Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — All six Palestinians who escaped an Israeli high-security jail through a tunnel dug under a sink are back in custody, after the forces said on Sunday they had recaptured the last two.

The inmates, who were being held for attacks against Israel, became heroes among many Palestinians when reports emerged they had burrowed out using tools as basic as a spoon.

The full weight of Israel's security apparatus was deployed to catch them, including aerial drones, road checkpoints and an army mission to Jenin in the occupied West Bank where many of the men grew up.

The huge manhunt lasted almost a fortnight, with the first four fugitives recaptured last week.

The Israel Defence Forces said on Sunday the remaining two had surrendered "after being surrounded by security forces" that had acted with precision on accurate intelligence.

The men, 35-year-old Ayham Kamamji and 26-year-old Munadel Infeiat, are both members of Islamic Jihad, an armed Palestinian Islamist movement.

Islamic Jihad hailed its "heroes" following the re-arrests, vowing the Palestinian people "will not surrender" in response to Israeli "criminality and aggression".

The pair were arrested in a joint operation with counterterrorism forces in Jenin and were "currently being interrogated", the Israeli forces statement said.

Two other men who had allegedly helped the fugitives were also detained, it added.

'Major mishap' 

Taleb Abo Jaafar, who owns the Jenin house in which the two fugitives were found, said he had been surprised to discover his home cordoned off in the middle of the night.

"There was shooting around the house. I went out to see what happened, I opened the door and looked at the street, the forces were outside and they told me to go back inside," he told AFP.

In a call on Sunday with Israeli security chiefs, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett branded the escape "a major mishap".

“But you mobilised with joint forces until the mission was completed,” he added, vowing in a separate statement that the security establishment would “correct what needs to be corrected”.

All six fugitives were members of Palestinian groups who were convicted by Israeli courts of plotting or carrying out attacks against Israelis.

Kamamji, originally from Kafr Dan near Jenin, was arrested in 2006 and jailed for life for the kidnap and murder of a young Israeli settler, Eliahu Asheri.

Islamic Jihad said Kamamji suffered abdominal and intestinal illness in jail and was subject to “medical negligence” by prison authorities.

Infeiat, arrested last year, had been jailed multiple times previously for his role in the armed group, and was awaiting sentencing at the time of the escape.

Hiding in lorry park 

The other four men recaptured last week included Mahmoud Abdullah Ardah, the alleged mastermind of the escape, and Zakaria Zubeidi, who headed the armed wing of the Fateh movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Zubeidi was found hiding in a lorry park just outside Nazareth in northern Israel along with one of the other men, Mohammad Ardah, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for his role in Islamic Jihad’s armed wing.

The remand of the four was extended at Nazareth’s magistrates’ court to September 29 in a Sunday hearing, police said.

‘Spoon of freedom’ 

Questions remain over how jailbreak could have happened, and a formal inquiry has been announced.

A lawyer for Yaqub Qadri, the sixth escapee, told Palestinian television that the inmates had not planned to escape when they did on September 6.

She said they rushed ahead with the plan on that day because they feared guards had become suspicious and noticed changes in their cell.

The break-out had been planned for months, Ardah’s lawyer told AFP, saying that “Mahmoud told me he started digging in December”.

Ardah told him he used spoons, plates and even the handle of a kettle to dig the tunnel from his jail cell.

Spoons have since become a symbol of Palestinian resistance, with protesters both inside and outside the Palestinian territories carrying them at demonstrations.

They have inspired political artwork as far away as Kuwait, where artist Maitham Abdal has sculpted a giant hand clasping what he labelled the “spoon of freedom”.

ALGIERS — Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who ruled Algeria for two decades before resigning in 2019 as huge protests engulfed the country, has died aged 84, public television announced.

The former president had left office in April 2019 under pressure from the military, following weeks of demonstrations over his bid to run for a fifth term in office.

After quitting, he had stayed out of the public eye at a residence in western Algiers.

The announcement of his death late Friday evening triggered little reaction in the North African country, reflecting how his absence had stamped him out of public interest.

