RAMADI: With a five-star hotel, malls and other real estate projects, the Iraqi city of Ramadi, ruined by more than a decade of war, is witnessing a construction boom led by the parliamentary speaker.
Mohammed Al-Halbussi, trained as a civil engineer and who cultivates an image of dynamism, hails from the province of Anbar and is hoping to be re-elected in the Oct. 10 national poll.
Supporters say the vote here will be akin to a plebiscite in favor of a new term for Halbussi, and his movement, whom they credit for pushing Ramadi’s nascent economic revival after it was left in rubble following the battle to defeat the Daesh terrorist group.
Sunni Muslim majority Ramadi is the capital of Anbar, a vast desert province west of Baghdad that covers a third of the country and extends to the borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, insurgents in Ramadi and nearby Fallujah fought some of the toughest battles against American forces.
A decade later, Anbar’s Sunni tribes rose up against the Shiite-led Baghdad government, which many in the province accuse of marginalization.
Then, Daesh terrorists captured Fallujah and Ramadi, before government forces reconquered the cities from the end of 2015.
Since then, Ramadi has strived to erase its bloody past and rebuild, with projects driven by Halbussi aimed at boosting the economy and wooing investors.
Halbussi, 40, travels frequently about the region, trading his elegant suits for jeans during field visits to shepherd the projects in Anbar province.
Along the banks of the Euphrates River, workers are busy finishing construction of Ramadi’s first five-star hotel, complete with a Euphrates riverfront marina and swimming pools.
The 15-story, 184-room hotel estimated to cost $60 million is a joint venture between the municipality and private investors.
Its builder, Hatem Ghadbane, praised the local authorities but reserved his plaudits for Halbussi.
“He deserves all the credit for construction projects underway in Anbar province, as well as for political stability and security,” Ghadbane said.
Over the years Halbussi has been known to maintain good ties with the Baghdad federal government while cultivating relations with regional powers.
In September, he traveled to the UAE for talks with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and a few days later he met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo.
“He has climbed up the political and administrative ladder quickly as he went from a parliamentarian to governor to speaker all in his 30s,” said Iraqi political analyst Hamzeh Hadad.
Halbussi attained the speaker’s post with the support of the pro-Iran bloc. “He has moved up so fast ... he has gone against the old guard of Sunni politicians. And he managed to unite them against him,” Hadad said.
Portraits of Halbussi, with his slick black hair, and candidates from his Taqadom (“Progress” in Arabic) party have been plastered all across Ramadi, rivaling those of challengers from the Azm coalition comprising traditional Sunni figures.
The candidates’ pictures rise above impeccably paved avenues adorned with new lamps and lawns. City work crews can often be seen touching up a sidewalk or street, but not everyone is impressed.
Iraqi journalist Amr Alkubaisi, who is close to Azm, has denounced the Halbussi-led projects as mere “smoke and mirrors.”
Taqadom, he wrote on social media in September, is “a personal project” trying to promote itself by pushing “medium-size projects like the tarring of roads.”
Challenges abound. The main public hospital, for example, is functioning but awaits the conclusion of restoration work — while a new private hospital with sophisticated equipment opened in April.
Anbar governor Ali Farhan Al-Dulaimi, who is running with Taqadom, said a series of projects are planned, including an international airport for Ramadi.
Ramadi municipality head Omar Dabbous is proud of his city’s economic revival and he, too, credited Halbussi for being a driving force behind efforts to attract investments.
“We hope he will stay at the top of the pyramid (and win a second term) in order to follow up on what he and his team have started,” Dabbous said.
The analyst Hadad said it would be “very difficult to predict” if Halbussi can win a second term as speaker.
“But if ever someone were to do so, it is Halbussi.”
Fast-rising Iraqi politician pushes rebirth of war-scarred city of Ramadi
https://arab.news/gsxjz
Fast-rising Iraqi politician pushes rebirth of war-scarred city of Ramadi
- Mohammed Al-Halbussi, who cultivates an image of dynamism, is hoping to be re-elected in the Oct. 10 poll
UNESCO ‘enhanced protection’ for 34 Lebanon heritage sites
- Baalbek and Tyre ‘will receive technical and financial assistance from UNESCO’
PARIS: Dozens of heritage sites in Lebanon were granted “provisional enhanced protection” by UNESCO on Monday, offering a higher level of legal shielding as fighting continues between Israel and Hezbollah militants.
The 34 cultural properties affected “now benefit from the highest level of immunity against attack and use for military purposes,” the United Nations cultural body said in a statement.
Several Israeli strikes in recent weeks on Baalbek in the east and Tyre in the south — both strongholds of Iran-backed Hezbollah — hit close to ancient Roman ruins designated as World Heritage sites.
UNESCO said the decision “helps send a signal to the entire international community of the urgent need to protect these sites.”
“Non-compliance with these clauses would constitute ‘serious violations’ of the 1954 Hague Convention and... potential grounds for prosecution,” it added.
Hezbollah and Israel have been at war since late September, when Israel broadened its focus from fighting Hamas in the Gaza Strip to securing its northern border, even as the Gaza war plows on.
