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JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces launched a third day of operations on Monday around the flashpoint West Bank city of Jenin following heavy gun battles in recent days and overnight arrests, the forces said.

Tensions have soared since a spree of attacks in Israel left 14 people dead in the past three weeks, with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warning Israel is now "on the offensive".

The Israeli forces said 14 Palestinians were arrested early Monday, a day after four Palestinians were killed in separate incidents in the occupied territory.

An additional 13 Israeli forces battalions were now operating in the West Bank, said an Israeli forces source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In Jenin, thousands of mourners flooded the streets, many carrying Palestinian flags or rifles, for the funeral of Mohamed Zakarneh, 17, who according to the Wafa news agency died of gunshot wounds overnight.

“The resistance is in direct confrontation with the occupation and any minute we must expect a total clash,” said Ziad Al Nakhala, secretary general of the Islamic Jihad movement, in a statement.

“Jenin must not be isolated, no matter the cost.”

The Israeli forces said it operated nearby Monday, in Burqa and Qallil in the northern West Bank, as well as in Al Aroub and Hebron in the south.

“Violent riots were instigated by dozens of Palestinians” near Nablus, the forces said, while the Palestine Red Crescent said 24 Palestinians were wounded in the Nablus area overnight.

Jenin, as well as Bethlehem in the southern West Bank, declared general strikes, shuttering shops, offices and official institutions.

Weeks of violence 

Tensions have surged during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, nearly a year after violence flared in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, leading to 11 days of war.

A total of 14 people in Israel have been killed in four attacks since March 22, including a shooting spree in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city in greater Tel Aviv, carried out by a Palestinian from Jenin.

Over the same period, at least 14 Palestinians have been killed, including assailants, according to a count by AFP.

Two of them were women shot dead on Sunday — one after stabbing and lightly wounding an officer in Hebron, the other when she failed to stop at a checkpoint near Bethlehem.

Islamic Jihad has been growing in strength and capability both in Gaza and the West Bank, and especially in Jenin.

Wrong turn 

Israeli forces were targeting relatives of Raad Hazem, the 28-year-old Jenin man who last Thursday killed three Israeli civilians and wounded 12 at a Tel Aviv bar before he was shot dead following a manhunt.

The Israeli forces demanded the father hand himself in, ahead of the planned demolition of the family home. It said it had engaged in an exchange of gunfire involving the assailant’s family members on Sunday — the clash in which 17-year-old Zakarneh was killed.

Another Palestinian from the Bethlehem area was shot dead on Sunday after hurling a Molotov cocktail at an Israeli vehicle, the Israeli forces told AFP.

In another incident overnight, two Israelis were shot and wounded after entering Nablus, where the previous night Joseph’s tomb, a religious site, had been vandalised by Palestinians.

“A group of Israeli civilians entered into the city after breaking through an unmanned military checkpoint,” said an army statement.

Shortly after, it said, the two Israeli men emerged at another checkpoint “with gunshot wounds”.

One of the men involved told public broadcaster Kan they had gone to inspect Joseph’s tomb.

“We were done and heading back to Jerusalem but then we took a wrong turn,” and were shot,” he said.

DAMASCUS — Ramadan drummers who awaken the faithful for their pre-dawn meal are dying out across the Muslim world but the tradition lives on in Syria’s capital despite growing reliance on smart phones.

Around one hour before the call to prayer rings out at dawn, Ramadan drummers, known as Musaharati, walk through narrow streets to wake the faithful.

They include Hasan Al Rashi, 60, one of the 30 Musaharati left in Damascus.

His voice breaks the nightime silence in the capital’s Old City, as he sings and pounds his drum.

“Despite the advent of smart phones and other technologies, people still like to wake up to the voice of the Musaharati,” Rashi told AFP.

“The Musaharati is a part of the customs and traditions of the people of Damascus during the month of Ramadan,” he added.

“It is a heritage that we will not leave behind.”

While performing his Musaharati task, Rashi carries a bamboo cane in one hand and a drum made of goatskin in the other.

He walks quickly from home to home, using his stick to tap on doors of families who have asked for his services.

