ALGIERS: Algeria said Thursday it was imposing visa requirements on Moroccans, accusing its passport holders of criminal activity, including “Zionist espionage,” in a new downturn in fraught relations with its neighbor.
A statement carried by Algeria’s official APS news agency charged that Morocco had “engaged in various actions that threaten Algeria’s stability.”
It accused Morocco of having “deployed Zionist espionage agents holding Moroccan passports to freely enter the national territory.”
It also said Morocco had been conducting “multiple networks of organized crime, drug and human trafficking, not to mention smuggling and illegal immigration” within its borders.
Earlier this month, authorities in the Algerian city of Tlemcen said they had arrested seven people, including four Moroccans, accused of belonging to a spy ring.
Algiers broke diplomatic ties with Rabat in August 2021, citing “hostile acts” by its neighbor, months after the kingdom normalized relations with Israel.
In 2020, then US president Donald Trump recognized Morocco’s annexation of the disputed Western Sahara in return for Rabat normalizing relations with Israel.
The border between Algeria and Morocco has been closed for 30 years.
But travelers from Morocco did not need a visa to enter Algerian territory — despite the lack of direct flights — and neither do Algerians to enter Morocco.
There was no immediate response from Rabat to Thursday’s move by Algiers.
Algeria said it was “committed to preserving ties” with the “brotherly” Moroccan people, and blamed the Rabat authorities for recent diplomatic rifts.
“The Moroccan regime alone bears responsibility for the current deterioration of bilateral relations due to its hostile and aggressive actions against Algeria,” it said.
The two countries remain at odds over the Western Sahara and alleged Moroccan support for the Berber separatist movement MAK in Algeria.
The Polisario Front, which is backed by Algiers, has campaigned for the independence of Western Sahara since its colonial ruler Spain pulled out in 1975 but the territory is largely controlled by Morocco.
The United Nations, which has had a peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara since 1991, regards it as a “non-self-governing territory.”
After French President Emmanuel Macron said in July that “the only solution” was a Moroccan plan to grant the territory autonomy within the kingdom without the option of independence, Algeria recalled its ambassador.
Algiers also accuses Rabat of backing the MAK movement, which seeks independence for the Berber Kabylie region east of the capital.
Morocco described the 2021 decision to break off diplomatic relations as “completely unjustified.”
Algeria slaps visa requirements on Moroccans, citing ‘Zionist espionage’
https://arab.news/5695j
Algeria slaps visa requirements on Moroccans, citing ‘Zionist espionage’
- A statement carried by Algeria’s official APS news agency charged that Morocco had “engaged in various actions that threaten Algeria’s stability“
- Algiers broke diplomatic ties with Rabat in August 2021, citing “hostile acts” by its neighbor
Winter is hitting Gaza and many Palestinians have little protection from the cold
- Nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month Israeli offensive
- The UN warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter
There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.
Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.
“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.
With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.
When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.
The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.
UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.
Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.
The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.
“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.
The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry’s count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.
Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.
For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza’s markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.
“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”
On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.
Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.
“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”
American pilots in ‘friendly fire’ incident as US military hits Houthi targets in Sanaa
- Houthis have targeted international shipping in Red Sea to impose Israel’s naval blockade
- The group that controls large parts of Yemen hit Tel Aviv with a missile strike, injuring 16 people
DUBAI: Two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said Sunday. Both pilots were recovered alive, with one suffering minor injuries in the incident.
The incident came as the US military conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, though the US military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was at the time.
“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman,” Central Command said in a statement.
The command said on X, shortly after midnight local time: “CENTCOM forces conducted the deliberate strikes to disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against U.S. Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden,”
The video released by the US military showed a jet taking off from a carrier.
“During the operation, CENTCOM forces also shot down multiple Houthi one way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) and an anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) over the Red Sea.”
Videos on social media showed people fleeing large explosions in the capital, but Arab News could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage.
The command said that US air and naval assets were used in the operation, including F/A-18s, adding the “strike reflects CENTCOM's ongoing commitment to protect U.S. and coalition personnel, regional partners, and international shipping.”
The Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, seized the capital in 2014 and have been conducting drone and missile attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea in an effort to impose a naval blockade on Israel, who, for more than a year, has been carrying out a devastating war against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier on Saturday, a Houthi missile hit Tel Aviv, injuring 16 people.
Syrian soldiers distance themselves from Assad in return for promised amnesty
- Lt. Col. Walid Abd Rabbo, who works with the new Interior Ministry, said the army has been dissolved and the interim government has not decided yet on whether those “whose hands are not tainted in blood” can apply to join the military again
DAMASCUS, Syria: Hundreds of former Syrian soldiers on Saturday reported to the country’s new rulers for the first time since Bashar Assad was ousted to answer questions about whether they may have been involved in crimes against civilians in exchange for a promised amnesty and return to civilian life.
