RABAT: Morocco’s king warned Monday that his country would react with the “greatest severity” to any attack in Western Sahara, as the pro-independence Polisario Front said conflict would continue until Rabat ended its “occupation” of the disputed territory.
The United Nations said that both sides had exchanged fire, and urged restraint.
Moroccan King Mohammed VI, speaking after a telephone call with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said Rabat remained committed to a cease-fire.
But Morocco also “remains firmly determined to react, with the greatest severity, and in self-defense, against any threat to its security,” the king said, quoted in an official statement.
The crisis erupted after Morocco launched a military operation Friday to reopen a key highway at the Guerguerat border crossing between the territory and Mauritania.
It accused the Polisario of blocking the highway, which is key to trade with the rest of Africa.
The Algerian-backed Polisario, which does not recognize the existence of the highway, responded by declaring the end of an almost three-decade UN-supervised cease-fire in Western Sahara.
“The end of the war is now linked to the end of the illegal occupation of parts of the territory of the Sahrawi Republic,” senior Polisario official Mohamed Salem Ould Salek said on Monday.
“The war only started as a consequence of Morocco’s aggression and action in Guerguerat,” said Ould Salek, who is foreign minister of the Polisario-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
He also downplayed the importance of the highway, where trucks had been blocked for weeks. Traffic resumed on Saturday between Mauritania and Morocco, the two countries have said.
“It is not an international or even regional road. It is being used to loot the natural resources of the Sahrawi people,” Ould Salek said, accusing Morocco of having started the latest conflict.
Rabat controls around three quarters of the Western Sahara, a vast swathe of desert on the Atlantic coast, including its phosphate deposits and its lucrative ocean fisheries. The Polisario controls the remainder.
Morocco maintains that Western Sahara is an integral part of the kingdom and has offered autonomy for the disputed territory, but insists it will retain sovereignty.
Ould Salek said a full implementation of the 1991 cease-fire — namely organizing the self-determination referendum set out in the truce deal — -- was a condition for an end to hostilities.
The vote has been repeatedly postponed due to disputes between Rabat and the Polisario over voter rolls and the question to be put on the ballot.
The Moroccan official news agency MAP said late Sunday that Rabat’s military had responded to fire by the Polisario Front along a UN-patrolled buffer zone.
“Since 13 November 2020, Polisario militias have fired provocative shots along the line of defense without causing human or material damage,” MAP said, citing the Far-Maroc unofficial website dedicated to military news.
Retaliatory fire from the Moroccans destroyed an armored vehicle east of the line of defense at El Mahbes, it said on its Facebook page.
The UN on Monday confirmed an exchange of fire.
The MINURSO mission “received reports by both sides of incidents of shooting” overnight Sunday to Monday “at various locations” in the territory, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN chief, told reporters in New York.
MINURSO, he said, calls on both sides to “exercise restraint” and take measures to defuse tensions.
On Sunday, the Polisario reported intense fighting along the 2,700-kilometer (1,700-mile) Moroccan wall of defense that cuts through Western Sahara.
It also announced that it was mobilizing “thousands of volunteers” to join Polisario Front fighters.
The territory is tough to travel through and Moroccan authorities do not allow journalists access, making it difficult to verify reports from either side.
Domestic flights are also suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Negotiations involving Morocco, Polisario, Algeria and Mauritania have been at a standstill since 2019.
Morocco’s king warns Polisario after rivals clash in W.Sahara
https://arab.news/peyjj
Morocco’s king warns Polisario after rivals clash in W.Sahara
- The United Nations said that both sides had exchanged fire
- Moroccan King Mohammed VI said Rabat remained committed to a cease-fire
Wars in Gaza and Sudan ‘drive hunger crisis affecting 280 million worldwide’
- New report on global food insecurity says outlook for 2024 is ‘bleak’
JEDDAH: More than 280 million people worldwide suffered from acute hunger last year in a food security crisis driven by conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, UN agencies and development groups said on Wednesday.
Economic shocks also added to the number of victims, which grew by 24 million compared with 2022, according to a report by the Food Security Information Network.
The report, which called the global outlook for this year “bleak,” is produced for an international alliance of UN agencies, the EU and governmental and non-governmental bodies.
Food insecurity is defined as when populations face food deprivation that threatens lives or livelihoods, regardless of the causes or length of time. More geographical areas experienced “new or intensified shocks” and there was a “marked deterioration in key food crisis contexts such as Sudan and the Gaza Strip,” said Fleur Wouterse, a senior official at the UN’s Food and Agricultue Organization.
Since the first report by the Global Food Crisis Network covering 2016, the number of food-insecure people has risen from 108 million to 282 million, Wouterse said. The share of the population affected within the areas concerned had doubled from 11 percent to 22 percent, she said.
Protracted major food crises are ongoing in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Syria and Yemen. “In a world of plenty, children are starving to death,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
“War, climate chaos and a cost-of-living crisis, combined with inadequate action, mean that almost 300 million people faced acute food crisis in 2023. Funding is not keeping pace with need.”
According to the report, situations of conflict or insecurity have become the main cause of acute hunger. For 2024, progress would depend on the end of hostilities, said Wouterse, who said aid could rapidly alleviate the crisis in Gaza or Sudan, for example, once humanitarian access to the areas was possible.
Yemen’s Houthis say they targeted American and Israeli ships
- The Iran-aligned group said it targeted the US ship Maersk Yorktown, an American destroyer in the Gulf of Aden and Israeli ship MSC Veracruz in the Indian Ocean
- “The Yemeni armed forces confirm they will continue to prevent Israeli navigation,” Sarea said
CAIRO/DUBAI: Houthi militants in Yemen have attacked what they said were two American ships and an Israeli vessel, the group’s military spokesman said on Wednesday, the first such attack in more than two weeks.
