GABES, Tunisia: Hundreds of people in southern Tunisia’s Gabes on Friday protested to demand dismantling a local phosphate processing plant after reports of respiratory distress among residents.
Demonstrators called for the “dismantling of the chemical group,” chanting “We want to live” and “Gabes is a victim of pollution and injustice.”
Local campaign group Stop Pollution called for the protest after videos circulated on social media showing local schoolchildren struggling to breathe in a classroom.
The footage, which AFP could not independently verify, showed civil protection officers and worried parents rushing to assist the students.
Last month, local reports said some 20 people had been hospitalized with respiratory problems as the plant is accused of spewing toxic waste into the sea and air.
The processing of phosphate rock into fertilizer emits toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide and ammonia.
The main solid waste product is phosphogypsum, which the plant discharges into the Mediterranean.
It contains radium that decays into radon gas, which is radioactive and can cause cancer.
Residents of Gabes, a city of around 400,000 people, have been campaigning for decades against the pollution from the plant, finally winning a promise from the government in 2017 to begin its gradual closure.
But with Tunisia now mired in public debt, the current government has backtracked on that promise and is planning a fivefold increase in fertilizer output at Gabes in a bid to boost hard currency earnings.
The North African country used to be the world’s fifth largest producer of fertilizer, but has dropped to 10th over the past decade and a half.
President Kais Saied has vowed to revitalize the sector and reverse long years of underinvestment in the Gabes plant.
The state-run Tunisian Chemical Group (GCT), which operates the plant, was inaugurated in 1972. Phosphate mining and processing remain one of Tunisia’s main natural resources.
Residents in southern Tunisia protest phosphate pollution
https://arab.news/8ujjn
Residents in southern Tunisia protest phosphate pollution
- Demonstrators called for the “dismantling of the chemical group,” chanting “We want to live“
- Local campaign group Stop Pollution called for the protest
Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon kills 13 people, Lebanese ministry says
- Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound
- Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire
SIDON, Lebanon: An Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon on Tuesday killed 13 people and wounded several others, state media and government officials said. It was the deadliest strike on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.
The drone strike hit a car in the parking lot of a mosque in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, the state-run National News Agency said. The Lebanese Health Ministry said 13 people were killed and several others wounded in the airstrike, without giving further details.
Hamas fighters in the area prevented journalists from reaching the scene, as ambulances rushed to evacuate the wounded and the dead.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas training compound that was being used to prepare an attack against Israel and its army. It added that the Israeli army would continue to act against Hamas wherever the group operates.
Hamas condemned the attack in a statement saying the strike hit a sports playground and denying that it was a training compound.
Over the past two years, Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed scores of officials from the militant Hezbollah group as well as Palestinian factions such as Hamas.
Saleh Arouri, the deputy political head of Hamas and a founder of the group’s military wing, was killed in a drone strike on a southern suburb of Beirut on Jan. 2, 2024. Several other Hamas officials have been killed in strikes since then.
Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. That sparked Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
A day after the Israel-Hamas war started, Hezbollah began firing rockets toward Israeli posts along the border. Israel responded with shelling and airstrikes in Lebanon, and the two sides became locked in an escalating conflict that became a full-blown war in late September 2024.
That war, the most recent of several conflicts involving Hezbollah over the past four decades, killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.
The war ended in late November 2024 with a US-brokered ceasefire. Since then, Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Lebanon, saying that Hezbollah is trying to rebuild its capabilities.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry has reported more than 270 people killed and around 850 wounded by Israeli military actions since the ceasefire.
