AL-OBEIDI, Iraq: For Abu Ahmed, the arrival of Iraqi forces in his village on the border with Syria has ended a three-year ordeal at the hands of the Daesh group that might never have been.
He was only meant to be visiting when he returned to the tiny settlement of Al-Obeidi in eastern Iraq for his mother’s funeral in September 2014.
But two days later the jihadists swept in, trapping him for years under their brutal rule and far from his home in the capital Baghdad.
That all ended this week when government troops pushing a final offensive against Daesh in Iraq seized Al-Obeidi as they closed in on the largest remaining jihadist-controlled town of Al-Qaim just to the west.
“Thank God, the Iraqi forces have liberated us,” he said, refusing to give his real name as “the fear” still remains even though the Daesh fighters might be gone.
After absorbing the village into their self-styled caliphate back in September 2014, the jihadists “behaved badly toward the people,” the man in his 60s says.
In the past few years Iraqi troops have been battling to retake the swathes of territory that Daesh captured when they stormed through the country in 2014.
In brutal fighting Baghdad has ousted Daesh from one city after another as they systematically dismantled the group’s experiment in statehood with the help of air strikes from a US-led coalition.
Now, all that remains of their territory in Iraq is Al-Qaim and the area around in a pocket of barren desert along the Euphrates river near the border with Syria.
Since launching the final offensive to retake the region last week Iraqi troops backed up by local Sunni fighters have captured “over 30 villages and advanced more than 90 kilometers (55 miles),” commander Qassem Al-Mohammedi said.
His men have quickly painted over the Daesh flag that was daubed across an arch at the entrance to Al-Obeidi.
A little further along buildings show the scars of fighting. A row of shops is now only a pile of rubble.
When the fighting started Umm Mohammed thought only of one thing: escaping.
The jihadists “deprived us of everything. There were people who were ill and died in their homes because they refused to let them be moved,” says the woman who also refused to give her full name.
A young girl by her side says she wants to go back to school “now that we are finished with IS.”
“Without school we forgot everything that we learnt,” she said.
Behind them women, children and a few men are crammed onto a long line of pickup trucks with the belongings that they managed to pack in a rush. Sheep, some cows and a donkey are gathered nearby.
Most of the men are seated on the earth waiting to be screened by government forces. They will face questioning and background checks as soldiers look to root out any Daesh fighters.
Several hundred meters (yards) away a sign next to the asphalt road that cuts through the desert points to Al-Qaim 12 kilometers (seven miles) away and Syria further on.
Across the frontier Daesh is also battling for survival as rival offensives backed by the US and Russia eat into its territory.
The Iraqi troops are now focused on Al-Qaim as they look to “force IS out” of their country, said general Noman Al-Zoabi, as he advances through the desert with a convoy of armored vehicles.
Ahead of him lie plenty more obstacles: the road is studded with improvised explosive devices set to explode as his forces advance.
And even in the areas that the troops have “liberated” the threat is still ever present.
Behind on the road near Al-Obeidi smoldered the charred carcass of an Iraqi armored vehicle that had just been blown up by a roadside bomb.
Iraqis hail end of Daesh rule
Iraqis hail end of Daesh rule
Palestinian toddler critically wounded in West Bank, Israeli military says shooting unintentional
- Latest bloodshed in a more than yearlong surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem
- Fighting has picked up since Israel’s new far-right government took office in late December
In a statement, the military said that gunmen opened fire late Thursday toward the West Bank settlement of Nevez Tzuf. It said soldiers at a guard post returned fire.
Moments later, Israeli medics received reports that a Palestinian man and the child had been badly wounded. The man was rushed to a Palestinian hospital, while the baby, after being resuscitated by Israeli medics, was airlifted to Israel’s Sheba Hospital. The hospital said the boy was in critical condition.
The military released a grainy video showing what it said were the gunmen firing toward the settlement and said that it was searching for them.
But it said the incident was being reviewed, saying “it regrets harm to noncombatants” and that it does “everything in its power to prevent such incidents.”
The shooting was the latest bloodshed in a more than yearlong surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. That fighting has picked up since Israel’s new far-right government took office in late December.
Nearly 120 Palestinians have been killed in the two areas this year, with nearly half of them members of armed militant groups, according to an Associated Press tally. The military says the number of militants is much higher. But stone-throwing youths and people uninvolved in violence have also been killed.
Meanwhile, Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis in those areas have killed at least 21 people.
Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians seek these territories for a future state.
Some 700,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Most of the international community considers these settlements illegal or obstacles to peace.
