DUBAI: Iranian demonstrators defied a heavy police presence Sunday night to protest their country’s days of denials that it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane carrying 176 people, the latest unrest to roil the capital amid soaring tensions with the United States.
Videos posted online showed protesters shouting anti-government slogans and moving through subway stations and sidewalks, many near Azadi, or Freedom, Square after an earlier call for people to demonstrate there. Other videos suggested similar protests were taking place in other Iranian cities.
Riot police in black uniforms and helmets earlier massed in Vali-e Asr Square, at Tehran University and other landmarks.
Revolutionary Guard members patrolled the city on motorbikes, and plainclothes security men were also out in force. People looked down as they walked briskly past police, hoping not to draw attention to themselves.
The plane crash early Wednesday killed everyone on board, mostly Iranians and Iranian-Canadians. After initially pointing to a technical failure and insisting the armed forces were not to blame, authorities on Saturday admitted to accidentally shooting it down in the face of mounting evidence and accusations by Western leaders.
Iran downed the flight as it braced for possible American retaliation after firing ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq housing US forces. The missile attack, which caused no casualties, was a response to the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general, in a US airstrike in Baghdad. But no retaliation came.
Iranians have expressed anger over the downing of the plane and the misleading explanations from senior officials in the wake of the tragedy. They are also mourning the dead, which included many young people who were studying abroad.
“Even talking about it makes my heart beat faster and makes me sad,” said Zahra Razeghi, a Tehran resident. “I feel ashamed when I think about their families.”
“The denial and covering up the truth over the past three days greatly added to the suffering and pain of the families, and me,” she added.
Another individual, who identified himself only as Saeed, said Iran’s largely state-run media had concealed the cause of the crash for “political reasons.”
“Later developments changed the game, and they had to tell the truth,” he said.
Earlier Sunday, hundreds of students gathered at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University to mourn the victims and protest against authorities for concealing the cause of the crash, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.
Bahareh Arvin, a reformist member of the Tehran City Council, took to social media to say she was resigning in protest at the government’s lies and corruption.
“With the current mechanism, there is no hope of reform,” she said.
Some Iranian artists, including famed director Masoud Kimiai, withdrew from an upcoming international film festival. Two state TV hosts resigned in protest over the false reporting about the cause of the plane crash.
President Donald Trump, who has expressed support for past waves of anti-government demonstrations in Iran, addressed the country’s leaders in a tweet, saying “DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS.”
“The World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching,” he tweeted.
Iranians took to the streets in November after the government hiked gas prices, holding large protests in several cities. The government shut down Internet access for days, making it difficult to gauge the scale of the protests and the subsequent crackdown. Amnesty International later said more than 300 people were killed.
A candlelight ceremony late Saturday in Tehran turned into a protest, with hundreds of people chanting against the country’s leaders — including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — and police dispersing them with tear gas. Protests were also held in the city of Isfahan and elsewhere.
Police briefly detained the British ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, who said he went to the vigil without knowing it would turn into a protest.
“Can confirm I wasn’t taking part in any demonstrations!” he tweeted. “Went to an event advertised as a vigil for victims of #PS752 tragedy. Normal to want to pay respects — some of victims were British. I left after 5 mins, when some started chanting.”
He said he was arrested 30 minutes after leaving the area.
Britain said its envoy was detained “without grounds or explanation” and in “flagrant violation of international law.”
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later tweeted that Macaire was arrested “as an unknown foreigner in an illegal gathering.”
Araghchi said when police informed him that a man was arrested who claimed to be the British ambassador, he didn’t believe them. But he said that once he spoke to Macaire by phone, he realized it was him, and that the ambassador was freed 15 minutes later.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry later summoned the British ambassador over his ”illegal and inappropriate presence” at the protest, it said on its Telegram channel.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, a member of Iran’s parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, accused the ambassador of organizing protests and called for his expulsion. Dozens of hard-liners later gathered outside the British Embassy, chanting “Death to England.”
They also called for the ambassador to be expelled and the embassy to be closed.
Iranian media, meanwhile, focused on the admission of responsibility for the crash, with several newspapers calling for those responsible to apologize and resign.
