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Tag: Middle East

  • Musicians promote ‘empathy, fraternity, solidarity’ between Israelis and Palestinians

    Musicians promote ‘empathy, fraternity, solidarity’ between Israelis and Palestinians

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    The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, appointed by the UN Secretary-General in 2016 as a United Nations Global Advocate for Cultural Understanding, recently played their first concert at UN headquarters in New York, at a special event organized to demonstrate that when people listen to each other, both musically and in other ways, great results can be achieved.

    UN News/Abdelmonem Makki

    The West-Eastern Divan Ensemble performs at UN headquarters in February 2023

    The West-Eastern Divan Ensemble, led by the orchestra’s concertmaster Michael Barenboim, draws upon players of Arab and Israeli heritage.

    Founded in 1999, the orchestra’s origins lie in the conversations between its creators, Edward W. Said and Daniel Barenboim. Over the course of their friendship, the Palestinian author-scholar and Israeli conductor-pianist discussed ideas on music, culture and humanity.

    In their exchanges, they realized the urgent need for an alternative way to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The opportunity to do so came when Barenboim and Said initiated a workshop for young musicians using their experience as a model.

    “We have musicians that come from countries that are in conflict with each other in one way or another. We show that by cooperating in a project such as this one, it’s possible to bring together people from states which are in conflict so that they’re able to work together towards a common goal,” said Michael Barenboim.

    Violinist Michael Barenboim is the concertmaster of the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble

    UN Photo/Mark Garten

    “I think that’s showing an alternative model and alternative way of thinking for the Middle East region. Which is not based on arms, bombs, war, blood and conflict, but based on understanding, dialogue and listening to each other. When you play music, you play, but you also have to listen to others,” he added.

    Mariam Said, widow of Edward W. Said, is a vice president of the US-based Barenboim-Said Foundation.

    “Edward believed that humanity is the only thing through which we can counteract the disintegration of our world. And this is the message that the orchestra is trying to send,” Mariam Said explained.

    “Teaching music as a language opens minds, leading to the generation of new ideas in society. It also allows people to get to know each other,” she added.

    Sindy Faisal Abdel Wahab from Egypt plays violin in the ensemble.

    “I started playing with the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble in 2013, and it was the first time for me to meet musicians from other Arab countries and Israel. It was a surprise to me, and I was curious about how we would deal with each other, how we would play together and understand each other,” he said, adding that “I discovered that Israelis have a similar culture to us, but politics is what separates people. When we play together, we forget everything.”

    West-Eastern Divan Ensemble cellist Assif Binness (right) hails from Israel.

    UN Photo/Mark Garten

    David Strongin, who is from Israel, also plays the violin; he believes that the mission of the orchestra is for musicians from different backgrounds to play music together.

    “Through music, one can do everything. You don’t need words, and don’t need any text. You play together, you learn to listen to each other. And this is actually a great help also for life for us as human beings, because we learn how to listen to each other.”

    “I think it’s not very easy to make music with strangers,” he added “because you have to you put so much soul into what you do. But this orchestra feels like one family and so it doesn’t really matter where we are from. We just we just love each other as human beings.”

    Speaking ahead of the concert Maher Nasser, the Director of the Outreach Division in the UN Department of Global Communications said: “When you look a group of eight musicians playing together and they are all reading from the same sheet of paper, they introduce harmony, and they are all equal. Some of them play cello and some of them are playing violin but the sound that comes out appears to be coming from one instrument. Every one of them is equal, every note is equal.”

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  • Syrians displaced by quakes fear cholera outbreak as cases surge

    Syrians displaced by quakes fear cholera outbreak as cases surge

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    Idlib, Syria – Abdel Moneim Hamdo rushed his two children, one a toddler, to a hospital in the northwest Syrian city of Idlib after they complained of severe stomach aches that did not seem to resolve.

    “I took my son and daughter to hospital to check whether they’d contracted cholera,” said Hamdo. He and his family — including his eight children — had moved from Atarib near Aleppo to the Al-Iman camp, close to Idlib, following the devastating earthquakes that struck the Turkey-Syria border region in February.

    “But after doing some tests, it turned out they were suffering acute gastroenteritis as a result of consuming contaminated water,” he said, adding that necessities, including access to clean water and sanitary toilet facilities, were lacking at the camp.

    Millions of Syrians were already displaced by more than 11 years of war, and the difficult living conditions at refugee camps in the area have worsened since the earthquakes. The number of people getting infected with cholera — a disease caused by eating and drinking contaminated food or water — has been on the rise.

    And there are concerns that the camp lacks enough resources to handle an outbreak.

    “After we survived the earthquake, we are now living in fear of contracting any of the communicable diseases that are spreading like wildfire across the camps,” said Hamdo, whose house collapsed in the February 6 earthquakes. “It’s as if we’ve escaped death only to find death.”

    Two people have died of cholera in northwestern Syria after devastating earthquakes hit the region, emergency responders in the rebel-held area say [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

    Growing numbers

    At least two people died of cholera in northwestern Syria last month, while the total number of cholera deaths recorded in the northwest since the outbreak began last year rose to 22, according to a tweet earlier this week from the Syria Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets.

    Fatima Abdelrahman, a doctor at the Cham Humanitarian Foundation cholera treatment centre in the suburbs of Idlib, said common symptoms among cholera patients include watery diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and difficulty urinating, with some also suffering from high fevers.

    “Treatment is given according to the severity of each case. Mild and moderate cases are treated with intravenous or oral solutions to replace the lost fluids, along with antibiotics, antiseptics and antispasmodics,” said Abdelrahman, an internal medicine specialist.

    “The danger lies among patients who come to hospital following a delay after initial symptoms begin to show. By the time they’ve arrived, they’re already showing signs of renal failure due to long periods of dehydration,” she added.

    Al Jazeera tried to speak to cholera patients about their experience, but they were too ill to answer questions.

    Cholera
    Aisha Abdulkarim is worried her nine children might contract cholera due to the lack of basic hygiene at the camp [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

    Poor sanitation

    Following the deadly quakes that killed nearly 6,000 thousand people in northwest Syria and displaced tens of thousands of others, local healthcare organisations warned of a looming outbreak of cholera and other communicable diseases, given the severe lack of shelter and clean drinking water.

    According to the Early Warning and Epidemic Response Program (EWARN) in northwest Syria, at least 6,458 new cholera cases were recorded last month. The EWARN confirmed two people had died of cholera in February.

    “We expect a significant rise in the number of cholera infections due to the fragile infrastructure and contamination of water sources with sewage,” Mohamed Salem, director of the vaccination programme at the response coordination centre, told Al Jazeera.

    Salem told Al Jazeera that with most healthcare facilities focused on treating victims of the earthquakes, cholera patients have taken second priority. He warned that the number of cholera infections would increase and called for the urgent launch of a vaccination campaign across the most vulnerable regions.

    “We only have about 1.7 million vaccinations from the World Health Organization, which is not sufficient to contain the spread of this epidemic across northwest Syria. To do that, we need approximately 4.5 million doses,” he explained.

    cholera
    Residents describe conditions at shelters and camp as very difficult, with necessities including basic hygiene and access to clean water and sanitary toilets as lacking [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

    ‘Constant fear’

    The danger of a cholera epidemic spreading across shelters and camps in northwest Syria has become a significant worry among people living there considering the weak humanitarian response following the quakes.

    “I try to do my best in taking care of my children’s cleanliness and hygiene. I want to protect them against any diseases. But because of the severe cold and lack of private shower facilities, I can only bathe them once a week, using a pot of water inside our tent,” said 36-year-old Aisha Abdulkarim.

    The mother of nine, who lives with 150 other Syrian families at a shelter set up along the Syrian-Turkish border since the quakes, says the situation at the camp is terrible.

    “I’m always washing our fruit and vegetables with water and salt. I even prevent my kids from eating or drinking anything outside the tent,” said Abdulkarim.

    “But I’m constantly in fear that one of them will get cholera. We hear about new cases daily.”

    Additional reporting by Arwa Ibrahim

    Inside a tent that has two rows of beds on each side, their tails facing each other, with a walkway in between. There is a heater at the end of the walkway, at the back of the tent. Three medical workers, wearing personal protective equipment are also near the back. One has a tank strapped to his back and is spraying an empty bed. Another two are at the back of the tent, taking notes from a patient sitting on a bed.
    The danger of a cholera epidemic spreading across shelters and camps in northwest Syria has become a big worry among people living there [Ali Haj Suleiman/Al Jazeera]

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  • Alarm grows in Iran over reports that hundreds of schoolgirls were poisoned | CNN

    Alarm grows in Iran over reports that hundreds of schoolgirls were poisoned | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Concern is growing in Iran after reports emerged that hundreds of schoolgirls had been poisoned across the country in recent months.

    On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News reported that Shahriar Heydari, a member of Parliament, cited an unnamed “reliable source” in saying that “nearly 900 students” from across the country had been poisoned so far.

    The first reported poisonings happened in the city of Qom on November 30, when 18 schoolgirls from one high school were hospitalized, according to Iranian state media. In another incident in Qom on February 14, more than 100 students from 13 schools were taken to hospitals after what the state-affiliated Tasnim news agency described as “serial poisonings.”

    There have also been reports of schoolgirls being poisoned in the capital Tehran – where 35 were hospitalized on Tuesday, according to Fars News. They were in “good” condition, and many of them were later released, Fars reported. State media have also reported student poisonings in recent months in the cities of Chaharmahal, Bakhtiari and Borujerd.

