Region

JERICHO, Palestinian Territories — Israelis on Sunday shot dead a Palestinian who, according to the army and medics, had rammed his car into soldiers in the occupied West Bank.

The incident near the city of Jericho comes amid mounting violence across Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

“An assailant accelerated his vehicle toward IDF [Israeli army] soldiers who were at a bus station adjacent to the Nabi Musa Junction,” the army said, before he continued and drove at other soldiers nearby.

“A police officer and a civilian who were at the scene responded with live fire toward the assailant and neutralised him,” and Israeli forces had also fired at the driver, an army statement said.

An army spokeswoman confirmed to AFP that the driver was killed.

An AFP journalist at the scene saw soldiers surrounding a damaged white car beside a bus stop, which was cornered off with red tape.

Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency response service said its medics treated five people who were moderately or lightly wounded.

Tourists frequently pass by the area en route to the ancient city of Jericho or the Dead Sea.

The attack comes a day after a Palestinian assailant killed an Israeli in the flashpoint city of Hebron, in the southern West Bank, before being shot dead.

Sunday’s incident brings to 29 the number of Palestinians killed across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank this month. Three Israelis have been shot dead over the same period.

Much of the violence has been centred around the northern occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have launched near daily raids.

AL MISHKHAB, Iraq — Iraq has long drilled the desert for oil, but now climate stress, drought and reduced river flows are forcing it to dig ever deeper for a more precious resource: Water.

The war-scarred nation and major crude exporter is one of the world’s five countries most impacted by key effects of the climate crisis, says the United Nations.

Compounding the water stress, upstream dams, mainly in Turkey, have vastly reduced the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates, the once mighty rivers that gave birth to Mesopotamian civilisation.

One of Iraq’s millions of hardscrabble farmers bearing the brunt of this ecological crisis is Jabar Al Fatlawi, 50, a father of five with a rough beard and wearing a white robe.

Like his father before him, he has grown wheat and rice in the southern province of Najaf — but not this year, he said, blaming the “severe water shortage”.

To help him keep alive at least his date palms and livestock, he has paid local authorities to dig a well on his dusty patch of land near the town of Al Mishkhab.

Fatlawi watched as a noisy drill churned up the ground and eventually hit the water table far below, sending up a jet of muddy water that will allow him to battle on, for now.

As Iraq endures its worst drought since 1930, and frequent sandstorms turn the sky orange, he hopes the precious water will allow him to at least grow dill, onions and radishes.

His well is one of hundreds recently drilled in Iraq — at ever greater depth as the groundwater table below keeps dropping.

Fatlawi said he had once dug his own, small-scale well, before the government declared it illegal.

At any rate, he recalled, “sometimes the water was bitter, sometimes it was salty”.

Vanished lake 

The short-term solution for farmers like Fatlawi exacerbates a long-term problem as frantic competition heats up for ever more scarce water, experts warn.

Another southern farmer, Hussein Badiwi, 60, said he had been planting barley and grass for livestock on the edge of the Najaf Desert for 10 years.

Like his neighbours, he relies exclusively on water drilling and said the area had seen “a drop in the water level because of the multitude of wells”.

“Before, we used to dig 50 metres and we had water,” Badiwi said. “Now we have to go down more than 100 metres.”

Iraq, a country of 42 million, is seeing a race to the bottom for the precious groundwater.

The Sawa Lake in the south, a pilgrimage site, this year vanished for the first time in recorded history as some 1,000 illegal wells had sucked away the water table below.

In a country where one in five people work in agriculture, water shortages have destroyed livelihoods and driven a rural exodus into crowded cities, heightening social tensions.

Anger has flared at a government seen as incompetent and corrupt, and sporadic protests have broken out in the south demanding Baghdad pressure Turkey to release more water from its dams.

‘Stolen country’ 

Iraq’s ministry of water resources warned during the blistering summer that “excessive groundwater use has led to many problems” and called for “the preservation of this wealth”.

To tackle the crisis, authorities have shuttered hundreds of illegal wells.

