Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

UK judge halts Home Office flight to remove asylum seekers

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Lawyers argue group of up to 20 people will be left destitute in Spain if deported

A senior high court judge has halted a charter flight hours before up to 20 asylum seekers who crossed the Channel to the UK in small boats were due to be forcibly removed to Spain, a country they had previously passed through.

The judge, Sir Duncan Ouseley, ordered the flight to be grounded because of concerns that the asylum seekers due to fly might be left destitute in the streets of Madrid, as happened to another group earlier this month.

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UK repatriates child orphaned in Syria after Isis collapse

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Child is thought to be first to have returned from the country since November

A British child left orphaned by the collapse of the Islamic State caliphate has been repatriated from Syria, the Foreign Office has said.

The child is understood to be the first to have returned to the UK from Syria since November, when a small number of other unaccompanied British children were repatriated.

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‘Confounding’: Covid may have already peaked in many African countries

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One explanation for virus not behaving as expected could be previous exposure to other infections, experts tell MPs

The coronavirus pandemic has peaked earlier than expected in many African countries, confounding early predictions, experts have told MPs.

Scientists do not yet know why, but one hypothesis is the possibility of people having pre-existing immunity to Covid-19, caused by exposure to other infections.

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Trump’s pre-election diplomatic offensive glosses over awkward realities

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The ‘Abraham accords’ merely make public once-furtive friendships between Israel and Gulf monarchies, while bigger problems remain

The White House was festooned with the flags of four nations. There were trumpet blasts, multiple signatures on various pieces of paper, and much weighty talk about blood and history – everything you might expect from a peace deal.

And not just any peace deal. The agreements signed in Washington on Tuesday were titled the Abraham Accords, implying a epochal reconciliation between Judaism, Islam and Christianity, three faiths with shared Middle East ancestry.

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UAE, Bahrain and Israel sign historic accords at White House event

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Trio establish formal relations at ceremony viewed as image boost for Trump and Netanyahu

Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have signed agreements to establish formal relations, ending a decades-old taboo in Arab diplomacy as power and priorities shift in the Middle East.

“Today’s signing sets history on a new course,” Donald Trump told a crowd outside the White House where the deal was signed. “This an incredible day for the world,” he said.

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Trump threatens to retaliate with ‘1,000 times greater’ force against any Iran attack

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  • US intelligence said to fear attack on US envoy to South Africa
  • Trump claims he had discussed plan to assassinate Syria’s Assad

Donald Trump has warned that the US will retaliate with “1,000 times greater” force against any Iranian attack on its interests.

Related: ‘The US feels very volatile’: former ambassador warns of election violence

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Jewish extremist who killed Palestinian family sentenced to life

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Amiram Ben-Uliel murdered Saad Dawabsheh, his wife and child in a 2015 arson attack

A court in Israel has ruled a Jewish extremist will serve three life sentences for killing a Palestinian couple and their toddler in a 2015 firebomb attack in the occupied West Bank, murders that contributed to surging violence at the time.

In handing out the sentence, the Lod district court said Amiram Ben-Uliel, 26, an Israeli settler, had meticulously planned the arson attack, which “stemmed from the radical ideology he held, and racism”. The punishment was close to the maximum penalty, it said.

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Israeli government to impose second Covid-19 national lockdown

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Three-week lockdown will make Israel the first country to reimpose such stringent restrictions on a national scale

Israel’s government has decided to impose a lockdown lasting three weeks, the first country to reimpose such severe restrictions on a national scale, after a dramatic resurgence in coronavirus cases.

Fearing mass gatherings during a string of national holidays over the next month, the cabinet decided to shut down the country as of Friday, the Jewish new year, until 9 October.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s supporters come out in solidarity on second anniversary of Iran detention

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Friends stage ‘Run for Kylie’ events for the Australian academic jailed on spying charges, as her family say they remain strong and hopeful

The family of the detained academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who faces 10 years in jail in Iran on espionage charges – have said they “remain strong and are far from giving up hope”, as hundreds of her friends marked the second anniversary of her detention on Sunday.

Moore-Gilbert, a dual UK and Australian citizen, was seized by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as she attempted to fly out of the country following an academic conference at which she had spoken.

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Iranian champion wrestler Navid Afkari executed despite global outcry

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Afkari had been convicted of killing security guard during anti-government protests in 2018

Iran has executed a champion wrestler convicted of murdering a security guard during anti-regime protests in 2018, state media said on Saturday, despite an international campaign to spare his life.

Navid Afkari, 27, was executed “this morning after legal procedures were carried out at the insistence of the parents and the family of the victim”, the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the head of the justice department in the southern Fars province as saying.

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Afghan peace talks with Taliban begin in Doha with rocky path ahead

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Securing a ceasefire and safeguarding rights of women and minorities are key challenges

The Taliban and Afghan government negotiators launched historic peace talks on Saturday, aiming to end decades of war through a political settlement that would be unprecedented in the country’s recent history.

