DOHUK, Iraq: Khari Hasan Kalo peered out of the window of the repatriation flight as it touched down in northern Iraq.
It’s a place he and his family had hoped never to see again after they left for Belarus two months ago, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe.
Kalo, 35, had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to the Belarusian capital of Minsk, the first stop on a journey to the West.
His wife, 30-year-old Zena, had sold her few belongings on the gamble that left the family of six stranded for days in a cold forest on the border of Belarus and Poland. In the end, they returned home, fearing they were endangering the life of Kalo’s ailing 80-year-old mother.
Yet they say they would do it all again to escape their hopeless life, spent in a camp for displaced persons for the past seven years. The Kalos are Yazidis, a religious minority that was brutalized by Daesh militants when they overran northern Iraq in 2014.
Years after their lives were torn apart, Yazidis are still unable to return home or locate hundreds of women and children who had been snatched by the extremists. The Kalos’ home lies in ruins.
“If it wasn’t for my children and my mother, I would never have returned, I would have stayed in that forest at all costs rather than return to this tent,” Kalo said Friday, speaking to AP from the Karbato camp in Dohuk province in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region.
His mother, looking frail, slept throughout the interview.
The Kalos, including three children ages 5, 7, and 9, had returned from Belarus a day earlier.
“It’s not even our tent; it’s his sister’s,” his wife interjected. “It’s no place to raise children, have a life.”
The region is considered the most stable part of conflict-scarred Iraq, yet Iraqi Kurds made up a large group among thousands of migrants from the Middle East who had flown to Belarus since the summer. Even in Iraq’s more prosperous north, growing unemployment and corruption is fueling migration, and the Yazidi community has endured particular hardship.
On Thursday, hundreds of Iraqis returned home from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union. The repatriation came after thousands of migrants became stuck at the Poland-Belarus border amid rising tensions between the two countries.
Kalo’s family was among 430 people who flew from Minsk back to Iraq, where 390 got off at Irbil International Airport before the flight continued to Baghdad.
The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns to destabilize the EU in retaliation for its sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime following a harsh crackdown on internal dissent. Belarus denies engineering the crisis, which has seen migrants entering the country since summer, lured by easy tourist visas, and then trying to cross into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all EU members.
Kalo didn’t mind if a geopolitical game was being played at his expense if it got his family out of Iraq.
“So what if I was a pawn in someone’s hands if it gets me to Germany?” he said.
Since being displaced, the family had gotten increasingly desperate. Their tent burned down in an accidental fire in June that ravaged the Sharia camp, also in Dohuk. They tried to return to their original home in Sinjar but found their house uninhabitable.
He heard from friends about Kurds finding their way to Germany after Belarus eased visa requirements last spring. He begged his brother in Australia to wire him $9,000 to pay the smugglers’ asking price for his wife, three young children and mother.
He also had saved money from his time as a policeman — cash that was hard-won because he endured discrimination as a Yazidi.
“What good is a job if it’s still not enough to feed your family?” he said of his decision to quit.
The Kalos took the land route to Istanbul in September, and boarded flights to Minsk the following month. There, they headed straight to the Polish border. With two other Iraqi families, the Kalos dug under the border fence, reaching the other side in darkness.
They walked for four days in search of a GPS point where they were promised a car would meet them and take them straight to Germany.
But that never happened.
Instead, on the fourth day, Kalo’s family ran out of food as temperatures dropped in the dense and soggy forest.
Polish authorities found them and sent them back across the border. They were greeted by an encampment of hundreds of migrants. Belarusian authorities were handing out wire cutters and pushing the migrants back through the razor wire.
Polish authorities used water cannons to repel them. But this did not deter Belarusian authorities, who beat and threatened them, Kalo said. He said they shouted: “Go (to) Poland!”
Still, husband and wife fought to stay, agreeing that anything was better than their life in a tent.
But with his mother struggling to survive as conditions grew increasingly squalid, Kalo sought the pity of the Belarusian authorities. They allowed them to return to Minsk to seek medical help.
Kalo heard the Iraqi government had agreed to repatriate citizens free of charge. He turned to his wife and they considered their choices: Return to their desperate lives in Iraq, or bear the responsibility if his mother died.
