and language i can just come out of my lungs are going on here to just. pick a different guy a d w dot com the german. this is d w news live from berlin iraq takes a step closer to civil war celebrations in care cook as a rocky forces seize control of key sites in and around the kurdish held city the operation comes weeks after kurds voted to declare independence from baghdad. also

coming up scores of people are still missing after saturday's powerful truck bomb in the somali capital of mogadishu the explosion killed hundreds of people at the death toll may rise even further. and they've rippled the fabric of space and time scientists have been discussing their existence for hundreds of years to get ready to find out why gravitational waves are so important. i'm sorry kelly welcome to the program thanks for joining us iraqi government forces have moved into the disputed city of kirkuk in a bold move to retake land from the kurds witnesses say that iraqi troops have taken over the governor's headquarters and seized a military base and oil and gas fields. footage from the city shows non kurdish

residents out celebrating in the streets welcoming those soldiers thousands of kurds are said to have fled the city officials have called the iraqi advance and unprovoked attack tension has been high in the kurdish region following a controversial independence referendum last month. let's get more now on the story with correspondent kathy auden she joins us from air bill that is the capital of the semi autonomous kurdish region in iraq and some one hundred kilometers north of kirkuk kathy thanks so much for being with us we just saw images there of people celebrating in the streets what are your sources there on the ground in care cook telling you. i thank you for having me well this really makes it a real night in her purse so from last night until about mid-afternoon the risk clashes ongoing training iraqi forces between some kind of regular. street.

i recently spoke with a major with iraqi kurds terrorism as you said that they have had their negotiations in deals with one of the kurdish factions the u.k. and there are those who doubt all of the five so the danger now is that there is. between here the. possibility. that the cash is all just between them that at the moment. is that thousands of peerages residents fled some arab protect the residents street and just a really mixed. reactions there and was quite a haul it. a volatile situation also with some complicated dynamics if you could just elaborate on those for us i mean specifically of the government here using the rationale that it's moving in because of the kurdish referendum what really lies

behind this offensive. so the kurdish referendum was incredibly controversial i mean as kurds in iraq they do want to be independent others vote ninety three percent said yes they are there and say they are having their own state not iraqi that the iraqi government they want to keep the territorial integrity of our country and turkey one of the flashpoints of this conflict there are those that hold of those executives and that kircher is one of the places that both the kurdish government and the iraqi government claim and partly has and the law reserves no oil fields of them six only reveals around. and it's famous for this you know the the money the baghdad government what's right go into the central command the close contest and would like to the independence and then what about oil money themselves to that and then you state but one bill so

seems in tripping additional rivalries difficulties that have come to the full resists operation with this fight one kurdish faction was negotiating the baghdad and cold out the other action you tend to be in that. region they're incredibly angry about there's a chloe the other side of the government traitors so like you say of the tile situation politics this messy kathy often with the very latest from air bill the capital of the semi autonomous kurdish region in iraq with you very much for your reporting. well now the death toll from a huge truck bomb explosion in the somali capital mogadishu has risen to more than three hundred the bombing took place in a busy commercial district on saturday it is the deadliest single attack in the country's history the government has declared three days of national mourning. the

crowd marched and chanted against the islamist militant group al-shabaab the group has staged similar attacks before but has not claimed responsibility for this one the death toll is rising quickly it stands at more than three hundred with hundreds more wounded. so. it was a massacre what happened on saturday. i have also such a thing in the last twenty seven years. i witnessed a little boy's head laying on the ground. and his mother and other children were also decapitated to the by the exclusion. and i think that little girl and. police said a truck packed with hundreds of kilos of explosives blew up outside a hotel at a busy intersection in downtown mogadishu close to government offices embassies and restaurants the blast flattened several buildings and set

a nearby fuel tanker on fire. rescue workers said it would be difficult to determine how many people were killed because the intense heat from the blast means the remains of many would never be found. people are thought to still be trapped in the rubble of the collapsed buildings. local hospitals were struggling to cope as casualties arrived. so. far today is just a little you know what we have seen is a very unusual jumble but the hospital was overwhelmed by both dead and wounded but we also received people whose limbs were blown off by the bomb. this is really horrendous unlike any other time in the past who's going to get it until you get it from doing to know someone. two hours after the first blast another explosion

struck the capital's medina district local officials said it killed two people. somalia's president mohamed abdulla he mohamed has declared three days of national mourning. and let's get a quick check now of some other stories making news around the world the government of spain has told catalonia separatist leader carlos pushed along that he has until thursday to withdraw any moves toward independence or face direct rule by madrid spain deputy prime minister. something medea said that catalonia failure to respond to the original deadline set for today is unacceptable. ophelia has left three people dead in ireland the storm made landfall earlier today with waves up to ten meters high hundreds of thousands of lost their electricity the government says it is the country's worst storm in fifty years visuals canceled some flights and asked people to avoid unnecessary travel. german chancellor angela merkel has denied that

