Region

BEIRUT — Explosive remnants of Syria's war killed nearly 30 civilians, including more than a dozen children, last month, a war monitoring group said on Wednesday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "29 civilians, including 12 children, died from explosive remnants in March" and that another 29 were wounded.

The latest toll brings to 73 the total number of people killed by explosive remnants since the start of the year, according to the monitor, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

Explosives left by all sides in fields, along roads or even in buildings in Syria's decade-long conflict have wounded thousands of civilians and killed hundreds of others.

Across the country, one in three communities are thought to be contaminated by explosive ordnance, says the United Nations.

In 2020, Syria overtook Afghanistan as the country with the highest number of recorded casualties from landmines and explosive remnants of war, with 2,729 people killed or wounded, according to the Landmine Monitor.

In 2021, 241 civilians were killed and 128 wounded by explosive remnants across Syria, said the observatory.

Syria’s war is estimated to have killed nearly half-a-million people and displaced millions since it began in 2011.

KHARTOUM — Thousands protested in Sudan against military rule on the anniversary Wednesday of previous popular uprisings, most recently against autocrat Omar Al Bashir three years ago.

In the capital Khartoum, where hundreds took to the streets, security forces fired tear gas at the crowd, said witnesses.

The security forces also "stormed Al Jawda hospital and fired tear gas inside, scaring patients and health workers and causing suffocation among some of them," said the independent Central Committee of Sudan Doctors.

Sudan has grappled with an October 25 coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan that has derailed a political transition period and hammered the economy of one of the world's poorest countries.

Pro-democracy activists have warned online of a people power "earthquake of April 6" — a momentous day in Sudan's history that was key in bringing down earlier strongmen.

In 1985, the day saw a popular uprising that ousted president Jaafar Nimeiri. In 2019 it marked the start of a mass sit-in outside army headquarters, after months of protests, against Bashir's three decades in power.

"It is an important day... so we expect many to take to the streets despite the heat and Ramadan," the Muslim month of fasting, said one Khartoum protester, Badwi Bashir.

"We just want to bring down the coup [leadership] and end the prospect of any future coups."

Sudan's latest putsch has "set fire to all aspects of life, turning our country into an arena of crises," said the civilian alliance Forces of Freedom and Change, or FFC.

As protesters started to gather in the capital, security forces sealed off key bridges and deployed around the presidential palace and army headquarters.

In Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, they set up barbed wire blockades on streets leading to the parliament building.

Hundreds marched in the eastern state of Gedaref with banners that read “No to military rule” and “Away with the government of hunger”, said one witness, Ahmed Salah.

A demonstration was also held in Nyala, South Darfur, according to witness Mahdi Adam.

Five days after the start of the 2019 sit-in, generals bowed to the pressure on the streets to remove Bashir.

But the protesters stayed on to press for civilian rule, only to be dispersed in a crackdown in June that year by men in military fatigues that claimed 128 lives according to medics.

Sudan’s civilian and military leaders later agreed on a transition of power, which promised greater international engagement for the country as well as foreign aid and investment.

But last October’s coup upended those plans, leading to the current wave of protests. At least 93 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the crackdown since, medics say.

“We have to defeat the coup,” FFC spokesman Jaafar Hassan said last week.

“We have tried a partnership with the military, and it failed, ending in this coup, and we shouldn’t do this again.”

Burhan said last Saturday he would only “hand over power to an honest, elected authority, accepted by the all the Sudanese people”.

The United States on Wednesday warned against “the use of any violence” and demanded Sudanese authorities “keep their word and hold accountable those responsible for abuses”.

Since the coup, Sudan’s already ailing economy has suffered severe blows, as Western donors cut crucial aid pending the restoration of a transition to civilian rule.

TEHRAN — An attacker stabbed to death an Iranian Shiite Muslim cleric on Tuesday and wounded two others, one of them seriously, in the shrine city of Mashhad, said officials and state media.