But they have also drilled some 500 new ones in this year’s first half, with plans for more in at least six provinces ahead of what the ministry predicts will be “another year of drought” in 2023.

Najaf’s head of water resources, Jamil Al Assadi, said fees to drill wells had been reduced by half, and many new ones had been sunk into areas formerly irrigated by rivers and canals.

The water is intended for “livestock, irrigating orchards and limited plantations”, but insufficient and too salty for wheat fields or rice paddies, he said.

In exchange, “the farmers must use modern irrigation methods” rather than the wasteful flooding of fields they have practised since ancient times.

A United Nations agency has welcomed Iraq’s new regulations, but also suggested water meters on wells and “a pricing system to limit groundwater use”.

On a national level, Iraq provides “no incentives to encourage the use of modern irrigation technologies”, said the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.

Another Iraqi wheat and rice farmer, Salah Al Faraon, complained that the authorities had limited the land he could cultivate “because there is not enough water”.

“Without rice and wheat, how can we live without income?” asked the 75-year-old. “We can migrate, but to where? The whole country is being stolen.”

PARIS — Students led the way on Saturday in protests across Iran over Mahsa Amini's death, even as the commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guards told them: "Do not come to the streets."

Security forces had targeted a hospital and a student dormitory overnight, a rights group said, as the protest movement that flared over the 22-year-old's death entered a seventh week.

Amini died in custody on September 16 after her arrest in Tehran for an alleged breach of Iran's strict dress rules for women based on Sharia law.

Security forces have struggled to contain the protests, which started with women taking to the streets and burning their hijab headscarves and have evolved into a broader campaign to end the Islamic republic founded in 1979.

Students protested on Saturday, the start of the working week in Iran, at campuses in Tehran, Kerman in the country’s south, and the western city of Kermanshah, among others, online videos showed.

“Shameless, shameless,” students shouted as they clashed with security personnel at a university in Ahvaz, southwest Iran, in footage published by the 1500tasvir social media channel.

Security forces fired gunshots and tear gas at a gathering of university students in the flashpoint western city of Sanandaj, said Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR).

The students turned out even as Major General Hossein Salami, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told demonstrators: “Do not come to the streets! Today is the last day of the riots.”

Salami was addressing mourners who gathered in Shiraz to bury worshippers killed Wednesday in a mass shooting at a shrine in the southern city.

Gunfire outside hospital 

The massacre at the Shah Cheragh mausoleum came on the same day that thousands paid tribute to Amini across Iran, 40 days after her death in police custody.

Ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi appeared on Thursday to link the shrine attack, one of the country’s deadliest in years, to what his government calls “riots” sparked by Amini’s death.

Commemorations were also held Saturday for protesters killed in a what Amnesty International has labelled an “unrelenting brutal crackdown”.

“Death to the dictator,” mourners chanted at a ceremony to mark 40 days since the slaying of a protester in the western city of Divandarreh, using a slogan aimed at supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rights groups say riot police shot Mohsen Mohammadi, 28, during protests in Divandarreh on September 19, and he died the next day at Kausar hospital in Sanandaj.

Dozens of people who had gathered outside the same hospital late Friday to protect another wounded protester came under fire from the security forces, the Hengaw rights group said.

“People who had gathered in front of the Kausar Sanandaj hospital to defend Ashkan Mrwati were shot at by repressive forces,” said the Norway-based organisation.

“These forces want to capture Ashkan Mrwati while he is injured,” it said, before tweeting an image it said was of him lying on a gurney and responding to a medic.

Soon after, Hengaw said, the same security forces also “fired at the nearby student dorm” of the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences.

In online footage verified by AFP, security forces are seen arriving on more than a dozen motorbikes before shooting up into the dormitory building.

In other verified footage, security forces are seen firing tear gas late Friday into a residential block in the Tehran neighbourhood of Chitgar where a massive protest was held the night before.

‘CIA plot’ 

Female students chanting on a street in Kermanshah on Saturday came under fire from the security forces, wounding some of them, including two critically, Hengaw said.

The demonstrations have continued despite a crackdown that IHR said on Friday had killed at least 160 protesters, including more than two dozen children.

