07/07/2014 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today, with me Dan?iela Ritorto.

Fighting in the Middle East intensifies - Hamas demands revenge

after Israeli airstrikes on their forces, while Israel warns

it is preparing to escalate operations on the border with Gaza.

And the man leading the race to become a scanner stand's vice

president. And Pope Francis begs forgiveness from the victims of

child abuse in the church. Brazil get set to play Germany in the first

semifinal of the World Cup tomorrow. Unrest continues in the Gaza Strip,

with Hamas warning that Israel will pay after eight Palestinian

militants were killed overnight. Israel launched airstrikes

after a wave of rocket fire Five Hamas fighters died in a tunnel

near Rafah in the south of Gaza. Israel says explosives they had

planted blew up as they inspected Tensions have been heightened

since three Israeli teenagers were murdered near the West Bank city

of Hebron. Soon after that a Palestinian

teenager was killed near East Jerusalem, in what is widely

seen as a revenge attack. The BBC's James Reynolds has

the latest. Overnight Israel's your force struck

targets in Gaza. A piece of land ruled by her masts. Israel says that

it went after rocket launcher sites and warehouses. This afternoon and

armed men killed in the strikes were buried. This was the deadliest night

in Gaza since 2012. This morning a rocket fired by her masts landed in

the Israeli village here, next to Gazza. Armas has -- how Mass has

fired several of its rockets. What may more is the atmosphere here

injuries will and nearby areas. Palestinians who live under Israeli

rule have protested and have fought against the police. This morning the

chief Palestinian negotiator to diplomats to see this village. It is

surrounded by Jewish settlements built on land the Palestinians want

for a state. What we are witnessing is a systematic approach by the

Israeli government to throw us into the path of Watchet and violence and

key loss -- chaos which we have seen in 2012. Israel's Justice Minister

has led stocks with representatives of the Arab minority. Sick and tired

of this on both sides. We need be more responsible. This is what I am

trying to do in Israel and I expect the same message to be sent in

Palestine. The army says that it is preparing for a possible escalation.

Preliminary results from Afghanistan's Presidential

election run-off show Ashraf Ghani has a big lead.

The former World Bank official took 56% of the ballots.

His rival, Abdullah Abdullah, has claimed the voting was rigged.

A final result won't be declared until the Election Commission

That's due to happen by July the 22nd.

The eventual winner is to take over from Hamid Karzai,

who has been president since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Professor Michael Semple is a former EU special representative

He spent more than two decades living in the country.

These allegations of fraud and vote rigging, do the surprise you? We are

very consistent with the way that elections have played out over the

past decade in Afghanistan, so it is not very surprising. Abdullah

Abdullah was the frontrunner and now it looks like Ashraf Ghani has got

the lead. That took me by surprise. It certainly took Abdullah Abdullah

by surprise and that is why they are disputing the results. Whoever wins,

do you think that they will accept and respect the result? That is what

we are going to see playing out over the next to the -- the next two

weeks. Whether there will be a political deal which will get both

teams to accept the results. I know that the US and its allies will be

very keen to see that and to give a certain amount of legitimacy to the

person that takes over from President Karzai. In terms of

inheriting the country from President Karzai, what sort of

country I the inheriting? One of the most difficult jobs in the world.

The economy has been highly dependent upon the wire. Money which

has come in around the US troop presence. That is rapidly dwindling

and 95% of security expenditure has been coming from the US. Now they

have a very limited revenue base, they have to find some way of paying

their own. All the while they are having to fight an insurgency which

is very far from over. Security is very much at the forefront whenever

we talk about Afghanistan, but I just wonder, for the average Afghan

who is trying to get by, make a living, improve life in their

family, what is either of these men offer them? I suspect that a lot of

Afghans, perhaps even the majority, are a little bit indifferent about

who takes over. They won the war to end, they want a chance to get on

with their lives. -- they want the war to end. The worst outcome for

most Afghans would be if this dragged on for a long time in a

disputed results. That is why there will be a lot of pressure to patch

up some kind of reconciliation between these two teams over the

next two weeks. Is the Afghan electoral commission up to the job?

They are certainly under tremendous pressure. We have seen the spectacle

of the chief officer, the man charged with running the election,

he was pressured to resign after the takes came out which supposedly

world hen instructing people to rig. He fled the country, he has

been brought back to the country. The gentleman who is the chairperson

of the commission is not really a hands-on technocrat kind of person.

He is a nice old man. That is why people are looking to political

understanding these two teams, rather than just trusting on the

process of what you call auditing the boats. Going through

spreadsheets, trying to work out whether votes are genuine or not.

