BASRA, Iraq: Hundreds of people gathered near a provincial government building in Iraq’s southern oil hub Basra on Tuesday to mourn the death of a protester in clashes with security forces on Monday night.
The protester, Yasser Makki, died in hospital and six more people were wounded in demonstrations over poor government services and corruption, local health and security sources said.
Mourners carried Makki’s body near the site where he was wounded, chanting “Yasser’s blood will not be lost.”
They damaged the gate of the provincial government headquarters but were dispersed by security forces using tear gas before they could enter the building. More protests were called for Tuesday night.
The local head of Iraq’s Human Rights Commission, Mahdi Al-Tamimi, called for an investigation into Makki’s death.
“We call on the Iraqi judiciary to open an immediate and urgent investigation into the killing of a demonstrator who was shot in the shoulder and subjected to electric shocks by security forces,” Tamimi said in a statement.
Hundreds of people had gathered near Basra’s provincial government building on Monday night to press demands for better public services and an end to corruption. Protesters threw petrol bombs and stones at security forces, who responded by firing shots into the air and tear gas, security sources said.
Protests have swept cities in the long neglected south, Iraq’s Shiite Muslim heartland, over electricity outages during the hot Iraqi summer, a lack of jobs and proper government services, and entrenched graft.
Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi suspended the electricity minister last month and said last week that his government had begun punishing those responsible for poor services in Basra, Iraq’s second biggest city.
But public anger has swelled at a time when politicians are struggling to form a new government after an inconclusive parliamentary election in May. Iraq’s top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani has expressed support for the protests.
On Friday, hundreds of protesters clashed with security forces in Basra as they tried to break into the provincial government headquarters.
Protester killed in Basra during clashes with security forces
Protester killed in Basra during clashes with security forces
- Mourners carried Makki’s body near the site where he was wounded
- undreds of people had gathered near Basra’s provincial government building on Monday night to press demands for better public services
Macron announces new Lebanon ‘reconstruction’ conference in Paris
“The international community must prepare for massive support to the reconstruction of infrastructure“
BEIRUT: France’s President Emmanuel Macron Friday announced that Paris would in coming weeks host an international reconstruction conference after a war between militant group Hezbollah and Israel.
After more than two years of a political vacuum at the top of the small Mediterranean country, Joseph Aoun was elected president on January 9 and chose Nawaf Salam as prime minister designate.
“Since January 9, in the middle of winter, spring has sprung,” Macron said at a joint press conference with Aoun.
“You are this hope,” he said, referring to Aoun and Salam.
The new prime minister faces the monumental task of forming a government to oversee reconstruction after a November ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, and enact reforms to lift the country out of its worst economic crisis in history.
“As soon as the president (Aoun) comes to Paris in a few weeks’ time, we will organize around him an international reconstruction conference to drum up funding,” Macron said.
“The international community must prepare for massive support to the reconstruction of infrastructure.”
Under the ceasefire deal, the Lebanese army must deploy alongside UN peacekeepers in the south of Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws by January 26.
At the same time, Hezbollah is required to pull its forces north of the Litani River, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure it has in the country’s south.
With just over a week to go until the cut-off date, Macron called for accelerated implementation of the truce.
“There have been results... but they must be accelerated and long-lasting. There needs to be complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, and the Lebanese army must hold total monopoly of any weapons” in south Lebanon, he said.
A committee composed of Israeli, Lebanese, French and US delegates, alongside a representative from UNIFIL, has been tasked with monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire deal.
EU’s Kallas says talks under way to revive Rafah border mission
- The mission operated for only a year and a half before it was suspended when Hamas militants took control of the Gaza Strip
- The EU is “in discussions about redeploying our monitoring mission to Rafah to ensure the stability at the border, so we have it ready,” Kallas told reporters
BRUSSELS: The European Union is in talks to revive a civilian mission to monitor the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah following the announcement of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
A civilian EU mission to help monitor the Rafah crossing was set up under agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 2005, part of international help with peace efforts at a time when Israel had pulled troops and settlers from Gaza.
But the mission operated for only a year and a half before it was suspended when Hamas militants took control of the Gaza Strip and drove out the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.
Kallas met with the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa in Brussels on Friday morning and spoke on the phone with Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar.
The EU is “in discussions about redeploying our monitoring mission to Rafah to ensure the stability at the border, so we have it ready,” Kallas told reporters in Brussels.
Kallas said redeploying would require invitations from Israel and the Palestinian Authority as well as a cooperation agreement with Egypt. She said the mission now had ten international staff and eight locals on standby.
“We will also be ready to assist in reconstruction and recovery,” she said.
Kallas said the EU was committed to a two-state solution to the broader Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“Of course lasting peace means compromises on both sides,” she said. “I think there is a chance to prevent further loss of life with this ceasefire.”
