Region

KHARTOUM — Rights groups pushed on Wednesday for the swift handover of Sudan's ousted strongman Omar Al Bashir to the International Criminal Court(ICC) after the country's new authorities pledged to bring him to justice for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

Top Sudanese officials said on Tuesday that the new rulers had agreed with rebel groups to send Bashir and three former aides to The Hague-based court for their role in the conflict in the western Darfur region.

"The Sudanese authorities should translate these words into action" and immediately transfer all four, said Amnesty International acting secretary general Julie Verhaar.

"Omar Al Bashir is wanted by the ICC over the murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape of hundreds of thousands of people during the conflict in Darfur.

"A decision to hand him over to the court would be a welcome step towards justice for victims and their families."

The conflict in Darfur, a region the size of France, erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Bashir's then Arab-dominated government, accusing it of economic and political marginalisation.

The ICC has charged Bashir with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the conflict.

Bashir, who is detained in Sudan after being convicted of corruption, denies the allegations. He evaded arrest for more than a decade, travelling overseas in open defiance of the ICC.

The court has also indicted three of his former aides, Ahmed Haroon, Abdulrahim Mohamed Hussain and Ali Kushied.

'Beyond time' 

Bashir and the three others wanted by the ICC "have to go there", Mohamed Hassan Al-Taishay, a member of Sudan's new ruling sovereign council, said on Tuesday.

"We agreed that we fully supported the ICC and we agreed... that the four criminals have to be handed over," Taishay said in the South Sudanese capital Juba where a government delegation was meeting rebel groups from Darfur.

He did not specify when they would be transferred to The Hague.

Rights groups say widespread abuses have taken place in Darfur, where the United Nations says about 300,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict began.

"Sudanese security forces' widespread attacks on civilians under Bashir's campaign of terror, including pervasive sexual violence as a weapon of war, have had devastating impacts on the lives and livelihoods of their victims," US-based NGO Physicians for Human Rights said in a statement.

"It is beyond time that his victims and their families receive justice."

Taishay said that the Juba talks had focused on several mechanisms for achieving peace in Darfur, including the establishment of a special court to investigate crimes in the region.

Sudanese government spokesman Faisal Mohamed Salih told reporters on Wednesday that "details of how Bashir and others will be presented in front of the ICC will be discussed with the ICC and armed groups".

Economic woes persist 

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said the ICC faced a major responsibility ahead.

"The court needs to get this right: it must re-engage with victims and affected communities and publicise its work effectively so that justice is visible to the people affected by the crimes," its president Alice Mogwe said in a statement.

Bashir was ousted by the army in a palace coup last April after months of protests against his three decades of iron-fisted rule.

He was arrested and later sentenced to two years in a detention centre on corruption charges.

Anti-Bashir protesters, residents of Darfur and rebel groups from the region have consistently demanded that he be handed over to the ICC.

Years of conflict in Darfur and other regions and the secession of South Sudan in 2011 left the country's economy in a shambles — the key factor for nationwide protests against Bashir last year.

Ten months after his ouster, acute shortages of bread, fuel and foreign currency continue to hamper Sudan's economic revival.

Long queues still form at bakeries, and rows of vehicles can be seen outside fuel stations across Khartoum.

"Every family is divided these days in a way," said Hassan Ahmed, a private sector employee waiting to fill his car at a fuel station.

"Some members are standing in a queue for bread, some for fuel and others for cooking gas. We are suffering a lot."

BEIRUT — Lebanon's parliament on Tuesday backed the Cabinet and programme of incoming Prime Minister Hassan Diab in a confidence vote held despite attempts by protesters to block it.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri congratulated lawmakers who sat through an eight-hour session before 63 out of 84 MPs present voted to back an administration, which now faces one of the worst crises in the county's recent history.

Protesters earlier clashed outside with security forces who used teargas and water cannon to disperse them.

The Red Cross said a total of 373 people were treated for teargas exposure and other injuries, including 45 who were hospitalised.

