In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Irbil ache for water

Iraqi Kurds fill container with portable water distributed by a mobile tanker as summer temperatures soar in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region, on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
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Iraqi Kurds fill container with portable water distributed by a mobile tanker as summer temperatures soar in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region, on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Irbil ache for water
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An Iraqi Kurd youth fills a water tank with portable water distributed by a mobile tanker (unseen), as summer temperatures soar in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region, on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Irbil ache for water
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Iraqi Kurds fill container with portable water distributed by a mobile tanker as summer temperatures soar in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region, on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Irbil ache for water
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An Iraqi Kurd fill an water tank and a large container with portable water distributed by a mobile tanker (unseen), as summer temperatures soar in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's northern autonomous Kurdish region, on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 12 August 2024
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In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Irbil ache for water

In Iraq’s summer, residents of Kurdistan’s Irbil ache for water
  • Iraq is known in Arabic as the Land of the Two Rivers, referring to the once mighty Tigris and Euphrates

IRBIL, Iraq: The taps have run dry, and the wells are almost empty. In the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, 80-year-old Babir hasn’t bathed in weeks and impatiently waits for trucked-in water deliveries.
“There is nothing worse than not having water,” said Babir, who gave only his first name, in his modest house in Irbil’s Darto suburb.
As in several other densely populated areas of Irbil and its suburbs, Babir and his neighbors rely on groundwater as their primary water source.
But for years, they have dreaded summer, when relentless drought, a lack of wells and power outages that bring pumps to a halt leave them cut off the supply of water.
For everything from bathing to watering plants, cooking and washing, they have been forced to depend on trucked-in water.
Usually “we bathe once every fortnight,” said Babir, dressed in traditional Kurdish sarwal trousers.
From the roof of his house, he shouted for a water truck as it drove up into the street, then hurried downstairs to request a refill for his home.
This time, the truck belonged to a local aid group. When such assistance is unavailable, the retiree has to pay from his meagre pension or rely on family for water and other essentials.
Over the years, residents of several districts have taken to the streets many times to demand solutions, but Babir said appeals to officials had fallen on deaf ears. He said he was considering moving “to a place with water.”

Iraq is known in Arabic as the Land of the Two Rivers, referring to the once mighty Tigris and Euphrates. But the rivers’ water levels have plummeted and the UN classifies the country as one of the most impacted by some effects of climate change.
Authorities blame the drought as well as dams built upstream in neighboring Turkiye and Iran.
Irbil relies on 1,240 wells dotted across the city alongside the Ifraz water station that draws from the upper Zab River, which has its source in Turkiye and joins the Tigris in Iraq.
Its governor, Omed Khoshnaw, told reporters earlier this month that “more than 25 percent of wells have dried up this year,” adding that Irbil should rely less on groundwater.
Amid the crisis, the city’s local authorities say they have allocated 1.5 billion Iraqi dinars ($1.1 million) to help solve it, including by digging new wells and providing power via generators and the electricity grid.
Local official Nabz Abdul Hamid said that power outages have heavily impacted pumps for wells in residential areas.
“We have now provided an uninterrupted electricity supply to most of the wells,” he told AFP, adding that officials were working to fix the broader problem including by improving the Ifraz plant supply.

In the Darto district, one person skillfully maneuvered the aid truck’s hose as a torrent of water gushed into a tank.
A young girl waited to fill plastic bottles while other children joyfully splashed water on their faces, finding relief from the relentless heat.
But when it comes to washing, Surur Mohamad, 49, said that for anything more than basic clothes he goes to a nearby village where they have a steady water supply.
Trucked-in water from aid organizations “is not a solution,” he said, adding that overcrowding has put further pressure on the water system while poor pipe infrastructure has exacerbated the problem.
“The government must find radical solutions as relying solely on wells” is no longer viable, especially considering the drought, he said.
His neighbor, Mahya Najm, said the lack of water had stopped her children and young families from visiting her.
“We cannot wash, cook or even receive guests,” she said.
“We are in dire need of water. This is not a life,” she added.

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Israel army says conducted 'targeted strike' in Beirut

Israel army says conducted 'targeted strike' in Beirut
Updated 24 sec ago
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Israel army says conducted 'targeted strike' in Beirut

Israel army says conducted 'targeted strike' in Beirut

BEIRUT: Israel army says conducted 'targeted strike' in Beirut.

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Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah says fighter killed in “Zionist attack” in Damascus

Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah says fighter killed in “Zionist attack” in Damascus
Updated 22 min 56 sec ago
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Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah says fighter killed in “Zionist attack” in Damascus

Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah says fighter killed in “Zionist attack” in Damascus
  • A fighter got killed in the “Zionist attack”

DUBAI: Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah armed group announced that one of its fighters was killed in what they called a “Zionist attack” in the Syrian capital Damascus, the group said in a statement on Telegram on Friday.


Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border

Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border
Updated 16 min 39 sec ago
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Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border

Israel-Hezbollah exchanges intensify on Lebanon border
  • The intensifying exchanges came as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss this week’s attacks on Hezbollah pagers and two-way radios
  • Hezbollah said it targeted at least six Israeli military bases with salvos of rocket fire in response to overnight bombardment

BEIRUT: Israel said Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets from Lebanon on Friday following overnight air strikes which destroyed dozens of launchers after its leader vowed retribution for deadly sabotage attacks on its communications.
The intensifying exchanges came as the UN Security Council prepared to discuss this week’s attacks on Hezbollah pagers and two-way radios, which killed 37 people and wounded thousands over two days.
Hezbollah said it targeted at least six Israeli military bases with salvos of rocket fire in response to overnight bombardment which people in south Lebanon described as among the fiercest so far.
“Some 140 rockets were fired from Lebanon within an hour,” an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
The military said that overnight its jets hit infrastructure and “approximately 100 launchers” ready to be fired.
Hezbollah said two of its fighters were killed, without elaborating.
Residents of Marjayoun, a Lebanese town close to the border, said the bombardment was among the heaviest since the border exchanges began in October last year.
“We were very scared, especially for my grandchildren,” said Nuha Abdo, 62. “We were moving them from one room to another.”
Clothing store owner Elie Rmeih, 45, said he counted more than 50 strikes.
“It was a terrifying scene and unlike anything we have experienced since the escalation began.
“We live in fear of a wider war, you don’t know where to go.”
The communications device explosions and intensifying air strikes came after Israel announced it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon.
For nearly a year, Israel’s firepower has been focused on Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily exchanges with Hezbollah militants.
International mediators have repeatedly tried to avert a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah and staunch the regional fallout of the Gaza war started by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Hezbollah maintains its fight is in support of Hamas, and its leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday that the attacks on Israel would continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts.
Speaking for the first time since the device blasts, Nasrallah warned Israel would face retribution.
Describing the attacks as a “massacre” and a possible “act of war,” Nasrallah said Israel would face “just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
The cross-border exchanges have killed hundreds in Lebanon, mostly fighters, and dozens in Israel, including soldiers. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have fled their homes.
Speaking to troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah will pay an increasing price” as Israel tries to “ensure the safe return” of its citizens to border areas.
“We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he said.
Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war.”
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the attacks set for Friday, he said Lebanon had filed a complaint against “Israel’s cyber-terrorist aggression that amounts to a war crime.”
Senior UN officials have also expressed concern about the legality of the Israeli sabotage.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called the blasts “shocking,” and said their impact on civilians was “unacceptable.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres said it was “very important... not to weaponize civilian objects.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been scrambling to salvage efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, called for restraint by everyone.
“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a Gaza ceasefire, he said.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy expressed “deep concern” over the rising tensions and renewed a call for Britons to leave Lebanon, saying the “situation could deteriorate rapidly.”
Hamas’s October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.
In the latest Gaza violence, the territory’s civil defense agency said an air strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp killed eight people. Another six people, including children, were killed in a separate strike on an apartment in Gaza City, it added.
The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers that exploded had been booby-trapped, a security official said.
Lebanon’s UN mission concurred, saying in a letter that the probe showed “the targeted devices were professionally booby-trapped... before arriving in Lebanon, and were detonated by sending emails to the devices.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the pagers that exploded were produced by the Hungary-based BAC Consulting on behalf of Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. It cited intelligence officers as saying BAC was part of an Israeli front.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary.”


Israel says submits challenge to ICC arrest warrant request for Netanyahu

Israel says submits challenge to ICC arrest warrant request for Netanyahu
Updated 10 min 18 sec ago
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Israel says submits challenge to ICC arrest warrant request for Netanyahu

Israel says submits challenge to ICC arrest warrant request for Netanyahu

JERUSALEM: Israel submitted on Friday formal challenges to the International Criminal Court over its jurisdiction and the legality of arrest warrant requests against Israeli leaders for their conduct of the Gaza war, the Foreign Ministry said.
Israel’s filings might further delay a decision on the warrants, requested in May against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan last month urged judges to rule on the warrants, sought also against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and others in the Palestinian militant group.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that its first legal brief outlined the ICC’s “manifest lack of jurisdiction” in the case.
The second paper, it said, argues that the ICC Prosecutor breached court rules by “failing to provide Israel with the opportunity to exercise its right to investigate by itself the claims raised by the Prosecutor, before proceeding.”
The office of the prosecutor could not immediately be reached for comment.
In August, Khan said the court has jurisdiction over any war crimes in occupied Palestinian territories and that rules saying the ICC cannot step in if a country is doing its own genuine investigation do not apply for the warrants sought for Netanyahu and Gallant.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed around 1,200 people with some 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli counts. More than 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed in an Israeli assault on Hamas in Gaza that has caused a humanitarian crisis.
Israel and Palestinian leaders have dismissed allegations of war crimes, and representatives for both sides have criticized Khan’s decision to seek warrants for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.


