DOUZROU, Morocco: Long, cold months have passed since an earthquake levelled Abdallah Oubelaid’s impoverished village in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains.
Every day, he or other villagers come to inspect the debris. They hope to find pieces of wood for heating and cooking, or even to recover objects of value that have so far escaped them, and all the while a bitter Oubelaid wonders when he will get the government aid that he applied for.
“Every time I ask, they tell me it’s going to happen,” Oubelaid, 35, said. “But I have children to feed and to clothe.”
Moroccan authorities said around 3,000 people died during the 6.8 magnitude earthquake that struck on September 8, leaving more than 60,000 houses damaged.
From Oubelaid’s village of Douzrou, around 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Marrakech city, residents give a death toll of about 80.
A pink and white mosque minaret stands out among the rubble of the village that clung to a corner of the mountainside.
The survivors, 150 families, found refuge a few kilometers away on rocky ground beside a road with a view of snow-capped mountains.
Around 120 of them have received help from the government. They either got a 2,500-dirham ($249) monthly stipend or 20,000 dirhams for reconstruction.
The rest, like Oubelaid, said they don’t know why they received nothing.
By the end of January, the Moroccan government said around 57,600 families had received the monthly stipend and more than 44,000 households obtained the reconstruction aid.
Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch said the government “sets itself the challenge of responding to the expectation of the local population with promptness and efficiency.”
Yet some remain desperate for help.
Local media said hundreds of people from areas south of Marrakech in Taroudant province and the town of Talat Nyacoub have demonstrated since January to protest the delayed payments and reconstruction aid during the difficult winter conditions.
Last month, a left-wing government member of parliament, Fatima Tamni, said while questioning Interior Minister Abdelouafi Laftit that reconstruction efforts “remain immersed in obscurity and improvization.”
She called on Laftit to take action, according to the Hespress news website.
The Moroccan government said some applications were rejected because residents did not live in the affected areas at the time of the earthquake or because their homes were still inhabitable.
In larger towns like Amizmiz, workers and backhoes are busy.
Things seem to have returned to normal, even as families still live in dozens of yellow tents donated by the authorities. Covered with tarpaulins for protection against the rain and mountain cold, the tents occupy every patch of empty land.
In their misfortune, the Douzrou survivors feel lucky that Moroccan and Dutch NGOs built barracks for them, and they are insulated from the cold.
“There would’ve been a lot more victims with the wind lately if we didn’t have that,” said Hamed Oumhend, 68, looking at the hut built beside others. From above, they look like rolls of aluminum foil.
“It saved us.”
The elderly villager has been collecting signatures for a petition asking for the reconstruction of Douzrou — a little lower on the mountain than their camp, in hopes it would be safer there.
They are determined to stay on their land but conscious of the fact that the name of the resilient village means “under the rock” in the local Berber language, also known as Amazigh.
They fear another disaster in the community whose isolation means few doctor visits and dwindling provisions, and where Oumhend said people are still in a state of shock.
They all lost a relative or barely managed to save themselves when their village disappeared.
“People had to crawl out of the rubble to get out of their homes,” he recalled.
“Some are still traumatized.”
Long winter for Morocco quake survivors
https://arab.news/vct9s
Long winter for Morocco quake survivors
- A pink and white mosque minaret stands out among the rubble of the village that clung to a corner of the mountainside
- The survivors, 150 families, found refuge a few kilometers away on rocky ground beside a road with a view of snow-capped mountains
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235
- Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry
GAZA CITY: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 44,235 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,638 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
Syria’s ‘large quantities’ of toxic arms serious concern: watchdog
- The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry
THE HAGUE: The world’s chemical watchdog said Monday that it was “seriously concerned” by large gaps in Syria’s declaration about its chemical weapons stockpile, as large quantities of potentially banned warfare agents might be involved.
Syria agreed in 2013 to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, shortly after an alleged chemical gas attack killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.
“Despite more than a decade of intensive work, the Syrian Arab Republic chemical weapons dossier still cannot be closed,” the watchdog’s director-general Fernando Arias told delegates at the OPCW’s annual meeting.
The Hague-based global watchdog has previously accused President Bashar Assad’s regime of continued attacks on civilians with chemical weapons during the Middle Eastern country’s brutal civil war.
“Since 2014, the (OPCW) Secretariat has reported a total of 26 outstanding issues of which seven have been fulfilled,” in relation to chemical weapon stockpiles in Syria, Arias said.
