BAGHDAD: More than half of Iraqis displaced by recent conflicts to other parts of the country have now returned to their homes, the UN’s International Organization for Migration said on Thursday.
At the end of December, more than 3.2 million displaced Iraqis had gone home while 2.6 million still lived away from home, the IOM said.
Iraqi forces have regained large swathes of the country from Daesh since the terrorists seized them in 2014, sending tens of thousands running for their lives.
In December, Baghdad declared victory over Daesh after a three-year war against the group that caused tens of thousands more to flee.
“The retaking of areas by the Iraqi forces is significant, as is the improvement of security,” said IOM communications officer Sandra Black.
Nearly one third are reported to have returned to houses that have been significantly or completely damaged, she said. Around 60 percent went back to housing that was only moderately damaged.
Other infrastructure has also been affected in the fighting, with residents in some areas reporting no water or power supply.
More than one million Iraqis have returned home to the Sunni-majority western province of Anbar, from which Iraqi forces expelled the last Daesh fighters late last year.
More than a third of those internally displaced are in the northern province of Nineveh, after tens of thousands fled second city Mosul during the months-long military campaign to retake the city.
More than half of Iraq’s displaced have returned home: IOM
More than half of Iraq’s displaced have returned home: IOM
Israeli defense chief challenges Netanyahu over post-war Gaza plans
- Defense Minister Yoav Gallant vows to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over Gaza
- Netanyahu accuses Gallant of making ‘excuses’ for not yet having destroyed Hamas in the conflict
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly challenged about post-war plans for the Gaza Strip on Wednesday by his own defense chief, who vowed to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over the ravaged Palestinian enclave.
The televised statement by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant marked the most vocal dissent from within Israel’s top echelon against Netanyahu during a seven-month-old and multi-front conflict that has set off political fissures at home and abroad.
Netanyahu hinted, in a riposte which did not explicitly name Gallant, that the retired admiral was making “excuses” for not yet having destroyed Hamas in a conflict now in its eight month.
But the veteran conservative premier soon appeared to be outflanked within his own war cabinet: Centrist ex-general Benny Gantz, the only voting member of the forum other than Netanyahu and Gallant, said the defense minister had “spoke(n) the truth.”
While reiterating the Netanyahu government’s goals of defeating Hamas and recovering remaining hostages from the Oct. 7 cross-border rampage by the faction, Gallant said these must be complemented by laying the groundwork for alternative Palestinian rule.
“We must dismantle Hamas’ governing capabilities in Gaza. The key to this goal is military action, and the establishment of a governing alternative in Gaza,” Gallant said.
“In the absence of such an alternative, only two negative options remain: Hamas’ rule in Gaza or Israeli military rule in Gaza,” he added, saying he would oppose the latter scenario and urging Netanyahu to formally forswear it.
Gallant said that, since October, he had tried to promote a plan to set up a “non-hostile Palestinian governing alternative” to Hamas — but got no response from the Israeli cabinet.
The format of his broadside, a pre-announced news conference carried live by Israeli TV and radio, recalled Gallant’s bombshell warning in March 2023 that foment over a judicial overhaul pursued by Netanyahu was threatening military cohesion.
At the time, Netanyahu announced that Gallant would be fired — but backed down amid a deluge of street demonstrations. Some defense analysts believe Gallant’s prediction was borne out by Hamas’ ability to blindside Israeli forces a few months later.
Asked on Wednesday whether he was worried he may again face being ousted, Gallant said: “I’m not blaming anyone. In a democratic country, I believe, it’s appropriate for a person, especially the defense minister who holds a position, to make it public.”
Gallant’s Gaza criticism recalled that of Israel’s chief ally, the United States, which has sought to parlay the war into a role for the internationally backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which wields limited governance in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu has refused this, describing the PA as a hostile entity — and repeated this position in a video statement he issued on social media within an hour of Gallant’s remarks.
Any move to create an alternative Gaza government requires that Hamas first be eliminated, Netanyahu said, finishing with the demand that this objective be pursued “without excuses.”
Netanyahu’s ruling coalition includes ultra-nationalist partners who want the PA dismantled and new Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Those partners have at times sparred with Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, over policy.
Netanyahu has said Israel would retain overall security control over Gaza after the war for the foreseeable future. He has stopped short of describing this scenario as an occupation — a status Washington does not want to see emerge — and has signalled opposition to Israelis settling the territory.
Over the last week, Israeli ground forces have returned to some areas of northern Gaza that they overran and quit in the first half of the war. Israel describes the new missions as planned crackdowns on efforts by Hamas holdouts to regroup, while Palestinians see evidence of the tenacity of the gunmen.
Briefing reporters on Tuesday, chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari was asked whether the absence of a post-Hamas strategy for Gaza was complicating operations.
