TRIPOLI: Across Libya’s capital residents have started drilling through pavements to access wells in a desperate search for water after the taps ran dry in a new low for living conditions.
After years of neglect, workers turned off the water to do urgent maintenance earlier this month, cutting supplies to many Tripoli households. Then an armed group sabotaged the system, prolonging the misery.
The water crisis is a powerful symbol of state failure in a country that was once one of the wealthiest in the Middle East but has been gripped by turmoil since a 2011 uprising unseated Muammar Qaddafi.
For Libyans the chaos has meant power cuts and crippling cash shortages. These are often made worse by battles between armed groups vying for control of the fractured oil-rich state and its poorly-maintained infrastructure.
“We haven’t had water for 10 days. The state does nothing,” said Nasser Said, a landlord in Tripoli’s upmarket Ben Ashour district.
Already equipped with a generator to keep the power running during outages that sometimes last more than a day, he hired drillers to dig some 31 meters to extract groundwater for the six apartments in the residential block he owns.
“No water, no electricity. You become a state in a state,” he said, standing next to his building on a leafy side street. “We last had to do this maybe 20 years ago.”
Like many Libyans, Said is skeptical about the chances of UN-led peace talks unifying rival factions that have been fighting for control.
The talks were adjourned last week with little sign of progress in creating a government that could stabilize Libya and stand up to armed groups that have repeatedly seized oil facilities and other state assets to make demands.
The UN-supported Government of National Accord (GNA) has struggled to impose its authority since its leaders arrived in Tripoli in March last year.
Early last week an armed faction in the south said it had turned off water supplies from Qaddafi’s Great Man Made River, a pipeline system that pumps water from underneath Libya’s vast southern desert to coastal areas such as Tripoli.
The group is seeking the release of a leader imprisoned by a rival faction in the capital, said Tawfiq Shwehaidi, a manager at the Great Man Made River based in the eastern city of Benghazi.
“We had started maintenance work on the 16th (of October) and cut supplies to Tripoli,” he said.
“Afterwards an armed group... set one power plant on fire which closed three other plants and shut down 24 wells.”
That has deprived residents of water while boosting the business of drillers who for 4,000-6,000 Libyan dinars ($2,940-$4,410 at the official exchange rate) access groundwater unused in some neighborhoods since the Great Man Made River started pumping water to Tripoli in 1996.
“We drill about three wells in two weeks — it takes about three to four days to drill a well,” said Abdulsalam Forganea, a 23-year-old worker helping to operate an aging drilling rig.
No budget
Parts of Tripoli offer a semblance of normality and power cuts have eased since the summer.
The city has seen fewer big clashes since a handful of armed groups aligned with the GNA earlier this year.
But security is still fragile. A former prime minister was abducted in August for nine days by one of the two most powerful armed groups, while the other engaged in a battle this month that shut down the airport.
A Reuters reporter recently saw a traffic clogged commercial street suddenly empty as a man was fatally shot by militiamen. Kidnapping for ransom is rife.
A conflict that escalated in 2014 has put extra pressure on a Tripoli population that swelled to an estimated three million with the arrival of displaced families from other Libyan cities.
Public health services are failing, inflation has spiraled, and the start of the school year has been delayed by several weeks because teachers are striking over salaries.
Shutdowns crippled oil revenues so little has been spent on repairs and maintenance, and the water network and other infrastructure have been corroded.
Most government spending goes on public salaries, including for former rebel groups that forced their way onto the state payroll after Qaddafi’s overthrow.
“No budget has been transferred... since 2011 except the emergency budget, which is the result of the financial difficulties experienced by the Libyan state,” said Naji Assaed, head of the Libyan Water Authority.
Production at desalination plants has fallen sharply, with output at a plant in the western town of Zuwara dropping from 80,000 cubic liters to 16,000 cl annually.
Assaed said officials were working hard to resolve the crisis, but it was not clear when supplies would be restored. As he spoke a tanker arrived up to deliver water for his tattered ministry building.
“In the absence of adequate spare parts, lack of budgets, lack of stability in the security situation, security chaos, people do not comply with the law and all this has affected the performance of the system,” he said.
Libyans dig for water in latest test for capital’s residents
Libyans dig for water in latest test for capital’s residents
Sudan’s war-ravaged Khartoum tiptoes back to life after recapture by army
- In a lightning offensive in March, the army recaptured the city center, including the presidential palace and the airport
- Within the next six months, the UN expects more than two million displaced people to return to the capital if security conditions allow
Life is slowly, cautiously returning to the Sudanese capital, weeks after the army recaptured the city from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) who had held it since soon after fighting erupted in April 2023.
