Iraq, US agree on phased pullout of coalition troops

Iraq, US agree on phased pullout of coalition troops
This photo taken on January 27, 2024, shows Iraqi PM Mohamed Shia al-Sudani (C) presiding over a meeting between Iraqi military officials representatives of the US-led coalition in Baghdad. (AFP/File)
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Updated 09 September 2024
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Iraq, US agree on phased pullout of coalition troops

Iraq, US agree on phased pullout of coalition troops
  • Pullout to be completed from Bagdad and other parts of federal Iraq by September 2025 and from Kurdistan by September 2026, says Iraq defense chief
  • The US has some 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the international coalition against the Daesh group

BAGHDAD: Iraq and the United States have agreed on a phased pullout of the US-led anti-jihadist coalition but have yet to sign a final agreement, the Iraqi defense minister said Sunday.
The US has some 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the international coalition against the Daesh group.
They have been engaged in months of talks with Baghdad on a withdrawal of forces, but fell short of announcing any timeline so far.
On Sunday, Iraqi Defense Minister Thabet Al-Abbassi told pan-Arab television channel Al-Hadath that the coalition would pull out from bases in Baghdad and other parts of federal Iraq by September 2025 and from the autonomous northern Kurdistan region by September 2026.
The pullout is “two-phased” and “maybe we will sign the agreement within the next few days,” Abbassi said.
He added that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had said in a meeting that “two years were not enough” to carry out the withdrawal.
“We refused his proposal regarding an (extra) third year,” Abbassi said.
Coalition forces have been targeted dozens of times with drones and rocket fire in both Iraq and Syria, as violence related to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza since early October has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East.
US forces have carried out multiple retaliatory strikes against these groups in both countries.
The Daesh group seized parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, and was defeated by Baghdad three years later and in Syria in 2019.
But jihadist fighters continue to operate in remote desert areas although they no longer control any territory.
Iraqi security forces say they are capable of tackling Daesh remnants unassisted, as the group poses no significant threat.


Under bombardment, Lebanon’s expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies

Under bombardment, Lebanon’s expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies
Updated 3 sec ago
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Under bombardment, Lebanon’s expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies

Under bombardment, Lebanon’s expectant mothers fear for their unborn babies
BEIRUT: Tahani Yassine was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she chose to return to her hometown of Beirut to deliver her baby.
Living in Equatorial Guinea with her husband and three young children, she had more faith in the Lebanese health care system.
But just a few days after her arrival in Beirut, Yassine began to regret her decision. Israel intensified its military campaign in Lebanon, targeting Hezbollah strongholds in the south, the Bekaa Valley in the east and the southern suburbs of Beirut, close to her home.
Although her area wasn’t directly hit, the strikes were unnervingly close, and the boom of Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier overhead filled her with fear.
Anxious for the safety of her unborn child, the 36-year-old moved to an apartment closer to hospital where she was due to deliver.
“My doctors told me that I was too far along in my pregnancy to travel. I had no choice but to stay and deliver here,” she told Reuters just hours after giving birth at Trad Hospital in central Beirut on Oct. 10.
Lying in her hospital bed, with her newborn girl nestled next to her in a crib, Yassine expressed her relief that both she and her baby were healthy — a very different experience to many expectant mothers in the escalating conflict in Lebanon.
Nicolas Baaklini, an obstetrician and gynaecologist in Beirut, says he has noticed an increase in premature births and foetal deaths since hostilities began last year.
“What has increased the most, and what was shocking to me, is the number of foetal deaths in in-utero babies who died in their mothers’ wombs,” said Baaklini, 61, who has a private clinic and also works in several Beirut hospitals.
“There are many malformations, and surprisingly, several colleagues have observed the same. When ... in one year, you have two foetal deaths in-utero, and then suddenly, in two months, you have about 15, it indicates that something is wrong,” he added.
Mothers flee their homes
Around 11,600 pregnant women remain in Lebanon, of whom around 4,000 are expected to deliver in the next three months, according to a flash appeal published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in October.
Many of them are displaced and lack adequate shelter, nutrition and sanitation. Access to safe antenatal, post-natal, and paediatric care is increasingly difficult.
Since the war intensified in late September, the Israeli campaign has forced about 1.2 million people from their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah militants erupted a year ago when the Iranian-backed group began launching rockets at northern Israel in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war.
Dressed in white scrubs in the neonatal intensive care unit of Trad Hospital, Baaklini stroked the tiny feet of a baby girl in one of the incubators. The baby and her twin brother had been delivered prematurely by a mother who had to evacuate her home in southern Beirut due to Israeli airstrikes.
He believed that the mother’s early contractions were partly caused the stress of the bombardments and having to flee.
He said all the ICU beds were occupied, attributing this to the intensifying bombardments.
“It is not panic that makes you give birth,” Baaklini said, as machines monitoring the premature babies beeped in the background. “It is the act of running, falling, and experiencing trauma to the abdomen that triggers contractions, leading to premature delivery.”

