Region

ALGIERS — A road crash in Algeria killed 34 people when a passenger bus collided head-on with a pickup truck carrying fuel cans and burst into flames Wednesday, deep in the southern Sahara region, officials said.

The North African country's deadliest road crash in years also left 12 others injured, many with severe burns, Algeria's civil defence agency said.

President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on a state visit to China, expressed "his deep distress and sadness" and offered "his sincere condolences" to the victims' families.

Pictures showed the bus engulfed in a massive ball of flames that lit up the pre-dawn sky after the crash around 4:00am (03:00 GMT) in a small town near Tamanrasset, a 2,000-kilometre drive south from the capital Algiers.

Later, rescue workers were seen recovering bodies from the mangled and charred hull of the bus in Outoul, 20 kilometres west of Tamanrasset, the accident scene surrounded by fire engines.

Local residents told AFP by phone that the bus had dropped off passengers and was about to resume its journey when a Toyota pickup truck smashed into it.

National gendarmerie official Samir Bouchehit said the truck was carrying cans of gasoline and driving on the wrong side of the road.

“The first elements of the investigation suggest that the responsibility lies with the driver of the pickup, which was loaded with cans of gasoline that caught fire in the collision,” he said, speaking on the private Ennahar TV channel.

The number of passengers in the pickup was not clear but they — and the driver — were killed, Bouchehit added.

Residents said the bus driver also perished.

Health Minister Abdelhak Saihi travelled to the accident site, promising “all the necessary measures for the care of the injured”, a ministry statement said.

The civil defence agency said the bus was travelling between Tamanrasset, a town of 150,000 people, and Adrar to the northwest, with about 65,000 residents.

Mohamed Boudraa, the governor of Tamanrasset, visited the local hospital where the 12 injured were being treated, the official APS news agency reported.

Three of them were later released from the hospital, its Director Abdelkader Bika told APS.

Officials in Algeria, an oil producer, regularly announce seizures in the Tamanrasset area of large amounts of contraband fuel destined for neighbouring countries.

Algeria recorded nearly 23,000 road accidents in 2022, leaving 3,409 people dead and more than 30,000 injured, according to the country’s road safety chief Nacef Abdelhakim.

Speed was the main cause, according to the state road safety agency.

Tamanrasset is a transport hub in the remote desert region for the movement of people and goods from Algeria’s far south to the coastal north.

The region, near the borders of Mali and Niger, is also a transit point for migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa hoping to reach Europe via Algeria.

In December 2020, a vehicle crash near Tamanrasset killed 20 people and injured 11 others, most of them African migrants.

Other countries in the region also see thousands of road deaths annually.

About 7,000 people lost their lives on the roads of Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, in 2020, according to official figures.

Sudan recorded around 10,000 annual traffic fatalities between 2016 and 2019, according to the World Health Organisation and the World Bank.

TEHRAN — Iran, largely shunned by western tourists, is making a push to attract visitors from wealthy Gulf Arab states and other nearby countries to boost its sanctions-hit economy.

The Islamic republic is also drawing more visitors from Russia and China to its ancient sites that date back to the Persian empire and the fabled Silk Road, industry figures say.

Iran’s Beijing-brokered diplomatic thaw this year with Saudi Arabia paved the way for direct flights, and Tehran is also seeking closer ties with other countries from Egypt to Morocco.

The slow but steady change is noticable at major tourist sights where more visitors can now be heard speaking not English, French or German, but Arabic, Chinese and Russian.

“In the past, we were receiving many tourists from Europe but now those numbers have seen a sharp decline,” said one Tehran travel agency owner, 46-year-old Hamid Shateri.

Europeans are “afraid of visiting Iran”, he said, after years of tensions over the country’s contested nuclear programme and after Western government warnings against travelling there.

“These days, mostly Chinese and Russian people visit Iran’s historical sites and spectacular scenery and Arab tourists, especially from Iraq, come to attend religious ceremonies.”

Years of isolation 

Iran has long attracted foreign visitors with its ancient splendours including the cities of Shiraz, Isfahan and Mashhad and its 2,500-year-old Persepolis complex.

It has deserts and snow-capped mountains as well as Gulf and Caspian Sea coastlines, and prides itself on its cuisine and tradition of hospitality.

A steady stream of mainly European visitors long kept coming despite the strict dress code for women and bans on alcohol and nightlife after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

As the largest Shiite Muslim power, Iran also hosts a steady stream of religious pilgrims, many from neighbouring Iraq, to its ancient shrine cities of Mashhad and Qom.

