Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Palestinians arrested and injured in Israeli raid on al-Aqsa mosque

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Police raid triggers West Bank clashes, cross-border strikes in Gaza Strip and fears of escalation

At least 14 Palestinians have been injured and hundreds arrested in an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, triggering clashes in the West Bank, cross-border strikes in the Gaza Strip and fears of wider escalation over the holiday period.

The violence in the early hours of Wednesday – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday – comes after a year of spiralling bloodshed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also carries echoes of 2021, when clashes at Jerusalem’s holiest site helped start an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of Gaza.

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Water ban in drought-stricken Tunisia adds to growing crisis

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Risk of unrest rises amid fourth dry year, poor grain harvest, weak economy and likely food subsidy cuts

Tunisia has introduced water rationing as the country suffers its fourth year of severe drought.

The state water distribution company, Sonede, has already begun cutting mains water supplies every night between 9pm and 4am. The agriculture ministry has now banned the use of water for irrigation, watering green spaces and other public areas, and for washing cars.

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US says strike in Syria has killed senior Islamic State leader

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Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri said to have been responsible for planning IS attacks in Europe

The US military has said it carried out a strike in Syria, killing a senior Islamic State group official responsible for planning attacks in Europe.

The strike in the north-west of the country on Monday killed the senior IS leader Khalid Aydd Ahmad al-Jabouri, US Central Command said.

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Only official civilian victim of UK’s bombing campaign against IS appears not to exist

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Contradictions over missions in Syria and Iraq deepens concern over Britain’s ‘perfect’ precision war

It sounded like accountability. Pressed about the UK’s implausibly spotless record in its bombing campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the British government admitted in May 2018 that its military had killed one civilian in eastern Syria two months earlier.

But the strike the then defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, described to parliament was not logged in the records of civilian casualties kept by its allies in the international coalition flying bombers and drones over Syria and Iraq.

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Revealed: UAE plans huge oil and gas expansion as it hosts UN climate summit

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Exclusive: UAE’s fossil fuel boss will be the president of Cop28, making a mockery of the summit, say campaigners

The United Arab Emirates, which is hosting this year’s UN climate summit, has the third biggest net zero-busting plans for oil and gas expansion in the world, the Guardian can reveal. Its plans are surpassed only by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, has been controversially appointed president of the UN’s Cop28 summit in December, which is seen as crucial with time running out to end the climate crisis. But Sultan Al Jaber is overseeing expansion to produce oil and gas equivalent to 7.5bn barrels of oil, according to new data, 90% of which would have to remain in the ground to meet the net zero scenario set out by the International Energy Agency.

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Saudi Arabia executes man during Muslim holy month of Ramadan

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Rights group says execution is first during the fasting month since 2009

Saudi Arabia has executed a man during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which a rights group said on Monday had not occurred in years.

The execution took place on 28 March – five days into the fasting month – in the Medina region, which includes Islam’s second holiest city, the official Saudi Press Agency has reported.

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Syrian refugee celebrates ‘sensational’ win in German mayoral race

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Ryyan Alshebl, 29, won an absolute majority in Sunday’s mayoral election in Ostelsheim

A Syrian who arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2015 has been elected as the mayor of a village in the south-west of the country.

Ryyan Alshebl, 29, who is a member of the German Greens but stood as a non-party candidate, won an absolute majority in Sunday’s mayoral election in Ostelsheim, a small municipality of about 2,500 inhabitants in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

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Mount of Olives becomes latest target in fight for control of Jerusalem

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Israeli settler movement is making life harder for Jerusalem’s Palestinians and erasing Christian character of holy city

Even in a city as storied as Jerusalem, some places are holier than others. The Mount of Olives, studded with churches marking events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, home to the most sacred Jewish cemetery in the world and tombs celebrated as those of the Sufi mystic Rabia al-Basri and the medieval scholar Mujir al-Din, is one such place.

Christians believe Jesus spent the last days of his life here, while according to the Hebrew Bible, the mount is where the resurrection will begin; in both Christianity and Islam, it is revered as the site Jesus ascended to heaven. The Mount of Olives’ summit, which gives the clearest view of the Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sherif, has served as a pilgrimage destination for all three faiths for millennia.

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‘I am proud of my work’: the women pushing boundaries in Gaza

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Palestinian women are fighting back, despite personal losses and scarcity of opportunities in the conservative territory

Rouzan al-Najjar, a paramedic from the Gaza Strip, knew that her work saving lives during the 2018 protests on the frontier with Israel challenged assumptions in the highly conservative Palestinian territory about the role of women.

“Being a medic is not only a job for a man,” the 21-year-old said in an interview shortly before she was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper.

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Israeli government approves far-right minister’s proposal of national guard

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Itamar Ben-Gvir says force will focus on Arab unrest as police chief voices concerns and opposition figures denounce it as ‘militia’

Israel’s government has authorised the establishment of a national guard proposed by the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said it would focus on Arab unrest, as political rivals accused him of setting up a sectarian “militia”.

