MOGADISHU: Thousands of people took to the streets of Somalia’s capital Wednesday in a show of defiance after the country’s deadliest attack, as two people were arrested in connection with Saturday’s massive truck bombing that killed more than 300.
Wearing red headbands, the crowd of mostly young men and women marched through Mogadishu amid tight security. They were answering a call to unity by Mayor Thabit Abdi, who said: “We must liberate this city which is awash with graves.”
Some in Somalia have called the bombing their 9/11, while asking why one of the world’s deadliest attacks in years has not drawn the kind of global attention given to extremist assaults elsewhere.
The crowd marched toward the site of the attack, which also wounded nearly 400. Scores remain missing.
“You can kill us, but not our spirit and desire for peace,” said a schoolteacher Zainab Muse. “May Allah punish those who massacred our people,” said university student Mohamed Salad.
It was not all peaceful. At least three people, including a pregnant woman, were injured after security forces opened fire while trying to disperse protesters marching toward the site of Saturday’s huge truck bombing in Mogadishu, said Capt. Mohammed Hussein. Both Somali police and African Union (AU) soldiers were at the scene and opened fire, he said.
Somalia’s government has blamed the attack on the Al-Shabab extremist group, which often targets Mogadishu but has not commented. Analysts have suggested that Al-Shabab, an ally of Al-Qaeda, may have avoided taking responsibility because it did not want to be blamed for the deaths of so many civilians.
According to a Somali intelligence official investigating the attack, an overloaded truck covered with a tarpaulin approached a security checkpoint outside Mogadishu early Saturday.
The truck, covered in dust, aroused suspicion from soldiers who ordered the driver to park and get out. The driver, a man who soldiers said behaved in a friendly manner, then made a phone call to someone in the capital.
The driver then passed the phone to the soldiers to speak to a well-known man who vouched for the truck and persuaded soldiers to allow it to proceed into the city, said the Somali intelligence official.
Once through the checkpoint, the truck started to speed along the sandy, potholed road and raced through another checkpoint where soldiers opened fire and flattened one of its tires.
The driver continued before stopping on a busy street and detonating. The blast leveled nearly all nearby buildings in one of Mogadishu’s most crowded areas. The man who vouched for the truck has been arrested and is being held in jail, said the official.
The driver probably decided to detonate on the street instead because several more checkpoints were ahead before the airport, the intelligence official said.
“Another reason that he would not proceed further is the fact that security forces were coming after it,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
The truck bomber had an accomplice driving a smaller car, a Toyota Noah minivan packed with explosives that took another route, said another intelligence official. Security forces stopped the vehicle at a checkpoint near the airport, forcing the driver to park and get out.
As soldiers questioned the driver, the minivan detonated, the official said. The minivan’s driver is currently in a prison in Mogadishu, said a senior Somali police officer, Capt. Mohamed Hussein.
Thousands in Mogadishu march in defiance after attack
Thousands in Mogadishu march in defiance after attack
Iran holds runoff presidential vote pitting hard-liner against reformist after record low turnout
- Vote unlikely to change policies, may shape Khamenei succession
- Authorities seek high turnout to offset legitimacy crisis
- Supreme Leader Khamenei, not the president, has the last say
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Iran held a runoff presidential election on Friday that pitted a hard-line former nuclear negotiator against a reformist lawmaker. Both men had struggled to convince a skeptical public to cast ballots in the first round of voting that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.
Early results reported by Iran’s election authority on state television showed reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian narrowly ahead of hard-liner Saeed Jalili.
Mohsen Eslami, the election spokesman, said Pezeshkian had 2,904,227 votes trailed by Jalili with 2,815,566 votes, with 5,819,911 votes counted in 13,277 polling stations. There are some 60,000 polling stations and more than 61 million eligible voters.
Government officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have predicted a higher participation rate as voting got underway, with state television airing images of modest lines at some polling centers across the country.
However, online videos purported to show some polls empty while a survey of several dozen sites in the capital, Tehran, saw light traffic amid a heavy security presence on the streets.
Polls closed after midnight, after voting was extended as had become tradition in Iran.
Khamenei has insisted the low turnout from the first round on June 28 did not represent a referendum on Iran’s Shiite theocracy. However, many remain disillusioned as Iran has been beset by years under crushing economic sanctions, bloody security force crackdowns on mass protests and tensions with the West over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels.
“I want to save the country from isolation we are stuck in, and from lies and the violence against women because Iranian women don’t deserve to be beaten up and insulted on the street by extremists who want to destroy the country by cutting ties with big countries,” voter Ghazaal Bakhtiari said. “We should have ties with America and powerful nations.”
