Iraq exhibits ancient artifacts returned by US and other countries

Iraq exhibits ancient artifacts returned by US and other countries
Ancient artifacts, that were stolen from Iraq and returned after they were seized by the US government, are displayed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad on July 8, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 08 July 2024
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Iraq exhibits ancient artifacts returned by US and other countries

Iraq exhibits ancient artifacts returned by US and other countries
  • Iraqi authorities have been trying to retrieve thousands of archaeological relics missing since the invasion
  • More ‘rare archaeological collections’ would be returned by Switzerland and Japan this month

BAGHDAD: Iraq on Monday exhibited several ancient artifacts that it said had been returned by the United States and other countries, long after they were looted and smuggled out following the 2003 US invasion.
Iraqi authorities have been trying to retrieve thousands of archaeological relics missing since the invasion, which was followed by widespread looting in the country that some historians regard as the cradle of civilization.
Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein handed the recently recovered relics over to Culture, Tourism and Antiquities Minister Ahmed Al-Badrani at a ceremony in Baghdad.
Most of the artefacts on display at the foreign ministry headquarters were returned by the US after a visit by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani to Washington in April, Badrani said.
He said other relics had been returned by other states, but gave no details.
Hussein said more “rare archaeological collections” would be returned by Switzerland and Japan this month.


Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel

Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel
Updated 12 sec ago
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Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel

Houthi leader pledges support for Iran against Israel
  • Yemeni information minister says militia abducted content creator Abdul Rahman Al-Baydani from his home in province of Ibb

AL-MUKALLA: The leader of Yemen’s Houthi militia, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, pledged on Sunday to defend Iran if it was attacked by Israel and to continue firing missiles and drones at Israel in support of the Palestinians and Lebanese. 

Speaking on the eve of the first anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Al-Houthi vowed to escalate attacks on international ships while continuing to fire missiles and drones at Israel, claiming that his forces had fired 1000 ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at 193 ships and Israel since the start of their campaign in November.

“On the Yemeni front, we maintain our principled, humanitarian, moral, religious and faithful position in support of the Palestinian people, their mujahideen, our brothers in Lebanon, the Hezbollah mujahideen, the Islamic Republic of Iran, our brothers in Iraq and the nation’s free people,” he said, adding that 774 US and UK strikes on Yemeni areas under the militia’s control had killed 82 people and injured 340 others. He also urged his supporters to demonstrate on Monday in the streets of Sanaa and other Yemeni cities under their control in support of Lebanon, Palestine and Iran. 

Al-Houthi’s speech came two days after the US Central Command launched a series of strikes on “Houthi offensive military capabilities” in Sanaa, Thamar, Hodeidah and Bayda, the latest round of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen for their ship attacks.

Since November, the Houthis have captured a commercial ship and its crew, sunk two more and set fire to several others while firing hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at more than 100 commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. 

The Houthis claim that they only target Israel-linked ships or ships visiting Israeli ports to pressure Israel to end its war in the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

This comes as Yemeni government officials said on Sunday that the Yemeni government’s efforts to evacuate stranded Yemeni nationals from Lebanon have been suspended after an Israeli airstrike hit Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing with Syria, cutting off a vital artery for thousands of people fleeing Israel’s devastating air bombardment of Lebanon.

The Yemeni Embassy in Lebanon recently requested that Yemenis living in Lebanon apply for a transit visit from Syria before proceeding to Lebanon’s border crossing with Syria and that it would arrange transportation to transfer them from Lebanon to Syria and then to Jordan before taking Yemenia Airways flights from Amman to Yemeni airports.

Stranded Yemenis in Lebanon rejected the Yemeni embassy’s proposal to evacuate them by land.

They demanded that their government evacuate them by air from Beirut on Yemenia Airways or by sea.

Mushtaq Anaam, a Yemeni national living in Beirut’s Cola, told Arab News on Sunday that the Yemeni government should evacuate them by air, just as the Tunisian government did by sending a flight to evacuate stranded Tunisians and their families, and providing them with lodging. Anaam added that their lives in Lebanon had deteriorated as apartment rentals had risen dramatically in recent days.

“The financial situation of those stranded has deteriorated significantly, with people unable to afford transportation and rent,” he said. 

“Rents have risen by 200 percent, and landlords ask for three months’ rent in advance. Except for Yemen, all countries are nearing the end of their citizens’ evacuations,” Anaam said.

Yemeni media reported that a Yemeni national, Ali A-Hajj, from Yemen’s Ibb province, and his Lebanese mother, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Lebanon’s West Bekaa on Friday.    

Meanwhile, Yemeni Information Minister Muammar Al-Eryani said on Saturday that the Houthis abducted a Yemeni content creator and media activist, Abdul Rahman Al-Baydani, from his home in the province of Ibb, due to online criticism of the Houthis, as the Yemeni militia intensifies their crackdown on Yemenis who criticize them or celebrate the 1962 revolution.

“These abductions are just a new episode in the series of systematic violations carried out by the Houthi militia against every free voice in the areas under its control, who exercise their right to report the facts and expose the militia’s oppressive practices,” Al-Eryani said in a post on X.