Tunisia’s financial crisis leaves the sick struggling to find medicine
- Hundreds of medicines have been missing for months, pharmacies say, including important treatments for heart disease, cancer and diabetes
- "The issue of missing medicine has become very hard for patients," said Douha Maaoui Faourati, a Tunis doctor
TUNIS: Sick Tunisians face a frantic struggle to find some medicines because the cash-strapped state has reduced imports, leaving doctors unable to control debilitating health problems and patients turning to informal markets for their medication.
Hundreds of medicines have been missing for months, pharmacies say, including important treatments for heart disease, cancer and diabetes as well as more basic products such as medicated eye drops whose absence worsens chronic conditions.
“The issue of missing medicine has become very hard for patients. We have a real problem with some medicines for which there are no generics available,” said Douha Maaoui Faourati, a Tunis doctor specializing in kidney and blood pressure disease.
Faourati has had to ask patients to try to get drugs from Europe, including ones used to control dangerously irregular heartbeat, swelling and clotting, and for which she says no good alternative is available in Tunisia.
Her difficulties show how Tunisia’s worsening fiscal problems are hitting ordinary people and adding to public anger at a state barely able to maintain even basic services.
Since last year Tunisia has struggled to pay for other goods that are sold at subsidised rates, causing periodic shortages of bread, dairy products and cooking oil as foreign currency reserves dropped from 130 days of imports to 93 days.
Tunisia wants a $1.9 billion International Monetary Fund bailout, without which ratings agencies have warned it may default on sovereign debt, but President Kais Saied has rejected key terms of the deal and donors say talks have stalled.
Tunisia imports all medicine through the state-owned Central Pharmacy, which provides drugs to hospitals and pharmacies around the country which offer them to patients at a subsidised rate.
The head of Tunisia’s Syndicate of Pharmacies, Naoufel Amira, said hundreds of medicines are no longer available, including for diabetes, anaesthesia and cancer treatment.
Amira and two officials at the Central Pharmacy who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to media, said the body owed large sums to foreign suppliers, which had restricted their sales to Tunisia in response.
“The problem is primarily financial,” Amira said.
Amira said the Central Pharmacy owed about 1 billion dinars ($325 million) to suppliers. The officials there said it owed about 800 million dinars, adding that public insurance companies and hospitals were delaying paying their bills by up to a year.
Tunisia’s Health Ministry and Central Pharmacy did not respond to requests for comment.
MEDICINE EXCHANGE
From the roof of his Tunis house, retired soldier Nabil Boukhili has opened an unofficial medicine exchange for his neighborhood in coordination with local doctors. “We have dozens of people coming here daily to get medication,” he said.
He sources medicine from people traveling overseas as well as leftover pills from people who have finished their own treatment, dispensing it free of charge to people who can show a prescription.
While Reuters was interviewing Boukhili, a woman arrived needing medicine for a thyroid problem. “I’ve been without this medicine for over a week,” said Najia Guadri, adding that she felt unable to function without it.
Sitting at his parents’ home in Tunis, Abdessalem Maraouni described how a lack of medicated eye drops has left him at risk of blindness and unable to go outside, forcing him to abandon his law studies at the university.
“This country can no longer provide even a box of medicine,” he lamented, sitting in the modest family home decorated with posters of his favorite football club but unable to see objects more than a few meters away.
The 25 year-old has not been able to find the medicine, or an alternative, for six months and has had to seek supplies from people traveling abroad, paying far more than he would from Tunisian pharmacies and rationing his use.
Maraouni’s father Kamal wept as he described how the state’s inability to import medicines had hit his son’s prospects.
“We don’t ask the state for money or grand places to live. We only ask for medicine. Is that too much?” he said.
After 22 years in a coma, Israeli woman critically wounded in 2001 Jerusalem suicide bombing dies
- Woman was 31 at the time and was dining with her 3-year-old daughter when the blast occurred
JERUSALEM: An Israeli woman critically wounded in a 2001 suicide bombing at a Jerusalem restaurant has died, an Israeli hospital said Thursday. Her death marks the sixteenth fatality from that attack.
Hana Nachenberg was 31 at the time and was dining with her 3-year-old daughter when the blast occurred, Israeli media reported. She was in a coma for nearly 22 years until she died on Wednesday, reports said. Her daughter was not hurt in the attack.
On Aug. 9, 2001, a Palestinian bomber walked into a Jerusalem pizzeria and blew himself up. The attack remains one of the most infamous in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it came at a time of surging violence between the sides during the second Palestinian intifada or uprising.
Aftershocks of the attack, which wounded dozens, still make news today. The family of an Israeli-American girl killed in the attack is waging a campaign to press Jordan, a close American ally, to send a woman convicted of aiding the attacker to the United States for trial.
Ahlam Tamimi was convicted of choosing the target and guiding the bomber there and was sentenced by Israel to 16 life sentences. Israel released her in a 2011 prisoner swap with the Hamas militant group and she was sent to Jordan, where she lives freely and has been a familiar face in the media.