The race pits former negotiator Jalili against reformist Pezeshkian.
Jalili has had a recalcitrant reputation among Western diplomats during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, something that is paired with concern at home over his hard-line views on Iran’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab. Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon, has campaigned on relaxing hijab enforcement and reaching out to the West, though he too for decades has supported Khamenei and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Pezeshkian’s supporters have been warning Jalili will bring a “Taliban”-style government into Tehran, while Jalili has criticized Pezeshkian for running a campaign of fear-mongering.
Both contenders voted Friday in southern Tehran, home to many poor neighborhoods. Though Pezeshkian came out on top in the first round of voting on June 28, Jalili has been trying to secure the votes of people who supported hard-line parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, who came in third and later endorsed the former negotiator.
Pezeshkian offered no comments after voting, walking out with former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who struck Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. A rambunctious crowd surrounded the men, shouting: “The nation’s hope comes!”
Both Pezeshkian and Jalili hope to replace the 63-year-old late President Ebrahim Raisi died in a May 19 helicopter crash that also killed the country’s foreign minister and several other officials.
Jalili voted at another polling station, surrounded by a crowd shouting: “Raisi, your way continues!”
“Today the entire world admits that it’s the people who decide who’s president for the next four years,” Jalili said afterward. “This is your right to decide which person, which path and which approach should rule the country in the next four years.”
But as has been the case since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women and those calling for radical change have been barred from the ballot while the vote itself had no oversight from internationally recognized monitors. The country’s Interior Ministry, in charge of police, oversees the result.
There have been calls for a boycott, including from imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, though potential voters in Iran appear to have made the decision not to participate last week on their own as there’s no widely accepted opposition movement operating within or outside of the country.
Khamenei cast one of the election’s first votes Friday from his residence, TV cameras and photographers capturing him dropping the ballot into the box. He insisted those who didn’t vote last week were not boycotting the government.
“I have heard that people’s enthusiasm is more than before,” Khamenei said. “God willing, people vote and choose the best” candidate.
One voter, 27-year-old Yaghoub Mohammadi, said he voted for Jalili in both rounds.
“He is clean, without depending on powerful people in the establishment,” Mohammadi said. “He represents those who have no access to power.”
By Friday night, both hard-line and reformist figures urged the public to vote as lines remained light in Tehran.
“Until a few hours ago I was reluctant to vote,” said Ahmad Safari, a 55-year-old shopkeeper and father of three daughters who voted despite skipping the first round. “But I decided to vote for Pezeshkian because of my children. Maybe they’ll have a better future.”
The vote comes as wider tensions have gripped the Middle East over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. In April, Iran launched its first-ever direct attack on Israel over the war in Gaza, while militia groups that Tehran arms in the region — such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels — are engaged in the fighting and have escalated their attacks.
Iran also continues to enrich uranium at near weapons-grade levels and maintains a stockpile large enough to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to do so. And while Khamenei remains the final decision-maker on matters of state, whichever man ends up winning the presidency could bend the country’s foreign policy toward either confrontation or collaboration with the West.
More than 61 million Iranians over the age of 18 were eligible to vote, with about 18 million of them between 18 to 30. Voting was to end at 6 p.m. but was extended until midnight to boost participation.
Raisi, who died in the May helicopter crash, was seen as a protégé of Khamenei and a potential successor as supreme leader.
Still, many knew him for his involvement in the mass executions that Iran conducted in 1988, and for his role in the bloody crackdowns on dissent that followed protests over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained by police over allegedly improperly wearing the mandatory headscarf, or hijab.
A look at how settlements have grown in the West Bank over the years
JERUSALEM: Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades and advanced plans to build thousands of new settlement homes, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement monitoring group. They are the latest steps by Israel’s hard-line government meant to cement Israel’s control over the territory and prevent the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
This map shows the expansion of settlements and outposts from 1967 until now.
Half a century of settlements
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek all three areas for their future state. In 56 years, Israel has built well over 100 settlements scattered across the West Bank. Settlers also have built scores of tiny unauthorized outposts that are tolerated or even encouraged by the government. Some are later legalized.
Dwindling two-state prospects
The international community considers the settlements illegal or illegitimate, and the Palestinians say they are the main barrier to a lasting peace agreement.
But with more than 500,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, it will be difficult – some say impossible – to partition the territory as part of a two-state solution.
