04/07/2016 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today with me, Geeta Guru-Murthy.

The Headlines: He got what he wanted, now he's off.

Nigel Farage has resigned, saying he's achieved

Nigel Farage took the UK Independence Party from a fringe

movement, to a political force to be reckoned with.

Now he says it's time for someone else to be leader.

During the referendum campaign, I said I want my country back. What I

am saying today as I want my life back.

Top Gear, one of the BBC's most popular programmes, in a spin,

as Chris Evans quits after just six episodes.

After a journey of three billion kilometres, this little spacecraft

is about to get just one shot at successfully entering

And Iraq's bitter legacy, a special report from Fallujahm

a week after so-called Islamic State forces were driven out.

The argument goes back 1400 years but the invasion in 2003 had the

effect of redefining and supercharging it for the 21st

century. The leader of the party that spent

a quarter of a century campaigning for Britain to leave

the European Union has resigned. Nigel Farage, who heads

the UK Independence Party, said his "political ambition

had been achieved". But Mr Farage said he planned to see

out his term as an MEP Our political correspondent

Ben Wright looks at his career and what might happen to the party

next. For two decades, Nigel Farage

had a mission, to lead While Ukip has just one MP

at Westminster, the party's impact Probably one of the most influential

politicians in the post-war era, not just of this century,

because if it wasn't for Nigel Farage and his hard work

and the Ukip activists, we wouldn't have had a referendum

on our membership of the EU. The former city trader was a founder

of Ukip and soon distilled its pitch What people are saying is get

Britain out. In 1999, Farage was elected

to the European Parliament, You have the charisma of a damp

rag and the appearance He wanted Britain to leave,

but the years Ukip could not break through with voters and in 2006

David Cameron memorably mocked them. I mean Ukip, it is just a bunch

of fruit cakes and closet racists. A decade later, Nigel Farage

would have the last laugh. With his love of the drink,

Farage is not like most politicians but the jovial demeanour

disguised serious intent. The seriousness that hardened

after he was injured in a plane crash in 2010,

an experience that spurred him on. Over the next five years

Ukip made huge strides, coming first in the European

elections in 2014. He celebrated in a Westminster

pub of course. Ukip's campaign was cutting through,

not only winning over disillusioned Tories, but many working-class

Labour voters as well. David Cameron promised an EU

referendum, in part to head Today in Essex, where Ukip came

second in the general election, some disappointment

at Nigel Farage's decision. Shocked when you told me,

he seems a nice guy, It up the party from being

a fringe organisation to a mainstream political force

is so very impressive figure. I am glad he is going,

especially the way he treated people in the EU, the way he spoke

to people is disgusting. A divisive rabble-rouser to some,

their hero to others, Ukip without Nigel Farage

will lose some of its colour. Where the party heads next

is a question for his successor. Immigration has of course been one

of the main issues of Brexit. One question now is what will happen

to the 3 million EU Theresa May has said that will be

part of the negotiations and two other Conservative

leadership candidates Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsome, who both

campaigned to Leave, have also It must be respected

and I will respect it. Hear, hear.

APPLAUSE The United Kingdom will leave

the European Union. Freedom of movement will end

and the British Parliament will decide how many people

enter our country each year to live, work and contribute

to our national life. The decision taken

by the British people was both historic and

courageous. There can be no backsliding

on this issue and no question of

a second referendum. It is quite clear that the public

rejected the concept of free movement and that the price of

including such free movement as part of a trade deal would be

regarded as a betrayal We have nothing to fear from a more

free trade environment. Two of the Tory candidates for the

job of Prime Minister. We will be speaking more on the Ukip question

to the party in a few minutes. Chris Evans has stepped down

as presenter of Top Gear saying his best shot

at the programme wasn't good enough. Ratings for the BBC show,

which was relaunched in May after Jeremy Clarkson

was sacked, have been falling. Here's our Media Correspondent,

David Sillito. Welcome to Top Gear with our

all-new, improved audience. When Chris Evans

replaced Jeremy Clarkson as the face of Top Gear,

it was never going to be easy. Jeremy Clarkson had turned the show

into a global success story and then he hit

one of the show's producers. Chris Evans stepped

in alongside former But Chris Evans has

lasted just one series. He has faced a stream

of negative stories in the press

and also allegations about his behaviour

going back to the 1990s. This morning, he said nothing

as he left A few hours later,

he sent this tweet. He said he had given

it his best shot but sometimes,

that's not enough. One Top Gear fan who is also a

former Stig agrees. The shows have got an awful lot better but it was

the key moment in the new show and they did not get the first one

right. Around 9 million did watch the first programme but since then

figures have dipped. Last nights ratings were below 2 million. The

BBC says the show will continue and filming for the new series will

begin in September. Chris Evans will be back on Radio 2 tomorrow.

Three days of national mourning are underway in Iraq. The Islamic State

group says it was as possible for the atrocity which comes just a week

after militants last control of the nearby city of Falluja.

