AMIZMIZ, Morocco: An earthquake months ago left parts of her home cracked and crumbling, but Fatima Barri felt wrong spending Islam’s holy month of Ramadan in a tent.
Thankful to be spared by the 6.8-magnitude quake that killed thousands around her in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, she stood in her damaged house and cooked the traditional meals to break the daily fasts. It felt safe enough, she said, until a 3.3-magnitude tremor rumbled through two weeks ago.
She was terrified but stayed.
“It’s my house. I have nowhere else to go,” the 57-year-old mother of three said and shrugged.
Like many of her neighbors, she’s tired of waiting for normal life to resume. For months after the quake killed nearly 3,000 Moroccans in September, Barri stayed in a hot and stuffy government-provided tent.
For Ramadan, she and others honored their traditions amid the rubble, cooking tagine in clay pots and making bread and tea on their stoves. On Wednesday, as Eid Al-Fitr began, the holiday mood for many Moroccans vacillated between festiveness and despair.
During the month of reflection, Barri appreciated the family and community gatherings as well as small pleasures like the mint and verbena she replanted in buckets near the debris on her roof.
Her community of Amizmiz is one of the larger towns shaken by the earthquake. Many people who had promised to stay and rebuild such communities have since moved to larger cities.
For Morocco, the task of rebuilding is daunting. The government estimates that more than 300,000 people were affected by the earthquake in Marrakech and the five hardest hit mountain provinces, where more than 4.2 million reside. There are plans to rebuild schools, roads and hospitals and help farmers who lost their herds.
The government has said it is committed to returning people to their homes and hopes the reconstruction will bring new development opportunities to a region that has long lacked the infrastructure of Morocco’s tourist hubs and coastal cities.
But on the ground, there is frustration.
Construction crews working to restore multi-story buildings for community associations are angry that they haven’t received more guidance from the government on how to build for future quakes. Untrained, they are stacking cinderblocks and plaster in the ruins of multi-story buildings.
A month after the disaster, protesters angry at local authorities and suspicious of corruption marched through the town demanding the promised government aid.
At the end of January, a government rebuilding commission said nearly 58,000 families had received monthly stipends of 2,500 dirhams — or $250 — and more than 20,000 households had received an initial installment of reconstruction assistance.
In total, officials have said rebuilding will cost 120 billion dirhams ($12 billion) and take about five years. International aid has been offered, including a $1.3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
In Amizmiz, some residents said they were surviving on the monthly stipends and waiting on a larger sum promised for reconstruction. Many told The Associated Press they had received nothing at all.
Last month, the Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis published survey data taken from October to December in which only 11 percent of people directly affected by the earthquake said they had received support from the government.
The most difficult to reach areas have faced more challenges.
In some villages, the government has used sheet metal and concrete to build barracks-style temporary homes. In Amizmiz there are only tents.
The community is proud of coming together to help one another. A community association, Alyatim, hosted nightly dinners serving up to 250 people breaking their Ramadan fasts.
“The help only comes from the associations. No help comes from the government,” said Abdelaziz Smina, a 50-year-old blacksmith.
Smina said local authorities told him that his cracked concrete home — currently held upright by wooden stilts — wasn’t damaged enough to qualify for aid. His neighbors have yet to receive assistance funds to allow them to buy metal doors from him for their own rebuilding.
But Smina and his family have seen Ramadan as a chance to reaffirm their faith in the face of disaster.
“It’s all up to God,” he said.
Morocco’s earthquake killed thousands, but survivors marking Ramadan say it didn’t shake their faith
https://arab.news/gn43b
Morocco’s earthquake killed thousands, but survivors marking Ramadan say it didn’t shake their faith
- For months after the quake killed nearly 3,000 Moroccans in September, Barri stayed in a hot and stuffy government-provided tent
- On Wednesday, as Eid Al-Fitr began, the holiday mood for many Moroccans vacillated between festiveness and despair
Iraq PM says Mosul airport to open in June, 10 years after Daesh capture
- On June 10, 2014, the Daesh group seized Mosul
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani on Sunday ordered for the inauguration of the airport in second city Mosul to be held in June, marking 11 years since Islamists took over the city.
On June 10, 2014, the Daesh group seized Mosul, declaring its “caliphate” from there 19 days later after capturing large swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
After years of fierce battles, Iraqi forces backed by a US-led international coalition dislodged the group from Mosul in July 2017, before declaring its defeat across the country at the end of that year.
In a Sunday statement, Sudani’s office said the premier directed during a visit there “for the airport’s opening to be on June 10, coinciding with the anniversary of Mosul’s occupation, as a message of defiance in the face of terrorism.”
Over 80 percent of the airport’s runway and terminals have been completed, according to the statement.
Mosul’s airport had been completely destroyed in the fighting.
In August 2022, then-prime minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi laid the foundation stone for the airport’s reconstruction.
Sudani’s office also announced on Sunday the launch of a project to rehabilitate the western bank of the Tigris in Mosul, affirming that “Iraq is secure and stable and on the right path.”
Turkiye’s top diplomat meets Syria’s new leader in Damascus
- Hakan Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders
- Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Bashar Assad’s fall
ANKARA: Turkiye’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan met with Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, Ankara’s foreign ministry said.
