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SFAX, Tunisia — Youths in Tunisia called for vengeance on Tuesday at the funeral of a man stabbed to death during a scuffle between residents and migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Three African migrants were arrested as suspects in the stabbing death of the local man in Tunisia's coastal city of Sfax, a court spokesman said.

The North African country's second-largest city is a departure point for many migrants hoping to reach Italy, and tensions have been rising in Sfax for months.

Police had fired tear gas on Sunday to disperse residents and migrants throwing stones at each other.

Faouzi Masmoudi, spokesman for the Sfax prosecutor, said the victim, aged in his early 40s, was fatally stabbed late Monday during a scuffle between Sfax residents and migrants.

He said three suspects, from Cameroon according to initial information, had been arrested.

Locals in Sfax regularly protest against the presence of the migrants and call for them to leave.

News of the man's death spread quickly after Tarek Mahdi, a member of parliament for Sfax, posted a video on social media showing a body lying in the street and a trail of blood.

Reaction to the post, some with racist overtones, included calls for African migrants to be expelled from Sfax.

"We are going to avenge his death!" a group of young people chanted at the victim's funeral on Tuesday, according to video footage published by a group which campaigns against illegal immigration in Sfax.

Clashes between migrants and residents were reported in several districts of the city on Tuesday.

Security boosted 

The interior ministry said the police and security presence in Sfax was bolstered after Monday's killing.

Racial tensions in Tunisia have led to deadly violence before. In late May, police arrested three citizens on suspicion of stabbing to death a migrant from Benin.

Tunisia has seen a rise in racially motivated attacks on migrants and foreign students following President Kais Saied's comments in February accusing "hordes" of illegal migrants of bringing violence, crime and "unacceptable practices".

He also spoke of a "criminal plot" to change the country's demographic make-up.

On Tuesday, Saied visited the interior ministry in the capital.

A presidency statement said he reiterated that Tunisia "does not accept that anyone who does not respect its laws stays on its territory, or uses it as a transit country or to resettle nationals of certain African countries".

With a population of 12 million, Tunisia hosts an estimated 21,000 migrants from other parts of Africa, representing 0.2 per cent of the population.

While some migrants come to Tunisia to study, many use the country as a springboard for attempts to reach Europe by sea, usually to the Italian island of Lampedusa about 130 kilometres away.

Tunisians themselves have joined the exodus in a bid to flee the economic crisis in their country, which is highly indebted and in talks for a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Europe has offered funding to help assist Tunisia's efforts against illegal migration and boost the economy.

Saied has repeatedly rejected what he terms the "diktats" of the Washington-based IMF.

JENIN/TEL AVIV — A car ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv wounded seven people on Tuesday before the suspect was shot dead, on the second day of Israel's biggest military operation in years in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian group Hamas praised the "heroic" attack as "an initial response to crimes against our people in the Jenin camp" where Israeli forces had killed 11 people in a "counterterrorism" operation launched in the early hours of Monday.

The driver in Tel Aviv was thought to have intentionally hit several pedestrians on a shopping street before getting out of the vehicle to "stab civilians with a sharp object", police said.

A West Bank resident, was shot dead by an armed civilian passerby, said police chief Yaakov Shabtai.

The attack came as the army pushed on with its operation in Jenin in the northern West Bank.

A Palestinian died Tuesday after being shot by Israeli forces in Jenin, the Palestinian health ministry said, taking the death toll to 11 since the start of the raid.

More than 100 people are in custody, and thousands have been displaced from their homes.

Explosions were heard from the camp and a drone hovered overhead, an AFP correspondent reported.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders condemned Israeli forces for firing tear gas inside Khalil Suleiman hospital in Jenin, calling it "unacceptable".

The Jenin raid, launched early Monday under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government, employed hundreds of troops as well as drone strikes and army bulldozers that ripped up streets.

“In the last five years, this is the worst raid,” said Qasem Benighader, a nurse at a hospital morgue.

During a visit to an army base near Jenin, Netanyahu vowed to “uproot terrorism”.

“We will not allow Jenin to go back to being a city of refuge for terrorism.”

The army said its forces had “neutralised” four explosives manufacturing facilities in Jenin and dismantled two operational situation rooms.

The Palestinian foreign ministry labelled the escalation “open war against the people of Jenin”.

‘Cut off from world’ 

Jenin’s shops were shuttered amid a general strike and the near-empty streets littered with debris and burned roadblocks.

The army said it had uncovered militant hideouts, arms depots and an underground shaft used to store explosives.