“There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would generate pressure on Hamas, but that’s a question for the government echelon,” he responded.
Pro-Turkiye Syria mercenaries head to Niger to earn cash
- At least 1,000 fighters have been sent to Niger in recent months “to protect Turkish projects and interests,” says Syrian war monitor SOHR
- Niger borders oil-rich Libya, and in 2020, Washington accused Turkiye-linked SADAT of sending Syrian fighters to Libya
BEIRUT: Like hundreds of other pro-Turkish fighters, Omar left northern Syria for mineral-rich Niger last year, joining Syrian mercenaries sent to the West African nation by a private Turkish military company.
“The main reason I left is because life is hard in Syria,” fighter Omar, 24, told AFP on message app WhatsApp from Niger.
In northern Syria “there are no job opportunities besides joining an armed faction and earning no more than 1,500 Turkish lira ($46) a month,” Omar said, requesting like others AFP interviewed to be identified by a pseudonym for security reasons.
Analysts say Ankara has strong ties with the new military regime in Niamey, in power since a July 2023 coup.
And in recent months, at least 1,000 fighters have been sent to Niger “to protect Turkish projects and interests,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
For the past decade, Turkiye has been increasing its footprint in Niger, mostly through “humanitarian aid, development and commerce,” said Gabriella Korling, a researcher focusing on the Sahel at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.
“The defense component of the relation between Niger and Turkiye has become more important over time with the signing of a military cooperation agreement in 2020 and the sale of armed drones,” Korling said.
Niamey often refers to Turkiye, Russia and China as “partners that are respectful of Niger’s sovereignty,” she added.
Omar, who supports his mother and three siblings, said since leaving his home in August he receives a “very good” monthly salary of $1,500 for his work in the West African nation.
He hopes his earnings will help him start a small business and quit the battlefield, after years working as a fighter for a pro-Ankara faction.
Tens of thousands of young men have joined the ranks of jihadist factions and others loyal to Ankara in Syria’s north and northwest, where four million people, half of them displaced, live in desperate conditions.
Omar said he was among a first batch of more than 200 fighters who left Syria’s Turkish-controlled north in August for Niger.
He is now readying to return home after his six-month contract, renewed once, ended.
He and two other pro-Ankara Syrian fighters who spoke to AFP in recent weeks said they had enlisted for work in Niger with the Sultan Murad faction, one of Turkiye’s most loyal proxies in northern Syria.
They said they had signed six-month contracts at the faction’s headquarters with private firm SADAT International Defense Consultancy.
“SADAT officers came into the room and we signed the contract with them,” said fighter Ahmed.
“They handle everything,” from travel to accommodation, added the 30-year-old, who was readying to travel from northern Syria to Niger.
The company is widely seen as Ankara’s secret weapon in wars across North Africa and the Middle East, although its chief denied the allegation in a 2021 interview with AFP.
Niger borders oil-rich Libya, and in 2020, Washington accused SADAT of sending Syrian fighters to Libya.
Turkiye has sent thousands of Syrian fighters to Libya to buttress the Tripoli government, which it backs against rival Russian-backed authorities in the east according to the Observatory and the Syria Justice and Accountability Center.
The Center said SADAT was “responsible for the international air transport of mercenaries once they crossed into Turkish territory” to go to Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkiye has also sent Syrian fighters to bolster Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh, but its efforts to send mercenaries to Niger have been shrouded in secrecy.
Turkiye’s defense ministry told AFP: “All these allegations are false and have no truth.”
Omar said his journey took him to Gaziantep in Turkiye, then to Istanbul, where he boarded a military plane to Burkina Faso before being driven under escort to camps in neighboring Niger.
After two weeks of military training, he was tasked with guarding a site near a mine, whose name he said he didn’t know.
He said he and other Syrians worked alongside Nigeriens in military fatigues, but was unable to say if they were soldiers.
“They divided us into several groups of guards and fighters,” he said.
Another group “was sent to fight Boko Haram (jihadists) and another was sent to Lome” in neighboring Togo, he said, without providing details about their mission.
His family collects his monthly salary, minus a $350 fee for his faction.
Ahmed, who has been a fighter for 10 years, said he had been told his mission would consist of “protecting military positions” after undergoing training.
He said “there could be battles” at some point, but did not know who he would be fighting.
The father of three said he spent six months in Libya in 2020 earning more than $2,000 a month.
In July 2023, the army seized power in Niger, ending security and defense agreements with Western countries including France, which has withdrawn forces who were fighting jihadists.
“The coup in 2023 did not disrupt diplomatic relations between Turkiye and Niger,” researcher Korling added, pointing to the appointment of the first Turkish defense attache to Niger earlier this year.