Red Cross says strike injured paramedics on rescue mission in south Lebanon

Lebanese Red Cross said its paramedics were hit by a strike on Sunday while attending the site of an earlier attack.
Lebanese Red Cross said its paramedics were hit by a strike on Sunday while attending the site of an earlier attack.
Updated 13 October 2024
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Red Cross says strike injured paramedics on rescue mission in south Lebanon

Lebanese Red Cross said its paramedics were hit by a strike on Sunday while attending the site of an earlier attack.
  • “Following the air strike on a house in Sirbin... Lebanese Red Cross ambulance teams were dispatched to the scene,” the Red Cross said in a statement
  • “As the team was searching for casualties to rescue, the house was hit for a second time resulting in concussions to the volunteers and damage to the” ambulances, it said

BEIRUT: The Lebanese Red Cross said its paramedics were hit by a strike on Sunday while attending the site of an earlier attack in the south, leaving them lightly injured.
“Following the air strike on a house in Sirbin... Lebanese Red Cross ambulance teams were dispatched to the scene in coordination with” UN peacekeepers, the Red Cross said in a statement.
“As the team was searching for casualties to rescue, the house was hit for a second time resulting in concussions to the volunteers and damage to the two ambulances,” it said, adding the paramedics had sustained light injuries.
Jagan Chapagain, who heads the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) called for rescuers to be protected.
“We have said it before and today we say it again: the Red Cross emblem must be respected under International Humanitarian Law,” he said in a statement shared on X.
Nearly a year of cross-border exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza war escalated into all-out conflict on September 23.
Since then, dozens of rescuers have been killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon, officials have said.


Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’

Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’
Updated 13 October 2024
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Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’

Netanyahu tells UN chief to move peacekeepers in Lebanon out of ‘harm’s way immediately’
  • Netanyahu’s appeal to UN chief Antonio Guterres comes a day after UNIFIL refused to withdraw