At least another 93 people were killed during separate protests that erupted on September 30 in the south-eastern city of Zahedan over the reported rape of a teenage girl by a police commander, says the rights group.

Worshippers in Zahedan came under automatic gunfire on Friday as they emerged from weekly prayers, said the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency.

At least 20 security personnel have been killed in the Amini protests, and at least another eight in Zahedan, according to an AFP tally based on official reports.

Iran has sought to portray the movement as a plot hatched by its arch-enemy the United States.

In a joint statement on Friday, Iran’s intelligence ministry and the Guard intelligence services said the CIA had been conspiring with spy agencies in Israel, Britain and Saudi Arabia “to spark riots” in Iran and set up networks of “accomplices” among other acts.

MOGADISHU — Two huge car bombings rocked Somalia's education ministry in the capital Mogadishu on Saturday causing casualties and shattering windows of nearby buildings, police and witnesses said.

The "simultaneous explosions occurred along the Zobe road and there are various casualties. We will provide details later", Sadik Dudishe, Somali police spokesman said.

A vehicle loaded with explosive was driven into the ministry compound and followed by gunfire, police officer Ibrahim Mohamed said.

“In a few minutes another blast occurred in the same area,” he said.

Abdirahman Ise, a witness, said the road had been busy when the first blast went off.

“I saw huge smoke in the ministry area and there is massive destruction,” another witness, Amino Salad, said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack but Islamist group Al Shabaab remains a potent force in the troubled Horn of Africa nation despite multinational efforts to degrade its leadership.

The militants have been seeking to overthrow the fragile foreign-backed government in Mogadishu for about 15 years.

Its fighters were driven out of the capital in 2011 by an African Union force but the group still controls swathes of countryside and has the capacity to wage deadly strikes on civilian and military targets.

They use threats of violence to collect taxes in territory under their jurisdiction.

The group last week claimed responsibility for an attack on a hotel in the port city of Kismayo that killed nine people and wounded 47 others.

In August, the group launched a 30-hour gun and bomb attack on the popular Hayat hotel in Mogadishu, killing 21 people and wounding 117.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who was elected in May, vowed after the August siege to wage “all-out war” on the Islamists.

In September he urged citizens to stay away from areas controlled by extremists, saying the armed forces and tribal militia were ratcheting up offensives against them.

A joint US-Somali drone strike killed one of the militants’ most senior commanders on October 1.

Just hours after his death was announced, a triple bombing in the southern city of Beledweyne killed at least 30 people.

In addition to violence, Somalia — like its neighbours in the Horn of Africa — is in the grip of the worst drought in more than 40 years. Four failed rainy seasons have wiped out livestock and crops.

The conflict-wracked nation is considered one of the most vulnerable to climate change but is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis as it battles the deadly Islamist insurgency.

NAQURA, Lebanon — Israel and Lebanon struck a US-brokered maritime border agreement on Thursday that opens up lucrative offshore gas fields for the neighbours that remain technically at war.

US President Joe Biden hailed the "historic" deal that comes as Western powers clamour to open up new energy production and reduce vulnerability to supply cuts from Russia.

The agreement was signed separately by Lebanon's President Michel Aoun in Beirut and by Israel's Prime Minister Yair Lapid in Jerusalem, and went into effect after the papers were delivered to mediators.

"Both parties took the final steps to bring the agreement into force and submitted the final paperwork to the United Nations in the presence of the United States," Biden said in a statement.

Israel's arch-foe, the Lebanese Hizbollah group, said it would end its "exceptional" mobilisation against the country, after threatening to attack Israel for months should it reach for offshore gas reserves at the border before the deal was signed.

"Our mission is complete," Hizbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

The deal comes as Lebanon hopes to extract itself from what the World Bank calls one of the world's worst economic crises in modern history, and as Lapid seeks to lock in a major achievement days ahead of a general election on November 1.

The exchange of letters was held in the southern Lebanese border town of Naqura, in the presence of US mediator Amos Hochstein and UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka, who will now deposit the new maritime coordinates at the UN headquarters in New York.