UNESCO’s move followed an appeal Sunday by hundreds of cultural professionals, including archaeologists and academics, to activate the enhanced protection.
Baalbek and Tyre “will receive technical and financial assistance from UNESCO to reinforce their legal protections, improve risk anticipation and management measures, and provide further training for site managers,” the body said.
Refugees who escaped from war-torn Tuti Island speak of hunger, disease
- Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices
JUBA: Mohammed Awad and his family are among dozens who escaped Sudan’s Tuti Island earlier this year amid a siege by the Rapid Support Forces, finding refuge at a shelter after surviving for months on scant food and the risk of disease.
The island in the middle of the Nile serves as a microcosm for the devastation unleashed by a war that began in April 2023.
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, significantly more than previously recorded, according to a new report.
Activists report that the Rapid Support Forces charged people large sums to evacuate them.
HIGHLIGHT
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war.
“There is no good food, and there’s a lot of diseases, there is no sleep, no safety,” Awad said, holding one of his children at the shelter for displaced residents in Omdurman, an army-controlled refuge. The island is one of 14 places across Sudan at risk of famine, according to experts. Dengue fever has ravaged Tuti, a close-knit farming community.
Sarah Siraj, a mother who left with her two children, said six or seven people were dying daily, and that she was only able to have her children treated for dengue, a mosquito-borne disease, once she reached Omdurman.
Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices.
Rabeea Abdel Gader, a nutrition guide, has been treating newly arrived families at a city shelter.
“We ask the mother about what they eat ... Sometimes the mother responds with her tears,” she said.
Meanwhile, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Monday calling for an immediate end to hostilities in Sudan.
Lebanon says Israeli strike on central Beirut kills four
- “A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq Al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said
- The densely populated working class district of Zuqaq Al-Blat has welcomed many displaced people who fled Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said Israel struck a densely packed Beirut neighborhood on Monday, killing at least four people, in the third attack in two days on the city’s central districts.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Zuqaq Al-Blat in Beirut killed four people and injured 18,” a ministry statement said in preliminary toll.
The official National News Agency (NNA) said an apartment near a Shiite Muslim place of worship had been targeted.
“A hostile drone targeted a residential apartment behind the Husseiniya of Zuqaq Al-Blat in the capital Beirut, causing great damage,” the NNA said.
An AFP correspondent in the area heard two blasts, and said the raid badly damaged the ground floor of a building.
Reporters elsewhere in the city heard ambulance sirens.
The densely populated working class district of Zuqaq Al-Blat has welcomed many displaced people who fled Israeli strikes on south and east Lebanon, as well as south Beirut — areas where the Iran-backed Hezbollah holds sway.
The strike hit near a building housing many displaced Lebanese, the AFP correspondent said.
It was cordoned off by security forces as residents rushed to help in the rescue efforts, he added.
Several hundreds of meters (yards) away was the site of a similar strike on Sunday, in the Mar Elias neighborhood, which the Lebanese health ministry said killed three people including a woman.
Israel has not commented on Monday’s and Sunday’s strikes in central Beirut, but confirmed one air raid in the area the killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.
The strike, also on Sunday, hit the Lebanese office of the Syrian Baath party, killing Afif and four other members of his media team, Hezbollah said, with the health ministry saying seven people had been killed in total.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,510 people have been killed since Hezbollah-Israel clashes began in October last year, with most casualties recorded since war erupted in September.
US hits Israeli settler group with sanctions over West Bank violence
- Sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets
- Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began
WASHINGTON: The United States imposed sanctions on Monday on an Israeli settler group it accused of helping perpetrate violence in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.
The Amana settler group “a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
The sanctions also target a subsidiary of Amana called Binyanei Bar Amana, described by Treasury as a company that builds and sell homes in Israeli settlements and settler outposts.
The sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets. The United Kingdom and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Amana.
Israel has settled the West Bank since capturing it during the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say the settlements have undermined the prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical Judea and Samaria, and the settlers cite biblical ties to the land.
Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began over a year ago.
Most countries deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position disputed by Israel which sees the territory as a security bulwark. In 2019, the then-Trump administration abandoned the long-held US position that the settlements are illegal before it was restored by President Joe Biden.
Last week, nearly 90 US lawmakers urged Biden to impose sanctions on members of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
Around 100 projectiles fired from Lebanon into Israel: army
- Israel’s first responders said two people, including a 65-year-old woman with a shrapnel wound to the neck, sustained light injuries in northern Israel
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon into northern Israel on Monday, with the country’s air defense system intercepting some of them.
Israel’s first responders said two people, including a 65-year-old woman with a shrapnel wound to the neck, sustained light injuries in northern Israel and were taken to hospital.
The military said in a first statement that “as of 15:00 (1300 GMT), approximately 60 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organization have crossed from Lebanon into Israel today.”
Later it said, “following the sirens that sounded between 15:09 and 15:11 in the Western Galilee area, approximately 40 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.”
Israel has escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon since September 23 and has since sent in ground troops, following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in support of Hamas in Gaza.