There were high hopes for a lucrative boost to tourism after Iran and major powers struck a landmark deal in 2015 to restrict its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

But those hopes were dashed three years later when the then US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement.

Bad news has spiralled since, including the COVID pandemic that hit Iran early and hard.

Last year, mass protests rocked the country, sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly flouting the dress rules, before authorities put down the women-led “riots”, which they blamed on hostile forces abroad.

Iran has also jailed several Europeans, prompting multiple Western countries to advise their citizens against all travel there, many citing the risk of “arbitrary detention”.

Last year Iran attracted 4.1 million foreigners — less than half the figure for 2019 and accounting for just 0.4 per cent of tourist trips worldwide, says the UN World Tourism Organisation.

Tehran has now launched a push to rebuild tourism, including by drawing people from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar to the Gulf islands of Kish and Qeshm, which boast beaches, luxury hotels and cheap shopping.

Renewed push Iran has also sought to attract more visitors from neighbouring Armenia and Azerbaijan, despite recent tensions between Baku and Tehran.

“Setting up tourism exhibitions in other countries, advertising through their media and hosting international events are among the programmes to promote tourism,” said Majid Kiani, the CEO of northwest Iran’s Aras Free Zone.

UNESCO last month added the region’s colourful Aras rock formations to its Global Geoparks network.

The area around the geological park, also hailed for its diverse ecosystem, hosted “more than 1.2 million tourists” during this year’s Nowruz new year season, Kiani said.

Armenians are now visiting the 9th-century monastery of Saint Stepanos, a UNESCO World Heritage site with vivid murals of biblical scenes and ornate facades.

“Many Armenian tourists come to visit the historic church,” said local Archbishop Krikor Chiftjian, prelate of the Diocese of the Iranian provinces of East and West Azerbaijan.

Tourism analyst Babak Babali said there was much potential, given that in the 2010s Azerbaijanis routinely visited the region for healthcare, creating “a sizeable medical tourism industry”.

More broadly, some observers see signs of easing tensions, pointing to Iran’s recent release of several European prisoners, although others remain in detention.

Babali said that, while “these steps signal Tehran’s intention to deescalate tensions, it will take a while before this gets reflected in the number of tourists from Europe”.

Shateri, the Tehran tour guide, also said Iran has some way to go before western visitors return in great numbers.

“Iran needs to improve its international relations and show the world that it has a peace-seeking nature if it wants to attract more tourists,” he said.

DOHA — Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited gas-rich Qatar on Tuesday to wrap up a Gulf tour centred on energy security and cooperation with Tokyo's main suppliers.

He was making the first visit to Doha by a Japanese premier in 10 years.

Kishida arrived in Qatar from the United Arab Emirates after starting his tour in Saudi Arabia where he met the de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

During his tour, Kishida and Gulf leaders discussed "how to deal with energy challenges" in the face of unstable supply due to Russia's Ukraine invasion, the prime minister told a Doha press conference. 

Japan relies almost entirely on imports for its crude oil, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar accounting for the bulk of its supplies.

But as the oil-producing Gulf states move towards cleaner energy sources, Japan said it is hoping to offer its greener and renewable energy technologies to assist their decarbonisation efforts.

"By combining respective strengths of Gulf states and Japan, oil producers in the Middle East will be transformed to global green energy hubs, exporting decarbonised energy and critical minerals," Kishida told reporters.

"Cooperation will be enhanced in respect to the production of hydrogen, ammonium," and decarbonisation technology, said the prime minister, the first from Japan to make a Gulf tour since Shinzo Abe in 2020.

'Energy security' 

Earlier on Tuesday, Kishida and Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani discussed "developments related to energy security and supplies," the Qatari leader said in a statement.

The Doha visit comes with Japanese companies negotiating new long-term LNG supply contracts with Qatar, according to Bloomberg.

It said Japan's LNG importers have not signed a contract with Qatar since 2014, and that Qatari LNG deliveries to Tokyo dropped by more than 60 per cent last year.

Japan’s top LNG importer, Jera, did not renew contracts that expired in 2021 for gas supply of 5.5 million tonnes per year, Bloomberg said.

Since Russia’s Ukraine invasion Japan has faced “potential LNG disruption”, said Takafumi Yanagisawa, a researcher with Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics.