This is Falluja, losing this town so hurt the Islamist, they lashed out

by massacring civilians in Baghdad. Iraq 's perpetual war was caused by

a chain of consequences that leads back to the invasion of 2003. Iraq

since traders, the US and Britain, removed a hated dictator but they

made no real plan to rebuild the country they broke. They improvised

and made matters worse. IS fighters still lie where the dyed in the

streets. Jihadists weren't in Iraq for the invasion and Shia and Sunni

Muslims whose civil war started during the occupation could coexist.

There is a lot of Isis members here. In this 13th year of war, elite

units took the lead, helped by American -- American air strikes.

One pulverise this compound. The bodies of more than a dozen

Jihadists lie rotting in the rubble. Suicide vest. So-called Islamic

State -- it's AmexStadium groat of Al-Qaeda, which are grouped in Iraq

in the chaos following the invasion. When you pull it, it'll blow up.

This is from a grenade. Yes, it blows up all the vehicles with him.

So this was intended for a suicide mission. Yes, exactly. This car bomb

was not used. After defeat in Falluja, IS put a much bigger one in

Baghdad. In a suburban house, IS said at a prison. This is not the

only private jail in Iraq. In a fractured country, arbitrary

imprisonment is a display of power. I S chain prisoners in cages the

size of dog kennels. To get power and keep it, politicians and

warlords in Iraq have exploited sectarian fears. The Jihadists of

Islamic State would not have been able to take such a grip on Iraq

without the sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The

argument between Shia and Sunni Muslims goes back 1400 years but the

invasion in 2003 had the effect of redefining and supercharging it for

the 21st-century. Around 45,000 people, all Sunni Muslims displaced

by the fighting against Islamic State, are in a camp outside

Falluja. They get water, food and basic shelter from the heat. But new

families are still arriving, Unicef says the lives of one in five Iraqi

children, 3.6 million, are at serious risk because of war. A

bullet hit this girl as they escaped Falluja. They said Shia militias

separated men from women and beat them to days. This four-year-old

hopes her father might join his family again. But a neighbour saw

him beaten to death as other men were shot dead. Many men in the camp

are still injured and all were too frightened to be identified. These

Sunni Muslims blame the invasion for changing the balance of power in the

Middle East. TRANSLATION:

Outside countries entered Iraq and destroyed us. America put us in the

mouth of Iran and other countries and left us.

The camp is on edge. Police tried to control food queues by firing into

the air. Iraqis have also made matters much worse for themselves.

But mistakes made by the United States and Britain 13 years ago

pushed them down the road to catastrophe.

I just want to bring you some breaking news on what we are hearing

from Baghdad. The area around the International Airport in Baghdad is

being shelled, with two dozen projectiles exploding within the

secured Perret. That is according to which this is. One witness living

near the airport says they heard 20 explosions and a security source

said it was a bombardment targeting the airport. It is not yet clear

whether the airport facilities have been hit but reports of several

rockets exploding near the airport at the moment. Not clear whether

rockets or mortar fire are being used in the shelling. We will keep

you updated just as soon as we can. We will move onto the Israeli visit

that begun today. Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu's

begun a four-nation tour of sub-Saharan Africa -

the first visit by an Israeli Prime Minister

to the continent since 1987. The visit's to try and develop

economic and security ties But Mr Netanyahu called it a deeply

moving day for him as he began by marking the anniversary

of the raid in Entebbe, Uganda, in which his brother

Jonathan was killed in 1976. With me is Colin Shindler,

Professor Emeritus in Israeli studies at SOAS and an author

on Israeli history. Can you just first of all tellers

about what happened to Benjamin Netanyahu 's brother, this very

personal link. He was the commander of the Israeli operation to rescue

and release hostages that had been taken off and Air France Airbus

flight from Athens to France. They were taken and there were 250

passengers originally, they were separated into Jews and non-Jews.

The identifiable Jews were put to one side and they even checked those

who had pre-ordered kosher food. There is even a British dimension to

this. There was a Jewish grandmother of 74 who was quite frail and Dylan

hospitalised in Uganda and she was not rescued and she was killed later

by ADR means forces. This visit is of great personal importers to the

Prime Minister but it is more than just that, what is going on

politically? There is a personal aspect of this, his brother who he

looked up to was killed there, but also it builds on the original ties

that Israel had with Africa. In the 1950s, Israel was barred from

joining the nonaligned nations yet they gave much aid to the African

nations, they even condemned apartheid several times during the

1960s. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, pressure from the Arab states,

economic and indeed political pressure, was put on the emerging

African nations to break diplomatic ties will stop this is what is

effectively now being restored. It is not straightforward. There have

been expressions of support for the politician as Palestinians,

complaints on about African Jewish people who back out of Israel when

they try to live there, so competitions. Yes, this is a wide

delegation. It also contains many businessmen who are opposed to

Benjamin Netanyahu 's policies, and are opposed to the politics of

stagnation. There are so many protests against the deportation of

Africans from Israel. They argued that it was against Jewish tradition

to not welcome refugees. Thank you so much for coming in. My pleasure.

