Migrant boat sinks off Turkiye, children among 22 dead
Two people had been rescued by the coast guard and two others had survived “by their own means“
Footage from Kabatepe port showed a boat taking part in search and rescue operations
Updated 15 March 2024
Reuters
ISTANBUL: At least 22 people drowned, including seven children, when a rubber boat carrying migrants sank off Turkiye’s northwest province of Canakkale, the local governor’s office said on Friday, adding that search and rescue efforts continued.
In a statement, the Canakkale governor’s office said that two people had been rescued by the coast guard and two others had survived “by their own means” after the boat capsized.
It said a plane, two helicopters, and a total of 18 vessels from the coast guard and other rescue authorities were involved in the search and rescue efforts, along with 502 personnel.
Footage from Kabatepe port showed a boat taking part in search and rescue operations returning to port with body bags on the deck. Health workers and security personnel could be seen carrying the body bags off the boat and onto ambulances waiting there.
Earlier, Canakkale Governor Ilhami Aktas told the state-run Anadolu news agency that the four rescued migrants were admitted to hospital.
It was not immediately clear how many migrants were on the boat, the governor told Anadolu.
Locked in Middle East wars and battered by sanctions, Iran is wary over US presidential election
Many Iranians are split on which candidate would be better for their country – if at all
Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have offered hardline views on Iran, making Iranians wary
Updated 13 sec ago
AP
TEHRAN: America’s presidential election next week comes just after Iran marks the 45th anniversary of the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis – and for many, tensions between Tehran and Washington feel just as high as they did then. Iran remains locked in the Middle East wars roiling the region, with its allies – militant groups and fighters of its self-described “Axis of Resistance” – battered as Israel presses its war in the Gaza Strip targeting Hamas and its invasion of Lebanon amid devastating attacks against Hezbollah. At the same time, Iran still appears to be assessing damage from Israel’s strikes on the Islamic Republic last Saturday in response to two Iranian ballistic missile attacks. Iran’s currency, the rial, hovers near record lows against the dollar, battered by international sanctions over Tehran’s nuclear program of enriching uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. In public spaces, women still openly defy Iran’s mandatory law on the headscarf, or hijab, a result of the mass demonstrations over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini that still haunts the country. That has left a feel of fatalism among some on the streets of the capital, Tehran, as Americans cast ballots for either Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump. Many are split on which candidate would be better for their country – if at all. “All US presidents elected after the (1979) revolution had the same views about Iran and I think that’s unlikely to change,” said Sadegh Rabbani, 65. Harris and Trump have offered hardline views on Iran, making Iranians wary. Both candidates have either undertaken or expressed tough stances on Iran. In 2018, Trump unilaterally pulled America out of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, setting off years of attacks across the Middle East even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Trump has been briefed on Iranian plots to retaliate against him, as well over his decision to launch a 2020 drone strike that killed Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad. Harris, meanwhile, vowed at the September presidential debate that she would always “give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.” For its part, the Biden administration did try indirect negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program that produced no tangible results, though it did reach one prisoner swap deal that saw five Americans detained for years in Iran walk free in September 2023. In an outdoor coffeeshop in downtown Tehran, popular among the youth, 22-year-old Zahra Rezaei said she preferred a Harris win. “We saw Trump in the past and he just ran an anti-Iran policy,” Rezaei told The Associated Press. “It is time for a woman ... I think she (Harris) will better since she is not after war.” Ebrahim Shiri, a 28-year-old postgraduate political sciences student, agreed. “I think Harris knows the world better,” he said. “She and (Joe) Biden convinced Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. This mean moving toward peace.” Others believe Trump, with his promises of dealmaking, might be a better fit. “I do not know what the American people think, but Trump is able to get a quick deal with Iran,” said Mohammad Ali Raoufi, 43, who runs a