BENGHAZI: Forces loyal to east Libya strongman Khalifa Haftar said Wednesday they have cornered the last jihadists in a neighborhood of second city Benghazi and vowed that victory is “imminent.”
The self-styled Libyan National Army said fighting in Soug Al-Hout neighborhood was over and its soldiers had advanced into the central district of Al-Sabri where they were surrounding the last jihadists.
LNA General Abdessalam Al-Hassi told AFP the jihadists were cornered in a small part of Al-Sabri and coming under attack from air strikes as well as ground forces on three fronts.
Haftar’s forces have retaken most of Benghazi since the eastern coastal city was overrun by jihadists in 2014.
Last week a medical source in the city said 44 LNA soldiers had been killed in June alone in Al-Sabri and Soug Al-Hout.
Hassi said the “total liberation of Benghazi from jihadists is imminent.”
A spokesman for the LNA special forces, Col. Miloud Al-Zwei, said Haftar’s forces were getting ready “to launch an assault on Al-Joumhouriya hospital and Al-Jarid market” in Al-Sabri.
Benghazi, cradle of the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed Libya’s veteran dictator Muammar Qaddafi, was overrun by several jihadist groups.
These include the Revolutionary Shoura Council of Benghazi, an alliance of Islamist militias among them suspected members of the Daesh and the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Al-Sharia.
Libya forces corner jihadists in Benghazi district
Libya forces corner jihadists in Benghazi district
Red Sea crisis intensifies economic strain on Yemenis ahead of Eid
DUBAI: Yemen, suffering from nearly a decade of civil war, now faces an additional challenge: a crippled economy further strained by the escalating crisis in the Red Sea.
Market vendors in Sanaa’s Old City, the Al-Melh, claim that sales have decreased by 80 percent, according to a report by Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Shopkeepers attribute this decline to recent increases in sea shipping costs, which have driven up wholesale prices.
This situation reflects the broader economic crisis in Yemen, where rising sea shipping costs have increased prices across the board, making basic Eid essentials unaffordable for many.
To help ease financial strain, an exhibition was organized in Al-Sabeen Park, where families were able to sell homemade goods.
Despite these efforts, Yemen’s economic problems persist. According to the UN, the decade-long war has pushed millions into poverty. Over 1.2 million civil servants have not received salaries in eight years, and hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. The Norwegian Refugee Council reports that four out of five Yemenis face poverty, and over 18 million people urgently need humanitarian aid.
Water crisis batters war-torn Sudan as temperatures soar
- The country at large, despite its many water sources including the mighty Nile River, is no stranger to water scarcity
- This summer, the mercury is expected to continue rising until the rainy season hits in August
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: War, climate change and man-made shortages have brought Sudan — a nation already facing a litany of horrors — to the shores of a water crisis.
“Since the war began, two of my children have walked 14 kilometers (nine miles) every day to get water for the family,” Issa, a father of seven, said from North Darfur state.
In the blistering sun, as temperatures climb past 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), Issa’s family — along with 65,000 other residents of the Sortoni displacement camp — suffer the weight of the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
When the first shots rang out more than a year ago, most foreign aid groups — including the one operating Sortoni’s local water station — could no longer operate. Residents were left to fend for themselves.
The country at large, despite its many water sources including the mighty Nile River, is no stranger to water scarcity.
Even before the war, a quarter of the population had to walk more than 50 minutes to fetch water, according to the United Nations.
Now, from the western deserts of Darfur, through the fertile Nile Valley and all the way to the Red Sea coast, a water crisis has hit 48 million war-weary Sudanese who the US ambassador to the United Nations on Friday said are already facing “the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet.”
Around 110 kilometers east of Sortoni, deadly clashes in North Darfur’s capital of El-Fasher, besieged by RSF, threaten water access for more than 800,000 civilians.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday said fighting in El-Fasher had killed at least 226.
Just outside the city, fighting over the Golo water reservoir “risks cutting off safe and adequate water for about 270,000 people,” the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
Access to water and other scarce resources has long been a source of conflict in Sudan.
The UN Security Council on Thursday demanded that the siege of El-Fasher end.
If it goes on, hundreds of thousands more people who rely on the area’s groundwater will go without.
“The water is there, but it’s more than 60 meters (66 yards) deep, deeper than a hand-pump can go,” according to a European diplomat with years of experience in Sudan’s water sector.
“If the RSF doesn’t allow fuel to go in, the water stations will stop working,” he said, requesting anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to speak to media.
“For a large part of the population, there will simply be no water.”
