members? … Where will they end up? What role will they play?”

A report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says there were 15.4 million refugees in other countries, 937,000 people seeking political asylum and 28.8 million people forced out of their homes but still inside their own countries.

“Those are the highest numbers since 1994, when people fled genocide in Rwanda and bloodshed in former Yugoslavia,” according to The Associated Press.

The U.N.’s yearly Global Trends report says most people are running away from war. “A full 55 percent of all refugees listed in UNHCR’s report come from just five war-affected countries: Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Sudan,” it states. Millions are also on the move in Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“These truly are alarming numbers. They reflect individual suffering on a huge scale and they reflect the difficulties of the international community in preventing conflicts and promoting timely solutions for them,” said António Guterres, head of UNHCR.

Nearly half of all refugees were children. The U.N. says 21,300 children who sought asylum were alone or separated from their parents — a record high.

The country producing the greatest number of refugees is Afghanistan: The agency says that “on average, one out of every four refugees worldwide is Afghan, with 95 percent located in Pakistan or Iran.”

Next is Somalia, followed by Iraq and then Syria, an area of growing concern. Because the report covers only 2012, it counts 471,400 Syrian refugees — and none from this year. Syrians are now fleeing in greater numbers, prompting the U.N. to label that country’s civil war “a major new factor in global displacement.”

Another concern is who is hosting all these refugees. The U.N. says it is poorer countries: “In all, developing countries host 81 percent of the world’s refugees compared to 70 percent a decade ago.”

The U.N. also says the 28.8 million displaced people represent the highest number in more than 20 years. Again, Syria is listed as a significant new contributor to this problem, along with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Not only that, but this morning Afghan President Hamid Karzai walked away from bilateral talks with the U.S. to “protest the way his government was being left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban meant to find ways to end the nearly 12-year war,” The Associated Press reports.

The AP adds:

“In a terse statement from his office, Karzai said negotiations with the U.S. on what American and coalition security forces will remain in the country after 2014 have been put on hold.

“The statement followed an announcement Tuesday by the U.S. and the Taliban that they would pursue bilateral talks in Qatar before the Afghan government was brought in.

“‘In view of the contradiction between acts and the statements made by the United States of America in regard to the peace process, the Afghan government suspended the negotiations, currently underway in Kabul between Afghan and U.S. delegations on the bilateral security agreement,’ Karzai’s statement said.”

As The New York Times explains it, the attack was “at best a rocky prelude to peace talks with Taliban.” The newspaper frames the story as a struggle for legitimacy between Karzai’s government and the Taliban.

Karzai is angry that the Taliban are flying a flag at its newly opened office in Doha, Qatar, and calling the office the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” The Afghan government wanted that office to be just an address where talks are held, but as the Times explains, the Taliban are making it sound like an embassy.

The Times reports that the Taliban:

“… made clear that they sought to be dealt with as a legitimate political force with a long-term role to play beyond the insurgency. In that sense, in addition to aiding in talks, the actual opening of their office in Qatar — nearly a year and a half after initial plans to open it were announced and then soon after suspended — could be seen as a signal that the Taliban’s ultimate aim is recognition as an alternative to the Western-backed government of President Karzai.”

Update at 8:49 p.m. ET. Walks Away From Peace Talks:

Beyond talks about a U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan has now announced it will stay out of the peace talks between the U.S. and the Taliban.

Reuters reports:

” ‘As long as the peace process is not Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in the talks in Qatar,’ Karzai said in a statement, referring to a body he set up in 2010 to seek a negotiated peace with the Taliban.

“Karzai also said the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar showed the United States had failed to honour promises made to the Afghan state about the role of that office.”

Update at 7:43 a.m. ET. Anticipated ‘Areas Of Friction’:

Speaking at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Obama said the U.S. had anticipated “some areas of friction.”

He said today’s developments were “not surprising” because “there’s enormous mistrust” between the parties.

Still, Obama said, he hoped that “despite those challenges” the talks would continue.