Syria’s White Helmets rescuers urge international quake help

Syria’s White Helmets rescuers urge international quake help
Members of the Syrian civil defence, known as the White Helmets, transport a casualty from the rubble of buildings in the village of Azmarin in Syria's rebel-held northwestern Idlib province at the border with Turkey following an earthquake, on Feb. 7, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 08 February 2023

Syria’s White Helmets rescuers urge international quake help

Syria’s White Helmets rescuers urge international quake help

BEIRUT: The White Helmets leading efforts to rescue people buried under rubble in rebel-held areas of earthquake-hit Syria appealed Wednesday for international help in their “race against time.”
First responders from the group that was formed a decade ago to save the lives of civilians during Syria’s civil war sprung into action early Monday when a 7.8-magnitude quake rocked Syria and Turkiye.
They have been toiling ever since to pull survivors out from under the debris of dozens of flattened buildings in northwestern areas of war-torn Syria that remain outside the government’s control.
In a video widely shared on social media, crowds of people surrounding the White Helmets cheered loudly as they lifted a young girl and her entire family from a collapsed building in Idlib province.
“International rescue teams must come into our region,” said Mohammed Shibli, a spokesperson for the group known formally as the Syria Civil Defense.
“People are dying every second; we are in a race against time,” he told AFP from neighboring Turkiye.
Monday’s earthquake devastated entire sections of major cities in Turkiye and Syria, killing more than 9,500 people, injuring thousands more and leaving many more without shelter in the winter cold.
In Syria alone at least 2,597 people have been killed, according to the government and the White Helmets.
Shibli said it was “impossible” for the group to respond to the large-scale calamity alone in the rebel-held northwest, home to more than four million people.
“Even states can’t do that,” he said, adding that the group’s volunteers have not had time to reach all of the disaster-struck places.
Britain announced Wednesday that it would release an additional 800,000 pounds ($968,000) to aid the rescue group.
The White Helmets emerged in 2013, when Syria’s civil war was nearing its third year, and operates in battered opposition-held zones.
They have been internationally praised for their work, with a Netflix documentary called “The White Helmets” winning an Academy Award in 2017, while a second film focused on the group, “Last Men in Aleppo,” was a 2018 Oscars nominee.
Their volunteers include 3,300 young men and women, including 1,600 dedicated to search and rescue operations.
“After 56 hours of continuous work... hundreds of families are still missing or trapped under the rubble,” Shibli said.
“People’s chances of survival are declining” in the biting cold, he said.
The rescue group needs heavy machinery, spare parts for the ones they already have, and equipment, “but when will we get them,” Shibli asked.
AFP correspondents across the war-ravaged country said rescue workers and residents have had to sift through the rubble with their bare hands.
White Helmets volunteer Fatima Obeid told AFP teams were busy at work despite exhaustion.
“Being able to pull survivors brings them indescribable joy and excitement,” she said from Sarmada in Idlib.


Tunisia recovers 29 bodies after migrant vessels capsize

Tunisia recovers 29 bodies after migrant vessels capsize
Updated 12 sec ago

Tunisia recovers 29 bodies after migrant vessels capsize

Tunisia recovers 29 bodies after migrant vessels capsize
  • Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people
TUNIS: Tunisia’s coast guard said Sunday the bodies of 29 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries had been recovered after three vessels capsized, the latest in a string of such tragedies.
A series of shipwrecks has left dozens of migrants dead and others missing in the country that serves as a key conduit for migrants seeking to reach nearby European shores.
It comes after President Kais Saied made an incendiary speech last month, accusing sub-Saharan Africans of representing a demographic threat and causing a crime wave in Tunisia.
The coast guard said in a statement Sunday that it had “rescued 11 illegal migrants of various African nationalities after their boats sank” off the central eastern coast, citing three separate sinkings.
In one, a Tunisian fishing trawler recovered 19 bodies 58 kilometers (36 miles) off the coast after their boat capsized.
A coast guard patrol off the coastal city of Mahdiya also recovered eight bodies and “rescued” 11 other migrants after their boat sank as it headed toward Italy.
Fishing trawlers in Sfax meanwhile recovered two other bodies.
Black migrants in the country have faced a spike in violence since Saied’s speech and hundreds have been living in the streets for weeks in increasingly desperate conditions.
People fleeing poverty and violence in Sudan’s Darfur region, West Africa and other parts of the continent have for years used Tunisia as a springboard for often perilous attempts to reach safety and better lives in Europe.


