Region

TEHRAN — An earthquake struck early Friday near Iran's highest peak and jolted Tehran, killing at least one person and injuring more than 20 as people ran for their lives.

The shallow 4.6 magnitude quake hit at 00:48 am (20:18 GMT) near the city of Damavand, about 55 kilometres east of Tehran, the US Geological Survey said.

It saw scores of residents of Tehran flee buildings for the safety of the capital's streets and parks, AFP journalists reported.

Many spent the rest of the night sleeping in their cars on the side of the road, apparently too fearful to return to their homes.

Some wore face masks, a sign of the times in a country already struggling to contain the Middle East's deadliest outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

The temblor struck as Iranians were either sleeping or resting after iftar, the meal breaking the daytime fast observed by Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan.

"We were sitting down when the earthquake struck," said 45-year-old Tehran resident Ahmad.

"We felt it completely shaking [the building], and then we all went out of the house together to be outside and not to be in danger if an aftershock struck."

His wife Maryam, who like him was wrapped in a blanket, said they escaped the apartment using the stairwell.

"We quickly took the children by their hands and got out," said the 37-year-old housewife.

Coronavirus crisis

Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on Twitter that the tremor claimed the life of one person.

He called on people to "keep calm" and to follow safety guidelines.

Iran's national emergency services said the person who died was a 60-year-old man in Damavand county.

Twenty-three people were injured in Tehran and Alborz provinces, a spokesman for the organisation told AFP.

The Iranian Red Crescent said its staff were on standby but that so far there were no reports of any collapsed buildings in which to carry out search and rescue operations.

"The situation is now stable, but we are still completely on alert" in the provinces of Tehran, Alborz, Mazandaran, Qom and Semnan, said Hamed Sajjadi, head of the organisation's rescue operations.

Six people were hospitalised, he told AFP.

"We were ready to accommodate people in stadiums with respect to social distancing, but it was not necessary," he said, referring to health guidelines aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus.

The USGS said the quake struck at a depth of 10 kilometres. Its epicentre was south of Mount Damavand, a largely inactive volcano which at 5,671 metres is Iran's highest peak.

Tehran University's Seismological Centre said the quake had a magnitude of 5.1 magnitude and was at a depth of seven kilometres.

It reported a series of aftershocks, the most powerful measuring 4.0.

Deadly history

Iran sits on top of major tectonic plates and experiences frequent seismic activity.

A 5.7 magnitude earthquake that rattled the western village of Habash-e Olya on February 23 killed at least nine people over the border in neighbouring Turkey.

In November 2017, a 7.3-magnitude quake in Iran's western province of Kermanshah killed 620 people.

In 2003, a 6.6-magnitude quake in southeastern Iran levelled the ancient mud-brick city of Bam and killed at least 31,000 people.

Iran's deadliest quake was a 7.4-magnitude tremor in 1990 that killed 40,000 people in northern Iran, injured 300,000 and left half a million homeless.

In December and January, two earthquakes struck near Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Iran's Gulf Arab neighbours have raised concerns about the reliability of the country's sole nuclear power facility, and the risk of radioactive leaks in case of a major earthquake.

DAMASCUS — Syria postponed a parliamentary election for a second time on Thursday as part of measures to protect the war-battered country from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Syrian government has recorded 44 cases, including three deaths in areas under its control, while the Kurdish administration in northeastern Syria has reported three cases, including one death.

The president's office said on its official social media accounts that the vote will be pushed back to July 19, from the scheduled date of May 20 as "part of preventive measures" to combat the virus.

The polls, to be held across government-run areas, are the third since the start nine years ago of a conflict that has killed at least 384,000 people.

They were initially supposed to happen on April 13 before the government in March enforced a lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.

President Bashar Assad warned on Monday of a "catastrophe" if the easing of lockdown measures in the war-battered country is mishandled.

A night-time curfew is still in force and travel is prohibited between provinces.