The US has charged Tamimi with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against Americans. Her name was added to the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists.
Blinken says US considering actions against Sudan leaders
- Blinken did not spell out what actions Washington could take or whether it would personally target the heads of the army and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
- He said the US would remain engaged and stopped short of blaming one side for violating the truce, after the army announced its withdrawal on Wednesday
OSLO: Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Thursday that the United States could take action against rival Sudanese leaders after the collapse of a US-brokered truce.
The United States is “looking at steps that we can take to make clear our views on any leaders who are moving Sudan in the wrong direction, including by perpetuating the violence and by violating cease-fires that they’ve actually committed to,” Blinken told reporters.
Blinken did not spell out what actions Washington could take or whether it would personally target the heads of the army and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces or take a broader approach.
Blinken, who was in Oslo for NATO talks, said the United States would remain engaged and stopped short of blaming one side for violating the truce, after the army announced its withdrawal on Wednesday.
Blinken acknowledged wide violations of a series of cease-fires brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.
“We did see the provision of humanitarian assistance going forward. But it has been incredibly imperfect and incredibly fragile,” Blinken said.
“Now we’re seeing actions — again, by both sides — in clear violation of the commitments they made,” he said.
A number of US lawmakers and activists have criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for not taking earlier action, including sanctions, against army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and paramilitary commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.
US diplomats have argued that it was more useful to preserve relationships to negotiate between them.
18 dead in attack on Khartoum market after army abandons talks
- Khartoum and other parts of the country gripped by warfare between the army and the paramilitary forces
- The army on Wednesday blasted RSF bases in Khartoum after pulling out of the talks
KHARTOUM: Shelling and aerial bombardments killed 18 civilians at a market in the capital of Sudan where fighting showed no signs of abating Thursday after the army abandoned truce talks.
For more than six weeks, Khartoum and other parts of the country have been gripped by bloody warfare between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The army on Wednesday blasted RSF bases in Khartoum after pulling out of the talks in the Saudi city of Jeddah, accusing its rival of violating a cease-fire that was meant to allow aid deliveries.
“Eighteen civilians were killed and 106 wounded” by army artillery fire and aerial bombardments Wednesday on a market in southern Khartoum, a committee of human rights lawyers said.
The toll was confirmed by a neighborhood group that organizes aid, which said the situation was “catastrophic” and appealed for help from doctors and for blood donations.
The United States said Thursday there had been “serious violations of the cease-fire by both sides” and warned it would only be ready to mediate between the warring parties when they get “serious.”
“Once the forces make clear by their actions that they are serious about complying with the cease-fire, the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are prepared to resume facilitation of the suspended discussions to find a negotiated solution to this conflict,” a State Department spokesperson said.
In both north and south Khartoum on Wednesday, troops loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan attacked key bases of the RSF led by commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, residents said.
One witness said there was “heavy artillery fire from army camps” in the capital’s north.
Another reported “artillery blasts on the RSF camp in Al-Salha” in southern Khartoum — the largest paramilitary base and arsenal in the city.
The attacks came two days after US and Saudi mediators said the two sides had agreed to extend by five days the initial week-long humanitarian truce.
Mediators admitted the truce had been “imperfectly observed,” but said the extension would “permit further humanitarian efforts.”
The army walked out “because the rebels have never implemented a single one of the provisions of a short-term cease-fire which required their withdrawal from hospitals and residential buildings,” a Sudanese government official said.
Despite repeated pledges from both sides, fighting has flared this week both in greater Khartoum and in the western region of Darfur.
“The army is ready to fight until victory,” Burhan declared during a visit to troops in the capital.
The RSF said they would “exercise their right to defend themselves” and accused the army of violating the truce.
Since fighting erupted on April 15, more than 1,800 people have been killed, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
The UN says 1.2 million people have been internally displaced and more than 425,000 have fled abroad.
Yaqout Abderrahim escaped Khartoum for Port Sudan, where she has been waiting 15 days for a rare seat on a flight out.
“We want to leave at any price because our houses are destroyed and we no longer have any means to raise our children,” she said.
More than half the population — 25 million people — are now in need of aid and protection, the UN says.
Entire districts of Khartoum no longer have running water, electricity is only available for a few hours a week, and three quarters of hospitals in combat zones are not functioning.
Hundreds have been killed in Darfur, on Sudan’s western border with Chad, the United Nations said.
Darfur has never recovered from the years-long war that began in 2003 when a rebel uprising led strongman Omar Al-Bashir to unleash the Janjaweed militia, from which the RSF are descended.
Experts say Burhan is facing increasing pressure from his own Islamist supporters and remnants of the Bashir regime, with whom he had built a symbiotic relationship in order to gain power.