Negotiations will be long and complicated; there is a yawning gulf between the Taliban’s vision of an austerely Islamic state and the government’s commitment to the constitution that guarantees democracy and women’s rights, even if its implementation is mixed.

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Bahrain to normalise ties with Israel, Donald Trump announces

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Arab country is latest to make agreement as part of US president’s diplomatic push

Bahrain has agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and will join the United Arab Emirates in signing an agreement at the White House on Tuesday.

“Even great warriors get tired of fighting, and they’re tired of fighting,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, portraying the deals as peace agreements, although neither Gulf monarchy has ever been at war with Israel, and both had already established extensive informal ties. Bahrain has long advocated Israel’s integration in the region.

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Woodward tells how allies tried to rein in ‘childish’ Trump’s foreign policy

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On the golf course, Lindsey Graham urged restraint on Iran, while James Mattis slept in his clothes in case of emergency, book says

Four days before ordering a drone strike against the Iranian military commander Qassem Suleimani, Donald Trump was debating the assassination on his own Florida golf course, according to Bob Woodward’s new book on the mercurial president.

Trump’s golfing partner that day was Senator Lindsey Graham, who had emerged as one of his closest advisers, and who urged him not to take such a “giant step”, that could trigger “almost total war”.

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Panic again at Beirut port as huge fire breaks out

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Blaze reportedly at warehouse where oil and tyres are kept near site of August explosion

A huge fire has broken out at Beirut’s port, triggering panic among residents traumatised by last month’s massive explosion there that killed and injured thousands of people.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire at the facility, which was devastated by the explosion on 4 August, when nearly 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate detonated and triggered a shockwave that blasted windows, doors and walls miles away.

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Conflicts since start of US ‘war on terror’ have displaced 37m people – report

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Study focuses on post-9/11 wars in which US initiated combat or took part in military operations

Conflicts with US military involvement have displaced at least 37 million people since the beginning of the “war on terror” nearly two decades ago, a report has estimated.

The invasion of Iraq and the decades of instability that have followed in the country have uprooted at least 9.2 million so far, the costliest of the eight US military operations that were included in the report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

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‘I had to kill so many people’: the battle to protect children in conflicts

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25,000 grave violations were committed against children in conflict in 2019, says the UN, which hopes to highlight issue with new international day

When Islamic State fighters rolled into Mosul, Iraq, they made promises.

“When they arrived they promised us salvation, a better life, but within months our schools were closed and we were living in fear, prisoners in our own city,” says Usama Salem, 11.

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Sun Children review – Iranian street kids strike gold

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Majid Majidi’s cast of young toughs digging for treasure under a school deliver a heart-rending story with unexpected depth of emotion

Sun Children, by the Iranian director Majid Majidi, gives us a prison-break drama that is escaping to nowhere, and a knockabout school comedy gone horribly wrong. The acting is broad, the plot gears often creak, but it has guts and heart and a grubby, street-smart charisma. It’s one of the finest films playing in this year’s Venice competition.

Dedicated to “the 152m children forced into child labour”, this casts 12-year-old Roohollah Zamani as Ali, the pint-sized boss of a gang of thieves, a miniature wheel inside a much bigger machine, working for an unnamed local crime boss who skulks on the rooftop amid his pigeon coops. The boss wants Ali to retrieve a hoard of unspecified treasure, which is either buried in the local graveyard or in the drainage pipe that runs beside it. And the only way he can do it is to go back to school.

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Jamal Khashoggi murder: Saudi court overturns five death sentences

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Eight defendants jailed for between seven and 20 years in final ruling on case

A Saudi court has overturned five death sentences over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, in a final ruling that jailed eight defendants for between seven and 20 years, state media reported.

“Five of the convicts were given 20 years in prison and another three were jailed for seven to 10 years,” the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing a spokesman for the public prosecutor. None of the defendants were named.

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Woman who helped deported Syrians ‘ashamed of UK government’

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Barbara Pomfret came to aid of group left homeless in Madrid after forced removal from UK

A British woman living in Spain who helped 11 Syrian asylum seekers who were left homeless and hungry on the streets of Madrid after being forcibly removed from the UK has said she is ashamed of the UK government’s behaviour.

The all-male group were left destitute after being put on a flight to Madrid by the Home Office last week. They had arrived in the UK in small boats from Calais and are part of a Home Office plan to remove almost 1,000 such arrivals.

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The forgotten victims of the Beirut explosion: domestic workers | Nesrine Malik

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Dumped on the streets after Covid-19 hit, hundreds of nannies are now starving amid the ruins of last month’s blast

It is just over a month since the Beirut port explosion, and the footage from that day remains as shocking as it was when it first began to appear on our TV screens and social media. In fragments of video, the world saw Beirut life freeze in confusion at the unfamiliar sound of the explosion, then shatter as its impact hit. Among those bits of film we saw one scene, captured on domestic CCTV, that was replicated across the city – an African nanny instinctively scooping children up out of harm’s way, and protecting them with her body.

Related: Beirut's devastating blast has not shaken the ruling class's grip on Lebanon | Gilbert Achcar

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