Aid agencies ready Gaza push but warn of mammoth obstacles
- On the ground in the territory, aid workers worry nothing will be enough to meet the need
- World Food Programme has enough food for one million people ‘waiting outside Gaza or on its way’
CAIRO: An Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal expected to take effect on Sunday has sparked hope for life-saving aid to reach Palestinians, but aid agencies warn of obstacles from destroyed infrastructure, massive need and collapsed law and order.
Announcing the truce, United States President Joe Biden said on Wednesday it would “surge much needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians.”
The United Nations’ humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher called it “a moment of hope and opportunity” but said “we should be under no illusions how tough it will still be to get support to survivors.”
On the ground in the territory, where nearly all 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once, aid workers worry nothing will be enough to meet the need.
“Everything has been destroyed. Children are on the streets. You can’t pinpoint just one priority,” Doctors Without Borders (MSF) coordinator Amande Bazerolle said by phone from Gaza.
Speaking from the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, Mohammed Al-Khatib, of Medical Aid for Palestinians, said local aid workers haven’t stopped for 15 months even though they themselves are displaced.
“Everyone is exhausted,” he said.
In the hunger-stricken makeshift shelters set up in former schools, bombed-out houses and cemeteries, hundreds of thousands lack even plastic sheeting to protect from winter rains and biting winds, Gavin Kelleher, of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said.
Even if the bombs stop, agencies like his have to focus on the basics of emergency response, including bringing in “tarpaulins, rope and fixtures to close gaping holes” in buildings.
“At least until we stop seeing children dying of hypothermia,” he said via text message from Gaza.
By last week, hypothermia had killed at least eight people – four newborns, three infants and one adult – according to a health ministry toll used by the World Health Organization.
On Wednesday, Egypt’s state-linked Al-Qahera News reported coordination was underway to reopen the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border. It was one of the main humanitarian entry points but has been closed since Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side in May.
The truce is based on a plan Biden presented in mid-2024 that foresaw a surge in aid to 600 trucks per day, or more than eight times the December average reported by the United Nations.
The World Food Programme said Thursday it had enough food for one million people “waiting outside Gaza or on its way.”
On the Egyptian side of the border, a source in the Egyptian Red Crescent said up to 1,000 trucks are waiting “for their entry into Gaza.”
But with air strikes continuing to pound the territory, where aid groups and the UN have regularly accused Israel of impeding aid flows – which Israeli denies – aid workers were skeptical.
MSF’s Bazerolle said the promise of hundreds of trucks a day “is not even feasible technically.”
“Since Rafah has been destroyed, the infrastructure is not there to be able to cope with that level of logistics,” she explained, with bombs audible in the background.
Aid that does arrive is subject to looting by both armed gangs and desperate civilians.
“The Israelis have targeted the police, so there’s no one to protect the shipments” from looting, which Bazerolle said will continue “as long as there’s not enough aid entering.”
After more than a year of the “systematic dismantling of the rule of law” in Gaza, NRC’s Kelleher called for “the resumption of a Palestinian civilian police force.”
The situation is especially dire in northern Gaza.
Bazerolle, who says MSF missions in the area have been targeted by Israel, says the group hopes to send teams to the north “to at least treat patients where they are,” in the absence of hospitals.
According to the WHO, only one hospital, Al-Awda, is partially functioning in the north.
WHO’s Rik Peeperkorn said that, in addition to hospital capacity, his agency will focus on “the very basic things” including water, electricity and waste management systems in Gaza.
Still, the displaced will hope to head back – including Khatib himself – if the truce holds.
Many, he said, “will return to find their entire neighborhoods destroyed” and without food or shelter.
“People aren’t even talking about rebuilding their houses, but just the most basic essential needs,” he continued.
“We’re closing one chapter of suffering and opening a new one,” he predicted, before adding: “At least there is some hope of the bloodshed ending.”
WHO upbeat on scaling up aid under Gaza ceasefire terms
- The WHO plans to bring in an unspecified number of prefabricated hospitals to support Gaza’s decimated health sector, he added
GENEVA: A World Health Organization official said on Friday that it should be possible to scale up aid imports into Gaza massively to around 600 trucks a day under the terms of a ceasefire deal.
“I think the possibility is very much there and specifically when other crossings will be opened up,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told a Geneva press briefing.
The WHO plans to bring in an unspecified number of prefabricated hospitals to support Gaza’s decimated health sector, he added.
First Syria visit by an EU official since Assad’s fall
- Syrian state news agency SANA published images of Lahbib with the country’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa
Damascus: EU crisis management chief Hadja Lahbib on Friday became the first European Union official to visit Syria since Islamist-led forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad last month.
Syrian state news agency SANA published images of Lahbib with the country’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, reporting he was meeting with “a delegation from the European Commission” headed by the EU official.