The hard-line daily Vatan-e Emrouz bore the front-page headline “A sky full of sadness,” while the Hamshahri daily went with “Shame,” and the IRAN daily said “Unforgivable.”
Mehdi Karroubi, an opposition activist under house arrest, lashed out at Khamenei himself, saying that as commander in chief he was “directly responsible.”
“If you were aware and you let military and security authorities deceive people, then there is no doubt you lack the attributes of constitutional leadership,” he said in a statement.
Criticism of the supreme leader is punishable by up to two years in prison.
Tensions with the United States eased after the ballistic missile attack, when Trump declined to respond and welcomed Iran’s apparent decision to stand down.
The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and other officials Sunday in Tehran. Qatar has warm relations with the US and Iran.
Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis was also leading a high-level delegation to Iran, including the defense and foreign ministers. Syrian state media described it as an “important visit” in light of recent events, without elaborating. Iran is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war, and Soleimani had mobilized militias and coordinated military aid.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was also traveling to Iran, with plans to visit Saudi Arabia the following day. And Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Saudi Arabia for talks with King Salman as part of a tour of oil-producing Gulf Arab states aimed at promoting peace.
Defying police, Iranians protest over plane shootdown
https://arab.news/5zdej
Defying police, Iranians protest over plane shootdown
- Iranian authorities admitted on Saturday to accidentally shooting down an airplane with 176 people on board, mostly Iranians
- President Donald Trump expressed his support for the anti-government demonstrations in Iran on Twitter
France condemns attack on Red Cross in Sudan
PARIS: France on Friday condemned “in the strongest terms” an attack on an International Committee of the Red Cross convoy in war-torn Sudan that killed two staff and injured three others.
“France calls on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, which obliges them to protect humanitarian and health staff and guarantee complete, safe and unhindered humanitarian access,” said French foreign ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine.
The ICRC said gunmen killed two drivers and injured three staff in South Darfur on Thursday as they returned from a humanitarian mission.
A brutal conflict between the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of his ex-deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has torn the country apart for more than a year.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions more to flee their homes in what the United Nations has called the “largest displacement crisis in the world.”
It has also triggered acute food shortages and a humanitarian crisis that has left the northeast African country’s people at risk of starvation.
UN official warns that famine in northern Gaza is already ‘full-blown’
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
- The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month
WASHINGTON: A top UN official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.
Cindy McCain, the American director of the UN World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.
“It’s horror,” McCain told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south.”
She said a ceasefire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entrance into Gaza and says it is beginning to allow in more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.
The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month. The next update will not come before this summer.
One of the US Agency for International Development’s humanitarian officials in Gaza told The Associated Press that on-the-ground preparations for a new US-led sea route were on track to bring in more food — including treatment for hundreds of thousands of starving children — by early or mid-May. That’s when the American military expects to finish building a floating pier to receive the shipments.
Ramping up the delivery of aid on the planned US-backed sea route will be gradual as aid groups test the distribution and security arrangements for relief workers, the USAID official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity over security concerns for work done in a conflict zone. They were some of the agency’s first comments on the status of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza pier project, for which USAID is helping coordinate on-the-ground security and distribution.
At a factory in rural Georgia on Friday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pointed to the food crises in Gaza and other parts of the world as she announced a $200 million investment aimed at increasing production of emergency nutritional paste for starving children under 5.
Power spoke to factory workers, peanut farmers and local dignitaries sitting among pallets of the paste at the Mana nonprofit in Fitzgerald. It is one of two factories in the US that produces the nutritional food, which is used in clinical settings and made from ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil, ready to eat in plastic pouches resembling large ketchup packets.
“This effort, this vision meets the moment,” Power said. “And it could not be more timely, more necessary or more important.”
Under pressure from the US and others, Israeli officials in recent weeks have begun slowly reopening some border crossings for relief shipments.
But aid coming through the sea route, once it’s operational, still will serve only a fraction — half a million people — of those who need help in Gaza. Aid organizations including USAID stress that getting more aid through border crossings is essential to staving off famine.
Children under 5 are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters curtail food. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from hunger in early March and said most of the dead were children.
