Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Lebanon’s mass revolt against corruption and poverty continues

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Dissent gains momentum with country’s largest protests since Cedar revolution of 2005

The largest protests in Lebanon in 14 years are set to shut down the country for a fifth day on Monday, as a revolt against a weak government, ailing services and a looming economic collapse continues to gain momentum.

Demonstrators took to the streets of most urban centres on Sunday to rail against officials who they say are preventing badly needed reforms that would cut into the pockets of the ruling class, and are instead trying to recoup state revenues by taxing the poor.

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Kurdish fighters leave Syrian border town, giving Turkey control

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Evacuation part of US-brokered ceasefire, as Nancy Pelosi leads congressional visit to region

Kurdish officials say their fighters have evacuated Ras al-Ayn, giving Turkey and its allies control of one of the border cities that has borne the brunt of fighting since Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from north-eastern Syria.

The Turkish defence ministry said a convoy of 86 vehicles left the city on Sunday afternoon carrying fighters from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Front (SDF) and wounded civilians south to cities beyond the 20-mile buffer zone that Turkey is seeking to clear along its border with Syria.

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Britain makes move to bring home Isis children stranded in Syria

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Whitehall sources are working with local agencies to bring back minors born to Islamic State fighters

British officials have taken the first steps to repatriate children stranded in Syria by liaising directly with agencies on the ground to identify unaccompanied minors for “safe passage” back to the UK.

Whitehall sources have confirmed they are working with “various agencies” in north-east Syria – believed to include the International Committee of the Red Cross – to kickstart the process of transferring children of British parents linked to Islamic State back to the UK.

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‘We Syrians are being used as political tools… yet again’

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Despite last week’s US-brokered truce, fighting continues on the Turkish-Syrian border

It’s an unusually hot autumn in the plains of southern Turkey, where in some places nothing but wire fencing is all that separates this country from the chaos that has engulfed Syria over the last eight years.

Cotton, pistachio and olive trees grow on both sides of the border. But plumes of black smoke are only rising above towns on the Syrian side.

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Erdoğan threatens to ‘crush the heads’ of Kurdish fighters refusing to withdraw

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Turkey-US deal asks Kurdish forces to vacate designated ‘safe zone’ in northern Syria during five-day ceasefire

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, has said his country would “crush the heads” of Kurdish militants if they did not withdraw from a planned “safe zone” in northern Syria.

On Thursday following an intervention from the US, Turkey agreed to pause its military offensive in north-eastern Syria for five days while Kurdish fighters withdrew from the safe zone.

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Archaeologists discover 30 ancient coffins in Luxor

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Intricately carved coffins with mummies from 1000BC ‘biggest such find in over a century’

Egypt has revealed details of 30 ancient wooden coffins with mummies inside, which were discovered in the southern city of Luxor in the biggest find of its kind in more than a century.

A team of Egyptian archaeologists found a “distinctive group of 30 coloured wooden coffins for men, women and children” in a cache at Al-Asasif cemetery on Luxor’s west bank, the ministry of antiquities said in a statement on Saturday.

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Belgium to evacuate Isis suspects from Syria detention camps

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Other European states also preparing to repatriate citizens accused of Isis links via safe zone

Belgium and other European states are preparing to evacuate citizens accused of having links to Islamic State from detention camps in north-eastern Syria through a newly declared safe zone being carved out by Turkish forces along the border.

Belgian officials informed family members of detainees held in two camps on Friday that they would attempt to take advantage of a five-day ceasefire to retrieve nationals allegedly tied to the terror group. The Guardian has learned that other European states, including France and Germany, are also looking at ways to take advantage of the window declared by US vice-president Mike Pence on Thursday to repatriate women and children.

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Fighting continues on Syria-Turkey border despite ceasefire

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Artillery fire and ground clashes reported in violation of US-brokered five-day truce

Fighting is continuing on the border between Syria and Turkey in defiance of a supposed five-day ceasefire negotiated between the US and Turkey.

Intermittent artillery fire and ground clashes were heard in the border town of Ras al-Ayn on Friday morning, one of the two main targets of the nine-day-old Turkish offensive, as the Turkish military and Syrian rebel proxies struggled to wrest control of the town from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

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Violence flares in Lebanon as protesters tell their leaders to go

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Dozens wounded or held as warnings over economy spark biggest protests in decade

Security forces fired teargas and chased down protesters in Beirut on Friday after tens of thousands of people across Lebanon marched to demand the demise of a political elite they accuse of looting the economy to the point of collapse.

Riot police in vehicles and on foot rounded up protesters, according to Reuters. They fired rubber bullets and teargas canisters, dispersing demonstrators in Beirut’s commercial district. Dozens of people were wounded and detained.

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The future of burial: inside Jerusalem’s hi-tech underground necropolis

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With a dire shortage of land for graves, the holy city is reviving an ancient custom of underground burial – with lift access, LED lighting and golf buggies

Cool air from deep inside the mountain lightly wafts through cavernous arched tunnels. Along the walls of the subterranean passages, rows of human-sized chambers have been dug into the rock. It is unmistakably a catacomb.