A politician from the governing party in Bangladesh has spoken

of his sorrow and shame after learning that his son

was among the Islamist militants who attacked a cafe in the capital,

Imtiaz Khan told the BBC Bengali Service that his son,

Rohan, left home six months ago and hadn't been in touch since.

The Islamic State group posted his picture on Facebook

on Friday and said it carried out the attack,

in which 20 mostly foreign hostages were killed.

The five dead hostage-takers came from affluent families.

TRANSLATION: I am stunned to learn this, dumbfounded.

My son used to pray five times a day from a young age.

There is a mosque just 25 feet from our home.

He started going to prayers with his grandfather,

There was nothing at all, no books or anything

to indicate he was leaning that way, so we had no inkling.

When I was searching for my son, I found that

Well-educated boys from good educated families,

children of professionals, garment officers...

I used to share my sorrows with them.

We do not know how this has happened.

The only thing I can think about is the Internet.

Maybe it is happening through the Internet.

I don't really know why this is happening.

Some more breaking news, there has been an explosion in the holy city

of Medina in Saudi Arabia. Local media say a suicide

bomber detonated a bomb near the Prophet's Mosque, one

of the most sacred sites in Islam. The incident followed a suicide

attack near a Shia mosque The bomber died in the blast,

but there are no reports Earlier in the day, two

security guards were wounded in a suicide blast near the US

Consulate in Jeddah. Joining me now for the latest

is the BBC's Alan Johnston. Reports are still coming in. What do

we know? As you say, a day of a series of explosions in Saudi Arabia

but by most women go far the most serious one is that in the holy city

of Medina. It is important to say at this stage that we have no

confirmation as to what caused this blast but a number of local outlets

are saying that this was a suicide attack which appeared to target

security forces in the headquarters near the prophets mask, one of the

holiest sites in Islam and whatever the reason for this explosion, there

will be many Muslims around the world who will be decent -- deeply

disturbed of this sort of thing happening in this sort of place in

these last days of Ramadan and that the same time, almost

simultaneously, on the other side of the country, several hundred

commenters away, another blast, this was a suicide bomber. It seemed that

he targeted a mosque used by Shia Muslims. There were no injuries

there other than the death of the bomber in itself. It seemed he

struck at a time when it was the end of than fast and a lotta people were

indoors and so the streets were not fall. Is this a Shia Sunni Muslim

thing going on? At this stage, we have to say we don't know who was

behind this attack but suspicion will certainly fall on the Islamic

State group. This extremist organisation has attacked Shia

Moslem targets repeatedly in the Gulf and in this Qatif region. No

confirmation yet but it would not be surprising if we were to find out

that it was IS again trying to drive a wedge between them in that area of

the Gulf. Politicians around the world, including Hillary Clinton,

have called on some of the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, to

do more to stop their support, as they see it. What is going on there?

I think the government is fully aware that it needs to front up and

confront the Islamic State group, which clearly has the kingdom in its

sights. We have seen a number of attacks by IS targeting Shia Muslim

groups and targeting the Saudi security forces. There is very much

an ongoing effort to try and uproot IS cells in the kingdom and that

will only surely be stepped up after a day like today. Thank you very

much. Let's return to our stop story,

the resignation of Nigel Farage, the leader of the Uk's Independence

Party who campaigned Joining me now is Peter Whittle

Ukip's Culture spokesman. Thank you very much for joining us.

Why has Nigel Farage gone? Want people feeling your party that he is

leaving and abandoning them just as he has achieved what he wanted but

there is still a lot to do and they got to decide? No, I don't think

anybody begrudges Nigel going in the party. I am sad he has gone because

he is the reason I came into the party. But the fact is, he is a man

who is actually leaving on an absolute high. He is unassailable

really. And there is this saying that all political careers end in

failure, well, this is one example where it has basically ended in

extraordinary success. He came into politics 20 years ago to get a

referendum for Britain to get out of the European Union and he got that

and indeed, also we are now out of the European Union. But want people

say, the 17 million people who voted to leave, they will look at what has

happened and say, hang on, Boris and Nigel Farage have gone. Michael Gove

fatally wound, perhaps by his own hand. Why are these people who

argued for Brexit who have now led to this result now abandoned ship?

He has not abandoned anything. The fact is that Nigel Bildt Ukip up, we

are about the only United party in the United Kingdom at the moment

without question and I think everybody understands that he said

today basically he wanted his country back, now he would quite

like his life back. Has he really gone? He has resigned in the past.

Do you have any idea what he wants to do next? There is a job vacancy

at Top Gear. The fact is that Nigel has worked at a superhuman pace over

the past 20 years, especially the past five - ten years, extraordinary

salmonella, extraordinary workload -- stamina. Often in a atmosphere of

considerable criticism and attacks. That requires a very strong

character and that is exactly the man that he is but I think possibly

he would quite like now to actually go out having actually achieved his

political aim, which was getting us a referendum and indeed basically

getting us out of the European Union. I think that when it comes to

going forward, we as a party have got to make sure that no means no.

That Brexit means Brexit. Thank you very much we are out of time.

But for now from me and the rest of the team, goodbye.

There are still no signs of any prolonged