The commission has put its hand up and said, we would far rather that

someone helped broker report: Understanding between the two teams

rather than just relying on us getting everybody to rely on audit

results. Pope Francis has made

an unprecedented apology to people who have been sexually abuse

by Roman Catholic priests. He met a group of victims

at the Vatican, where he begged for their forgiveness for not only

what he described as grave crimes, but also for the failure

of the Church to deal with them. He also promised action to

ensure this was never repeated. Let?s talk to our Rome

correspondent, Alan Johnston. What did the Pope have to say to

these victims? This group of six victims, two from Britain, two from

Ireland, two from Germany, were invited to stay at the Vatican

guesthouse, which was also the home of the Pope. They attended Mass with

him this morning and his private chapel and after that he met each of

them individually for half an hour, a series of encounters that went on

for some three others. But it was during mass, during his homily, when

he delivered his message to his visitors and all those around the

world who have suffered in the same way, he said that the church had two

-- had to weep and to beg for forgiveness. He acknowledged that

there is additional suffering because church members had not acted

on information. At one point he made enormous personal reference to some

kind of personal feeling. -- failing. He talked about a personal

pain, he talked about complicity. He talked about abuse victims turning

to alcohol addiction, even to suicide. And he appealed to those

victims who had come to visit him to help him shape policy so that that's

sort of thing no longer happened. The victims themselves have been

speaking, I be satisfied, are they happy since this meeting? We have

heard from one of those in the meetings, a British man who was

abused by a priest when he was still at school. He was satisfied with the

way that things had gone. He said he had a full chance to see everything

that he wanted to say to the Pope. He said that the church did not only

need to atone for what happened but they needed to make sure that there

could be no more cover-ups, that there needed to be complete

cooperation with the civil authorities. He said he felt that he

could see the pain that the Pope fell on his face as this unfolded --

felt. He said it had been a life changing experience, having missed

chance to come to the Vatican and explain himself to the Pope himself.

Let us have a look at some of the day's other stories.

16 people have died and five others are receiving

treatment for burns in Vietnam, after a military helicopter crashed

State-run media are saying the Russian-made helicopter was

on a parachute training mission when it came down in

the early morning in the Thach That district, a sparsely populated rural

No civilians were injured in the crash, which has been blamed

The murder trial of the athlete Oscar Pistorius has resumed with the

cross-examination of the defence's final witness. Mr Pistorius' lawyers

have condemned the leaking of a video showing him re-enacting events

of the night he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. He

insists he mistook her for an intruder.

The Ukrainian Government says its forces have retaken two more

They announced on Sunday they'd regained Sloviansk - which had been

The rebels have re-grouped in other areas - including

Ukraine has ordered a complete blockade of that city

The former President of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze, has died at

He was also the last foreign minister

of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev, who called him a talented

It is almost a month since ISIS began its advance. The country's

security is now dependent on Shia militias whose ranks have swelled

volunteers. It seems that one group in particular are holding fort.

Drive 40 miles north of Baghdad and you will see the stronghold of Isis.

Now another group of militia have stepped in after the Iraqi army

collapsed under ISIS attack. The League Of The Righteous. The men on

this front line position said that ISIS fighters were only 300 yards

away. This is where the war is being fought on hot, empty roads in the

heart of Iraq. And what is going on here has repercussions, not just

across this country but right across the Middle East. It is changing the

political dynamic. It is deepening sectarian divides. And eventually it

may well be felt a long way from here, in Europe, or in the United

States. At the Field HQ their commanders say that they would

protect any Iraqi against invaders but have warned local Sunnis that

anyone helping ISIS will be killed. TRANSLATION: We have had phone calls

from villagers offering to surrender in exchange for the safety. This

shows how terrified the militants are of us. This is because of our

expertise in urban and gorilla warfare and experience we gained

fighting against the Americans and the British. These either one

pictures, they say, of their men in action recently against ISIS. They

also fought in Syria on the resume's side. The group's leader

says Syria and Iran are in the same war. TRANSLATION: I think that

sending our men to fight in Syria was the right decision. Al-Qaeda has

had a lot of practice in street fighting. If our guys had not got

the experience in Syria then ISIS could have taken Baghdad and we

would not be sitting here now. At local checkpoints the police defer

to the militias. Most people here are she -- Shia Muslims and believe

that ISIS would kill them if they could. ISIS will attack anybody,

policeman, army soldiers, civilians. The local population here has been

mobilised, soldiers coming to pick up food from this mosque. A fighter

from a smaller Shia militia had spent years in American prisons in

Iraq for fighting the western occupation. TRANSLATION: We will

win, God willing. ISIS has been established by a dirty hand. They

took the food out to another position on the edge of town. It has

become a hit and run guerrilla war. TRANSLATION: No one likes war,

unfortunately Iraq was targeted by foreign conspiracy. I blame Saudi

Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. Back in Baghdad the paramilitary federal

police handle much of the security. Guns dominate this country. Talk

about a political deal today route the Shia ascendancy in the capital

is getting nowhere. Iraq's ethnic fractures deepened by the day.

He's a Consultant Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute

here in London, he's a counter-insurgency expert

and has worked as an advisor to the Iraqi government on security.

Thank you very much for coming in. We heard Jeremy's report, Iraq's

religious and ethnic fractures getting deeper, and they are armed

to the back teeth as well. What is happening on the ground? As far as

we can tell, the militias are being split into different areas, one

militia is doing the road between Baghdad and another town. Another

militia is looking after the road between Baghdad and another town. I

am also picking up report that ethnic cleansing is going on. There

is this fear of something called zero over. That is a fear that when

ISIS coming to the new areas of Baghdad and so on, the Sunni Muslims

will split into sleeper cells and start undermining the defences.