The previous government had begun moves to set up an auxiliary police force to tackle internal political violence after pro-Palestinian protests in mixed Jewish-Arab areas during the Israel-Gaza conflict in May 2021. However, that government ended before the force was finalised.

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Israeli airstrikes wound five Syrian soldiers, state media say

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Attack near western city of Homs early on Sunday was Israel’s third in recent days

Five Syrian soldiers were wounded in the latest Israeli airstrike on Syria, the state news agency Sana reported on Sunday, while Iran said two Revolutionary Guards officers had died in earlier attacks.

Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory during more than a decade of civil war, primarily targeting Iranian-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

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Second killing in a day by Israeli forces in Jerusalem and West Bank

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Authorities say both deaths were in response to threats: a man grabbing a police officer’s gun at al-Aqsa mosque, and a car ramming near Beit Ummar

A man was killed by Israeli soldiers after a West Bank car ramming on Saturday, the army said, in an escalation threatening to end a relative lull during the holy month of Ramadan so far.

The Palestinian’s death came less than 24 hours after an Arab Israeli allegedly snatched a gun from a police officer at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound and fired it before being shot dead.

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Two women attacked with yoghurt in Iran arrested for not covering hair

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Country’s chief justice says unveiled women will be prosecuted ‘without mercy’ after defiance

Two women have been arrested in Iran for not covering their hair in public after having a tub of yoghurt thrown over them.

Video footage that went viral on social media showed two female customers being approached by a man who engages them in conversation.

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Israeli police say man shot dead in Jerusalem had grabbed officer’s gun

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Man was killed near al-Aqsa mosque after allegedly firing officer’s gun, in what police describe as terrorist attack

A man detained by Israeli police near a flashpoint mosque compound in Jerusalem grabbed an officer’s gun and fired it, prompting the unit to shoot him dead, the force said on Saturday, describing the incident as a terrorist attack.

The incident overnight at the edge of al-Aqsa mosque complex, an icon of Palestinian nationalism, came at a high point of Muslim attendance for the holy month of Ramadan.

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Man shot dead by police near Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque

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26-year-old man from an Arab village in southern Israel had grabbed and fired officer’s gun after being stopped for questioning, say police

A man detained near al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was shot dead after he grabbed an officer’s gun and fired it, police said.

They identified the man as a 26-year-old resident of Hura, an Arab village in southern Israel.

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Recycling rubble can help rebuild Syria faster, scientists show

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Tests show recycled concrete could safely be used in new buildings in war- and quake-stricken country

Concrete rubble from destroyed buildings in Syria can be safely recycled into new concrete, scientists have shown, which will make the rebuilding of the war-hit country faster, cheaper and greener.

Syria, which was also hit by a huge earthquake in February, has a vast amount of concrete rubble, estimated at 40m tonnes. The key barrier to recycling this waste is ensuring that the new concrete is as strong and safe as conventional concrete.

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Finland’s way into Nato clears as hold-out Turkey votes in favour

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Parliament in Ankara passes bill allowing membership after second-to-last objector, Hungary, voted in favour

Turkey’s parliament has approved a bill to allow Finland to join Nato, clearing the way for Helsinki to join the western defence alliance as war rages in Ukraine.

The Turkish parliament was the last among the 30 members of the alliance to ratify Finland’s membership, after Hungary’s legislature approved a similar bill this week.

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Tunisian morgue overflows as more people attempt risky sea crossing

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Migrant crackdown is prompting increasing number of people from sub-Saharan Africa to board boats

On a recent afternoon in the Tunisian coastal city of Sfax, as shoppers hurried around a market buying food and drink for that evening’s iftar meal, a small group of men from sub-Saharan Africa gathered near a stall selling phone accessories.

One of them, Joseph, had made a two-week journey to the city from Cameroon eight months ago. His plan, like thousands before him fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East in the hope of a better life, had been to board a boat from near Sfax and cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

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Egyptian army has turned Sinai schools into military bases, says rights group

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Exclusive: group says military is compromising children’s right to education with its campaign against militants

Egyptian forces have taken over 37 schools and transformed them into military bases while dozens more have been destroyed during a 10-year war with militants in Sinai, a rights group has found in an initial assessment.

In a months-long investigation shared with the Guardian before its official release, the UK-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR) accused the Egyptian armed forces of compromising the right to education of children during its campaign against militants in north Sinai.

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Israel’s Netanyahu rejects Biden’s call to ‘walk away’ from judicial overhaul

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Prime minister praises US president’s commitment to Israel but will not be swayed by ‘pressures from abroad’

Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed Joe Biden’s call to “walk away” from a proposed judicial overhaul that has led to massive protests across Israel, with the Israeli prime minister responding that he does not make decisions based on pressure from abroad.

Netanyahu on Monday delayed the proposal after large numbers of people spilled into the streets. The White House initially suggested Netanyahu should seek a compromise but the US president went further in taking questions from reporters on Tuesday. “I hope he walks away from it,” Biden said.

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