BEIRUT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on the UN chief to move UN peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon out of “harm’s way.”
Netanyahu’s appeal to UN chief Antonio Guterres comes a day after the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, refused to withdraw from the border area despite five of its members being wounded in Israeli fire in recent days.
“Mr Secretary General, get the UNIFIL forces out of harm’s way. It should be done right now, immediately,” Netanyahu said in a video statement issued by his office, in what were his first comments on the issue.
Netanyahu, speaking at a cabinet meeting, said Israeli forces had asked UNIFIL several times to leave but it had “met with repeated refusals” that provided a “human shield to Hezbollah terrorists.”
“Your refusal to evacuate the UNIFIL soldiers makes them hostages of Hezbollah. This endangers both them and the lives of our soldiers,” Netanyahu said.
“We regret the injuring of UNIFIL soldiers and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this injuring. But the simple and obvious way to ensure this is simply to get them out of the danger zone.”
UNIFIL has refused to leave its positions in southern Lebanon.
“There was a unanimous decision to stay because it’s important for the UN flag to still fly high in this region, and to be able to report to the Security Council,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti told AFP in an interview on Saturday.
Tenenti said Israel had asked UNIFIL to withdraw from positions “up to five kilometers (three miles) from the Blue Line” separating both countries, but the peacekeepers refused.
That would have included its 29 positions in Lebanon’s south.
UNIFIL, a mission of about 9,500 troops of various nationalities that was created in 1978, is tasked with monitoring a ceasefire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Forty nations that contribute to the peacekeeping force in Lebanon said on Saturday that they “strongly condemn recent attacks” on the peacekeepers.
“Such actions must stop immediately and should be adequately investigated,” said the joint statement, posted on X by the Polish UN mission and signed by nations including leading contributors Indonesia, Italy and India.


Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself

Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself
Updated 13 October 2024
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Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself

Iran FM says ‘no red lines’ in defending itself
  • Abbas Araghchi was in Baghdad to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon with Iraqi officials
  • After Baghdad, Araghchi will head to Oman

BAGHDAD: Iran’s top diplomat vowed Sunday there would be “no red lines” for the country in defending its people and interests, ahead of Israel’s expected retaliation for Iran’s recent missile attack.
“While we have made tremendous efforts in recent days to contain an all-out war in our region, I say it clearly that we have no red lines in defending our people and interests,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a post on X.
Iran fired 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-aligned militant leaders in the region and a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has vowed Israel’s response will be “deadly, precise, and surprising.”
Araghchi was in Baghdad to discuss the wars in Gaza and Lebanon with Iraqi officials, according to the ministry.
Ali Al-Moussawi, political adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, told AFP Araghchi’s visit was part of a diplomatic effort “to silence weapons and violence... to establish security and stability in the region.”
After Baghdad, Araghchi will head to Oman, the Iranian ISNA news agency reported.
On Thursday, Araghchi was in Qatar where he met Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
Qatar has been mediating talks aimed at a Gaza ceasefire and has called for a truce in Lebanon.
A day earlier, Araghchi met Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan.
In a recent interview, Araghchi said Iran does “not want war” but it was “not afraid of it.”
“We will be ready for any scenario,” he told Al Jazeera news network.


Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market

Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market
Updated 13 October 2024
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Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market

Sudan rescuers say air strike killed 23 in Khartoum market
  • The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military as part of a civil war

POST SUDEN: A Sudanese network of volunteer rescuers said on Sunday the military carried out an air strike a day earlier on a marketplace in Khartoum, leaving 23 people dead.
The market is near one of the main camps in the Sudanese capital, where the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been fighting the military as part of a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.
“Twenty-three people were confirmed dead and more than 40 others wounded” and taken to hospital after “military air strikes on Saturday afternoon on the main market” in southern Khartoum, the youth-led Emergency Response Rooms said in a post on Facebook.
Fierce fighting has raged since Friday around Khartoum, much of which is controlled by the RSF, with the military pounding the center and south of the city from the air.
The military is advancing toward Khartoum from nearby Omdurman, where clashes erupted on Saturday, eyewitnesses said.

Since April 2023, when war broke out between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the paramilitaries had largely pushed the army out of Khartoum.
The World Health Organization says at least 20,000 people have been killed in the civil war, but some estimates put the toll much higher at up to 150,000.
The war has also created the world’s largest displacement crisis, the UN says.
More than 10 million people, around a fifth of Sudan’s population, have been forced from their homes, according to UN figures.
A UN-backed assessment in August declared a famine in the Zamzam refugee camp in Darfur near the city of El-Fasher.
The government loyal to the army is based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, where the army has retained control.
The RSF meanwhile has taken control of nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur, rampaged through the agricultural heartland of central Sudan and pushed into the army-controlled southeast.