♪ russia says it's begun withdrawing the main part of military force from syria as peace talks from geneva head into their second day. ♪ hello there and welcome to al jazeera live from our headquarters in doha i'm laura kyle and our other top stories at least three refugees drown in a desperate attempt from macedonia to greece after the border crossing was closed and in myanmar where more than half a century of military rule and elected a civilian as the country's president plus french

government ministers travelling to the ivory coast in mourning after an al-qaeda attack and we will have the latest on that. ♪ the russian defense ministry says they have a partial we draw from syria and pictures shown on russian state television as u.n. brokered talks of ending the five-year conflict enter the second day in geneva and carolyn malone has more. >> reporter: russian air strikes in syria have allowed the syrian government to regain lost ground while also killing hundreds of people. now it appears they are coming to an end. russian president vladimir putin says they achieved what they came to achieve, back in december that was helping bashar al-assad what they call terrorists. >> translator: i believe that the goals with the ministry of defense and armed forces have

over all been fulfilled and i order the minister of defense as of tomorrow to start a pull out of the military grouping from the syria republic. >> reporter: they were told about the decision a statement from assad said it was a joint one, the syrian opposition is cautious, the timing of the announcement was significant and made while u.n. led talks were going on in geneva, the message from putin to diplomates it's their turn. >> our diplomacy received the marching order to achieve a political settlement in syria so i think it should be well we believe we have helped under cut their infrastructure and destroy much of their infrastructure. the fight against the terror is going to continue. >> reporter: moscow will keep control of an air base in latakia and still have control in kartouse. >> good timing because of the talks and air strikes have already declined so pulling out

the airforce won't have much effect on the battle plus they made clear, putin made clear russia will keep access to its bases so they can easily come back in the future. air strikes expensive but may have bought them something pri priceless with dealing with the u.s. >> use military force and did this part of creating a diplomatic political process where now russia cochairs the political process with the united states which is a dramatic increase in russian power and influence over this process. >> reporter: but a military pull back from russia means there will be real progress on talks in syria. there are many other players in the war and many of them are still on the ground willing to fight. carolyn malone, al jazeera. the iranian foreign minister zarif says the russian pull out is a sign that the ceasefire in syria is working.

>> the fact that russia announced that it's withdrawing part of its forces indicates that they don't see an imminent need to resort to force in maintaining the ceasefire. that in and of itself should be a positive sign and now we have to wait and see. >> reporter: we are joined now by the founder of center for american strategic studies in europe kamal and first of all why do you think that russia is withdrawing now? >> well, i think this is a time for making peace and this is the whole work that has been done by the putin administration and the obama administration. they have been in dialog but talk between them and i think this is a time where they feel that this is the time to launch a serious effort to reach reconciliation and political solution for a crisis that is not going to end militarily. everybody knows that political

dialog probably could be the answer. i'm sure mr. putin has his own collision and he gained a lot from coming to syria. he felt that he is threatened by those terrorist organization and are fighting in syria, he will deliver a constructive support for the syrian government but in the end i think thal the question how to resolve this issue, it has to be resolved through political means. the message and the thyming of the message at the start of the geneva again it's really the message go and find a solution for this crisis and continue dialog with the obama administration and remaining time for the obama probably this will give more push. on the other hand probably mr. putin he is looking for maybe working relation with other arab countries, maybe

there is more work to be done with the saudi and the persian gulf country and some economic maybe contracts and other political coordination could help in the process by stopping and withdrawing from syria. >> okay what do you think it means russia's withdrawal for the other external players who are supporting assad such as iran? >> well, i'm sure there is no political solution that puts more pressure on the other supporter of the regime of bashar al-assad especially the iranian and hezbollah and they were there at beginning of confrontation and i'm sure they will be there to the end. they are not going to abandon the regime of bashar al-assad at this point but probably have to put more forces especially the