Flights from all Iran’s airports canceled from late on Sunday

Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday.
Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday.
Updated 06 October 2024
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Flights from all Iran’s airports canceled from late on Sunday

Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday.
  • The flights have been canceled due to operational restrictions, state media cited the spokesperson as saying without providing further details

DUBAI: Flights from all Iran’s airports will be canceled until 6 a.m. local time (0230 GMT) on Monday from 9 p.m. on Sunday, Iran’s state media said, citing a spokesperson for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization.
The flights have been canceled due to operational restrictions, state media cited the spokesperson as saying without providing further details.
Iran implemented restrictions on flights on Tuesday when it launched missiles at Israel, in an attack to which Israel vowed to respond.


Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far

Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far
Updated 06 October 2024
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Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far

Israeli strikes batter Beirut in heaviest bombardment so far
  • On Sunday, a grey haze hung over city and rubble was strewn across streets in southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over area
  • Israel said its air force had ‘conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities belonging to the Hezbollah’

BEIRUT: Israeli air attacks battered Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and early on Sunday, the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah last month.
During the night, the blasts sent booms across Beirut and sparked flashes of red and white for nearly 30 minutes visible from several kilometers away.
It was the single biggest attack of Israel’s assault on Beirut so far, witnesses and military analysts on local TV channels said.
On Sunday a grey haze hung over the city and rubble was strewn across streets in the southern suburbs, while smoke columns rose over the area.
“Last night was the most violence of all the previous nights. Buildings were shaking around us and at first I thought it was an earthquake. There were dozens of strikes — we couldn’t count them all — and the sounds were deafening,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of the Burj Al-Barajneh area in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Videos posted on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed fresh damage to the highway that runs from Beirut airport through its southern suburbs into downtown.
Israel said its air force had “conducted a series of targeted strikes on a number of weapons storage facilities and terrorist infrastructure sites belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of Beirut.”
Lebanese authorities did not immediately say what the missiles had hit or what damage they caused.
This weekend’s intense bombardment came just ahead of the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli figures.
The target of Israel’s airstrikes across Lebanon and its ground invasion in the south of the country is the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, Iran’s chief ally in the region. The assault has killed hundreds of people including civilians and has displaced 1.2 million, Lebanese officials say.
For days Israel has bombed the Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh — considered a stronghold for Hezbollah but also home to thousands of ordinary Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian refugees — killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27.
A Lebanese security source said on Saturday that Hashem Safieddine, Nasrallah’s potential successor, had been out of contact since Friday, after an Israeli airstrike on Thursday near the city’s international airport that was reported to have targeted him.
Israel continues to bomb the area of the strike, preventing rescue workers from reaching it, Lebanese security sources said.
Hezbollah has not commented on Safieddine.
His loss would be another blow to the group and its patron Iran. Israeli strikes across the region in the past year, sharply accelerated in recent weeks, have devastated Hezbollah’s leadership.

Gaza war
Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after the Oct. 7 attacks and aimed at eliminating Hamas, another Iran-backed group, has killed nearly 42,000 people, Palestinian authorities say. The coastal enclave lies in ruins.
At least 26 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people in the Gaza Strip early on Sunday, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.
Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel a day after the Oct. 7 attacks and after Israel had begun bombing Gaza, saying it was acting in solidarity with the Palestinian group.
Cross-border fire continued between Israel and Hezbollah for months, but were mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area before the recent upsurge.
Israel says it stepped up its assault on Hezbollah last month to enable the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to homes in northern Israel, bombarded by the group since last Oct. 8.
Israeli authorities said on Saturday that nine Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon so far.
In northern Israel, air raid sirens sounded on Sunday and the Israeli military said it had intercepted rockets fired from Lebanese territory.
Iran has signalled it does not want a direct war with Israel but has launched responses on occasion to Israeli attacks. It fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday that did little damage.
Israel has been weighing options for its response.


UN refugee chief says airstrikes in Lebanon have violated humanitarian law

A man stares at the devastation in the aftermath of an Israeli strike that targeted the Sfeir neighbourhood.
A man stares at the devastation in the aftermath of an Israeli strike that targeted the Sfeir neighbourhood.
Updated 1 min 9 sec ago
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UN refugee chief says airstrikes in Lebanon have violated humanitarian law

A man stares at the devastation in the aftermath of an Israeli strike that targeted the Sfeir neighbourhood.
  • Fighting has led some 220,000 people to cross the Lebanese border with Syria, 70 percent of whom are Syrians and 30 percent Lebanese

