Algeria forest fires extinguished: emergency services

A view shows a burnt area following a wildfire in the village of Ait Sid Ali in Algeria on Monday. All forest fires in Algeria have been extinguished, the emergency services said Wednesday. (Reuters)
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Updated 18 August 2021
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Algeria forest fires extinguished: emergency services

  • "No forest fire was recorded" on Wednesday morning, Algeria’s emergency services said
  • Government has blamed arsonists and a blistering heatwave for the blazes as 22 suspects were arrested

Algiers: All forest fires in Algeria have been extinguished, the emergency services said Wednesday, ending over a week of deadly blazes that left at least 90 people dead.
“No forest fire was recorded” on Wednesday morning, the emergency services in the North African nation said.
Fires broke out on August 9, and at one point dozens were raging in multiple sites across northern Algeria, burning tens of thousands of hectares of forest.
The government has blamed arsonists and a blistering heatwave for the blazes, and authorities have arrested 22 suspects.
Police have also arrested 61 people over the lynching of a man falsely accused of arson, an incident that sparked outrage. The mob also set the victim on fire.
Authorities have appeared to point the finger for the incident and the blazes at the independence movement of the hard-hit mainly Berber region of Kabylie, which extends along the Mediterranean coast east of the capital Algiers.
The Movement for Self-determination of Kabylie (MAK), which Algiers classifies as a “terrorist organization,” has rejected the accusations.
Algeria is Africa’s biggest country by surface area, and although much of the interior is desert, the north has over four million hectares (10 million acres) of forest, which is hit every summer by fires.
Critics say the authorities failed to prepare for the blazes.
Algeria’s army mobilized five helicopters and its emergency services three water-bombing helicopters to fight the flames, with firefighting aircraft also coming to help from Europe.
Algeria has since decided to buy four firefighting planes.
Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that man-made global warming will bring higher temperatures and more extreme weather events across the world.


Iran’s supreme leader makes first public appearance since Iran-Israel war started

Updated 13 sec ago
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Iran’s supreme leader makes first public appearance since Iran-Israel war started

  • Ali Khamenei’s absence during the war suggested the Iranian leader, who has final say on all state matters, had been in seclusion in a bunker
  • State TV in Iran showed him waving and nodding to the chanting crowd, which rose to its feet as he entered and sat at a mosque in the capital
Iran’ s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday made his first public appearance since the 12-day war between Israel and Iran began, attending a mourning ceremony on the eve of Ashoura.
Khamenei’s absence during the war suggested the Iranian leader, who has final say on all state matters, had been in seclusion in a bunker — something not acknowledged by state media. State TV in Iran showed him waving and nodding to the chanting crowd, which rose to its feet as he entered and sat at a mosque next to his office and residence in the capital, Tehran.
There was no immediate report on any public statement made. Iranian officials such as the parliament speaker were present. Such events are always held under heavy security.
After the US inserted itself into the war by bombing three key nuclear sites in Iran, US President Donald Trump sent warnings via social media to the 86-year-old Khamenei that the US knew where he was but had no plans to kill him, “at least for now.”
On June 26, shortly after a ceasefire began, Khamenei made his first public statement in days, saying in a prerecorded statement that Tehran had delivered a “slap to America’s face” by striking a US air base in Qatar, and warning against further attacks by the US or Israel on Iran.
Trump replied, in remarks to reporters and on social media: “Look, you’re a man of great faith. A man who’s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth. You got beat to hell.”
Iran has acknowledged the deaths of more than 900 people in the war, as well as thousands of injured. It also has confirmed serious damage to its nuclear facilities, and has denied access to them for inspectors with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Iran’s president on Wednesday ordered the country to suspend its cooperation with the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, further limiting inspectors’ ability to track a program that had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels. Israel launched the war fearing that Iran was trying to develop atomic weapons.
It remains unclear just how badly damaged the nuclear facilities are, whether any enriched uranium or centrifuges had been moved before the attacks, and whether Tehran still would be willing to continue negotiations with the United States over its nuclear program.
Israel also targeted defense systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists. In retaliation, Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of them intercepted, killing 28 people and causing damage in many areas.
Ceremony commemorates a death that caused rift in Islam
The ceremony that Khamenei hosted Saturday was a remembrance of the 7th century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein.
Shiites represent over 10 percent of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, and they view Hussein as the rightful successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Hussein’s death in battle at the hands of Sunnis at Karbala, south of Baghdad, created a rift in Islam and continues to play a key role in shaping Shiite identity.
In predominantly Shiite Iran, red flags represented Hussein’s blood and black funeral tents and clothes represented mourning. Processions of chest-beating and self-flagellating men demonstrated fervor. Some sprayed water over the mourners in the intense heat.
Reports of problems accessing the Internet
NetBlocks, a global Internet monitor, reported late Saturday on X that there was a “major disruption to Internet connectivity” in Iran. It said the disruption corroborated widespread user reports of problems accessing the Internet. The development comes just weeks after authorities shut down telecoms during the war. NetBlocks later said Internet access had been restored after some two hours.