double-glazed window workshop. “The Biden administration including Harris failed to reach any (deal) with Iran over the past years when they were in power.” Reza Ghaemi, a 31-year-old taxi driver, also suggested Trump may lessen tensions in the region since he pushed to withdraw US troops from the Middle East during his term in office. Iran’s government wants sanctions gone and hopes for another nuclear deal Many declined to speak to the AP on camera – Iran has only state-run television and radio stations, so people are suspicious of reporters with video cameras working openly on the street. A woman walking by immediately tightened her previously loose headscarf after seeing the camera. Those who did speak to the AP mostly expressed worries about a direct United States-Iran war – especially if Trump wins. While saying he wants Trump to win “for my own reasons,” 53-year-old Ahmad Moradi claimed that would make a US-Iran war “100 percent” sure to happen. A woman who only gave her name as Mahnaz, fearing repercussions for speaking openly, suggested that Harris, as a woman, couldn’t reach any deals with Iran because “men can talk to men.” “I think if Trump is elected, it will be much harder for our kids. Of course it doesn’t matter which one is elected, it’s already tough for us,” said Fariba Oodi. “We the Iranian people are trapped in some political game. And our kids are paying a price for that,” she added. “But I still think if it’s Trump, it will be more difficult, especially for my son who is a student and plans to apply” to study in America. Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, elected after a helicopter crash killed hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi in May, came to power on a promise to reach a deal to ease Western sanctions. Iranian officials maintain that separating nuclear negotiations from Middle East wars is possible, even as the US has accused Iran of meddling in the November election, which Tehran denies. Fatemeh MoHajjerani, a spokeswoman for Pezeshkian’s administration, said Tehran wants to see a change in US policies and a respect for the “national sovereignty of other countries.” It also wants Washington to “avoid tension-making activities as we witnessed in recent years,” she said. Analysts, however, see a difficult road ahead for any possible US-Iran talks, no matter who wins next Tuesday. “The talks will be a war of attrition,” Ali Soufi told the pro-reform Shargh newspaper. Saeed Nourmohammadi, another analyst, suggested such talks “are unlikely to be fruitful.” But ultimately, any decision rests with Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “You know, Khamenei has seen eight US presidents” come and go, said Abbas Ghasemi, a 67-year-old retired teacher “He knows how to deal with the next one.”
Lebanese family killed in Israeli strike on their home ahead of daughter’s wedding
Maya Gharib was planning to get married in October, though she was worried her brother living abroad wouldn’t be able to make it back to Lebanon as tensions with Israel grew
Israel said it struck a site hiding Hezbollah rocket launchers and missiles. Maya’s brother said the family had no connection to the group
Updated 41 sec ago
AP
BEIRUT:The family WhatsApp group chat buzzed with constant messages. Israel was escalating its airstrikes on villages and towns in southern Lebanon. Everyone was glued to the news. Reda Gharib woke up uncharacteristically early that day, Sept. 23. Living a continent away in Senegal, he scrolled through videos and pictures shared by his sisters and aunts of explosions around their neighborhood in Tyre, Lebanon’s ancient coastal city. His aunts decided to leave for Beirut. His father, mother and three sisters had no such plans. Then his father announced to the group that he had received a call from the Israeli military to evacuate or risk their lives. After that, the chat fell silent. Ten minutes later, Gharib called his father. There was no answer. The Gharibs’ apartment had been directly hit by an Israeli airstrike. The family had no time to get out. Gharib’s father, Ahmed, a retired Lebanese army officer, his mother, Hanan, and his three sisters were all killed. “The whole apartment was gone. It is back to bare bones. As if there was nothing there,” said Gharib, speaking from the Senegalese capital, Dakar, where he has been living since 2020. The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah site hiding rocket launchers and missiles. Gharib said his family had no connection to Hezbollah. The direct hit gutted their apartment, while those above and below suffered only damage, suggesting a specific part of the building was targeted. Gharib said it was his family’s home. The strike was one of more than 1,600 Israel said it carried out on Sept. 23, the first day of an intensified bombardment of Lebanon it has waged for the past month. More than 500 people were killed that day, a casualty figure not observed in Gaza on a single day until