Hezbollah handed out pagers hours before blasts — even after checks

Hezbollah handed out pagers hours before blasts — even after checks
Updated 20 September 2024
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Hezbollah handed out pagers hours before blasts — even after checks

Hezbollah handed out pagers hours before blasts — even after checks
  • Hezbollah had scanned, tested pagers for safety, sources say
  • Batteries of walkie-talkies laced with explosive known as PETN: source

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah was still handing its members new Gold Apollo branded pagers hours before thousands blew up this week, two security sources said, indicating the group was confident the devices were safe despite an ongoing sweep of electronic kit to identify threats.
One member of the Iranian-backed militia received a new pager on Monday that exploded the next day while it was still in its box, said one of the sources.
A pager given to a senior member just days earlier injured a subordinate when it detonated, the second source said.
In an apparently coordinated attack the Gold Apollo branded devices detonated on Tuesday across Hezbollah’s strongholds of south Lebanon, Beirut’s suburbs and the eastern Bekaa valley.
On Wednesday, hundreds of Hezbollah walkie-talkies exploded. The consecutive attacks killed 37 people, including at least two children, and injured more than 3,000 people. The batteries of the walkie-talkies were laced with a highly explosive compound known as PETN, another Lebanese source familiar with the device’s components told Reuters on Friday. Up to three grams of explosives hidden in the pagers had gone undetected for months by Hezbollah, Reuters reported earlier this week.
One of the security sources said it was very hard to detect the explosives “with any device or scanner.” The source did not specify what type of scanners Hezbollah had run the pagers through.
Hezbollah examined the pagers after they were delivered to Lebanon, starting in 2022, including by traveling through airports with them to ensure they would not trigger alarms, two additional sources told Reuters. In total, Reuters spoke to six sources familiar with the details of the exploding devices for this story.
The sources did not specify the name of the airports where they conducted the tests.
Lebanon, Hezbollah and Western security sources say Israel was behind the attacks. Israel, which has since stepped up airstrikes on Lebanon, has neither denied or confirmed involvement.
Rather than a specific suspicion of the pagers, the checks had been part of a routine “sweep” of its equipment, including communications devices, to find any indications that they were laced with explosives or surveillance mechanisms, one of the security sources said. The attacks, and the distribution of the devices despite the routine sweep and checks for breaches, have struck at Hezbollah’s reputation as the most formidable of Iran’s allied ‘Axis of Resistance’ umbrella of anti-Israel irregular forces across the Middle East.
In a televised speech on Thursday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said the attacks were “unprecedented in the history” of the group.
Hezbollah’s media office and Israel’s armed forces did not immediately respond to requests for comment for this story. Taiwan-based Gold Apollo has said it did not manufacture the devices used in the attack, saying they were made by a company in Europe licensed to use the firm’s brand. Reuters has not been able to establish where they were made or at what point they were tampered with. A batch of 5,000 of the pagers were brought into Lebanon earlier this year. Reuters previously reported that Hezbollah turned to pagers in an attempt to evade Israeli surveillance of its mobile phones, following the killing of senior commanders in targeted airstrikes over the past year. Hezbollah’s conflict with Israel dates back decades but has flared up in the past year in parallel with the Gaza war, heightening worries of a full-blown regional war.
Too little, too late
After the pagers detonated on Tuesday, Hezbollah suspected more of its devices may have been compromised, two of the security sources, as well as an intelligence source, told Reuters.
In response, it intensified the sweep of its communications systems, carrying out careful examinations of all devices. It also began investigating the supply chains through which the pagers were brought in, the two security sources said.
But the review had not been concluded by Wednesday afternoon, when the hand-held radios exploded.
Hezbollah believes that Israel opted to detonate the group’s hand-held radios because it feared Hezbollah would soon find that the walkie-talkies were also rigged with explosives, one of the sources told Reuters.
The walkie-talkie explosions left 25 people dead and at least 650 injured, according to Lebanon’s health ministry — a much higher fatality rate than the previous day’s pager blasts, which killed 12 and wounded nearly 3,000.
That is because they carried a higher payload of explosives than the beepers, one of the security sources and the intelligence source said.
The group’s probe into precisely where, when and how the devices were laced with explosives is ongoing, three of the sources said. Nasrallah later said the same in the speech on Thursday.
One of the security sources said Hezbollah had foiled previous Israeli operations targeting devices imported from abroad by the group — from its private landline telephones to ventilation units in the group’s offices.
That includes suspected breaches in the past year.
“There are several electronic issues that we were able to discover — but not the pagers,” the source said. “They tricked us, hats off to the enemy.”