“Japan needs to secure more LNG from Qatar,” he told AFP, arguing that a deal would provide Tokyo with “stable and reliable LNG supply”.

China has inked some of the industry’s longest-running contracts with Qatar. Last month, Doha announced a 27-year deal to supply 4 million tonnes annually to the China National Petroleum Corporation.

It matches the terms of a November deal with China’s Sinopec as the longest ever seen in the industry.

China, Japan, South Korea and other Asian countries are the main market for Qatari gas, which has been increasingly sought by European countries too since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year.

By expanding activities at North Field, which has the world’s biggest natural gas reserves and extends under the Gulf into Iranian territory, Qatar expects to raise its LNG production by at least 60 per cent, taking it to 126 million tonnes a year by 2027.

BAGHDAD — Despite punishingly high temperatures, dozens of Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad on Tuesday to protest water and electricity shortages, and to blame Turkey for reduced flow of rivers.

Designated by the United Nations as one of the five countries in the world most touched by some effects of climate change, Iraq is experiencing its fourth consecutive summer of drought.

“We have come to peacefully protest and demand water from the government and the source countries,” Najeh Jawda Khalil told AFP around midday as temperatures neared 50ºC.

“The agricultural regions and marshes are gone,” said Khalil, who travelled to the Iraqi capital from the central province of Babylon for the march. “There is neither electricity nor water.”

In addition to declining rainfall and rising temperatures, Iraqi authorities say upstream dam construction by Turkey and Iran has affected the volume of water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through Iraq.

“If the Turkish government continues to deprive Iraqis of water, we will move towards internationalising the water problem and boycotting Turkish products,” read a sign at the demonstration.

Summer in Iraq is a prime example of the convergence of multiple crises weighing down the lives of the 43-million strong population: rising temperatures, severe water shortages and a dilapidated electricity sector — exacerbated by rampant corruption and public mismanagement.

“Twenty years and the electricity crisis repeats itself every year,” read another banner, referring to the time passed since the fall of Saddam Hussein in a US-led invasion.

Ravaged by decades of conflict, oil-rich Iraq relies on Iranian gas imports for a third of its energy needs.

Generally, power cuts can last up to 10 hours a day. But every summer when the thermometer climbs, the supply of public electricity worsens.

Only those who can afford it are able to connect their houses to neighbourhood generators to make up for the poor supply.

Water shortages have fuelled tensions between Turkey and Iraq, which demands Ankara release more water from upstream dams along the rivers.

“Currently, Iraq only receives 35 per cent of its water rights. This means that Iraq has lost 65 per cent of its water, whether it’s from the Tigris or the Euphrates,” Khaled Chamal, the spokesman for the Ministry of Water Resources, has told AFP.

In the summer of 2022, the Turkish ambassador to Baghdad sparked outrage after accusing Iraqis of wasting water and urging “the modernisation of irrigation systems”.

Experts say he may have a point. Iraqi farmers flood their fields, rather than irrigate them which is more efficient.

TRIPOLI — An Arab rights group called on Monday for international help for 360 sub-Saharan migrants who Libyan authorities say were rescued after having been abandoned in the desert by Tunisian police on the border with Libya.

The Cairo-based Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) said it welcomed Libya's reception of the migrants who had "experienced difficult humanitarian conditions" before being picked up by Libyan border guards.

"According to Libyan border guards, 360 migrants including women and children need urgent humanitarian and medical aid," the AOHR's Libya chapter said, urging Libyan authorities to "authorise the concerned organisations — the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration [IOM] — to meet them and help with legal procedures".

The IOM in Libya said on Monday it had provided "emergency humanitarian assistance to migrants rescued at the border with Tunisia".

It said "191 migrants were provided with hygiene kits, clothes, mattresses & screened for medical, protection and psychosocial assistance".

Libya's interior ministry said on Monday it had "documented the expulsions by the Tunisian authorities towards the Libyan border" and posted a video on Facebook showing migrants telling their stories.

On Sunday, Libyan border patrols rescued dozens of migrants who had been abandoned in the desert without water, food or shelter near the border with Tunisia, AFP journalists said.

The migrants, whom the border guards said had been abandoned by Tunisian police, were found in an uninhabited area near Al Assah 150 kilometres west of Tripoli and around 15 kilometres inside Libyan territory.

An AFP team at the border saw the visibly exhausted and dehydrated migrants sitting or lying on the sand and using shrubs to try to shield themselves from scorching summer heat that topped 40°C. 

Hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan African countries were forcibly taken to desert and hostile areas bordering Libya and Algeria after racial unrest in early July in Sfax, Tunisia's second-largest city.

The trouble flared after the July 3 killing of a Tunisian man in an altercation between locals and migrants.

The port of Sfax is a departure point for many migrants from impoverished and violence-torn countries seeking a better life in Europe by making a perilous Mediterranean crossing.

The Tunisian Red Crescent said it has provided shelter to at least 630 migrants who had been taken after July 3 to the militarised border zone of Ras Jedir, north of Al Assah, on the Mediterranean coast.

On Sunday, Tunisia and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding for a “strategic and comprehensive partnership” that includes financial assistance of 10 million euros to help deal with irregular migration.

DUBAI — Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday discussed clean energy cooperation with top officials during a visit to the UAE, host of this year's UN climate talks.

Kishida's visit to the United Arab Emirates, which will host COP28 in November-December, is part of the first Gulf tour by a Japanese premier since the late Shinzo Abe in 2020.

Japan relies almost entirely on imports for its crude oil, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar accounting for the bulk of its supplies.

But as the oil-producing Gulf states move towards cleaner energy sources, especially ahead of COP28, Japan is hoping to offer its greener and renewable energy technologies to assist their decarbonisation efforts.

Kishida flew in from Saudi Arabia, where he met de facto leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday. After talks with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi, he will head to Qatar on Tuesday.

On Monday, Sheikh Mohammed said he held "fruitful and constructive discussions" with Kishida in Abu Dhabi on "developing bilateral relations and advancing the comprehensive strategic partnership between our two countries".

The leaders "affirmed the commitment of both countries to enhancing cooperation on climate action, decarbonisation efforts, and clean energy in the lead-up to COP28", according to a joint statement carried by the COP28 team. 

The Japanese premier later met with COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the head of the UAE oil giant ADNOC.

They discussed “unlocking further global cooperation to utilise more cutting-edge technologies to scale up climate action and accelerate the transition towards a net zero economy”, said a COP28 statement.

‘Decarbonisation technologies’ 

During his UAE visit, the Japanese premier plans to offer Japan’s “cutting-edge decarbonisation technologies” as part of a green energy initiative for the Middle East, he said in an open letter carried by the UAE’s official WAM news agency.

Under the initiative, the UAE and Japan “will be well placed to collaborate in the related fields of hydrogen and ammonia production and utilisation as well as carbon recycling”, Kishida added.

Shigeto Kondo, a senior researcher with The Institute of Energy Economics in Japan, said that Tokyo and Gulf states were “initiating their own strategy for carbon neutrality”.

“Japan and the Gulf states think that climate actions should be realistic, and blue hydrogen and ammonia are one of the realistic solutions to climate change for the time being,” he told AFP.

On Sunday, Kishida discussed energy security and decarbonisation with senior Saudi officials including Prince Mohammed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

During the meeting with Prince Mohammed, Tokyo and Saudi Arabia agreed to launch the “Lighthouse Initiative for Clean Energy Cooperation”, according to the official Saudi Press Agency. 

“The initiative will support the ongoing efforts that Saudi Arabia is undertaking to become a hub for clean energy,” said a joint statement carried by SPA on Monday.

It will focus on areas including hydrogen, ammonia, recycled carbon fuels and carbon capture technology, the statement said.

GCC trade deal 

Saudi Arabia is the biggest oil exporter to Japan, fulfilling 40 per cent of its total needs, the kingdom’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman said on Sunday.

During Kishida’s visit, Saudi Arabia and Tokyo signed 26 cooperation agreements, including in the fields of energy and green energy, according to the state-run Al Ekhbariya TV. 

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and Japan on Sunday also announced the resumption of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations, according to a GCC statement. 

The GCC-Japan FTA negotiations began in Tokyo in September 2006 but talks were suspended in 2009. 

Japan’s prime minister was due to visit Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar in August last year, but he postponed the trip after contracting the coronavirus. 

His visit comes at a time of deepening engagement between the region and China, which brokered a shock detente between Gulf rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in March.

CAIRO — Sudanese refugee Mohannad had only been in Cairo a few weeks when his landlady told him he would have to pay triple the rent if he wanted to keep his apartment.

He had arrived with his wife and three children in the Egyptian capital — 2,000 kilometres north of his home in Khartoum — two weeks after the brutal war between Sudan’s rival generals broke out on April 15.

