IRBIL, Iraq: A central government imposed ban on international flights servicing airports in Iraq’s Kurdish region went into effect Friday evening at 6 p.m. local.
The flight ban has so far been the most significant escalation amid heightened tensions, largely marked by threats from Baghdad and neighboring countries, following the controversial referendum on support for independence held by Iraq’s Kurds Monday.
Hundreds of passengers lined up in the hours before an Iraqi government order that international airlines halt all flights in and out of the cities of Irbil and Sulaimaniyah in Kurdish territory kicks in Friday.
Airport officials speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the volume of passengers was higher than usual but no additional flights were added to accommodate people attempting to depart the region ahead of the ban.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi first warned of the ban the day after the referendum was held, demanding the Kurdish region hand their airports over to central government.
While Baghdad controls the airspace over the Kurdish region, immigration and security inside the airports are controlled by local Kurdish region officials and security forces.
Iraq’s Transport Ministry ordered international airlines to halt service to Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, and Sulaimaniyah, its second city. Regional airlines have said they will honor the flight ban.
Talar Saleh, the general director of Irbil International Airport, says Kurdish authorities have attempted to communicate with Baghdad to comply with the demand to hand the airport over to federal authorities.
Kurdish officials requested “a meeting to get everybody together so we can discuss closely, face-to-face, what’s required from the (Kurdish region’s) airports,” she said at a press conference held at the airport Friday. “So far, up to this moment, there is no reply from Baghdad.”
Many of the hundreds of people traveling Friday afternoon were foreigners ordered to leave the region by the companies they work for.
“Of course we don’t want to leave,” said Joao Gabriel Villar, a Brazilian doctor working for a non-governmental organization that helps people displaced by the conflict with the Daesh group.
“We had only just arrived,” he said. “We could have helped many more people if we stayed.”
The nonbinding referendum — in which the Kurds voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Iraq — was billed by Kurdish leaders as an exercise in self-determination. The idea of an independent state has been central to Kurdish politics for decades.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi said the flight ban was not intended to hold the Kurdish region captive, according to a statement released by his office Friday afternoon.
“Central government control of air and land ports in the Kurdistan region is not meant to starve, besiege and prevent (the delivery of) supplies to the citizens in the region as alleged by some Kurdistan region officials,” said the statement.
Also on Friday, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric expressed opposition to the referendum.
Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani called it “an attempt to divide Iraq and take its northern part by setting up an independent state.”
Al-Sistani’s comments, read in the Shiite holy city of Karbala by cleric Ahmad Al-Safi during Friday prayers, were the first by the top Shiite cleric since Monday’s referendum.
Al-Sistani warned such “unilateral steps” toward dividing Iraq will lead to internal and external reactions that will have consequences on our “dear Kurdish citizens and could have more dangerous repercussions.”
Earlier on Friday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi announced the launch of the “second phase” of the operation to retake the Islamic State-held city of Hawija, 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Baghdad.
Hawija is one of the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq. Iraqi forces are also fighting the extremists in the western province of Anbar where IS launched a counterattack against Iraqi forces holding the provincial capital of Ramadi Wednesday. The city had been declared “fully liberated” from the group in Feb. 2016.
Despite the threatened flight ban, anti-IS coalition military air operations from Irbil airport continue as normal, US-led coalition spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday from his headquarters in Baghdad.
More broadly, Dillon said the fallout from the Kurdish referendum has diminished the military’s focus on fighting IS.
“What I’ll say now is that there is a lot of posturing and a lot of things that have been said about what could or may happen,” he said. “The focus, which used to be like a laser beam on (IS), is now not 100 percent there. So there has been an effect on the overall mission to defeat (IS) in Iraq as a result of the referendum.”
Asked whether it is just the Iraqi security forces that have lost focus, he said that Kurdish fighters battling alongside them, known as the peshmerga, and US military planners and advisers also have lost some of their focus as a result of the referendum. The loss of focus, he said, is “across the board.” US military planners have had to spend time to “play out the what-ifs” resulting from assessing the political and military implications of the referendum, he said.
Baghdad announced Thursday that Turkey — an indispensable trade partner to the region and once a key political ally — will now only deal with Iraq’s central government on oil sales. That could deprive the Kurdish region of more than 80 percent of its income.
Ankara had forged close ties to Iraq’s Kurdish region but strongly opposes its moves toward independence, fearing it could inspire Turkey’s own Kurdish minority. Turkey has threatened military action and economic sanctions against the region.
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Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Robert Burns in Washington D.C. contributed to this report.
Iraqi flight ban on Kurdish airports goes into effect
Iraqi flight ban on Kurdish airports goes into effect
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps
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- The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups
JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.
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The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps
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- The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups
JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.
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The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.
More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN
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- “Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
GENEVA: More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Assad, including 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.
Assad was toppled in December in a rebel offensive, putting an end to his family’s decades-long grip on power in the Middle Eastern country and bookmarking a civil war that broke out in 2011, with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions from their homes.
The Islamist-led rebels whose offensive ousted Assad have sought to assure the international community that they have broken with their past and will respect the rights of minorities.
“Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.
“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though, otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.
At a meeting in Paris in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Turkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”
The meeting’s final statement also pledged support for Syria’s new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara
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- France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco
ALGIERS: Algeria on Tuesday denounced a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara, after Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The vast desert territory is a former Spanish colony largely controlled by Morocco but claimed for decades by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who described her visit as “historic,” launched with Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid a French cultural mission in the territory’s main city, Laayoune.
An Algerian foreign ministry statement posted on social media Tuesday said the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonization process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” it said.
Dati’s trip, a first for a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” the statement added.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara dispute.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front said it was ending a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove independence supporters blocking the only road to Mauritania.
The Polisario Front claims the route is illegal, arguing that it did not exist when the ceasefire was established in 1991.