    Many of the reports involve students at girls’ schools, but state media have also reported at least one incident of poisoning at a boys’ school, on February 4 in Qom.

    CNN has reached out to one of the schools named by state media as having had an incident of poisoning, Noor Yazdanshahr Conservatory in Qom, as well as to individual teachers, but has not heard back.

    Iranian Health Minister Bahram Einollahi, who visited affected students in Qom, said on February 15 that the symptoms included muscle weakness, nausea, and tiredness, but that the “poisoning” was mild, according to a report in state media outlet Iranian Students News Agency.

    Einollahi said his team had taken many samples from patients admitted to one Qom hospital for further testing at Iran’s renowned Pasteur Institute, which reported that no microbes or viruses had been identified in the samples, according to ISNA.

    It’s unclear if the incidents are linked and if the students were targeted. But Iran’s Deputy Health Minister in charge of Research and Technology Younes Panahi said on February 26 that the poisonings were “chemical” in nature, but not compound chemicals used in warfare and the symptoms were not contagious, according to IRNA.

    Panahi added that it appears that the poisonings were deliberate attempts at targeting and shutting down girls’ schools, according to IRNA.

    “After the poisoning of several students in Qom … it became clear that people wanted all schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed,” Younes Panahi told a news conference Sunday, according to Iranian state media outlet IRNA. He later retracted the comment, saying he was misquoted, Fars news said.

    But a mother of two girls in Qom told CNN that both of her daughters had been poisoned, at two different schools, and one of them had experienced significant health issues after being poisoned last week. She spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the reports, and fears for her family’s safety.

    “One of my daughters was poisoned in school last week,” the mother told CNN on Tuesday. She said they spent two days at Shahid Beheshti Hospital in Qom along with several other schoolchildren and staff. Her daughter experienced nausea, shortness of breath and numbness in her left leg and right hand, she said.

    “Now she has trouble with her right foot and has difficulty walking,” the mother said.

    Local activists and national political figures have called for the government to do more in investigating the poisonings.

    “The poisoning of students at girls’ schools, which have been confirmed as deliberate acts, was neither arbitrary nor accidental,” tweeted Mohammad Habibi, spokesman for the Iranian Teachers Trade Association on February 26.

    Habibi is among a growing number of people who believe that the poisonings may be linked to the recent protests under the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. The movement has been characterized by women’s and young girls’ outpouring of anger over issues ranging from freedoms in the Islamic Republic to the crippling state of the economy.

    “To erase the gains on freedom of clothing, (the authorities) need to increase public fear,” he tweeted.

    United States Department of State Spokesperson Ned Price called the reports of poisoning schoolgirls “very disturbing,” during a briefing Wednesday.

    “We’ve seen these reports, these are very disturbing, these are very concerning reports,” Price said.”To poison girls who are simply trying to learn is simply an abhorrent act.”

    Price urged “Iranian authorities to thoroughly investigate these reported poisonings and do everything they can to stop them and to hold accountable the perpetrators.”

    In mid-February Tasnim reported that Iran’s Minister of Education, Yousef Noori, said “most” of the students’ conditions were caused by “rumors that have scared people,” and that “there is no problem.” He said that some students had been hospitalized due to “underlying conditions,” according to Tasnim.

    Dan Kaszeta, a London based defense specialist and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, spoke to CNN about the difficulties authorities may face in confirming reports like these.

    “Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to investigate such incidents. Often, the only way to discover the causative agent is to collect samples at the time of dissemination, and this is usually difficult or impossible,” he said.

    “These current incidents in Iran are remarkably similar to dozens of incidents at schools in Afghanistan since approximately 2009. In a few of these incidents, pesticides were strongly suspected, but most of the illnesses remain unexplained,” he added.

    Kaszeta went on to explain that smells are difficult to use as an indicator. “Some things have smell added to them as the underlying dangerous chemical may be odorless.”

    Jamileh Kadivar, a prominent Iranian politician and former member of parliament, also believes that there is malicious intent behind the poisonings. “The continuity and frequency of poisonings in schools during the past three months proves that these incidents cannot be accidental and are most likely the result of organized group actions directed by think tanks and aimed at specific goals,” she wrote in an Op-Ed in Iran’s state-run newspaper Etelaat.

    Iranian Education Minister Yousef Nouri visited some of the students who were hospitalized in Qom after the string of school poisonings in mid-February, and said that a special team had been formed in Tehran to follow up on the issue, according to a report in Tasnim, a state-affiliated media outlet.

    Iran’s national police chief, Ahmadreza Radan, said on February 28 they are investigating the cause behind the “poisonings” and that no one has been arrested with the authorities still trying to determine whether the alleged poisonings are intentional or not, according to IRNA.

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  • ‘Repugnant’: US rebukes Israeli remark on Palestinian village

    ‘Repugnant’: US rebukes Israeli remark on Palestinian village

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    Washington, DC – The United States has slammed a top Israeli minister for saying a Palestinian village that had been attacked by settlers needed to be “wiped out“, calling his comments “repugnant”.

    US Secretary of State spokesperson Ned Price also urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “publicly and clearly” disavow the remarks that his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made against the West Bank village of Huwara.

    “These comments were irresponsible. They were repugnant. They were disgusting,” Price told reporters on Wednesday. “And just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence.”

    Smotrich, a far-right Israeli politician who also oversees civil administration in the occupied West Bank, made his remarks days after Israeli settlers stormed Huwara and burned dozens of cars and homes.

    “I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the state of Israel should do it,” Smotrich was quoted as saying by Israeli media outlets on Wednesday.

    One Palestinian died during the settlers’ attack on Huwara, near the city of Nablus, which came amid a spike of violence in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

    Israeli forces killed 11 Palestinians in an invasion of Nablus last week.

    Two Israeli settlers were killed by a Palestinian gunman on Sunday, and an Israeli-American motorist was also killed in a shooting attack in Jericho, deep inside the West Bank, earlier this week.

    On Wednesday, Price renewed Washington’s call for “equal measures of accountability for extremist actions regardless of the background of the perpetrators, or the victims”.

    But according to a report by the Times of Israel newspaper, Israeli authorities had only arrested eight suspects — out of hundreds who participated in the Huwara rampage — and released all of them by Tuesday.

    Washington has been increasingly critical of the policies of Netanyahu’s far-right government, including the expansion of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

    Palestinian rights advocates, however, have been calling for concrete action from the administration of US President Joe Biden to deter further Israeli abuses.

    Israel, accused of imposing a system of apartheid by leading human rights organisations like Amnesty International, receives at least $3.8bn of US aid annually.

    On Thursday, Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an advocacy group, urged the State Department to impose a US visa ban on Smotrich.

    “The Biden Administration should not allow senior government officials inciting atrocities against Palestinian civilians to spread their violent and hateful rhetoric in the United States,” Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s executive director, said in a statement.

    “The ‘exceptional’ nature of the US-Israel relationship should have its limits, and banning Smotrich would send an important signal that the US will not tolerate such dangerous, reckless incitement to violence.”

    Earlier this week, J Street, a Jewish-American group that describes itself as pro-Israel and pro-peace, called on Biden to set “clear redlines and tangible consequences” for Israeli government policies.

    “Only then can the Biden Administration truly hope to halt the escalation of violence and terror, advance US interests, defend Israeli and Palestinian rights and lives, and help secure Israel’s future as a democracy,” J Street said in a statement on Monday.

    Biden, a self-proclaimed Zionist, has repeatedly affirmed his “ironclad” commitment to Israel, dismissing calls for imposing conditions on US aid to the country.

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  • Near bomb-grade level uranium found in Iranian nuclear plant, says IAEA report | CNN

    Near bomb-grade level uranium found in Iranian nuclear plant, says IAEA report | CNN

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    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    Uranium particles enriched to near bomb-grade levels have been found at an Iranian nuclear facility, according to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, as the US warned that Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb was accelerating.

    In a restricted report seen by CNN, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that uranium particles enriched to 83.7% purity – which is close to the 90% enrichment levels needed to make a nuclear bomb – had been found in Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), an underground nuclear facility located some 20 miles northeast of the city of Qom.

    The report says that in January, the IAEA took environmental samples at the Fordow plant, which showed the presence of high enriched uranium particles up to 83.7% purity.

    The IAEA subsequently informed Iran that these findings were “inconsistent with the level of enrichment at the Fordow plant as declared by Iran and requested Iran to clarify the origins of these particles,” added the report.

    Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60% had also grown from 25.2 kg to 87.5 kg since the last quarterly report, according to the confidential IAEA report.

    The IAEA report said discussions with Iran to clarify the matter are ongoing, noting that “these events clearly indicate the capability of the IAEA to detect and report changes in the operation of nuclear facilities in Iran.”

    In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian did not directly respond to a question on reports of the enrichment.

    Amir-Abdollahian said that the deputy director general of the IAEA, Massimo Aparo, had visited Iran on two occasions in the past weeks and that the IAEA’s director general Rafael Grossi has been invited to visit the country.

    “We have a roadmap with the IAEA. And on two occasions, Mr. [Massimo] Aparo, Mr. [Rafael] Grossi’s deputy, came to Iran in the past few weeks, and we had constructive and productive negotiations. And we have also invited Mr. Grossi to come and visit Iran soon,” Amir-Abdollahian told CNN. “Therefore our relationship with the IAEA is on its correct, natural path.”

