More than 40 people have died as wildfires sweep through parts of Algeria. Dozens of fires have hit the Kabyle region 60 miles (100km) east of Algiers with remote villages and limited access to water complicating efforts to contain the blazes. The death toll includes 25 soldiers who were killed as they worked to rescue people in Bejaiea and Tizi Ouzou
Continue reading...Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa
Wildfires in Algeria: dozens of civilians and soldiers reported dead
Prime minister says request made for help internationally as forest blazes erupt in Kabyle region and elsewhere
More than 40 people, including 25 soldiers, have died in wildfires that erupted east of the Algerian capital, the country’s prime minister, Ayman Benabderrahmane, said.
Benabderrahmane also told state television that the government had asked for help from the international community and was in talks with partners to hire planes to extinguish fires. So far, 42 deaths have been reported.
Continue reading...FBI offer to release some Saudi files not enough, 9/11 families say
Victims’ families demand comprehensive declassification review of all documents, particularly into Saudi Arabia’s role in attacks
Families of 9/11 victims say an FBI offer to release some documents from its investigation into the attack has not gone far enough, and are demanding a comprehensive declassification review of all relevant material, particularly on Saudi Arabia’s role.
The FBI offer on Monday followed a call by some victims’ families and first responders for Joe Biden to stay away from ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the attack next month, if the president failed to honour a campaign pledge to lift the secrecy surrounding the multi-agency investigations.
Continue reading...Princess Latifa campaigners disband after cousin says she is ‘happy and well’
Free Latifa’s co-founder, Latifa’s cousin Marcus Essabri, was photographed with her in Iceland
The organisers of a campaign to free Princess Latifa, who was captured three years ago trying to leave Dubai by her father, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, have disbanded it after the latest photograph of the princess out with friends emerged, and her cousin, the campaign’s co-founder, confirmed he had seen her looking happy and well.
A photo of Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed al-Maktoum and her cousin, Marcus Essabri, in Iceland along with Sioned Taylor, a British woman who has previously appeared in pictures with Latifa, was posted on Taylor’s Instagram account on Monday. Latifa has not yet spoken publicly.
Continue reading...Israel’s shadow war with Iran
A spate of attacks on one of the world’s busiest shipping trade routes is part of an escalating tit-for-tat conflict playing out between Iran and Israel, says Martin Chulov, the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent
In the last week of July, an oil tanker managed by an Israeli company was making a routine journey from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates when it was hit by an explosive, believed to be a drone. Two men, a Romanian and a British national, were killed in the attack. The Israeli government immediately blamed Iran who has denied any part in it.
The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, tells Nosheen Iqbal that it is the latest action in what is now a rapidly escalating ‘shadow war’ between Israel and Iran. With both countries under new leadership in recent weeks, there is an added layer of unpredictability to relations that have been tense for some time.
Continue reading...Major coup for Taliban as fighters take Afghan city of Kunduz
Insurgent group seizes important political and military hub as pro-government forces retreat
The Taliban have claimed a huge symbolic victory after their fighters seized a large city for the first time in northern Afghanistan as part of a seemingly unstoppable offensive in which they have captured five provincial capitals in just three days.
Armed men swept into Kunduz on Sunday, a strategic city close to the border with Tajikistan and an important political and military hub. By mid-morning they controlled the city centre while pro-government forces retreated to the nearby airport. Residents fled as smoke from the city’s burning market engulfed the sky.
Continue reading...True Stories: Spaces review – impressive short docs from folk horror to a Lebanese marvel
This short film collection from the True Story platform ranges across continents to look at how we interact with our environments
Deeply psychogeographical, this collection of documentary shorts from the streaming platform True Story roams among spaces old and new, and across continents. Personal and public memories are intertwined, creating portraits of how human beings interact with their environments, and vice versa.
Paul Heintz’s nocturnal Shānzhài Screens is a meditative study of liminal urban spaces, shot in a Chinese district that specialises in fine-art reproductions. Rectangular frames populate the screen, from flickering apartment windows, hurried video calls, to endless replicas of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Authenticity is elusive, and loneliness reigns.
Continue reading...‘I’d never seen a boat come in with so many bodies’: mortal cost of Atlantic migrant route
Every year thousands of refugees from conflict, climate and instability in Africa board vessels in search of a new life in Europe but hundreds never arrive
At 6.30am on Friday 28 May, three fishermen at work four miles off the southern coast of Tobago spotted a large white boat adrift on the dawn waters of the Caribbean.
As they drew closer, the trio saw the boat’s shape was far from local, and noticed a strong smell coming from inside it. The body the fishermen glimpsed at the bow was enough to confirm their suspicions. They called the coastguard who, unable to dispatch a vessel, asked them to tow the boat ashore at Belle Garden beach.
Continue reading...Israel targets Hamas sites after balloons from Gaza ignite fires
Israeli military says strikes target rocket launching site as balloons aim to pressure Israel to ease restrictions
Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian enclave, Israel’s military said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the strikes on Saturday that targeted what the military said was a rocket launching site and a compound belonging to Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza.
Continue reading...UK condemns 10-year sentence for dual national in Iran as tensions rise
British-Iranian labour rights activist’s sentencing coincides with deteriorating relations between western allies and Iran
The UK government has hit out at reports that a British-Iranian labour rights activist has been given a sentence of 10 years in Tehran for participating in an outlawed group.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that London “strongly” condemned the sentence handed out to Mehran Raoof, a former teacher from north London.
Continue reading...Iran’s decision-makers must shoulder the blame for its water crisis | Kaveh Madani
Invoking climate change as the sole cause of terrible shortages lets those in authority off the hook
- Kaveh Madani is a former deputy vice-president of Iran
Iran’s water bankruptcy has been in the news lately, prompting deadly protests in Khuzestan province that also garnered the attention of global media. But this kind of problem is neither new or unique in the country. Drying rivers, vanishing lakes, shrinking wetlands, declining groundwater levels, land subsidence, sinkholes, desertification, soil erosion, dust storms, air, water and waste pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation and wildfires are among the other familiar signs of Iran’s environmental devastation.