Based on that, they are trying to drive people out. Which is not very

helpful situation. The people we saw in the report, these are the same

men who used to fight and kill and maim US and British forces during

the occupation. That's right. All they know being tolerated because

they are fighting ISIS? Indeed. They were tolerated when the forces were

there in August of 2004. There was major conflict between them and the

coalition forces. They have always had a bit of animosity against the

West. But now there is a bigger enemy. In terms of the Iraqi army,

Shia militias are acting as a defector Iraqi army, would that be

fair to say? They are doing the job the Iraqi army should have done.

Many soldiers have deserted, particularly in the North. He's

militias are now coming into play. Who is the loyalty to with these

militias? The loyalty is to the head of the militia. That is what makes

them very strong, that strong bond of loyalty to their commander. It

depends on who the commander... Who the commanders loyal to? One of them

is very much loyal to the idea of Iraq as an entity. And the Shia

identity you logically. -- feel logically. The commanders are

working towards getting rid of this threat which threatens them as a

country. That is what is galvanising them. We need to leave it there.

Thank you very much. Hamas has claimed responsibility for firing a

barrage of rockets fired at Israel. The claim came shortly after the

Israeli military confirmed that several rockets were fired across

the border without seeing how many had actually struck the Israeli

territory. Hamas seems to have claimed responsibility for firing

rockets into southern Israel. Here in the UK, the Home Secretary

has announced an independent inquiry into how allegations of widespread

child sex abuse were handled by the government and other public

bodies in the 1980s and 1990s. They will also be an investigation

into the handling of child abuse by seat -- senior politicians. How will

these new investigations operate? I want to apologise on behalf of the

government... Last month, the Health Secretary published what he called

an overarching public enquiry into Jimmy Savile's sex crimes inside the

NHS. A second enquiry into the lessons that can be learned in the

health service is already underway. The BBC has commissioned to Mac

enquiries into the activities of Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall. Those

independent reports are considering the lessons to be learned. As for

allegations of possible child sex abuse involving senior politicians,

there are investigations at the Home Office. Will this overarching

enquiry be a political figleaf? There are a number of cases that

need to be investigated, it is right to do this. The main reason it is

right is because it is right for the victims. People need to know the

truth. The enquiry panel is expected to draw the work of investigations

into alleged cover-ups of abuse at children's homes in Northern

Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands. At schools, and at the

police response to gangs grooming young girls in a number of towns

across the country. This former policeman who investigated

allegations against Cyril Smith says his evidence was taken away from

them. That was it, we never heard anything, so anything, heard

anything about the file, it simply disappeared. The man whose

allegations inspired the police enquiry into an alleged paedophile

ring involving senior politicians today told the BBC he believes there

was a cover-up in Westminster. The Lords, the Commons, all

institutions, they will be a small percentage of paedophiles and a

slightly larger percentage of people who have known about it but felt in

terms of their own self and self-preservation and her politic or

party reasons it has been safer to cover it up.

Any of us who fly will want to take a look at this story.

you're looking forward to getting off the plane, stretching your feet.

When, unknown to you but definitely in view of the pilot,

a plane is on the runway ahead of you.

Thankfully the Argentinean Airbus pulled back up into the sky

as a Russian airliner rolled across the runway in front of it.

The near miss took place at a Barcelona airport

as the pilot avoided what could have been a catastrophic disaster.

None of the passengers were hurt and an investigation is taking place.

To the World Cup and Brazil continues preparations

for the World Cup semi-final against Germany.

The team will be without key player, Neymar, after his tournament

ended in injury in the quarter final win over Colombia.

about who will replace him in Belo Horizonte.

Let's go to Peter Okwoche in Rio de Janeiro.

Peter, in terms of that terrible injury that Neymar sustained,

fractured vertebra, FIFA has made a decision on what is going to happen

to the Colombian player who inflicted it. That's right. FIFA

have said they are not going to take any action against the Colombian

defender over the incident. They said that he had witnessed the

incident, so there is no way they can take any active action against

the defender. Viewers might remember that Neymar was injured in the small

of the back during the quarterfinal win over Colombia. Neymar has been

ruled out of the World Cup completely. The biggest star in this

Brazilian squad. That incident caused a lot of pain and

consternation here because they felt, they feel rather, but without

Neymar it might be difficult for their team to go all the way. FIFA

have said that they cannot take the stature and popularity of the player

into consideration when they are dealing with these incidents. FIFA

also rejected Brazil's request that the ban on the ago Silver be lifted.

He earned two yellow cards. He is suspended for the semifinal against

Germany tomorrow. FIFA said there is no legal basis for them to rescind

that yellow card. I am going to put you on the spot. Our Brazil going to

win? Against Germany, it will be tough. I like the way the Germans

have been playing so far. They were not as good against Algeria are

friends, but I think the Germans... We have got to leave it there. That

is all from the programme we will see you on Wednesday.

Monday turned out to be a wet day, especially across Wales and into the

south west of England. Tomorrow offers the prospect of sunny