    Last year, Iran removed all of the IAEA equipment previously installed for surveillance and monitoring activities related to the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

    The move had “detrimental implications for the IAEA’s ability to provide assurance of the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme,” the IAEA report stated.

    A US State Department spokesperson on Tuesday said the IAEA report potentially poses a “very serious development.”

    “We are in close contact with our allies and partners in Europe and the region as we await further details from the IAEA on this potentially very serious development,” added the spokesperson.

    Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl on Tuesday said that “Iran’s nuclear progress since” the Trump administration withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear deal “has been remarkable,” adding that in 2018, when the US withdrew, “it would have taken Iran about 12 months to produce one fissile, one bomb’s worth of fissile material.”

    “Now it would take about 12 days,” he said.

    More than a year of indirect negotiations between the US and Iran to try to restore the 2015 nuclear deal broke down in September 2022. Tensions between the two countries only worsened after Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests at home, and as Tehran supplied Russia with drones in the Ukraine war.

    Kahl said Tuesday that the agreement is “on ice.”

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  • Analysis: Efforts to end Assad isolation gather speed after quake

    Analysis: Efforts to end Assad isolation gather speed after quake

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    The February 6 earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 in Turkey and Syria require Arab states to address controversial questions about dealing with the government in Damascus and acute humanitarian needs in Syria’s opposition-held northwest.

    Thus far, the disaster has not resulted in any Arab government changing its fundamental stance on President Bashar al-Assad, whose government has largely been isolated from the rest of the Arab world since 2011, when a largely unarmed uprising against his rule escalated into a full-fledged war.

    Syria was suspended from the Arab League the same year, with many of its members withdrawing their envoys from Damascus. The United States and the European Union also disengaged with al-Assad, imposing sanctions on his government in response to the violent repression of civilians during the crackdown on the anti-government protests.

    But after the quakes, Arab efforts – mostly driven by the United Arab Emirates – to accelerate Syria’s reintegration into the region’s diplomatic fold have gained momentum. The arrival this week in Damascus of an Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation, including representatives from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Oman and the UAE, for meetings with al-Assad and Syrian parliamentarians highlighted this reality.

    “There’s an opening for governments to establish relationships with the Assad regime because of the humanitarian aid that’s needed, thus forcing a political conversation about reestablishing relations and rehabilitating Assad,” Nader Hashemi, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, told Al Jazeera.

    Al-Assad welcomes a delegation from the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union in Damascus on February 26 [ Syrian Presidency/Handout via Reuters]

    A host of Arab states such as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman, Tunisia and the UAE have their own geopolitical and economic interests in ending Syria’s regional isolation – from gaining greater influence in post-conflict Syria that can challenge the role of al-Assad’s backer Iran, to becoming actively being engaged in the reconstruction process for economic returns.

    Experts have said many Arab governments – with Kuwait, Qatar and, at least for now, Saudi Arabia being the exceptions – see the earthquakes as reason to deepen engagement with al-Assad. These countries have argued that the US policy towards Syria has produced negative outcomes and the international community should set aside politics and remove sanctions to help Syrian earthquake victims who desperately need humanitarian assistance.

    The disaster “brought into sharp relief the inability of regional leaders to influence events on the ground without working through Damascus,” Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow in the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.

    “As such, relations might well move forward, but most regional leaders will view it simply as a necessity to aid the victims of the earthquake and to also stem the flow of captagon towards the Gulf,” said Quilliam, referring to the drug that was initially developed in Germany in the 1960s but today is made mostly in Syria.

    Two weeks after the disaster, al-Assad visited Oman – the second Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state that he has travelled to since the Syrian war erupted 12 years ago.

    Al-Assad’s welcome in Muscat indicated “interest at the highest levels of the GCC to rehabilitate” him, according to Hashemi, who argued that the Syrian president could not have gone to Oman without Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s approval.

    It was not too surprising that Oman was the first foreign country that al-Assad visited after the earthquake. The sultanate was the only state in the six-member GCC to maintain diplomatic relations with Damascus throughout the Syrian conflict and Muscat has supported Syria’s return to the Arab League.

    Experts assessed that the most important aspect of al-Assad’s trip to Muscat, which built on his March 2022 visit to the UAE, was the message it sent to governments in the Middle East and beyond.

    The trip was “mostly of symbolic value” as it demonstrated to “the Arab world and the rest of the world that the Arab League is getting ready to accept the return of Syria to the Arab League”, said Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London.

    “The optics of the visit – flying aboard Syrian Airlines aircraft, no longer travelling in secret – were intended to highlight the significance of Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Oman,” added Quilliam. “It was meant to persuade world leaders that his rehabilitation is well under way, and they should reconsider their opposition to him.”

    At previous junctures in the Syrian conflict, Saudi Arabia and the UAE saw their support for rebel groups fighting for government change as a way to counter the influence of Iran, which in 2011 deployed forces to back al-Assad. Indeed, whereas his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for 30 years, balanced his relations with Gulf Arab monarchies and Iran, the successor spent the 2000s moving Damascus closer to Riyadh’s regional foe Tehran, while Syria’s relationship with Saudi Arabia underwent greater tension.

    But now, with al-Assad having largely weathered the Syrian crisis, there seems to be a view among some GCC states that engaging the government in Damascus and bringing it back to the Arab fold is the most realistic path towards weakening Tehran’s hand in the Levant, analysts have said. However, any support to Damascus will come with strings attached.

    Saudi Arabia and the UAE believe that al-Assad is “sufficiently vulnerable and weak that he can be lured away from Iran, but it’s an open question whether that proposition has any possibility”, Hashemi told Al Jazeera. “That’s the outstanding question about intra-Arab relations with the Assad regime and possible openings that might appear as a result of this disaster.”

    Despite lacking Russia and Iran’s levels of influence over al-Assad, the UAE’s ability to persuade him to make a goodwill gesture to the international community by permitting cross-border aid into rebel-controlled northwestern Syria signals a degree of sway that the Emiratis have in Damascus. Following years of building on a rapprochement with al-Assad’s government, the UAE is attempting to play a highly activist role in post-conflict Syria, and the earthquakes seem to have facilitated further growth of Emirati clout in the war-torn country.

    “For Abu Dhabi, Syria is a network-building asset,” according to Krieg. “It tries to use relations with Damascus as a bargaining chip to boost its own standing as a regional middle power.”

    Ferial Saeed, a former senior US diplomat, told Al Jazeera that “there are a whole set of questions related to whether Assad can navigate relations with Iran and the Arab world well enough to satisfy both sides, and what pressures Tehran will put on Damascus.

    “There are a lot of big moving pieces to this story, but this is a space to watch. Things could get very interesting this year.”

    Still, the earthquakes will probably not result in Qatar and Kuwait reembracing al-Assad.

    Krieg believes that Qatar will use its veto at the Arab League to prevent Syria’s return to the institution, but he is of the view that Saudi Arabia – which has supported Western efforts to isolate al-Assad’s government since early in the Syrian crisis – “is becoming more flexible”.

    “For them [Saudis], it is about Iran and getting the Syrians back in the Arab fold. It could be a way of using the occasion to reverse their decision of how they engage,” Krieg said.

    Indeed, Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud last month insisted that when it comes to Syria “the status quo is not workable,” and that the world must “at some point” engage Damascus on issues like refugees and humanitarian aid. In practice, what this says about Riyadh’s approach to Assad remains to be seen.

    “If the Saudis were to resume diplomatic relations, that would be significant,” said Saeed.

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  • Guterres stresses UN commitment to Iraq during first visit in 6 years

    Guterres stresses UN commitment to Iraq during first visit in 6 years

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    “I am here in a visit of solidarity to underscore the commitment of the United Nations to support Iraq in the consolidation of its democratic institutions and advancing peace, sustainable development and human rights for all Iraqis,” Mr. Guterres told journalists in Baghdad, after touching down late on Tuesday.

    After “decades of oppression, war, terrorism, sectarianism and foreign interference” in Iraq’s affairs – just days ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 2003 invasion – Mr. Guterres acknowledged that the challenges the country faces could not be brushed aside.

    Opportune moment

    And amid reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani continues to face potential political obstacles in reviving national fortunes, the UN chief, in a joint press encounter with Mr. Al-Sudani, expressed his hope that Iraq “can break cycles of instability and fragility”.

    He added: “I applaud the Prime Minister for his commitment to address the most pressing challenges facing the country head on – including combatting corruption, improving public services, and diversifying the economy to reduce unemployment and create opportunities, especially for young people.

    “Such structural change requires systemic reform, stronger institutions, greater accountability and better governance at all levels – and the United Nations stands ready to support these important efforts.”

    Referencing reported divisions over the sharing of Iraqi oil revenues between central government in the capital and provincial government in the north, Mr. Guterres encouraged all parties to build on “recent positive steps” between Baghdad and Erbil. “Sustainable agreements” and dialogue should be the long-term objective the UN Secretary-General said.

    UNAMI/Sarmad Al-Safy

    UN Secretary-General António Guterres meets Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on his arrival in Baghdad, Iraq.

    Dignity of Iraq’s displaced

    In earlier comments just after touching down, Mr. Guterres also spoke of his “enormous admiration” for the Iraqi people, highlighting how he had witnessed the courage of those displaced inside the country several times, on previous visits.