New premier Diab, a little-known academic and former education minister, was tasked with forming a government in December after mass rallies against official corruption and economic woes forced premier Saad Hariri to resign.

But more than three months on, angry demonstrators charge that the new Cabinet fails to address their demands and won’t be able to rescue Lebanon’s ailing economy.

Before the session started in an area cordoned off by riot police and soldiers, protesters mobbed and threw water bottles at the tinted-glass vehicles of lawmakers in a bid to stop them reaching parliament.

But enough lawmakers reached the chamber to make the vote valid.

One member of parliament turned up with a black eye, following a brief trip to hospital after he was wounded trying to reach the chamber.

‘Emergency rescue plan’ 

Earlier, security forces had clashed with demonstrators who had hurled rocks over blast walls erected to block off roads leading to parliament.

Human Rights Watch condemned the use of force against demonstrators.

“Security forces were throwing tear gas and beating people up” said Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Demonstrators draped in Lebanese flags and chanting “no confidence” had started gathering early in the morning before parliamentarians were set to arrive for the vote.

“I’m here to say ‘no confidence’ in the government because the way it was formed shows that it cannot be trusted,” said one protester who gave her name as Carole.

Lebanon’s cross-sectarian protest movement has pushed for the wholesale removal of a hereditary political elite widely seen as corrupt and incompetent.

While Diab has vowed to carry the hopes of the protesters, portfolios were shared out through the same partisan and sectarian gamesmanship that has been the trademark of Lebanon’s political class since the end of its 15-year civil war in 1990.

Inside parliament, Diab said his Cabinet was determined to draw up an emergency rescue plan for the country by the end of the month.

With the economy badly hit, he warned that “we could reach a complete collapse from which it will be hard — if not near impossible — to get out”.

The international community has pledged more than $11 billion in desperately needed financial aid, but made it conditional on the speedy implementation of economic reforms.

‘People have no confidence’ 

But in the street, 26-year-old protester Christopher said he had little faith in the new leadership.

“We are here to reject Diab’s government and to say that the Lebanese people have no confidence in it — even if lawmakers vote to support it,” he said.

He said the new ministers may appear qualified, but still depend on “the parties that destroyed the country”.

Some lawmakers had spent the night in parliament to thwart protesters, who have successfully prevented several previous sessions since they launched their campaign in October.

Their protests spell the biggest popular challenge to the power-sharing system that emerged from the 1975-1990 civil war.

Demonstrators on Tuesday travelled to Beirut from as far as Sidon, Tripoli and Tyre.

Lebanon is also on the brink of defaulting on its sovereign debt and the impact is being felt by all social classes, with tough restrictions on cash withdrawals and a steep de-facto devaluation of the national currency.

The World Bank has warned that if no solution is found swiftly to the crisis, the poverty rate may shoot up from a third to half of the population.

One placard at Tuesday’s protest carried a sarcastic message: “Of course we are confident — that they will help the banks to the detriment of the people.”

QAMINAS, Syria — Tensions escalated on Tuesday between the Syrian army and Turkey as a Syrian military helicopter was shot down and Ankara warned of a "heavy price" for any attacks on its forces.

The new flare-up, a day after the army shelling killed five Turkish troops, came as government forces battling extremists in northwestern Syria took full control of a key highway linking the country's four largest cities.

The advance marked another step in the Syrian army's campaign to retake Syria's last rebel-held pocket, where nearly 700,000 civilians have fled violence since December in the largest exodus since the start of the war.

Shortly after the M5 motorway was recaptured, a rocket attack downed a Syrian military helicopter in Idlib province, killing both pilots, an AFP correspondent and a war monitor said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the helicopter was hit by a rocket fired by Turkish forces, though Ankara did not claim responsibility.

The Syrian army later shelled areas near a Turkish observation post in the same village, said the observatory and an AFP correspondent who saw large plumes of smoke rising following a large fiery blast.