iranian but i think in light of everything that has taken place in the past year where the iranian reach an agreement with the american, i think more likely they are looking for political solution for the crisis. >> well if too pin is now turning his attention whole hardly to finding a political solution does he have enough leverage over assad to reach that? >> well, today maybe assad have to think twice about what is going to be put on the table because the russian clearly stated that we put the fight to maintain your power in syria, now you almost now you have to think whole hardly how you can reach out of the opposition and bring him to the table. and find something agreeable to discuss and a resolution that

can be acceptable to everybody. now i think maybe the timing of that announcement could put more pressure on assad in that sense because there is more urgency now to find a political solution because russia is not going to be there for very long time, it's not going to be withdrawn for a fight that cannot be ended and now the price of oil is down. everybody is having some economic problem. russia has some economic problem. i'm sure maybe russia do not want to be entangled in a confrontation with no end in it. for that i think the political solution probably would be the answer at this time. >> thank you for joining us there from beirut and five years of war in syria created a huge refugee crisis in bordering countries and further afield and lawrence lee is live for us in

kinis and you are in a refugee camp five kilometers from the syrian border and ceasefire or no ceasefire how safe is it there? >> that is a good question and i'm not in a refugee camp but overlooking syria and let me give you a sense of the terrain and three kilometers is syrian territory and to the right of the shot is the road border going into turkey and at the border left and you can perhaps see the silver lines in the past and if we track further left again is in the foreground you will be able to see kinis population 90,000 and hosting 127,000 syrians and so you can see even here in ta microcausm split by war and if we leave the camera and in kinis this is territory controlled by the free syrian army but just further

east is i.s.i.l. territory and this is shelled twice in a week and on one occasion killing a mother and four-year-old child. so it's very important in the context that europe has an idea of potentially sending many syrian refugees back here into areas potentially inside syria on the border which it says are safe. now clearly in the context of the russian apparently withdraw shift in territorial lines inside syria it's very difficult to determine these places are actually safe for refugees and human rights watch has written to every single leader of the eu saying to them that they think that all this is in breach of international law. i have for a moment lost communications with you at the time so i'll hand it back to you. thanks for joining us from turkey near the syria border. well three refugees drown as they tried to cross a river on the greek border hoping to reach macedonia and hundreds made the attempt and many of them are now being held by police on the

macedonia side, refugees abandon a makeshift camp in greece where they were stranded after the border crossing was closed and mohamed reports. >> reporter: desperate to continue with their journey north word hundreds of refugees make a dramatic corrosioning over the river at the border of greece and macedonia and young men formed a human chain helping the women, children and elderly cross the fast-moving river, hundreds were successful with many of them holding children and their belongings on their head as they waded across. >> translator: we have no option but to go on. we have children and we don't have much basic of services, no toilets. >> reporter: they are holding 400 refugees who reached the border with greece and 1,000 migrants including children left the supporting camp in the greek village and walked along the fence on the border that gets them back in the hope they will

find a way into macedonia. this is what they are trying to live behind, the refugee camp that is fast becoming a by word for misery. humanitarian agencies here offer a place to sleep for some but thousands spent the night in small tens pitched there while other simply sleep rough. and this is the daily endurance and added on to their misery, the flimsy tents they live in offer little protection from the rain and cold. to stay warm they burn wood donated by greek villages as well as plastic and old clothes. >> translator: look how we are living, your children are sick with no tent, no assistance, all we want is to get to germany. >> reporter: health workers at the camp treated more than 100 children for different ailments in the past few days. >> most of the cases and now they have a respiratory diseases so upper respiratory disease.