    The UN Secretary-General also highlighted how Iraqi refugees in Jordan and in Syria had shown that they were able “to live in solidarity with each other, to help each other in the spirit that, in my opinion, is the best hope for the future of the country”.

    Iraq’s efforts to repatriate its citizens from northeast Syria – including from the infamous Al Hol camp – had been “exemplary”, Mr. Guterres said, before noting Prime Minister Al-Sudani’s commitment to allowing the safe and dignified return of ethnic Yazidis to their homes in northern Iraq, after suffering genocide at the hands of Daesh in 2014.

    Water emergency

    Addressing another key challenge for Iraq, namely water scarcity, Mr. Guterres noted that the issue required international attention, before flagging the UN 2023 Water Conference from 22-24 March in New York.

    The mighty Tigris and the Euphrates rivers were now running dry and the impact on agriculture has been dramatic, the UN chief said, adding that “it breaks my heart” to see farmers who have been forced to abandon lands where crops have been grown for thousands of years.

    Iraq is one of the countries worst hit by climate change, which has driven displacement, threatened food security, destroyed livelihoods, fuelled conflict and undermined human rights, Mr. Guterres maintained.

    When coupled with a volatile security situation and governance challenges, “it can put stability at risk… so now is the time for the international community to support Iraq in tackling its environmental challenges, diversifying its economy, and harnessing its potential for sustainable growth,” the Secretary-General insisted.

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  • Children and women among 63 dead as migrant boat hits rocks near Italy | CNN

    Children and women among 63 dead as migrant boat hits rocks near Italy | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    At least 63 people including children and women died after a wooden boat carrying migrants from Turkey broke apart on rocks off the coast of Calabria on Sunday, Italian authorities said.

    More bodies were being pulled from the Mediterranean Sea on Monday, where bad weather hampered search efforts and made the field of debris larger.

    More than two dozen of the dead were Pakistani nationals, the country’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said Monday. Sharif described the news as “deeply concerning and worrisome” and directed Pakistan’s foreign ministry to investigate.

    At least 82 passengers survived the shipwreck, an official from Italy’s Crotone prefecture said Monday. Among those on board were people from Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, according to rescuers.

    The vessel left the Turkish city of Izmir three or four days before the wreck, with 140 to 150 people on board, Reuters reported. The first three bodies washed up on the beach near Staccato di Cutro in southern Italy around 4:40 a.m. local time Sunday.

    The full breakdown of migrants by gender and ages who have died were set to be released soon and the total number of people missing had not yet been established, Manuela Curra, prefect of Crotone, told CNN on Monday.

    Some of the migrants who were saved from a deadly shipwreck over the weekend were rescued and warmed by blankets on February 26, 2023.

    Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni blamed human traffickers. “It is criminal to launch a boat just 20 meters long with 200 people on board in adverse weather,” she said in a statement. “It is inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the price of a ticket under the false perspective of a safe journey.”

    Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi added that new measures must be instituted to reduce such perilous journeys. “It is essential to continue with every possible initiative to stop departures and discourage crossings in any way which takes advantage of the illusory mirage of a better life,” he said in a statement.

    Meloni made stopping migrant boats a priority of her hard-right government. This week parliament approved new laws making it more difficult for NGOs to carry out rescues.

    In Vatican City on Sunday, in reference to the victims of the shipwreck, Pope Francis said: “I pray for each of them, for the missing, and for the other migrants who survived. I thank those who are helping them and those who are giving them assistance. May the Virgin Mary help these brothers and sisters.”

    Police officers standing at the beach where bodies were found. One survivor has been arrested on migrant trafficking charges.

    UNHCR records show that 11,874 people have arrived in Italy so far in 2023 by sea, with 678 of them arriving at Calabria.

    Typically, arrivals are from African countries, rather than the Middle East and Asia, with the majority of boats setting off from Libya.

    Only 8.3% of arrivals are from Pakistan, 6.7% from Afghanistan and 0.7% from Iran. The rest are primarily from Africa, with 17.3% of arrivals from Ivory Coast alone, 13.1% from Guinea. Other African nations, including North African countries, make up most of the rest.

    The most deadly migration route is the Central Mediterranean route, where at least 20,334 people have died since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.

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  • Abrahamic House in UAE houses a church, synagogue and mosque

    Abrahamic House in UAE houses a church, synagogue and mosque

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    ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — On the shores of the Persian Gulf, a new complex houses a Catholic church, a Jewish synagogue and an Islamic mosque in the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

    The Abrahamic Family House offers a concrete, marble and oak manifestation of the UAE’s publicized push toward tolerance after hosting Pope Francis in 2019 and later diplomatically recognizing Israel in 2020. Worshippers have already prayed and communed at the site on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island, while the general public will be allowed in next month.

    However, the UAE still criminalizes proselytizing outside of the Islamic faith. Security also remains a concern as well for Jewish worshippers in this new outpost on the Arabian Peninsula, whether from Israel’s regional enemy Iran or from those angered by Israel pursuing settlements on land Palestinians seek for their future state.

    Organizers declined to speak on camera Tuesday to The Associated Press about the project, even as they led journalists around the site.

    The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, announced plans for the Abrahamic Family House in 2019 during the country’s “Year of Tolerance.” Designed by the British-Ghanian architect Sir David Adjaye, the site includes the three houses of worship and a center connecting them for future events.

    The site itself stands out as a stark, white-marble place of worship in a capital more known for its oil industry, ongoing arms fair, glass towers and beachfront hotels. The three houses of worship — the St. Francis of Assisi Church, the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue and the Imam al-Tayeb Mosque — stand at triangle points, each a structure of about 30 cubic meters (1,060 cubic feet).

    Triangular fountains lay set inside parts of the grounds, providing a bubbling background against the sound of construction taking place elsewhere on an island that is already home to the domed Louvre Abu Dhabi, a museum opened under an agreement with France. Behind the site, the massive falcon wings of the under-construction Zayed National Museum rise overhead as workers climbed through its scaffolding on Tuesday.

    While each house of worship is the same size, all appear different on the inside. In the church, eastward windows with morning light frame a marble altar and lectern with a crucifix above it. Oaken pews sit inside for the faithful under suspended wooden columns hanging from the ceiling.

    The synagogue has similar pews, with the Ten Commandments inscribed in Hebrew at the front. A room for the Torah is located behind the front. Bronze netting hangs from the ceiling, playing with the light from the windows and a skylight above.

    The mosque has shelves for the Quran and also outside, for the faithful to remove their shoes, hidden behind Islamic geometric designs. Gray carpeting covers the floor, with two microphones under and one above on the minbar, the platform where the imam stands for Friday prayers. Moveable walls separate the men’s and women’s sections.

    Officials gave no figure for the cost of construction of the site, though the materials alone likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

    Still, proselytizing outside of the Islamic faith remains illegal in the UAE and Islam is enshrined as the official religion in the country’s constitution, with government websites even offering online applications to convert. Conversion from Islam to another religion, however, is illegal, as is witchcraft and sorcery, the U.S. State Department has warned.

    Blasphemy and apostasy laws also carry a possible death sentence — though no such execution is known to have been carried out since the UAE became a nation in 1971. Despite facing restrictions, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus and others in the UAE have never faced the violence that has targeted their communities in Syria and Iraq during the rise of the Islamic State group and other militants.

    Security appears to be a major concern for the site. Though hidden as much as possible, metal detectors screen those coming into the facility. Security cameras can be seen at every major corner, both inside and outside the houses of worship. On Tuesday, black-suited private security guards also ran mirrors around vehicles to check their undercarriages for explosives — a measure rarely seen in the Emirates.

    Hard-line media in Iran have previously described the UAE as a “legitimate” target, given its recognition of Israel.

    ___

    Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.

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  • Israel and Palestinians agree steps to curb violence

    Israel and Palestinians agree steps to curb violence

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    Israel has agreed to stop the authorisation of illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank for six months, a joint statement says.

    Israel has committed to stopping the authorisation of illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank for six months during a meeting with Palestinian officials in Jordan, where the sides pledged to de-escalate surging violence.

    In a joint statement at the end of the meeting in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba on Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian officials said that they would work closely to prevent “further violence” and that they “reaffirmed the necessity of committing to de-escalation on the ground”.

    Israel was committed to stop “discussing setting up any new settlement units for four months and stop approving any new settlements for six months”, a joint statement said.

    After “thorough and frank discussions”, the Palestinian and Israeli sides “reaffirmed the need to commit to de-escalation on the ground and to prevent further violence”, it said.

    The joint statement came at the end of a meeting also attended by United States, Egyptian and Jordanian officials amid growing concerns over an escalation of violence in the run-up to the holy Muslim month of Ramadan that begins in late March.

    Israel and the Palestinian Authority stressed “joint readiness and commitment to work immediately to stop unilateral measures” for three to six months, according to the statement.

    Host nation Jordan, along with Egypt and the US, considered “these understandings as major progress towards re-establishing and deepening relations between the two sides”, the statement said.

    The two sides also agreed to meet again next month in  Sharm el-Sheikh in Eqypt.

    The Hamas group, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip, condemned the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority for taking part. An official from the group said the meeting was “worthless” and would not change anything.

    “The decision to take part in the Aqaba meeting despite the pain and massacres being endured by the Palestinian people comes from a desire to bring an end to the bloodshed,” the ruling Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had said on Twitter.

    Two Israelis killed

    The talks were held on the same day two Israelis were shot and killed in the occupied West Bank in what the Israeli government called a “Palestinian terror attack”.