But the government last week started to gradually lift restrictions by allowing markets and businesses to reopen during the day.

This week, it said Friday sermons would resume in mosques.

After holding barely a fifth of the country five years ago, Russian intervention has helped the regime reclaim control over more than 70 percent of the national territory.

PARIS — North Africans say they are missing the taste of Ramadan, as coronavirus restrictions deprive them of traditional mealtime gatherings, evening outings and beloved sweets during the Muslim holy month.

"It's not the usual Ramadan," said one woman shopping in Ariana, near the capital Tunis, looking desperately for the cakes and sweets that normally fill the stalls during the fasting month.

Ramadan is traditionally a time for worship and socialising.

The faithful refrain from consuming food and water during the day, breaking their fast at dusk with family and friends for a meal known as iftar, and often going out afterwards.

But this year, social distancing measures have largely put a stop to the usual Ramadan traditions.

Mosques in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia have been closed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, preventing special evening prayers.

There are no long nights of musical gatherings, and in the medina of Tunis, there are no Sufi-inspired "hadra" chants and no "stambali" -- a mystical trance dance ritual.

The old cities of Rabat, Casablanca and Tunis, normally crowded after iftar, are like ghost towns.

"Even the meals that bring all the family together around the same table are impossible -- I'm afraid for my parents, who are elderly and sick", said Maissa, a 46-year-old teacher from Algiers.

"The coronavirus has taken all the flavour out of the holy month this year," said the mother-of-four.

'Unprecedented'

In Morocco, dates -- a Ramadan staple -- and sweets are still available at the markets or in supermarkets.

"But I can't travel to have iftar at my parents' place" due to the night-time curfew, lamented one 35-year-old teacher who lives alone in Marrakesh.

"No cafes, no people in the mosques... it's unprecedented", he said.

In Algeria, after businesses were allowed to reopen at the start of Ramadan in April, crowding led authorities to reimpose closures in some areas.

Some in the capital Algiers travelled to Boufarik -- around 30 kilometres away in Blida province, the epicentre of the country's virus outbreak in early March -- for a sugary sweet known as zlabia.

One man, Salem, said that in 30 years he had never failed to have zlabia from Boufarik on the table for Ramadan, but this year he came back empty-handed.

"Most of the stalls are closed and those that are open are crowded, so I turned back", the 51-year-old said.

Authorities in Algeria have even prohibited community restaurants and soup kitchens where volunteers serve meals to the poor during the holy month.

Fekhreddine Zerrouki said his charity organisation had planned to serve more than 1,500 meals a day, but was doing deliveries instead.

Samir, a volunteer with the Algerian Red Crescent, said the number of people benefiting from such Ramadan charity initiatives was "very low compared to the number of people in need".

"We are missing the taste of Ramadan because of the lack of zlabia or the lost evenings, but some people don't even have dates for breaking their fast", he said.

BAGHDAD — Iraq's former spy chief Mustafa Kadhemi took office as prime minister on Thursday facing a staggering economic crisis, a pandemic and the spectre of renewed protests after breaking months of political deadlock.

Parliament approved the new government overnight after last-minute changes to the cabinet line-up, nearly a month after the ex-head of the National Intelligence Service (INIS) was nominated by President Barham Saleh.

It was the third attempt to replace outgoing premier Adel Abdel Mahdi.

The nomination of 53-year-old Kadhemi followed weeks of lobbying of deeply divided political parties, including those close to neighbouring Iran who had been wary of his ties to the United States.

One hardline faction had accused Kadhemi of conspiring with Washington over the January drone strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis outside Baghdad airport.

But on Thursday morning, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted a congratulatory message to the new premier, saying: "Iran always stands with the Iraqi people and their choice of administration."

Kadhemi appeared to have brought Iran-aligned factions on board, with endorsements from both Soleimani's successor as Quds Force chief Ismail Qaani, and from Mohammed Kawtharani, the pointman on Iraqi affairs for powerful Iran-backed Lebanese movement Hizbollah.