BEIRUT: The United Nations’ refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on Sunday that airstrikes in Lebanon had violated international humanitarian law by hitting civilian infrastructure and killing civilians, in reference to Israel’s bombardment of the country.
“Unfortunately, many instances of violations of international humanitarian law in the way the airstrikes are conducted that have destroyed or damaged civilian infrastructure, have killed civilians, have impacted humanitarian operations,” he told media in Beirut.
Grandi was in Lebanon as it struggles to cope with the displacement of more than 1.2 million people as a result of an expanded Israeli air and ground operation that it says is targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Fighting had previously been mostly limited to the Israel-Lebanon border area, in parallel to Israel’s war in Gaza against Palestinian group Hamas.
Grandi said all parties to the conflict and those with influence on them should “stop this carnage that is happening both in Gaza and in Lebanon today.”
More than 2,000 people have been killed and nearly 10,000 wounded in Lebanon in nearly a year of fighting, most in the past two weeks, the Lebanese health ministry says. Israel says around 50 civilians and soldiers have been killed.
Israel says it targets military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians, while Lebanese authorities say civilians have been targeted.
Israel accuses both Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
Grandi said the World Health Organization briefed him “about egregious violations of IHL in respect of health facilities in particular that have been impacted in various locations of Lebanon,” using an acronym for international humanitarian law.
Attacks on civilian homes may also be violations, though the matter requires further assessment, he said.
The fighting has led some 220,000 people to cross the Lebanese border with Syria, 70 percent of whom are Syrians and 30 percent Lebanese, Grandi said, saying these were conservative estimates.
Israel’s bombardment of the main border crossing with Syria at Masnaa on Friday was “a huge obstacle,” to those flows of people continuing, he said.
Many of the Syrians leaving Lebanon had sought refuge and fled war and a security crackdown after the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
Now was an opportunity for the Syrian government to show that returnees’ “safety and ability to go back to their homes or wherever they need to go is respected,” Grandi said.


Too hot by day, Dubai’s floodlit beaches are packed at night

Too hot by day, Dubai’s floodlit beaches are packed at night
Updated 06 October 2024
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Too hot by day, Dubai’s floodlit beaches are packed at night

Too hot by day, Dubai’s floodlit beaches are packed at night
  • The city has more than 800 meters of designated night beaches fitted with shark nets and illuminated by giant, bright floodlights
  • The idea, in one of the world’s hottest regions, with temperatures climbing ever higher through climate change, has proved popular

Dubai: Roasted by summer temperatures too hot for the beach, Dubai has turned to an innovative solution: opening them at night, complete with floodlights and lifeguards carrying night-vision binoculars.
The idea, in one of the world’s hottest regions, with temperatures climbing ever higher through climate change, has proved popular — more than one million people have visited the night beaches since last year, an official said.
Even with much of the region preoccupied with the widening conflict that pits Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, the United Arab Emirates’ giant neighbor, the night beaches remain busy on weekend evenings.
“The temperature drops down in the evening after the sun sets. So, yeah, it’s amazing,” said Mohammed, 32, from Pakistan, who brought his children to enjoy the sea without having to worry about the burning Gulf sun.
For residents of Dubai, a coast-hugging, desert metropolis of about 3.7 million people, the hot season from June to October is an annual trial.
With temperatures regularly topping 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), often with high humidity, outdoor activities are severely limited.
The city now has more than 800 meters (yards) of designated night beaches fitted with shark nets and illuminated by giant, bright floodlights.
“While you’re... bathing inside the water, you can see the sand even on your foot and your hands and everything,” said Mohammed, who has lived in Dubai for a decade.
Lifeguards are posted 24 hours a day and, beyond the floodlights’ glare, they use the night-vision binoculars to keep an eye on swimmers or kayakers further out in the water.
Officials are also testing an artificial intelligence camera system meant to detect when people are in distress.
At nearly midnight on a recent Friday, with temperatures still above 30C (86F), Umm Suqeim beach was packed with people — mainly expatriates, who make up about 90 percent of the UAE’s population.
Mary Bayarka, a 38-year-old fitness coach from Belarus, was enjoying being outside after a “long, hot day,” even if the Gulf seawater was a little warm.
“It feels like (I’m) in a bath,” she said.
Nearby, Filipino saleswoman Laya Manko was burying her body in the sand. The beach is an escape for the 36-year-old, one of the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who keep Dubai’s economy ticking.
“Every weekend we come here to have fun,” she said. “Sometimes we sleep here with my friends.
“Because you work hard in Dubai, you feel you need to relax. Yes, this is my stress reliever,” said Manko.
For the authorities, the night beaches are another way to tempt tourists, especially in summer when the stifling heat usually keeps them indoors.
“I believe we are one of the only cities in the world to have such infrastructure on public beaches at night,” said Hamad Shaker, an official from the Dubai municipality.
Dubai used to empty out in summer as expats fled the heat in droves, said Manuela Gutberlet, a tourism researcher at the University of Breda in the Netherlands.
But with attractions such as the world’s tallest building, giant malls and indoor amusement parks, it has become “a year-round urban destination,” attracting more than 17 million visitors last year, she said.
However, climate change could limit its ambitions, Gutberlet warned, citing the unprecedented rains that paralyzed the city for several days in April.
Extreme weather events and a further rise in temperatures could discourage some visitors, she said, highlighting the need to “adapt quickly to new risks.”
Meanwhile, Frenchman Laziz Ahmed, 77, found himself on the night beach during his first holiday in Dubai, where he was visiting relatives.
“During the day, I don’t go out much,” he said, adding that in the evening “I make up for it.”