Power said the UN has called for 400 metric tons of the nutritional paste “in light of the severe hunger that is pervading across Gaza right now, and the severe, acute humanitarian crisis.” USAID expects to provide a quarter of that, she said.
Globally, she said at the Georgia factory, the treatment made there “will save untold lives, millions of lives.”
USAID is coordinating with the World Food Program and other humanitarian partners and governments on security and distribution for the pier project, while US military forces finish building it. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to ease the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the US provides military support for Israel, announced the project in early March.
US Central Command said in a statement Friday that offshore assembly of the floating pier has been temporarily paused due to high winds and sea swells, which caused unsafe conditions for soldiers. The partially built pier and the military vessels involved have gone to Israel’s Port of Ashdod, where the work will continue.
A US official said the high seas will delay the installation for several days, possibly until later next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details, said the pause could last longer if the bad weather continues because military personnel and divers have to get into the water for the final installation.
The struggles this week with the first aid delivery through a newly reopened land corridor into north Gaza underscored the uncertainty about security and the danger still facing relief workers. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed Wednesday. Once inside Gaza, the convoy was commandeered by Hamas militants, before UN officials reclaimed it.
In Gaza, the nutritional treatment for starving children is most urgently needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most aid supplies, bombarded by Israeli airstrikes and driven into hiding by fighting.
Acute malnutrition rates there among children under 5 have surged from 1 percent before the war to 30 percent five months later, the USAID official said. The official called it the fastest such climb in hunger in recent history, more than in grave conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.
One of the few medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan hospital, is besieged by parents bringing in thousands of children with malnutrition for treatment, the official said. Aid officials believe many more starving children remain unseen and in need, with families unable to bring them through fighting and checkpoints for care.
Saving the gravely malnourished children in particular requires both greatly increased deliveries of aid and sustained calm in fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities around the territory and families can safely bring children in for the sustained treatment needed.
Hamas says Israeli PM trying to derail Gaza truce deal
- Israel has killed more than 34,622 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: A top Hamas official accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail a proposed Gaza truce and hostage release deal with his threats to keep fighting the Palestinian militant group.
“Netanyahu was the obstructionist of all previous rounds of dialogue... and it is clear that he still is,” senior Hamas official Hossam Badran told AFP by telephone.
Foreign mediators have waited for a Hamas response to a proposal to halt the fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners, which its chief Ismail Haniyeh has said the group was considering in a “positive spirit.”
A major stumbling block has been that, while Hamas has demanded a lasting ceasefire, Netanyahu has vowed to crush its remaining fighters in the far-southern city of Rafah, which is packed with displaced civilians.
The hawkish prime minister has insisted he will send ground troops into Rafah, despite strong concerns voiced by UN agencies and ally Washington for the safety of the 1.2 million civilians inside the city.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was “deeply concerned that a full-scale military operation in Rafah... could lead to a bloodbath.”
“The broken health system would not be able to cope with a surge in casualties and deaths that a Rafah incursion would cause,” an agency statement said.
Badran charged that Netanyahu’s insistence on attacking Rafah was calculated to “thwart any possibility of concluding an agreement” in the negotiations brokered by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators.
Israeli air strikes killed several more people in Rafah overnight, Palestinian medics and the civil defense agency said.
One bereaved resident, Sanaa Zoorob, said her sister and six of her nieces and nephews were killed.
Two of the children “were found in pieces in their mother’s embrace,” Zoorob said, appealing for “a permanent ceasefire and a full withdrawal from Gaza.”
The war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also took some 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza.
The army says 35 of them are dead, including 49-year-old Dror Or, a resident of the badly hit kibbutz Beeri, whose death was confirmed by authorities on Friday.
Israel’s devastating retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34,622 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Israel has weathered an international backlash over the spiralling death toll.
Pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked US campuses for weeks were more muted Friday after a series of clashes with police, mass arrests and a stern White House directive to restore order.
But similar demonstrations have spread to campuses in Britain, France, Mexico, Australia and elsewhere.
Turkiye announced on Thursday that it was suspending all trade with Israel, valued by the government at $9.5 billion a year.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move was intended to “force Israel to agree to a ceasefire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid to enter” Gaza.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have carried out months of attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea in a costly blow to maritime trade, said they would extend their attacks on Israel-bound shipping to the Mediterranean “immediately.”
