TRIPOLI: Libya is not “preventing” non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from carrying out migrant rescue operations off its coast, but has set up a coastal search and rescue zone to “organize” their work, its navy said.
The navy last week ordered unauthorized foreign vessels to stay out of Libya’s coastal zone, a measure it said targeted NGOs carrying out search and rescue missions for migrants headed toward Europe.
Several NGOs including Doctors without Borders (MSF), Germany’s Sea-Eye and Britain’s Save the Children have since suspended their operations.
Tripoli has long accused the NGOs of collaboration with people traffickers.
“We did not announce any prohibited zone, nor did we prevent any party or organization from carrying out clear, transparent rescue operations,” the navy said in a statement.
“What we announced was aimed at organizing the work, which has become chaotic and arbitrary.”
Six years since a revolution that toppled longtime dictator Maammar Qaddafi, Libya has become a departure point for masses of migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, mostly heading for Italy.
The Libyan navy called the situation “chaotic, especially close to Libyan waters.”
It said the NGOs’ decision to suspend operations was “regretable” but denied it was responsible, blasting the NGOs’ “aggressive discourse” that was “smearing” Libya.
It added that its move to create a coastal search and rescue zone was “a legitimate right of the Libyan state, guaranteed by international laws.”
It called for “coordination with the Libyan authorities” to help save lives “without infringing on Libyan sovereignty.”
Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said this week that the zone would likely be authorized by the International Maritime Organization.
But he added that the coast guard of Libya does not have the resources to patrol such an area.
The Libyan authorities have requested aid from Italy to help secure its maritime borders.
In a related development, officials in Madrid said Spanish coastguards rescued nearly 600 people from 15 boats and a jet ski on Wednesday in the waters between Morocco and Spain, a route increasingly used by migrants trying to reach Europe.
A coastguard spokesman said 599 people had been rescued since the early hours of Wednesday morning, a large number for just one day in Spain.
At least 35 minors, including a baby, were among the flow of migrants crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and the Alboran Sea as they fled unrest or poverty in their countries, he said.
"The high number of boats coming to the Spanish coast this summer is unusual," a spokeswoman for Spain's coastguards said earlier, adding that there were three times as many as in the same period last year.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 8,385 migrants had arrived in Spain this year by August 9.
At least 121 drowned while attempting this route, compared with 128 deaths for the whole of 2016, as recorded by the IOM.
The number still pales in comparison with the number of people hitting the shores of Italy, which saw close to 97,300 people arrive this year until August 13, with 2,242 deaths.
In June, about 5,000 people were rescued in just one day in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya, Italian coastguards said.
But Spain could overtake Greece this year in the number of migrants arriving by sea, the IOM said this month.
And this does not take into account those crossing by land into Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish territories in northern Morocco.
Both cities are the EU's only land borders with Africa.
As a result, they are entry points for migrants who regularly try to climb high double border fences or force their way through them with wire cutters, or hide in vehicles crossing the frontier.
Libyan marine rescue zone aims to ‘organize’ NGOs: Navy
Libyan marine rescue zone aims to ‘organize’ NGOs: Navy
Syria unable to import wheat or fuel due to US sanctions, trade minister says
- The sanctions were imposed during Assad’s rule, targeting his government and also state institutions such as the central bank
DAMASCUS: Syria is unable to make deals to import fuel, wheat or other key goods due to strict US sanctions and despite many countries, including Gulf Arab states, wanting to do so, Syria’s new trade minister said.
In an interview with Reuters at his office in Damascus, Maher Khalil Al-Hasan said Syria’s new ruling administration had managed to scrape together enough wheat and fuel for a few months but the country faces a “catastrophe” if sanctions are not frozen or lifted soon.
Hasan is a member of the new caretaker government set up by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham after it launched a lightning offensive that toppled autocratic President Bashar Assad on Dec. 8 after 13 years of civil war.
The sanctions were imposed during Assad’s rule, targeting his government and also state institutions such as the central bank.