“Wake up for Suhur [pre-dawn meal], Ramadan has come to visit you,” Rashi sings.

‘Duty’ -

Although they do receive gifts, the Musaharati don’t usually expect financial rewards.

They sometimes carry bags or straw baskets to store food and other gifts that are given to them.

For Rashi, it’s not about the freebies.

“We feel joy when we go out every day,” he said.

“Some children follow us sometimes and ask to beat the drum,” Rashi added.

Ahead of the call to prayer, Sharif Resho asks one of his neighbours for a glass of water before the start of his fast.

The 51-year-old Musaharati usually accompanies Rashi every night, also beating his drum and singing.

“My equipment is simple, it is my voice, my drum and my stick,” he said.

Resho, whose father was also a Ramadan drummer, has carried out Musaharati duties for nearly a quarter of a century.

Syria’s more than decade-long war and the coronavirus pandemic did not stop him from carrying on, he said.

“I will keep waking people up for Suhur as long as I have a voice in my throat,” Resho told AFP.

“It is a duty I inherited from my father, that I will pass on to my son.”

TEHRAN — Tehran on Monday questioned Washington’s will in reaching an agreement to restore the 2015 nuclear agreement, with key sticking points unresolved after talks halted last month.

Iran has been engaged for a year in negotiations with France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China directly, and the United States indirectly to revive the deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Negotiations in the Austrian capital Vienna aim to return the United States to the nuclear deal, including through the lifting of sanctions on Iran, and to ensure Tehran’s full compliance with its commitments.

“We really don’t know if we’ll get a deal or not, because the United States hasn’t shown the necessary will to reach an agreement,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said.

“What remains are the decisions of Washington,” he added.

Earlier this month, Khatibzadeh’s counterpart in the State Department Ned Price said it was Tehran that was not giving way to make a deal possible, but that Washington still believed there was “opportunity to overcome our remaining differences”.

The 2015 agreement gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme to guarantee that Tehran could not develop a nuclear weapon — something it has always denied wanting to do.

But the US unilateral withdrawal from the accord in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump and the reimposition of biting economic sanctions under a “maximum pressure” campaign prompted Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.

“All components of maximum pressure must be removed,” Khatibzadeh said.

“Unfortunately, the United States is trying to maintain some of the elements of maximum pressure,” he added.

The talks have been paused since March 11 after Russia demanded guarantees that Western sanctions imposed following its February 24 invasion of Ukraine would not damage its trade with Iran.

Days later, Moscow said it had received the necessary guarantees.

The negotiations had progressed most of the way toward reviving the deal, with different parties pointing to the “final phase”, but pending issues are still unresolved.

“More than one issue is remaining between us and the United States,” Khatibzadeh added.

Among the key sticking points is Tehran’s demand to delist the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological arm of Iran’s military, from a US terror list.

Last month, US negotiator Rob Malley said the Guards would remain “sanctioned by American law” even in the event of an agreement.

“What is important to us is the certain benefit of the Iranian people from the lifting of the sanctions,” Khatibzadeh said.

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces carried out fresh raids on Sunday in the flashpoint West Bank district of Jenin, a bastion of Palestinian groups and the home of gunmen who launched two recent deadly attacks.

As Israel was laying to rest three recent shooting victims, gun battles rocked the Jenin area for a second day, with 10 people wounded in clashes across the West Bank on Sunday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

"The State of Israel has gone on the offensive," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said after a Cabinet meeting, vowing to "settle accounts with everyone who was linked, either directly or indirectly, to the attacks".

Israeli forces on Sunday detained 20 Palestinians, a military source said.

The operation came after a gunman from Jenin went on a shooting rampage in a Tel Aviv nightlife area Thursday, killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others — the latest in a spate of bloody attacks in Israel.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad welcomed the Tel Aviv attack, which was condemned by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian woman killed 

Elsewhere in the West Bank, near the southern city of Bethlehem, Israeli forces on Sunday shot dead a Palestinian woman who had approached them and failed to stop after they had fired warning shots, the forces said.