Last year, Turkish state television opened a French-language channel covering Africa, and Ankara operates daily flights to Niamey.
“Turkiye, given its religious proximity and lack of political and historical baggage, is looked upon quite favorably in Niger especially in comparison to” Western countries, said Korling.
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Turkiye was “exploiting” impoverished men in areas under its control “to recruit them as mercenaries in military operations” serving Ankara’s foreign interests.
The war monitor and other human rights groups said promises of lucrative payments to mercenaries sent abroad are not always kept.
Mohammad Al-Abdallah of the Syria Justice and Accountability Center said his organization had for example documented “false promises of granting Turkish citizenship” to those sent to Azerbaijan or Libya.
Abdul Rahman noted reports that about 50 Syrian fighters had been killed in Niger, mostly after they were attacked by jihadists, but he said his organization had only verified nine deaths, with four bodies having been repatriated.
A source within a faction whose members have been dispatched to Niger said about 50 bodies were expected to return in the coming days.
For Abed, a 30-year-old Syrian who has been displaced with his family for more than a decade, death is a risk he has decided to take.
The father of four and sole breadwinner told AFP: “I’m scared of dying... but maybe I could die here” too.
The difference, he said, is that in Syria “I would die for 1,000 Turkish liras ($30), and (in Niger) I would die for $1,500.”
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Tunisian bar association accuses policemen of torturing a lawyer during detention
- Lawyer Souad Boker said Zagrouba appeared on Wednesday before the investigating judge in a exhausted state
- Lawyer Mahdi Zagrouba was arrested after he criticized the president for detaining Sonia Dahmani, another lawyer, during the weekend
TUNIS: Tunisian lawyer Mahdi Zagrouba was tortured by police officers after being arrested on Monday, lawyers and a human rights organization said on Wednesday after he collapsed in court and was taken to a hospital.
The Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Lawyer Souad Boker said Zagrouba appeared on Wednesday before the investigating judge in a exhausted state, adding that “he mentioned the names of the policemen who tortured him before he suffered a collapse and coma.”
Witnesses and lawyers said that Zagrouba was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.
TAP state news agency quoted Zarouba’s attorney, Boubaker Ben Thabet, as saying Zagrouba had been subjected to “systematic torture” during his detention.
Toumi Ben Farhat, another lawyer representing Zagrouba, said his colleague “was subjected to extremely severe torture.”
Tunisian police stormed the bar association’s headquarters on Monday for the second time in two days and arrested Zagrouba, who has criticized the president, after detaining Sonia Dahmani, another lawyer, during the weekend.
Bassam Trifi, the head of the Tunisian League for Human Rights, said that “Zagrouba was subjected to brutal torture, and I personally witnessed the torture on his body.”
Without referring to the allegations, President Kais Saied said in a statement after a meeting with Minister of Justice Laila Jafel that the state is responsible for guaranteeing every prisoner the right to treatment that preserves his dignity.
The Bar Association said in a statement late on Wednesday that torture deserves criminal prosecution, and that it held the Ministry of Interior officers responsible. It said a strike was planned for Thursday.
Saied took office after free elections in 2019, but two years later he shut down the elected parliament and has ruled by decree.
The European Union said on Tuesday it was concerned about the wave of imprisonment of many civil society figures, journalists and political activists, and demanded clarifications from Tunisia.
Sudan facing ‘inferno’ of violence, crushing aid holdups: UN
- The grim situation is only expected to worsen
United Nations, US: Residents of conflict-hit Sudan are “trapped in an inferno of brutal violence” and increasingly at risk of famine due to the rainy season and blocked aid, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the country warned Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced since war broke out in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“Famine is closing in. Diseases are closing in. The fighting is closing in and there’s no end in sight,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami told a press conference.
The grim situation is only expected to worsen, with “just six weeks before the lean season sets in, when food becomes less available, and more expensive.”
Noting that more than four million people are facing potential famine, Nkweta-Salami added that the onset of the country’s rainy season means that “reaching people in need becomes even more difficult.”
The area’s planting season also “could fail if we aren’t able to procure and deliver seeds for farmers,” she said.
And “after more than a year of conflict, the people of Sudan are trapped in an inferno of brutal violence.”
“In short, the people of Sudan are in the path of a perfect storm that is growing more lethal by the day,” Nkweta-Salami warned, adding that the humanitarian community needs “unfettered access to reach people in need, wherever they are.”
The United Nations has expressed growing concern in recent days over reports of heavy fighting in densely populated areas as the RSF seeks control of El-Fasher, the last major city in the western Darfur region not under its control.
“Right now the humanitarian assistance they rely on can’t get through,” Nkweta-Salami said.