some infections or lower respiratory disease. we have some gastro enteritis and parasite disease. >> reporter: a nine-year-old girl who tested positive for hepatitis a has workers worried most. >> what we don't know and are worried there are vaccinations status of the children because coming from a war area the vaccination is not complete or they are under vaccinated so we can have some sporadic case of preventable disease. >> reporter: they say they are planning a vaccination campaign for all the children in the camp. mohamed with al jazeera, on the greece-macedonia border. >> reporter: turkey's military says it killed 45 fighters linked to kurdistan workers

party pkk in northern iraq. meanwhile police broke up two separate demonstrations in istanbul on monday and protesting for the car bomb attack in ankara that killed at least 37 people. myanmar's parliament elected a new president time is the first democratic elected leader after 50 years of military rule and the lead of the national party and it barred her from becoming president because her two sons are british citizens and takes office the first of april. and wayne hey has been following the latest developments in myanmar from bangkok. >> no surprise as mps voted on who they wanted to be the next president of myanmar and the largest in party managed to get

the president of its choosing, no surprises there because it dominates the upper and lower houses of parliament after it won november's election in a landslide and this was a parliamentary vote by mps and the next president after he is sworn in will be a 69-year-old who is not a member of parliament, he is a member of the nld a man who is known to be very close to the party leader who cannot become president under this constitution but the party has not given up hope of her becoming the president and it's believed there will be another push to amend the constitution perhaps within the next year to allow her to become president and known to be very loyal to her and and that is going to be important if indeed those negotiations with the military to suspend that article of the constitution are to be successful then they need someone to be president now who is willing to stand aside and let her become the president and

now he will be a proxy president because she said she will be above the president. still to come on the program a state of a higher and most win for u.s. presidential hopefuls in another big day in the race for the white house and the mission to grow potatos on mars and what they are practicing in peru. ♪

♪ hello again the top stories here on al jazeera, russia is withdrawing the main part of its forces from syria, the russian

military began an air campaign in september to support syria's president bashar al-assad and most military goals have been achieved. three refugees died trying to cross on the greek border attempting to go to macedonia and many are held by macedonia police. and myanmar's parliament elected a new president and tim is the country's first democratically elected leader after 50 years of military rule and part of the nld leader and she was barred from president because her two sons are british citizens. government ministers from france are travelling to the ivory coast, it's a show of support following an al-qaeda attack on a popular beach resort on sunday and 19 people were killed and nicholas reports. >> reporter: was selling jewelry to a young mother with her baby on the beach when she heard the first volumely of

shots and still shaken 24 hours later she has come back to the tourist hotel to check up on the woman. >> translator: they were shooting at her. she was holding her baby and she fell on the ground pretending to be dead then they moved inside the hotel. it was so scary. [screams] this video surveillance shows the moment guests realized that gunmen were storming the hotel. moments after the bar clears you see one of the attackers brandishing a machine gun and the simultaneous assault on three beach hotels lasted for hours and we walked inside one of them, the panic and the carnage that followed was still visible and some believe the attackers may have been local. >> translator: we are worried. they were speaking english but also in french like we do. >> reporter: the survivors of the killings most french ex

patriots have left the hotel heading for home. >> translator: i heard what was happening and we hid in the toilet, i waited there and didn't want to leave and seemed like next to us the people were dying. >> reporter: armed personnel clear and secure the hotel and found a suspicious device buried in the sand and think it's an explosive device and asked all of us to move away from the beach. al-qaeda and the islamic grourp claim responsibility for attacks and french intelligence officers warn there could be more attacks on the way this west africa, security forces are organizing reenactment of events and asking eyewitnesses for as much information as possible trying to find clues as to what the security lapses were to try and ensure that attack like this doesn't happen again, still looking for the young mother she met on the beach hoping she is safe, nicholas hawk, al jazeera, ivory coast. in norway the convicted math

killer is in court accusing the government of treating him inhumane and pictures of the court in norway and he bombed and shot 77 people did five years ago says that his solitary confinement causes depression and complaining to the convention of human rights and serve agree 21 year sentence in a prison in southern norway where this trial is also being held. the president of el salvadore is deciding for a state of emergency to suspend certain constitutional right and 1400 people have been killed since january. to the u.s. presidential elections now on tuesday the most significant day in the u.s. primary race for both parties since super tuesday earlier this month. to win the republican race candidates need 1327 delegates