“The substance of the remaining 19 outstanding issues is of serious concern as it involves large quantities of potentially undeclared or unverified chemical warfare agents and chemical munitions,” he told delegates.
Syria’s OPCW voting rights were suspended in 2021, an unprecedented rebuke, following poison gas attacks on civilians in 2017.
Last year the watchdog blamed Syria for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on a case that sparked tensions between Damascus and the West.
Damascus has denied the allegations and insisted it has handed over its stockpiles.
Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011 after the government’s repression of peaceful demonstrations escalated into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.
The war has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions, and ravaged the country’s infrastructure and industry.
Syria state TV says Israel struck bridges near border with Lebanon
- The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries
DAMASUS: Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the Lebanese border on Monday, with the defense ministry reporting two civilians injured in the attacks.
Israel’s military has intensified its strikes on targets in Syria since its conflict with Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon escalated into full-scale war in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the bridges of Al-Jubaniyeh, Al-Daf, Arjoun, and the Al-Nizariyeh Gate in the Qusayr area,” state television said, with official news agency SANA reporting damage in the attacks.
The defense ministry said “the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of Lebanese territory, targeting crossing points that it had previously hit” between the two countries.
The attacks “injured two civilians and caused material losses,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, based in Britain, said the attacks had “killed two Syrians working with Hezbollah and injured five others,” giving a preliminary toll.
Earlier, the monitor with a network of sources in Syria had said the “Israeli strikes targeted” an official land border crossing in the Qusayr area and six bridges on the Orontes River near the border with Lebanon.
Since September, Israel has bombed land crossings between Lebanon and Syria, putting them out of service. It accuses Hezbollah of using the routes, key for people fleeing the war in Lebanon, to transfer weapons from Syria.
Iraqis sentenced to prison in $2.5bn corruption case
- A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced to prison former senior officials, a businessman and others for involvement in the theft of $2.5 billion in public funds — one of Iraq’s biggest corruption cases.
The three most high-profile individuals sentenced — businessman Nour Zuhair, as well as former prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi and a former adviser, Haitham Al-Juburi — are on the run and were tried in absentia.
The scandal, dubbed the “heist of the century,” has sparked widespread anger in Iraq, which is ravaged by rampant corruption, unemployment and decaying infrastructure after decades of conflict.
A criminal court in Baghdad specializing in corruption cases issued the prison sentences ranging from three to 10 years, a statement from Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council said.
Thirteen people received sentences on Monday, according to member of Parliament Mostafa Sanad.
Most of them, 10, are from Iraq’s tax authority and include its former director and deputy, he added on his Telegram channel.
Iraq revealed two years ago that at least $2.5 billion was stolen between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 cheques that were cashed by five companies.
The money was then withdrawn in cash from the accounts of those firms.
A judicial source told AFP that some tax officials charged were in detention, without detailing how many.
Businessman Zuhair was sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to the judiciary statement.
He was arrested at Baghdad airport in October 2022 as he was trying to leave the country, but released on bail a month later after giving back more than $125 million and pledging to return the rest in instalments.
The wealthy businessman was back in the news in August after he reportedly had a car crash in Lebanon, following an interview he gave to an Iraqi news channel.
Juburi, the former prime ministerial adviser, received a three-year prison sentence. He also returned $2.6 million before disappearing, a judicial source told AFP.
Kadhemi’s cabinet director Raed Jouhi, also currently outside Iraq, was sentenced to six years in prison — alongside “a number of officials involved in the crime,” according to the judiciary’s statement.
Corruption is rampant across Iraq’s public institutions, but convictions typically target mid-level officials or minor players and rarely those at the top of the power hierarchy.
11 killed in Kurdish-led attacks in north Syria: war monitor
- Seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in the attack and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that control swathes of northeast Syria.
BEIRUT: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Monday 11 people including civilians were killed in attacks by a Kurdish-led force on positions of Turkiye-backed militants in north Syria.
“A woman, her two children and a man were killed... in the bombing of a military position... used by Ankara-backed factions for human smuggling operations to Turkiye,” the Britain-based monitor said.
It said seven Turkiye-backed militants were also killed in that incident and in an operation by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) that control swathes of northeast Syria.
SDF special forces infiltrated a Turkiye-backed group’s military position and killed three militants, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
The SDF also booby-trapped a military position as they withdrew, in an attack that killed another four pro-Turkiye militants but also four civilians including a woman and her two children, the Observatory said.
On Sunday, 15 Ankara-backed Syrian militants were killed after the SDF infiltrated their territory, the monitor reported earlier.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkish troops and allied armed factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.