Shiite neighborhoods in Damascus commemorate Ashoura quietly after Assad’s ouster

Updated 37 min 40 sec ago
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Shiite neighborhoods in Damascus commemorate Ashoura quietly after Assad’s ouster

  • Syrian Shiites already felt they were in a precarious position after Assad’s ouster
  • Shiite neighborhoods of Damascus are now subdued; the hotels once brimming with religious tourists are empty, there are no banners or processions

DAMASCUS: Shiite pilgrims from Syria and abroad used to flock to the Sayyida Zeinab shrine outside of Damascus every year to commemorate Ashoura, a solemn day marking the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.
In the days leading up to Ashoura, the streets would be lined with black and red mourning banners and funeral tents. On the day of the commemoration, black-clad mourners would process through the streets, while in gathering halls known as “husseiniyas,” the faithful would listen and weep as clerics recounted the death of Imam Hussein and his 72 companions in the battle of Karbala in present-day Iraq.
Protecting the shrine dedicated to Sayyida Zeinab, the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter and sister to Hussein, from Sunni extremists became a rallying cry for Shiite fighters during Syria’s 14-year civil war. It was often pointed to as justification for the intervention of militants from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq in the Syrian conflict in support of former President Bashar Assad.
This year, after Assad’s ouster in a lightning rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgents, the Shiite neighborhoods of Damascus were subdued. The hotels that were once brimming with religious tourists were empty. There were no banners or processions.
The faithful continued to observe their rituals inside the shrine and prayer halls, but quietly and with strict security measures.
Violence takes its toll
Syrian Shiites already felt they were in a precarious position after Assad’s ouster. Their fears increased after a suicide bomber blew himself up in a church outside of Damascus last month, killing 25 people and wounding dozens more. Government officials blamed the attack on a cell of the Daesh group and said they had thwarted plans by the same cell to attack Sayyida Zeinab.
In Damascus’ Zain al Abdeed neighborhood, mourners entered gathering halls after going through a search and screening with metal detectors.
Qassem Soleiman, head of a body that coordinates between the Shiite community and the new government, said Shiite leaders had agreed with the state that they would hold their Ashoura rituals but would “cut back on certain things outside of the halls in order for no one to get hurt and for there not to be problems.”
The attack on the Mar Elias Church in Dweil’a “put us into a state of great fear and anxiety,” he said. “So we tried as much as possible to do our commemorations and rituals and ceremonies for Ashoura inside the halls.”
Jafaar Mashhadiyia, an attendant at one of the gathering halls, echoed similar fears.
“The security situation is still not stable — there are not a lot of preventive measures being taken in the streets,” he said. “The groups that are trying to carry out terrorist attacks have negative views of Shiites, so there is a fear of security incidents.”
Worry affects the economy
The absence of pilgrims coming from abroad has been an economic hit to the area.
“There are no visitors,” said a hotel owner in the Sayyida Zeinab area near the shrine, who asked to be identified only by his nickname, Abu Mohammad, because of security concerns. During the lead-up to Ashoura, “the hotels should be 100 percent full,” he said. “The Iraqis normally fill up the area.” But this year, they didn’t come.
His economic woes predate Assad’s fall. In the months before the rebel offensive in Syria, a low-level conflict between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah escalated into a full-scale war in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands fled from Lebanon across the border into Syria to escape the bombardment, with many of them staying in the hotels in Sayyida Zeinab at discounted rates, Abu Mohammad said.
A guard at a checkpoint in Sayyida Zeinab, who gave only his nickname, Abu Omar, in accordance with regulations, said he had seen no security issues in the area since the fall of Assad.
“There are attempts to sow discord and sectarianism by corrupt people who were with the former regime and want to play on the string of sectarianism and destroy the country and create issues between us,” he said, describing them as “individual efforts.”
Abu Omar pointed to a group of local men sitting in chairs on the sidewalk nearby smoking hookah.
“If they didn’t feel safe here next to us, next to a security checkpoint, they wouldn’t come and sit here.”
Soleiman said he hopes that next year, the foreign pilgrims will be back and Shiites will be able to openly commemorate Ashoura, with Syrians from other groups coming to see the rituals as they did in the past.
“We hope that next year things will return to how they were previously, and that is a call to the state and a call to the General Security agency and all the political figures,” he said. “We are one of the components in building this state.”