Israeli team led by spy chief Barnea meets Qatari mediators on Gaza deal
- US believes Israel and Hamas have a “pretty significant opening” to reach an agreement
- No public statement was issued after the talks
JERUSALEM: Israel’s spy chief held talks with Qatari mediators on Friday in the latest effort for a truce and hostage release deal for Gaza, almost nine months into the Israel-Hamas war.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations said Mossad chief David Barnea and his delegation had left Doha straight after the meetings on the latest Hamas ideas for an agreement.
No public statement was issued after the talks.
The US, which has worked alongside Qatar and Egypt in trying to broker a deal, had talked up the significance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to send a delegation to Qatar.
The US believes Israel and Hamas have a “pretty significant opening” to reach an agreement, a senior official said.
The Gaza war — which has raised fears of a broader conflagration involving Lebanon — began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.
In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,011 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
US President Joe Biden announced a pathway to a truce deal in May that he said had been proposed by Israel. It included an initial six-week truce, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza population centers and the freeing of hostages by Palestinian militants.
Talks subsequently stalled but the US official said on Thursday that the new proposal from Hamas “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal,” though “significant work” remained.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that the group expected a swift Israeli response — “likely today or tomorrow morning” — to its new “ideas.”
He blamed Israel for the deadlock since Biden’s announcement.
Hamdan said the ideas had been “conveyed by the mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side. Now the ball is in the Israeli court.”
Hamdan said the Doha talks “will be a test for the US administration to see if it is willing to pressure the Zionist entity to accept these proposed ideas.”
There has been no truce in the war since a one-week pause in November saw 80 Israeli hostages freed in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The war has uprooted 90 percent of Gaza’s population, destroyed much of the territory’s housing and other infrastructure, and left almost 500,000 people enduring “catastrophic” hunger, UN agencies say.
The main stumbling block to a truce deal has been Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners strongly reject.
The Israeli leader has faced a well-organized protest movement demanding a deal to free the hostages, which took to the streets again on Thursday evening.
Netanyahu insists the war will not end until Israel destroys Hamas and the hostages are freed.
The head of the World Health Organization warned that “further disruption to health services is imminent in Gaza due to a severe lack of fuel.”
Only 90,000 liters (20,000 gallons) of fuel entered Gaza on Wednesday, but the health sector alone needs 80,000 liters each day.
The WHO and its partners in Gaza were having “to make impossible choices” as a result, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
US officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have voiced hope that a ceasefire in Gaza could lead to an easing of violence on the Israel-Lebanon border as well.
Since the war began, Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army in support of its Palestinian ally.
The exchanges have intensified over the past month after Israel killed senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted air strikes.
Hezbollah said it fired more than 200 rockets and “explosive drones” at army positions in northern Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights in its latest round of reprisals on Thursday.
A military source said the rocket fire killed a soldier in northern Israel.
Hamas said Friday that its foreign relations chief Khalil Al-Hayya had met Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to coordinate their “resistance efforts” and the upcoming truce negotiations.
Hamas delegation holds talks in Beirut with Hezbollah
- Naim Qassem: ‘Prospects of war expansion are unlikely, but Hezbollah is prepared for worst possibilities’
- Nasrallah received Hamas deputy chief Hayya for the meeting, which reviewed “the latest security and political developments” in the Gaza Strip
BEIRUT: Hezbollah and Hamas leaders discussed the latest developments in ceasefire negotiations with Israel at a meeting in Beirut on Friday
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, received a Hamas delegation headed by Khalil Al-Hayya, and both sides discussed “the developments of the ongoing negotiations and the proposals aiming to stop the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.”
A statement issued by Hezbollah and Hamas affirmed that both parties “emphasized continued field and political coordination at all levels to achieve the desired goals.”
The Hamas delegation also met with the leaders of the Islamic Group in Lebanon, which is an ally of Hezbollah.
BACKGROUND
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire since October across the Lebanese-Israeli border in a conflict that has run in parallel to the Gaza war, raising fears of a bigger conflict between the heavily armed adversaries.
The group said the discussion focused on “indirect negotiations and the implications of these developments for Palestine, Lebanon, and the region.”
The talks also tackled ways to face the “challenges of the next phase, emphasizing the importance of cooperation and the mobilization of the nation’s capabilities in this pivotal battle,” the statement added.
The talks came as Israel continued its raids on Lebanese border villages, with a drone raiding Markaba, injuring a paramedic next to an aid station for the Islamic Risala Scout.
Israeli media outlets said that five missiles were launched from Lebanon toward western Galilee without triggering local sirens.