Stallholder Maqbool Essa Mohamed was laying out his wares in the large market in the southern neighborhood of Kalakla.
“People feel safe again,” he said. “Business is moving and there’s security.”
Just weeks ago this market was deserted – shops shuttered, streets silent and snipers perched on rooftops.
In a lightning offensive in March, the army recaptured the city center, including the presidential palace and the airport, and the RSF was shed back into the western outskirts of greater Khartoum.
But the RSF remain within artillery range of the city center, as they demonstrated twice this week with a bombardment of the army’s General Command headquarters last Saturday followed by shelling of the presidential palace on Thursday.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The fighting has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million.
In greater Khartoum alone, more than 3.5 million people have fled their homes, leaving entire neighborhoods abandoned.
Within the next six months, the UN expects more than two million displaced people to return to the capital if security conditions allow.
Kalakla, a neighborhood on the road to Jebel Awliya – once an RSF bastion – suffered heavily during the war.
Its location close to a military base made it a prime target, with RSF fighters encircling the area and cutting off food and water for the civilians trapped inside.
In July 2023 activists called it “uninhabitable.”
But now women can be seen on the roadside brewing tea – a common sight before the war – as a man dragging his suitcase stands beside a minibus, newly arrived in the war-torn neighborhood.
Public transport has yet to return to normal as fragile security conditions and crumbling infrastructure impede movement.
With buses packed to capacity, weary commuters climb atop vehicles, preferring the risky ride over an indefinite wait for the next bus – which may not come for hours.
From January, the army began advancing in the greater Khartoum area and by late March had wrested back control of both Khartoum and the industrial city of Khartoum North just across the Blue Nile.
Standing amid the wreckage of the presidential palace, army chief Burhan declared: “Khartoum is free.”
The paramilitaries are now confined to the southern and western outskirts of Omdurman, the third of the three cities that make up greater Khartoum.
Both sides in the conflict have been accused of war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilians and indiscriminately bombing residential neighborhoods.
The RSF in particular has been notorious for systematic sexual violence, ethnic cleansing and rampant looting.
“They left nothing,” said Mohamed Al-Mahdi, a longtime resident. “They destroyed the country and took our property.”
Today, Mahdi steers his bicycle through the recovering market, where vehicles, animal carts and pedestrians jostle for space under the wary eye of the army.
Earlier this month, Sudan’s state news agency reported that the army-backed government plans to restore the water supply to the area – a basic necessity still out of reach for many.
But for vendor Serelkhitm Shibti, the costs of the war are not about lost income or damaged infrastructure.
“What pains me is every drop of blood that fell in this land, not the money I lost,” he said.
Israeli military strikes near Syria’s presidential palace after warning over sectarian attacks
DAMASCUS, Syria: Israel’s air force struck near Syria’s presidential palace early Friday hours after warning Syrian authorities not to march toward villages inhabited by members of a minority sect in southern Syria.
The strike came after days of clashes between pro-Syrian government gunmen and fighters who belong to the Druze minority sect near the capital, Damascus. The clashes left dozens of people dead or wounded.
The Israeli army said in a statement that fighter jets struck adjacent to the area of the Palace of President Hussein Al-Sharaa in Damascus. It gave no further details.
Pro-government Syrian media outlets said the strike hit close to the People’s Palace on a hill overlooking the city.
The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.
US meets Syria’s top diplomat, urges action to protect Druze minority
- State Department spokeswoman confirms meeting in New York between US and Syrian delegations
WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday confirmed meeting Syria’s top diplomat and called on the interim authorities to take action on concerns, as violence flares against the Druze minority.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani last Friday raised his new country’s flag at the UN headquarters, marking a new chapter after the overthrowing in December of longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce confirmed that US representatives met the Syrian delegation in New York on Tuesday.
She said that the United States urged the post-Assad authorities to “choose policies that reinforce stability,” without providing any assessment on progress.
“Any future normalization of relations or lifting of sanctions... will depend on the interim authority’s actions and positive response to the specific confidence-building measures we have communicated,” Bruce told reporters.
The demands were in line with those set out in December by the United States, then led by president Joe Biden, and include protecting minorities and preventing a role in Syria by Assad’s ally Iran.
