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TUNIS: Tunisian President Kais Saied has extended a long-running state of emergency by 11 months until Dec. 31, 2024, the official gazette showed on Tuesday.
The North African country has been under a state of emergency since 2015 after an attack in which several presidential guards were killed.
PARIS: France’s foreign minister said an international conference for Lebanon raised $1 billion in pledges for humanitarian aid and military support to help the country where war between Hezbollah militants and Israel has displaced a million people, killed over 2,500, and deepened an economic crisis.
Jean-Noël Barrot said: “We have collectively raised $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million for the security forces, that’s about $1 billion,” in his closing speech at the Paris conference, which gathered over 70 nations and international organizations.
“We’re up to the challenge,” Barrot said.
The United States pledged to provide about $300 million, he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron had called on participants to bring “massive aid” to support the country, as France promised $100 million.
The United Nations had previously estimated the urgent humanitarian needs in Lebanon to be $426 million.
Germany pledged a total of 96 million euros in humanitarian aid to both Lebanon and neighboring Syria, also deeply affected by escalating violence in the Middle East. Italy announced this week an additional 10 million euros ($10.8 million) in aid for Lebanon.
However, experts warn that delivering aid could be challenging as Lebanon’s growing dependence on informal and cash economy increases lack of transparency and corruption risks.
The Paris conference also aimed at coordinating international support to strengthen Lebanon’s armed forces so they can deploy in the country’s south as part of a potential deal to end the war. Such a deal could see Hezbollah withdraw its forces from the border.
This support to the Lebanese military includes “helping with health care, fuel, small equipment, but also supporting the plan to recruit at least 6,000 additional soldiers and to enable the deployment of at least 8,000 additional soldiers in the south,” Macron said.
Paris also seeks to help restore Lebanon’s sovereignty and strengthen its institutions. The country, where Hezbollah effectively operates as a state within a state, has been without a president for two years while political factions fail to agree on a new one.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a pre-recorded video, called on Lebanon’s leaders “to take decisive action to ensure the proper functioning of state institutions in order to meet the country’s urgent political and security challenges.”
Acting Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the international community to take action.
“The devastating impact of this war on our nation cannot be overstated, and it has left a trail of destruction and misery in its wake. The Israelis’ aggression has not only caused immense human suffering and loss of lives, but also inflicted severe damage to the country’s infrastructure, economy and social fabric,” Mikati said Thursday in Paris.
In Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike killed early Thursday three Lebanese soldiers, including an officer, as they were evacuating wounded people in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army said Israeli forces have targeted it on eight occasions since an all-out war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah in September.
The Israeli army apologized for a strike on Sunday that it said mistakenly killed three soldiers, and on Wednesday said it was looking into whether “a number of soldiers of the Lebanese army were accidentally harmed” after it targeted what it says was Hezbollah infrastructure.
Israel in the past month has launched a major aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Lebanon as it says it’s targeting Hezbollah, with strikes hitting the capital, Beirut, and elsewhere.
The International Organization for Migration has said about 800,000 people are displaced, with many now in overcrowded shelters, while others have fled across the border into Syria. Mikati on Thursday estimated the number of displaced people is over 1.4 million, including 500,000 children.
The cash-strapped Lebanese government is ill-prepared to deal with the crisis or the increased demands on its health system. Several have been evacuated because of nearby airstrikes and fears that they might be targeted.
Lebanon’s army has been hit hard by five years of economic crisis. It has an aging arsenal and no air defenses, leaving it in no position to defend against Israeli incursions or confront Hezbollah.
The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops, around 5,000 of them deployed in the south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, according to the militant group’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The militant group’s arsenal, built with support from Iran, is more advanced.
Conference participants also are to discuss how to support the 10,500-soldier-strong UN peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL. European nations including France, Italy and Spain provide a third of its troops.
Italy, which has over 1,000 troops in UNIFIL, is pushing for the peacekeeping force to be strengthened to “be able to face the new situation” on the ground, an Italian diplomat said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing talks.
Guterres said Thursday that “attacks on UN peacekeepers are totally unacceptable and are contrary to international law, contrary to international humanitarian law and may constitute a war crime.”
France’s historic links with Lebanon, a former colony, and its influential diplomacy give Paris momentum to coordinate “a proper response to the massive challenge that the war in Lebanon now poses,” said Middle East expert Rym Montaz, editor-in-chief of Carnegie Europe’s blog Strategic Europe.
“What we do know is that without a strengthened Lebanese armed forces and UNIFIL, there can be no sustainable peace and stability at the border between Lebanon and Israel,” Montaz said. “As such, the French efforts are important and crucial for the way forward.”
GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Thursday it can no longer provide first responder services in the north of the territory, accusing Israeli forces of threatening to “bomb and kill” its crews.
Since October 6, the Israeli military has mounted a sweeping air and land assault on north Gaza, initially focused on the Jabalia area, describing it as an operation aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping.
“We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp,” said Mahmud Bassal, the agency’s spokesman.
First responders had been “targeted” on several occasions, leaving “several members injured, and others are left bleeding on the streets with no one able to rescue them,” he told AFP.
Bassal published a photograph of a burnt truck on social media, saying it was “the only civil defense vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip governorate,” which includes Gaza City.
The truck, he said, was “targeted by the Israeli army” in the northern city of Beit Lahia, just north of Jabalia and near Gaza’s northern border with Israel.
The Israeli army said it was conducting operations in the Jabalia area and had “eliminated dozens of terrorists.”