The woman — a widowed mother of six in her 40s named by the Palestinian news agency Wafa as Ghada Ibrahim Sabatien — died after suffering massive blood loss from a torn artery, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Islamic Jihad movement condemned her killing in Bethlehem as an “execution in broad daylight”.

But the centre of the heightened tensions was the Jenin area where, the Israeli forces told AFP, Palestinians shot from passing vehicles at Israeli forces, who responded with live fire.

A total of 20 “wanted individuals” suspected of involvement in attacks were apprehended, the source said, while the Palestinian Prisoners Club announced 24 arrests across the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war.

The Israeli source said forces had located stolen Israeli army ammunition and uniforms in the residence of one of the suspects, and an explosive device in another home.

No Israeli forces were reported injured, while the Palestinian health ministry said at least 10 Palestinians were wounded in clashes in Jenin, as well as in Jericho and Tulkarem.

‘No limits’ 

Tensions have surged during Ramadan, after violence flared during the Muslim holy month last year leading to 11 days of devastating conflict between Israel and Palestinian fighters in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, Israel has been stunned by a string of attacks, some carried out by assailants linked to or inspired by the Daesh group.

A total of 14 people have been killed in four attacks in Israel since March 22, including another shooting spree on March 29 in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv, also carried out by a Palestinian attacker from Jenin.

Over the same period, at least 11 Palestinians have been killed, including assailants, according to a count by AFP.

BAGHDAD — Garbage clogs the banks of Iraq’s Tigris River in Baghdad but an army of young volunteers is cleaning it, a rare environmental project in the war-battered country.

With boots and gloves, they pick up soggy trash, water bottles, aluminium cans and muddy styrofoam boxes, part of a green activist campaign called the Cleanup Ambassadors.

“This is the first time this area has been cleaned since 2003,” shouts a passer-by about the years of conflict since a US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein.

The war is over but Iraq faces another huge threat: a host of interrelated environmental problems from climate change and rampant pollution to dust storms and water scarcity.

The 200 volunteers at work in Baghdad want to be part of the solution, removing garbage from a stretch of one of the mighty rivers that gave birth to the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia.

“It breaks my heart to see the banks of the Tigris in this state,” said one 19-year-old volunteer, who gave only her first name, Rassel, working under Baghdad’s Imams Bridge.

“We want to change this reality. I want to make my city more beautiful.”

The task is Herculean in a country where it remains common for people to drop their trash on the ground.

The green banks of the Tigris, popular for picnics by families and groups of friends, are usually littered with waste, from single-use plastic bags to the disposable tips of hookah pipes, especially after public holidays.

Rubbish chokes wildlife 

“There is a lot of plastic, nylon bags and corks,” said Ali, also 19 and an organiser of the cleanup event.

The group then handed their collected waste to the Baghdad City Council which took it away, bound for a landfill.

More often the garbage ends up directly in the Tigris. It is one of Iraq’s two major waterways, along with the Euphrates, that face a host of environmental pressures.

The rivers or their tributaries are dammed upstream in Turkey and Iran, over-used along the way, and polluted with domestic, industrial and agricultural waste.

The trash that flows downriver clogs riverbanks and wetlands and poses a threat to wildlife, both terrestrial and aquatic.

When the water empties into the Gulf, plastic bags are often ingested by turtles and dolphins and block the airways and stomachs of many other species, says a United Nations paper.

In Iraq — which has suffered four decades of conflict and years of political and economic turmoil — separating and recycling waste has yet to become a priority for most people.

The country also lacks proper infrastructure for waste collection and disposal, said Azzam Alwash, head of the non-governmental group Nature Iraq.

“There are no environmentally friendly landfills and plastic recycling is not economically viable,” he said.

Plumes of smoke 

Most garbage ends up in open dumps where it is burned, sending plumes of acrid smoke into the air.

This happens in Iraq’s southern Mesopotamian Marshes, one of the world’s largest inland deltas, which Saddam once had largely drained. They were named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2016, both for their biodiversity and ancient history.