a regional election loss for her conservatives has left her weakened as she enters coalition talks to form a new national government are conservatives came second behind the social democrats in the state of lower saxony achieving their worst results in the state for nearly sixty years. well europe is on the verge of getting another nationalist government with far right policies following elections in austria conservative leader kurtz came out the winner in sunday's election which saw him adopt the anti immigrant policies of his extreme right opponents a coalition has yet to be negotiated but it's looking likely that curt's will need the far right freedom party to form a government the next austrian chancellor has not only drawn attention for his policies but also his age. sebastian is said to be the world's youngest leader and he supporters can't get enough. the

thirty one year old has led the center right people's party for just five months. has steered the party rightward on key issues and to victory in austria's national elections. thank you i have a big request for you used today to celebrate. you've all earned it through hard work and dedication. you ok to be at the same time i need to tell you that you're moral the work starts we didn't just run to win the elections we did it to bring austria back on track. so we're going to treat it so we'll be here we ran in this election to achieve real change. how could scopes to achieve this change is up for debate the former foreign minister appealed to conservative and right wing voters with pledges to reduce immigration shut down migrant routes kept benefits to refugees

and bar immigrants from benefits for five years a divisive stance in austria. from korea i'm shocked and outraged i truly have to say but i can't say more i'm very disappointed that the austrians vote like this for instance i. don't if in school i think the result is great school i think it is great that the leader the other candidates are all tricksters i voted mchugh it seems good indeed on that you can decide sodomy having included scrape. could says party is too far short of the numbers needed to form a government he will have to form a coalition he's most likely patna. the far right freedom party the took an anti immigrant anti islam position during the campaign. despite good says proof pledge observers see a rightwing alliance risks driving

a wedge between vienna and brussels well now to what is being called the most intensely observed astronomical event today and a new era in astronomy scientists around the world say that they have witnessed the collision of two ultra dense stars for the very first time check this out because the collision of the two dead stars called neutron stars it caused a ripple in the fabric of space it was first observed on earth in the united states with the help of gravitational wave detectors astronomers around the world were notified so that they could focus their telescopes on the event scientists say that collisions like this are likely responsible for much of the gold and the platinum that exists in the universe. of get more on this now from steven smart he is joining us from darshan which is near munich and he happens to be an astrophysicist who took part in the observations thank you so much for being with us this

afternoon we understand that you and your team you you actually witnessed the crash of these two ultra dense neutron stars for the first time ever walk us through what exactly you discovered and why is this so significant. yes on the seventeenth of august virgo the collaboration announced that a new source of gravitational waves this week is very different to what they find before because the signal lasted for for sixty seconds which is much longer than a black hole mergers they have discovered which last less than a second it was also accompanied by a detection of gamma rays from space from two orbiting satellites so what we did and many other groups did over a period of two weeks afterwards was identifying a new source of optical an infrared light in a galaxy call n.g.c. three four nine three c m distance and c m sky position as estimated for the gravitational waves and this point source an optical light is the first time we have exactly identified where gravitational waves have come from and we can

pinpoint exactly the star merger and its position on this guy once a ball or interest the nasuwt physics incredible stuff and i want to ask you just briefly now before we go because we know that albert einstein that he first predicted the existence of these gravitational waves about a century ago why do you think it took so long to get out of their existence. i took a hundred years to build an instrument that was capable of making this measurement the measurement you have to me is a distance measurement you've got to measure space and time you've got to measure a distance of four kilometers to one thoughtless the size of a proton it's an amazing the physics experiment is amazing distance measurement and it's just taken not long to actually get the technology to measure it and that's that's done and what we call a loser interferometer and that's where do i go get his name from it's the equivalent of measuring the distance that the nearest star to the with human hair it's a fantastic distance measurement just to make the technology work absolutely incredible

stuff and stephen's part we thank you so much for joining us this afternoon to tell us a little bit more about this and why it is such a significant thing that you and your team have witnessed there we appreciate it thank you. a quick reminder now the top stories that we have been following for you here at the w. there have been celebrations in kirkuk as iraqi forces move into the kurdish city it's a move that could transform the balance of power in iraq reports saying that thousands of kurds have fled the city. you're up to date after a short break it is business with ben facility the seal and human. the whole d w o m one a. w made for mines. when the history books.