Region

JUBA — Severe flooding since August has affected at least 623,000 people in South Sudan, forcing many to flee their homes with the situation further exacerbated by ongoing violence, the UN's emergency-response agency said on Thursday.

Torrential rains have caused rivers to overflow, deluging homes and farms in eight of South Sudan's ten states, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a briefing note.

Emergency workers are using canoes and boats to reach cut-off populations, with over two-thirds of the affected areas now facing the risk of hunger as food prices shoot up, recording a 15-per cent jump since August, the agency said.

"Schools, homes, health facilities and water sources were inundated, impacting people's access to basic services."

Some families have been able to flee to the capital Juba, while others have set up makeshift camps along highways, grabbing what few possessions they could from the ruins of their flimsy thatched huts.

In some parts of the country, violence between rival communities has forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes while also complicating emergency workers' efforts to help flood-battered communities.

UN teams have struggled to get aid to Warrap, a northwestern state plagued by ethnic violence, which is now battling a measles outbreak.

Meanwhile, around 80,000 people have been uprooted from their homes in Western Equatoria state in the country's southwest as a result of the fighting which erupted in June, OCHA said, with some fleeing to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The agency last month warned of limited supplies and a funding shortfall, saying that it had only received 54 per cent of the $1.7 billion (1.4 billion euros) required to pay for programmes in the country.

Funding shortages have also forced the UN World Food Programme to suspend food aid to over 100,000 displaced people in South Sudan, the agency said last month, warning of further reductions unless it received more cash.

Four out of five of South Sudan's 11 million people live in "absolute poverty", according to the World Bank in 2018, while more than 60 per cent of its population suffers from severe hunger from the combined effects of conflict, drought and floods.

Since achieving independence from Sudan in 2011, the young nation has been in the throes of a chronic economic and political crisis, and is struggling to recover from the aftermath of a five-year civil war that left nearly 400,000 people dead.

Although a 2018 ceasefire and power-sharing deal between President Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar still largely holds, it is being sorely tested, with little progress made in fulfilling the terms of the peace process.

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt — Standing on a boat bobbing gently in the Red Sea, Egyptian diving instructor Mohamed Abdelaziz looks on as tourists snorkel amid the brilliantly coloured corals, a natural wonder now under threat from climate change.

"If they disappear, we'll disappear with them," he says of the vibrant corals on the reef, a species-rich ecosystem just below the turquoise waters that is beloved by diving enthusiasts worldwide.

Coral reefs -- often dubbed the "rainforests of the oceans" for their rich biodiversity -- are under threat everywhere as rising sea temperatures and acidification cause catastrophic "bleaching" events.

Along with pollution and dynamite fishing, global warming wiped out 14 per cent of the world's coral reefs between 2009 and 2018, says a new survey by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, the biggest ever carried out.

Some studies have suggested that many species of coral in the Red Sea -- which is also bordered by the Arabian Peninsula, Sudan and Eritrea - are unusually heat-resistant, but local professionals say they have already witnessed the damage.

"We can see the effects of global warming before our eyes," said Islam Mohsen, 37, another local diving instructor at the resort town of Sharm El Sheikh.

"We can see the coral discolouring and turning white."

Biodiversity hotspots 

Coral reefs cover only a tiny fraction -- 0.2 per cent -- of the ocean floor, but they are home to at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants.

The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden boast the most biologically diverse coral reef communities outside of Southeast Asia.

The Red Sea -- with just over five percent of the world's coral reefs -- is home to 209 types of coral, according to Egypt's environment ministry.

The new global survey said that live hard coral cover in the region fluctuated over recent decades but declined overall, from 36.1 per cent in 1997 to 34.3 per cent in 2019.

Causes for the degraded reefs varied by location but included tourism activities, coastal development, land runoff and overfishing, the report said.

Steps have been taken in Egypt to protect reefs and marine life that are crucial to the local tourism sector.

Egypt's Chamber of Diving and Water Sports -- which oversees 269 diving centres and over 2,900 professional divers -- has protected fragile areas with buoys to keep boats from mooring.

It has also suspended beginners' diving classes in some areas to allow damaged reefs to recover.

But the largest looming threat, far harder to fix, is global warming.

Marine heatwaves 

Oceans absorb more than 90 per cent of the excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions, shielding land surfaces but generating huge, long-lasting marine heatwaves.

These are pushing many species of corals past their limits of tolerance.

"When the temperature of the ocean goes up, it absorbs more carbon dioxide, which creates carbonic acid," said Cairo-based climate change consultant Katherine Jones.

"So not only will the temperature increase, but the PH level will change too," affecting all animals with shells, she said. "We will lose a lot of wildlife, and the ecosystem will be changing in a way that affects us as humans in terms of resources.

"The coral reefs are nurseries to baby fish and a feeding ground to bigger fish ... it's an essential part of the ecosystem."