Today a round-the-clock fire outside the town of Souq Al Shuyukh, which is the gateway to the marshes, burns thousands of tonnes of garbage under the open sky, sending white smoke drifting many kilometres away.

“Open burning of waste is a source of air pollution, and the real cost is the shortening of Iraqi lives,” said Alwash. “But the state has no money to build recycling facilities.”

Even worse is the air pollution caused by flaring — burning off the gas that escapes during oil extraction.

This toxic cocktail has contributed to a rise in respiratory illnesses and greenhouse gas emissions, a phenomenon the UN’s climate experts have voiced alarm about.

Environment Minister Jassem Al Falahi admitted in comments to the official news agency INA that waste incineration’s “toxic gases affect people’s lives and health”.

But so far there have been few government initiatives to tackle Iraq’s environmental woes, and so projects like the Tigris cleanup are leading the way for now.

Ali, the volunteer, hopes that their effort will have a more long-term effect by helping to change attitudes.

“Some people have stopped throwing their waste on the street,” he said, “and some have even joined us.”

BAGHDAD — The Al Hol camp for displaced people in Syria is a threat and should be dismantled, a senior Iraqi security official said on Saturday.

Al Hol, in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, is Syria's largest camp for displaced people. It houses about 56,000 including displaced Syrians and Iraqi refugees, some of whom maintain links with the Daesh group.

About 10,000 are foreigners, including relatives of terrorists.

"Each day that passes with the camp still there, hate grows and terrorism thrives," Iraq's national security adviser, Qassem Al Araji, told an international conference about the camp.

Daesh "continues to represent a real threat at Al Hol," Araji told delegates who included ambassadors from the United States and France.

The overcrowded camp is controlled by the autonomous Kurdish administration and lies less than 10 kilometres  from the Iraqi border.

Araji called on foreign governments to repatriate their citizens from Al Hol, and urged rapid dismantlement of the camp.

Most of Al Hol's residents are people who fled or surrendered in Syria during the dying days of Daesh’s self-proclaimed "caliphate" in March 2019.

Since then, Syria's Kurds and the United Nations have repeatedly urged foreign governments to repatriate their nationals, but this has only been done in dribs and drabs, out of fear that they might pose a security threat back home and trigger a domestic backlash.

Baghdad proclaimed victory against Daesh at the end of 2017 but remnants of the group have continued to mount hit-and-run attacks.

In January, Daesh fighters carried out their biggest assault in Syria in years, attacking a prison in the Kurdish-controlled northeastern city of Hasakeh, aiming to free fellow terrorists.

Almost a week of intense fighting left more than 370 people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Prisons run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces hold an estimated 12,000 Daesh members, and the group aims to mount further operations similar to the January attack in a bid to free them, Araji said.

Since that assault, Iraq has begun building a concrete wall along the border in an effort to stop terrorist infiltration.

JUBA — More than 7.7 million South Sudanese, around 63 per cent of the population, are facing a food crisis as violence intensifies in the country, the government and United Nations said on Saturday.

The figure marks a seven percent hike on the figure reported last year.

According to the joint report, which was presented to the press on Saturday, climatic shocks such as floods and droughts, and population displacements are contributing to the increased food insecurity, as well as the ongoing armed clashes.

South Sudan — the world’s newest nation — has suffered from chronic instability since independence in 2011, spending almost half of its life as a nation at war.

The country was in 2013 plunged into a brutal five-year civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and veteran opposition leader Riek Machar.

The war cost almost 400,000 lives and uprooted millions from their homes.

Two years ago, the two men formed a unity government, cementing a peace deal signed in 2018 that brought an end to the conflict.

But since then, South Sudan has lurched from crisis to crisis, battling flooding, hunger, as well as violence and political bickering as the promises of the peace agreement have failed to materialise.

The UN has repeatedly criticised South Sudan’s leadership for its role in stoking violence, cracking down on political freedoms and plundering public coffers.

“We will continue to have the situation we have in South Sudan if we don’t start to make that transition to ensuring peace at the community levels,” Sara Beysolow Nyanti, the UN humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan said, adding “we do see sub-national violence”.