More than a dozen UN trucks loaded with medical equipment and food, which left Port Sudan on April 3, have still not reached El Fasher, she said, “due to insecurity and delays in getting clearances at checkpoints.”
Israel PM says no humanitarian crisis as hundreds of thousands flee Rafah
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday insisted there was no “humanitarian catastrophe” in Rafah, even as hundreds of thousands fled the south Gaza city amid intense fighting.
Hamas meanwhile insisted it would take part in any decision on the post-war government of Gaza as Palestinians marked the 76th anniversary of the “Nakba,” when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 creation of Israel.
Israeli forces have bombed Hamas militants around Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, but clashes have also flared again in northern and central areas which Israeli troops first entered months ago.
The upsurge in urban combat has fueled US warnings that Israel, which launched its war after the October 7 Hamas attacks, risks being bogged down in years of counterinsurgency.
But despite previous threats by US President Joe Biden to withhold some arms deliveries over Netanyahu’s insistence on attacking Rafah, his administration informed Congress on Tuesday of a new $1 billion weapons package for Israel, official sources told AFP.
The European Union urged Israel to end its military operation in Rafah “immediately,” warning failure to do so would “inevitably put a heavy strain” on ties with the bloc.
But even as he announced that hundreds of thousands had been “evacuated,” Netanyahu insisted there was no humanitarian crisis in Rafah.
“Our responsible efforts are bearing fruit. So far, in Rafah, close to half a million people have been evacuated from the combat zones. The humanitarian catastrophe that was spoken about did not materialize, nor will it,” he said.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, meanwhile said “600K people have fled Rafah since military operations intensified.”
Nakba Day
The sight of desperate families carrying scant belongings through the ruins of war-scarred Gaza cities has evoked for many the events of the 1948 Nakba which translates from Arabic as “catastrophe.”
Hamas declared in a Nakba Day statement that “the ongoing suffering of millions of refugees inside Palestine and in the diaspora is directly attributed to the Zionist occupation.”
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh insisted meanwhile that the militant movement will be involved in deciding post-war rule in Gaza along with other Palestinian factions.
“We say that the Hamas movement is here to stay ... and it will be the movement and all national (Palestinian) factions who will decide the post-war rule in Gaza,” Haniyeh said in a televised address for Nakba.
He also said the fate of truce talks was uncertain because of Israel’s “insistence on occupying the Rafah crossing and on its expansion of the aggression” in the Palestinian territory.
“Any agreement must ensure a permanent ceasefire, comprehensive withdrawal (of Israeli forces) from all sectors of the Gaza Strip, a real deal for exchange of prisoners, the return of displaced persons, reconstruction and lifting the siege” of Gaza, Haniyeh said.
Thousands marched to mark the day in cities across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, waving Palestinian flags, wearing keffiyeh scarves and holding up symbolic keys as reminders of long-lost family homes.
Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and bring home hostages still held in Gaza.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, meanwhile said “600K people have fled Rafah since military operations intensified.”
In a Wednesday interview with CNBC, Netanyahu addressed the tensions with Biden over the offensive, saying: “Yes, we do have a disagreement on Gaza. Rather, on Rafah. But we have to do what we have to do.”
Washington has also repeatedly urged Israel to work on a post-war plan for Gaza and supports the goal of a two-state solution, which Netanyahu and his far-right allies strongly oppose.
US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said without a political plan, Palestinian militants “will keep coming back” trapping all sides in “this continued cycle of violence.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday said he would “not agree to the establishment of an Israeli military administration in Gaza, Israel must not have civilian control over the Gaza Strip.”
The war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 128 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 36 the military says are dead.
Israel’s military retaliation has killed at least 35,233 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.
Clashes continue
The Israeli military said Wednesday its aircraft had “struck and eliminated approximately 80 terror targets” including military compounds, missile launchers and weapons depots.
It also reported battles in eastern Rafah and in Jabalia in northern Gaza, where it said it had killed militants, adding troops were also fighting in the Zeitun area.
Hamas’s armed wing also reported its fighters were clashing with troops in the Jabalia area, much of which has been reduced to rubble.
At least five people were killed, including a woman and her child, in two Israeli air strikes on Gaza City overnight, Gaza’s civil defense agency said.
At the city’s Al-Ahli hospital, a wounded man, his bare chest smeared with blood, lay on a cot while outside several men placed a shrouded corpse in the shade of a tree.
Sporadic aid deliveries into Gaza by truck have slowed to a trickle since Israeli forces took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt last week.
A UK delivery of 100 tons of temporary shelter kits left Cyprus Wednesday on its way to a US-built pier in Gaza, Britain said.
Another convoy carrying humanitarian relief goods was ransacked by Israeli right-wing activists on Monday after it had crossed from Jordan through the West Bank.
