BASRA: Police used tear gas to disperse around 150 protesters at the main entrance to Iraq’s giant Nahr Bin Omar oilfield on Sunday, police sources said, amid growing unrest in southern cities over poor public services and corruption.
Officials at the field in the southern oil hub of Basra said operations were running normally.
Production from Nahr Bin Omar, which is operated by the state-run Basra Oil Co., now stands at around 44,000 barrels per day, oilfield officials said.
On Friday, hundreds of Iraqi protesters stoned and tried to break into the provincial government headquarters in the southern oil hub of Basra demanding better public services and an end to pervasive corruption. Around 3,000 people gathered there again on Sunday and set fire to tires outside.
Protesters threatened to break into the field if the government did not respond to their demands to improve basic services and address their complaints over Basra’s drinking water, which residents say is undrinkable due to high salt levels.
“We will not allow the oilfield to operate unless we get clean water. No services, no jobs and now no clean water. We are fed up,” said Hassan Ali, a protest organizer.
Iraqi political blocs are attempting to form a coalition government after a May 12 parliamentary election tainted by allegations of fraud.
Oil exports from Basra account for more than 95 percent of OPEC producer Iraq’s state revenues. Any potential disruptions to production could severely impact Iraq’s limping economy.
Police also dispersed protesters who tried to prevent trucks moving on a main road to the east of Basra which leads to a border crossing with Iran, customs and police officials said.
Police disperse protesters at entrance to Iraq’s Nahr Bin Omar oilfield
Police disperse protesters at entrance to Iraq’s Nahr Bin Omar oilfield
- About 150 protesters gathered at the main entrance to Iraq’s giant Nahr Bin Omar oilfield in the southern oil hub of Basra
- Production from Nahran Bin Omar now stands at around 44,000 barrels per day
Syria’s caretaker PM Bashir: Syria has very low foreign currency reserves
Current and former Syrian officials have told Reuters that the dollar reserves have been nearly depleted because Bashar Assad’s government increasingly used them to fund food, fuel and its war effort.
The central bank’s foreign exchange reserves amount to just around $200 million in cash, one of the sources told Reuters, while another said the US dollar reserves were “in the hundreds of millions.”
Palestinians in Syria flock to cemetery off-limits under Assad
YARMUK: In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father’s grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar Assad’s fall.
“Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father’s grave again,” said 45-year-old Adwan.
“When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave.”
It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.
Assad’s fall on December 8, after a lightning offensive led by Islamist rebels, put an end to decades of iron-fisted rule and years of bloody civil war that began with repression of anti-government protests in 2011.
Yarmuk camp fell to rebels early in the war before becoming a jihadist stronghold. It was bombed and besieged by Assad’s forces, emptied of most of its residents and reduced to ruins before its recapture in 2018.
Assad’s ouster has allowed former residents to return for the first time in years.
Back at the cemetery, Adwan’s mother Zeina sat on a small metal chair in front of her husband’s gravesite.
She was “finally” able to weep for him, she said. “Before, my tears were dry.”
“It’s the first time that I have returned to his grave for years. Everything has changed, but I still recognize where his grave is,” said the 70-year-old woman.
Yarmuk camp, established in the 1950s to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land after Israel’s creation, had become a key residential and commercial district over the decades.
Some 160,000 Palestinians lived there alongside thousands of Syrians before the country’s conflict erupted in 2011.
Thousands fled in 2012, and few have found their homes still standing in the eerie wasteland that used to be Yarmuk.
Along the road to the cemetery, barefoot children dressed in threadbare clothes play with what is left of a swing set in a rubble-strewn area that was once a park.
A steady stream of people headed to the cemetery, looking for their loved ones’ gravesites after years.
“Somewhere here is my father’s grave, my uncle’s, and another uncle’s,” said Mahmud Badwan, 60, gesturing to massive piles of grey rubble that bear little signs of what may lie beneath them.
Most tombstones are broken.
Near them lay breeze blocks from adjacent homes which stand empty and open to the elements.