The Italian island of Lampedusa is just 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the Tunisian coast, part of the Central Mediterranean route described by the United Nations as the most deadly in the world.
Rome has pressured Tunisian authorities to rein in the flow of people, and has helped beef up the coast guard, which rights groups accuse of violence.
Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni warned Friday that Tunisia’s “serious financial problems” risked sparking a “migratory wave” toward Europe.
She also confirmed plans for a mission to the North African country involving the Italian and French foreign ministers.
Meloni echoed comments earlier in the week by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who warned Tunisia risks economic collapse that could trigger a new flow of migrants to Europe — fears Tunis has since dismissed.
Since Saied’s speech, hundreds of migrants have been repatriated in flights organized by their embassies, but many say they fear going home and have called on the UN to organize evacuation flights to safe third countries.
Tunisia is in the throes of a long-running socio-economic crisis, with spiralling inflation and persistently high joblessness, and Tunisians themselves make up a large proportion of the migrants traveling to Italian shores.
The heavily indebted North African country is in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a $2-billion bailout package, but the talks have been stalled for months and there is no sign a deal is any closer.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Wednesday that unless they reach an agreement, “the economy risks falling off the deep end.”

Israeli group asks court to punish Netanyahu over legal plan

Israeli group asks court to punish Netanyahu over legal plan
Updated 26 March 2023

Israeli group asks court to punish Netanyahu over legal plan

Israeli group asks court to punish Netanyahu over legal plan

TEL AVIV: An Israeli good governance group on Sunday asked the country’s Supreme Court to punish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allegedly violating a conflict of interest agreement meant to prevent him from dealing with the country’s judiciary while he is on trial for corruption.
The request by the Movement for Quality Government in Israel intensifies a brewing showdown between Netanyahu’s government and the judiciary, which it is trying to overhaul in a contentious plan that has sparked widespread opposition.
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, a fierce opponent of the overhaul, asked the court to force Netanyahu to obey the law and sanction him either with a fine or prison time for not doing so, saying he was not above the law.
“A prime minister who doesn’t obey the court and the provisions of the law is privileged and an anarchist,” said Eliad Shraga, the head of the group, echoing language used by Netanyahu and his allies against protesting opponents of the overhaul. “The prime minister will be forced to bow his head before the law and comply with the provisions of the law.”
Netanyahu is barred by the country’s attorney general from dealing with his government’s plan to overhaul the judiciary, based on a conflict of interest agreement he is bound to, and which the Supreme Court acknowledged in a ruling over Netanyahu’s fitness to serve while on trial for corruption.
But on Thursday, after parliament passed a law making it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, Netanyahu said he was unshackled by the attorney general’s decision and vowed to wade into the crisis and “mend the rift” in the nation. That declaration prompted the attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to warn that Netanyahu was breaking his conflict of interest agreement by entering the fray.
The fast-paced legal and political developments have catapulted Israel into uncharted territory and to a burgeoning constitutional crisis, said Guy Lurie, a research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.
“We are at the start of a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is a disagreement over the source of authority and legitimacy of different governing bodies,” he said.
If Netanyahu continues to intervene in the overhaul as he promised, Baharav-Miara could launch an investigation into whether he violated the conflict of interest agreement, which could lead to additional charges against him, Lurie said. He added that the uncertainty of the events made him unsure of how they were likely to unfold.
It is also unclear how the court, which is at the center of the divide surrounding the overhaul, will treat the request to sanction Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate affairs involving wealthy associates and powerful media moguls. He denies wrongdoing and dismisses critics who say he will try to seek an escape route from the charges through the legal overhaul.
The overhaul will give the government control over who becomes a judge and limit judicial review over government decisions and legislation. Netanyahu and his allies say the plan will restore a balance between the judicial and executive branches and rein in what they see as an interventionist court with liberal sympathies.
Critics say the plan upends Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances and pushes Israel down a path toward autocracy.
The government has pledged to pass a key part of the overhaul this week before parliament takes a month recess, but pressure has been building on Netanyahu to suspend the plan.


Burhan: Sudan’s army will be under leadership of civilian government

Burhan: Sudan’s army will be under leadership of civilian government
Updated 26 March 2023

Burhan: Sudan’s army will be under leadership of civilian government

Burhan: Sudan’s army will be under leadership of civilian government

Sudan's leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said on Sunday that the country's army will be brought under the leadership of a new civilian government. Speaking before a session for security and army reforms in Khartoum Burhan said his country will build a military force that will not intervene in politics and will be trusted by the Sudanese people in building a modern and democratic state.
More than a year after the military took power in a coup, the military and its former civilian partners and other political forces have agreed on a framework to form a new transitional government and write a new constituation to be announced next month. 