A boy in Gaza with brain damage fights for his life amid blockade

Updated 06 July 2025
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A boy in Gaza with brain damage fights for his life amid blockade

  • Nearly 21 months into the conflict, it is nearly impossible for the critically wounded to get the care they need, doctors and aid workers say
  • Since the Israeli blockade on Gaza began in March, 317 patients, including 216 children, have left the territory for medical treatment alongside nearly 500 of their companions, according to the World Health Organization

BEIRUT: It’s as if the whole weight of Israel’s war in Gaza has fallen on Amr Al-Hams. The 3-year-old has shrapnel in his brain from an Israeli strike on his family’s tent. His pregnant mother was killed. His father is paralyzed by grief over the death of his longtime sweetheart.
Now the boy is lying in a hospital bed, unable to speak, unable to move, losing weight, while doctors don’t have the supplies to treat his brain damage or help in his rehabilitation after a weekslong blockade and constant bombardment.
Recently out of intensive care, Amr’s frail body twists in visible pain. His wide eyes dart around the room. His aunt is convinced he’s looking for his mother. He can’t speak, but she believes he is trying to say “mom.”
“I am trying as much as I can. It is difficult,” said his aunt Nour Al-Hams, his main caregiver, sitting next to him on the bed in Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. “What he is living through is not easy.”
To reassure him, his aunt sometimes says his mother will be back soon. Other times, she tries to distract him, handing him a small ball.
The war has decimated the health system
The war began Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people captive. Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up most of the dead but does not specify how many were fighters or civilians.
Nearly 21 months into the conflict that displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, it is nearly impossible for the critically wounded to get the care they need, doctors and aid workers say.
The health care sector has been decimated: Nearly half of the territory’s 36 hospitals have been put out of service. Daily bombings and strikes overwhelm the remaining facilities, which are operating only partially. They struggle with shortages of anything from fuel, gauze and sutures to respirators or scanners that have broken down and can’t be replaced.
Israeli forces have raided and besieged medical facilities, claiming Hamas militants have used them as command centers. Doctors have been killed or were displaced, unable to reach hospitals because of continued military operations.
For more than 2 1/2 months, Israel blocked all food, medicine and other supplies from entering Gaza, accusing Hamas of siphoning off aid to fund its military activities, though the UN said there was no systematic diversion. The population was pushed toward famine.
Since mid-May, Israel has allowed in a trickle of aid, including medical supplies.
Gaza’s Health Ministry estimates that 33,000 children have been injured during the war, including 5,000 requiring long-term rehabilitation and critical care. Over 1,000 children, like Amr, are suffering from brain or spinal injuries or amputated limbs.
“Gaza will be dealing with future generations of kids living with all sorts of disabilities, not just brain, but limb disabilities that are consequences of amputation that could have been prevented if the health system was not under the pressures it is under, wasn’t systematically targeted and destroyed as it was,” said Tanya Hajj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care specialist who has volunteered multiple times in Gaza with international medical organizations.
A fateful journey north
In April, one week before her due date, Amr’s mother, Inas, persuaded her husband to visit her parents in northern Gaza. They trekked from the tent they lived in on Gaza’s southern coast to the tent where her parents live.
They were having an evening meal when the strike hit. Amr’s mother and her unborn baby, his grandfather and his brother and sister were killed.
Amr was rushed to the ICU at Indonesian Hospital, the largest in northern Gaza. A scan confirmed shrapnel in his brain and reduced brain function. A breathing tube was inserted into his throat.
“He is 3. Why should he bear the weight of a rocket?” his aunt asked.
His father, Mohammed, was too stunned to even visit the ICU. His wife had been the love of his life since childhood, the aunt said. He barely spoke.
Doctors said Amr needed advanced rehabilitation. But while he was at the hospital, Israeli forces attacked the facility — encircling its premises and causing damage to its communication towers, water supplies and one of its wards. Evacuation orders were issued for the area, and patients were transferred to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Another treacherous journey
