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ALGIERS — President Emmanuel Macron starts a three-day visit on Thursday to Algeria to help mend ties with the former French colony, which this year marks its 60th anniversary of independence.

The first French president to be born after Algerian independence, Macron is hoping "to lay a foundation to rebuild and develop" a sometimes difficult relationship with the North African nation, his office said.

Accompanied by seven ministers, Macron will be met at the airport in the capital Algiers by President Abdelmadjid Tebboune at around 3:00 pm (14:00 GMT).

The two heads of state will visit a monument to martyrs of the country's war for independence, which ended more than 130 years of French colonial rule in 1962.

Franco-Algerian relations have seen repeated crises since then.

The French leader, on his second visit to Algeria since he took power in 2017, "has chosen to direct this visit towards the future, focusing on start-ups, innovation, youth, new sectors," the Elysee said.

Macron, who will meet entrepreneurs in Algiers as well as young people in the second city Oran, is accompanied by a 90-strong delegation.

France's chief rabbi Haim Korsia, the son of Algerian-born Jews, withdrew from the trip at the last moment after testing positive for COVID-19.

His planned attendance had been criticised by prominent Islamist politician Abderrazak Makri and social media users in Algeria, where the Palestinian cause is widely supported.

Ties between Paris and Algiers have been particularly stormy since last year, when Macron questioned Algeria’s existence as a nation before the French occupation and accused the government of fomenting “hatred towards France”.

Tebboune withdrew his country’s ambassador in response and banned French military aircraft from its airspace.

But Macron’s office said he “regretted” the misunderstandings caused by his comments, and his aides believe both sides have moved on.

They note the resumption of normal diplomatic relations and overflights to French army bases further south in Africa.

Analyst Mansour Kedidir said that “given instability in the Maghreb region, conflicts in the Sahel and the war in Ukraine, improving ties between France and Algeria is a political necessity”.

Macron and Tebboune will discuss the situation in Algeria’s southern neighbour Mali, as well as the growing influence in the region of Russia, Algeria’s top arms supplier.

France’s latest efforts to mend ties comes as Algeria moves to fill a vast shortfall in gas supplies to Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

European nations are seeking to end their dependence on Russian hydrocarbons, giving Algeria — Africa’s biggest gas exporter with direct pipelines to Spain and Italy — renewed clout.

“The French president will certainly ask Algeria to make an effort to try to increase its gas production,” said Algerian Economist Abderrahmane Mebtoul.

But Macron’s office has said gas is not a major feature of the visit, and an adviser said the trip is “about being oriented towards the future”.

‘Different discourse’ 

Macron has long ruled out issuing an apology for the highly sensitive issue of colonialism, but he has made a series of gestures aimed at healing past wounds.

In Algiers, few have much sympathy towards Macron, who during his first election campaign had described French colonialism as a “crime against humanity”.

“Before he was president, he used nice words, he visited [Algeria], but right after he went back to France, he changed,” said computer scientist Othmane Abdellouche, 62. “He used a totally different discourse.”

French historians say half-a-million civilians and combatants died during Algeria’s bloody war for independence, 400,000 of them Algerian. The Algerian authorities say 1.5 million were killed.

Tebboune’s office said in October that over 5.6 million Algerians were killed during the colonial period.

Algerian rights groups have also urged Macron not to overlook human rights abuses by the government that came to power after long-time leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika stepped down in 2019.

Tebboune, a prime minister under Bouteflika, has clamped down on the Hirak opposition movement that forced his predecessor to resign.

BAGHDAD — Several hundred supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr launched a sit-in outside Iraq's top judicial body on Tuesday, ratcheting up tensions in a showdown with a rival Shiite alliance.

Caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi cut short a visit to Egypt, where he had been due to take part in a five-nation summit, to return home to monitor developments.

Kadhemi "called on all political parties to calm down and to take advantage of the opportunity for national dialogue to get the country out of its current crisis", his office said.

The standoff between the Sadrists and their rivals in the pro-Iran Coordination Framework has triggered an intensifying war of words, but so far no violence.

The Sadrists, who have already been camped outside parliament for the past three weeks, pitched tents outside the gates of the judicial body's headquarters in Baghdad, AFP correspondents reported.

