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ZAKHO, Iraq — Iraqi policeman Jundi Khodr Kalo was among thousands of Yazidis again forced to flee their homes this month, after fierce clashes between the army and local fighters in their Sinjar heartland.

“Last time we were displaced because we were afraid of the Daesh” group, said Kalo, 37, from the non-Arab, Kurdish-speaking minority.

The Yazidis are a monotheistic, esoteric community who were massacred by Daesh when the extremists swept across Iraq in 2014.

Two days of fighting broke out on May 1 in northern Iraq’s Sinjar region between the army and Yazidi fighters affiliated with Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

A local official said the violence forced more than 1,700 families, or over 10,200 people, to flee.

Some 960 families have settled in a displacement camp in the neighbouring Iraqi Kurdistan region, while others have sought shelter with relatives, according to the United Nations.

Kalo, his wife and their five children took refuge in the crowded Chamisku camp, home to more than 22,000 people, near the city of Zakho.

‘Not an ideal solution’

Like many Yazidis, the Kalo family suffered long years of displacement after IS overran swathes of their country.

“We lived in a camp for six years,” he said, only returned to their home village two years ago.

Going back “was not easy... but we managed to get by”.

“But lately, the situation got worse,” he told AFP.

Sinjar is the site of sporadic skirmishes between Iraqi security forces and the Sinjar Resistance Units — local fighters allied with the PKK separatists.

“Every day we would hear the sound of shooting and explosions. We were afraid for our families,” Kalo said.

But life in Chamisku, like in other camps, is tough, too.

Residents take shelter in tarpaulin tents, where foam mattresses line the ground.

AFP journalists saw dozens of people queueing for handouts of rice, tea, sugar, flour and milk.

“The situation in these camps is crowded,” said Firas Al Khateeb, a spokesman for the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR).

He cited “a risk of limited access to basic services due to a reduction of humanitarian funding”.

Living in displacement camps “for long periods of time is not an ideal situation”, he added.

“But any return [home] must be voluntary, maintain human dignity”, and be to a “peaceful environment”, Khateeb said.

‘Need security, stability’

Iraqi authorities say calm has returned to Sinjar following the fighting, which killed an Iraqi soldier.

Each side has blamed the other for starting the clashes in the region, the scene of simmering tensions and multiple actors. 

The army is seeking to apply an agreement between Baghdad and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region for the withdrawal of Yazidi and PKK combatants.

The deal is seen as crucial for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which has been looking to restore its former influence in Sinjar.

It is also key to facilitating the return of Yazidis displaced years ago by IS.

But the Yazidi fighters, who are affiliated with the Hashed Al Shaabi — a pro-Iran former paramilitary organisation — accuse the army of trying to take control of their stronghold.

Iraqi security forces said military reinforcements were dispatched to Sinjar to “impose state authority”.

“We will not allow the presence of armed groups,” the forces said in a statement on Thursday.

The Sinjar region has also been a target of Turkish air strikes on rear bases of the PKK, which Ankara considers a terrorist organisation.

In such a complex and dangerous atmosphere, Yazidi civilians say they feel like collateral damage.

“We need security and stability, otherwise we will not go back to Sinjar,” said labourer Zaeem Hassan Hamad.

The 65-year-old took refuge in Chamisku with more than a dozen family members, including his grandchildren.

Daesh forced him to flee once before, and he said he did not want to keep repeating that traumatic experience.

“We cannot go home and be displaced again,” he said.

“If the Hashed, the PKK and the army remain in the region, the people will be afraid,” he added.

“No one will ever go back.”

PARIS — A French court opened hearings on Monday in the case of the 2009 crash of a Yemenia Airways flight that killed 152 people but miraculously left a 12-year-old girl alive.

The Yemeni national airline, whose representatives will not be in the dock due to the country’s still-raging civil war, faces a maximum fine of 225,000 euros ($240,000) for involuntary homicide and injuries in a trial expected to last four weeks.

On June 29, 2009, flight Yemenia 626 was on approach to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros islands which lie between Mozambique and Madagascar, after departing from the airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.