But Shifa was overwhelmed with mass casualties, and staff asked the family to take Amr south, even though no ambulances or oxygen tanks could be spared.
The father and aunt had to take Amr, fresh out of ICU with the tube in his throat, in a motorized rickshaw for the 25-kilometer (15-mile) drive to Nasser Hospital.
Amr was in pain, his oxygen levels dropped. He was in and out of consciousness. “We were reading the Qur’an all along the road,” said his aunt, praying they would survive the bombings and Amr the bumpy trip without medical care.
About halfway, an ambulance arrived. Amr made it to Nasser Hospital with oxygen blood levels so low he was again admitted to ICU.
Unable to get the care he needs
Still, Nasser Hospital could not provide Amr with everything he needed. Intravenous nutrients are not available, Nasser’s head of pediatrics, Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, said. The fortified milk Amr needed disappeared from the market and the hospital after weeks of Israel’s blockade. He has lost about half his weight.
When he came out of the ICU, Nour shared his bed with him at night and administered his medication. She grinds rice or lentils into a paste to feed him through a syringe connected to his stomach.
“We have starvation in Gaza. There is nothing to eat,” said his aunt, who is a trained nurse. “There is nothing left.”
The care Amr has missed is likely to have long-term effects. Immediate care for brain injuries is critical, Hajj-Hassan said, as is follow-up physical and speech therapy.
Since the Israeli blockade on Gaza began in March, 317 patients, including 216 children, have left the territory for medical treatment alongside nearly 500 of their companions, according to the World Health Organization.
Over 10,000 people, including 2,500 children, await evacuation.
Amr is one of them.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in Gaza, coordinates medical evacuations after receiving requests from countries that will take the patients and security screenings. In recent weeks, over 2,000 patients and their companions have left for treatment, COGAT said, without specifying the time period.
Tess Ingram, spokesperson for the UN children’s agency, said the only hope for many critically injured who remain in Gaza is to get out. Countries need to “open their hearts, open their doors and open their hospitals to children who survived the unimaginable and are now languishing in pain,” she said.
Amr’s aunt reads his every move. He is unhappy with his diapers, she said. He outgrew them long ago. He was a smart kid, now he cries “feeling sorry for himself,” said Nour. He gets seizures and needs tranquilizers to sleep.
“His brain is still developing. What can they do for him? Will he be able to walk again?” Nour asked. “So long as he is in Gaza, there is no recovery for him.”


Israel army bulldozers plow through homes at West Bank camps

Updated 06 July 2025
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Israel army bulldozers plow through homes at West Bank camps

  • The “right of return” claimed by Palestinian refugees ever since the creation of Israel in 1948, remains one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • Palestinian residents of Tulkarem fear the clearances will erase not just buildings, but their own status as refugees from lands inhabited by generations of their ancestors in what is now Israel

TULKAREM: In the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the landscape has been transformed after Israeli army bulldozers plowed through its two refugee camps in what the military called a hunt for Palestinian militants.
The army gave thousands of displaced residents just a few hours to retrieve belongings from their homes before demolishing buildings and clearing wide avenues through the rubble.
Now residents fear the clearances will erase not just buildings, but their own status as refugees from lands inhabited by generations of their ancestors in what is now Israel.
The “right of return” to those lands, claimed by Palestinian refugees ever since the creation of Israel in 1948, remains one of the thorniest issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The army said it would demolish 104 more buildings in the Tulkarem camp this week in the latest stage of an operation that it launched in January during a truce in the Gaza war, billing it as an intensive crackdown on several camps that are strongholds of Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israel.
“We came back to the camp and found our house demolished. No one informed us, no one told us anything,” said Abd Al-Rahman Ajaj, 62, who had been hoping to collect his belongings on Wednesday.
Born in Tulkarem camp after his parents fled what is now the Israeli city of Netanya, about 12 kilometers (seven miles) to the west, Ajaj said he had not foreseen the scale of the Israeli operation.