Sharm El Sheikh hosted a United Nations agencies conference in 2018 that called for the protection of coral reefs "before it's too late".

Egypt also plans to host the Climate Conference of the Parties (COP27) in November next year.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that up to 90 per cent of coral reefs "may be gone by mid-century" even if the rise in temperatures stabilises below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Jones warned that, as things stand now, climate change and its impacts can no longer be reversed -- only slowed -- to prevent the worst consequences.

"Even if humans completely disappear from Earth tomorrow or we stopped producing any kind of emissions," she said, "the temperature will continue to rise by itself".

BAMAKO — Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra has told France to "decolonise" its history, in the latest verbal broadside between Paris and a former colony in Africa.

On a trip to Mali, whose ruling junta has been fiercely criticised by France, Lamamra said French President Emmanuel Macron suffered from "forgetfulness of history," Malian TV reported late Tuesday.

"Our foreign partners need to decolonise their own history," said Lamamra.

"They need to free themselves of certain attitudes, certain behaviours, certain visions which are intrinsically linked to the incoherent logic driven by the West's claimed mission to bring civilisation," he said.

This mission, he claimed, "was the ideological cover used to try to gain acceptance for the crime against humanity which was [France's] colonisation of Algeria, colonisation of Mali and the colonisation of so many African peoples".

Lamamra's barb appeared to be aimed at comments by Macron last week in which he said Algeria's post-independence "political-military system" had "totally rewritten" the country's history.

Macron told descendants of Algeria's war of independence that the version of history transmitted to Algerians was "not based on truths" but "on a discourse of hatred towards France", according to remarks reported by Le Monde.

Algeria over the weekend recalled its ambassador from Paris and banned French military planes from its airspace, which France regularly uses to reach its forces battling extremists in the Sahel region to the south.

On Tuesday, Macron said he hoped for a "calming down" of tensions with Algeria and that his relations with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune were "truly cordial".

Macron is also at loggerheads with Mali's junta, which ousted the country's elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, in August 2020.

France intervened after extremists seized control of Mali's north in 2012, and Paris has since deployed thousands of troops across the Sahel to combat the insurgency.

In June, France announced a major scaleback of its Sahel deployment — a move that caused Mali last month to publicly declare its ally had decided to "abandon" it.

On Tuesday Macron urged the junta to restore state authority over territory that had been relinquished to the extremists and then recovered.

"It's not the role of the French army to fill in for the 'non-work', if I may describe it, of the Malian state," he told French media.

Mali's foreign ministry summoned the French ambassador in Bamako to register its "indignation" at the remarks.

GAZA CITY, Palestine — Thousands of Gazans applied on Wednesday for work permits for Israel, which has been reopening its gates to labourers from the Palestinian enclave following the latest war in May.

In Jabalia, a refugee camp in northern Gaza, a crowd of men holding their identity papers lined up hoping to obtain a permit to work in Israel, AFP journalists said.

"There is no work in the Gaza Strip," said Fathi Abu Nur, a 40-year-old unemployed man.

"Yesterday I heard that workers are registering to get permits [for Israel]," he said.

"I hope things will get better because the current situation is really difficult," the father of five said.

The total number of permits being granted by Israel to Palestinian labourers in Gaza is 7,000, an Israeli security official told AFP, up from 5,000 workers and traders allowed in August.

In May, Israel and Hamas reached a truce following 11 days of the deadliest fighting in years.

Israel has since been easing restrictions on the Palestinian enclave, including reopening crossings, expanding the fishing zone and permitting the entry of certain goods.

Many Palestinians want to work in Israel, where wages are higher than in Gaza.

The impoverished territory of 2 million inhabitants with an unemployment rate of about 50 per cent has been blockaded by Israel for nearly 15 years.

Palestinian economic analyst Omar Shaaban said Israeli work permits could help alleviate "the unemployment crisis and poverty" within the territory, ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas.

According to Shaaban, Gaza's income would increase by 3 million dollars per day ($3 million), if Israel granted 20,000 work permits.

Meanwhile, the increase in permits was "the result of a political process, including discussions in Cairo between the Hamas movement and Egyptian officials", a Palestinian official at the chamber of commerce said on condition of anonymity.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has put forth a plan to improve living conditions in Gaza in exchange for a Hamas commitment to "long-term quiet".

Israel has waged four aggressions on Gaza since 2008.

TUNIS — Tunisian security forces on Wednesday seized broadcasting equipment used by an unlicensed television station close to the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha Party, the country’s media authority said.

Zitouna TV, considered close to Ennahdha and its ally Al Karama, both of which oppose a July power grab by President Kais Saied, had been operating illegally, the Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAICA) said.

“Broadcasting equipment was confiscated today from the Zitouna channel following a decision,” HAICA President Nouri Lajmi told AFP.