“Until conflict is addressed we will continue to see these numbers increase because what it means is that people do not have safe access to their lands to cultivate,” Adeyinka Badejo, World Food Programme Acting Country Director in South Sudan told AFP.

“We appeal to the leaders of the country to continue towards the path of peace.”

On Friday, fresh fighting erupted between government and opposition forces, just days after both sides pledged to uphold a ceasefire and try to save a teetering peace deal.

The clashes in oil-rich Unity State were the latest in recent weeks between forces allied to Kiir and those loyal to his deputy Machar.

According to Saturday’s report, 80 per cent of the population who are suffering food crisis are in the Unity, Jonglei, Upper Nile, Warrap, and Eastern Equatoria states.

ALEXANDRIA, United States — A French journalist held by the Daesh in Syria testified on Wednesday that he and other hostages were forced by their captors to sing a depraved parody of the Eagles song "Hotel California" called "Hotel Osama".

"It was terrifying for us, a joke for them," Nicolas Henin said at the trial of El Shafee Elsheikh, a 33-year-old former British national.

Elsheikh is accused of involvement in the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig.

Henin is one of several former hostages who have testified at the trial in federal court of the alleged member of the notorious Daesh kidnap-and-murder cell known as the "Beatles".

Henin said the words to "Hotel Osama" included the original lyrics from "Hotel California" about checking in but never leaving, but with a twist.

"If you try, you'll die Mr Bigley style," the lyrics went, a reference to British Engineer Kenneth Bigley, who was beheaded in 2004 by Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, head of the Al Qaeda terror network in Iraq.

Henin said he was captured in June 2013 on his fifth reporting trip to Syria.

He was held alone for two days in a bathroom but managed to escape by breaking bars on the windows with a broom.

After running the whole night, he arrived at a village at dawn and spoke to two men in pyjamas.

"Unfortunately they were Daesh fighters," he said.

Returned to captivity, he was beaten and taken outside and "hung in the air for a couple of hours" with his hands and feet chained together.

'They were terrified' 

Henin was later placed with other hostages including Frenchman Pierre Torres and Danish photographer Daniel Rye Ottenson.

British aid worker David Haines and Italian relief worker Federico Motka arrived later.

After being taken to another prison, three guards arrived one day speaking with British accents.

Haines and Motka told the other hostages they were the "Beatles", Henin said, using the nickname given to the jailers because of their British accents.

"They were terrified," he said of Haines and Motka. "Shaking".

They were later joined by Sotloff, Foley, John Cantlie, a British journalist captured with Foley, Toni Neukirch, a German citizen, and five Doctors Without Borders (MSF) workers.

He said the Beatles would come around once or twice a week, "sometimes for a round of beatings".

After his release in April 2014, Henin provided the authorities with information that was used in a rescue attempt.

"I spent a long time with agencies, describing the location, giving details to the person in charge of preparing the raid," Henin said.

The US-led rescue mission was launched on July 4, 2014 but the hostages had been taken elsewhere just days earlier.

"They had been moved prior to the operation," said Robert Daniel Story, an FBI special agent who was involved in preparations for the raid and took the witness stand after Henin.

"We were very disappointed," Story said.

The "Beatles" held at least 27 foreign hostages in Syria between 2012 and 2015.

A number of European journalists and aid workers were released after ransoms were paid but the Americans — Foley, Sotloff and Kassig — were killed and videos of their murders released by Daesh for propaganda purposes.

Mueller was reportedly handed over to Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, who allegedly raped her repeatedly before killing her.

Elsheikh and another former British national, Alexanda Amon Kotey, were captured in January 2018 by a Kurdish militia in Syria.

They were turned over to US forces in Iraq and flown to Virginia in 2020 to face charges of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder US citizens and supporting a foreign terrorist organisation.

Kotey pleaded guilty in September 2021 and is facing life in prison.

"Beatles" executioner Mohamed Emwazi was killed by a US drone in Syria in 2015, while the fourth member of the cell, Aine Davis, is imprisoned in Turkey after being convicted of terrorism.

Elsheikh has denied the charges, and his lawyers claim his arrest is a case of mistaken identity.