Israeli forces had detained “120 Palestinian suspects”, the army said, adding around “300 armed terrorists were still in Jenin, mostly in hiding”.

The army said it does not intend to stay in the camp housing about 18,000 people but was ready for prolonged fighting.

“The most dangerous is what happened inside the camp, where there is no electricity, no water, and no roads for those who need to go to hospital,” Jenin Mayor Nidal Abu Saleh told AFP.

The northern West Bank has seen a recent spate of attacks on Israelis as well as Zionist settler violence targeting Palestinians.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict has worsened since early last year, and escalated further under the Netanyahu government that includes extreme-right allies.

Around 3,000 people had fled their homes in the refugee camp, said deputy governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al Roub.

Imad Jabarin, one of those leaving in the rubbles-strewn camp, said “all aspects of life have been destroyed, there is no electricity and no communications... we are cut off from the world to some extent”.

‘Strengthen settlements’ 

The United Nations decried the violence in Tel Aviv and Jenin.

“The killing, maiming and the destruction of property must stop,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said.

The United States said its ally Israel had a right to “defend its people against... terrorist groups” but called for protection of civilians.

In the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, protesters burned tyres near the border fence with Israel.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the June War of 1967.

Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.

The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it seized in 1967 and to dismantle all Zionist settlements.

Netanyahu, however, has pledged to “strengthen settlements” and expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, which have been moribund since 2014.

At least 189 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed this year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides.

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed eight Palestinians in a large-scale operation on Monday in the occupied West Bank in what the army labelled an "extensive counterterrorism effort" involving drone strikes and hundreds of troops.

The raid launched under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right government targeted the northern city of Jenin and was the biggest in the West Bank for years, featuring armoured vehicles, army bulldozers and drones.

Firefights and explosions rocked the city and adjacent refugee camp, a militant stronghold, as Palestinians threw rocks at soldiers and smoke from blasts and burning barricades darkened the sky, an AFP correspondent said.

"There is bombing from the air and an invasion on the ground," said Mahmoud Al Saadi, director of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin.

“Several houses and sites have been bombed... smoke is rising from everywhere.”

Eight people were killed and 50 wounded, 10 seriously, the Palestinian health ministry said — exceeding the toll of seven dead in an Israeli raid in Jenin two weeks ago which saw the rare use of helicopter missile fire.

The Palestinian foreign ministry said the Israeli army had launched “an open war against the people of Jenin”.

Monday’s operation featured “brigade-level” troop numbers, said army spokesman Richard Hecht, while Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters that “we are striking the terrorism hub with great strength”.

The army said soldiers and gunmen exchanged fire at a mosque in the Jenin camp and that weapons and explosives were later found in the building.

Jenin resident Badr Shagoul told AFP: “I saw them taking bulldozers into the camp, they were destroying buildings ... These were people’s homes.”

At a hospital morgue some bodies were covered in blankets and others were heavily bandaged, an AFP correspondent reported, adding that the fighting continued late Monday.

“We have many injured from explosives dropped from airplanes and many having bullet injuries,” nurse Qasem Benighader said.

“In the last five years this is the worst raid.”

Israel had already stepped up operations in the northern West Bank, which has seen a recent spate of attacks on Israelis as well as Zionist settler violence targeting Palestinians.

Jenin camp resident Mahmoud Hawashin called the situation “catastrophic”, and predicted that “for every action there is a reaction.

“If there is more Palestinian bloodshed, there will be more Israeli bloodshed.”

‘All options open’ 

The Palestinian group Islamic Jihad said “all options are open to strike the enemy in response to its aggression in Jenin”.

In a separate incident, Israeli fire killed a Palestinian youth near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The army said that in Jenin it had struck a “joint operations centre” of a group called the Jenin Brigade, a weapons depot, an “observation and reconnaissance” site and a hideout for alleged attackers of Israeli targets.

“People were aware that we were probably going in”, Hecht told reporters, “but the method of striking from the air”, in the core of the camp, “basically caught them by surprise”.

He said troops remained inside the camp but were after “specific targets” and “not trying to hold ground”.

“We are still seizing weapons and ammunitions,” Hecht said, adding that the operation had no specific timeline.

The Arab League said it will convene an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss “an Arab mobilisation to counter the Israeli attack on Jenin”.

Israeli-Palestinian violence has worsened since last year, and escalated further under the Netanyahu coalition government that includes extreme-right allies.

The Jenin area is nominally controlled by President Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.