    The fatal shooting came days after Israeli forces launched their deadliest raid in the West Bank in nearly 20 years, which left 11 Palestinians dead in the northern city of Nablus.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power at the head of one of the most right-wing coalitions in Israeli history has added to Arab concerns about escalation.

    Israel on February 12 granted retroactive authorisation to nine Jewish settler outposts in the occupied West Bank and announced the mass construction of new homes within established settlements.

    The United Nations Security Council issued a formal statement denouncing Israel’s plan to expand settlements on occupied Palestinian territory – its first action of the kind against Israel in six years.

    The occupied West Bank is home to about 2.9 million Palestinians plus an estimated 475,000 Israelis who live in state-approved settlements considered illegal under international law.

    Israeli forces have killed 65 Palestinians, including 13 children, this year so far. They have also injured hundreds of others, making the first two months of 2023 the deadliest for Palestinians compared with the same period since 2000.

    Eleven Israeli civilians, including three children, a police officer and one Ukrainian civilian have been killed over the same period, according to the AFP news agency.

    Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.

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  • Turkey arrests nearly 200 people over alleged poor building construction following quake tragedy | CNN

    Turkey arrests nearly 200 people over alleged poor building construction following quake tragedy | CNN

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    Istanbul, Turkey
    CNN
     — 

    Nearly 200 people have been arrested for alleged poor building construction following the catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey earlier this month, Turkey’s Justice Ministry said.

    About 50,000 people were killed across Turkey and Syria after the earthquake struck on February 6.

    The ministry said that 626 people were “suspects” after buildings fully collapsed or were seriously damaged in the wake of the earthquakes. Some of the suspects died in the quake while police are still hunting for others.

    On Saturday, Turkey’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said evidence had been collected at thousands of buildings.

    More than 5,700 buildings in Turkey have collapsed, according to the country’s disaster agency, and questions have been asked about the integrity of structures in some areas of the affected regions.

    “The thing that strikes mostly are the type of collapses – what we call the pancake collapse – which is the type of collapse that we engineers don’t like to see,” said Mustafa Erdik, a professor of earthquake engineering at Bogazici University in Istanbul. “In such collapses, it’s difficult – as you can see – and a very tragic to save lives. It makes the operation of the search and rescue teams very difficult.”

    Erdik also told CNN the images of widespread destruction and debris indicates “that there are highly variable qualities of designs and construction.” He says the type of structural failures following an earthquake are usually partial collapses. “Total collapses are something you always try to avoid both in codes and the actual design,” he added.

    After previous disasters, building codes were tightened – which should have ensured that modern builds would withstand large tremors. Yet many damaged buildings across the stricken region appeared to have been newly constructed. Residents and experts are now questioning if the government failed to take the necessary steps to enforce building regulations.

    Yasemin Didem Aktas, structural engineer and lecturer at University College London, told CNN that while the earthquake and its aftershocks constituted “a very powerful event that would challenge even code compliant buildings,” the scale of damage indicates that buildings didn’t meet safety standards.

    “What we are seeing here is definitely telling us something is wrong in those buildings, and it can be that they weren’t designed in line with the code in the first place, or the implementation wasn’t designed properly,” Didem Aktas said.

    Several critics are also questioning the Turkish government’s periodic approval of so-called “construction amnesties” – essentially legal exemptions that, for a fee, forgave developers for constructing projects without the necessary safety requirements.

    The amnesties were designed to legalize older sub-standard buildings that had been erected without the proper permits. They also didn’t require developers to bring their properties up to code.

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  • Photos: The lasting scars and pain of the war in Darfur

    Photos: The lasting scars and pain of the war in Darfur

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    Twenty years ago, conflict broke out in the western Sudanese state of Darfur as non-Arab tribes rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.

    After Omar al-Bashir came to power through a military coup backed by the National Islamic Front in 1989, tensions grew as non-Arab tribes accused the government of marginalising and underfunding them.

    In 2002, the Darfur Liberation Front (later called the Sudan Liberation Movement) was formed, and on February 26, 2003, it claimed responsibility for an attack on Golo in the Jebel Marra area of Darfur. The group was joined by the Justice and Equality Movement, and a rebellion was launched.

    Khartoum’s response was to support and arm local Arab militia known as the Janjaweed to support its forces in fighting the African tribes. The Janjaweed were later absorbed into Sudan’s official forces by al-Bashir.

    Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and more than two million were displaced, both internally and over the border in neighbouring Chad.

    While a peace agreement was signed in 2020, the people of Darfur still have a long, painful journey ahead of them to heal from the conflict.

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  • Earthquakes Fast Facts | CNN

    Earthquakes Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at earthquakes worldwide.

    The US Geological Survey describes an earthquake as “the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth’s outer layer push the sides of the fault together. Stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the earth’s crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake.”

    Earthquakes are measured using seismographs, which monitor the seismic waves that travel through the Earth after an earthquake strikes.

    Scientists used the Richter Scale for many years to measure earthquakes but now largely follow the “moment magnitude scale,” which USGS says is a more accurate measure of size.

    (selected timeline of earthquakes around the world with death tolls exceeding 100)

    June 4, 2000 – A magnitude 7.9 earthquake strikes southern Sumatra, Indonesia, killing an estimated 103 people.

    January 13, 2001 – A magnitude 7.7 earthquakes hits near San Miguel, El Salvador, killing an estimated 852 people.

    January 26, 2001 – An estimated 20,000 people are killed by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake centered in Gujarat, India.

    February 13, 2001 – Another earthquake strikes El Salvador, magnitude 6.6. Three hundred and fifteen people are estimated to have been killed.

    June 23, 2001 – An estimated 138 people are killed in Peru by an 8.4-magnitude earthquake.

    March 3, 2002 – In the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, an estimated 166 people are killed by a magnitude 7.4 earthquake.

    March 25, 2002 – Another earthquake in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan, this one a magnitude 6.1, kills 1,000 people.

    June 22, 2002 – A magnitude 6.5 earthquake strikes western Iran, killing an estimated 261 people.

    February 24, 2003 – In southern Xianjiang, China, a magnitude 6.3 quake leaves an estimated 263 people dead.

    May 1, 2003 – A 6.4-magnitude quake strikes eastern Turkey, killing approximately 177 people.

    May 21, 2003 – An estimated 2,266 people are killed by a magnitude 6.8 quake in northern Algeria.

    December 26, 2003 – A magnitude 6.6 earthquake strikes the city of Bam in southeast Iran. Around 31,000 people die in the quake.

    February 24, 2004 – Approximately 631 people are killed in Morocco by a magnitude 6.4 quake.

    December 26, 2004 – A magnitude 9.1 earthquake strikes off the west coast of Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The earthquake and tsunamis generated by the earthquake kill 227,898 people in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania and Bangladesh. The quake releases an amount of energy equal to a 100-gigaton bomb and lasts between 500-600 seconds.

    February 22, 2005 – A magnitude 6.4 earthquake strikes central Iran, killing at least 612 people.

    March 28, 2005 – A magnitude 8.6 earthquake strikes off the coast of Indonesia, on the same fault line that originated a December 26 earthquake that launched a deadly tsunami. At least 1,300 people are killed.

    October 8, 2005 – A magnitude 7.6 earthquake strikes Pakistan. At least 86,000 people are killed.

    May 26, 2006 – A magnitude 6.3 earthquake occurs in central Java, Indonesia, killing at least 5,749 people.

    July 17, 2006 – A magnitude 7.7 quake strikes Java, Indonesia, killing an estimated 730 people.

    August 15, 2007 – A magnitude 8.0 earthquake hits Peru, about 100 miles south of the capital of Lima. Approximately 514 people are reported dead.

    May 12, 2008 – A magnitude 7.9 earthquake strikes in central China, killing more than 87,000 people.

    October 28, 2008 – A 6.4-magnitude earthquake strikes Pakistan, killing an estimated 166 people.

    April 6, 2009 – A magnitude 6.3 earthquake strikes central Italy, killing 295 people.

    September 29, 2009 – A magnitude 8.0 earthquake in the Samoa Islands kills 192 people.

    September 30, 2009 – A magnitude 7.6 earthquake strikes Sumatra, Indonesia, killing more than 1,000 people.

    January 12, 2010 – A 7.0-magnitude earthquake strikes 14 miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. USAID estimates the death toll to be about 230,000, but other estimates are as high as 316,000.

    February 27, 2010 – An 8.8-magnitude earthquake strikes central Chile, killing an estimated 547 people.

    April 13, 2010 – A 6.9-magnitude earthquake strikes China’s Qinghai province. Approximately 2,968 people are reported dead.

    October 25, 2010 – At least 503 people die due to a magnitude 7.7 earthquake off Indonesia and a subsequent tsunami.

    February 21, 2011 – A 6.3-magnitude earthquake strikes Christchurch, New Zealand. An estimated 181 people are killed.

    March 11, 2011 – A 9.1-magnitude earthquake strikes near the east coast of Honshu, Japan, causing a massive tsunami. The quake’s epicenter is 231 miles away from Tokyo. The total of confirmed deaths and missing is over 22,000.

    September 18, 2011 – A magnitude 6.9 earthquake strikes Sikkim, India, killing an estimated 111 people.

    October 23, 2011 – A 7.1-magnitude earthquake strikes eastern Turkey. The death toll is 604 people.