The former soldiers trooped to what used to be the head office in Damascus of Assad’s Baath party that had ruled Syria for six decades. They were met with interrogators, former insurgents who stormed Damascus on Dec. 8, and given a list of questions and a registration number. They were free to leave.
Some members of the defunct military and security services waiting outside the building told The Associated Press that they had joined Assad’s forces because it meant a stable monthly income and free medical care.
The fall of Assad took many by surprise as tens of thousands of soldiers and members of security services failed to stop the advancing insurgents. Now in control of the country, and Assad in exile in Russia, the new authorities are investigating atrocities by Assad’s forces, mass graves and an array of prisons run by the military, intelligence and security agencies notorious for systematic torture, mass executions and brutal conditions.
Lt. Col. Walid Abd Rabbo, who works with the new Interior Ministry, said the army has been dissolved and the interim government has not decided yet on whether those “whose hands are not tainted in blood” can apply to join the military again. The new leaders have vowed to punish those responsible for crimes against Syrians under Assad.
Several locations for the interrogation and registration of former soldiers were opened in other parts of Syria in recent days.
“Today I am coming for the reconciliation and don’t know what will happen next,” said Abdul-Rahman Ali, 43, who last served in the northern city of Aleppo until it was captured by insurgents in early December.
“We received orders to leave everything and withdraw,” he said. “I dropped my weapon and put on civilian clothes,” he said, adding that he walked 14 hours until he reached the central town of Salamiyeh, from where he took a bus to Damascus.
Ali, who was making 700,000 pounds ($45) a month in Assad’s army, said he would serve his country again.
Inside the building, men stood in short lines in front of four rooms where interrogators asked each a list of questions on a paper.
“I see regret in their eyes,” an interrogator told AP as he questioned a soldier who now works at a shawarma restaurant in the Damascus suburb of Harasta. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to media.
The interrogator asked the soldier where his rifle is and the man responded that he left it at the base where he served. He then asked for and was handed the soldier’s military ID.
“He has become a civilian,” the interrogator said, adding that the authorities will carry out their own investigation before questioning the same soldier again within weeks to make sure there are no changes in the answers that he gave on Saturday.
The interrogator said after nearly two hours that he had quizzed 20 soldiers and the numbers are expected to increase in the coming days.
Israel accuses Pope of ‘double standards’, after Gaza criticism
JERUSALEM: Israel accused Pope Francis of “double standards” Saturday after he condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as “cruelty” following an air strike that killed seven children from one family.
“The Pope’s remarks are 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,” an Israeli foreign ministry statement said.
“Enough with the double standards and the singling out of the Jewish state and its people.”
Gaza’s civil defense rescue agency had reported that an Israeli air strike killed 10 members of a family on Friday in the northern part of the Palestinian territory, including seven children.
“Yesterday they did not allow the Patriarch (of Jerusalem) into Gaza as promised. Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he told members of the government of the Holy See.
“I want to say it because it touches my heart.”
The Israeli statement said: “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,” a reference to the Palestinian Hamas militants who attacked Israel and took hostages on October 7, 2023, triggering the Gaza war.
“Unfortunately, the Pope has chosen to ignore all of this,” the Israeli ministry said.
American pilots in ‘friendly fire’ incident as US military hits Houthi targets in Sanaa
DUBAI: Two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said Sunday. Both pilots were recovered alive, with one suffering minor injuries in the incident.
The incident came as the US military conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, though the US military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was at the time.
“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman,” Central Command said in a statement.
The command said on X, shortly after midnight local time: “CENTCOM forces conducted the deliberate strikes to disrupt and degrade Houthi operations, such as attacks against U.S. Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden,”
The video released by the US military showed a jet taking off from a carrier.
“During the operation, CENTCOM forces also shot down multiple Houthi one way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles (OWA UAV) and an anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) over the Red Sea.”
Videos on social media showed people fleeing large explosions in the capital, but Arab News could not immediately verify the authenticity of the footage.
The command said that US air and naval assets were used in the operation, including F/A-18s, adding the “strike reflects CENTCOM's ongoing commitment to protect U.S. and coalition personnel, regional partners, and international shipping.”
The Houthis, who control large parts of Yemen, seized the capital in 2014 and have been conducting drone and missile attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea in an effort to impose a naval blockade on Israel, who, for more than a year, has been carrying out a devastating war against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier on Saturday, a Houthi missile hit Tel Aviv, injuring 16 people.
