Region

TEHRAN — Iran said on Wednesday there was "nothing new" in an International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA) report which said it had recently accelerated production of highly enriched uranium after months of slowdown.

"We have done nothing new and our activity is according to the regulations," said Iran's top nuclear official Mohammad Eslami.

"We were producing the same 60 per cent, we didn't change anything and we didn't create any new capacity."

On Tuesday, the IAEA released a report saying Iran "increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023".

Iran had increased its output of 60 per cent enriched uranium to a rate of about nine kilogrammes a month since the end of November, the UN watchdog said.

That is up from about three kilogrammes a month since June, and a return to the nine kilogrammes a month it was producing during the first half of 2023.

Still higher enrichment levels of around 90 per cent are required for use in a nuclear weapon.

Iran has consistently denied any ambition to develop a nuclear weapons capability, insisting that its activities are entirely peaceful.

Iran appeared to have slowed its enrichment as a gesture while informal talks for a restored nuclear agreement resumed with the United States.

But animosity between the two countries has intensified in recent months, with each accusing the other of exacerbating the war between Hamas and Israel.

Iran suspended its compliance with limits on its nuclear activities set by a 2015 nuclear deal with major powers a year after then US president Donald Trump unilaterally pulled out of the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sweeping sanctions.

It has since built up its stocks of enriched uranium to 22 times the level permitted under the deal, according to a confidential IAEA report seen by AFP last month.

Eslami criticised what he called a “media frenzy” around the latest IAEA report, saying it “sought to distract public attention” from the war in Gaza.

GENEVA — The United Nations said on Tuesday it was "gravely concerned" by Israel's continued bombardment of the central Gaza Strip and urged Israeli forces to take all available measures to protect civilians.

The UN Human Rights Office said all attacks had to adhere to international humanitarian law.

"We are gravely concerned about the continued bombardment of Middle Gaza by Israeli forces," rights office spokesman Seif Magango said in a statement.

"It is particularly concerning that this latest intense bombardment comes after Israeli forces ordered residents from the south of Wadi Gaza to move to Middle Gaza and Tal Al Sultan in Rafah."

The health ministry in Gaza said an Israeli air strike killed at least 70 people on Sunday at the Al Maghazi refugee camp. AFP was unable to independently verify that toll.

Hamas reported 50 strikes in central areas early on Monday, including in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Magango said the death toll from such strikes came amid "a deepening and already catastrophic humanitarian situation".

He said roads to the camps had been damaged, “obstructing relief aid from reaching those in need, and shelters and hospitals still minimally operating are critically overcrowded and under-resourced”.

Israel launched extensive aerial bombardment and a siege followed by a ground invasion. The campaign has killed 20,915 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

“We restate our warning that all attacks must strictly adhere to the principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction, proportionality and precaution in attack,” said Magango.

“Israeli forces must take all measures available to protect civilians. Warnings and evacuation orders do not absolve them of the full range of their international humanitarian law obligations.”

The health ministry in Gaza Strip said Tuesday at least 20,915 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war broke out on October 7.

The ministry said another 54,918 people have been wounded in more than 11 weeks of fighting.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli occupation forces killed two Palestinians on Tuesday in a raid on a refugee camp near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The two, aged 17 and 31, were shot dead in the Fawwar refugee camp, south of Hebron, the ministry said.

The army did not offer an immediate comment.

A resident from the camp told AFP that troops stormed the camp from its southern and northern entrances.

"The two men were killed just outside their homes," he said, asking to remain anonymous over security concerns.

He said after the death of the first man there were clashes in which five others were wounded and one of them later died.

Violence across the West Bank has flared since the Israeli war on Gaza erupted on October 7.

In Israel’s offensive in Gaza, more than 20,600 people have been killed, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

More than 300 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the Gaza war erupted, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah.

BAGHDAD — US air strikes targeting a pro-Iranian group in Iraq on Tuesday claimed at least one life, drawing an angry response from Baghdad as regional tensions spike amid the Hamas-Israel war.

The United States has repeatedly targeted sites used by Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq and Syria in response to dozens of attacks on American and allied forces in the region since the October 7 outbreak of the war.

Iraq said the latest US strikes killed one member of the security forces and wounded 18 other people, including civilians.

In a statement, it warned that such attacks "infringe upon Iraq's sovereignty and are deemed unacceptable under any circumstances or justification".

"Iraqi military sites were targeted by the American side justifying the act as a response," the Iraqi government said, adding it "resulted in the martyrdom of one service member and the injury of 18 others, including civilians".

"This constitutes a clear hostile act.