    February 6, 2012 – A 6.7-magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of Negros, Philippines, killing at least 113 people.

    August 11, 2012 – Two earthquakes hit northern Iran. The first to strike is a 6.4-magnitude earthquake. 11 minutes later, a second earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 hits. At least 306 people are killed.

    November 7, 2012 – A 7.4 earthquake off the coast of Guatemala kills an estimated 139 people.

    April 20, 2013 – An earthquake strikes the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan, killing at least 192 people. The USGS gauges it at 6.6-magnitude and the China Earthquake Networks Center estimates it at 7.0-magnitude.

    September 24, 2013 – A magnitude 7.7 earthquake hits the Balochistan province of Pakistan. More than 300 people are reported killed.

    August 3, 2014 – An earthquake hits China’s Yunnan province, killing at least 615 people and injuring more than 2,400. The USGS gauges the quake at 6.1 magnitude and the China Earthquake Networks Center estimates it at 6.5 magnitude.

    April 25, 2015 – A 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes Nepal, and is centered less than 50 miles from its capital Kathmandu. The death toll is more than 8,000, with 366 missing, according to Nepal’s National Emergency Operations Center. Weeks later on May 12, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake strikes the already reeling country of Nepal, killing at least 125 in Nepal, India and Tibet.

    October 26, 2015 – A 7.5-magnitude earthquake hits South Asia, killing at least 364 people and injuring more than 2,000 others. The epicenter is in northeastern Afghanistan, but most of the deaths – at least 248 – are reported in Pakistan.

    April 16, 2016 – A 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes coastal Ecuador, killing 663 people.

    August 24, 2016 – A 6.2-magnitude earthquake strikes central Italy, killing at least 290 people.

    September 19, 2017 – A 7.1-magnitude earthquake hits Mexico City and surrounding states, killing at least 369 people.

    November 12, 2017 – A 7.3-magnitude earthquake hits the border region between Iraq and Iran. More than 600 people are killed.

    September 28, 2018 – A 7.5-magnitude earthquake strikes the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. More than 2,100 people are killed and 1,300 missing from the earthquake and resulting tsunami.

    August 14, 2021 – A 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes southwest Haiti. Two days later, Tropical Storm Grace brings strong winds and heavy rain to the same region, complicating relief efforts. Approximately 2,248 people are killed and 12,763 injured.

    June 22, 2022 – A 5.9-magnitude earthquake strikes eastern Afghanistan. More than 1,000 people are killed and at least 1,500 are injured.

    November 21, 2022 – A 5.6-magnitude earthquake hits the Cianjur region in West Java, Indonesia, killing more than 334 people.

    February 6, 2023 – A 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria. The epicenter is 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) east of Nurdagi, in Turkey’s Gaziantep province. More than 50,000 people are killed and tens of thousands injured.

    (from the USGS)

    May 22, 1960 – Chile, 9.5

    March 28, 1964 – Prince William Sound, Alaska, 9.2

    December 26, 2004 – Sumatra, Indonesia, 9.1

    March 11, 2011 – Honshu, Japan, 9.1

    November 4, 1952 – Kamchatka, Soviet Union, 9.0

    February 27, 2010 – Chile, 8.8

    January 31, 1906 – Ecuador, 8.8

    February 4, 1965 – Rat Islands, Alaska, 8.7

    August 15, 1950 – Assam, Tibet, 8.6

    April 11, 2012 – Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, 8.6

    March 28, 2005 – Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, 8.6

    March 9, 1957 – Andreanof Islands, Alaska, 8.6

    April 1, 1946 – Unimak Island, Alaska, 8.6

    February 1, 1938 – Banda Sea, Indonesia, 8.5

    November 11, 1922 – Chile-Argentina Border, 8.5

    October 13, 1963 – Kuril Islands, 8.5

    February 3, 1923 – Kamchatka, Soviet Union, 8.4

    September 12, 2007 – Southern Sumatra, Indonesia, 8.4

    June 23, 2001 – Arequipa, Peru, 8.4

    March 2, 1933 – Sanriku, Japan, 8.4

    January 12, 2010 – Haiti – 316,000 killed (magnitude 7.0). Other sources report 230,000.

    July 27, 1976 – Tangshan, China – 255,000 killed (7.5)

    December 26, 2004 – Sumatra, Indonesia – 227,898 killed in quake and resulting tsunami (9.1)

    December 16, 1920 – Haiyuan, China – 200,000 killed (7.8)

    September 1, 1923 – Kanto, Japan – 143,000 killed (7.9)

    October 5, 1948 – Ashgabat, Turkmenistan – 110,000 killed (7.3)

    May 12, 2008 – Eastern Sichuan, China – 87,587 killed (7.9)

    October 8, 2005 – Pakistan – 86,000 (7.6)

    December 28, 1908 – Messina, Italy – 70,000 (7.2)

    May 31, 1970 – Chimbote, Peru – 66,000 killed (7.9)

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  • Israeli incursion shatters lives in ancient Middle Eastern city | CNN

    Israeli incursion shatters lives in ancient Middle Eastern city | CNN

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    Nablus, West Bank
    CNN
     — 

    The heart of occupied Nablus is one of the most ancient cities in the Middle East. With two churches, 12 mosques and a Samaritan synagogue around densely populated residential areas, the occupied West Bank city’s nickname is “Little Damascus” because of the way its architecture, arches and even the local accent and food are reminiscent of those of the Syrian capital.

    On a normal day, the smell of spices and hand-made Nablus soap, the bright colors of cloth, and the welcoming faces of people fill the narrow alleys of the Ottoman-era Old City.

    A massive Israeli military incursion on Wednesday targeting three suspected militants changed all that. A CNN team visited the city a day after that raid, to find residents looking into the eyes of every stranger, not welcoming, but concerned about the reason for their visit.

    The market was on strike, mourning the 11 Palestinians killed the day before. Rather than selling their wares, business owners were collecting spent bullets from the alleys, with bullet holes and blood stains testifying to the violence the day before.

    “We heard explosions and went to hide under the beds. We covered our ears with blankets,” said an old woman with trembling hands and a shaking voice, who was afraid to be identified. “I can’t even describe how shocking it was. We saw death with our own eyes. We didn’t expect to get out of this alive.”

    Bullet holes in a door testify to the violence of the previous day.

    Residents of the Old City have faced many night-time military invasions over the last year, especially since the new Lion’s Den militant group started operating there.

    But this week’s invasion came at a very unexpected time of the day.

    “They came around 10 a.m. We consider that rush hour in a densely populated area,” said Ahmad Jibril, head of the Emergency and Ambulance Department of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Nablus. The dead included a 72-year-old market trader who, Jibril alleged, “was shot with 10 live bullets all over his body although he wasn’t causing any threat.”

    Paramedic Amid Ahmad, who was working to rescue the injured, said this is the first time since the height of the last intifada in 2000 that he has seen the Israeli army using weapons the way they did this week.

    “They were shooting randomly everywhere,” he said. “There was an extremely huge number of injuries. Everything was so difficult – reaching the injured, evacuating the injured, everything was difficult because the area is very narrow and was all blocked by the army that prevented us from working.”

    Israel Defense Forces international spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht denied that Israeli troops were firing “randomly,” saying: “The IDF only shoots at threats.”

    Another IDF spokesman, Maj. Nir Dinar, told CNN he hoped it was not true that IDF forces had blocked medics from reaching the wounded, and said he was “not familiar with such behavior.”

    Nablus residents say undercover Israeli military operatives were involved in the raid, one reason they were so distrustful of strangers the following day.

    This Nablus building was damaged in the raid.

    Bullet holes are seen on a car in Nablus, the day after the deadly raid.

    Sahar Zalloum was coming home from bringing her husband’s breakfast to his shop in the market, she said, when she was shocked to see a man she believes was an undercover operative at the door of her house: “I heard some noises in the yard. I saw a man wearing a sheikh’s clothes sitting with a gun. He asked me to get into the house. I ran home – it was terrifying, we didn’t dare to look out from any window, snipers were on all of the rooftops.”

    Zalloum and her husband survived uninjured. But many were not so lucky.

    Social media video appears to show at least two Israeli army vehicles near the entrance of a mosque, amid gunfire as a group of Palestinians come out of the mosque.

    CNN asked the IDF about the video, but received only a generic statement in response, saying in part: “The circumstances of the event in the video are under examination.”

    The wounded were transferred to Al Najah Hospital in the city, where Elias Al-Ashqar is a nurse. A video captured him in the emergency room, screaming “My father, my father” the moment he realized one of the dead was his father Abdul-Hadi Al-Ashqar, 61.

    “I didn’t believe it, then I came closer,” he told CNN the next day. “I had one of my colleagues with me. I asked him if he sees this dead man as my father. I looked around, waiting for anyone to say that I was mistaken. But it was my father.”

    Since the beginning of the year, 62 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health – the highest number at this point in a year since the year 2000. Israel argues that many of the dead are militants, or people attacking Israeli civilians or clashing with Israeli military forces.

    But some of them – like Elias Al-Ashqar’s father Abdul-Hadi – appear simply to have been innocent bystanders.

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  • Photos: Fearing aftershocks, families in NW Syria sleep in tents

    Photos: Fearing aftershocks, families in NW Syria sleep in tents

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    Idlib, Syria – Hundreds of Syrian families whose homes were destroyed or damaged when devastating earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria this month are sleeping in tents or in public spaces in harsh winter conditions in rebel-held northwestern Syria.

