Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

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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‘Get out of here’: thousands in Israel call for Netanyahu to resign

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Anger continues to build over prime minister’s handling of coronavirus crisis and corruption allegations

Thousands of Israelis protested outside the official residence of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night, pressing ahead with a months-long campaign demanding he resign.

Demonstrators have been protesting against Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has led to soaring unemployment, and believe he should step down while on trial for corruption charges.

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Kosovo and Serbia give Israel diplomatic boon after US-brokered deal

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Majority-Muslim Kosovo will recognise Jewish state, while Serbia promises to relocate embassy to Jerusalem

Israel scored two diplomatic gains on Friday when majority-Muslim Kosovo agreed to recognise the Jewish state and Serbia said it would move its embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

The decisions came after a White House-brokered agreement between the two Balkan arch-rivals to normalise economic relations two decades after they fought a bitter war.

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A city in need of miracles: few glimmers of hope in Beirut’s reconstruction effort

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Business is strong for glaziers but the mood among most rescuers and residents is sombre

Working 13 hours a day for more than a month, Ghassan Awad has driven trucks carrying glass panels from Beirut’s southern suburbs to the ruins of its waterfront.

He has not been so busy since the 2006 war with Israel. Nor have all Lebanon’s other glaziers, who have been at the frontline of making the capital inhabitable in the 31 days since the massive explosion that killed 190 people, injured more than 6,000 and ripped the city apart.

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Libyan warlord faces legal action in US for alleged war crimes

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Khalifa Haftar challenged in Virginia by relatives of military leader’s alleged victims

A $50m damages claim lodged in a court in Virginia alleges that the Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar, who holds US citizenship, is guilty of war crimes including starvation sieges that forced families to eat grass and tree bark to survive.

The claim against Haftar by two relatives of his alleged victims is an attempt to make him answerable somewhere for the crimes he is accused of perpetrating as head of the Libyan National Army, the major military force in the east of the country, which since 2014 has been in conflict with the Tripoli-based government in the west.

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Possible sign of life detected under Beirut rubble weeks after blast

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Search renewed after pulsing signal that may be heartbeat heard under collapsed building

A pulsing signal has been detected from under the rubble of a building that collapsed in the Beirut port explosion last month, raising faint hopes that there may be a survivor there.

A sniffer dog belonging to a Chilean search and rescue team first detected something in rubble of a building that had previously been searched. The team then used audio equipment to listen for a possible heartbeat, and detected what could be a pulse of 18 to 19 beats per minute.

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Trump’s tweets are felt in Ethiopia. Washington should use its power wisely | Mekonnen Firew Ayano

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Anti-democratic attitudes in America helped to scrub our election, while US-Nile geopolitics could become a powder keg

When US presidents comment on events in other countries, their remarks have impact.

When, for example, President Barack Obama congratulated the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) on an apparent landslide election victory in 2015, it signalled to some Ethiopians that the world’s most powerful country would not favour a legal challenge to the election results.

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‘I am starving’: the migrant workers abandoned by Dubai employers

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With no salary or money to pay for flights home, many are trapped in desperate situations in crowded labour camps

Hassan doesn’t know if he will eat today. The 30-year-old Pakistani has lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), for over a decade, employed as a construction worker. But when the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, he lost his job. Without his salary he cannot afford to live in the UAE. Nor can he afford to fly home.

“The suffering is too much. We hardly have any food and there’s no support. Since we don’t have any money, we can’t travel from here either,” he says. “How are we going to buy the ticket?”

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