Talks took place in Paris on Friday as part of efforts to de-escalate the situation along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
A White House official said Amos Hochstein, a senior US official at the heart of the discussions, spoke about efforts to restore calm in meetings with French officials.
Reuters quoted a White House source as saying that France and the US shared the goal of diplomatically resolving the current conflict.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan expressed the Kingdom’s “concern over the risk of the war expanding in Lebanon.”
In a statement, he said: “We do not see any political horizon,” noting that “a ceasefire in Gaza could help stop the tension in southern Lebanon.”
Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem commented on the diplomatic efforts to Russian Sputnik Radio.
Qassem said foreign delegates, including from the US and French, wanted to separate the Lebanese front from the war in Gaza, and are trying to appease Israel to allow Jewish settlers to return to their homes.
“There’s no discussion without a ceasefire, which will then be followed by the necessary political discussion and a review of the latest developments,” he warned.
Qassem said that “the chances of an expanded war are not likely soon, but Hezbollah is prepared for the worst possibilities.”
Qassem said Israel’s “only option is to accept Hamas’ conditions because it won’t stop its resistance as long as the aggression and the targeting of civilians continue.”
He also wondered “whether the Israeli Army can tolerate (Hezbollah’s) attrition operations.”
Qassem said the party had not built its military position based on political analysis but on information and field results.
He said: “Reaching an agreement is the strongest option today, especially amid the upheaval inside Israel, in addition to the Israeli opposition and its ability to pressure (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).”
He added that he expected Hamas to play a major role in Palestine after the war ended, contrary to Israeli aims.
This came as the UN said the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon reached 98 as of June 28, including 31 women, 12 children, 21 health workers and three journalists.
A renewed report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or OCHA said that “IDPs and host communities were experiencing “escalating fatigue, heightening the risk of intra-Lebanese tensions.”
It said internally displaced people were grappling with extended displacement and uncertain living conditions, while host communities were beginning to feel the pressure on local resources and, in some instances, competition for jobs.
According to the International Organization for Migration, around 96,829 people from border towns have been displaced mostly to relatives’ homes, while 16 shelters are housing around 1,498 displaced people.
The Ministry of Agriculture observed that more than 1,240 hectares of land had been destroyed, while around 72 percent of farmers had lost their sources of income in the south, with 340,000 livestock and a significant number of beehives destroyed as a result of Israeli bombing.
The National Council for Scientific Research documented “more than 175 Israeli attacks with phosphorus bombs and more than 196 attacks with incendiary bombs.”
It said that 10 water facilities had been destroyed, and more than 100,000 residents had been affected by water shortage.
The clashes have caused the closure of around six healthcare centers in Marjayoun and Bint Jbeil and the partial or complete closure of 72 private and public schools in the affected towns.
Close adviser of Syrian president dies after car crash: Presidency
- Shibl was involved in incident on Yaa’four Road in Damascus
DAMASCUS: Luna Shibl, an adviser to Syrian president Bashar Assad, died on Friday three days after she was involved in a car accident, the office of the president said.
“The presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic mourns the death of the adviser Luna Al-Shibl, who passed away today after a serious car accident,” it said in a statement.
“She served in recent years as a director of the political and media office of the presidency and then as a special adviser to the presidency,” it added.
State media reported on Tuesday that Shibl was involved in a traffic accident on Yaa’four Road in Damascus, suffering a “cerebral haemorrhage” after her car “veered off the road,” after which she was taken to a clinic near the crash site and then transferred to intensive care in Al-Shami Hospital in the Syrian capital.
The 48-year-old rose to prominence for quitting a prestigious journalism career at Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera to become Assad’s media adviser.
She carved out a place within Assad’s inner circle as she accompanied him to high-level meetings in Syria and on his rare visits abroad and played an important role during the most intense years of the Syrian civil war. She was part of the delegation to ultimately doomed peace talks in 2014.
Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported earlier this week that she had fallen out of official favor in recent months and her brother had been arrested.
“There was growing dissatisfaction with her within the regime,” said Observatory director Rami Abdulrahman.
“Accusations surfaced that she leaked minutes of closed meetings between Assad and Iranian officials,” Abdulrahman added.
Syrian intelligence arrested her brother “on charges of communicating with a party hostile to Syria” after Israel struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus in April, the monitor said.
In 2020, Washington sanctioned Shibl and her husband Ammar Saati, with the US Treasury saying at the time that “she has been instrumental in developing Assad’s false narrative that he maintains control of the country and that the Syrian people flourish under his leadership.”
* With AFP