Israel’s siege has pushed many of Gaza’s 2.4 million people to the brink of famine.
US pressure has prompted Israel to facilitate more aid deliveries to Gaza, including through the reopened Erez crossing that leads directly into the hardest-hit north.
Food availability has improved “a little bit,” said the World Health Organization’s representative in the Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn.
But he warned that the threat of famine had “absolutely not” gone away.
Five Israeli human rights groups that took Israel to court over restrictions on aid to war-torn Gaza said the state’s insistence that it has met its obligations was “incomprehensible.”
The government had told the supreme court that the steps it had taken went “above and beyond” its obligations under international law.
Gisha and four other Israeli non-profit organizations retorted that the shortages evident inside Gaza indicated “the respondents are not meeting their obligations, not to the required extent nor at the necessary speed.”
The US-based charity World Central Kitchen resumed operations this week, after suspending them in the aftermath of Israeli drone strikes that killed seven of its staff as they unloaded aid in Gaza on April 1.
The group’s kitchen manager Zakria Yahya Abukuwaik said: “We realized after the kitchen closed that many mouths were left hungry.”
World Central Kitchen was involved in an effort earlier this year to establish a new maritime aid corridor to Gaza from Cyprus to help compensate for dwindling deliveries by land from Israel.
The project suffered a new blow Friday when the US military announced high winds had forced troops working to assemble a temporary aid pier off the Gaza coast to relocate to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
“The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when sea states subside,” US Central Command said in a statement.
Several Arab and Western governments have also airdropped aid into northern Gaza. Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Basal said one person was killed and several injured when they were hit by falling pallets.
€1bn EU ‘bribe’ over Syrian refugees stirs anger in Lebanon
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday vowed to step up deportations as part of a crackdown on illegal residents in the country.
“This matter is not up for debate, and orders have been given to the relevant authorities to implement what is necessary,” he said.
Mikati’s comments came after the EU on Thursday announced a €1 billion ($1.07 billion) aid package for Lebanon, mostly to boost border control in a bid to curb refugee flows across the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus and Italy.
Lebanon hosts more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees.
In a television interview, Mikati said: “Any Syrian residing in Lebanon illegally will be deported, and a different approach will be taken toward all registered individuals compared to unregistered ones.”
While Mikati welcomed the announcement of increased European aid, some political and religious figures described the package as a “bribe” to resettle Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and warned that Lebanon is “not for sale.”
Local newspaper headlines highlighted the objections, which follow increasing numbers of murders, thefts, and kidnappings in recent months carried out by Syrians who entered Lebanon illegally.
Syrian inmates now make up 35 percent of Lebanon’s prison population, according to Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi.
Cyprus recently complained about the increasing number of boats arriving on its shores carrying Syrians who traveled via Lebanon. Dozens remain stranded on the island, which refuses to accept them as refugees, and wants to return them to Lebanon.
Mikati said that there is “a European division” on the issue of safe areas in Syria for the return of refugees.
“We will undertake a campaign in this context to push the EU to take a decision that there are safe areas in Syria,” he added.
The announcement of the EU package was made as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Lebanon on Thursday with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
However, Nicolas Sehnaoui, a member of the Strong Lebanon parliamentary bloc, said: “Keep the billion euros, and take an additional billion in exchange for taking all the Syrian refugees to European countries.”
Razi Al-Hajj, a member of the Strong Republic bloc, described the presence of Syrian refugees in the country as a “ticking time bomb.”
He said: “If Mikati wants to dispel the doubts of the Lebanese about the EU’s agenda in Lebanon, and the government’s true intention, he must begin implementing what he promised, which (means) deporting anyone residing illegally on Lebanese territory.”
Change party MP Waddah Sadek said: “Those who are residing illegally in Lebanon — the number of whom is significant — should be deported. An appropriate solution should then be reached regarding those who sought refuge in Lebanon for fear of getting killed or persecuted.”
Jaafari Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kabalan said in his Friday sermon: “We don’t want to slaughter Lebanon with 1 billion poisoned euros.
