BBC在线收听下载:美国空袭帮库尔德力量夺回战略要地

BBC news 2014-09-07

BBC News with Julie Candler

The leaders of Russia and Ukraine say that they are satisfied that the ceasefire agreed in eastern Ukraine is generally holding. President Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko discussed the truce by phone a day after the deal was reached. Both stressed the importance of international monitoring. Richard Galpin is in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

It does seem to be much more calmer compared to how it was before the ceasefire came into effect. We went up to the airport, which was the scene of the most serious fighting over recent weeks, we did hear a couple of explosions and a few gunshots. But I think that was the exception rather than the rule, and certainly local people were saying to us that basically had been quiet there as well. So overall certainly in Donetsk city it seems much much better as a result of the ceasefire.

A BBC correspondent in the port of Mariupol has heard shelling outside the city during the evening.

The man charged with an attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels in May has been accused of having previously been a jailor of Western hostages in Syria.

A French journalist who was freed in April after nearly a year in captivity, Nicolas Henin, told journalists in Paris that Mehdi Nemmouche was feared and violent. Mr Henin said when he was not singing he was torturing.

"Mehdi Nemmouche was some kind of an egoistic person. He did beat me a number of times. I don't know any bad treatments to any other foreign hostages, coming from him specifically. But I witnessed him torturing local prisoners."

A lawyer for Mr Nemmouche does express surprise at the allegations. The suspect is awaiting trial in Belgium for the gun attack on the museum that left four people dead.

Kurdish forces have recaptured a strategically important mountain in northern Iraq from Islamic State militants with the help of American air strikes. Mount Zartak overlooks a plain to the east of Mosul, helping whoever holds it to control the land below. Our correspondent Jim Muir has been to the mountain.

On the windy height of the Mount Zartak, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were picking out the villages lying on the hazy, gusty plain hundreds of feet below. The Kurds, backed by American air strikes that they say made a big difference, recaptured the mountain and large stretches of rugged terrain in a short, sharp battle, which left more than 30 IS fighters dead. They saw some of their bodies still sprawled among the rocks where they fell. But retaking Mosul has a much more daunting enterprise. It's a huge mainly Sunni city. The Kurds have no intention of trying to do it alone.

Reports from Lebanon say that its second soldier taken hostage by Islamic State militants has been beheaded. Photos of his murder have been posted on social media networks. He was among a number of Lebanese soldiers taken captive in the border town of Arsal last month.

World News from the BBC

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF, has expressed concern over a three-day national lockdown announced by Sierra Leone to try to hold the spread of Ebola. MSF said that in its experience lockdowns did not help control Ebola as they ended up driving people under ground. Umaru Fofanah is in Freetown.