Russia and Iran, both major backers of the Assad government, previously provided most of Syria’s wheat and oil products but both stopped doing so after the rebels triumphed and Assad fled to Moscow.
The US is set to announce an easing of restrictions on providing humanitarian aid and other basic services such as electricity to Syria while maintaining its strict sanctions regime, people briefed on the matter told Reuters on Monday.
The exact impact of the expected measures remains to be seen.
The decision by the outgoing Biden administration aims to send a signal of goodwill to Syria’s people and its new Islamist rulers, and pave the way for improving basic services and living conditions in the war-ravaged country.
At the same time, US officials see the sanctions as a key point of leverage with a new ruling group that was designated a terrorist entity by Washington several years ago but which, after breaking with Islamist militant group Al Qaeda, has recently signalled a more moderate approach.
Washington wants to see Damascus embark on an inclusive political transition and to cooperate on counterterrorism and other matters.
Hasan told Reuters he was aware of reports that some sanctions may soon be eased or frozen.
Libya military says air strikes target smuggling sites
- The Libyan Army said the air strikes “targeted and destroyed fuel trafficking sites in Zawiya, specifically in Asban,” a semi-rural area outside of the city
ZAWIYAH, Libya: Libya’s UN-recognized authorities have launched air strikes targeting drug trafficking and fuel smuggling hubs west of the capital, a military statement said on Monday.
It remained unclear if there were casualties from the strikes in Zawiya, a city on the Mediterranean coast about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Tripoli.
Libya was plunged into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed strongman Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, with armed groups exploiting the situation to fund their activities through fuel smuggling and the trafficking of migrants.
The Libyan Army said the air strikes “targeted and destroyed fuel trafficking sites in Zawiya, specifically in Asban,” a semi-rural area outside of the city.
It also called on locals to clear areas it labelled as “strongholds for trafficking and crime.”
In May 2023, the Tripoli-based government carried out drone strikes as part of an anti-smuggling operation, killing at least two people and injuring several others, authorities said at the time.
Those strikes followed clashes between armed groups suspected of involvement in human trafficking and smuggling of fuel and other contraband goods.
Libya’s eastern-based parliament accused the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity of targeting the home of one of its lawmakers, an opponent of the government.
Libya is divided between the Tripoli-based GNU and a rival administration in the east, backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.
Footage posted on the army’s Facebook page showed a military truck smashing into the facade of a small dwelling.
Other footage showed tanks and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns driving through Zawiya.
The city hosts Libya’s second-largest oil refinery, with smugglers trafficking the fuel across the border into neighboring Tunisia.
UN envoy in rare Yemen visit to push for peace
- Grundberg’s office said his visit would also “support the release of the arbitrarily detained UN, NGO, civil society and diplomatic mission personnel”
SANAA: Hans Grundberg, the United Nation’s special envoy for war-torn Yemen, arrived Monday in the rebel-held capital in a bid to breathe life into peace talks, his office said.
Grundberg last visited the capital Sanaa, controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis, in May 2023 for meetings with the rebels’ leaders in an earlier effort to advance a roadmap for peace.
The envoy’s current visit “is part of his ongoing efforts to urge for concrete and essential actions... for advancing the peace process,” Grundberg’s office said in a statement.
Yemen has been at war since 2014, when the Houthis forced the internationally recognized government out of Sanaa. The rebels have also seized population centers in the north.
A UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022 calmed fighting and in December 2023 the warring parties committed to a peace process.
But tensions have surged during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, as the Houthis struck Israeli targets and international shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, in a campaign the rebels say is in solidarity with Palestinians.
In response to the Houthi attacks, Israel as well as the United States and Britain have hit Houthi targets in Yemen over the past year. One Israeli raid hit Sanaa’s international airport.
Grundberg’s office said his visit would also “support the release of the arbitrarily detained UN, NGO, civil society and diplomatic mission personnel.”
Dozens of staff from UN and other humanitarian organizations have been detained by the rebels, most of them since June, with the Houthis accusing them of belonging to a “US-Israeli spy network,” a charge the United Nations denies.