Khuzestan, in south-west Iran, is known globally for its rich oil and gas resources. But this wealthy province’s contribution to Iran’s development is not just its oil and gas revenue. Khuzestan is also water-rich compared with most of the country. So, its large rivers have been blocked by gigantic dams to store water for agriculture, industrial and domestic uses and hydroelectricity production. Considerable amounts of water have been also transferred from its rivers’ tributaries to dry regions in central Iran.
Continue reading...A coup or not? Tunisian activists grapple with president’s powergrab
While Saied’s shutdown of parliament has outsiders worried, in Tunisia he has 87% support and civil society remains strong
Outside Tunisia, the president’s sacking of the prime minister and shutdown of parliament looked like a coup. Inside, however, activists and journalists are still struggling to define what is happening to their country – and what to do about it.
“The day after the president acted, we had a conversation in the newsroom about whether it was a coup,” said Thameur Mekki, the editor-in-chief of the influential media platform Nawaat. Other news outlets aired programmes debating the “coup” question, and activist groups started worrying. But then, said Mekki, the president, Kais Saied, personally called leading civil society groups and “gave assurances about their freedom to operate”.
Continue reading...Israel launches airstrikes in Lebanon in response to rockets
Israeli military says jets struck rocket launch sites, in a marked escalation of hostilities
Israel escalated its response to rocket attacks this week by launching airstrikes on Lebanon, the Israeli military has said.
The military said in a statement that jets struck the launch sites from which rockets had been fired over the previous day, as well as an additional target used to attack Israel in the past. Several militant groups operate in Lebanon but none claimed responsibility.
Continue reading...Tunisia unions call for president to form new government
UGTT union body urges president, Kais Saied, to form government, nearly two weeks after he sacked PM
Tunisia’s powerful UGTT trade union body has urged the country’s president, Kais Saied, to form a new government, nearly two weeks after he assumed executive power and sacked the prime minister.
Saied also suspended parliament for 30 days on 25 July, and has since dismissed four ministers and other top officials.
Continue reading...Taliban suicide-bomb attack targets defence minister’s Kabul home
Islamist group escalates insurgency with assault on Green Zone in Afghan capital
A suicide-bomb and gun attack in Kabul’s Green Zone that targeted Afghanistan’s acting defence minister and killed eight people on Tuesday was claimed by the Taliban, as the hardline Islamist group continued to escalate violence across the country.
The suicide bombing, which targeted the house used by Bismillah Mohammadi, was one of the most significant in the Afghan capital in recent months. It came amid heavy fighting in the south and west of the country as the Taliban have sought to take three key cities.
Continue reading...‘No sense of safety’: how the Beirut blast created a mental health crisis
A year on from the devastating explosion, people are struggling to sleep and PTSD is widespread – amid economic chaos
Rayan Khatoun has been dreading 4 August. She has been constantly on edge as the anniversary of the port explosion in Beirut approached.
The blast threw Khatoun into a wall as she came home from work and left her with a head injury, a fractured cheekbone and torn tendons. Since then, she has suffered from recurring nightmares, insomnia and anxiety attacks.
Continue reading...Shattered and scarred: Beirut’s devastation then and now – in pictures
One year on from the huge explosion in the port of Beirut in Lebanon the devastation from the blast is still visible
At least 200 people were killed, and more than 6,000 injured in the Beirut blast that devastated the port area on 4 August 2020. The explosion is believed to have been caused by an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse.
Away from the broken grain silos, and their rotting contents, Lebanon remains paralysed and anguished. The investigation into the blast has flatlined, and its perpetrators are as far away from accountability as ever. The global aid pledged in the wake of the destruction remains forsaken by the country’s rulers, who prefer the narrow privileges that flowed to them from a crippled system to a global rescue plan that could save the country.
Continue reading...Suspected tanker hijacking off UAE coast is over, says British military
Armed group has left the Panama-registered Asphalt Princess, says British navy, after initial reports Iranian-backed forces had raided vessel
A group of armed men who boarded a tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in the Gulf of Oman have left the targeted ship, the British navy has said without elaborating.
The notice on Wednesday came after the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) warned of a “potential hijack” under unclear circumstances underway the night before.
Continue reading...A year on from Beirut explosion, scars and questions remain
Lebanese capital remains a shell of a city as efforts to find who is to blame for tragedy have made little progress
When his workplace blew to pieces, dockworker Yusuf Shehadi was waiting to hear back from colleagues who had scrambled to help firefighters extinguish a blaze in the port of Beirut. The fire was bad and getting worse, they told him in their last conversation before a giant explosion killed them, and 210 others, a year ago today.
The catastrophic blast laid to ruin the place Shehadi had worked for a decade. And he immediately knew its cause. “I had taken the nitrate from the dock to the hangar six years earlier,” he said of the massive stockpile of military-grade fertiliser that he had helped move from a freighter to a nearby hangar in 2014.
Continue reading...US to return 17,000 looted ancient artefacts to Iraq
Items smuggled out after 2003 invasion include 3,500-year-old Gilgamesh clay tablet
The United States is returning more than 17,000 ancient artefacts that were looted and smuggled out of Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, including a 3,500-year-old clay tablet that bears part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iraq has said.
Tens of thousands of antiquities disappeared from Iraq after the invasion that toppled its leader, Saddam Hussein. Many more were smuggled out or destroyed by Islamic State (Isis), which held a third of Iraq between 2014 and 2017 before it was defeated by Iraqi and international forces.
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