"It runs counter to the pursuit of enduring mutual interests in establishing security and stability, and it opposes the declared intention of the American side to enhance relations with Iraq."

Questioned by AFP, an official in Iraq's interior ministry said a strike had targeted a Hashed Al Shaabi site in Hilla, the capital of Babylon province.

One person was killed and 20 others wounded, the official said, giving a higher injured toll than the government.

Four others were wounded in a second strike in Wassit province. The casualty toll was confirmed by security sources in both Babylon and Wassit provinces.

'Proportionate strikes' 

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said earlier American forces had carried out strikes on three sites used by pro-Iran groups in Iraq in response to a series of attacks on US personnel.

"US military forces conducted necessary and proportionate strikes on three facilities used by Kataeb Hizbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq," Austin said in a statement.

The Iran-backed Kataeb Hizbollah, or Hizbollah Brigades, forms part of the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a coalition of former paramilitary forces that are now integrated into Iraq's regular armed forces.

The group was designated a "terrorist organisation" by the US State Department in 2009.

"These precision strikes are a response to a series of attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias, including an attack by Iran-affiliated Kataeb Hizbollah and affiliated groups on Arbil Air Base" on Monday, Austin said.

That attack wounded three US military personnel, one critically, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said.

US President Joe Biden was briefed on the attack, which was carried out with a one-way attack drone, and directed the US strikes in a call with Austin and other national security officials after ordering the defense department to prepare a response, the statement said.

Biden “places no higher priority than the protection of American personnel serving in harm’s way. The United States will act at a time and in a manner of our choosing should these attacks continue”, the statement added.

The drone attack was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose formation of armed groups affiliated with the Hashed Al Shaabi.

A tally by US military officials has counted 103 attacks against its troops in Iraq and Syria since October 17, most of which have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which opposes US support for Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The United States has about 2,500 soldiers deployed in Iraq and around 900 in Syria, as part of efforts to prevent a resurgence of the extremist Daesh group.

AL JAZIRA STATE, Sudan — On a countryside road in battle-ravaged Sudan, the hum of a passing vehicle turns villagers' blood cold, fearing the arrival of paramilitaries plundering their way south in their war against the army.

"They've created a state of total panic," said Rabab, who lives in a village north of Wad Madani, the Al Jazira state capital and latest site of fierce battles between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

Like others AFP spoke to, she requested to be identified by first name only out of fear of retaliation from fighters who have consistently targeted civilians during more than eight months of war.

On Saturday at least eight people were killed by RSF fighters in a village in Al Jazira state, witnesses told AFP, saying they had been shot after trying to stop their looting.

Just south of Khartoum, more than half a million people had sought shelter in Al-Jazira after the fighting overwhelmed the Sudanese capital.

This month, however, paramilitaries pressed deeper into the state and shattered one of the country's few remaining sanctuaries, forcing more than 300,000 people to flee once again, the United Nations said.

Those who remain, unable or unwilling to leave, have found themselves in what the Red Cross has called "another death trap".

Since April 15, Sudan has been gripped by a war pitting army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan against his former deputy, RSF commander Mohammad Hamdan Daglo.

By the end of November, at least 12,190 people had been killed in the fighting, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict and Location Event Data project.

The United Nations says more than seven million people have been displaced by the war. At least 85,000 had sought refuge in Wad Madani.

In the village of Aykura, 30 kilometres north of Wad Madani, one resident told AFP by phone that “the RSF has taken everything, the cars, the trucks, the tractors”.

He, too, stressed the need for anonymity to protect him from paramilitary violence.

‘At war with us?’ 

Before the war, Al-Jazira was a key agricultural hub.

However, as the RSF has moved southwards from Khartoum it has taken over swathes of agricultural land and terrorised the farmers that till it.

By Saturday, RSF fighters were seen north of Sennar, about 140 kilometres south of Wad Madani, according to witnesses.

The RSF has become notorious for looting property, with civilians who fled watching in horror as fighters posted videos of themselves on social media taking joyrides in stolen cars and vandalising homes.

In the market of Hasaheisa, a town 50 kilometres north of Wad Madani, an AFP correspondent saw shop doors flung open with the merchandise looters had not wanted strewn on the ground.

Omar Hussein, 42, stood in the wreckage of his family business.

Every store and vehicle they owned was destroyed. “Is the RSF at war with the army or with us?” he said.

On Saturday, fellow Hasaheisa resident Abdin found “seven men in RSF uniform carrying machine guns” at his door.

They questioned him about the car in his driveway, “and took it at gunpoint”.