the second week, said Emily Tripp, director of London-based Airwars, a conflict monitoring group. Israel has vowed to cripple Hezbollah to put an end to more than a year of cross-border fire by the Iranian-backed militant group that began the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war in Gaza. It says its strikes are targeting Hezbollah’s members and infrastructure. But there are also hundreds of civilians among the more than 2,000 people killed in the bombardment over the past month — often entire families killed in their homes. Since then, the street where the Gharib family lived — an area of shops, residential buildings and offices of international agencies in Tyre’s Al-Housh district — has been battered with repeated airstrikes and is now deserted. Gharib, 27, a pilot and entrepreneur, moved to Senegal in search of a better future but always planned to return to Lebanon to start a family. He was close to his three sisters, the keeper of their secrets and best friend, he said. Growing up, their father was often away, so he and his mother took charge of family affairs. The last time he visited his family was in May 2023, when his sister Maya, an engineering student, got engaged. She had planned to marry on Oct. 12. But as tensions with Israel grew in September, Gharib’s plans to come home for the wedding were uncertain. She told him she would put it off until he could get there. After the strike, her fiancé, also an army officer, found her body and those of the rest of her family in a hospital morgue in Tyre. “She was not destined to have her wedding. We paraded her as a bride to paradise instead,” Gharib said. On the day the wedding was to have taken place he posted pictures of his sister, including her wedding dress. His sister Racha, 24, was about to graduate as a dentist and planned to open her own clinic. “She loved life,” he said. His youngest sister, Nour, 20, was studying to be a dietitian and prepping to be a personal trainer. Gharib called her the “laughter of the house.” There is nothing left of his family now except for a few pictures on his phone and on social media posts. “I am so hurt. But I know the hurt will be hardest when I come to Lebanon,” Gharib said. “Not even a picture of them remains hanging on the walls. Their clothes are not there. Their smell is no longer in the house. The house is totally gone.” “They took my family and the memories of them.”
Lebanon PM says hopes for ceasefire with Israel in ‘coming hours or days’
Updated 15 min 13 sec ago
AFP
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s prime minister said US envoy Amos Hochstein had signalled during a phone call Wednesday that a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war was possible before US elections are held on November 5.
“The call today with Hochstein suggested to me that perhaps we could reach a ceasefire in the coming days, before the fifth” of November, Najib Mikati said in a televised interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.
Hochstein was heading to Israel on Wednesday to discuss conditions for a ceasefire with Hezbollah, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
Hezbollah’s new leader Naim Qassem on Wednesday said the group would agree to a ceasefire with Israel under acceptable terms, but added that a viable deal has yet to be presented.
“We are doing our best... to have a ceasefire within the coming hours or days,” Mikati told Al-Jadeed, adding that he was “cautiously optimistic.”
Mikati said Hezbollah is no longer linking a ceasefire in Lebanon to a truce in Gaza, however criticizing the group over the “late” reversal.
Previously, Hezbollah had repeatedly declared that it would only stop its attacks on Israel if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza.
But Qassem on Wednesday said the group would accept a ceasefire under conditions deemed “appropriate and suitable,” without any mention of the Palestinian territory.
Mikati said a ceasefire would be linked to the implementation of a United Nations resolution that ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 states that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in southern Lebanon, while demanding the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory.
“The Lebanese army is ready to strengthen its presence in southern Lebanon” and ensure that the only weapons and military infrastructure in the area are those controlled by the state, Mikati said.
Dominant Kurdish parties maintain their sway in the election for the parliament in the Iraqi region
The election outcome will also play a pivotal role in determining how Kurdish leaders handle ongoing disputes with Baghdad
Updated 31 October 2024
AP
IRBIL, Iraq: Election results from the vote for the regional parliament in Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region show the two dominant Kurdish parties have maintained their hold while an opposition party has made inroads, officials said Wednesday.