Kadhemi had already received a call from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who announced a 120-day waiver extension on US sanctions to let Iraq buy gas from neighbouring Iran.

The waiver is "a display of our desire to help provide the right conditions for success",  the State Department said.

- A partial government -

Iraqi lawmakers, observing social distancing and wearing masks and gloves to curb the spread of the coronavirus, approved 15 ministers out of a prospective 22-seat cabinet.

Seven ministries -- including the key oil and foreign affairs positions -- remain empty as political parties squabble over shares.

Outgoing premier Abdel Mahdi, 77, resigned late last year following months of protests decrying rampant corruption, unemployment and a political class seen as beholden to neighbouring Iran.

He became the first prime minister to step down since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, but stayed on as caretaker premier in the absence of a successor.

Ministers who were approved included those for the sensitive portfolios of finance, interior, defence, health and electricity -- securing the majority that Kadhemi needed for his Cabinet to be considered viable.

The new government is meant to hold early elections seen as an opportunity for a political reset for the country, but it will also face urgent policy priorities.

Iraq's economy is set to shrink by 9.7 per cent this year and poverty rates may double, making it the country's worst annual performance since 2003, the World Bank has warned.

The enormous deficit brought on by collapsing crude prices may force the cabinet to trim salaries for state workers, potentially sparking new anti-government rallies.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 100 Iraqis, and the country's dilapidated health system is at risk of being overwhelmed by a spike in cases.

In-house trouble 

Kadhemi will also have to resolve budget and oil disputes with the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, and lead a strategic dialogue with the United States in June over economic and military ties.

In the phone call, Pompeo mentioned talks with Kadhemi and agreed on "working together to provide the Iraqi people the prosperity and security they deserve", the State Department said.

The new premier has pledged to strike a balance between competing allies Washington and Tehran, which have been at deepening loggerheads since the US reimposed tough sanctions on Iran in 2018.

The United States has also blamed Iran and its allies for a spate of rocket attacks on troops in Iraq that have killed US, British and Iraqi forces in recent months.

Just hours before parliament's vote, a new rocket attack -- the first since late March -- hit a military complex outside the Baghdad airport where US troops are based.

Iraq's parliament voted to oust all foreign forces, including some 5,200 US troops, after Soleimani's killing in January -- but the decision has yet to be implemented.

And remnants of the Daesh group have apparently stepped up attacks in recent weeks, two years after the country declared the militants  defeated.

In his overnight address to parliament, Kadhemi pledged to hold early elections and draft an emergency budget law.

But Kadhemi's challenges are not just external, said Renad Mansour, a researcher at the London-based Chatham House think tank.

"Kadhemi will try to retain some level of independence from the political blocs as prime minister, but the biggest spoiler could be holdovers from the Abdel Mahdi administration who will be wary of him," Mansour told AFP.

"It will be increasingly difficult to do the kind of horse-trading required to reach consensus in Iraq given the level of fragmentation in the political scene," he said.

HASAKEH, Syria — Years after jihadists stole her away to Syria, 17-year-old Layla Eido finally recontacted her family in Iraq several months ago. But a coronavirus lockdown has delayed their long-awaited reunion.

The teenager from Iraq's minority Yazidi community has been stuck in northeast Syria since the Daesh group's so-called "caliphate" collapsed last year, ending her captivity.

But just when she was on the cusp of reuniting with her family, the novel coronavirus pandemic forced both Iraq and Syria to close their borders, stalling her return.

"The coronavirus is keeping me from seeing my family," she told AFP inside a home where she is staying near the Syrian city of Hasakeh.

"I am counting the days until I see them again."

The soft-spoken girl is among dozens of Yazidi women and girls who were abducted by Daesh from their ancestral Iraqi home of Sinjar in 2014, then enslaved, systematically raped, or married off by force to terrorists.