    Many buildings in the region collapsed, and other infrastructure buckled in the February 6 quakes, which killed tens of thousands of people in Turkey. More than 4,500 people were killed in rebel-held Syria, according to the Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets.

    Two weeks later, magnitude 6.3 and 5.8 earthquakes hit southern Turkey and were felt across the border in Syria. At least six people were killed and more than 200 were injured in Turkey while the White Helmets said more than 100 people were injured in northwestern Syria.

    Fearful of more earthquakes, Syrian families in the war-torn region have resorted to sleeping in trucks, tents and open spaces despite the harsh weather.

    “It’s very cold, but we have nowhere to go,” said Abdullah al-Tuwainy, a man who has been living with his family at a tent site since the earthquakes struck. “There’s no way we can return to our home. It’s destroyed.”

    Pointing at a tent set up on the side of a road, Ahmed Ghafir said, “We are living on the street now. I have a 17-year-old disabled child. If another tremor struck and we were in our home, we’d all be gone by the time we carry her down the stairs of our building.”

    Abdelmone’im Asaad, a father of seven, shares an open space with more than 50 other families without shelter.

    “We set up the kids in the cars, and the rest of us spend the night out on the pavements with some bedsheets,” he said. “We’re shivering from the cold.”

    Although Abdul Moe’in Zahra’s home is damaged but liveable, he is afraid to return for fear of another tremor. “It’s safer to spend our nights out here,” he told Al Jazeera.

    Grandmother Um Salim told Al Jazeera that the weather has been terrible. “It’s freezing cold, and the rain has been non-stop, but we don’t dare return home,” she said. “We’re just out here in the park all day.”

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  • IS attacks on Syria truffle hunters are deadliest in a year

    IS attacks on Syria truffle hunters are deadliest in a year

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    BEIRUT (AP) — The Islamic State group has carried out its deadliest attacks in more than a year, killing dozens of civilians and security officers in the deserts of central Syria, even as people of northern Syria have been digging out of the wreckage from the region’s devastating earthquake.

    The bloodshed was a reminder of the persistent threat from IS, whose sleeper cells still terrorize populations nearly four years after the group was defeated in Syria.

    The attacks also underscored the extremists’ limitations. IS militants have found refuge in the remote deserts of Syria’s interior and along the Iraqi-Syrian border. From there, they lash out against civilians and security forces in both countries. But they are also hemmed in by opponents on all sides: Syrian government troops as well as Kurdish-led fighters who control eastern Syria and are backed by U.S. forces. American raids with their Kurdish-led allies have repeatedly killed or caught IS leaders and, earlier this month, killed two senior IS figures.

    The IS attacks this month were largely against a very vulnerable target: Syrians hunting truffles in the desert.

    The truffles are a seasonal delicacy that can be sold for a high price. Since the truffle hunters work in large groups in remote areas, IS militants in previous years have repeatedly preyed on them, emerging from the desert to abduct them, kill some and ransom others for money.

    On Feb. 11, IS fighters kidnapped about 75 truffle hunters outside the town of Palmyra. At least 16 were killed, including a woman and security officers, 25 were released and the rest remain missing.

    Six days later, on Friday, they attacked a group of truffle hunters outside the desert town of Sukhna, just up the highway from Palmyra, and fought with troops at a security checkpoint close by. At least 61 civilians and seven soldiers were killed. Many of the truffle hunters in the group work for three local businessmen close to the Syrian military and pro-government militias, which may have prompted IS to target them, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, and the Palmyra News Network, an activist collective that covers developments in the desert areas.

    Smaller attacks around the area killed 12 other people, including soldiers, pro-government fighters and civilians.

    The area is far from the northern regions devastated by the Feb. 6 earthquake that killed more than 46,000 people in Turkey and Syria. Still, IS fighters “took advantage of the earthquake to send a message that the organization is still present,” said Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Observatory.

    Friday’s attack in Sukhna was the group’s deadliest since January 2022, when IS gunmen stormed a prison in the northeastern city of Hassakeh that held some 3,000 militants and juveniles. Ten days of battles between the militants and U.S.-backed fighters left nearly 500 dead.

    The prison attack raised fears IS was staging a comeback. But it was followed by a series of blows against the group, which reverted to its drumbeat of smaller-scale shootings and bombings.

    It’s too early to say if the new spate of attacks marks a new resurgence, said Aaron Y. Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

    “It’s the biggest attack in a while. So the question is if it’s just a one-off attack or if they are reactivating capabilities,” said Zelin, who closely follows militant Islamic groups and founded Jihadology.net.

    He said IS fighters have been less active every year since 2019 and noted that the recent attacks hit civilians, not tougher security targets.

    In 2014, IS overran large swaths of Syria and Iraq and declared the entire territory a “caliphate,” where it imposed a radically brutal rule. The U.S. and its allies in Syria and Iraq, as well as Syria’s Russian-backed government troops, fought against it for years, eventually rolling it back but also leaving tens of thousands dead and cities in ruins. The group was declared defeated in Iraq in 2017, then in Syria two years later.

    In 2019, many thought that IS was finished after it lost the last sliver of land it controlled, its founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. raid and an international crackdown on social media pages linked to the extremists limited its propaganda and recruitment campaigns.

    Another U.S. raid about a year ago killed al-Baghdadi’s successor, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. His replacement was killed in battle with rebels in southern Syria in October.

    The newest IS leader, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, may be trying to show his strength with the latest attacks, said Abdullah Suleiman Ali, a Syrian researcher who focuses on jihadi groups. The leaders’ names are pseudonyms and don’t refer to a family relation.

    “The new leader has to take measures to prove himself within the organization … (to show) that the group under the new leadership is capable and strong,” Ali said.

    American troops and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces eliminated a series of senior IS figures this month, according to the U.S. military. On Feb, 10, they killed Ibrahim Al Qahtani, suspected of planning last year’s prison attack, then eight days later they captured an IS official allegedly involved in planning attacks and manufacturing bombs. Last week, a senior IS commander, Hamza al-Homsi, was killed in a raid that also left four American service-members wounded.

    But IS remains a threat, according to U.N., U.S. and Kurdish officials.

    It is estimated to have 5,000 to 7,000 members and supporters – around half of them fighters — in Iraq and Syria, according to a U.N. report this month. IS uses desert hideouts “for remobilization and training purposes” and has spread cells of 15 to 30 people each to other parts of the country, particularly the southern province of Daraa.

    SDF spokesman Siamand Ali said IS persistently plots attacks in Kurdish-run eastern Syria. He pointed to an attempted attack by IS fighters on SDF security headquarters in the city of Raqqa in December. SDF sweeps since then have captured IS operatives and weapons caches, he said. This is a sign the group was close to carrying out large operations, he said.

    IS in particular aims to storm SDF-run prisons to free militants, he said. Some 10,000 IS fighters, including about 2,000 foreigners, are held in the more than two dozen Kurdish-run detention facilities.

    Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, commander of the U.S. Central Command or CENTCOM, said in a statement this month that IS “continues to represent a threat to not only Iraq and Syria, but to the stability and security of the region.”

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  • British woman who joined ISIS as a teen loses UK citizenship appeal | CNN

    British woman who joined ISIS as a teen loses UK citizenship appeal | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Shamima Begum, who left the United Kingdom to join ISIS at the age of 15, has lost her appeal against the decision to revoke her British citizenship.

    Judge Robert Jay gave the decision on Wednesday following a five-day hearing in November, during which her lawyers argued the UK Home Office had a duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before removing her citizenship.

    The ruling does not determine if Begum can return to Britain, but whether the removal of her citizenship was lawful.

    Begum, now 23 and living in a camp in northern Syria, flew to the country in 2015 with two school friends to join the ISIS terror group. In February 2019, she re-emerged and made international headlines as an “ISIS bride” after pleading with the UK government to be allowed to return to her home country for the birth of her son.

    Family of ISIS victim says YouTube algorithm is liable. What will the Supreme Court say?


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    Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship on February 19, 2019, and Begum’s newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp the following month. She told UK media she had two other children prior to that baby, who also died in Syria during infancy.

    Begum’s lawyers criticized Wednesday’s ruling as a “lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.”

    “The outcome is that there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK if the home secretary invokes national security,” Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Pierce Solicitors, said in a statement seen by UK news agency PA Media.

    “Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued,” it continued.

    Rights group Amnesty International described the ruling as a “very disappointing decision.”

    “The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world, not least when we’re talking about a person who was seriously exploited as a child,” Steve Valdez-Symonds, the group’s UK refugee and migrant rights director, said in a statement.

    “Along with thousands of others, including large numbers of women and children, this young British woman is now trapped in a dangerous refugee camp in a war-torn country and left largely at the mercy of gangs and armed groups.”

    “The home secretary shouldn’t be in the business of exiling British citizens by stripping them of their citizenship,” Valdez-Symonds said.

    Javid, the home secretary who removed Begum’s British citizenship, welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, tweeted that it “upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds.”

    “This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.” Javid added.

    Begum has made several public appeals as she fought against the government’s decision, most recently appearing in BBC documentary The Shamima Begum Story and a 10-part BBC podcast series.

    In the podcast series she insisted that she is “not a bad person.” While accepting that the British public viewed her as a “danger” and a “risk,” Begum blamed this on her media portrayal.