France’s overseas territory of Mayotte is also part of the Comoros Archipelago. Among the 142 passengers and 11 crew were 66 French citizens.

Rather than landing safely, just before 11:00 pm the Airbus A310 plunged into the Indian Ocean with its engines running at full throttle, killing everyone on board except Bahia Bakari, then just 12 years old.

In interviews and a book of her own, Bakari remembered “turbulence” during the approach, before feeling what seemed to be an electric shock and then blacking out — only to find herself in the sea.

She survived by clinging to debris for 11 hours until she was found by a fishing boat the following day.

Bakari was present as proceedings opened Monday, as were around 100 family members or friends of the crash victims. She is expected to testify on May 23.

‘Bitter taste’

Although the black boxes were found weeks after the crash, France accused the Comoros government of dragging its feet in the investigation, while victims’ families accused Yemen of lobbying to hinder a trial of the national carrier.

“Thirteen years is a very long time, it’s psychologically and morally exhausting, even physically,” said Said Assoumani, president of a victims’ association.

“But after 13 years of waiting and impatience, the criminal trial has finally come.”

Investigators and experts found there was nothing wrong with the aircraft, blaming instead “inappropriate actions by the crew during the approach to Moroni airport, leading to them losing control”.

But Yemenia Airways has been attacked by prosecutors for pilot training “riddled with gaps” and continuing to fly to Moroni at night despite its non-functioning landing lights.

“Yemenia remains deeply marked by this catastrophe... nevertheless it maintains its innocence,” the company’s lawyer Leon-Lef Forster said.

Meanwhile, the absence of any company representatives at the trial “leaves the families and the survivor with a bitter taste”, said Sebastien Busy, a lawyer for another victims’ association.

Around 560 people have joined the suit as plaintiffs, many of them from the region around Marseille in southern France, home to many of the victims.

A video feed to the southern port city has been set up for their benefit, allowing them to follow part of the proceedings.

TEHRAN — Syrian President Bashar Assad met with Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi during a brief visit to Tehran on Sunday, Iranian state television said.

"Assad has left Iran for Damascus after meeting separately with the supreme leader" and the president, the report said.

Iran is a major ally of Assad, backing him alongside Russia in Syria's more than decade long civil war.

Tehran has given financial and military support to the Assad regime during the 11-year war, and says it has deployed forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus but only as advisers.

The relationship between Tehran and Damascus are "vital for both countries and we should not let it weaken", Khamenei said, according to a statement on his website. 

"We should strengthen it as much as possible."

Assad's last reported visit to Iran was in February 2019 — and that was the first one since the start of the war.

Iran's supreme leader also hit out at Arab nations that normalised relations with Tehran's arch nemesis Israel under the US-sponsored Abraham Accords.

BEIRUT — More Syrian children are in need than at any time since a devastating civil war erupted over a decade ago, but funding for them is "dwindling", the United Nations warned Sunday.

"Syria's children have suffered for far too long and should not suffer any longer," the UN children's agency said in a statement.

A total of 9.3 million Syrian children are in need of aid both inside the country and in the wider region where they have fled, UNICEF spokesperson Juliette Touma told AFP.

"More than 6.5 million children in Syria are in need of assistance, the highest number recorded since the beginning of the crisis, more than 11 years ago," the agency statement added.

In neighbouring countries, 2.8 million Syrian refugee children depend on assistance, Touma said.

Syria's war is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions since it began with a brutal crackdown of anti-government protests in 2011.

It escalated into a devastating and complex conflict that drew in numerous actors including terrorist groups and regional and international powers.

"Children's needs, both inside Syria and in neighbouring countries, are growing," said Adele Khodr, UNICEF's Middle East chief.

"Many families struggle to make ends meet. Prices of basic supplies including food are skyrocketing, partially as a result of the crisis in Ukraine."

Children are among the most vulnerable and the UN warned they are bearing the brunt of the impact.

UNICEF said the agency faced a severe cash shortfall to provide aid.