As Egypt said more than 250,000 people crossed in from Sudan — fleeing ceaseless air strikes, street battles, rampant looting and sexual violence — property owners in Cairo saw an opportunity.

Mohannad, 35, signed a six-month lease for a furnished apartment for 6,000 Egyptian pounds ($195) per month — the average monthly income for an Egyptian family, according to official figures.

But “my landlady told me that the rent had gone up to 18,000 pounds,” said Mohannad, who like others interviewed by AFP gave only his first name to protect his privacy.

At around the same time, he found out his home in the Sudanese capital had been broken into and looted.

When he refused the increase, “she said she had other Sudanese takers who were willing to pay 25,000 pounds”.

“She would cut off the electricity and water, and get her kids to throw things at us,” he said.

Fed up, Mohannad and his family eventually packed up and left.

Many others reported similar ordeals in Egypt, where its worst-ever economic crisis has pushed property owners to squeeze a profit wherever they can — including from war refugees.

‘Nothing left to rent’ 

Inflation in Egypt hit a record high of 36.8 per cent in June, and the pound has lost half its value against the US dollar since early last year.

Purchasing power in the import-dependent economy has been slashed as families struggle to make ends meet.

New arrivals face the same hardships, with realtors reporting a sharp increase in demand in the satellite city of 6 October, west of Cairo. 

Sudanese families scramble to find housing there, near the offices of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR.

Within weeks, “there was nothing left to rent, after a period of stagnation on the local market”, said Mohamed, an independent realtor who asked to be identified by first name only, fearing scrutiny by authorities.

And rents have soared well above market prices.

“The average rent for a furnished apartment used to be 7,000-8,000 pounds, now it’s up to 10,000 and more the closer you are to the UNHCR offices,” the realtor told AFP.

Another broker, who also requested anonymity, said rent prices in the traditionally well-off neighbourhood of Heliopolis in eastern Cairo used to be similar to 6 October rates before the influx of Sudanese refugees, but within months have climbed to 12,000 pounds.

Ashraf, a Sudanese man in his 40s, managed to rent an unfurnished apartment for his family of nine in Hadayek Al Ahram, a working class neighbourhood near the Giza pyramids.

But within a week of moving in, “prices for the same type of unit had gone up from 3,500 to 5,000”, he told AFP.

‘On the street’ 

The main cause of the surge in prices across Cairo is not the arrival of many Sudanese, according to real estate market analyst Mahmud Al Lithy Nassef.

“As residents of central Cairo move out of the city to new satellite cities, they’ve converted their old units to sources of revenue,” he said.

The analyst pointed to past surges in demand.

Iraqis, Yemenis and Syrians have all flocked to Egypt to escape conflicts in their countries, and yet the local market had always stabilised, he said.

But until it does, some refugees are being left with nowhere to turn.

“I met a Sudanese woman who had been sleeping on the street with her children and her luggage,” said Mohannad, who found a flat in Hadayek Al Ahram.

“Her landlord raised the rent, she couldn’t afford it,” he told AFP.

According to Mohannad, the woman was waiting for her husband, who is one of thousands camped at a border crossing between Sudan and Egypt, waiting to be issued an entry visa.

TEHRAN — Iranian authorities have shuttered an educational centre accused of “inciting riots” during last year’s mass demonstrations triggered by the death in custody of a young woman, state media reported on Monday.

Nationwide protests rocked Iran following the September death of a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, Mahsa Amini, in police custody after her arrest over violating the Islamic republic’s strict dress code.

“We prepared and issued a warrant for the closure of Gaj centre following the directive of the minister of education,” state news agency IRNA quoted Ahmad Mahmoudzadeh, head of Iran’s non-governmental schools, as saying.

Mahmoudzadeh said Gaj had “incited riots” during a Persian literature exam for students, without elaborating.

Iran’s reformist newspaper Shargh daily reported that Gaj had cited excerpts from revolutionary poems by prominent dissident Farrokhi Yazdi.

Gaj centre, founded in 2002, has won multiple awards over the years for its publications.

Last year’s protests saw hundreds of people killed, including dozens of security personnel, and thousands arrested in connection with what officials labelled as “riots” fomented by foreign countries after Amini’s death.

Seven men have been executed in protest-related cases involving killings and other violence against security forces.

On Sunday, Iran’s police said it has restored morality police patrols to deal with women who “insist” on violating the dress code.