Military activity in adjacent Beit Lahia has also forced Palestinians to flee, including Raghib Hamuda, who moved his family to Gaza City after Israeli forces issued calls for the evacuation of a shelter last week.
“The military bulldozers demolished the school after evacuating all the displaced people,” he told AFP by phone, adding his family faced “checkpoints and gunfire along the way” to Gaza City, where they found shelter in another school.
“The shelling is intense, and the army has demolished dozens of houses,” he said.
The Israeli army announced it would intensify operations in Gaza’s ravaged north on October 6, with troops even encircling Jabalia and adjacent areas.
Since then, the military has steadily expanded its offensive to other parts in northern Gaza, and Bassal said on Thursday that more than 770 people have been killed so far in the assault.
He said the toll is expected to rise as the military operation continues in the area and “there are people still buried in the rubble.”
The stated goal of the military’s overall assault it says is to destroy the operational capabilities Hamas is trying to rebuild in the north.
It has repeatedly told people to evacuate, and to do so they must pass through army-manned checkpoints.
Images posted online and verified by AFP show crowds of Palestinians waiting to cross such checkpoints often supported by tanks, while several Palestinians reported mistreatment or detention during the process.
The UN refugee agency, UNRWA, says 400,000 people remain in Gaza’s north including Gaza City, and that within the governorate, tens of thousands have fled the northernmost areas subject to intensified Israeli operations, most to Gaza City.
The Israeli defense ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, says 250,000 people remain in Gaza’s north.
The United States has pressured its ally Israel to allow more aid into north Gaza, saying the amount sent so far has “not been sufficient.”
Israeli officials meanwhile have denied charges Israel was implementing a plan to starve out northern Gaza.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has until now killed at least 42,847 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations has described as reliable.
KAZAN, Russia: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told BRICS leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday that the world needed peace in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Sudan.
“Across the board, we need peace,” Guterres said at the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
“We need peace in Ukraine. A just peace in line with the UN Charter, international law and UN General Assembly resolutions.”
ANKARA: The first Ankara attack victims were being buried Thursday, just hours after Turkiye struck PKK militants in Iraq and Syria whom it blames for the assault on a defense firm that killed five.
As the dust settled after Wednesday’s deadly attack on the state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) that also left 22 injured, Turkiye pointed the finger at Kurdish militants as “very likely” responsible.
Turkish investigators said both attackers were “PKK terrorists,” identifying them as a man called Ali Orek, codename “Rojger,” and a woman called Mine Sevjin Alcicek, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X.
Both appeared in CCTV images posted on X in which they are seen emerging from a taxi then firing assault rifles before entering the building.
The taxi driver, whom they killed, was buried on Thursday at a funeral attended by Yerlikaya and parliamentary speaker Numan Kurtulmus.
Of the 22 people hurt in the attack, eight had been discharged, while the other 14 remained in hospital, Turkiye’s health ministry said.
Istanbul’s two main airports have since stepped up security, the DHA news agency and private NTV channel reported.
Sabiha Gokcen airport, which is located on the Asian side of the city, told passengers to arrive “at least three hours” early to avoid delays due to increased security.
Overnight, the defense ministry said the military struck “47 terrorist targets” in Syria and northern Iraq and pledged the raids would continue.
Kurdish sources in northern Syria said the strikes had killed 12 civilians and wounded 25 others.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is in Russia attending the BRICS summit of major emerging economy nations, said the attack had “further strengthened Turkiye’s determination and resolve to eliminate terrorism.”
The attack happened amid growing signs of a political thaw between Ankara and Kurdish militants.
Just hours beforehand, PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan — who has been jailed on a Turkish prison island in solitary confinement since 1999 — received his first family visit in years.
His nephew, Omer Ocalan, who is a lawmaker for the main pro-Kurdish DEM party, confirmed the visit on X, and said the family had last seen him “on March 3, 2020.”
The only other contact was a brief phone call in March 2021.
His uncle was “in good health” and had sent a message about the ongoing “political developments,” saying: “If the conditions allow, I have the necessary theoretical and practical power to shift this process from an arena of conflict and violence to one of law and politics.”
According to Abdulkadir Selvi, a columnist for the Hurriyet daily which is close to the government, during the two-hour meeting “Ocalan said he was ready to lay down his arms.”
On Tuesday, Devlet Bahceli, head of the far-right MHP, which is fiercely hostile to the PKK and belongs to Erdogan’s ruling coalition, sparked shockwaves by inviting Ocalan to parliament to renounce terror and dissolve his movement.
After the attack, DEM — the third largest party in parliament — condemned the violence but said it was “noteworthy” it happened “just as Turkish society was talking about a solution and the possibility of dialogue.”
Arrested on February 15, 1999 in the Kenyan capital Nairobi following a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces after years on the run, Ocalan was brought to Turkiye for trial and sentenced to death.
He escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004 but has spent his remaining years in an isolation cell on Imrali prison island in the Sea of Marmara.
Now 75, the former guerrilla is a hero for many Kurds, who call him “Apo” — Kurdish for “uncle.”
He founded the PKK in 1978 which went on to spearhead a brutal insurgency that has killed tens of thousands in its fight for independence.
He first called for dialogue and a ceasefire in 2012 and again in 2013, before the bloody conflict resumed in 2015 in the mainly-Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir.
Following these clashes, which left hundreds of Kurds dead, the militants retreated to the mountains on the borders of Syria and Iraq.