Delicate dance 

Biden said that “energy — particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean — should not be a cause for conflict, but a tool for cooperation, stability, security and prosperity”.

“This agreement takes us one step closer to realising a vision for a Middle East that is more secure, integrated and prosperous, delivering benefits for all the people of the region.”

Hours before signing it, Lapid had claimed that Lebanon’s intention to ink the deal amounted to a de-facto recognition of Israel.

“It is not every day that an enemy state recognises the State of Israel, in a written agreement, in front of the entire international community,” he said.

Aoun denied Lapid’s assertion, countering that “demarcating the southern maritime border is technical work that has no political implications”.

The deal comes as political parties in Israel — including Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid — jockey for position in what will be the fifth general election in less than four years.

Veteran right-winger and longtime premier Benjamin Netanyahu has his sights set on a comeback and he dismissed the maritime deal as an “illegal ploy” early this month.

London-listed Energean on Wednesday said it began producing gas from Karish, an offshore field at the heart of the border agreement, a day after Israel gave the green light.

Lebanon meanwhile will have full rights to operate and explore the so-called Qana or Sidon reservoir, parts of which falls in Israel’s territorial waters, with the Jewish state receiving some revenues.

With demand for gas rising worldwide because of the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Lebanon hopes that exploiting the offshore field will help ease its financial and economic crisis.

But analysts caution that it will take time for production to start in Lebanese waters, meaning no quick return for a country that is desperately short of foreign exchange reserves.

Exploration has so far only been tentative — a 2012 seismic study of a limited offshore area by the British firm Spectrum estimated recoverable gas reserves in Lebanon at 25.4 trillion cubic feet, although authorities in Lebanon have announced higher estimates.

The maritime border deal could not have been signed by Lebanon without the consent of Hizbollah, a powerful Shiite faction backed by Israel’s arch nemesis Iran.

Hizbollah leader Nasrallah said that the deal “is not an international treaty and it is not a recognition of Israel”, while hailing it as a “great victory for Lebanon”.

Israel and Hizbollah fought a 34-day war in 2006 and the Shiite movement is the only faction to have kept its weapons after the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

On July 2, Israel said it had downed three drones launched by Hizbollah that were headed towards the offshore field of Karish.

KHARTOUM — Around 150 Sudanese protesters rallied on Thursday in front of the United Nations headquarters in Khartoum to denounce ethnic clashes that have killed more than 200 people this month in Blue Nile state.

Demonstrators held banners reading “No to deaths”, “We want to live in peace”, demanding an end to the violence that erupted in early October over reported land disputes between members of the Hausa people and rival groups, an AFP journalist said.

Since the start of the year, ethnic conflicts in Sudan have killed 600 people and displaced more than 210,000 others, the UN says.

Access to land is highly sensitive in the impoverished country, where agriculture and livestock account for 43 per cent of employment and 30 per cent of GDP, according to UN and World Bank statistics.

“Today, we protest to tell the international community to put an end to violence in Blue Nile because the Sudanese authorities are doing nothing,” protester Mawaheb Ibrahim told AFP.

The health minister in Blue Nile state, which borders South Sudan and Ethiopia, said Thursday a total of 237 had been killed in the violence last week in the Wad Al Mahi area, about 500 kilometres south of Khartoum.

“This is not the final toll because there are still bodies in the rubble of homes,” he added.

Some “40,000 people, mainly women, children and elderly people, have found refuge in schools in Roseires and Damazin”, the two closest major cities, he said.

“International organisations must help us, in particular to provide them with medicines because there are sick people among them,” he said.

A high-ranking member of the Hausa, Mohammed Nureddine, told AFP that “entire houses have been burned”.

There are “besieged inhabitants, some of whom are injured, but no one can access them” as tensions continue to rage in the area, he said.

Sudan has been grappling with deepening political unrest and a spiralling economic crisis since last year’s military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan.

The military power grab upended a transition to civilian rule launched after the 2019 ouster of strongman Omar Al Bashir, who ruled for three decades.

A surge in ethnic violence in recent months has highlighted the security breakdown in Sudan since the coup.