“Zitouna has been broadcasting illegally for years and has not received a broadcasting licence as it has not respected the legal framework.”

Nasreddine bin Hammouda, head of production at the Zitouna Network that produces programmes for Zitouna TV and other channels, said “security forces accompanied by members of the HAICA raided the headquarters of Zitouna Network... and began confiscating equipment”.

“Nobody told us it was forbidden to work with Zitouna TV,” he said.

The channel was still on air, he added.

Saied in July suspended parliament, sacked the Ennahdha-supported government of Hichem Mechichi and removed MPs’ immunity following months of growing public anger over an ongoing economic crisis and failings in managing the coronavirus pandemic.

Hichem El Senoussi, a member of HAICA, told AFP that decisions had been taken a month ago against Zitouna TV and other channels that had “failed to comply with orders to stop broadcasting”.

Zitouna TV started broadcasting in 2012, following the fall of longtime dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali in an uprising the previous year.

In 2015, some of its equipment was seized but it continued operating.

El Senoussi said the HAICA had repeatedly ordered the channel to close, but that it had been “supported by political actors including Ennahdha”, preventing the orders from being implemented.

Tunisian authorities on Sunday arrested Zitouna TV presenter Amer Ayad on charges of “plotting against state security”, his lawyer said, along with an Al Karama MP who appeared on Ayad’s show and criticised Saied’s moves.

It was the latest detention of a legislator after Saied lifted their immunity.

Military justice arrested Al Karama’s head Seifeddine Makhlouf on September 22 for “undermining the dignity of the army”, his lawyer said at the time.

Tunisian police on July 26 closed the offices of Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera in the capital Tunis, without giving reasons.

NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Iraq will hold early elections Sunday as a concession to a youth-led protest movement, but in Nasiriyah, the city at the heart of the revolt, most young people won't vote.

Ahead of the parliamentary polls, the mood in Nasiriyah and much of Iraq is sombre with little hope the election will bring much-needed change to the war-scarred country.

"Elections in Iraq are rigged," said 21-year-old Anas, echoing a common sentiment among young adults in the impoverished southern city.

"They are corrupted by arms and money, and I can't be made to vote with a gun to my head."

Anas, who declined to give his full name, is an economics graduate but, like 40 per cent of Iraqi youths, he is unemployed.

In October 2019, anti-government protests erupted in Baghdad and cities in the mainly Shiite south like Nasiriyah against corruption, unemployment, poor public services and neighbouring Iran's influence over Iraq.

Two years on, the protests have died down across much of the country. But in Nasiriyah, simmering public anger is still palpable.

From time to time, young demonstrators still take to the streets, which are filled with posters of "martyrs" killed in clashes with security forces.

Anas said the protests changed his life and opened his eyes to the problems facing his country.

"Before, I was a normal person who went to university. I studied or texted my girlfriend," he said.

"But after the October revolution, I felt I had a responsibility to assume, a place to fill within society, and that my voice was being heard."

Nearly 600 people died across Iraq and tens of thousands were wounded in violence related to the protests. More activists have been murdered since, kidnapped or intimidated, but there has been no accountability.

Activists have blamed pro-Iran armed groups, part of the Hashed Al  Shaabi paramilitary coalition that helped defeat the Daesh terror group.

Aside from insecurity, Iraq is grappling with an economic crisis exacerbated by diminished oil revenues and the coronavirus pandemic, as well as infrastructure dilapidated by decades of conflict and neglect.

Nasiriyah reflects it all: Poverty is rampant, there are severe power and water cuts and investment in infrastructure is sorely lacking.

‘Awash with weapons’ 

The country is emerging from almost two decades of war and insurgency since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled leader Saddam Hussein.

But promises of a new beginning for the oil-rich country have remained elusive, with many blaming corrupt politicians for Iraq’s ills.

Haider Jaafar, 23, said that two years ago he thought elections “were the only means to change things”.

Like Anas and other young graduates in Nasiriyah he is now disillusioned.

“How can we hold polls when the country is awash with weapons... when political parties wield a lot of influence and control big money?” he asked.

With so much anger bubbling, candidates hoping to be elected to the 329-seat parliament have kept a low profile in Nasiriyah.

Instead of canvassing the streets of the city of half a million inhabitants, they have taken their campaign to social media.

After the massacre 

The few who put up campaign posters in Nasiriyah have had them torn down.

“It’s difficult for a candidate to campaign in Nasiriyah, especially after October [2019] and the massacres that took place,” said Jaafar.

“Some people believe that every candidate is linked to the death of a friend.”

Jaafar said that some of the 85 demonstrators killed on a single day in November 2019 in clashes with security forces were friends of his.

“At our age, we should not see friends die, lie in a pool of blood,” he said.

The government had vowed to bring those responsible for the deaths to justice “but nothing has happened”, said Jafaar.