Yet this mass tomb is not a relic of the Roman empire. It was made with huge electric diggers, and the walls are lined with concrete. People will enter by lift, and those with limited mobility will be able to use a golf buggy to traverse the necropolis.

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Pence and Erdoğan agree on ceasefire plan but Kurds reject ‘occupation’

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  • Mike Pence strikes deal with Turkish president in Ankara
  • Agreement appears to cement key Turkish objectives

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has agreed with the US vice-president, Mike Pence, to suspend Ankara’s operation on Kurdish-led forces in north-east Syria for the next five days in order to allow Kurdish troops to withdraw, potentially halting the latest bloodshed in Syria’s long war.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters would pull back from Turkey’s proposed 20-mile (32km) deep “safe zone” on its border, Pence told reporters in Ankara on Thursday evening after hours of meetings with Turkish officials.

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What his letter to Erdoğan tells us about Donald Trump

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US president’s letter to his Turkish counterpart is ‘the product of an amateur’, say critics

We now know – not that there was ever much doubt – that Donald Trump writes presidential letters like he talks – with a blustery mix of flattery and threats. His letter to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has all the charm and elegance of an eviction notice from a slumlord, but on White House stationery.

Those who have observed him the longest say this is how he has always expressed himself. The most remarkable aspect of the Erdoğan letter is arguably that it shows the extent to which the distinctions between Trump’s personality and the remaining formal trappings of the presidency have crumbled away.

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Saudi bus crash kills 35 foreign tourists near holy city of Medina

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Arab and Asian visitors were on a bus when it collided with another heavy vehicle

Thirty-five foreign tourists were killed and four others injured when a bus collided with another heavy vehicle near the Muslim holy city of Medina, Saudi state media said on Thursday.

The accident on Wednesday involved a collision between “a private chartered bus ... with a heavy vehicle (loader)“ near the western Saudi Arabian city, a spokesman for Medina police said, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.

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Banks warned over Saudi Aramco by environmental groups

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Eight green groups send letter to express concern over planned market float

Environmental groups have warned the banks linked to Saudi Aramco’s planned market float that they risk financing the destruction of the planet by supporting the public listing of the world’s biggest oil producer.

The eight green groups, including Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth, warned that the world’s largest IPO would be “the biggest single infusion of capital into the fossil fuel industry” since global governments signed the Paris climate accord in 2015.

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Trump calls decision to withdraw US troops from Syria ‘strategically brilliant’ – video

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Donald Trump on Wednesday played down the crisis in Syria touched off by Turkey’s incursion against US-allied Kurdish forces, saying the conflict was between Turkey and Syria and that it was okay for Russia to help Damascus. The US president, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the Kurds were ‘no angels’

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Biden warns Isis fighters will strike US over Syria withdrawal

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Former vice-president said at Democratic debate ‘they are going to damage’ the US and blasted Trump for abandoning Kurdish allies

The former US vice-president Joe Biden warned during a Democratic debate on Tuesday night that Islamic State fighters would strike the US as a result of Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of American forces in northern Syria.

“We have Isis that’s going to come here,” Biden said. “They are going to damage the United States of America. That’s why we got involved in the first place.”

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Erdoğan’s calamitous Syrian blunder has finally broken his spell over Turkey | Simon Tisdall

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The belligerent president has forgotten that his country is a democracy, not a dictatorship. It is time for him to go

If Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s belligerent president, were a true patriot with his country’s security and wellbeing at heart, he would resign immediately. He has made an appalling hash of things. His Syrian misadventure, while unusually calamitous, is but the latest in a long line of foreign blunders. Erdoğan abuses his position. He harms his country. He is still in office not because he is popular but because of the fear he instils and the power he crudely wields. It’s time for him to go.

Getting rid of Erdoğan is a matter for the Turks. And it wouldn’t be quite as difficult as it might sound

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Russian troops patrol between Turkish and Syrian forces on border

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Soldiers’ presence underlines Moscow’s role as power broker after evacuation of US personnel

Russian units have begun patrolling territory separating Turkish-backed Syrian rebels from the Syrian army around the flashpoint town of Manbij in north-east Syria, in a clear sign that Moscow has become the de facto power broker in the region after the evacuation of US troops.

Oleg Blokhin, a Russian journalist usually attached to mercenaries in Syria, posted a video on social media on Tuesday from a deserted US military base in the village of al-Saadiya, near Manbij.

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Qatar’s workers are at risk of heat stress for half the day during summer, finds UN

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A third of workers in study experienced dangerously high body temperatures, despite working ban during hottest periods

Migrant labourers working outdoors in Qatar face “high” or “extreme” risk of heat stress for more than half the working day during the four hottest months of the year, according to a UN report.

The findings come just weeks after the Guardian revealed that hundreds of workers may be dying due to exposure to Qatar’s intense summer heat.

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