and donald trump has 460 delegates, cruz in second place has 370, marco rubio has 163 and john kasich has 63. and the democratic party the winning candidate needs 2383 delegates to be nominated hillary clinton is in the lead with 1235 and bernie sanders has picked up 580. and presidential candidates are busy touring states ahead of an important round of primaries on tuesday and we have more. >> here in north carolina there are two key voting rights issues that are playing out not only in the haul halls of power behind me but in voting booths as well, one is redistricting, 2011 the republican party lawmakers took control of the state legislature here and they redrew the lines of the voting districts to where

they now control ten of the 13 districts in the entire state. critics say that was blatant manipulation in order to gain and control more power. the other issue is the rules of voting, those were also changed as well and made much more restrictive. everything from the type of identification that voters have to show before they cast their ballot to where and when they can register to even the amount of time they can vote have all been made more confusing and more restrictive. people are saying that endangers many people from being able to exercise their right to cast a ballot and vote. >> minorities, again, low information, low income many african/american we have an emerging latino population in north carolina as well and may not understand what the new rules are and may be confused and may be intimated by it with the history of race relations not only in america but the

south which is where north carolina is. >> adding to the confusion there are now more than ten different lawsuits pending challenging the different voting laws that have been put in place here in the state. and why is it so important? because north carolina is one of the fastest growing states anywhere in the country and it's equally divided between republican voters and democratic voters. and the voting challenges here are happening in other states around the country as well as the political parties push the legal boundaries to try to gain every vote they can. likely partnership for you nasa teaming up with the international potato center in peru and want to develop a potato that can be ground on mars and we report from the dese desert. >> reporter: it's billions of years old, the oldest desert on earth, this patch of desert even looks like it could be from

another world. nasa scientists changed the sky to orange and you are on mars. >> translator: we found here the closest similarity to the soil in mars and done experiments by missions that have gone to mars, the organic matter which is the base for life is almost nonexistent here. >> reporter: and that is why scientists from nasa and the international potato center believe it's the perfect soil to breed a potato that can grow in extreme conditions as on mars. >> translator: the potato is an ideal candidate because it conquered this planet since spain took them here in the 16th century and there are 4,000 varieties in peru. >> reporter: researchers say the martian atmosphere has high levels of carbon dioxide to help potatos grow and students are

testing samples of the soil which will be transported to lima for the experiment, at the national potato center they will build a greenhouse simulating mars, 100 varieties have already been chosen for the experiment. >> translator: they will not be genetically modified but transformed by traditional breeding with male and female plants for a new variety and clean and we hope and are sure it will be positive because potatos have a high ability to adapt. >> reporter: because the soil, the scenery and the inequity of this desert is the closest place to mars scientists believe it's tremendously important for this and other expect -- expect -- experiments but it may disappear and want to destroy squatters and must be protected because if

the experiments exceeds a new variety could grow and ease world hunger and growing potatos on mars may still be way off but now it's not completely science fiction, al jazeera, peru. dinosaurs once came in all shapes and sizes but not as well-known as the massive tra tranasaurs rex. >> with massive jaws they believe it could eat an animal the size of a gorilla in one bite. but he wasn't always so big, before tre came as what scientists say was pre-t-rex and revealed by scientists at the national museum of history in

washington d.c. sheds new light on his evolution, as explained via skype by his researcher. >> had to get smart before they get big and with the evolution of t-rex this was 100 million year evolution journey. >> reporter: the horse size dinosaur lived at the end of 100 period and took longer for his brain to evolve than his brawn. >> we realize basically it had all of the advanced senses that t-rex has, keen hearing and keen eyesight and presumably really keen smell and so that this evolved in a much smaller creature and basically it was when the ecological to be what everyone knows and are prepared and he just bulked up and increased in size. >> reporter: the growth to huge size and ecological dominance

happened suddenly and what triggered it is still a mystery. kristen with al jazeera. and of course you can always keep to update with all the very latest of news past and present on our website, there it is on your screen, go and take a look, it's at al jazeera.com. both sides from going too far? one day before another round of presidential primaries, all eyes are focused on republican front runner donald trump. actually all eyes are focused on the rhetoric on the campaign trail. while his appearances have gone