“Europe is Washington’s partner in the devastation in Syria and the siege on Lebanon. I warn those in charge against assuming the role of Europe’s security and political guard. The Syrian refugees’ case requires an urgent resolution. We ran out of time, and our country’s demography, stability, security, economy and livelihood are threatened.”
Maroun Al-Khawli from the National Campaign for the Return of Syrian Refugees, said: “Lebanon will not be for sale under any circumstances.”
He said the aid package “is a humiliating deal for Lebanon’s dignity and sovereignty, and a dark spot in the history of the caretaker government.”
Shiite cleric Ali Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in his Friday sermon: “The European Union resorts to the financial aspect to persuade the Lebanese when it comes to the Syrian refugees’ file.
“However, this matter is not limited to the financial dimension. It requires us to address its root causes and organize the Syrian presence in a way that doesn’t cause any internal repercussions, concerns and tensions that might affect the relationship between Lebanese and Syrian refugees.”
In a statement, the Progress Party said: “The European countries’ policy ensures that the Syrian refugees’ boats don’t reach their shores. This is what made them offer Lebanon €1 billion to make up for their presence in the country.
“The governing system accepted the bribe to recycle itself at the expense of the accumulating crises without organizing this file.”
The party proposed setting up camps for Syrian refugees on the border, and securing their needs through international support.
Egypt braces for second summer of power cuts as gas supplies dwindle
- The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running
CAIRO: Among the bustling workshops of central Cairo’s Al-Sabtiyah district, Om Ghada’s blacksmith business has seen profits dip as two-hour power cuts each day returned after a brief suspension during the holy month of Ramadan.
When scheduled outages began last summer it came as a shock to Egyptians accustomed to years of reliable power supplies under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and the government promised they would be temporary.
But supplies of the natural gas that helped generate an electricity surplus are dwindling and the power cuts are back.
The outages “create a lot of obstacles and cut into my profit,” said Om Ghada, as sparks flew from a metal cutter nearby. She owns the workshop, which is among dozens in the area that rely on electricity to power machines.
“One customer yesterday waited two hours, until they became impatient and left,” she said.
While Egypt recently secured record investments from the United Arab Emirates and an expanded IMF program, easing a foreign currency crisis, power cuts are a reminder of underlying economic challenges.
The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running. The government initially blamed them on high temperatures, but they continued through 2023 after summer ended even after the government paused exports to meet demand.
Egypt has been seeking a role as a regional energy exporter, eyeing electricity sales to countries including Saudi Arabia and Libya, planning an interconnector to Greece, and shipping Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) cargoes from two liquefaction plants.
But development of renewables has been halting and gas supplies are in doubt because of a lack of large discoveries since the giant Zohr field in 2015. That pushed gas production in 2023 to its lowest level since 2017, and the government recently started importing LNG cargoes.
Officials have blamed power cuts on rising demand from a growing population of 106 million, mega-projects backed by El-Sisi, and urban development.
Cuts to electricity subsidies have been slowed as the economy came under pressure in recent years.
Egypt’s electricity ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SALES DOWN
The power cuts were suspended over Ramadan and the Eid holiday that followed, and local media said they would also be halted for labor day and spring holidays going over this weekend. But they are sometimes hard to predict and are hurting small businesses that play a crucial role in an economy where growth has slowed and is expected to ease to 2.8 percent in the current financial year ending in June, from above 4 percent last year.
Ahmed Hussein, an air conditioning technician in Al-Sabtiyah, said daytime power cuts reduced productivity by 40 percent. South of central Cairo in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, Essam said sales at the dessert shop where he works were down 30 percent since the regular power cuts began.
“As long as there’s no electricity there are no sales. The safe and the till aren’t working,” Essam, who didn’t give his last name, said. “Customers can’t see anything.”
Sales of generators are up, but many can’t afford them.
The cuts have drawn ire on social media, where some have complained about being stuck in elevators, or unable to use them, and others have bemoaned the lack of air conditioning in hotter areas in southern Egypt.
At the launch of a state-run cloud computing data center this week, El-Sisi encouraged citizens to focus on developing sectors like information technology, saying “this needs brains, not a factory or anything else.”
But as one social media post quipped in response: “This needs electricity and unlimited Internet.”
