Region

DIWANIYAH, Iraq — Hundreds of Iraqis in the southern province of Diwaniyah protested on Monday against power cuts and water shortages during the extreme heat of summer, an AFP correspondent said.

Decades of war have left the country's infrastructure in a pitiful state, with power cuts worsening the blistering summer when temperatures often reach 50ºC mostly in southern provinces.

Dozens of villages in Diwaniyah have also suffered for years from water shortages because of a four-year-long drought and reduced river flows.

On Monday, around 500 angry protesters encircled the municipality building in Shafeiya village, burning tyres and chanting for better services.

"We don't have electricity. We used to get it for only two hours [per day], but now it is only one hour and 15 minutes," said protester Youssef Kamel.

"We don't have water or agriculture," he said, adding that "everyone has left to look for jobs" as labourers in the cities.

Last week, hundreds of people also protested outside electricity department offices in Ghamas district, blocking roads and burning tyres.

On Saturday, police used tear gas to disperse protesters, and dozens were briefly detained.

Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the OPEC cartel, but despite having immense oil and gas reserves, it remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs.

Neighbouring Iran supplies about a third of its power sector requirements.

Many households have just a few hours of mains electricity per day, and those who can afford it use private generators to keep fridges and air conditioners running.

Anger over corruption, unemployment and blackouts helped to fuel deadly protests from late 2019 to mid-2020.

The protests morphed into an unprecedented anti-government movement, mostly across southern Iraq and in Baghdad, before a security crackdown killed more than 600 people.

DAMASCUS — A Syrian soldier was killed early on Sunday and three others injured in Israeli strikes on several positions in and around Damascus, Syrian state media said.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, said it had targeted a Syrian military command centre as well as targets and infrastructure belonging to the Syrian army and air defence in response to two drones launched towards Israel from Syrian territory.

The statement was a rare acknowledgement by the Israeli military of action in Syria, where it has launched hundreds of strikes since the country's civil war erupted in 2011, which have mainly targeted army positions and Iran-backed fighters.

"A soldier was killed and three others injured following an aerial aggression launched by the Israeli enemy after midnight" on Sunday, Syria's state news agency SANA reported.

The strike "was launched from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights targeting several military positions in the southern region and a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district of Damascus", it added.

It said that aerial defence systems had intercepted and downed a number of missiles "despite their intensity".

The news agency published a photo showing a fire in what appeared to be a crater caused by the blast.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile said a Syrian pro-government fighter had been killed and six others injured in Israeli strikes targeting a building in Kafr Sousa and a military headquarters south of Damascus.

The building in Kafr Sousa, which hosted fighters from the so-called “axis of resistance” — Iran-backed armed factions opposed to the US and Israel — was destroyed, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria.

Local radio station Sham FM had reported “the explosion of a munitions depot following an Israeli attack that targeted a position near the capital”.

“The blasts were very strong and came in succession,” a resident of the eastern Damascus neighbourhood of Mezzeh told AFP, adding that this was followed by “the strong odour of gunpowder”.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon's Hizbollah launched rockets at Israel on Saturday after an Israeli air strike that according to a Lebanese security source killed two civilians in the country's south.

The Israeli military, whose forces have been trading regular cross-border fire with Hizbollah since early October, said its raid had targeted two operatives from the Iran-backed group.

The Shiite Muslim movement said it had retaliated by launching dozens of rockets at the border town of Kiryat Shmona, in Israel's north.

The Israeli military said four soldiers were wounded including one "severely", after air defences intercepted most of the "approximately 15 launches... identified crossing from Lebanon".

Israeli aircraft then "struck a Hizbollah field commander who was operating in the area of [Kfar] Tebnit in southern Lebanon", the military added.

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported multiple wounded in an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near Kfar Tebnit.

Hizbollah had already launched multiple attacks against Israeli military positions along the border on Saturday.

The Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said that "two civilians were filling up water from a roadside spring" in south Lebanon's Deir Mimas area when they were killed in an "Israeli air strike".

A source close to Hizbollah, also requesting anonymity, said one of the men was a member of the group and the father of a fighter who had been killed, while the second man was a member of Hizbollah ally the Amal movement.

The pair were “civilians, not fighters”, the source added.

Hizbollah said it had launched rockets “in response to the aggressions by the Israeli enemy against the villages... and civilians in the south”.

Hizbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 surprise attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

The NNA said an “enemy drone” killed two men on Saturday in the same area, identifying one of them as a local council member for the Amal movement in the nearby village of Kfar Kila.

It said they were collecting water from the spring “to take it for livestock in Kfar Kila”.

The Amal movement released a statement saying one of its members, born in 1964, was killed.

In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed more than 500 people, mostly fighters but also including more than 90 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, which last went to war in the summer of 2006.

AL MAWASI, Palestinian Territories — Israel had declared Al Mawasi a safe zone as it pushed into Rafah near the Egyptian border, but on Saturday Palestinians raced to collect the dozens of casualties from the army's latest strike.

Sirens wailed and women screamed as children were pulled out of the wreckage and rushed to nearby hospitals following the strike on a displacement camp.

"What did we do? What did we do? We were only sitting near the beach," one woman from the coastal town cried. 

The territory's health ministry said more than 71 people were killed and 289 people wounded in what it called a "massacre" at Al Mawasi camp.

AFP could not independently confirm the toll.

The Israeli military claimed the attack targeted Hamas military strategist Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama, a brigade commander, describing the pair as two of the masterminds of the October 7 surprise attack, which set off the war in Gaza.

The camp, near the city of Khan Yunis, was designated a humanitarian area after Israel in May ordered civilians to evacuate other parts of the Gaza Strip. 

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people were sheltering there, according to UK-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, which operates health sites in the area.

“We have been warning for months that there is no safe place for anyone in Gaza amid Israel’s military bombardment,” the charity said in a statement.

Black smoke billowed behind a wide, ash-strewn street in Al Mawasi where bodies lay in pools of blood, some covered by sheets.

Men struggling to carry the wounded wove through those beyond help to get to ambulances waiting with doors open. Others were piled onto donkey-pulled carts. 

Despite the Nasser Hospital reporting it was at full-capacity, ambulances kept arriving with wounded on orange stretchers, including a man with a towel tied to his leg as a makeshift tourniquet. 

A woman outside the hospital could be head pleading: “Please enough, enough for God sake”.

The Israeli military said Saturday’s offensive “struck an open area” that “was not a tent complex but an operational compound”.

“According to our information, only Hamas terrorists were present and there were no civilians,” it said.

Hamas called the claim that Deif had been targeted “false allegations” intended “to cover up the magnitude of the horrific massacre”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said heavy shelling was preventing its teams from reaching the “many bodies” scattered in the streets.

Mahmud Abu Akar described missiles raining down seemingly endlessly.

“Every time people tried to get close to rescue others, they would strike,” he said. 

“There was no warning at all, it happened all of a sudden.”

There have been previous reports of the camp coming under fire, including in June when the International Committee of the Red Cross said 22 people were killed by shelling that damaged its office.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 38,443 people in Gaza, according to data from Gaza’s health ministry.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Fighting and bombardment shook Gaza's biggest city on Thursday, an AFP correspondent said, even after Israel's military declared an end to its operation in an eastern district that saw Gaza City's heaviest combat in months.

The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement followed Israeli embattled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement in late June that "the war in its intense phase is about to end".

Gaza's authorities said troops had pulled back from Gaza City's eastern district of Shujaiya, leaving "more than 300 residential units and more than 100 businesses destroyed",

Witnesses said tanks and troops had moved into other Gaza City districts. An AFP correspondent reported air strikes on the Sabra neighbourhood while fighters engaged in heavy clashes with Israeli forces in Tel Al Hawa.

Officials in Gaza reported 45 air strikes in the Gaza City area, as well as in Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah.

Hamas's October 7 surprise attack on southern Israel that sparked the war. Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, according to figures from Gaza's health ministry.

The latest toll included 50 new deaths over the previous 24 hours, it said.

The United Nations said the latest evacuations “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced many times”, and who face “critical levels of need”.

Palestinian official Hossam Badran told AFP that Israel was “hoping that the resistance will relinquish its legitimate demands” in truce negotiations.

But “the continuation of massacres compels us to adhere to our demands”, he said.

Standing nearby, Mohammed Nairi said he and other residents returned to “immense destruction that defies description. All the houses were demolished”.

Another displaced resident, a can of food tucked under her arm, said the district “lies in ruins”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said around 60 bodies had been found in the ruins of Shujaiya.