A statement from his successor Abdelmadjid Tebboune noted Bouteflika's past as a fighter in the war for independence from France and said flags would be lowered to half mast for three days to honour him.

But on the streets of the capital Algiers, many residents told AFP the once-formidable president would not be missed.

"Bless his soul. But he doesn't deserve any tribute because he did nothing for the country," said greengrocer Rabah.

Malek, a telecoms employee, said Bouteflika "was incapable of reforming the country despite his long rule".

Even state broadcasters limited their coverage to the news of his death, without running special bulletins on his legacy.

Sabqpress news website said the funeral would take place on Sunday at the El Alia cemetery east of the capital where his predecessors and other independence fighters are buried.

There was no immediate confirmation from authorities.

‘Absolute president'

Bouteflika became president of Algeria in 1999 as the former French colony emerged from a decade of civil war that killed nearly 200,000 people.

He went on to be elected for three more consecutive five-year terms, most recently in 2014.

Dubbed "Boutef" by Algerians, he won respect as a foreign minister in the 1970s and then for helping foster peace after the civil war, notably with an amnesty law that prompted thousands of Islamist fighters to hand in their weapons.

“He was welcomed in countries around the world, and the country improved when Bouteflika became president,” said kitchen porter Amer, 46.

Journalist Farid Alilat, who has written a biography of Bouteflika, says that at the height of his rule in the early 2000s, the president had “all the levers of power”.

Crucially, he was backed by the army and the intelligence services.

“He became an absolute president,” Alilat told AFP.

Algeria was largely spared the wave of uprisings that swept the Arab world in 2011, with many crediting still-painful memories of the civil war — as well as a boost in state handouts — for keeping a lid on tensions.

But Bouteflika’s rule was marked by corruption, leaving many Algerians wondering how a country with vast oil wealth could end up with poor infrastructure and high unemployment that pushed many young people overseas.

“He had a very comfortable life, even after he was ousted from power. But we have to admit that his legacy isn’t the most glowing,” said carpenter Mohamed, 46.

In his later years, Bouteflika’s ill health started weighing on his credibility as a leader.

Despite suffering a mini-stroke in April 2013 that affected his speech and forced him to use a wheelchair, he decided to seek a fourth mandate despite growing public doubts about his ability to rule.

His bid in 2019 for a fifth term sparked angry protests that soon grew into a pro-democracy movement known as Hirak.

When he lost the backing of the army, he was forced to step down.

The Hirak mass protests continued, with demands for a full overhaul of the ruling system in place since Algeria’s independence from France in 1962.

Some key Bouteflika-era figures were eventually jailed in corruption cases, including Bouteflika’s powerful brother Said, but the long-sought changes did not happen.

Bouteflika’s successor Tebboune was elected in late 2019 on record low turnout, with the Hirak calling for a boycott.

A referendum on a constitutional amendment seen as aiming to torpedo the Hirak generated even less interest from voters.

But the protest movement was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic and has struggled to regain momentum as the government cracks down on opposition.

According to the CNLD prisoners’ group, around 200 people are in jail in connection with the Hirak or over individual freedoms.

And with the Bouteflika-era old guard still largely ruling the country, the legacy of two decades of his rule is mixed.

“For his entire life, Abdelaziz Bouteflika was driven by two obsessions: Take power and keep it at any price,” said Alilat.

“But it was this obsession... that sparked the revolt that drove him from power.”

MOSUL, Iraq — A bell was inaugurated at a church in Mosul on Saturday to the cheers of Iraqi Christians, seven years after the Daesh group overran the northern city.

Dozens of faithful stood by as Father Pios Affas rang the newly installed bell for the first time at the Syriac Christian church of Mar Tuma, an AFP correspondent reported.

It drew applause and ululations from the crowd, who took photos on mobile phones, before prayers were held.

“After seven years of silence, the bell of Mar Tuma rang for the first time on the right bank of Mosul,” Affas told them.

Daesh swept into Mosul and proclaimed it their “capital” in 2014, in an onslaught that forced hundreds of thousands of Christians in the northern Nineveh province to flee, some to Iraq’s nearby Kurdistan region.

The Iraqi army drove out the terrorists three years later after months of gruelling street fighting.

