Region

BAGHDAD — An angry and grieving Iraq on Thursday buried nine holidaymakers, including a newlywed, killed in the artillery bombardment of a Kurdish hill village.

The government has blamed neighbouring Turkey, which denied its troops were responsible and instead accused rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Germany called for an urgent investigation.

The coffins of the nine dead, draped in Iraqi national flags and festooned with flowers, were flown on a military aircraft to Baghdad from Erbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region.

An honour guard bore the coffins at a ceremony witnessed by Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhemi on the tarmac of Baghdad's airport, where his office said he met relatives of the victims who came to claim their loved ones' bodies for burial.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and Kurdish regional president Nechirvan Barzani had led the pallbearers carrying the smallest of the coffins, a child's, onto the military plane in Erbil, an AFP correspondent reported.

Wednesday's shelling in the Zakho district village of Parakh also wounded 23 people, the majority of them domestic tourists seeking respite from the heat of the plains in the mountains of the Kurdish north.

Among the dead was Abbas Alaa, 24, an engineer married for barely a week, said a friend who gave his name as Nour.

Alaa was on his honeymoon,  his first-ever trip, Nour said, and his wife was wounded.

"We can't believe it," said Nour who waited with other friends at a modest Baghdad home for relatives to return with his corpse.

"This doesn't happen in any other country, only Iraq," Nour said.

The deaths prompted angry anti-Turkish demonstrations in cities across Iraq.

In Baghdad, dozens of demonstrators protested outside the Turkish visa office early Thursday, despite a heavy police presence.

Loudspeakers blared out patriotic songs as protesters chanted slogans demanding the expulsion of the Turkish ambassador, an AFP journalist reported.

Protesters brandished portraits of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labelled “terrorist”. They trampled Turkish flags underfoot.

“We want to burn down the embassy. The ambassador must be expelled,” said demonstrator Ali Yassin, 53. “Our government is doing nothing.”

There were similar protests on Wednesday night in the Shiite shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala and in the southern city of Nasiriyah.

Germany’s foreign ministry on Thursday said “the circumstances of the attack and those responsible” must be urgently investigated.

“The German government assigns great importance to respect for Iraq’s state sovereignty and international law,” it said.

In Tehran, the foreign ministry spokesman said “Iran considers the security of Iraq as its own security and will not hesitate to provide any assistance in this regard”.

In an unusually strong rebuke, Iraq’s prime Minister Kadhemi warned Turkey that Iraq reserves the “right to retaliate”.

Kadhemi called the artillery fire a “flagrant violation” of sovereignty,  a line echoed by the Kurdistan administration.

Iraq said it was recalling its charge d’affaires from Ankara and demanded an official apology from Turkey along with “the withdrawal of its armed forces from all Iraqi territory”.

The Turkish foreign ministry denied responsibility for the bombardment, saying these “kinds of attacks” were committed by “terrorist organisations”.

On its Twitter account, the Turkish embassy offered its condolences to “our brother Iraqis killed by the PKK terrorist organisation”.

Ankara launched an offensive in northern Iraq in April dubbed “Operation Claw-Lock”, which it said targets fighters from the PKK.

The rebels have kept up a deadly insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

Ankara’s Western allies also list the group as a “terrorist organisation”.

For the past 25 years, the Turkish army has maintained dozens of outposts across Iraq’s Kurdish north as part of its campaign against the rebels. There have been sporadic calls for their removal.

Iraq and Turkey are trade partners but Ankara’s successive offensives against PKK rear bases in the north have been a persistent source of tension in relations, particularly when they have caused civilian casualties.

KHARTOUM — Ethnic clashes in a deadly land dispute in Sudan's Blue Nile state has killed 105 people and wounded 291, the state's health minister said Wednesday, providing a new toll.

Fighting broke out in the southern state which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan on July 11 between members of the Berti and Hausa ethnic groups.

Troops were deployed in the state on Saturday to stop the fighting, and "the situation is now calm," state health minister Jamal Nasser told AFP.

“The challenge now is in sheltering the displaced,” Nasser said, speaking by telephone from the state capital Al Damazin, some 460 kilometres  south of Khartoum.

The United Nations said Tuesday that more than 17,000 people have fled their homes from the fighting, with 14,000 “sheltering in three schools in Al Damazin”.