The assailant and four suspected accomplices were arrested after the bloody attack in the Imam Reza shrine's courtyard, said Mohammad-Hossein Doroudi, the chief prosecutor of the north-eastern city.

"The attacker is a foreign national," he told the Fars news agency, without specifying the country.

Amateur video footage showed a man lying in a pool of blood in the courtyard of the site with golden domes and minarets after the attack on Iran's third day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"A man stabbed three Shiite clerics with knives, killing one and wounding two others," said the governor of Khorasan Razavi province, Yaghoub-Ali Nazari, adding that "one of the injured is in serious condition".

The Astan Quds Razavi charitable foundation which runs the shrine, said: "With the vigilance of the pilgrims and the efforts of security forces, the assailant was immediately arrested and handed over to the police, and the injured were quickly taken to the hospital.

"The identity of the assailant is under investigation," added that foundation, whose large asset portfolio was managed from 2016 to 2019 by Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi.

Iran has a population of 83 million, 90 per cent of whom are Shiite.

DUBAI — Yemen's warring parties on Tuesday traded accusations of violating a ceasefire agreement, three days after it went into effect at the start of Ramadan.

The internationally recognised government, supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been locked in a violent power struggle since 2014, when the insurgents seized the capital Sanaa.

But a two-month truce that started on Saturday, the first day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, has offered a glimmer of hope in the conflict considered the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

Yemen's foreign minister, Ahmed Bin Mubarak, in a Twitter post accused the Houthis of ceasefire violations.

"The truce has been greatly welcomed, but it is threatened by Houthi's breaches including military deployments, mobilisation of troops and vehicles, artillery and drone strikes," he wrote in English, without providing details.

While the insurgents did not directly respond to the claims, their media channels also reported alleged "breaches", but by pro-government troops, on Sunday and Monday.

Since 2016, the coalition backing the government has enforced an air and sea blockade on Yemen, with exemptions for aid flights, accusing Tehran of smuggling weapons to the rebels. Iran denies the charge.

'Pivotal' moment 

The US special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, told Bloomberg TV on Monday all sides to the conflict had compromised and showed flexibility, with nobody getting "entirely what they want".

“I think this is a really pivotal moment for Yemen, and I think what it does is it gives the Yemenis a break from seven years of conflict,” he added.

Under the latest ceasefire agreement brokered by the UN, all ground, air and naval military operations, including cross-border attacks, are meant to cease.

In addition, 18 fuel ships are to be allowed into Hodeida Port, a lifeline for Yemen, and two commercial flights a week are allowed into and out of the rebel-held Sanaa airport.

The truce announcement came as discussions on Yemen’s devastating conflict were being held in Saudi Arabia, in the absence of the insurgents, who refused to hold talks on “enemy” territory.

The civil war has killed hundreds of thousands, directly or indirectly, according to UN figures, and pushed the country to the brink of famine.

Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in remarks on Monday in the Saudi capital Riyadh, called on the Houthis to return to the negotiating table in order to “let us heal our torn homeland’s wounds”.

But Yemenis remained cautiously optimistic, as a number of previous ceasefires had failed.

“If it does in fact hold, and there is good will from everyone, I think things may get better and safety and security will return to the country,” Houssam Fathi, 24, a resident of Sanaa, told AFP.

A national truce ahead of peace talks in April 2016 was violated almost immediately, as were other ceasefires that year.

A 2018 agreement to cease hostilities around rebel-held Hodeida Port was also largely ignored.

In the western city of Hodeida, 45-year-old Abdulaziz, said he was still struggling to make a living as a delivery person amid inflation.

“I buy fuel from the black market at very high prices,” he said, adding: “This truce seems impossible.”

BEIRUT — Trade in the amphetamine-type stimulant captagon in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021 to top $5 billion, posing an increasing health and security risk to the region, a report said.

Research by the New Lines Institute, to be released on Tuesday and seen by AFP, paints an alarming picture of the impact booming captagon production is having on the region.

