BRUSSELS: The EU is determined to go on preventing migrants setting off from the coast of Libya, interior ministers said on Thursday, despite criticism from rights advocates who say the strategy is aggravating human suffering.
After more than two years struggling to stem the flow of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa, the EU is cautiously hopeful it is finally in control.
A 2016 deal with Turkey effectively closed one major migratory route and this year Italy has led the EU’s efforts to curb sea crossings from Libya, supplying money, equipment and training for Libya’s border and coast guard and striking deals with local groups in control on the ground in a country still largely lawless after the 2011 death of Muammar Qaddafi.
Mediterranean crossings have dropped from nearly 28,000 people in June to below 10,000 in August, according to UN data. Sources told Reuters late last month a new armed group on Libya’s coast was stopping migrant boats from leaving.
Human rights groups decry the EU’s support for Libya’s Prime Minister Fayez Seraj and allied militias who run migrant detention centers they have compared to concentration camps.
The top UN human rights official said the EU strategy was “very thin on the protection of the human rights of migrants inside Libya and on the boats, and silent on the urgent need for alternatives to the arbitrary detention of vulnerable people.”
To offset that, the bloc has stepped up financing for the UN agencies for migration (IOM) and refugees (UNHCR) to have them try to improve conditions for migrants inside Libya. But it is not changing tack on trying to keep them there.
“If we look at the flows of migrants across the Mediterranean a few months ago and now, the decrease in illegal migration has been big in numbers,” Estonia’s Interior Minister Andres Anvelt said ahead of talks in Brussels with his EU peers.
“We’ll have a discussion about how to have this success story going on.”
Germany’s Thomas de Maiziere told reporters: “I’m happy that the number of people sent across the Mediterranean by the smugglers to Italy has really fallen in the last two months ... These developments need to be carried on.”
“We really need to work to ensure that many people simply do not make the trip across the desert to Libya. The neighborhood policy with Africa is very important for a sustainable decline in migrants coming to Italy.”
After struggling to come up with a strategy on Libya, the EU has increasingly let Italy, Libya’s former colonial power, take the lead.
Interior Minister Marco Minniti has led those efforts, curbing the sea operations of non-governmental aid groups and striking deals with Libyan mayors to fight people-trafficking, among other moves.
Rome has also played a central role in training the Libyan coast guard, which has been accused of abuses, including shooting at aid workers trying to rescue migrants.
The EU has denied that any of its funding goes to the militia in the coastal city of Sabratha, which has often prevented migrants from departing for Europe by locking them up.
But a senior EU diplomat said the EU’s strategy was complex.
“It is hard to know exactly what is going on in Libya. We have increasingly entrusted Italy with doing the job there, we give them money. There would never be any proof of EU money going directly to some armed group somewhere,” the person said.
“Some of the methods may seem controversial. But there is also preventing loss of life at the sea and political stability in Italy to consider. We shouldn’t be too judgmental.”
EU sticks to Libya strategy on migrants, despite human rights concerns
EU sticks to Libya strategy on migrants, despite human rights concerns
Turkiye man kills seven before taking his own life
The man, who was found dead in his car shortly after the shooting, is also accused of wounding two other family members, one of them seriously, the Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement.
The authorities, who had put the death toll at four on Sunday evening, announced on Monday the discovery near a lake on Istanbul’s European shore of the bodies of the killer’s wife and son, as well as the lifeless body of his mother-in-law.
According to the Small Arms Survey (SAS), a Swiss research program, over 13.2 million firearms are in circulation in Turkiye, most of them illegally, for a population of around 85 million.
2 Palestinians killed in Israeli raid in West Bank: PA
- The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces entered the village on Sunday night
Yabad: The Palestinian Authority said two Palestinians, including a teenage boy, were killed during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank village of Yabad.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces entered the village on Sunday night, leading to clashes during which soldiers shot dead two Palestinians.
The two dead were identified by the Palestinian health ministry as Muhammad Rabie Hamarsheh, 13, and Ahmad Mahmud Zaid, 20.
“Overnight, during an IDF (Israeli army) counterterrorism activity in the area of Yabad, two terrorists hurled explosives at IDF soldiers. The soldiers responded with fire and hits were identified,” an Israeli military source told AFP.