The return of the Mosul church bell “heralds days of hope, and opens the way, God willing, for the return of Christians to their city”, said Affas.

“This is a great day of joy, and I hope the joy will grow even more when not only all the churches and mosques in Mosul are rebuilt, but also the whole city, with its houses and historical sites,” he told AFP.

‘Back to life’ 

The bell weighing 285 kilogrammes was cast in Lebanon with donations from Fraternity in Iraq, a French NGO that helps religious minorities, and transported from Beirut to Mosul by plane and truck.

The church of Mar Tuma, which dates back to the 19th century, was used by the terrorists as a prison or a court.

Restoration work is ongoing and its marble floor has been dismantled to be completely redone.

Nidaa Abdel Ahad, one of the faithful attending the inauguration, said she had returned to her home town from Erbil so that she could see the church being “brought back to life”.

“My joy is indescribable,” said the teacher in her forties. “It’s as if the heart of Christianity is beating again”.

Faraj-Benoit Camurat, founder and head of Fraternity in Iraq, said that “all the representations of the cross, all the Christian representations, were destroyed”, including marble altars.

“We hope this bell will be the symbol of a kind of rebirth in Mosul,” he told AFP by telephone.

Iraq’s Christian community, which numbered more than 1.5 million in 2003 before the US-led invasion, has shrunk to about 400,000, with many of them fleeing the recurrent violence that has ravaged the country.

Camurat said around 50 Christian families had resettled in Mosul, while others travel there to work for the day.

“The Christians could have left forever and abandoned Mosul, but instead they being very active in the city,” he said.

RAMALLAH — Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have called off a planned hunger strike later this week involving some 1,400 inmates after their demands were met, a Palestinian group said Wednesday.

Tensions have been running high since six militants staged a dramatic escape from a high-security jail in northern Israel on September 6, via a tunnel dug under a sink. Four of them have since been recaptured.

Hundreds of their fellow inmates were transferred to other jails, and personal items were confiscated, according to the Palestinian Prisoners' Club.

The Palestinian Authority's commission for prisoners had announced plans for a hunger strike from Friday.

Some 1,380 prisoners — out of more than 4,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails — were to start fasting on Friday, to be joined by other inmates next week.

On Wednesday, however, the Prisoners' Club said it had been decided to "suspend the collective hunger strike after the demands were met" including a "cessation of the collective punishments".

An Israel Prison Service spokesman said that as of Wednesday there was no indication that a hunger strike was set to begin, but refused to comment on the claim that prisoners' demands had been met.

BEIRUT — More than 140 human rights groups, survivors and relatives of victims of the Lebanon port blast called Wednesday for a UN-backed international, independent and impartial probe into the disaster.

The explosion of hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser on the Beirut dockside on August 4 last year killed at least 214 people, injured thousands and ravaged entire neighbourhoods.

It emerged later that officials had known that the highly volatile substance had been left to linger unsafely at the port for years, in a warehouse close to residential neighbourhoods.

Lebanese politicians have rejected previous calls for an international probe into the disaster, but have also hampered the progress of a local investigation at every turn.

The 145 signatories, which include Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Lebanese rights groups, survivors, and relatives of the victims, called on member states at the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish "an international, independent and impartial investigative mission, such as a one-year fact-finding mission".

"The failures of the domestic investigation to ensure accountability dramatically illustrates the larger culture of impunity for officials that has long been the case in Lebanon," they said.

A first lead investigator was removed by a court in February after he charged former prime minister Hassan Diab and three ex-ministers with "negligence and causing death to hundreds".

The second, judge Tarek Bitar, has also faced obstructions, including the parliament refusing to lift the immunity of former ministers who are also lawmakers so he could question them.

Bitar in August subpoenaed Diab for interrogation on September 20, but local media has reported the ex-premier has flown to the United States to see his family.

Diab's government resigned in the wake of the blast, but remained in a caretaker capacity until this week when a new government finally took up its functions after 13 months of political wrangling.

The powerful Shiite Muslim movement Hizbollah and former prime ministers have accused Bitar of "politicising" the investigation.