“Once the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the Shujaiya neighbourhood, civil defence crews, with local residents, managed to recover about 60 martyrs up to now,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday imposed new sanctions against Israeli extremists over violence against Palestinians, including financial restrictions on four settlement outposts in the West Bank.

The State Department also blacklisted Lehava, which it described as the "largest violent extremist organisation in Israel" with more than 10,000 members.

"We strongly encourage the government of Israel to take immediate steps to hold these individuals and entities accountable. In the absence of such steps, we will continue to impose our own accountability measures," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Settlement expansion has increased sharply since prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the helm of a hardline pro-settler coalition.

The United States, while supporting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, has repeatedly warned Netanyahu about inflaming tensions in the West Bank, home of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority.

Israel distinguishes between wildcat outposts, built without the government's permission and state-approved settlements.

"Outposts like these have been used to disrupt grazing lands, limit access to wells and launch violent attacks against neighbouring Palestinians," Miller said in a statement.

The Israeli government recently approved three wildcat outposts, in what the Peace Now watchdog called a new step toward "annexation" of the West Bank.

Lehava swiftly criticized the US designation and President Joe Biden, saying the group will not stop its actions.

“Biden’s measures won’t deter us — we’ll continue to act fearlessly to save Israel’s daughters, much to the dismay of Biden and Israel’s other enemies.”

PORT SUDAN, Sudan  — Large parts of war-torn Sudan are inaccessible to aid workers, a Red Cross official said on Wednesday as devastating fighting between the army and paramilitaries rages on.

“There are plenty of areas we cannot access, sometimes because they are very dangerous, and sometimes we do not receive permission,” said Pierre Dorbes, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“Improving access will help millions of people,” Dorbes told journalists in Port Sudan, the Red Sea city where the army, government and UN agencies are now based.

War has raged since April 2023 between the regular army under Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 10 million people, according to the United Nations.

A recent UN-backed report said nearly 26 million people, or slightly more than half of the population, were facing high levels of “acute food insecurity”.

Volunteer groups in some areas consumed by the violence have set up communal kitchens, supported by international organisations.

“We provide about 2,000 meals a day, and this number is increasing daily,” Esmat Mohamed, who supervises one such initiative in the capital Khartoum, told AFP.

But international groups face logistical hurdles in transferring funds to volunteers on the ground, said one employee requesting anonymity for security reasons.

In the town of Dilling, near the South Sudan border, Kinda Komi is one of the volunteers providing meals to those in need.

“Since the start of the war, no food aid has reached the town, and the roads connecting it to the rest of the country have been cut due to the clashes,” she said.

According to her, “half of those in need leave without receiving meals.”

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday his group would accept Palestinian ally Hamas's decision on Gaza truce negotiations, repeating that his movement would stop cross-border attacks on Israel if a ceasefire were reached.

Hizbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas since the Palestinian resistance group's October 7 surprise attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip, stoking fears of a full-blown conflict.

"Hamas is negotiating... on behalf of the whole axis of resistance," Nasrallah said, referring to regional pro-Iran groups opposed to Israel and the United States.

"Whatever Hamas accepts, everyone accepts and is satisfied with," he said, adding: "We do not ask [Hamas] to coordinate with us because the battle in the first instance is theirs."

Nasrallah's remarks came days after he met with a Hamas delegation headed by foreign relations chief Khalil Al-Hayya, and as talks were to resume in Qatar towards a truce and hostage release deal in the Gaza war, now grinding into its 10th month.

Hamas has signalled that it would drop its insistence on a "complete" ceasefire — which Israel has repeatedly rejected — as a condition for starting truce talks.

Nasrallah repeated his position that "if a ceasefire is reached, and we all hope for that... our front will cease fire without any discussion".

"That is a commitment, because it is a support front and we have been clear [about this] from the start," he said, during a televised address commemorating a senior Hizbollah commander killed in an Israeli strike last week.

However, Nasrallah warned that “we will never allow any attack that the Israeli enemy might carry out against Lebanon [even] if there is a ceasefire in Gaza”.

Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said Sunday that “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hizbollah, “even if there is a ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip.

In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed nearly 500 people, mostly fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

Nasrallah said Israeli demands to push Hizbollah back from the border “won’t fix” the situation for Israel.

His group’s launching of “hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones in a single day” towards Israeli targets was a message “that Hizbollah doesn’t fear war”, he added.