They carried placards demanding the dissolution of parliament and new elections, 10 months after an inconclusive poll failed to deliver a majority government.

Even though his political bloc has taken part in previous administrations, securing top jobs in government ministries, Sadr himself has managed to keep above the political fray.

He is lionised by his supporters as an outsider dedicated to the fight against a corrupt elite.

"We want to stamp out corruption," said Abu Karar Al Alyawi, a Sadr supporter among those demonstrating.

"The judicial system is being blackmailed, or maybe it's corrupt too."

On August 10, Sadr gave the Supreme Judicial Council one week to dissolve parliament to end the political deadlock, but the council ruled it lacked the authority to do so.

In the face of Tuesday's protest, the council announced it was suspending work until further notice.

The UN mission in Iraq said it respected the right to "peaceful protest", while urging "respect for state institutions".

Police deployed in numbers around the headquarters, which unlike parliament, lies outside Baghdad's high-security Green Zone government and diplomatic compound.

Following the start of the sit-in, the Coordination Framework said it would “refuse any call for direct dialogue” with the Sadrists, until they put an end to “the occupation of institutions”.

The Coordination Framework, which has been holding a sit-in of its own just outside the Green Zone, wants a transitional government before new polls are held.

They include former paramilitaries of the Tehran-backed Hashed Al Shaabi network, and the party of ex-prime minister Nuri Al Maliki, a longtime Sadr foe.

Kadhemi, the prime minister, last week convened crisis talks with party leaders, but they were boycotted by the Sadrists.

Since the aftermath of the US-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has been governed under a sectarian power-sharing system that reserves the premiership for the country’s Shiite majority community.

The Sadrists insist that after emerging from 2021 elections as the largest bloc in parliament — but not an absolute majority — the constitution be amended to give it the right to nominate the prime minister, something their opponents strongly oppose.

The persistent failure of the rival Shiite factions to form a government in a country blighted by ailing infrastructure and crumbling public services has sparked mounting public frustration.

Iraqis grown used to daily power cuts lasting much of the day now also face water shortages as drought ravages swathes of the country.

Despite its oil wealth, many Iraqis are mired in poverty, and some 35 per cent of young people are unemployed, according to the United Nations.

ANKARA — Turkey said on Tuesday that its restoration of full diplomatic relations with Israel did not mean a shift in Middle Eastern allegiances as it warmly welcomed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian leader met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks and a private dinner on his second visit to Turkey in a year.

The talks came just a week after Turkey and Israel sealed a rapprochement from a decade of rocky relations by announcing plans to reappoint ambassadors for the first time in four years.

Erdogan has been a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause who has branded Israel a "terrorist state".

He held the veteran Palestinian leader by the hand while gingerly walking him down a turquoise carpet to his presidential palace before a welcoming guard.

"The steps taken in our relations with Israel will in no way diminish our support for the Palestinian cause," Erdogan later told a joint media event.

"Turkey defends its vision of a two-state solution on every platform, and we have clearly demonstrated our response to the Israeli attacks and civilian casualties."

Abbas did not mention Turkish-Israeli relations in his comments but thanked Erdogan for his past support.

"I would like to thank you for the close attention and hospitality you have shown us," Abbas told Erdogan.

"I would like to reiterate my gratitude for the fact that Turkey and the Turkish government are on the side of Palestine."

Abbas' visit is widely seen as an attempt by Turkey to show that it stood by old allies even as it repairs relations with more recent rivals.

Turkey has gradually mended fences across the volatile region as it seeks new deals and investments to help recover from its most profound economic crisis in more than two decades.

The warming with the Jewish state is accompanied by plans to restore direct flights by Israeli airlines between the two countries that could bring in more tourists to Turkey’s resorts.

Turkey is also hoping to revive an east Mediterranean natural gas pipeline project that won tentative backing from the United States last year.

Cavusoglu said Palestinian leaders also “want our relations with Israel to be normalised”.

“They also know that thanks to this dialogue, we will better defend the Palestinian cause,” he said.

MOGADISHU — Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Tuesday pledged “an all-out war” to eliminate Al-Shabaab in his first statement to the nation since the terrorists staged a deadly 30-hour hotel siege in Mogadishu.

The attack, which began on Friday night, was the biggest to hit Somalia’s capital since Mohamud took office in June and underscored the challenge of trying to crush the 15-year insurgency by the Al Qaeda linked group.