When Rabab was robbed, she did not receive the courtesy of a knock.

“They fired their guns in front of the house, stormed in and left no room unsearched,” she said.

Free rein 

Home invasions have been a hallmark of RSF takeovers, as have sexual assaults.

According to Sudan’s Combating Violence Against Women Unit, most sexual violence occurs “inside homes, when gunmen, whom survivors describe as wearing RSF uniforms, break in and assault women and girls”.

Both the RSF and the army have been accused of a range of systematic violations including indiscriminate shelling of residential neighbourhoods, arbitrary detention of civilians and torture.

In Tambul, halfway between Khartoum and Wad Madani, witnesses said RSF members rampaged through one of the state’s main markets, shooting into the air at random.

And many who tried to flee the onslaught were unable to.

Activists, who risk their lives to document the horrors, said the RSF had set up checkpoints across the state, stopping civilians as they tried to flee and ordering them to turn back.

Three days into the RSF’s assault on Wad Madani, the army said it opened an investigation into “the retreat of forces from their positions” in the city.

Burhan warned every “negligent and complacent person” would be held to account after the RSF, accused of committing atrocities in the Darfur war where it fought on behalf of the army, had free rein.

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian Mawaheb Marei is mourning a double tragedy, her relatives suffering and dying in Gaza, and the killing of her teenage son, a victim of Israel’s frequent raids in the occupied West Bank.

“I wish I could wrap him in a coat”, Marei told AFP, like she had done every winter to keep her son, Eid, warm.

The 15-year-old was killed on October 25 in an Israeli raid on Jenin refugee camp where the family live in the northern West Bank, said the mother.

“Now, it doesn’t matter if I live or die in the raids.”

Marei said she had also lost six relatives in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by a deadly attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants on October 7.

The Israeli forces carries out regular raids on the Jenin camp and adjacent city, often triggering gun battles between troops and Palestinian militants.

The army says it is targeting “terrorists” in its raids, but the Palestinian health ministry says many civilians are among the dead.

When Marei heard that her son had been hit, she frantically searched local hospitals, and eventually found him intubated and dying from shrapnel wounds.

“So many innocent children have been killed,” she said.

The camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, was originally built to house Palestinians displaced during the Arab-Israeli war that coincided with Israel’s creation in 1948. It is now home to more than 23,000 people.

AFP correspondents in Jenin saw houses in the camp sprayed with bullets, and children’s clothes lying strewn in the wreckage.

Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank have killed more than 300 Palestinians since the Israeli war on Gaza erupted, Palestinian health officials say. 

Standing in a bombed-out Jenin mosque strewn with shattered tiles, Hani Al-Damaj, an elderly Palestinian who lived next door, said he and his relatives were lucky to escape alive when it was hit.

An Israeli air strike tore through the Al Ansar mosque in October, leaving the lower floors a skeleton. Staircases rise into the sky, leading nowhere. 

 ‘Our future in Israeli hands’ 

The Palestinian health ministry said the strike had killed two men, while the Israeli army said it targeted and killed “terror operatives” who used the mosque’s basement as a command centre.

In Damaj’s bedroom, within touching distance of the mosque, chunks of concrete ripped through the wall, showering the mattress with rubble.

Other camp residents told AFP that some people had been killed in their beds by stray bullets during Israeli operations.

In a multi-day raid earlier this month, Israeli forces killed 11 people and a sick 13-year-old boy died after he had been prevented from reaching hospital, Palestinian health authorities said.

Among the wounded was a 27-year-old woman shot in the chest, said the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The military said at the time that troops had seized dozens of weapons and dismantled multiple bomb-making laboratories.

Last month, the Israeli army killed 14 people in the deadliest single raid in the West Bank since 2005, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Earlier this month footage showed Israeli soldiers inside another mosque in the camp reciting a Jewish prayer through the loudspeakers, in what the Palestinian presidency called a “shameful desecration”. The army said the soldiers had been taken off duty.

Soldiers were also accused of breaking into the nearby Freedom Theatre, where an AFP correspondent saw a trail of damage.

“What is this kind of behaviour from a soldier?” said the theatre’s artistic director Ahmed Tobasi.

“Our life, our future, our sleeping, our breathing, it’s in Israeli hands.”

TUNIS — Tunisians trickled into polling stations on Sunday in the first elections for a new second chamber of parliament under a constitution pushed through last year by President Kais Saied.

Opponents of Saied argue the election is the latest step in the president's "authoritarian" agenda.

Saied, a former law professor who was elected president in 2019, seized executive powers two years later, sacking the government, dissolving parliament and declaring he would rule by decree.