It began with a raid on the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a longtime stronghold of Palestinian militants, and quickly spread to other cities, including Tulkarem, displacing at least 40,000 people, according to UN figures.
Vacating the camp after a warning of a raid, “we would usually come back two or three days later,” Ajaj told AFP.
Now left without a house, he echoed the sentiments of Palestinians of his parents’ generation, who thought their own displacement in 1948 would also be temporary.
“The last time, we left and never returned,” he said.
In Tulkarem, the Israeli army’s bulldozers plowed through the dense patchwork of narrow alleyways that had grown as Palestinian refugees settled in the area over the years.
Three wide arteries of concrete now streak the side of Tulkarem camp, allowing easy access for the army.
Piles of cinder blocks and concrete line the roadside like snowbanks after a plow’s passage.


Ajaj said the destruction had been gradual, drawn out over the course of the operation, which the army has dubbed “Iron Wall.”
Beyond the military value of wide access roads, many residents believe Israel is seeking to destroy the idea of the camps themselves, turning them into regular neighborhoods of the cities they flank.
Residents fear this would threaten their refugee status and their “right of return” to the land they or their forebears fled or were expelled from in 1948.
The current Israeli government — and particularly some of its far-right ministers, who demand the outright annexation of the West Bank — are firmly opposed to this demand, which they see as a demographic threat to Israel’s survival as a Jewish state.
“The aim is clearly to erase the national symbolism of the refugee camp, to eliminate the refugee issue and the right of return,” said Suleiman Al-Zuheiri, an advocate for residents of nearby Nur Shams, Tulkarem’s other refugee camp, where he also lives.
Zuheiri’s brother’s house was destroyed last week by the bulldozers.
“The scene was painful and tragic because a house is not just walls and a roof. It holds memories, dreams, hopes and very important belongings that we couldn’t retrieve,” he said.
Each demolished building housed at least six families on three floors, he added.
The land allocated to the camps was limited, so residents have had little choice but to build upwards to gain space, adding an extra story with each new generation.


Back at Tulkarem camp, 66-year-old Omar Owfi said he had managed to make two trips into the camp now occupied by Israeli soldiers to retrieve belongings on Wednesday.
He feared becoming homeless if his home was demolished.
“They don’t care what the house is worth. All they care about is demolishing. We’re the ones losing. We’ve lost everything,” he told AFP.
“They want to erase the camp — to remove as many buildings as possible and leave just streets.”
He said he feared for his children and grandchildren, as they dispersed to live with various relatives.
The Israeli supreme court froze the military order for mass demolitions in Tulkarem camp on Thursday, giving the state two months to answer a petition against them, said the Palestinian human rights group Adalah, which filed it.
But the physical damage has already been done as the army’s manhunt for militants continues.
As residents retrieved mattresses, wardrobes and air conditioning units from the camp on Wednesday under the surveillance of Israeli troops, gunshots rang out through the streets.
A loud explosion echoed across the city, followed by a column of dust rising as another building was apparently blown up, sending the smell of gunpowder wafting in the wind.


Israeli military says intercepted missile launched from Yemen

Updated 06 July 2025
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Israeli military says intercepted missile launched from Yemen

  • The attack was in “response to the crimes of the criminal Zionist enemy against civilians” in Gaza

SANAA: The Israeli military said on Sunday that it has intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel.
Sirens were activated across several areas in Israel in accordance with protocol, it said.
Israel threatened Yemen’s Houthi movement with a naval and air blockade if it the Iran-aligned group persists with attacks on Israel, in what it says is solidarity with Gaza.
Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, the Houthis have been firing at Israel and at shipping in the Red Sea, disrupting global trade.
Most of the dozens of missiles and drones they have launched have been intercepted or fallen short. Israel has carried out a series of retaliatory strikes.