TUNIS: A Tunisian allegedly caught red-handed taking a bribe was among three regional officials sacked on Monday by Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, who has vowed to fight graft.
A government statement announced the sackings but did not say why the three were relieved of their duties.
A spokesman for a provincial prosecutor said one of the officials had been arrested during a police sting allegedly pocketing money from a businessman who had complained to authorities that he had been asked to pay bribes.
According to spokesman Mohamed Ali Barhoumi, the businessman told authorities the official pestered him with demands for payment for the renewal of the lease for his shop.
The suspect allegedly pocketed 500 dinars ($200) from the shop owner in the police sting operation, Barhoumi said. Corruption was widespread under longtime president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in a 2011 uprising, and has remained endemic since.
Chahed’s government has made fighting corruption a priority since taking office last year, when the head of the national anti-graft body Chawki Tabib warned graft had reached “epidemic” proportions.
Tunisia was ranked 75th out of more than 170 countries in the 2016 corruption perceptions index published by Transparency International. It had been 59th in 2010.
In January, the anti-graft body honored 10 whistleblowers in corruption cases in a move to encourage more people to come forward.
Meanwhile, a young man trying to enter the Tunisian Parliament was arrested on Tuesday when a scanner at the entrance detected that he had a knife, officials said. A parliamentary official told Reuters it was not immediately clear why the man was attempting to enter the building.
A member of Parliament told local media he was among a group of students who had come to watch a parliamentary session.
Security at the Parliament building in Tunis has been tightened since gunmen stormed the neighboring Bardo Museum two years ago and killed 21 foreign tourists.
Taking bribe, Tunisian official ‘caught red-handed’
Taking bribe, Tunisian official ‘caught red-handed’
Israel building military corridor splitting northern Gaza: BBC
- Satellite photos, video footage show buildings demolished, troop positions established
- Expert: ‘I think they’re going to settle Jewish settlers in the north, probably in the next 18 months’
LONDON: Israel is building military infrastructure separating the north of the Gaza Strip from the rest of the Palestinian enclave, the BBC has reported.
The broadcaster’s Verify team said it has seen satellite images showing that buildings have been demolished along a line from the Israeli border with Gaza to the Mediterranean through a series of controlled explosions.
BBC Verify added that the images show Israeli military vehicles and soldiers stationed along the line, which reaches almost 9 km across the enclave, cutting off Gaza City from the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia.
Footage has also emerged online of Israeli soldiers destroying buildings in the area since October, and of personnel driving Humvee vehicles through the zone.
Footage has also been released by Hamas fighters still in the area engaging with Israeli ground forces and tanks around the new dividing line.
Dr. H. A. Hellyer, a Middle East expert at the Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC that the images suggest Israel will block thousands of Palestinians from returning to their homes in northern Gaza.
This new partition is not the first to be built in Gaza since the start of the war in October 2023.
The Netzarim Corridor to the south separates Gaza City into two areas, whilst the Philadelphi Corridor separates the south of the enclave from its border with Egypt.
“They’re digging in for the long term,” Hellyer said. “I would absolutely expect the north partition to develop exactly like the Netzarim Corridor.”
He added: “I think they’re going to settle Jewish settlers in the north, probably in the next 18 months. They won’t call them settlements.
“To begin with they’ll call them outposts or whatever, but that’s what they’ll be and they’ll grow from there.”
The developments have raised fears that Israel is implementing a plan devised by former Gen. Giora Elland to force civilians out of northern Gaza by limiting supplies, and informing those who remain that they will be treated as enemy combatants, in a bid to pressure Hamas into releasing Israeli hostages.
The BBC reported that around 90 percent of Gaza has been subject to evacuation orders at various points since the start of the conflict, with millions of people repeatedly displaced.
The UN estimates, with the assistance of aid agencies working in Gaza, that around 65,000 people could still be trapped north of the new line, where they face the prospect of starving.