Last week, the Israeli army launched several raids in the West Bank city of Jenin, killing nine people, most of them Palestinian militants.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the war in Gaza erupted on October 7 last year after Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis have also killed at least 24 people in the West Bank in the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Israel says hit Hezbollah command center in deadly weekend strike
- The strike hit a residential building in the heart of Beirut before dawn Saturday
- Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army on Monday said it had struck a Hezbollah command center in the downtown Beirut neighborhood of Basta in a deadly air strike at the weekend.
“The IDF (Israeli military) struck a Hezbollah command center,” the army said regarding the strike that the Lebanese health ministry said killed 29 people and wounded 67 on Saturday.
The strike hit a residential building in the heart of Beirut before dawn Saturday, leaving a large crater, AFP journalists at the scene reported.
A senior Lebanese security source said that “a high-ranking Hezbollah officer was targeted” in the strike, without confirming whether or not the official had been killed.
Hezbollah official Amin Cherri said no leader of the Lebanese movement was targeted in Basta.
Since September 23, Israel has intensified its Lebanon air campaign, later sending in ground troops against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
The war followed nearly a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
The conflict has killed at least 3,754 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September this year.
On the Israeli side, authorities say at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians have been killed.
HRW says Israel strike that killed 3 Lebanon journalists ‘apparent war crime’
BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch said on Monday an Israeli air strike that killed three journalists in Lebanon last month was an “apparent war crime” and used a bomb equipped with a US-made guidance kit.
The October 25 strike hit a tourism complex in the Druze-majority south Lebanon town of Hasbaya where more than a dozen journalists working for Lebanese and Arab media outlets were sleeping.
The Israeli army has said it targeted Hezbollah militants and that the strike was “under review.”
HRW said the strike, relatively far from the Israel-Hezbollah war’s main flashpoints, “was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime.”
“Information Human Rights Watch reviewed indicates that the Israeli military knew or should have known that journalists were staying in the area and in the targeted building,” the watchdog said in a statement.
HRW “found no evidence of fighting, military forces, or military activity in the immediate area at the time of the attack,” it added.
The strike killed cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda from pro-Iran, Beirut-based broadcaster Al-Mayadeen and video journalist Wissam Qassem from Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.
The watchdog said it verified images of Najjar’s casket wrapped in a Hezbollah flag and buried in a cemetery alongside fighters from the militant group.
But a spokesperson for the militant group said he “had no involvement whatsoever in any military activities.”
HRW said the bomb dropped by Israeli forces was equipped with a United States-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kit.
The JDAM is “affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates,” the statement said.
It said remnants from the site were consistent with a JDAM kit “assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.”
One remnant “bore a numerical code identifying it as having been manufactured by Woodard, a US company that makes components for guidance systems on munitions,” it added.
The watchdog said it contacted Boeing and Woodard but received no response.
In October last year, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah was killed by Israeli shellfire while he was covering southern Lebanon, and six other journalists were wounded, including AFP’s Dylan Collins and Christina Assi, who had to have her right leg amputated.
In November last year, Israeli bombardment killed Al-Mayadeen correspondent Farah Omar and cameraman Rabih Maamari, the channel said.
Lebanese rights groups have said five more journalists and photographers working for local media have been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
16 survivors rescued after tourist boat sinks off Egypt’s Red Sea coast
CAIRO: Egyptian authorities rescued 16 people after a tourist boat sank off its Red Sea coast, three security sources told Reuters on Monday, as search operations continued for the remaining passengers and crew members.
The boat, Sea Story, was carrying 45 people, including 31 tourists of varying nationalities and 14 crew, on a multi-day diving trip when it went down near the coastal town of Marsa Alam, according to a statement by the Red Sea Governorate.
Governor Amr Hanafi said some survivors were rescued using a helicopter and have been taken to medical care. Efforts to locate more survivors were ongoing in coordination with the Egyptian navy and army.
The governorate said a distress call was received at 5:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) and that the boat had departed from Porto Ghalib in Marsa Alam on Sunday, with plans to return to Hurghada Marina on Nov. 29.
The Red Sea is a popular diving destination renowned for its coral reefs and marine life, key to Egypt’s vital tourism industry.