On Sunday, the nine million strong electorate has been asked to choose more than 2,000 councillors from around 7,000 candidates, according to the Independent High Authority for Elections.

Opponents of Saied had called for a boycott of the election, which they said was "illegal" and had been "imposed".

A feeble turnout had been widely expected. Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (07:00 GMT), and an AFP journalist in the capital Tunis said they remained almost empty by midday.

"I have never seen such a low turnout during elections held in Tunisia since 2011," said an official in charge of one polling station in downtown Tunis, who asked not to be named.

The official was referring to the year in which a revolution overthrew president Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali after 24 years in power.

The protests that deposed Ben Ali helped to spark demonstrations and uprisings across the Middle East, a phenomenon later dubbed the Arab Spring.

“I understand the people who are ignoring these elections,” Salah Habib, a 60-year-old who said he cast his ballot simply “to mark [his] presence”, told AFP.

Nadia Majer, a 23-year-old student who opted not to vote, said upon leaving a nearby gym: “I didn’t understand anything about this election, and I don’t want to understand anything”.

More than 260 prominent Tunisian figures had signed a petition against what they called a “useless” election, saying Saied’s government “continues to implement its political project imposed on” people in the country.

They alleged the aim of the election was to “weaken local power, disperse it, and make it another docile instrument in the hands of the executive power”.

Since February, authorities have jailed more than 20 members of the opposition, including the Ennahdha Party leader Rached Ghannouchi and Jawhar Ben Mbarek, the co-founder of the National Salvation Front, among others.

The vote will result in the establishment of local, regional and district councils, allowing for the creation of the second chamber of parliament.

President Saied’s new constitution, which was approved at a referendum in July 2022, established two chambers of parliament, the Assembly of People’s Representatives and a National Council of Regions and Districts.

The assembly, with very limited powers, began its work earlier this year after an election boycotted by the opposition and spurned by voters, with only 11 per cent casting ballots.

The inauguration of the council, the second chamber that voters were asked to elect on Sunday, is scheduled for June 2024.

The council will decide on the state budget and regional development projects, and its members are selected in a complex process of local ballots and drawing of lots.

The electoral authority is scheduled to give preliminary results on December 27. A second round is scheduled for February, with no set date as of now.

BETHLEHEM, Palestinian Territories — Israel on Sunday pressed on with its war on Hamas in Gaza, shifting focus to the besieged territory's south as a spiralling death toll has thrown a pall of gloom over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.

US President Joe Biden stressed the "critical need" to protect civilians, in a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who vowed Israel would "continue the war until all of its goals have been achieved", according to official statements.

As heavy fighting raged on, the Israeli army said it had struck another 200 targets in the past 24 hours in the narrow Palestinian territory, where it is seeking to defeat Hamas and free hostages.

The army said 153 troops had died in Gaza since it launched its ground invasion on October 27. Ten soldiers were killed in battles on Saturday, one of the deadliest days for the Israeli side.

Israel’s withering military campaign, including massive aerial bombardment, has killed 20,424 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.4 million people have endured dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine due to an Israeli siege, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.

Eighty per cent of Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many fleeing south and now shielding against the winter cold in makeshift tents.

Near the far southern Gaza city of Rafah, Umm Amir Abu Al Awf, 27, suffered wounds to her hand and legs in a strike on her house early Sunday.

“Who won?” she said. “Nothing has been achieved except killing civilians... They keep saying Rafah is safe. It is not safe. Nowhere is safe. Every house has a martyr and injured.”

‘More hatred, less peace’ 

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus indicated that forces were close to gaining control in northern Gaza and that now “we focus our efforts against Hamas in southern Gaza”.

Fighting has raged in the main southern city of Khan Yunis, the birthplace of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the man Israel holds most responsible for the October 7 attack.

Elsewhere, Palestinian rescuers scrambled again to pull survivors and bodies from the rubble of a destroyed residential building, after a strike hit in the central city of Deir Al Balah.

“I was praying when a huge explosion occurred,” said Yazan Moqbel, a wounded man whose sister was still under the broken concrete. “Rubble fell on us. I didn’t know what happened.”

The head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, urged an end to the suffering in the third month of the war.

“For aid to reach people in need, hostages to be released, more displacement to be avoided and above all stop the appalling loss of lives, a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is the only way forward,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“War defies logic and humanity, and prepares a future of more hatred and less peace.”

And World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus similarly renewed calls for a ceasefire, saying: “The decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy.”

On Friday, the United States allowed the passage of a UN Security Council resolution that effectively called on Israel to allow “immediate, safe and unhindered” deliveries of life-saving aid to Gaza “at scale”.