"Funding for humanitarian operations is meanwhile fast dwindling," Khodr said. "UNICEF has received less than half of its funding requirements for this year."

UNICEF called for $20 million to fund "cross-border operations" in northwest Syria, the country's last major rebel enclave, to support "the only lifeline for nearly one million children".

JALIHA, Iraq — Iraqi farmer Kamel Hamed looks at the golden ears of wheat waving in the wind, unable to hide his anguish over the baking heat that is decimating his harvest.

"The drought is unbelievable," said the 53-year-old in a white dishdasha robe and keffiyeh head covering at his farm in Jaliha village of central Diwaniya province.

"Even the well water can't be used, it's salt water."

Searing heat and a lack of rain were already threatening his harvest. Then came Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, driving up the cost of fuel, seeds and fertiliser.

Like all farmers in Iraq, Hamed must follow the instructions of the state authorities who are the main grain buyers.

They determine the areas to be planted and the level of irrigation, depending on rain and water reserves. This year, due to water shortages, Iraq has reduced the area under cultivation by half.

As a result, Hamed has planted just one quarter of his 100 donums, where the combine harvester was now throwing grain into a truck bed.

“This year we didn’t even get 500 kilogrammes of wheat from one donum,”  less than half the usual harvest, he said.

The war in Ukraine has “pushed up the price of motor oil and of high-yield seeds”, he added, yet “another financial burden for farmers”.

“I don’t know how to support my family. No salary, no job, where can I go?”

‘Abandon the land’

After decades of war and insurgency, Iraq faces another huge challenge: Severe water scarcity driven by climate change.

It is highly sensitive issue for Iraq and its 41 million people, who feel the impacts on a daily basis, from depleted rivers to rapid desertification and more intense sandstorms.

Iraq’s big rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, and their tributaries originate in Turkey and Syria as well as Iran, which dam them upstream, reducing the flow as they enter Iraq.

Irrigated by the Euphrates, Diwaniya province, where Jaliha is located, normally receives 180 cubic metres of water per second.

This year the volume has been at least halved to “80 to 90 cubic metres”, said Hani Shaer, who heads a farmers’ collective responsible for distributing the water.

The result can be seen in the stagnant water in the main irrigation canal, which serves the 200,000 donums of surrounding land, with some gullies now completely dry.

Shaer denounced a lack of support from authorities, charging that the agriculture ministry provided just five kilos of fertiliser this season, down from 40 kilos in previous years.

“The farmer will leave, abandon the land and head to the city to look for any kind of work,” he said.

Collapsed harvest 

Agriculture ministry spokesman Hamid al-Nayef said the state was helping by raising the purchase price in order to pay producers around $500 per tonne of wheat.

In 2019 and 2020, wheat harvests had reached 5 million tonnes, enough to guarantee “self-sufficiency” for Iraq, he told AFP.

This season, Iraq may only grow 2.5-3 million tonnes of wheat, “not enough for a whole year for the Iraqis”, Nayef acknowledged.

“We will have to import,” he said.

Iraq will be confronted with the vagaries of the world market and prices driven up by the conflict in Ukraine, even though Baghdad imports its cereals mainly from Canada, Australia and the United States.

“With the interplay of supply and demand, prices are rising even in the United States and other countries,” Nayef said.

Back in Jaliha, another farmer, Ahmed Al Jelhawi, was questioning his life choices. He said he used to harvest 500 tonnes of wheat, but this year expects just 50-75 tonnes.

“I gave up my studies to devote myself to agriculture,” he lamented. “But this year, agriculture is zero.”

“Between the low production and the rising prices, we probably won’t be able to plant next year.”

SEVERODONETSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces braced Sunday to defend their final bastion in the devastated port city of Mariupol, desperate to deny Russia a symbolic win on the eve of Moscow's Victory Day celebrations.

Kyiv's allies lent their support, with US First Lady Jill Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau making unannounced visits to Ukraine, and G7 leaders due to join President Volodymyr Zelensky on a video call.