‘Clear violation’ 

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the June  War of 1967.

Excluding occupied East Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.

The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it occupied in 1967 and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.

However, Netanyahu has pledged to “strengthen settlements” and expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, moribund since 2014.

Jordan called the raid “a clear violation of international humanitarian law, as well as Israel’s obligations as the occupying power”.

After last month’s Jenin raid, four Israelis were killed by two Palestinian gunmen near the West bank settlement of Eli. The assailants were shot dead.

That same week, Israel said a drone strike killed three members of a “terrorist cell” in the West Bank.

At least 185 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed this year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides.

WAD MADANI, Sudan — Explosions again rocked Sudan's capital Khartoum on Monday as the army rallied civilians to take up arms against a renewed onslaught by its paramilitary foes.

The sound of artillery fire shook the dawn in northwest Khartoum and progressed towards the centre and east of the city, witnesses told AFP.

The fighting "began at 4:00 am [02:00 GMT] and is still going", one resident said.

The war-torn capital barely saw a few hours of respite after heavy clashes on Sunday between troops loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and those of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The army announced on Monday it was ready to “receive and prepare” volunteer fighters, after Burhan last week urged Sudanese “youth and all those able to defend” to join the military.

War-weary civilians have largely rejected the call, pleading for an end to the relentless war between Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

Later on Monday, witnesses reported the air force targeted an armoured RSF convoy as it wound its way from the country’s south towards Khartoum.

Outside the capital, some of the worst fighting has been in the vast western region of Darfur, where late Sunday RSF forces “attacked the military base” in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state.

Since April 15, nearly 3,000 people have been killed in the violence, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

But medics warn the death toll is likely to be much higher, with about two-thirds of health facilities in combat areas still “out of service”.

A further 2.2 million people have been displaced within the country, with another 645,000 fleeing across borders, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

Darfur violence 

Darfur is home to a quarter of Sudan’s population and is still scarred by a two-decade war.

Residents there, as well as the United Nations, United States and others, say civilians have been targeted and killed for their ethnicity by the RSF and allied Arab militias.

The RSF has been accused of intentionally targeting civilians in Darfur, including by shooting people fleeing towards the Chadian border.

The paramilitaries have also been identified as the main perpetrators of conflict-related sexual assault by survivors in both Darfur and Khartoum, according to the governmental Combating Violence Against Women and Children Unit.

Since the conflict began, RSF fighters — highly mobile and embedded in densely populated neighbourhoods — have been accused of widespread break-ins and looting.

Late on Sunday, the RSF announced it was cracking down on “looting and vandalism, particularly the theft of civilian cars”.

The force, which traces its origins to the notorious Janjaweed militia recruited in the early 2000s to crush a rebellion by ethnic minority groups in Darfur, announced last week it had begun to try some of its “undisciplined” members.

On Monday a coalition of Arab tribes from South Darfur announced in an online video its allegiance to the RSF, urging community members in the armed forces to desert and join ranks with the paramilitaries.

Children fleeing 

More than half of Sudan’s population is now in need of aid, according to UN figures.

In addition to food and water, people are “also in need of protection”, the UN’s deputy special representative for Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, told Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television on Sunday.

She reiterated appeals “to both parties” to allow for supplies and personnel to enter the country and “move freely”.

Relief deliveries have been repeatedly looted and humanitarian workers attacked.

The situation has been especially horrific in Darfur, where entire neighbourhoods have been razed to the ground, cities besieged and bodies left to rot on the streets.

Barely any humanitarian assistance has reached desperate civilians, as aid groups report their teams standing by in neighbouring Chad, waiting for humanitarian corridors to open.

Since April, more than 170,000 people have fled Darfur across the Chadian border, according to the UN refugee agency.

“Thousands of families with children are fleeing the violence in West Darfur,” according to Mandeep O’Brien, country representative for UNICEF which has reported hundreds of children killed in the fighting.

The UN agency estimates that more than 13 million children are in “dire need” of humanitarian assistance.

AL MAJAR AL KABIR, Iraq — Thousands of dead fish have washed ashore in southeast Iraq, prompting an official investigation into the wildlife disaster that officials said on Monday may be linked to drought conditions.

An AFP photographer saw thousands of small fish washed up on the banks of the Amshan River in Majar Al Kabir, an area in Maysan province that borders Iran.

The region is home to fabled marshes in the floodplain of the Tigris River, already suffering from the effects of global warming.

Iraq’s agriculture ministry on Sunday announced it was forming a committee to look into the causes of the fish deaths, according to state news agency INA.