World powers had wrangled for days over the wording and, at Washington’s insistence, toned down some provisions, including removing a call for a ceasefire.

Separately, a leading member of Islamic Jihad, which has been fighting alongside Hamas, said the group’s chief Ziad Nakhaleh arrived in Cairo for talks on a truce and hostage exchange, after the Hamas chief visited last week.

Muted holiday 

As the war rages on, Christians around the world celebrate Christmas Eve, and festivities are usually held in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem where they believe Jesus was born.

But this year the city is almost deserted, with few worshippers around and no Christmas tree erected, after church leaders decided to forego “any unnecessarily festive” celebrations, in solidarity with Gazans.

The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, arrived on Sunday at the Church of the Nativity, clad in the traditional black and white keffiyeh.

“Our heart goes to Gaza, to all people in Gaza but a special attention to our Christian community in Gaza who is suffering,” he said.

“We are here to pray and to ask not only for a ceasefire, a ceasefire is not enough, we have to stop these hostilities and to turn the page because violence generates only violence.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas voiced hope Christmas would mark “a cessation of the Israeli war against the Palestinian people in Gaza, as well as across the occupied Palestinian territories”.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Khalil Sayegh lives in the United States and for days he anxiously awaited news of his family who had taken refuge in Gaza churches to escape the Hamas-Israel war.

A few days before Christmas, he learned his father had died due to a lack of medical care, Sayegh said by telephone from Washington DC where he works as a political analyst.

"I was told by a relative... who had learned it from a priest," he said.

The news left him feeling shattered, he said, adding that he has yet to speak with other relatives stuck in Gaza which has been under heavy Israeli bombardment since Hamas' October 7 sudden attacks.

Mobile and Internet services, as well as electricity, have been largely disrupted in the Palestinian territory since the war broke out.

"Days go by without us having any news," said Sayegh, 29.

"We live with fear... not knowing if they are dead or alive, if they have food and water or if they are hungry."

Sayegh's family — his parents, two sisters and a brother — are among the 1.9 million people the United Nations estimates have been displaced in the territory of 2.4 million.

His parents and one sister took shelter at the Catholic Holy Family Church in Gaza City, while his younger brother stayed in Khan Yunis as he needs kidney dialysis.

His other sister fled to the nearby Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church with her husband and two children. While there she gave birth to a third child, a boy named Khader.

"I haven't even seen a picture of him. All I know is that he exists," said Sayegh.

About 7,000 Christians lived in Gaza before Hamas took control of the Palestinian territory in 2007, according to the Gaza authorities. Now they number around 1,000.

The Hamas government says more than 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched air strikes and a ground offensive. Most of the dead are women and children.

The war has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and put out of action most of its hospitals, particularly in the north of the territory, the United Nations says.

Food, medicine, water and fuel are hard to come by.

'Pray for us'

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem reported that on December 16 two Christian women were "murdered" by an Israeli forces sniper inside the same church where Sayegh's family are sheltering.

Pope Francis deplored the deaths, which he said happened in a church complex "where there are no terrorists but families, children, people who are sick and have disabilities".

Back in Washington, Gaza-born Sayegh said he has put on hold studies he was undertaking in the field of human rights.

"I just cannot function 100 per cent," he said.

"The only thing that keeps me going is to talk about what is happening and to remember that the people of Gaza have no voice of their own."

Sayegh is not the only person eager for news of loved ones trapped in Gaza.

A Jerusalem-based nun, who declined to be identified, said she is only able to reach two other nuns sheltering at the Holy Family Church every three or four days.

“They say they are well and ask us to pray for them,” she said.

On Monday, they told her that water supplies were cut and that none of the displaced had been able to shower for at least two weeks.

“God be with them. Their situation is miserable.”

Father Ibrahim Nino of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem said the displaced at the church have enough food, water and electricity to last them days and must be frugal.

But regardless of the difficult situation, he said, they will celebrate Christmas mass.

This year, church leaders in Jerusalem and the city council of Bethlehem — home to the Church of the Nativity where Christians believe Christ was born — decided to dampen Christmas celebrations in solidarity with Gazans.

And in a Christmas message, the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem lamented that “hope seems distant and beyond” reach for Gazans caught up in 11-weeks of deadly violence.

“Christmas should be a time of hope and celebration,” said Sayegh. But “it’s really hard to celebrate or feel any joy when Muslims and Christians are being massacred in Gaza and innocent civilians are dying”.

“I still rejoice in the fact that we know God is with us... He feels the pain of people, of all people.”