US says anti-Daesh operation in Iraq kills coalition soldier
- US officials have said Daesh is hoping to stage a comeback in Syria following the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar Assad
WASHINGTON: The US military said on Monday operations against Daesh in Iraq over the past week led to the death of a non-US coalition soldier and wounded two other non-US personnel.
It also detailed operations in Syria against Daesh militants led by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, including one that resulted in the capture of what the US military’s Central Command said was an Daesh attack cell leader.
US officials have said Daesh is hoping to stage a comeback in Syria following the fall in December of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
West Bank camp under fire as Palestinian forces face off militants
- Gunshots occasionally rung out from inside the camp, an AFP correspondent reported this week
JENIN, Palestinian Territories: A month into a crackdown by Palestinian security forces on militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the streets of Jenin refugee camp are deserted, except for a few residents briefly checking on their homes.
Shops are closed, and militants have erected metal barricades to block Palestinian forces, in the area where Israeli army raids are more common.
Black military vehicles from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited control over the West Bank, are stationed beyond roadblocks at the camp’s entrances.
“I only came back to check on my house,” said Muayyad Al-Saadi, a 53-year-old resident of Jenin camp, riding a bicycle down roads stripped of pavement.
Saadi, one of around 17,000 Palestinians who live in the camp, fled when clashes began in early December, citing a lack of electricity and running water.
The fighting, triggered by the arrests of several militants, has involved Palestinian militant factions affiliated with opponents of the PA’s leadership.
One of these factions, the Jenin Battalion, is largely made up of fighters affiliated with Islamic Jihad or Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered war in Gaza.
Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, is the main political rival of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, which dominates the PA.
Fourteen Palestinians have been killed, including six security forces, seven civilians, and one gunman in the clashes.
Gunshots occasionally rung out from inside the camp, an AFP correspondent reported this week.
Since bakeries have closed, an unusually long line stretched from a shop that delivers bread from outside the camp.
“I’ve lived through wars since I was eight years old,” said the shopkeeper, Umm Hani, who is in her 70s.
She said there was “never anything like this” since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, when Israel captured the West Bank.
“Let them (the security forces) come and arrest whoever they want. We have nothing to do with it,” said Umm Hani.
Another woman, in her 30s, said: “Everyone wants to speak out, but they’re afraid of repercussions from both sides.”
“We’re suffering. We can’t leave or enter the camp freely.”
The intra-Palestinian clashes erupted amid a major PA raid on the camp after the December 5 arrest of a Jenin Battalion commander on charges of possessing weapons and illicit funds.
Armed factions in Jenin and elsewhere see themselves as more effective resistance to Israeli occupation than the PA, which coordinates security matters with Israel.
“They (the PA) don’t want any resistance against the occupation,” said a fighter carrying an M16 rifle, blocking a road with militants.
The militants accuse the PA of cutting off the water and power supply to the camp, a claim the Ramallah-based authority denies.
“The gunmen fire at electricity and water crews whenever they attempt to repair the networks,” Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the PA forces, told AFP.
He said militants were also shooting at distributors of food aid.
Rajab added that the PA was trying to spare civilians, accusing militants instead of disrupting the lives of residents.
“We’re not besieging the camp. People are entering and leaving the camp normally.”
One gunman said the fighting has been “incredibly difficult for civilians. They have no water, no food, and they’ve stopped working.”
Walls throughout the camp are riddled with bullet holes, some from past Israeli army incursions and others from the recent fighting.
A 19-year-old Hamas fighter, who requested anonymity, said residents of Jenin camp have been exposed to violence long before the current operation.
“Every house here has a martyr, a prisoner or an injured person,” he said.
The fighter accused the PA’s forces of firing indiscriminately.
Both sides have traded blame for the deaths of the seven civilians, including a father and son killed on a rooftop on Friday.
“If they’re targeting us — the resistance factions and the Jenin Battalion — why don’t they come for us directly instead of targeting civilians?” said the young militant.