According to the Independent High Electoral Commission, the Kurdistan Democratic Party — with its base of support in the regional capital, Irbil, and the city of in Dohuk — made the strongest showing, securing 39 seats.
The rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan won 23 seats, continuing its influence over the city of Sulaymaniyah. In the 2018 elections, the two parties won 45 and 21 seats, respectively.
A relatively new opposition party, New Generation, won 15 seats, a significant increase from the eight seats it got in 2018, when the party was first established.
The Kurdistan Islamic Union, which came in fourth with seven seats, announced it will join the New Generation in opposition in the regional, 100-seat parliament. Other minor parties took a smattering of seats.
Despite some technical issues at the polls, voters turned out in large numbers, with 72 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The surge in support for the New Generation appeared to stem from growing disillusionment among younger voters, who are increasingly frustrated with the region’s ongoing economic challenges, including delays in salary payments, high unemployment, and perceived corruption within the traditional political leadership.
Economic concerns remain at the forefront — widespread dissatisfaction over delayed payments to civil servants, fluctuating oil prices, and ongoing budget disputes with the central government in Baghdad have fueled calls for reform.
Three Assyrian Christian candidates and two Turkmen candidates secured the five remaining quota seats for minorities, despite the Iraqi federal court’s controversial elimination of the reserved seats for ethnic and religious minorities earlier this year.
These seats are usually filled by candidates backed by the major political parties, leading some to say that they do not offer a genuine minority representation.
“We no longer have true representation in the parliament or the government; our voices are being silenced,” said Toma Khoshaba, an Assyrian ethnic activist.
Khoshaba argued that that these “so-called independent Assyrian representatives occupying the quota seats are largely supported by the Kurdistan Democratic Party” or by Shiite factions.
“Their loyalty lies with these dominant political groups, not with our communities,” he said.
The election outcome will also play a pivotal role in determining how Kurdish leaders handle ongoing disputes with Baghdad, particularly over oil revenue sharing and budget allocations, as well as the region’s broader economic challenges.
A Gaza medic realizes he’s carrying his own mother’s body, killed by an Israeli airstrike
Israel says it carries out precise strikes in Gaza targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. But the strikes often kill women and children
Updated 31 October 2024
AP
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: A Palestinian ambulance worker made a horrifying discovery when the bloody sheet was lifted: The corpse on the stretcher was his own mother, killed by an Israeli airstrike Wednesday in central Gaza.
“Oh God, I swear- she’s my mother! I didn’t know it was her!” Abed Bardini sobbed as he leaned over his mother, Samira, cradling her head in his arms. Fellow Red Crescent medics tried to console him, without success.
Bardini had unknowingly sat in the ambulance beside her body, wrapped in a white sheet stained dark with blood, as the vehicle bounced across broken roads for about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) toward Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah.
Three people were killed and 10 wounded by the Israeli strike on a car in Maghazi refugee camp, according to Palestinian health officials and Associated Press journalists. Health officials at the hospital said two of the dead were men sitting in the vehicle, while the blast fatally injured 61-year-old Samira Bardini as she stood nearby.
Abed Bardini was in one of two ambulances dispatched to the scene. Back at the hospital, he unloaded the stretcher with practiced professionalism, squinting into the late afternoon sun as he wheeled the body across the hospital courtyard.
Inside, medical staff pulled back the blanket to check for signs of life, and Bardini’s strength collapsed.
Later, his tears exhausted, he sat in the morgue beside Samira’s body with his head in his hands, comforted by his Red Crescent colleagues. They held a funeral prayer over her body in the parking lot, then Bardini personally helped carry the body into an ambulance for burial.
A spokesperson for the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strike. Israel says it carries out precise strikes in Gaza targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. But the strikes often kill women and children.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted around 250 in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war. Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children. Gaza’s Health Ministry said Wednesday that 102 deaths were recorded over the past 24 hours.