But fierce fighting continued on the ground. Shelling and missile strikes have intensified in the build up to the World War II anniversary, and rescuers are searching for 60 Ukrainian civilians feared killed in the bombing of a village school.

Zelensky marked a day commemorating the end of the 1939-1945 war by comparing Ukraine's battle for national survival to the region's war of resistance against its former Nazi occupiers.

"Decades after World War II, darkness has returned to Ukraine, and it has become black and white again," Zelensky said, in a monochrome social media video shot against the backdrop of a bombed out apartment block.

"Evil has returned, in a different uniform, under different slogans, but for the same purpose," he warned, trying to turn Russia leader President Vladimir Putin's "anti-Nazi" rhetoric back on itself.

Russia, meanwhile, was gearing up for a Victory Day parade designed to associate the invasion of its neighbour with the national pride felt over the Soviet Union's defeat of Germany. 

"Today, our soldiers, as their ancestors, are fighting side by side to liberate their native land from the Nazi filth with the confidence that, as in 1945, victory will be ours," Putin said.

Zelensky was also to meet G-7 leaders via video conference to discuss the crisis, and European diplomats will meet again next week to hammer out the details of their latest sanctions package against Moscow.

The US first lady met her Ukrainian counterpart Olena Zelenska at a school sheltering civilians, including children displaced by the conflict, near Ukraine’s border with Slovakia.

“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Biden told reporters. 

“I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and this war has been brutal and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”

Separately, Canadian leader Trudeau visited Irpin, a suburb on the northwest edge of Kyiv that was the scene of heavy fighting in the early weeks of the conflict.

Local mayor Oleksandr Markushyn, posted pictures on social media and said Trudeau “came to Irpin to see with his own eyes all the horror that the Russian occupiers had done to our city”.

On the ground, the key battles were being fought in Ukraine’s east.

Civilians have now been evacuated from Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, leaving a small force of defenders holed up in its sprawling network of underground tunnels and bunkers.

The complex, the final pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the port city, has taken on a symbolic value.

“We, all of the military personnel in the garrison of Mariupol, we have witnessed the war crimes performed by Russia, by the Russian army. We are witnesses,” said Ilya Samoilenko, an intelligence officer with the far-right Azov regiment, which is defending the steelworks.

“Surrender is not an option because Russia is not interested in our lives,” he said.

Taking full control of Mariupol would also allow Moscow to create a land bridge between the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014, and regions run by pro-Russian separatists in the east.

In one of those regions, Lugansk, Ukrainian forces are now mounting a last ditch defence of the city of Severodonetsk, formerly an industrial city of 100,000 people, now Russia’s next target.

In the same region, governor Sergiy Gaiday said 60 civilians were feared dead after a school in the village of Bilogorivka was hit in an air strike.

“The bombs fell on the school and unfortunately it was completely destroyed. There were a total of 90 people, 27 were saved,” he said on Telegram. 

“Sixty people who were in the school are very probably dead.”

Rescuers could not work overnight because of a threat of new strikes, but resumed their work on Sunday.

Rescuers were also looking for survivors in the neighbouring village of Shepilivka after a strike hit a house where 11 people were sheltering in the basement, Gaiday said.

Civilians who escape Mariupol describe passing through Russian “filtration” sites where several evacuees told AFP they were questioned, strip-searched, fingerprinted, and had their phones and documents checked.

“They asked us if we wanted to go to Russia... or stay and rebuild the city of Mariupol,” said Azovstal evacuee Natalia, who spoke on condition that her full name not be published.

“But how can I rebuild it? How can I return there if the city of Mariupol doesn’t exist anymore?”

Russia’s campaign has run into tough resistance, and galvanised Kyiv’s Western allies to impose potentially crippling sanctions on the Russian economy and Putin’s inner circle.

TUNIS — Hundreds of Tunisians demonstrated Sunday in a show of support for President Kais Saied and a series of extraordinary measures he took since last July that critics have slammed as a "coup".

The rallies come as Saied faces mounting criticism over his July 2021 power grab, in which he sacked the government and suspended parliament before moving on to rule by decree.