“The Assad regime spared neither the living nor the dead. Look at how the ruins have covered the cemetery. They spared no one,” Badwan said.
There is speculation that the cemetery may also hold the remains of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen and an Israeli solider.
Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government.
A Palestinian source in Damascus, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the subject, told AFP contacts were underway through mediators to try to find their remains.
Camp resident Amina Mounawar leaned against the wall of her ruined home, watching the flow of people arriving at the cemetery.
Some wandered the site, comparing locations to photos on their phones taken before the war in an attempt to locate graves in the transformed site.
“I have a lot of hope for the reconstruction of the camp, for a better future,” said Mounawar, 48, as she offered water to those arriving at the cemetery.
Western governments open talks with Syria’s new leaders
- Germany is coordinating closely with international partners, including France, the US, Britain, and Arab states, as Syria enters a new political phase
- United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher also expressed optimism after meeting with Syria’s new leaders
BERLIN: Germany, France, and other Western nations are engaging in talks with representatives of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) in Damascus, following the Islamist group’s role in the recent overthrow of Syria’s Bashar Assad. Germany’s foreign ministry confirmed on Tuesday that its diplomats would meet HTS-appointed interim government officials, joining efforts by the United States and Britain to establish contact with Syria’s new leadership.
The German talks will focus on Syria’s transitional process and the protection of minorities, a foreign ministry spokesperson said. “The possibilities of establishing a diplomatic presence in Damascus are also being explored,” the spokesperson added, while underscoring that Germany continues to monitor HTS closely due to its origins in Al-Qaeda ideology.
“So far, they have acted prudently,” the spokesperson noted, referring to the group that led Assad’s ouster earlier this month, bringing an end to Syria’s 13-year civil war.
France has also moved to reestablish its presence in Syria. Visiting French special envoy for Syria, Jean-Francois Guillaume, said his country was committed to supporting Syrians during the transitional period.
“France is ready to stand with Syrians during this transition, which we hope will be peaceful,” Guillaume told journalists. He added that his delegation was in Damascus to “make contact with the de facto authorities.” An AFP journalist reported seeing the French flag raised at the embassy entrance for the first time since its closure in 2012.
The end of the conflict has reignited debate in Germany over asylum policies, particularly as the country took in nearly one million Syrian refugees during the war. For now, asylum procedures for Syrians are paused pending a reassessment of conditions in their homeland.
Germany is coordinating closely with international partners, including France, the US, Britain, and Arab states, as Syria enters a new political phase.
The Italian Prime Minister also welcomed the fall of the Assad regime, describing it as good news and expressing readiness to engage with Syria's new leadership. While acknowledging that initial signs from the new Syrian government are encouraging, the Prime Minister emphasized the need for caution moving forward.
United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher also expressed optimism after meeting with Syria’s new leaders in Damascus, including HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
“I’m encouraged,” Fletcher said on X, adding that there is “a basis for an ambitious scale-up of vital humanitarian support.” He described the current moment as a “cautious hope for Syria.”
Israeli airstrikes kill 14 Palestinians in Gaza, tanks push south
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 14 Palestinians on Tuesday, at least 10 of them in one house in Gaza City, medics said as tanks pushed deeper toward the western area of Rafah in the south.
Medics said the Israeli airstrike on the house in the Daraj suburb of Gaza City destroyed the building and damaged nearby houses. Four other people were killed in two separate airstrikes in the city and the town of Beit Lahiya north of the enclave said medics, medics added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper toward the western area of Mawasi, known as a humanitarian-designated area, residents said.
Heavy fire from tanks rolling into the area forced dozens of families sheltering there to flee northwards toward Khan Younis.
The war began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel then launched an air and land offensive that has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Israeli defence minister says Israel will have freedom of action in Gaza after defeating Hamas
DUBAI: Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Monday Israel will have security control over Gaza with full freedom of action after defeating Hamas in the enclave.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said on Tuesday that two soldiers were killed during combat in southern Gaza.