A UN spokesperson on Tuesday said “virtually no aid” is entering the area, and locals are “facing critical shortages of supplies and services, as well as severe overcrowding and poor hygiene conditions.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said Israel should occupy Gaza and “encourage” Palestinians to leave.
Gaza in anarchy, says UN
- Palestinians are suffering “on a scale that has to be seen to be truly grasped,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said
- “This time I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a media briefing in Geneva
GENEVA: The Gaza Strip has descended into anarchy, with hunger soaring, looting rampant and rising numbers of rapes in shelters as public order falls apart, the United Nations said on Friday.
Palestinians are suffering “on a scale that has to be seen to be truly grasped,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said after concluding his latest visit to the devastated Palestinian territory.
“This time I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a media briefing in Geneva, via video-link from Amman.
“The breakdown of public order and safety is exacerbating the situation with rampant looting and fighting over scarce resources.
“The anarchy in Gaza we warned about months ago is here,” he said, calling the situation entirely predictable, foreseeable and preventable.
Sunghay said young women, many displaced multiple times, had stressed the lack of any safe spaces or privacy in their makeshift tents.
“Others said that cases of gender-based violence and rape, abuse of children and other violence within the community has increased in shelters as a consequence of the war and the breakdown of law enforcement and public order,” he said.
Sunghay described the situation in Gaza City as “horrendous,” with thousands of displaced people sheltering in “inhumane conditions with severe food shortages and terrible sanitary conditions.”
He recounted seeing, for the first time, dozens of women and children in the beseiged enclave now scavenging in giant landfills.
The level of destruction in Gaza “just gets worse and worse,” he added.
“The common plea by everyone I met was for this to stop. To bring this to an end. Enough.”
He said the UN was being blocked from taking any aid to the 70,000 people still thought to be living in northern Gaza, due to “repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities.”
“It is so obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to come in — and it is not.”
UN Human Rights Office spokesman Jeremy Laurence called for an immediate ceasefire.
“The killing must end,” he said.
“The hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. Those arbitrarily detained must be released,” he added.
“And every effort must be made to urgently provide the full quantities of food, medicine and other vital assistance desperately needed in Gaza.”
Fighters from Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, that resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,363 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Israeli rescuers say eight hurt in bus shooting
- The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, claimed responsibility for the attack, which left more than a dozen bullet holes in the windshield of the bus
- The attack occurred at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.
SALFIT, Palestinian Territories: A shooting at a bus near an Israeli settlement injured at least eight people on Friday in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rescue service said.
Violence in the West Bank has surged since the start of the Gaza war sparked by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, claimed responsibility for the attack, which left more than a dozen bullet holes in the windshield of the bus.
The attack occurred at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.
It added that a “terrorist was neutralized on the spot.”
Four people suffered bullet wounds, three of them serious, and four others were lightly injured by shards of glass, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
Three of the injured were lying near the bus, conscious, when the rescuers arrived, a spokesman for MDA said, adding that those most seriously hurt were taken to hospital in a “stable condition.”
“In this operation, one of our heroic fighters ambushed a number of Israeli soldiers and settlers inside a bus,” Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement, identifying the attacker as 46-year-old Samer Hussein, from a village near Nablus.
At least 24 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during military operations in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, Israeli official figures show.
During the same period, at least 778 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP count based on Palestinian official figures.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law.
Israel extends Palestinian banks’ lifeline for one year
- Smotrich had threatened in May to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank
- Smotrich had told PM Benjamin Netanyahu that he “did not intend to extend” Israel’s annual guarantees to banks in the West Bank
JERUSALEM: Israel extended for one year a waiver allowing Israeli banks to work with Palestinian ones just days before it was due to expire, threatening to paralyze Palestinians financial institutions.
The extension was approved Thursday during a security cabinet meeting ahead of expiration of the waiver at the end of the month, a spokesman for far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told AFP.
Smotrich had threatened in May to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for the recognition of the State of Palestine by three European countries.
Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement and advocates for the full annexation of the territory occupied by Israel since 1967, had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he “did not intend to extend” Israel’s annual guarantees to banks in the West Bank.
