RABAT: Morocco’s Christian minority on Thursday called on authorities in the Muslim-majority country to guarantee religious freedoms, ahead of a visit by Pope Francis.
The Coordination of Moroccan Christians, a group representing converts to Christianity in a nation that is 99 percent Muslim, appealed for “basic freedoms of which we, Moroccan Christians, are still often deprived.”
These include freedom of public worship as well as the right to have church or civil weddings and Christian funeral rites and education, it said in a statement.
“We dream of a free Morocco” which embraces religious diversity, the group said, adding that it hopes Pope Francis’s visit this month will be a “historic occasion” for the country.
“We also call on the Moroccan authorities to no longer put pressure on the country’s official churches, including the Catholic church in Morocco, to dissuade them from accepting” converts to Christianity, the statement said.
The pontiff is due to visit the North African country on March 30-31 at the invitation of King Mohammed VI.
More than 40,000 Christians — mostly foreigners — are estimated to live in Morocco, whose king describes himself as the “commander of the faithful.”
Religious pluralism is enshrined in the constitution and freedom of worship is guaranteed, according to the Moroccan authorities.
Morocco Christians urge religious freedom before pope visit
Morocco Christians urge religious freedom before pope visit
- Morocco is 99 percent Muslim
- The pontiff is due to visit the North African country on March 30-31 at the invitation of King Mohammed VI
Israel’s Gaza war producing ‘staggering’ carbon footprint
- Emissions from military activity, reconstruction more than annual footprint of 100 countries: Study
- Analyst: ‘Sobering reminder of the ecological and environmental cost of Israel’s genocidal campaign’
LONDON: The emissions caused by Israel’s war on Gaza as well as estimated reconstruction costs are greater than the annual footprint of 100 individual countries, new research has found.
The war caused more carbon emissions than the annual combined total of Costa Rica and Estonia in its first 15 months.
The research, published by the Social Science Research Network, was shared exclusively with The Guardian.
Destroying, clearing and rebuilding the Gaza Strip could produce 31 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), researchers from the UK and US found.
There is no obligation for states to record military emissions to the UN’s climate body, with researchers warning that the lack of accountability could lead to an underreporting of the global carbon footprint.
The study’s data, which also includes estimates of emissions relating to Hamas and Hezbollah activity, highlights the asymmetry between each side.
Hamas’s use of bunker fuel and rockets accounted for about 3,000 tCO2e, just 0.2 percent of the conflict’s total carbon footprint.
Israel’s use of weapons, equipment, tanks and ordnance produced 50 percent of emissions, the study found.
Researchers also included estimated emissions from Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has traded strikes with Israel over the course of the war. Iran and Israel’s tit-for-tat attacks, and the war in southern Lebanon, were also recorded.
All military activity arising from the Gaza war produced the equivalent, in emissions, of charging 2.6 billion smartphones or running 84 gas power plants for a year.
The figure includes the tC02e estimate — 557,359 — of the pre-war construction of Hamas’s tunnel network and Israel’s “iron wall” barrier surrounding Gaza. The findings could eventually help calculate claims for reparations, The Guardian reported.
More than 99 percent of the tCO2e generated between Oct. 7, 2023, and the temporary ceasefire in January this year was attributed to Israeli bombardment and the invasion of Gaza.
US involvement in the emissions was also highlighted by researchers. They found that almost 30 percent of greenhouse gases generated in the same period came from regular resupply flights carrying military equipment to Israel from American stockpiles in Europe.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza has produced an estimated 60 million tonnes of toxic rubble that requires clearing, producing what researchers warned would be the biggest emissions toll of the conflict.
Removing debris, rebuilding 436,000 destroyed apartments, roads, 700 schools, mosques and administrative sites will produce an estimated 29.4 million tCO2e.
Zena Agha, analyst for Palestinian policy network Al-Shabaka, said: “This report is a staggering and sobering reminder of the ecological and environmental cost of Israel’s genocidal campaign … But this is also the US, UK and EU’s war, all of which have provided seemingly limitless military resources to enable Israel to devastate the most densely populated place on the planet.
“This brings home the destabilizing (regional) impact of the Israeli settler state and its inseparability from the western military-industrial complex.”
In producing the report, researchers used open-source information, media articles and data from independent groups, including UN agencies.
Hadeel Ikhmais, head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority, said: “Wars not only kill people but also release toxic chemicals, destroy infrastructure, pollute soil, air and water resources and accelerate climate and environmental disasters.
“War also destroys climate adaptation and hinders environmental management. Not counting carbon emissions is a black hole in accountability that allows governments to get away from their environmental crimes.”
Three suspects detained for storming Libya’s state oil firm, attorney general says
- “The public prosecution reviewed the evidence of the storming of the Corporation’s headquarters,” the attorney general said
- The three suspects were handed over by the defense ministry
TRIPOLI: Three suspects have been detained for allegedly storming the Libyan state oil firm’s headquarters in Tripoli, the country’s attorney general said on Friday, a day after its rival government in the east threatened to declare force majeure on oil fields and ports citing assaults on the firm.