Many remain missing, despite hopes they would be found after the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the US-led coalition declared the Daesh proto-state defeated in March last year.

Layla was forcibly taken from Sinjar aged just 11 years old, and later married off to a 21-year old Iraqi Daesh fighter from Tal Afar -- a man she said treated her like a "proper wife".

She lived alongside her husband in several of the group's Syria strongholds until he was killed last year in the village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border, where Daesh fighters made their last stand.

Laying low

Newly widowed, Layla found herself among the hundreds of thousands of people who flooded out of the former Daesh bastion, after months of bombardment.

They were taken to the Kurdish-run Al Hol camp, now home to thousands of Daesh wives and their children, including many who are still committed to the group's extremist beliefs.

Fearing for her safety, she kept the fact that she was a Yazidi a secret, telling only one person she had met in the destitute settlement -– a woman belonging to the same minority.

The jihadists "used to scare us and tell us the Kurds would kill us if we told them who we really were," said Layla, who later realised this was not true.

When her Yazidi friend from Al Hol returned to Iraqi Kurdistan last year with help from Kurdish authorities, she managed to track down Layla's family and helped them connect with their long-lost daughter via Facebook.

Layla says she received the first message from her parents five months ago, and now they exchange text messages on a daily basis.

"I speak to my family every day over WhatsApp and we exchange pictures and I get to check up on them," she said.

For around a month, Layla has been staying with a Syrian Yazidi family.

The family head, an official with the Yazidi House organisation, has been helping to organise her reunion with her parents and siblings, who are living in a displacement camp in Iraq's northern Dohuk province.

But it remains to be seen when this repatriation will happen.

"There is nothing we can do," said Ali Kheder, of the Yazidis' Higher Spiritual Council, the group's highest religious body.

"The borders are closed on both sides because of the virus."

"When they reopen, she will return."

'Different customs'

Inside a large bedroom, Layla holds a mobile phone, looking at pictures of other Yazidi women who have also been helped to return home.

Like many of them, she said she fears a difficult homecoming.

She no longer fully understands Kurdish, having spoken Turkmen with her husband and Arabic with her friends for years.

In captivity, she was called Zeinab, after the eldest daughter of the Prophet Mohammad, and was indoctrinated into Islam, although she said she has now returned to the Yazidi faith.

It was not until she left the Al Hol camp last month that she took off her niqab, a face veil she said she had grown used to.

"I am scared it will be difficult for me to adapt to my family since I left them when I was just little," she said.

"I was far away from them, I lived with strangers and practiced different customs."

But Layla says she is desperate to heal her wounds.

"I want to live a better life, without warplanes, without bombardment and war," she said.

"I want to go back to my family as soon as possible and start a new life."

CAPE TOWN — Sudan's government has thanked the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi after it sent medical supplies to Khartoum to help its neighbour deal with its Covid-19 outbreak, Egyptian daily newspaper Ahram reported.

It said the vice president of the supreme committee for health emergencies in Sudan, Professor Siddig Tawer described the gesture as testimony to the strong relations between the two North African countries, as he received a convoy of four Egyptian army planes loaded with medical supplies at Khartoum International Airport.

Tawer said the Covid-19 pandemic had helped reveal the sincerity of "brother nations" and would serve as a true test of ties between the world's nations, as the globe grapples with the coronavirus which has now infected nearly 3.8 million people since being first reported in China in December.

Egyptian ambassador to Sudan, Hossam Essa said the supplies to Sudan included medical devices, oxygen measuring devices, masks, sterilisers and other items required to handle Covid-19.

Sudanese daily newspaper Alintibaha said Egypt's donation was an expression of president El Sisi’s appreciation of his country's neighbour.

The pandemic is seen as a key test for Sudan’s new transitional government which came into power only last year.

Covid-19 cases are gradually rising in Sudan; as of Tuesday, the country had reported 778 confirmed cases, with 45 people dying from the virus.