The observatory said the attack killed at least three people but it remained to be seen whether they were Syrian rebels or Turkish troops.

'They will pay' 

Turkey, which has troops deployed in several locations in northern Syria, continues to support rebel groups battling the Syrian army or acting as proxies against Kurdish forces.

Along with government  ally Russia, it is the key foreign broker in northern Syria, but a 2018 deal aimed at averting a major offensive has failed to take hold.

On Tuesday, Erdogan said Turkish troops would continue to respond to Syrian army attacks.

"The more they attack... our soldiers, they will pay a very, very heavy price," he told a televised ceremony in Ankara.

Erdogan said he would reveal his next steps on Wednesday.

The Syrian army hit back in a later statement saying it was “ready to respond to the aggressions of the occupying Turkish army”, accusing Ankara of targeting its positions with rockets.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would work with Turkey on its response to Monday’s attack.

“The ongoing assaults by the Assad army and Russia must stop,” Pompeo said on Twitter.

He said he has sent US special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey to Turkey “to coordinate steps to respond to this destabilising attack”.

Jeffrey was due to arrive Wednesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, Syrian forces retook full control of the key M5 highway from extremists and allied rebels in the northwest for the first time since 2012, the observatory said.

That highway links the capital Damascus to the second city of Aleppo through Homs and Hama, and has been a key target for the government as it seeks to rekindle a moribund economy.

Its recapture also helps secure Aleppo, the country’s former industrial hub, which still comes under sporadic rocket fire from holdout rebel groups.

In Idlib city on Tuesday, Syrian air force strikes killed at least 12 civilians, the observatory said.

Half of those killed were minors, according to the monitor.

Unprecedented exodus 

Turkey, which already hosts more than three million refugees, fears a massive fresh influx from Syria and has kept its border closed to the newly displaced people in Idlib.

The exodus, which has seen endless convoys of families with their mattresses stacked on trucks criss-cross the war-torn province, is the biggest of the nine-year-old conflict, the UN said on Tuesday.

“In just 10 weeks, since 1 December, some 690,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Idlib and surrounding areas,” a spokesman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

“This is, from our initial analysis, the largest number of people displaced in a single period since the Syrian crisis began almost nine years ago,” David Swanson said.

The Idlib region is a dead-end for hundreds of thousands of people who were forced to flee or were evacuated from formerly rebel-held territory elsewhere in Syria.

Some have moved four times or more since the start of the war but there is nowhere for them to go after Idlib, with the Turkish border to the north and government forces in the other three directions.

Snowfall in some regions and sub-zero temperatures are raising fears of a major humanitarian catastrophe and prompting the United Nations to make an urgent appeal for shelter solutions.

“Existing camps and settlements of internally displaced persons are overcrowded, and shelter in existing houses is getting scarce,” the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.

DUBAI — The massive aid operation for war-torn Yemen is under severe threat in the face of mounting obstruction from Houthi rebels, officials told AFP on Tuesday ahead of a crunch meeting expected to be held in Brussels.

Humanitarian agencies describe a deteriorating situation in the Houthi-controlled north where aid workers face arrest and intimidation as they attempt to distribute food to millions in dire need after five years of conflict.

But the Yemen government sounded the alarm at reports the United States is considering suspending much of its humanitarian assistance by March 1 in response to the pressures that include a new 2 per cent rebel “tax” on assistance projects.

Abdul Raqib Fateh, a minister and the head of Yemen’s relief committee, said although the government believes the militia misuses aid “as a cover to finance its war efforts”, cutting off supplies would hurt the wrong people.

“Scaling back on aid in governorates under Houthi control will affect citizens, not the armed Houthi militias,” he told AFP.

The Houthis hit out at the criticism, which includes allegations of systematic interference and layers of bureaucracy imposed by SCMCHA, the rebel’s aid body that was created late last year.