But regional Hausa leader Mohamed Noureddine said he believed the death toll would rise further, with some people missing following the heavy fighting, which has seen houses torched.

“We cannot determine the number of victims, since there are corpses trapped under rubble,” Noureddine said, who called from Blue Nile to speak to reporters at a press conference in Khartoum.

Another senior Hausa leader, Hafez Omar, accused local officials of being behind the violence, claiming that “government weapons” were used in the violence.

“We hold the governor responsible for what happened,” Omar said, accusations rejected by the authorities.

Economic crisis 

In Sudan, deadly clashes regularly erupt over land, livestock and access to water and grazing, especially in areas still awash with weapons left over from decades of civil war.

The violence is the latest unrest to hit the northeast African nation, already reeling from months of mass demonstrations demanding the restoration of a transition to civilian rule following a military coup last year.

Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries and mired in an economic crisis that has deepened since an October coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, has seen only rare interludes of civilian rule since independence.

Fighting in Blue Nile reportedly broke out after Bertis rejected a Hausa request to create a “civil authority to supervise access to land”, a prominent Hausa member said.

But a senior Berti leader said the group was responding to a “violation” of their land by the Hausas.

Between January and March this year, the UN said aid was provided to 563,000 people in Blue Nile, a region still struggling to rebuild after years of heavy fighting during Sudan’s devastating 1983-2005 civil war.

The latest violence in Blue Nile has sparked protests, with Hausa people taking to the streets in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday demanding “justice for the martyrs”.

Thousands of Hausa also protested on Tuesday in the key eastern cities of Gedaref, Kassala and Port Sudan, as well as El Obeid in North Kordofan.

Between January and March this year, the UN said aid was provided to 563,000 people in Blue Nile.

TUNIS — The leader of Tunisia’s Islamist-inspired opposition party Ennahdha was questioned and then allowed to go free by an anti-terror unit, just days before a controversial constitutional referendum.

After a “more than nine-hour” session and “19 defence speeches” requested by lawyers, Rached Ghannouchi left the anti-terror centre and headed home, his lawyer and former Ennahdha official Samir Dilou said on Facebook.

Dilou told AFP the anti-terror unit had allowed Ghannouchi freedom of movement, while another lawyer said the politician was not the subject of “judicial control measures”.

Ghannouchi’s supporters had feared he would be arrested after being questioned.

More than 20 security vans were stationed in front of the headquarters of the anti-terror centre, where scores of Ennahdha activists were gathered in support of their leader, AFP correspondents said.

Supporters chanted Ghannouchi’s name as he entered the building, making the victory sign and waving placards.

“Stop political trials”, one read, written in both English and Arabic.

Ghannouchi, 81, has been under investigation since June amid allegations of corruption and money laundering linked to transfers from abroad to the charity Namaa Tunisia, affiliated with Ennahdha.

As part of the same investigation, Tunisian authorities last month arrested former prime minister and one-time Ennahdha leader Hamadi Jebali for alleged money-laundering.

Jebali was later released, but is due to face questioning on the allegations on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, a court ordered the freezing of the bank accounts of Ghannouchi and a dozen members of his family and his party — including Jebali — as part of this investigation.

In June, Ghannouchi was also handed a ban from travelling abroad as part of a separate investigation into high-profile political assassinations that rocked the country in 2013.

Ennahdha and Ghannouchi deny all charges against them.

Tunisia’s long-running political crisis took a dramatic turn in July last year when President Kais Saied sacked the government, froze the Ennahdha-dominated parliament headed by Ghannouchi, and seized far-reaching powers.

Saied has put forward a draft constitution set for referendum on July 25, the anniversary of his power grab.

Opponents accuse him of waging political vendettas and dragging the country back to dictatorship, over a decade since its pro-democracy revolt sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.

TEHRAN — Damascus said on Wednesday that the Turkish president did not achieve his “goals” during yesterday’s summit with Iran and Russia, referring to Ankara’s efforts to rally support for a military operation in northern Syria.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi hosted his Russian and Turkish counterparts, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Tuesday as part of the “Astana Peace Process” ostensibly aimed at ending Syria’s 11-year conflict.