The Iran-aligned group said it targeted the US ship Maersk Yorktown, an American destroyer in the Gulf of Aden and Israeli ship MSC Veracruz in the Indian Ocean, the spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said in a televised speech.
Yemen’s Houthis have been attacking ships in the Red Sea region since November in what they say is a campaign of solidarity with Palestinians fighting Israel in Gaza.
“The Yemeni armed forces confirm they will continue to prevent Israeli navigation or any navigation heading to the ports of occupied Palestine in the Red and Arabian Seas, as well as in the Indian Ocean,” Sarea said on Wednesday.
Separately, British maritime security firm Ambrey said earlier on Wednesday that it was aware of an incident southwest of the port city of Aden, an area where the Houthis often target ships they say are linked to Israel or the United States.
The vessel reported an “explosion in the water” approximately 72 nautical miles east-southeast of Djibouti, an updated advisory from Ambrey said.
Houthi attacks have disrupted global shipping through the Suez Canal, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa. The United States and Britain have launched strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
Iraq hangs 11 convicted of ‘terrorism’: security, health sources
- Under Iraqi law, terrorism and murder offenses are punishable by death, and execution decrees must be signed by the president
- A security source in Iraq’s southern Dhi Qar province told AFP that 11 “terrorists from the Daesh group” were executed by hanging at a prison in Nasiriyah
NASIRIYAH, Iraq: Iraqi authorities have executed at least 11 people convicted of “terrorism” this week, security and health sources said Wednesday, with rights group Amnesty International condemning an “alarming lack of transparency.”
Under Iraqi law, terrorism and murder offenses are punishable by death, and execution decrees must be signed by the president.
A security source in Iraq’s southern Dhi Qar province told AFP that 11 “terrorists from the Daesh group” were executed by hanging at a prison in the city of Nasiriyah, “under the supervision of a justice ministry team.”
A local medical source confirmed that the health department had received the bodies of 11 executed people.
They were hanged on Monday “under Article 4 of the anti-terrorism law,” the source added, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
All 11 were from Salahaddin province and the bodies of seven had been returned to their families, the medical official said.
Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences in recent years for people convicted of membership in “a terrorist group,” an offense that carries capital punishment regardless of whether the defendant had been an active fighter.
Iraq has been criticized for trials denounced by rights groups as hasty, with confessions sometimes obtained under torture.
Amnesty in a statement on Wednesday condemned the latest hangings for “overly broad and vague terrorism charges.”
It said a total of 13 men were executed on Monday, including 11 who had been “convicted on the basis of their affiliation to the so-called Daesh armed group.”
The two others, arrested in 2008, “were convicted of terrorism-related offenses under the Penal Code after a grossly unfair trial,” Amnesty said citing their lawyer.
Biden says Israel must allow aid to Palestinians ‘without delay’
- “We’re going to immediately secure that aid and surge it,” Biden said
- “Israel must make sure all this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay“
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden on Wednesday demanded that new humanitarian aid be allowed to immediately reach Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as key US ally Israel fights Hamas there.
“We’re going to immediately secure that aid and surge it... including food, medical supplies, clean water,” Biden said after signing a massive military aid bill for Israel and Ukraine, which also included $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza.
“Israel must make sure all this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay,” he said.
US-Israel relations have been strained by Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to send troops into the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where 1.5 million people are sheltering, many in makeshift encampments.
“This bill significantly — significantly — increases humanitarian assistance we’re sending to the innocent people of Gaza who are suffering badly,” Biden said.
“They’re suffering the consequences of this war that Hamas started, and we’ve been working intently for months to get as much aid to Gaza as possible.”
Israel hits Lebanese border towns with 14 missiles
- Hezbollah targets Israeli settlements in retaliation for Hanin civilian deaths
- Hezbollah said it attacked the Shomera settlement with dozens of Katyusha rockets
BEIRUT: Clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces escalated sharply on Wednesday, the 200th day of conflict in southern Lebanon’s border area.
Israeli airstrikes created a ring of fire around Lebanese border towns, with at least 14 missiles hitting the area.
In the past two days, military activity in the border region has increased, with Hezbollah targeting areas in northern Acre for the first time in the conflict.
On Wednesday, Israeli strikes hit the outskirts of Aita Al-Shaab, Ramya, Jabal Balat, and Khallet Warda.
The Israeli military said it had destroyed a missile launching pad in Tair Harfa, and targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in Marqaba and Aita Al-Shaab.
Israeli artillery also struck areas of Kafar Shuba and Shehin “to eliminate a potential threat.”
Hezbollah also stepped up its operations, saying this was in retaliation for the “horrific massacre committed by the Israeli enemy in the town of Hanin, causing casualties and injuries among innocent civilians.”
A woman in her 50s and a 12-year-old girl, both members of the same family, were killed in the Israeli airstrike. Six other people were injured.
Hezbollah said it attacked the Shomera settlement with dozens of Katyusha rockets.
The group said it also targeted Israeli troops in Horsh Natawa, and struck the Al-Raheb site with artillery.
It also claimed to have killed and wounded Israeli soldiers in an attack on the Avivim settlement.
Israeli news outlets said that a rocket-propelled grenade hit a house in the settlement, setting the dwelling ablaze.
Hezbollah’s military media said that in the past 200 days of fighting with Israel, 1,998 operations had been carried out from Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, including 1,637 staged by Hezbollah.