Reluctantly, they put their names on the list.
But their hope is not lost, Kalo said, as his 5-year old daughter, Katarin, dug her face into his chest at the Karbato camp.
“I have two priorities now,” he said. “The first (is) to get a tent of our own. The second, to get back on my feet and leave this country. I will make it this time.”
He added: “If it was my last day on this Earth, I will spend it trying to leave.”
Yazidi family abandons EU dream, reluctantly returns to Iraq
https://arab.news/6vztg
Yazidi family abandons EU dream, reluctantly returns to Iraq
- Kalo, 35, had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to the Belarusian capital of Minsk
- The family returned home, fearing they were endangering the life of Kalo’s ailing 80-year-old mother
Child labourers among 19 dead in Egypt road accident: state media
A truck collided with the minibus carrying the laborers to their place of work from their home village of Kafr Al-Sanabsa in the Nile Delta, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Cairo, state-owned newspaper Akhbar Al-Youm reported.
According to a list of the names and ages of the dead published by another state-owned daily, Al-Ahram, most of the workers were teenagers — two of them just 14.
Egyptian media dubbed the girls “martyrs for their daily bread.”
Road accidents are common in Egypt, where traffic rules are unevenly enforced and many roads are in poor repair.
Accidents often involve underage laborers traveling to work in overcrowded minibuses in rural areas.
At least 1.3 million minors are engaged in some form of child labor in Egypt, according to official figures.
UN peacekeeping chief ‘very, very worried’ about future of Lebanon-Israel peace framework if UNIFIL withdraws
- Jean Pierre Lacroix tells Arab News Resolution 1701, governing peace between the nations, would be at risk if the UN Interim Force in Lebanon was no longer deployed
- Lebanese authorities back UNIFIL and want its mandate extended, but the mission faces financial pressures and the Security Council will review it in August
NEW YORK CITY: The future of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which governs the ceasefire and peacekeeping framework between Lebanon and Israel, would be at risk without the continuing presence of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, the UN’s top peacekeeper warned on Thursday.
Jean Pierre Lacroix, the organization’s head of peacekeeping operations, expressed his deep concern during a press conference following visits to Lebanon and Syria. He told Arab News he would be “very, very worried” about the future of the resolution if UNIFIL was withdrawn.
“UNIFIL is not an end in itself, and UNIFIL is not something standalone,” he said. “It’s a tool for supporting implementation of Resolution 1701, so the two are inextricably linked.
“I would be very, very worried about the future of Resolution 1701 if there is no UNIFIL on the ground to support the implementation of that resolution.”
UNIFIL, established in 2006 to monitor the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel and prevent hostilities in Lebanon’s volatile southern border region, continues to play a crucial role in providing support for the Lebanese army presence in areas south of the Litani River.
The peacekeepers assist in tasks such as mine clearance and rehabilitation efforts, serve as liaisons between Lebanese and Israeli forces, and help with deconfliction efforts.
Despite progress in enforcing the provisions of the resolution, Lacroix said that violations persist and more work is needed to ensure it is fully implemented.
During his trip, Lacroix met senior Lebanese officials, including President Joseph Aoun, the prime minister, the speaker of the parliament, and the commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces. All of them, he said, reiterated the critical need for UNIFIL to maintain its presence in the country, and Lebanese authorities have formally asked the Security Council to extend the mission’s mandate.
However, UNIFIL faces severe financial constraints. Lacroix said contingency planning is underway amid liquidity shortfalls and uncertainties about the funding commitments of UN member states, particularly in light of potential US opposition to extension of the mandate.
“To the best of my knowledge, there is no final position expressed by Israel or the United States,” he said in response to reports of possible opposition to the continued deployment of UNIFIL. “But we expect consistency from member states; they give mandates and then are expected to pay on time and in full.”
Lacroix stressed that in the absence of UNIFIL, practical and symbolic support for Resolution 1701 would erode, potentially escalating tensions in a region where stability remains fragile.
“The interlocutors in Lebanon were concerned and expressed the need for UNIFIL’s presence to help mitigate and reduce tensions that remain quite high in the region,” he said.