Tehran condemns US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria

Tehran condemns US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria
Updated 26 March 2023

Tehran condemns US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria

Tehran condemns US strikes on Iran-linked groups in Syria
  • Washington said it launched retaliatory raids after US contractor was killed
  • Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least 19 people were killed

TEHRAN: Tehran has condemned US airstrikes on Iran-linked forces in Syria that reportedly killed 19 people, which Washington said it carried out following a deadly drone attack on US forces.
The Iranian foreign ministry late Saturday condemned “the belligerent and terrorist attack of the American army on civilian targets” in the eastern Syrian region of Deir Ezzor.
Washington said it launched the retaliatory raids after a US contractor was killed — and another contractor and five military personnel wounded — by a drone “of Iranian origin” that struck a US-led coalition base in Syria on Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor has said at least 19 people, most of them Syrian, were killed in the following US strikes launched early Friday morning.
The US strikes triggered further rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias, the Observatory said.
The Syrian government, which is closely allied with Iran, has accused the United States of lying about the targets of its air strikes to justify its “act of aggression.”
The United States has about 900 troops in posts across northeastern Syria to keep pressure on the remnants of the Daesh group and support the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control most of the northeast.
US personnel in Syria have frequently been targeted in attacks by militia groups that Washington says are backed by Tehran.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the US troops’ presence was “illegal” and a “violation of international law and the national sovereignty” of Syria.
In contrast, Kanani said Iranian forces were in Syria at the behest of Damascus.
“The military advisers of the Islamic Republic of Iran are present in Syria at the request of the Syrian government,” he said, adding that they will continue to support Damascus to “help establish peace, stability and lasting security.”


Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province

Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province
Updated 26 March 2023

Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province

Spiking violence strains sectarian ties in Iraqi province
  • The Iranian-backed Badr Organization, a state-sanctioned militia within the Popular Mobilization Forces with a political wing, wrested control of the province from Daesh in 2015

MUQDADIYAH: Hussein Maytham and his family were driving past the palm tree grove near their home after a quiet evening shopping for toys for his younger cousins when their car hit a bomb planted on the moon-lit road.
“I only remember the explosion,” Maytham, 16, said weakly from his hospital bed, his pale arms speckled brown by shrapnel. The attack took place earlier this month in the Shiite-majority village of Hazanieh. The force of the blast hurled the teenager out of the vehicle, but his family — his parents, an aunt and three cousins — perished in the fiery carnage. Residents say gunmen hidden nearby in irrigation canals opened fire, killing two others.
This is the latest in a series of attacks witnessed over the last month in the central Iraqi province of Diyala, located north and east of Baghdad. Security officials say at least 19 civilians have been killed by unidentified assailants, including in two targeted attacks.
The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of Daesh can be sustained.
Iraq as a whole has moved on from the conditions that enabled the rise of Daesh and the large-scale bloody sectarian violence that erupted after the US-led invasion 20 years ago, according to Mohanad Adnan, a political analyst and partner at the Roya Development Group.
But some parts of the country, including Diyala, remain tense, with occasional waves of violence reopening old wounds. “There are a few villages, especially in Diyala, where they have not overcome what happened in the past,” said Adnan.
Officials, residents, and analysts say at least one instance of violence in Diyala appears to be a sectarian reprisal by Shiites against Sunnis over a Daesh-claimed attack. But they say other killings were carried out by Shiites against Shiites, as rival militias and their tribal and political allies that control the province struggle over influence and lucrative racketeering networks. Diyala, bordering both Iran and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, is a prime conduit for smuggling, including drugs.

HIGHLIGHT

The violence is pitting communities against each other in the ethnically and religiously diverse province. It also raises questions whether the relative calm and stability that has prevailed in much of Iraq in the years since the defeat of Daesh can be sustained.

The Iranian-backed Badr Organization, a state-sanctioned militia within the Popular Mobilization Forces with a political wing, wrested control of the province from Daesh in 2015. Since then, it has asserted its dominance over several Shiite political parties and their associated paramilitaries, as well as Sunni groups.
Although most Sunni residents displaced during the war against Daesh have returned to the province, they say they are often viewed with suspicion by authorities and neighbors due to their perceived affiliation with the extremists.
When remnants of the group stage attacks on civilians or security forces, it often prompts a spiral of retaliatory attacks.
In the Sunni village of Jalaylah, nine people, including women and children, were killed in a gruesome attack in late February, two months after they were blamed for allowing a Daesh attack on a neighboring village, according to security officials.
The attackers moved openly through the area, said villager Awadh Al-Azzawi. “They didn’t wear masks. Their faces were clear,” he said.
Residents accuse members of the nearby Shiite village Albu Bali, where Daesh killed nine in December, of carrying out the attack in revenge. They say the perpetrators belong to local militias using weapons given to them by the state. Security officials affiliated with the armed groups declined to comment.