Last week the United Nations said it was concerned that Sudan’s new transitional government would not be able to handle the health crisis, saying its institutions and ailing health system were not equipped to grapple with an outbreak of this magnitude.

RABAT — Morocco has rapidly expanded its fleet of drones as it battles the coronavirus pandemic, deploying them for aerial surveillance, public service announcements and sanitisation.

"This is a real craze. In just weeks, demand has tripled in Morocco and other countries in the region," said Yassine Qamous, chief of Droneway Maroc, African distributor for leading Chinese drone company DJI.

Moroccan firms have been using drones for years and Qamous says it "is among the most advanced countries in Africa" for unmanned flight, with a dedicated industrial base, researchers and qualified pilots.

But restrictive regulations have long limited civilian drones to specific applications such as filming, agriculture, monitoring solar panels and mapping.

That changed rapidly as the novel coronavirus swept across the world.

In recent weeks, authorities have employed drones to issue warnings, identify suspicious movement in the streets and disperse illegal rooftop and balcony gatherings.

A strict lockdown imposed in March has not been uniformly respected, with local media reporting on nighttime gatherings of neighbours and collective prayers on roofs, beyond the view of street patrols.

 'Vital technology'

Last week local authorities in Temara, a town near the capital Rabat, launched a high-precision aerial surveillance system developed by local company Beti3D, which previously specialised in aerial mapping.

Other countries in Europe, Asia and the Middle East have also adopted technology deployed in China since the start of the pandemic, whether for tracking the movements of citizens, disinfecting public spaces or facilitating deliveries.

"Drones have quickly emerged as a vital technology for public safety agencies during this crisis as they can safely monitor public spaces," according to the website of DJI, by far the world's top drone maker.

Like most countries, Morocco primarily uses imported Chinese drones. But the emergence of new applications linked to the pandemic is also driving local production of specialised aerial vehicles.

"There is real demand," said Abderrahmane Krioual, the head of Farasha, a startup that has raised funds to produce drones for thermal surveillance and aerial disinfectant spraying.

The aeronautics department of the International University of Rabat (UIR) offered its facilities, expertise and prototypes to authorities in March, deploying drones with loudspeakers or infrared cameras able to detect movement at night or spot individuals with high temperatures.

Several projects are underway across the country ahead of the widespread deployment of various models of drones, said Mohsine Bouya, the university's director of technology development and transfer.

Teams are also developing tracking applications, but "we'll have to wait for a change to the law" before launching them, he said.

Moroccan authorities declined to comment on the use of drones or the numbers deployed since the start of the public health emergency in mid-March.

 'Toxic lockdown culture'

Unlike in some countries, the use of surveillance drones has not sparked public debate in Morocco, where the kingdom's authoritarian response to the pandemic is widely supported.

Morocco closed its borders early and tasked law enforcement with imposing strict confinement measures on the population.

They include movement restrictions and the compulsory wearing of masks, with a nighttime curfew since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- enforced by a heavy police presence.

Those found guilty of violating lockdown measures face one to three months in prison, a fine equivalent to $125, or both.

Officials say 59,000 people have been prosecuted for breaching lockdown measures.

Authorities say the measures have limited transmission of the virus, with 5,382 COVID-19 cases reported including 182 deaths since the state of emergency was announced.

But the kingdom's high number of arrests -- some 85,000 people by April 30 -- has drawn criticism from Georgette Gagnon, director of field operations at the United Nations' Human Rights Office.

Last week she listed Morocco among countries where repressive coronavirus measures have created a "toxic lockdown culture".

TEHRAN — Iran's president said on Wednesday the United States made a "stupid mistake" by abandoning a nuclear deal and warned of severe consequences if its allies agree to extend an arms embargo.

The United States is waging a campaign to extend the ban on selling conventional weapons to Iran, which is set to be progressively eased starting in October.