Environmental campaigner Ahmed Saleh Neema said “a rise in temperatures” leading to increased evaporation, coupled with reduced water flow contributed to “a lack of oxygen and high salinity” in the river.

Largely arid Iraq is ranked by the United Nations as one of the world’s five countries most impacted by some effects of climate change.

It endures blistering summer heat and frequent dust storms. Declining rain over the past four years as well as upstream dams have reduced the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where ancient civilisations flourished.

Khodr Abbas Salman, a Maysan province official overseeing its marshes for the Iraqi environment ministry, told AFP that “according to terrain analyses we have conducted, the level of oxygen [in the water] is zero, in addition to a rise in salinity levels”.

He joined a mission on Monday to inspect the deaths of “tonnes” of fish, he said, noting the Amshan’s waters are home to nine species.

The fish “keep dying even now”, he said.

Samples from both the fish and the water will be “analysed... to determine if there is any presence of chemical substances”, Salman added.

But the high salinity levels may be enough to cause considerable damage.

The water can no longer “be used for agriculture. It would scourge the land if farmers use it for irrigation”, Salman said.

He warned of further risks of pollution in the water and surrounding lands the more animals die.

“Any dead animal rots... which raises the level of pollution,” he said. “The water’s toxicity might increase and infiltrate the land too.”

In a similar phenomenon in 2018, fishermen in the central province of Babylon found dead carp in their thousands, but an investigation failed to discern what had caused it.

KHARTOUM — Fierce fighting between the forces of rival generals shook the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Sunday as disease and malnutrition threatened the rising number of displaced.

Khartoum residents said they were shaken awake by warplanes and "violent fighting" between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Witnesses told AFP a police base and the state television building in the capital's northwest were under attack by the RSF, who said they had shot down an army MiG fighter.

In central Khartoum, others saw "scores of RSF vehicles" driving towards the vicinity of "the Armoured Corps".

Since April 15, the war between Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, has killed nearly 3,000 people and displaced 2.2 million within the country, with another 645,000 fleeing across borders, according to the International Organisation for Migration.

"The situation is grave," the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said in a statement detailing the hardships of displaced Sudanese stuck in nine camps in White Nile State which borders South Sudan.

In addition to Khartoum, the worst fighting has been in the western region of Darfur where residents, as well as the United Nations, United States and others, say civilians have been targeted and killed for their ethnicity by the RSF and allied Arab militias.

The death toll is believed to be much higher than recorded, as the World Health Organisation says about two-thirds of health facilities are "out of service" in combat-affected areas.

Many injured people are unable to reach hospitals, and bodies lie rotting in the streets of Khartoum and Darfur.

A record 25 million people in Sudan need humanitarian aid and protection, the UN says.

“Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women and children”, pack camps that stretch out from the south of Khartoum all the way to the border with South Sudan, MSF said.

“There are suspected cases of measles, and malnutrition among children has become a vital health emergency.

“From June 6 to 7 we treated 223 children with suspected measles, 72 were hospitalised and 13 have died,” MSF said.

The war has smashed the country’s already fragile infrastructure, leaving residents short of water and electricity in the oppressive summer heat.

Numerous ceasefires, including some negotiated by the United States and Saudi Arabia, have failed to hold.

Fighting continued during the just ended Eid Al Adha holiday for which the warring sides announced separate unilateral truces.

The worsening situation in Darfur is a bleak reminder of the region’s painful history.

In 2003, former strongman Omar Al Bashir armed and unleashed the RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, against Darfur’s non-Arab ethnic minorities in violence that killed more than 300,000 people and displaced 2.5 million.

The International Criminal Court charged Bashir and others with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

A UN official has warned of possible new “crimes against humanity” in the current fighting in Darfur.

Dozens of women have been sexually abused in Darfur and elsewhere, a government unit monitoring such offences has said.

In Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, at least 25 “conflict-related sexual assaults” were recorded, in addition to 21 in West Darfur capital El Geneina and 42 in Khartoum.

Most survivors in Khartoum, and “all in Nyala and Geneina” identified the perpetrators as RSF fighters, the unit said.

In early June, Darfur governor and ex-rebel leader Mini Minawi, who is now close to the army, declared Darfur a “disaster zone”.

Aid organisations are repeating their appeals to the warring sides to open up secure corridors so they can reach the injured and those displaced by the fighting.

These appeals have taken on increased urgency with the start of the rainy season in Sudan, which is usually accompanied by floods that bring water-borne diseases.