At least 21 people died and 117 others were wounded in the gun and bomb attack targeting the popular Hayat Hotel, with the fatalities including Norwegian citizens, according to Norway’s government.

“I know that the Somali people are fed up with the endless condolences and mourning, I know that you lose respectable people in every attack carried out by the terrorists,” Mohamud said.

“So I call upon you to be prepared for an all-out war against the ruthless [people] who are hostile to our peace,” he said in a statement released by the office of the president.

Mohamud convened a national security committee meeting on Tuesday, attended by the prime minister, interior minister and the foreign minister, as well as the country’s defence chiefs.

“We are determined to weaken the terrorists who destroy our people till all the areas they control are liberated, this is a priority for our government and the preparation and implementation of that plan is ongoing,” he said, without elaborating.

The Hayat was a favoured meeting spot for government officials and scores of people were inside when a suicide bomber triggered a massive blast, enabling heavily-armed gunmen to enter the hotel.

Minutes later, a second explosion struck as rescuers, security forces and civilians rushed to help the injured, witnesses said.

The siege only ended at around midnight Saturday after security forces bombarded the building, leaving much of it in ruins.

Mohamud, who was elected in May after a protracted political crisis, said last month that ending the insurgency required more than a military approach, but that his government would negotiate with Al Shabaab only when the time was right.

The group has carried out several attacks in the mainly Muslim country since Mohamud took office.

Last month it also mounted an incursion into neighbouring Ethiopia and raided a military base on the border.

The Islamist militants, who espouse a strict version of sharia or Islamic law, were driven out of Mogadishu by an African Union force in 2011.

But they still control swathes of countryside and retain the ability to launch deadly strikes, often hitting hotels and restaurants as well as military and political targets.

KARBALA, Iraq — The bodies of two pilgrims were pulled from an Iraqi shrine on Monday, two days after its partial collapse in a landslide, taking the overall toll to seven dead, rescuers said.

Emergency workers were trying to remove the rubble and debris from the shrine known as Qattarat Al Imam Ali near the Shiite holy city of Karbala in cental Iraq.

"Unfortunately, we found this morning two bodies, a man and a woman", under the rubble, Jawdat Abdelrahman, director of the civil defence media department, told AFP.

So far, the bodies retrieved from the site were a child, four women and two men, while three children had been rescued and rushed to hospital.

"We are continuing the search for other victims," Abdelrahman said, adding eyewitnesses had reported that there was another body, of a woman, still under the rubble.

Civil defence spokesman Nawas Sabah Shaker had said on Sunday that between six and eight pilgrims had been reported trapped under the debris of the shrine, near the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

The three children rescued earlier were in "good condition" and being monitored in a hospital, emergency services had said on Sunday.

Search and rescue operations have been carried out since the shrine, which sits at the base of high, bare rock walls, became partially buried when earthen embankments collapsed on Saturday due to saturation from humidity, according to the civil defence.

Anger over tragedy 

It is the latest tragedy to befall oil-rich but poverty-stricken Iraq, which is trying to move past decades of war but is hobbled by political paralysis, endemic corruption and other challenges.

Anger has erupted at officials as grieving locals demanded an explanation.

"We want to know what happened, why it happened," said Bassem Khazali, whose nephew was among the victims.

Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr meanwhile railed against “suspected corruption that caused civilian deaths”, in a tweet Sunday evening.

But Iraq’s Shiite waqf, which is responsible for administering Shiite properties in the country, said in a statement that it did not manage the shrine nor the land on which it was built.

“The shrine does not belong to a known party, but to individuals who have been summoned” for questioning, Karbala governor Nassif Al Khatabi wrote on Facebook, without providing further detail.

Rescuers on Sunday drove a bulldozer through the shrine’s entrance, which resembles half a dome ornately decorated with blue tiles covered in Arabic script.

Iraqi President Barham Saleh had called on rescue workers to “mobilise all efforts to save the trapped people”, while Caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi urged his interior minister to directly supervise operations.

The stricken shrine is dedicated to Imam Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, who according to Shiite tradition stopped there with his army on his way to a battle in 657AD.

It is located in a natural depression about 25 kilometres  west of Karbala, which is the burial place of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.