Iran and Russia support the Damascus government and Turkey supports rebel forces against the regime in the long-running war.

But Turkey is also deeply opposed to a semiautonomous Kurdish administration in Syria’s oil-rich northeast, and Erdogan has lately repeatedly vowed to launch an offensive against Kurdish militants, on the back of a 2019 onslaught.

Erdogan said at the summit Turkey “will continue” its fight against “terrorist organisations”, demanding Russia and Iran’s backing.

Hours after the summit concluded, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad was received in Tehran by his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

Erdogan “had many goals and policies that he wanted to impose on the meeting”, Mekdad said in a joint press conference.

Those goals “were not achieved thanks to the serious discussions and opinions put forward by Iranian and Russian friends”.

‘Negotiate and consult’ 

On Tuesday, the Turkish president earned a rebuke for his push for the offensive from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a bilateral meeting.

Khamenei told Erdogan that any Turkish offensive on Syria would be “detrimental” for the region and called for the issue to be resolved through dialogue between Ankara, Damascus, Moscow and Tehran.

Moscow has previously called on Ankara to “refrain” from an attack.

However, in a statement at the end of the summit, the three countries “rejected all attempts to create new realities on the ground... including illegitimate self-rule initiatives”, and expressed their determination to stand against separatist and “terrorist” groups in Syria.

Ankara hopes to create a “safe zone” that would drive Kurdish militants 30 kilometres back from the Turkish border.

Amir-Abdollahian noted that his country “will continue to negotiate and consult with the Turkish and Syrian sides” over Ankara’s threatened offensive.

Mekdad suggested that the move increase the risks of Syrian-Turkish “conflict”.

“It does not benefit Turkey or anyone other than Turkey to penetrate the Syrian borders and for there to be safe areas, because this will create another kind of conflict between Syria and Turkey,” he said.

“We are ready to defend our sovereignty, our security, our freedom and the freedom of our people and this is something that cannot be abandoned.”

The Iranian foreign minister reiterated a demand for US forces — aligned with the Kurdish administration — to withdraw from areas east of the Euphrates, a call that Khamenei issued on Tuesday in a meeting with Putin.

“The presence of US armed forces east of the Euphrates is one of the problems of the region,” Amir-Abdollahian said, adding that “we believe American forces should leave Syrian soil immediately and without precondition”.

Mekdad described the American presence in Syria as “illegal”.

CAIRO — At least 25 people were killed and more than 35 injured in Egypt on Tuesday when the bus they were travelling in smashed into a parked truck, official media reported.

The bus carrying around 45 passengers crashed into the stationary truck near the village of Al Barsha, some 300 kilometres south of the capital Cairo in al-Minya governorate.

"The truck was parked on the side of the road to change a tyre when it was hit from behind by the bus travelling from Sohag governorate to Cairo," a statement from the governorate said.

Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity said it would offer "emergency benefits" of 10,000 Egyptian pounds (around $530) to the families of those killed, state media said.

Crashes are relatively common in Egypt, where many roads are in disrepair and traffic regulations frequently ignored.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Israeli occupation army said it launched strikes on Tuesday on a position belonging to the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after gunfire from the Palestinian enclave.

The Israeli occupation army said on Twitter that fighter jets were striking a Hamas military post in the northern Gaza Strip following the firing of a bullet from the coastal enclave. 

A witness in Gaza's Beit Hanoun area told AFP they saw multiple strikes on a security site controlled by Hamas, the militant group which rules the enclave.

The latest strikes come after Israeli warplanes targeted a Hamas site in the Gaza Strip over the weekend in response to rocket fire from the enclave, the military said.

That exchange of fire came hours after US President Joe Biden had visited Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem condemned Saturday's strikes, which the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said caused no injuries.

WAFA said Israeli missiles were fired at two locations, one "near a tourist resort", where nearby houses were severely damaged.

In further retaliation, Israel announced late Saturday it was suspending a decision to increase the number of permits granted for Gazans to work in Israel..

The quota was raised before Biden's visit by 1,500 permits, allowing 15,500 Gazan workers into Israel.

Impoverished Gaza, home to 2.3 million Palestinians, has been under Israeli blockade since 2007 when Iran-backed Hamas seized power from the secular Fateh movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.