BAGHDAD: A drone loaded with explosives struck an oil field in Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region on Thursday, Kurdish forces said — the second attack in two days on the Norwegian-operated site.
“At 10:55 am (0755 GMT) a new attack by an explosives-laden drone hit” the DNO-operated Tawke field in Zakho disrict, Kurdistan’s counterterrorism services said.
No casualties or damage were reported.
Similar attacks on Wednesday forced the Norwegian firm to suspend operations at the Tawke and Peshkabir oil fields.
Another two attacks targeted an oil field operated by the US firm Hunt Oil in Duhok province.
In the past few weeks, Kurdistan has seen a spate of unclaimed drone attacks, which have come as the regional government and the federal authorities in Baghdad wrangle over control of export revenues from the Kurdistan fields.
Several oil fields in the region have been hit in the space of a week.
The Association of the Petroleum Industry of Kurdistan (APIKUR) — which represents international oil firms in the region, including DNO, and Hunt — condemned the attacks Wednesday.
It added that the majority of its members have suspended production “totalling over 200,000 barrels per day.”
Long plagued by conflict, Iraq frequently experiences such attacks, often linked to regional proxy struggles between Iran and the United States and its ally Israel.
There has been no claim of responsibility for any of the past week’s attacks, and Baghdad has promised an investigation to identify the culprits.
But a Kurdish official, who requested anonymity, blamed the recent attacks on the Popular Mobilization Forces — Hashed Al-Shaabi in Arabic — a coalition of pro-Iran former paramilitaries now integrated into the regular armed forces.
“We hold the Iraqi government responsible because they are funding the PMF, which is attacking the oil infrastructure,” he told AFP Wednesday.
Drone hits oil field in Iraq’s Kurdistan for second day
https://arab.news/8krs9
Drone hits oil field in Iraq’s Kurdistan for second day
Jailed Tunisia opposition figure handed 12 years in third trial
- Dozens of opposition figures were recently sentenced to harsh prison terms in a mass trial on charges of conspiracy against state security
TUNIS: Jailed Tunisian opposition figure Abir Moussi was sentenced to an additional 12 years in prison on Thursday under a law criminalizing any “attack aimed at changing the form of government,” her lawyer told AFP.
A fierce critic of both President Kais Saied and the Islamist-inspired opposition Ennahdha party, Moussi has been in custody since her arrest in October 2023 outside the presidential palace where her party says she was seeking to lodge appeals against Saied’s decrees.
The latest sentence was in connection to that incident.
This is the third trial against Moussi, who was initially sentenced in August 2024 to two years in prison under Decree 54, a law Saied enacted in 2022 to combat “false news.” That sentence was later reduced on appeal.
Last June, just after completing her first jail term, she was sentenced again under the same law to two years in prison. The appeal process in that case is underway.
In a statement released before Friday’s verdict, the Free Destourian Party condemned “the injustice suffered by the party’s president, Abir Moussi, who has been arbitrarily detained since October 3, 2023.”
She is suspected by her detractors of wanting to return to the authoritarianism of former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, overthrown in Tunisia’s 2011 revolt.
Meanwhile Saied, elected in 2019, has ruled by decree since a sweeping 2021 power grab and many of his opponents have been jailed.
Dozens of opposition figures were recently sentenced to harsh prison terms in a mass trial on charges of conspiracy against state security.
Others are being prosecuted under Decree 54, a law criticized by human rights advocates for its overly broad interpretation by the courts.