The ban is to be lifted in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which blessed the landmark international agreement that placed limits on Iran's nuclear programme in 2015.

US President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord -- known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA -- in 2018 and began reimposing sanctions on the Islamic republic.

"America made a very stupid mistake by abandoning this agreement," his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, said at a televised cabinet meeting.

"The wise thing for the US is to return to the JCPOA... but those in charge today won't ever reach such wisdom," he added.

Rouhani said the lifting of the embargo was "an inseparable part" of the nuclear accord.

"If it is ever reimposed... they know well what severe consequences and what historical defeat awaits them if they make such a mistake."

Rouhani did not elaborate on the consequences but said they were detailed in a letter sent previously to the remaining parties to the deal -- Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Tehran has progressively scaled back its commitments to the JCPOA in retaliation to the US pullout and what it sees as European inaction to salvage the accord.

Iran's Supreme National Security Council secretary, Ali Shamkhani, warned on Sunday that the deal would "die forever" if the embargo is extended.

Tehran has in the past threatened to retaliate against any reimposition of UN sanctions by withdrawing from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Washington has said it would use a legal argument based on an interpretation of Resolution 2231 that it remains a "participant" in the deal despite renouncing it, and can extend the arms embargo on Tehran or see more stringent sanctions reimposed.

Iran, for its part, accuses the US of violating the resolution over its 2018 withdrawal.

"There is no longer a JCPOA for America," Rouhani said.

He added that the US "should know, and some other countries too, that Iran will in no way accept a violation of Resolution 2231", while stressing that lifting the embargo is Iran's "inalienable right".

Rouhani said Iran would not use weapons it purchases to "add fuel to the fire" but to "extinguish flames" by not allowing conflicts to take place.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — President Mahmud Abbas renewed a coronavirus lockdown in Palestinian-ruled areas of the West Bank for a further month late Monday, though some measures will be eased.

The state of emergency in place since March 22 will now last until at least June 5, Abbas announced.

But movement between cities in the Israeli-occupied territory will be eased and steps taken towards reopening shops and other businesses, he added.

The measures do not apply to the Gaza Strip, another part of the Palestinian territories which is run by the rival Hamas-led government and where restrictions have already been eased.

So far there have been 345 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with two deaths.

Israel has more than 15,000 cases and the Palestinian government is concerned that the tens of thousands of Palestinians working inside Israel could bring fresh cases, especially with the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Fitr at the end of the month.

CAPE TOWN — Doctors at Tripoli University Hospital have managed to restore the eyesight of a 30-year-old woman who lost her vision due to health complications.

The patient, who suffers from high blood pressure, had her pituitary gland removed.

The operation, which took two hours to perform, was carried out by the neuro and spine surgery department at Tripoli University Hospital.

In a Facebook post, the university said: “The operation that lasted for more than two hours was fully successful and the patient's vision was once again restored with the efforts of the medical team, who made sure that the operation was successful to maintain the life of the patient. The patient was transferred to the observation room immediately after the operation for follow-up checks by the doctors.”

The university said it was a rare and successful achievement by the department of neurosurgery during the coronavirus pandemic.

Furthermore, the hospital welcomed the co-operation of the nose, ear and throat department for contributing to the success of the surgery.

According to the online news publication Libyan Observer, the Tripoli University Hospital has previously performed several advanced surgical operations, including a stent implant within the aorta.

Such operations, which cost around 120,000 dinars ($85,000) abroad, are conducted free of charge at the hospital, the Libyan Observer said.

Meanwhile, hospitals have come under attack by military commander Khalifa Haftar's forces during the ongoing conflict in the country.

According to Anodolu News Agency, Haftar's forces carried out a rocket attack on a field hospital in the capital of Tripoli.

In a statement issued by the press centre of the Government of National Accord-led Operation Volcano of Rage, Haftar's militias have continuously targeted hospitals and health staff.