A video released by the Anadolu state news agency showed the two men greeting each other.
No details of where the meeting took place in the Syrian capital were released by the ministry.
Fidan had announced on Friday that he planned to travel to Damascus to meet Syria’s new leaders, who ousted Syria’s strongman Bashar Assad after a lightning offensive.
Turkiye’s spy chief Ibrahim Kalin had earlier visited the city on December 12, just a few days after Assad’s fall.
Kalin was filmed leaving the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, surrounded by bodyguards, as broadcast by the private Turkish channel NTV.
Turkiye has been a key backer of the opposition to Assad since the uprising against his rule began in 2011.
Besides supporting various militant groups, it has welcomed Syrian dissenters and millions of refugees.
However, Fidan has rejected claims by US president-elect Donald Trump that the militants’ victory in Syria constituted an “unfriendly takeover” of the country by Turkiye.
Syria’s de facto ruler reassures minorities, meets Lebanese Druze leader
- Ahmed Al-Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as ‘a new era far removed from sectarianism’
- Walid Jumblatt said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria
Syria’s de facto ruler Ahmed Al-Sharaa hosted Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt on Sunday in another effort to reassure minorities they will be protected after Islamist militants led the ouster of Bashar Assad two weeks ago.
Sharaa said no sects would be excluded in Syria in what he described as “a new era far removed from sectarianism.”
Sharaa heads the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), the main group that forced Assad out on Dec. 8. Some Syrians and foreign powers have worried he may impose strict Islamic governance on a country with numerous minority groups such as Druze, Kurds, Christians and Alawites.
“We take pride in our culture, our religion and our Islam. Being part of the Islamic environment does not mean the exclusion of other sects. On the contrary, it is our duty to protect them,” he said during the meeting with Jumblatt, in comments broadcast by Lebanese broadcaster Al Jadeed.
Jumblatt, a veteran politician and prominent Druze leader, said at the meeting that Assad’s ouster should usher in new constructive relations between Lebanon and Syria. Druze are an Arab minority who practice an offshoot of Islam.
Sharaa, dressed in a suit and tie rather than the military fatigues he favored in his militant days, also said he would send a government delegation to the southwestern Druze city of Sweida, pledging to provide services to its community and highlighting Syria’s “rich diversity of sects.”
Seeking to allay worries about the future of Syria, Sharaa has hosted numerous foreign visitors in recent days, and has vowed to prioritize rebuilding Syria, devastated by 13 years of civil war.
Pope Francis again condemns ‘cruelty’ of Israeli strikes on Gaza
- Comes a day after the pontiff lamented an Israeli airstrike that killed seven children from one family on Friday
- ‘And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty’
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis doubled down Sunday on his condemnation of Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip, denouncing their “cruelty” for the second time in as many days despite Israel accusing him of “double standards.”
“And with pain I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty,” the pope said after his weekly Angelus prayer.
It comes a day after the 88-year-old Argentine lamented an Israeli airstrike that killed seven children from one family on Friday, according to Gaza’s rescue agency.
“Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” the pope told members of the government of the Holy See.
His remarks on Saturday prompted a sharp response from Israel.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman described Francis’s intervention as “particularly disappointing as they are disconnected from the true and factual context of Israel’s fight against jihadist terrorism — a multi-front war that was forced upon it starting on October 7.”
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people,” he added.
“Cruelty is terrorists hiding behind children while trying to murder Israeli children; cruelty is holding 100 hostages for 442 days, including a baby and children, by terrorists and abusing them,” the Israeli statement said.
This was a reference to the Hamas Palestinian militants who attacked Israel, killed many civilians and took hostages on October 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war.
The unprecedented attack resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, the majority of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
That toll includes hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
At least 45,259 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in the Palestinian territory, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Those figures are taken as reliable by the United Nations.
Iran’s supreme leader says Syrian youth will resist incoming government
- Iran had provided crucial support to Assad throughout Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war
- Iran’s supreme leader accused the United States and Israel of plotting against Assad’s government
TEHRAN: Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday said that young Syrians will resist the new government emerging after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad as he again accused the United States and Israel of sowing chaos in the country.
Iran had provided crucial support to Assad throughout Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, which erupted after he launched a violent crackdown on a popular uprising against his family’s decades-long rule. Syria had long served as a key conduit for Iranian aid to Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address on Sunday that the “young Syrian has nothing to lose” and suffers from insecurity following Assad’s fall.
“What can he do? He should stand with strong will against those who designed and those who implemented the insecurity,” Khamenei said. “God willing, he will overcome them.”
He accused the United States and Israel of plotting against Assad’s government in order to seize resources, saying: “Now they feel victory, the Americans, the Zionist regime and those who accompanied them.”
Iran and its militant allies in the region have suffered a series of major setbacks over the past year, with Israel battering Hamas in Gaza and landing heavy blows on Hezbollah before they agreed to a ceasefire in Lebanon last month.
Khamenei denied that such groups were proxies of Iran, saying they fought because of their own beliefs and that the Islamic Republic did not depend on them. “If one day we plan to take action, we do not need proxy force,” he said.