"The captagon trade is a rapidly growing illicit economy in the Middle East and Mediterranean," said the report, authored by analysts Caroline Rose and Alexander Soderholm. 

"Based on large-scale seizures alone, the potential value of the retail trade in 2021 is estimated at over $5.7 billion," it said.

The figure is a jump from an estimate of around $3.5 billion in 2020 and only reflects the retail value of the pills seized last year, which the think tank tabulated at more than 420 million.

Many countries have not divulged aggregated seizure figures for the drug, of which Syria is the main producer and Saudi Arabia the main consumer.

The real amount of seized pills is likely higher and still only a fraction of the total amount of captagon produced.

An AFP tally shows seizures continuing at a slightly slower rate than last year, mostly because a record shipment of 94 million pills was intercepted in Malaysia in March 2021.

Captagon was the trade name of a drug initially patented in Germany in the early 1960s that contained an amphetamine-type stimulant called fenethylline used to treat attention deficit and narcolepsy among other conditions.

It was later banned and became an illicit drug almost exclusively produced and consumed in the Middle East.

Captagon is now a brand name, with its trademark logo sporting two interlocked “Cs”, or crescents, embossed on each tablet, for a drug that often contains little or no fenethylline and is close to what is known in other countries as “speed”.

New Lines said its changing formula made attempts at cracking down on the booming trade harder.

“One of the most challenging aspects in tracking the patterns of captagon production, smuggling and use is assessing its precursors and constantly shifting chemical formula,” it said.

The market value of the captagon produced in Syria now far outstrips legal exports and has resulted in the country being branded a “narco-state”.

Stifled by international sanctions slapped on the regime in the course of Syria’s 11-year-old war, the government is “using the trade as a means for political and economic survival”, the report said.

Some captagon production facilities, albeit smaller ones, are located in Lebanon, already the world’s third-largest hashish exporter after Morocco and Afghanistan.

“Lebanon has served as an extension of the Syrian captagon trade, a key transit point for captagon flows,” the report said.

‘Broad appeal’ 

Syrian state figures are benefitting from various allied militias and proxies in organising the trade, including Lebanon’s Hizbollah movement, it said.

Some of the Shiite group’s main areas of influence include a significant stretch of the Syrian-Lebanese border, giving it a key role in regional trafficking.

“With its history of controlling Lebanese cannabis production and smuggling out of the southern Bekaa Valley, Hizbollah has seemingly served an important supporting role in the captagon trade,” New Lines said.

Captagon has so far only been consumed on a very small scale in Europe but what has become Syria’s biggest export has the potential to spread beyond the Middle East.

“Its spectrum of effects and reasons for use give it a very broad appeal,” Caroline Rose told AFP.

Sold for less than one dollar in parts of Syria to consumers who primarily use it to stay awake and work several jobs, a tablet can fetch more than $20 in Saudi Arabia where is it prized as a recreational drug.

“It could ultimately penetrate the European market and carve out its own niche,” Rose said.

THE HAGUE — A former Sudanese militia chief led a campaign of murder, rape and torture across Darfur, the International Criminal Court (ICC) heard on Tuesday, as the first trial for war crimes in the region got underway.

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al Rahman, an ally of deposed Sudanese strongman Omar Al Bashir, faces 31 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict almost 20 years ago.

His trial is the first before the Hague-based ICC for crimes in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and two and a half million fled their homes, according to UN figures.

The trial also comes as the world's eyes turn to possible war crimes committed in Ukraine.

"You will hear evidence that he [Abd-Al Rahman] and his forces rampaged across different parts of Darfur," the ICC's Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan told judges.

He "inflicted severe pain and suffering on women, children and men in the villages that he left in his wake," Khan said.

Abd-Al Rahman, 72, a senior commander of the Janjaweed militia — a notorious armed group created by the Sudanese government — pleaded not guilty after the historic trial opened.

"I reject all these charges. I am innocent of all these charges," Abd-Al Rahman told judges at the ICC, a court set up in 2002 to try the world's worst crimes.