Already in the nearby village of Shaqra, where 40,000 people have sought shelter, “people stand in lines 300 meters long to get drinking water,” said Adam Rijal, spokesperson for the civilian-led General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.
In photos he sent to AFP, some women and children can be seen huddled under the shade of lonely acacia trees, while most swelter in the blazing sun, waiting their turn.
Sudan is hard-hit by climate change, and “you see it most clearly in the increase in temperature and rainfall intensity,” the diplomat said.
This summer, the mercury is expected to continue rising until the rainy season hits in August, bringing with it torrential floods that kill dozens every year.
The capital Khartoum sits at the legendary meeting point of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers — yet its people are parched.
The Soba water station, which supplies water to much of the capital, “has been out of service since the war began,” said a volunteer from the local resistance committee, one of hundreds of grassroots groups coordinating wartime aid.
People have since been buying untreated “water off of animal-drawn carts, which they can hardly afford and exposes them to diseases,” he said, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Entire neighborhoods of Khartoum North “have gone without drinking water for a year,” another local volunteer said, requesting to be identified only by his first name, Salah.
“People wanted to stay in their homes, even through the fighting, but they couldn’t last without water,” Salah said.
Hundreds of thousands have fled the fighting eastward, many to the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea — itself facing a “huge water issue” that will only get “worse in the summer months,” resident Al-Sadek Hussein worries.
The city depends on only one inadequate reservoir for its water supply.
Here, too, citizens rely on horse- and donkey-drawn carts to deliver water, using “tools that need to be monitored and controlled to prevent contamination,” public health expert Taha Taher said.
“But with all the displacement, of course this doesn’t happen,” he said.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, the health ministry recorded nearly 11,000 cases of cholera — a disease endemic to Sudan, “but not like this” when it has become “year-round,” the European diplomat said.
The outbreak comes with the majority of Sudan’s hospitals shut down and the United States warning on Friday that a famine of historic global proportions could unfold without urgent action.
“Health care has collapsed, people are drinking dirty water, they are hungry and will get hungrier, which will kill many, many more,” the diplomat said.
UAE, Iran discuss bilateral relations
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirats Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, had a phone conversation on Saturday with Iran's acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Bagheri Kani, to discuss the bilateral relations between the two countries.
During the call, they exchanged Eid Al-Adha greetings and explored ways to enhance cooperation that would serve the mutual interests of their countries and peoples, contributing to regional security and stability.
They also reviewed several issues of common interest, as well as recent developments in both regional and international arenas.
Two explosions near vessel off Yemen’s coast, UK maritime office says
- Houthi militants, who are backed by Iran, have been targeting vessels off the Yemen’s coast
CAIRO: The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said on Sunday a vessel 40 nautical miles south of Al-Mukha in Yemen had reported two explosions nearby, adding that the vessel and its crew were safe and proceeding to their next port of call.
Authorities are investigating, UKMTO said.
UKMTO WARNING INCIDENT 087 ATTACK UPDATE 001https://t.co/fX3hWupi7g#MaritimeSecurity #MarSec pic.twitter.com/tOQXLZoQ9w
— United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) (@UK_MTO) June 16, 2024
Houthi militants, who are backed by Iran, have been targeting vessels off the Yemen’s coast in what they said is a show of solidarity with the Palestinians being killed in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Iran rebukes G7 statement over its nuclear program escalation
- Tehran’s foreign ministry calls on G7 to distance itself from ‘destructive policies of the past’
- Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity close to the 90 percent weapons grade
DUBAI: Iran called upon the Group of Seven on Sunday to distance itself from “destructive policies of the past,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said, referring to a G7 statement condemning Iran’s recent nuclear program escalation.
On Friday, the G7 warned Iran against advancing its nuclear enrichment program and said they would be ready to enforce new measures if Tehran were to transfer ballistic missiles to Russia.
“Any attempt to link the war in Ukraine to the bilateral cooperation between Iran and Russia is an act with only biased political goals,” Kanaani said, adding that some countries are “resorting to false claims to continue sanctions” against Iran.
Last week, the UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors passed a resolution calling on Iran to step up cooperation with the watchdog and reverse its recent barring of inspectors.
Iran responded by rapidly installing extra uranium-enriching centrifuges at its Fordow site and begun setting up others, according to a International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report.
Kanaani added Tehran would continue its “constructive interaction and technical cooperation” with the IAEA, but called its resolution “politically biased.”
Iran is now enriching uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the 90 percent of weapons grade, and has enough material enriched to that level, if enriched further, for three nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick.