The Security Council is scheduled to review UNIFIL’s mandate in August. The mission currently comprises about 10,000 troops from more than 40 countries.
62 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, say Gaza rescuers
- Medical charity deplores ‘slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid’ amid hunger crisis
GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency said that Israeli forces killed at least 62 people on Friday, including 10 who were waiting for aid in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
The reported killing of people seeking aid marks the latest in a string of deadly incidents near aid sites in Gaza, where a US- and Israeli-backed foundation has largely replaced established humanitarian organizations.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said that 62 Palestinians had been killed on Friday by Israeli strikes or fire across the Palestinian territory.
When asked for comment, the Israeli military said it was looking into the incidents, and denied its troops fired in one of the locations in central Gaza where rescuers said one aid seeker was killed.
People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.
Antonio Guterres, UN secretary-general
Bassal said that six people were killed in southern Gaza near one of the distribution sites operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and one more in a separate incident in the center of the territory, where the army denied shooting “at all.”
Another three people were killed by a strike while waiting for aid southwest of Gaza City, Bassal said.
The Health Ministry in the territory says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies.
GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points.
Medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF on Friday slammed the GHF relief effort, calling it “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”
It noted that in the week of June 8, shortly after GHF opened a distribution site in central Gaza’s Netzarim corridor, the MSF field hospital in nearby Deir Al-Balah saw a 190 percent increase in bullet wound cases compared to the previous week.
Aitor Zabalgogeaskoa, MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement that, under how the distribution centers currently operate: “If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot.”
“If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot.”
“If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’, they get shot,” he added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the US-backed aid operation in Gaza is “inherently unsafe,” giving a blunt assessment: “It is killing people.”
He also said UN-led humanitarian efforts are being “strangled,” aid workers themselves are starving and Israel — as the occupying power — is required to agree to and facilitate aid deliveries into and throughout the Palestinian enclave.
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres said.
Meanwhile, Bassal said that 10 people were killed in five separate Israeli strikes near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, east of which he said “continuous Israeli artillery shelling” was reported on Friday.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said they shelled an Israeli vehicle east of Khan Younis on Friday.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said they had attacked a group of Israeli soldiers north of Khan Younis in coordination with the Al-Qassam Brigades.
Bassal added that 30 people were killed in six separate strikes in northern Gaza on Friday, including a fisherman who was targeted “by Israeli warships.”
He specified that eight of them were killed “after an Israeli airstrike hit Osama Bin Zaid School, which was housing displaced people” in northern Gaza.
In central Gaza’s Al-Bureij refugee camp, 12 people were killed in two separate Israeli strikes, Bassal said.
The 50th medic from the Palestine Red Crescent has been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, the PRCS said on Friday in a statement.
Haitham Bassam Abu Issa, a nurse at the PRCS clinic in Deir Al-Balah in the center of the Gaza strip, was killed while off duty on Thursday, the PRCS said.
“This brings the total number of PRCS staff and volunteers killed during the conflict to 50 – a deeply shocking figure,” the PRCS said.
Israeli restrictions on media in the Gaza Strip and difficulties in accessing some areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers and witnesses.
Israel’s military said it was continuing its operations in Gaza on Friday, after army chief Eyal Zamir announced earlier in the week that the focus would again shift to the territory.
The Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,331 people, mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The UN considers its figures reliable.
UN commission says Syria must end violence against Alawites and protect places of worship
- “Disturbingly, reports continue to circulate of ongoing killings and arbitrary arrests of members of the Alawite community,” Pinheiro said
- Pinheiro’s commission also “documented abductions by unknown individuals of at least six Alawite women”
BEIRUT: The head of a UN investigative commission on Friday called commitments made by the new authorities in Syria to protect the rights of minorities “encouraging” but said attacks have continued on members of the Alawite sect in the months since a major outbreak of sectarian violence on Syria’s coast.
Paulo Pinheiro, the head of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that the current Syrian government — led by Islamist former insurgents who ousted former Syrian President Bashar Assad — had given his team “unfettered access” to the coast and to witnesses of the violence and victims’ families.