Wearing a dark blue suit, light blue shirt and fiddling with his maroon tie, Abd-Al Rahman sat motionless as the 31 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity allegedly committed in 2003-04 were being read.

The long charge sheet describes acts of murder, rape, torture and pillaging.

Fighting broke out in Darfur when black African rebels, complaining of systematic discrimination, took up arms against Bashir's Arab-dominated regime.

Khartoum responded by unleashing the Janjaweed, a force drawn from among the region's nomadic tribes.

Rights groups described it as a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.

In April 2007, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Abd-Al Rahman, also known by the nom de guerre of Ali Kushayb.

He fled to the Central African Republic in February 2020 when the new Sudanese government announced its intention to cooperate with the ICC investigation.

Four months later, he surrendered voluntarily.

Watching the trial from the Kalma camp for displaced people in Darfur, some of the victims of the conflict said they were happy to see justice being done.

“I feel relieved while watching him in court today and I hope he gets what he deserves,” Darfuri Mohamed Issa told AFP.

Another resident of Kalma camp since 2005, Adam Musa said: “I was surprised to hear that Kushayb denied the charges of killing our people. I have seen him take away men from our village and none of them came back.”

Abd-Al Rahman’s trial is the first-ever stemming from a UN Security Council referral.

Former president Omar al-Bashir and three others are still being sought by the ICC for crimes in Darfur.

Following his ouster in 2019, Bashir remains in Sudan despite calls for him and two other associates to be handed over to the ICC for prosecution.

‘Feared reputation’ 

Prosecutors said Abd-Al Rahman, who carried the title of “colonel of colonels” in the Janjaweed, played a central role in a series of attacks on at least four villages in West Darfur.

He is charged with both directing attacks, as well as mobilising, recruiting, arming and supplying to Janjaweed militia under his command.

Abd-Al Rahman “took pride in the power that he thought he exerted... and a strange glee in his feared reputation”, Khan told the judges.

During these attacks, at least 100 villagers were murdered, women and girls were raped and the members of the predominantly Fur ethnic group subjected to forcible transfer and persecution.

After one attack in late February and early March 2002 on a village, 100 Fur men including community leaders, doctors and teachers were taken to a police station in the town of Mukjar, where they were interrogated and tortured.

Fifty detainees were driven out into the countryside, told to lie face down and were then executed, prosecutors said.

In another incident in March 2004, between 100 to 200 Fur men were detained and taken to an open area at the Deleig police station where they were tortured, prosecutors added.

“Abd-Al Rahman stood or walked on the backs of detainees, hit them... kicked them, and verbally abused them,” said Khan.

“He literally trampled on their rights,” the prosecutor said.

BEIRUT — Pope Francis is set to visit Lebanon in June, the country’s presidency said on Tuesday, in a long-awaited trip that comes amid spiralling financial and political crises.

Lebanon, home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East, has been gripped by an unprecedented economic downturn since 2019, with more than 80 per cent of the population now living in poverty.

The Pontiff, who has received Lebanon’s president and prime minister in the Vatican in recent months, had previously promised to visit the country and repeatedly expressed concern over its worsening crises.

“Apostolic Envoy Joseph Spiteri informed President Michel Aoun that Pope Francis will visit Lebanon next June,” a presidency statement said.

“The Lebanese people have been waiting for this visit for some time to express gratitude to his holiness for his support,” the statement said, adding the exact date and agenda for the visit would be set later.

Lebanese took to social media to celebrate the announcement.

“A welcome to the Pope of peace in the holy land,” said one user.

Lebanon, a multiconfessional country of some 6 million people, is home to a Muslim majority but Christians account for around a third of the population.

Pope Francis’ planned visit, coming after Lebanese parliamentary elections scheduled for May 15, would be the third by an incumbent Pope to the country since the end of its 1975-1990 civil war.