“Some UN agencies play a political role and use aid as a card with which to threaten the Yemenis,” said the head of SCMCHA, Abdul Mohsen Al Tawoos.

“This blackmail of reducing aid doesn’t work on Yemenis, and if they continue with this threat, then things will turn against them,” he said according to Houthi media.

‘Violence and coercion’ 

Allegations of aid being diverted and obstructed are not new in Yemen, which has been driven to the brink of famine during the long-running crisis which pits the Iran-backed Houthis against the government and a Saudi-led military coalition.

One battleground has been expired food, with the Houthis accusing the United Nations of distributing maggot-ridden rice and flour, and aid workers saying that supplies due for needy families had been held for months until they spoiled.

The UN World Food Programme, which feeds 12 million Yemenis a month, halted deliveries in Houthi-controlled areas for two months last year as it pushed for a biometric registration scheme to avoid the diversion of supplies meant for Yemeni civilians.

However, the New Humanitarian news agency last week cited a United Nations report that said threats to aid workers were increasing along with bureaucratic delays that bogged aid agencies down.

“The issue of the manipulation of beneficiary lists and/or pressure to share these lists is of particular concern, and cases involving the use of violence and coercion at aid distribution points have increased in 2019,” it quoted the unreleased report as saying.

Red lines 

The thorny topic of how to respond to the pressure, and the implications of suspending humanitarian aid in a country already on the brink, will be discussed at a meeting of aid agencies and donors in Brussels which opens on Thursday.

“Too many red lines have been crossed by the authorities,” a Sanaa-based aid worker told AFP. “Our job is to get aid to people. What do we do when we’re being blocked from doing that?”

Humanitarian officials say they are hoping there is still room for negotiation to avoid a suspension, but that the outlook will be clearer after the Brussels meeting.

“I think we’re all hoping that it will not come to that,” one aid official said. “We are trying to coordinate with all the donors including the US to come up with a more unified approach.”

Lise Grande, the UN resident coordinator for Yemen, indicated that the agencies would be forced to act if they cannot uphold their principles in Yemen.

“If we reach a point where the operating environment doesn’t allow us to do that, we do everything we can to change it,” she told the BBC.

“We may have to go in a different direction for a little while until we can get those conditions back in place. That’s our responsibility,” she said. “We are committed to find ways to cooperate.”

BAGHDAD — Residents of Baghdad rushed to have snowball fights or take photographs on Tuesday as the Iraqi capital woke carpeted in white by only its second snowfall in a century.

The last recorded snowfall in the city was in 2008, but it was a quick and mostly slushy affair — and prior to that, it had been a century since Baghdad saw any flakes.

Iraqis young and old said it was the first time they had ever seen snow falling in Baghdad.

The city’s iconic palm trees were daintily outlined in white, and the tarpaulins of the long-running anti-government protest camp in Tahrir Square in the city centre were sprinkled with snow.

People on their way to work stopped their cars to snap pictures or break out into impromptu snowball fights.

“Snowfall may continue until Wednesday given the very cold weather,” said Amer Al Jaberi, media head of the Iraqi Meteorological Centre.

“This cold wave came from Europe,” he told AFP.

The people of Baghdad are more used to heat than cold.

The highest temperature recorded in the capital was a searing 51ºC, a record it has neared several times in recent years.

South of the capital, snow also carpeted the Shiite holy city of Karbala, which draws pilgrims from round the world to its famed shrines, the golden-domed mausoleums of Abbas and Imam Hussein.

Snowfall is more common in northern Iraq, where snow covered the war-battered city of Mosul, but in the centre and south there is rarely enough precipitation.

Iraq has been hit by a succession of extreme weather events in recent years.

In 2018, chronic water shortages sparked a health crisis in the centre and south but the following year, heavy rains caused deadly flooding and heavy damage to homes and crops.

Blistering temperatures then hit the north triggering wild fires and scorching crops.

Experts say Iraq lacks the funding or infrastructure to cope with climate change and the desertification of once productive land.