    She challenged the UK government’s decision to revoke her citizenship but, in June 2019, the government refused her application to be allowed to enter the country to pursue her appeal.

    In 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled Begum should be granted leave to enter the country because otherwise, it would not be “a fair and effective hearing.”

    The following year, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, arguing that the Court of Appeal made four errors when it ruled that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to carry out her appeal.

    UK police appealed for help Friday, Feb. 20, 2015, to find three teenage girls who are missing from their homes in London and are believed to be making their way to Syria. The girls, two of them 15 and one 16, have not been seen since Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2015, when, police say, they took a flight to Istanbul. One has been named as Shamima Begum, 15, who may be traveling under the name of 17-year-old Aklima Begum, and a second as Kadiza Sultana, 16. The third girl is identified as Amira Abase, 15.

    Shamima Begum loses legal bid to return home to appeal citizenship revocation (February 2021)

    Begum was 15 when she flew out of Gatwick Airport with two classmates and traveled to Syria.

    The teenagers, all from the Bethnal Green Academy in east London, were to join another classmate who had made the same journey months earlier.

    While in Syria, Begum married an ISIS fighter and spent several years living in Raqqa. Begum then reappeared in al-Hawl, a Syrian refugee camp of 39,000 people, in 2019.

    shamima begum sky feb 2019

    With ISIS fall, Europe faces returnees dilemma (February 2019)

    Speaking from the camp before giving birth, Begum told UK newspaper The Times that she wanted to come home to have her child. She said she had already had two other children who died in infancy from malnutrition and illness.

    She gave birth to her son, Jarrah, in al-Hawl in February of that year. The baby’s health quickly deteriorated, and he passed away after being transferred from the camp to the main hospital in al-Hasakah City.

    In response to that news, a British government spokesperson told CNN at the time that “the death of any child is tragic and deeply distressing for the family.”

    But the spokesperson added the UK Foreign Office “has consistently advised against travel to Syria” since 2011.

    Begum pictured at a refugee camp in northern Syria in March 2021.

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  • Ten Palestinians killed during Israeli raid targeting militants in West Bank | CNN

    Ten Palestinians killed during Israeli raid targeting militants in West Bank | CNN

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    Jerusalem and Gaza
    CNN
     — 

    At least 10 Palestinians were killed Wednesday during a major Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank that also left more than 100 injured, Palestinian officials said.

    Israeli authorities said Wednesday’s operation targeted three suspects “planning attacks in the immediate future.” The three were “neutralized,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Security Agency said in a joint statement.

    In the unusual daytime raid, Israeli forces entered Nablus in the West Bank.

    The Islamic Jihad militant group said two of its commanders were killed in ensuing clashes with Israeli troops.

    The Lion’s Den militant group also confirmed its members were involved in the fighting, but did not say if any of their members were killed.

    All three of the suspected Palestinian militants targeted by the IDF were killed, a list of the dead released by the Palestinian Ministry of Health shows.

    Six of the dead were men in their 20s, the ministry said. One was 16, one was 33, one was 61 and was was 72. All were men, the ministry list of dead shows.

    An IDF statement said earlier that two of those killed were from the Lion’s Den militant group and that one was from Islamic Jihad.

    The names of at least two suspects released by the IDF – Hussam Esleem and Waleed Dakheel – appeared to match names of the dead released by the Palestinian health ministry. The IDF said one was shot while fleeing and the other two were killed in an exchange of fire with the military.

    Israeli authorities said that suspects threw rocks, Molotov cocktails and “explosive devices” at Israeli forces.

    The raid brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces to 61 this year, the Palestinian health ministry said. That number includes people shot as they attacked Israelis, militants being targeted in raids, people clashing with Israeli forces during raids, and bystanders, CNN records show.

    Eleven Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks this year: seven in a shooting near a synagogue, three in a car ramming attack, and a border police officer who was stabbed by a teenager and then shot by friendly fire from a civilian security guard.

    Relatives mourn the death of a Palestinian killed in an Israeli raid, outside a hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus on February 22, 2023.

    IDF raids into the West Bank usually occur overnight; the last time the military conducted a daylight operation, they said it was because of an immediate threat.

    The Palestinian health ministry said five of the dead were men in their 20s. One was in his 30s, along with a man who was 61 and one who was 72.

    In addition, the ministry said 104 Palestinians were injured “with live ammunition … six of them in critical condition.”

    Islamic Jihad’s armed faction in Gaza, the Al Qassam Brigade, warned they are “watching the enemy’s escalating crimes against our people in the occupied West Bank, and its patience is running out.”

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  • Dozens dead in migrant shipwreck off Italian coast

    Dozens dead in migrant shipwreck off Italian coast

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    At least 43 migrants drowned on Sunday after the fishing boat on which they were traveling sank off the coast of the Italian region of Calabria.

    According to local authorities, some 250 migrants were crammed aboard the ship, which broke in two about 20 kilometers from the city of Crotone. Over 100 passengers have been rescued, but at least 70 of the people who were aboard the ship remain missing.

    Over the course of the morning, bodies, including those of children and at least one newborn baby, have washed ashore in the resort town of Steccato di Cutro, according to local reports.

    Although the ship’s port of origin was in Turkey, authorities say the majority of the migrants that have been rescued are from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

    Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the disaster was “a huge tragedy that demonstrates how necessary it is to oppose the chains of irregular migration,” adding that more needed to be done to clamp down on “unscrupulous smugglers” who, “in order to get rich, organize improvised trips with inadequate boats and in prohibitive conditions.”

    Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “deep sorrow” for the shipwreck and pledged to stop irregular sea migration in order to prevent more tragedies. “The government is committed to preventing [migrant] departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies,” she said in a statement.

    “It is inhumane to trade the lives of men, women and children for the price of the ‘ticket’ they have paid with the false prospect of a safe journey,” Meloni said.

    Calabrian President Roberto Occhiuto slammed EU authorities for their inaction in addressing the migration crisis and asked “what has the European Union been doing all these years?”

    “Where is Europe when it comes to guaranteeing security and legality?” he asked, adding that regions like his were left on their own to “manage emergencies and mourn the dead.”

    Opposition parties said the tragedy indicated the flaws in Italy’s migration policy. “Condemning only the smugglers, as the center-right is doing now, is hypocrisy,″ said Laura Ferrara, a European Parliament lawmaker from the 5-Star Movement. “The truth is that the EU today does not offer effective alternatives for those who are forced abandon their country of origin; there are no real alternatives to smugglers and traffickers,″ Ferrara said in a statement.

    According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, at least 2,366 migrants lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year; at least 124 have been reporting missing in its waters since the beginning of this year.

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    Aitor Hernández-Morales

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  • Magnitude 6.3 earthquake strikes southern Turkey killing 3 and injuring hundreds, 2 weeks after massive quake killed thousands | CNN

    Magnitude 6.3 earthquake strikes southern Turkey killing 3 and injuring hundreds, 2 weeks after massive quake killed thousands | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck southern Turkey on Monday killing at least three people and injuring hundreds more, according to Turkish and Syrian officials, two weeks after a massive earthquake killed tens of thousands of people in both countries.

    The quake struck Turkey’s southern Hatay province, near the Syrian border, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (AFAD) said Monday.

    The quake’s epicenter was in the province’s Defne district, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said Monday, adding that there have been 26 aftershocks since.

    Three people had died and 213 were injured on Monday, Soylu said, and rescue services are still searching several buildings.

    In northwest Syria, there have been more than 130 injuries, the White Helmets volunteer rescue group said Monday. The quake also led to the collapse of a number of buildings that were already hit by the previous earthquake.

    “Our teams are working to take the injured to hospitals, inspect the affected villages and towns, and remove rubble to open the roads for the ambulances,” the White Helmets said.

    The United States Geological Survey (USGS) initially reported the quake as being of magnitude 6.4 at a depth of 10 kilometers before revising it down to 6.3 magnitude.

    Officials have been urging the public to stay away from buildings. Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay earlier Monday asked the public “not to enter the damaged buildings, especially to take their belongings.”

    The mayor of Samandag, near where the quake hit, said some buildings had collapsed and that the mood was one of panic following the AFAD warning.

    CNN teams in Adana, Turkey felt the quake, as did eyewitnesses in Gaziantep and Mersin.

    Monday’s earthquake follows a deadly magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6 that left more than 46,000 people dead in Turkey and Syria.

    Families who were affected by the the earthquake two weeks ago told CNN of the terror caused by Monday’s tremors.

    “We went back to our house and this shock happened again and we went out… may God help us,” said Zahir, who lives in a town between the cities of Iskenderun and Antakia, in Turkey’s Hatay province.

    “We don’t know what to do today – today we will stay in the car and in the tent, we don’t know what will happen till tomorrow,” he told CNN.

    People react after an earthquake in Antakya.

    On Sunday, Turkey’s disaster management authority said it had ended most search and rescue operations nearly two weeks after the earthquake struck as experts say the chances of survival for people trapped in the rubble this far into the disaster are unlikely.

    Some efforts remain in the provinces of Kahramanmaraş and Hatay. On Saturday, a couple and their 12-year-old child were rescued in Hatay, 296 hours after the earthquake, state news agency Anadolu reported.

    Efforts to retrieve survivors have been hampered by a cold winter spell across quake-stricken regions, while authorities grapple with the logistical challenges of transporting aid into northwestern Syria amid an acute humanitarian crisis compounded by years of political strife.

    This story has been updated with new information from USGS.

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