YATER, Lebanon: Villagers who live off the land in south Lebanon are rushing to sow their crops, making up for lost time after weeks of hostilities with Israel forced them to miss out on the start of the planting season.
“I work from this, I produce from this, I live from this,” Zaynab Suweidan said as she sowed wheat in the village of Yater, in an area hit by Israeli strikes during heavy exchanges of fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
After enduring its worst violence since a 2006 war, the area has been largely calm since Friday, when Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas agreed a temporary truce to the conflict they have been waging some 200km (120 miles) away in and around Gaza.
That war, which erupted on Oct. 7, quickly spilled into Lebanon, with the Iran-backed Hezbollah rocketing Israeli positions at the border and Israel launching air and artillery strikes in response.
Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the truce by one day on Thursday, bringing a seventh day of respite.
As a drone buzzed in the sky above her, Suweidan said she had stayed in her home throughout the hostilities even after it sustained some damage.
“Shelling has happened around us and planes launched two strikes near us, and we stayed in our house and we didn’t leave. We want to stay steadfast,” she said.
The crops should have been planted at the start of November, but she hoped the delay would not affect the yield: “Through God’s power, everything will be fine.”
Farming their land has become even more important for many in Lebanon since the economy there collapsed in a devastating financial meltdown more than four years ago.
Mousa Kawrani, a 55-year-old father of four who was planting wheat, beans and peas, said people needed to farm because they could not afford to buy everything they needed.
“We must farm. We cannot remain without farming.”
Lebanese rush to plant crops as calm prevails in south
https://arab.news/ruc9f
Lebanese rush to plant crops as calm prevails in south
- “I work from this, I produce from this, I live from this,” Zaynab Suweidan said as she sowed wheat in the village of Yater
- The crops should have been planted at the start of November
Algeria inaugurates strategic railway to giant Sahara mine
- The mine is expected to produce 4 million tons per year during the initial phase, with production projected to triple to 12 million tons per year by 2030
- The project is financed by the Algerian state and partly built by a Chinese consortium
ALGEIRS: Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday inaugurated a nearly 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) desert railway to transport iron ore from a giant mine, a project he called one of the biggest in the country’s history.
The line will bring iron ore from the Gara Djebilet deposit in the south to the city of Bechar located 950 kilometers north, to be taken to a steel production plant near Oran further north.
The project is financed by the Algerian state and partly built by a Chinese consortium.
During the inauguration, Tebboune described it as “one of the largest strategic projects in the history of independent Algeria.”
This project aims to increase Algeria’s iron ore extraction capacity, as the country aspires to become one of Africa’s leading steel producers.
The iron ore deposit is also seen as a key driver of Algeria’s economic diversification as it seeks to reduce its reliance on hydrocarbons, according to experts.
President Tebboune attended an inauguration ceremony in Bechar, welcoming the first passenger train from Tindouf in southern Algeria and sending toward the north a first charge of iron ore, according to footage broadcast on national television.
The mine is expected to produce 4 million tons per year during the initial phase, with production projected to triple to 12 million tons per year by 2030, according to estimates by the state-owned Feraal Group, which manages the site.
It is then expected to reach 50 million tons per year in the long term, it said.
The start of operations at the mine will allow Algeria to drastically reduce its iron ore imports and save $1.2 billion per year, according to Algerian media.