Demonstrators gathered in the capital's central Bourguiba Avenue, the epicentre of vast protests that toppled former leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, in response to a call by a pro-Saied alliance.

They held banners reading "We are all Kais Saied" and demanded the prosecution of "corrupt" politicians, echoing a frequent refrain uttered by the head of state.

Critics have warned that Saied's moves mark a shift towards autocracy, threatening the only democracy to have emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings.

In late April, several Tunisian opposition parties announced the formation of a National Salvation Front to "save" the country from the deepening political crisis.

Prominent leftist Ahmed Nejib Chebbi said at the time that the alliance aimed to unite political forces, re-establish constitutional and democratic processes and guarantee freedoms and rights in the country.

Saied in early May announced the launch of a "national dialogue" to help resolve the crisis, but excluded critical opposition groups, including his arch-rivals, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party.

In parallel with the political turmoil, Tunisia has been gripped by a dire social and economic crisis, and has sought a loan package from the International Monetary Fund.

ELAD, Israel — Israeli forces on Sunday arrested two Palestinians suspected of axing to death three Israelis, after a more than two-day manhunt, the latest in a spate of deadly attacks.

The security services — who previously identified the suspects as Assad Yussef Al Rifai, 19, and Subhi Imad Abu Shukair, 20 — said the pair were spotted hiding in a bush near a quarry, just outside the central town of Elad, where the axe attack took place on Thursday.

“We said we would get the terrorists, and so we did,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said ahead of his weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday.

The deadly attack in Elad, populated by mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews, was the sixth in which Israelis have been targeted since March 22.

Witnesses said two assailants leapt from a car swinging axes at passers-by, leaving three dead and four wounded, before fleeing in the same vehicle.

The manhunt included the police, domestic security agency and the army, along with helicopters and drones, the Israeli forces said. 

Bloody cash

An Israeli official said bloody cash notes, presumably dropped by the suspects in flight, helped lead the trail to where they were hiding. 

Forces scanning the area noticed a bush “that looked a bit different”, said the official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

“When they got closer they saw the bush moving up and down, like a breathing movement,” the official said.

The suspects surrendered and confessed during initial questioning, the official said. 

Israel has identified the three dead as Yonatan Habakuk, 44, and Boaz Gol, 49, both from Elad, as well as Oren Ben Yiftach, 35.

The perpetrators had entered Israel from the occupied West Bank through the porous security barrier hours before the attack, the official said, calling their infiltration a “failure” of the army.

The bloodshed unfolded as Israel marked the 74th anniversary of its founding, which has previously been a tense day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Palestinians, the anniversary of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence marks the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, when more than 700,000 fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel’s creation.

Hamas threats

The Elad killings followed a tense period in which the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the Jewish festival of Passover and the Christian holiday of Easter overlapped.

Tensions have boiled over into violent confrontations between Israelis and Palestinians at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, a highly contested site in Jerusalem’s Israeli-occupied Old City.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had condemned the Elad attacks, warning that the murder of Israeli civilians risked fuelling a broader cycle of violence.

But the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers Hamas praised the attack — as did the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad armed group — calling it a consequence of unrest at Al Aqsa. 

The Islamic Jihad called the attackers “heroes” and said their arrest would not “discourage” people from continuing their violent resistance.

Hamas said the attack “demonstrates our people’s anger at the occupation’s attacks on holy sites”.

Last week Hamas threatened Israel with rocket fire and attacks on synagogues if its forces carry out further raids on Al Aqsa Mosque compound.

“Whoever has a rifle must have it ready, and whoever does not have a rifle must prepare their knife or their axe,” said Yahya Sinwar, Hamas chief in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip.

A string of anti-Israeli attacks since March 22 have killed 18 people, including an Arab-Israeli officer and two Ukrainians.

Two of the deadly attacks were carried out in the Tel Aviv area by Palestinians.

A total of 27 Palestinians and three Arab Israelis have died during the same period, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli forces in West Bank operations.