The last trip in 2012 saw Pope Benedict XVI visit to appeal for peace, months after the start of the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Pope John Paul II visited in 1997, drawing one of the largest crowds Lebanon had ever seen.

“Lebanon is more than a country — it is a message,” he said at the time.

‘New hope’ 

One social media user drew a parallel between the 1997 visit and the one expected in two months.

“Just as Pope John Paul II was a hope for Lebanon, Pope Francis too will definitely be a new hope,” he wrote on Twitter.

“During elections, out with the old and in with the new,” he said, referring to traditional party leaders who have been at the helm of Lebanese politics since the end of the civil war.

Pope Francis met last month with Lebanon’s president, who is a Christian as dictated by the country’s constitution which also divides seats in government and parliament along sectarian quotas.

In November, he received Lebanon’s Muslim Prime Minister Najib Mikati in the Vatican.

“May God take Lebanon by the hand and tell it: ‘Get up!’” the Vatican quoted Francis as saying during the meeting.

During a visit to Cyprus in December, Pope Francis met with the head of Lebanon’s Maronite Church and expressed concern over the country’s crises.

He also received the heads of Lebanon’s top churches in July.

In August, he called on the international community to offer support to Lebanon, one year after an explosion in Beirut port killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the capital.

Since 2019, the Lebanese currency, the pound, has lost more than 90 per cent of its value against the US dollar on the black market.

The bankrupt Lebanese state has struggled to afford basic imports of fuel, food and medicine.

With no exit in sight from the country’s crisis, Lebanon’s population has fled the country en masse in a detrimental brain drain.

HODEIDA,  Yemen — Two fuel ships have entered war-torn Yemen's port of Hodeida, the first shipment in months, the rebels who control the city said on Monday, after a UN-brokered truce went into effect.

Yemen has been embroiled in conflict between the government, supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels since 2014, when the insurgents seized the capital Sanaa.

Since 2016, the coalition has enforced an air and sea blockade, with exemptions for aid flights, accusing Tehran of smuggling weapons to the rebels. Iran denies the charge.

"The fuel ship, Ceasar, has now arrived to the port of Hodeida after being held up for 32 days," the Yemen Petroleum Company (YPC), which is under rebel control, said in a statement.

On Sunday, it announced the arrival of the first boat after it had been "held up for 88 days".

Flights to and from Sanaa are to follow under the ceasefire deal.

Areas under rebel control, which include much of the country's north and parts of the west, have suffered a fuel crisis for months, with the Houthis accusing the coalition of detaining oil ships since the start of January.

But a two-month truce took effect Saturday, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, bringing a glimmer of hope in a brutal conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and left millions on the brink of famine in Yemen, long the Arab world’s poorest country.

Essam Al Moutawakel, a spokesman for the YPC, told AFP that the latest fuel shipments “will not end the fuel crisis, as the demand is very high... but it could alleviate its severity”.

Under the UN-brokered agreement, all ground, air and naval military operations, including cross-border attacks, should cease.

In addition, 18 fuel ships are to be allowed into Hodeida Port, a lifeline for Yemen, and two commercial flights a week can resume in and out of Houthi-held Sanaa airport.

Cairo-Sanaa flights 

David Gressly, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said he welcomed the commitment to allow fuel ships through the ports of Hodeida province.

“These ports are critical entry points for fuel, food and other essential commodities into Yemen,” he said.

“The resumption of some commercial flights into and out of Sanaa International Airport will be welcome news to many Yemenis, including those who have been waiting for an opportunity to seek medical treatment or education abroad and for families who hoped to reunite” over Ramadan, Gressly added.

The director general of Sanaa airport, Khaled Al Shayef, said the first flights between Sanaa and Cairo were “expected within the next two days”, according to the rebel-run Al Masirah television channel.

“We are not facing any difficulties or problems to receive these flights and are ready to provide various navigational services for aircraft and passengers,” he said.

“The two trips [per week] do not meet 10 per cent of the Yemeni people’s needs, but we consider it the beginning to fully opening the airport.”