Since the Islamist fighters toppled Assad, sectarian clashes have repeatedly flared.
The spiritual leader of the Druze community on Thursday alleged a “genocidal campaign” after two days of violence left 102 people dead.
“We urge the interim authorities to hold perpetrators of violence and civilian harm accountable for their actions and ensure the security of all Syrians,” Bruce said of the violence against Druze.
Children broken in mind and body by Israeli ‘abomination’ in Gaza
- UN health chief: ‘How much blood is enough?’
- We can’t live like this, say Palestinians
GENEVA: Palestinian children in Gaza are being physically and mentally broken by two months of an Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid and incessant pounding by airstrikes, UN health chiefs said on Thursday.
More than 1,000 children had lost limbs, thousands had severe spinal cord and head injuries from which they would never recover and many were psychologically damaged, World Health Organization emergencies chief Mike Ryan said.
“We have to ask ourselves, how much blood is enough to satisfy whatever the political objectives are?” he said. “We are watching this unfold before our very eyes, and we’re not doing anything about it.
“We are breaking the bodies and minds of the children of Gaza. We are starving the children of Gaza. We are complicit. As a physician I am angry. It is an abomination.”
Israel has interrupted or blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza since the war began in October 2023, and imposed a total blockade on March 2. Since then the UN has repeatedly warned of a humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine looming, and it said this week that acute malnutrition among Gaza’s children was worsening.
Meanwhile Israel continues to pound civilians in Gaza with daily airstrikes and artillery bombardments. Civil defense chiefs said at least 29 Palestinians were killed on Thursday. They included eight who died in an airstrike on the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Younis refugee camp, four killed in another strike on Al-Tuffah in Gaza City, and others who died in an attack on a tent sheltering displaced people near the central city of Deir Al-Balah.
“We came here and found all these houses destroyed, and children, women and young people all bombed to pieces,” survivor Ahmed Abu Zarqa said after a deadly strike in Khan Younis.
“This is no way to live. Enough, we’re tired, enough. We don’t know what to do with our lives any more. We’d rather die than live this kind of life.”
Several countries send firefighting planes to Israel to help tackle major wildfire
JERUSALEM: Several countries were sending firefighting aircraft to Israel on Thursday as crews battled for a second day to extinguish a wildfire that had shut down a major highway linking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and sent drivers scrambling from their cars.
The fire broke out around midday on Wednesday, fueled by hot, dry conditions and fanned by strong winds that quickly whipped up the flames, burning through a pine forest.
Several communities were evacuated as a precaution as the smoke turned the skies over Jerusalem gray.
The fire has burned about 20 sq. km and is the most significant fire Israel has had in the past decade, according to Tal Volvovitch, a spokesperson for Israel’s fire and rescue authority.
She said the fire has “miraculously” not damaged any homes.
Israel’s fire and rescue authority warned the public to stay away from parks or forests, and to be exceptionally careful while lighting barbecues.
Thursday is Israel’s Independence Day, which is typically marked with large family cookouts in parks and forests.
At least 12 people were treated in hospitals on Wednesday, mainly due to smoke inhalation, while another 10 people were treated in the field, Magen David Adom Ambulance services said.
Italy, Croatia, Spain, France, Ukraine, and Romania were sending planes to help battle the flames, while several other countries, including North Macedonia and Cyprus, were also sending water-dropping aircraft.
Israeli authorities said 10 firefighting planes were operating on Thursday morning, with another eight aircraft to arrive during the day.
Israel’s fire and rescue authority lifted the evacuation order on approximately a dozen towns in the Jerusalem hills on Thursday.
Three Catholic religious communities that were forced to evacuate from their properties on Wednesday could also return on Thursday, said Farid Jubran, the spokesperson for the Latin Patriarchate.
He said their agricultural lands, including vineyards and olive trees, suffered heavy damage, and some buildings were damaged.
But there were no injuries, and historic churches were not affected.
The main highway linking Jerusalem to Tel Aviv was opened again on Thursday, a day after the flames had encroached on the road, forcing drivers to abandon their cars and flee in terror.
On Thursday morning, broad swathes of burned areas were visible from the highway, while pink anti-flame retardant dusted the top of burned trees and bushes.
Smoke and the smell of fire hung heavy in the air.
In 2010, a massive forest fire burned for four days on northern Israel’s Mount Carmel, claiming 44 lives and destroying around 12,000 acres, much of it woodland.