On a cautiously optimistic note, Muntazer, a medical student, said independent candidates with no links to traditional political parties could make a difference.

“If one or even 10 independents win seats in the election, they could exert pressure [in parliament] and form the nucleus of a real opposition,” he said.

RAMALLAH — Recent visits by three Israeli Cabinet ministers to Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas indicate both sides are keen to promote stability and improve ties, even if peace talks remain off the table for now.

The Israeli coalition led by hardline nationalist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — which ranges from left-wingers to Islamists — has no common position on ending the decades-long Palestinian conflict, complicating any formal diplomatic negotiations.

But Bennett has said his government will aim to improve economic conditions in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

For Abbas, who was largely ignored by Bennett’s predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, moves by Israel to bolster his position would likely be welcome, analysts said.

A poll last month by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research found that a record 80 per cent of Palestinians want Abbas to resign, reflecting deep frustration with the 86-year-old leader.

Only 19 per cent of respondents believe Abbas’s secular Fateh movement deserves to lead the Palestinian people, with 45 per cent preferring Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip.

‘Take advantage’ 

For Abbas and his Palestinian Authority — facing mounting anger over endemic corruption and a crackdown on human rights activists — talking to Israel is partly about “taking advantage of the diplomatic context”, said Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Middle East Research Centre at Tel Aviv University.

That context, Rabi said, is shaped by an Israeli coalition that includes leaders committed to a two-state solution and, for the first time ever, an Arab-Israeli party.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is also seen as far more sympathetic to the Palestinians than Donald Trump, who was accused of egregious bias towards Israel.

The first high-level Israeli visit to Abbas in Ramallah, which came days after Bennett met Biden in Washington, was by Defence Minister Benny Gantz.

Bennett is the former head of a lobby group representing Jewish settlers, who live in West Bank communities considered illegal under international law, and he opposes the creation of a Palestinian state.

After Gantz met Abbas, a source close to the premier clarified that the discussions were on security issues and that “there is no peace process with the Palestinians nor will there be” under Bennett’s leadership.

But on Sunday, Abbas received Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz, regional cooperation minister Issawi Freij and lawmaker Michal Rozin, all from the left-wing Meretz Party, part of the ruling coalition.

“We have a common mission,” Horowitz wrote on Twitter. “To maintain the hope of a peace founded on the two-state solution.”

The tweet included a photo of him standing with Abbas.

Ultimatum 

As Abbas has stepped up his diplomacy with Israel, he has also maintained a hard rhetorical line.

In an address to the UN General Assembly last month, he said that if Israel did not withdraw from all occupied territory within a year, he would no longer recognise Israel based on pre-1967 borders.

Rabi of Tel Aviv University said Abbas’ goal with that unrealistic ultimatum was to suggest that if there was no progress on peace talks during his tenure as president, a “chaotic” situation could result.

Palestinian analyst Diana Buttu stressed the limitations of Abbas’s dealings with Israel, saying Israel was open to discussing humanitarian issues, but it “does not want to hear about rights or political freedoms”.

Khalil Shaheen, a veteran Palestinian analyst and journalist, said Abbas is betting that he can create “momentum” that pressures Bennett into reviving moribund peace talks.

But that strategy could prove “ineffective” because Bennett’s ideologically disparate coalition is more focused on its own survival than on peace talks with the Palestinians, Shaheen told AFP.

“Israeli government has agreed to avoid controversial subjects like the Palestinian question that could tear it up at any moment,” he said.

DUBAI — The United Arab Emirates will launch a spacecraft to explore a major asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, officials said on Tuesday, after a UAE probe reached the red planet early this year.

The five-year journey from 2028 will traverse 3.6 billion kilometres, with the unmanned craft drawing on gravity assists from Earth and Venus to reach the main asteroid belt beyond Mars, officials said.

“The mission will make its first close planetary approach orbiting Venus in mid-2028, followed by a close orbit of Earth in mid-2029,” the UAE Space Agency said in a statement.

“It will make its first fly-by of a main asteroid belt object in 2030, going on to observe a total of seven main belt asteroids before its final landing on an asteroid 560 million kilometres from Earth in 2033.”

The UAE — made up of seven emirates including the capital Abu Dhabi and Dubai — is a newcomer to the world of space exploration.

In September 2019, the oil-rich country sent the first Emirati into space as part of a three-member crew that blasted off on a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan.

Then in February 2021 its “Hope” probe successfully entered Mars’ orbit on a journey to reveal the secrets of Martian weather, in the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission.

The UAE also has plans to send an unmanned rover to the moon by 2024.

Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed, the UAE’s de facto leader, said that the launch of the new project sets an “ambitious” new goal for the country.

“The UAE is determined to make a meaningful contribution to space exploration, scientific research and our understanding of the solar system,” he tweeted.