“Disturbingly, reports continue to circulate of ongoing killings and arbitrary arrests of members of the Alawite community, as well as the confiscation of the property of those who fled the March violence,” he said.
Pinheiro’s commission also “documented abductions by unknown individuals of at least six Alawite women this spring in several Syrian governorates,” two of whom remain missing, and has received “credible reports of more abductions,” he said.
Pinheiro also called on authorities to put in place more protections for places of worship after Sunday’s suicide bombing attack on a church outside of Damascus. The attack, which killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens more, was the first of its kind to take place in the Syrian capital in years.
The Syrian government has said that the perpetrators belonged to a cell of the Daesh group and that they thwarted a subsequent attempt to target a Shiite shrine in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb in Damascus.
“Attacks on places of worship are outrageous and unacceptable,” Pinheiro said. “The authorities must ensure the protection of places of worship and threatened communities and ensure that perpetrators and enablers are held accountable.”
Assad was deposed in a lightning rebel offensive in December, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war.
In March, hundreds of civilians, most of them from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs, were killed in revenge attacks after clashes broke out between pro-Assad armed groups and the new government security forces on the Syrian coast.
Pinheiro said his commission had documented scattered “revenge attacks” that happened before that, including killings in several villages in Hama and Homs provinces in late January in which men who had handed over their weapons under a “settlement” process set up for former soldiers and members of security forces under Assad, believing that they would be granted an amnesty in exchange for disarmament, were then “ill-treated and executed.”
He praised the interim government’s formation of a body tasked with investigating the attacks on the coast and said government officials had told his team that “dozens of alleged perpetrators” were arrested.
Pinheiro said the government needs to carry out a “reform and vetting program” as it integrates a patchwork of former rebel factions into a new army and security services and enact “concrete policies to put an end to Syria’s entrenched cycles of violence and revenge, in a context where heightened tensions and sectarian divisions have been reignited.”
13 killed including 3 children in Sudan paramilitary strikes in Darfur
- Rapid Support Forces accused of shelling city of El-Fasher
- UN seeking to secure humanitarian pause in the city
KHARTOUM: Paramilitary shelling of the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher in western Sudan killed 13 people including 3 children on Friday, a medical source told AFP as the United Nations announced it was seeking to secure a humanitarian pause in the city.
“Another 21 people were injured due to the artillery shelling from the Rapid Support militia,” the source said, referring to the Rapid Support Forces, at war with the regular army since April 2023.
The RSF has besieged the North Darfur state capital since May of last year and has launched repeated attacks in an attempt to seize the city of an estimated million people.
The strike came hours after Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council said army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan’s office had agreed in a phone call with UN chief Antonio Guterres to a “week-long humanitarian truce in El-Fasher to support UN efforts and facilitate aid access to thousands of besieged civilians.”
Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday said “we are making contacts with both sides with that objective.”
The UN has repeatedly warned of the plight of trapped civilians in the city, where hunger has pushed families to survive on eating leaves and peanut shells as nearly no aid is allowed in.
Civilians report soaring prices and a near-total absence of health facilities, nearly all of which have been forced shut by the fighting.
A World Food Programme facility inside El-Fasher was damaged from repeated RSF shelling last month, and in early June five aid workers were killed in an attack on a UN convoy seeking to supply the city.
The paramilitary has repeatedly attacked the city and its surrounding famine-hit displacement camps, killing hundreds of civilians and pushing hundreds of thousands of already displaced people to flee.
UNICEF has described the situation as “hell on earth” for at least 825,000 children trapped in and around El-Fasher.
The RSF conquered nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur in the early months of the war, but has been unable to seize North Darfur state capital El-Fasher despite besieging the city for over a year.
An RSF source told AFP Friday the paramilitary had not received a ceasefire proposal.
Aid sources say an official famine declaration is impossible given the lack of access to data, but mass starvation has already taken hold of the city.
Over a million people are on the brink of famine in North Darfur, according to the latest available UN figures.
Of the 10 million people currently internally displaced in Sudan — the world’s largest displacement crisis — nearly 20 percent are in North Darfur.