In exchange for trade-offs on the development of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Smotrich later agreed to extend the guarantee, but only for a few months.
Since June 30, the waiver was renewed on several occasions for different lengths of time, the last of which was to last a month until November 30.
Until then, Smotrich had raised concerns over the financing of armed groups via Palestinian banks to justify the short extension renewals.
The Palestinian financial and banking system is dependent on the regular renewal of the Israeli waiver.
It protects Israeli banks from potential legal action relating to transactions with their Palestinian counterparts, for instance in relation to financing terror.
The waiver had previously been renewed annually, until Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack sparked the war in Gaza.
In July, G7 countries urged Israel to “take necessary action” to ensure the continuity of Palestinian financial systems.
It came after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that “to cut Palestinian banks from the Israeli counterparts would create a humanitarian crisis.”
The overwhelming majority of exchanges in the West Bank are in shekels, Israel’s national currency, because the Palestinian Authority does not have a central bank that would allow it to print its own currency.
Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive
- The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
- Militants cut highway linking Aleppo to capital Damascus on Thursday
BEIRUT: Militants and their Turkish-backed allies shelled Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday, in a major offensive against government troops that has sparked some of the deadliest fighting the country has seen in years.
The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor, most of them combatants on both sides but also including civilians, including 24 dead, most of them in Russian air strikes.
The offensive began at a sensitive time for Syria and the region, with a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel taking effect earlier this week in neighboring Lebanon.
Syria’s civil war began when President Bashar Assad’s forces cracked down in 2011 on pro-democracy protests.
Since then, it has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Over the years, the conflict has morphed into a complex war drawing in militants and foreign powers, including Assad allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
While the army regained control over most of the territory that it lost earlier in the war, the area where the militants and their allies are based has been subject to a truce since 2020.
This week, militants and factions backed by Turkiye, which neighbors Syria and supported the anti-Assad rebellion, launched a major surprise offensive against government forces.
On Friday, they shelled a university student residence in government-held Aleppo, northern Syria’s main city, according to state media, which reported four civilian deaths in the latest attack.
By Friday, they had wrested more than 50 towns and villages in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the biggest advances that anti-government factions had made in years.
The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus, according to the Britain-based Observatory.
“The highway has now been put out of service, after it was reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people — nearly half are children — have been displaced” by the violence.
At a press conference earlier this week, Mohamed Bashir of the militant Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) said: “This operation aims to repel the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the frontlines.”
HTS, led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of the northwest Idlib region as well as small parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.
The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire, repeatedly violated but which had largely been holding, brokered by Turkiye and Russia after a Syrian government offensive in March 2020.
An AFP correspondent based in rebel-held areas said there were intense exchanges of fire in an area just seven kilometers (four miles) from the city of Aleppo.
HTS has close ties with Turkish-backed factions, and analyst Nick Heras of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy said the fighters were “trying to preempt the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the region of Aleppo.”
According to Heras, the Syrian government and its key backer Russia had been preparing for such a campaign.
Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in favor of the president, whose forces at the time had lost control of most of country.
Turkiye, Heras said, may be “sending a message to both Damascus and Moscow to back down from their military efforts in northwest Syria.”
Other interests are also at stake.
As well as Russia, Assad has been propped up by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.
Anti-government forces are, according to Heras, “in a better position to take and seize villages than Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon.”
A general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed in Syria on Thursday during the fighting, an Iranian news agency reported.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the deadly offensive was “part of a plan by the diabolical regime (Israel) and the US” and called for “firm and coordinated action to prevent the spread of terrorism in the region.”
During its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel intensified its strikes on Iran-backed groups in Syria including Hezbollah.
Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Observatory, said Assad’s forces “were totally unprepared” for the attack.
“It is strange to see regime forces being dealt such big blows despite Russian air cover and early signs that HTS was going to launch this operation,” Abdel Rahman said.
“Were they depending on Hezbollah, which is now busy in Lebanon?”