The National Oil Corporation is based in Tripoli under the control of the internationally-recognized Government of National Unity. The parallel government in Benghazi in the east is not internationally recognized, but most oilfields in the major oil producing country are under the control of eastern Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar.
The NOC has previously denied its corporation’s headquarters were stormed, calling it “completely false” and quoted its acting chief as calling it “nothing more than a limited personal dispute that occurred in the reception area.”
But the eastern-based government has threatened to also temporarily relocate the NOC’s headquarters to “safe cities” such as Ras Lanuf and Brega, both of which it controls.
“The public prosecution reviewed the evidence of the storming of the Corporation’s headquarters, inspected the scene, reviewed the video footage recorded at the time of the incident and heard the testimonies of those present,” the attorney general said in a statement.
The three suspects were handed over by the defense ministry, which was asked “to arrest the remaining contributors to the incident,” the attorney general said.
The national output of crude oil in the past 24 hours reached 1,389,055 barrels per day, the NOC said on Wednesday, reflecting normal levels.
Libya’s oil output has been disrupted repeatedly in the chaotic decade since 2014 when the country divided between two rival authorities in the east and west following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
RSF drone strike kills six in Sudan hospital: army source
- “The militia launched a drone strike on the Social Insurance Hospital, killing six and wounding 12,” an army source said
- A medical source at El-Obeid Hospital, the city’s main facility, confirmed the toll
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces bombarded El-Obeid on Friday, killing six people in a hospital in the key southern city, medical and army sources said.
“The militia launched a drone strike on the Social Insurance Hospital, killing six and wounding 12, simultaneously attacking residential areas of the city with heavy artillery,” an army source told AFP, adding that the bombardment had also hit a second hospital in the city center.
A medical source at El-Obeid Hospital, the city’s main facility, confirmed the toll, adding that the Social Insurance Hospital had been forced shut “due to damage” sustained in the drone strike.
El-Obeid, a strategic city 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum which is the capital of North Kordofan state, was besieged by the RSF for nearly two years before the regular army broke the siege in February.
It was one of a series of counteroffensives that also saw the army recapture Khartoum, but El-Obeid has continued to come under RSF bombardment.
The city is a key staging post on the army’s supply route to the west, where the besieged city of El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast Darfur region still under its control.
The RSF and the army have clashed repeatedly along the road between El-Obeid and El-Fasher in recent weeks.
On Thursday, the paramilitaries said they retaken the town of Al-Khoei, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of El-Obeid, after the army recaptured it earlier this month.
The war between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million since it erupted in April 2023.
The United Nation says the conflict has created the world’s biggest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the center, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Since losing Khartoum in March, the RSF has adopted a two-prong strategy: long-range drone strikes on army-held cities accompanied by a counteroffensive in the south.
On Thursday, the paramilitaries also announced they had recaptured Dibeibat, in South Kordofan state some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of El-Obeid, another town that the army had retaken earlier this month.
Swathes of South Kordofan are controlled by a rebel group allied with the RSF, Abdelaziz Al-Hilu’s faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.
Israel minister says ‘we will build Jewish Israeli state’ in West Bank
- “This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land,” Katz said
- Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank
JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank, a day after the government announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the Palestinian territory.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, seen as a major obstacle to lasting peace, are regularly condemned by the United Nations as illegal under international law, and Thursday’s announcement drew sharp foreign criticism.
“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land — and it is also a clear message to (French President Emmanuel) Macron and his associates: they will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground,” Katz was quoted as saying Friday in a statement from his office.
“The paper will be thrown into the trash bin of history, and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper.”
Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank.
Sa-Nur was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, promoted by then prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
During a visit to Singapore on Friday, French President Macron asserted that recognition of a Palestinian state, with some conditions, was “not only a moral duty, but a political necessity.”
An international conference meant to resurrect the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is set to take place in June at the UN headquarters in New York.
A diplomat in Paris close to preparations for the conference said it should pave the way for more countries to recognize a Palestinian state.
Macron said in April that France could recognize a Palestinian state in June.
Following Israel’s announcement of the new settlements on Thursday, Britain called the move a “deliberate obstacle” to Palestinian statehood, while UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said it pushed efforts toward a two-state solution “in the wrong direction.”
11 Sudanese migrants killed in a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say
- Authorities say 11 Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed in a car crash in the desert in Libya
- The dead included three women and two children. A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash
The crash between the migrants’ vehicle and a truck happened early Friday in the desert, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the Libyan town of Kufra, the town’s Ambulance and Emergency Service said in a statement.
The dead included three women and two children, the service’s director Ibrahim Abu Al-Hassan told The Associated Press.
A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash, he added.
It was the latest deadly incident involving Sudanese migrants in the Libyan desert.
Earlier this month, seven Sudanese were found dead after their vehicle broke down in the desert. The vehicle broke down in a path used by traffickers between Chad and Libya, leaving 34 migrants on board stranded for several days in the desert.
Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
It has become a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East to seek better lives in Europe. The country shares borders with six nations and has a long coastline along the Mediterranean.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across Libya’s borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled to Libya since April 2023 after simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into street fighting across the country.
The conflict in Sudan has turned into a civil war that killed thousands people, displaced over 14 million, and pushed parts of the county into famine.
