Region

GIBRALTAR — Iran on Thursday condemned the "illegal interception" of one of its oil tankers in Gibraltar where authorities said they suspected it was carrying crude to Syria in violation of EU sanctions.

The detention of the 330-metre Grace 1 vessel comes at a sensitive time in Iran-EU ties as the bloc mulls how to respond to Tehran announcing it will breach the maximum uranium enrichment level it agreed in a 2015 nuclear deal.

The tanker was halted in the early hours of Thursday by police and customs agencies in Gibraltar, a tiny overseas British territory on Spain's southern tip.

They were aided by a detachment of British Royal Marines.

The ship was detained four kilometres south of Gibraltar in what it considers British waters, although Spain, which lays claim to the territory, says they are Spanish. 

It was boarded when it slowed down in a designated area used by shipping agencies to ferry goods to vessels.

"We have reason to believe that the 'Grace 1' was carrying its shipment of crude oil to the Banyas Refinery in Syria," Gibraltar's Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said in a statement.

"That refinery is the property of an entity that is subject to European Union sanctions against Syria.

"We have detained the vessel and its cargo," Picardo said.

Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Borrell told reporters the vessel was detained at the request of the United States.

Picardo said he had "written this morning to the presidents of the European Commission and Council, setting out the details of the sanctions which we have enforced".

In a statement, Britain's foreign office said "we welcome this firm action by the Gibraltarian authorities, acting to enforce the EU Syria Sanctions regime".

EU notified 

European Union sanctions against war-torn Syria have been in force since late 2011.

The 28-member bloc has imposed sanctions on Syrian officials including government ministers.

It has frozen the assets of around 70 entities and introduced an embargo on Syrian oil, investment restrictions and a freeze on Syrian central bank assets within the European Union.

According to specialised shipping trade publication Lloyd’s List, which analysed vessel-tracking data, the 1997-built ship is laden with Iranian oil, the first such tanker to head for Europe since late 2018.

It reported that the ship loaded oil off Iran in April and sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.

The tanker detention comes just days after Iran announced it would exceed the uranium enrichment limit set up as part of the 2015 deal to avoid it building up to the level required for a nuclear warhead.

Iran did this in response to Washington abandoning the nuclear deal last year and hitting Iran’s crucial oil exports and financial transactions with biting sanctions.

KHARTOUM — Talks between Sudan's ruling generals and protest leaders, held after weeks of standoff following a deadly crackdown on protesters, enter a second day Thursday with the key issue of forming a new governing body still unresolved.

Sudan has been rocked by a political crisis since the army ousted longtime ruler Omar Al Bashir in April on the back of widespread protests, with the ruling generals resisting demonstrators' demands to hand power to a civilian administration.

The generals had previously agreed over a broad civilian structure, but talks between the two sides collapsed in May following a disagreement over who should lead an overall new governing body — a civilian or a soldier.

Tensions further surged between the generals and protest leaders after a deadly pre-dawn raid on a longstanding protest camp in Khartoum on June 3 killed dozens of demonstrators and wounded hundreds.

Talks finally resumed on Wednesday after intense mediation by Ethiopian and African Union envoys, who have put forward a draft proposal to break the deadlock.

The two sides were due to meet again on Thursday evening.

“The discussion will be about who heads the sovereign council,” a prominent protest leader who is part of the talks, Ahmed Al Rabie, told AFP, referring to the governing body.

He said the ruling military council that took power after Bashir’s ouster insists the head of the new governing body be from the army.

“We believe that symbolically the head of the state must be a civilian,” Rabie said.

For weeks this issue has rocked Sudan, extending the political crisis triggered since the fall of Bashir.

Darfur rebels released 

The joint Ethiopian and African Union blueprint calls for a civilian-majority ruling body.

On Wednesday, the first day of the latest round of talks, the two sides did not discuss the crucial issue of the governing body.

“The parties conducted responsible negotiations and agreed on some issues,” African Union mediator Mohamed El Hacen Lebatt told reporters overnight after long hours of talks held at a luxury hotel in the capital.

“There’s a decision taken to release all political detainees.”

A group of 235 fighters from a faction of a Darfur rebel group that is part of the protest movement were released later on Thursday.

They were freed from Al Huda prison in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum across the Nile river, an AFP correspondent reported, adding that many relatives had arrived to receive the fighters.

Protest leaders have exerted pressure on the generals since the June 3 raid on the mass sit-in outside army headquarters.

The raid was carried out by men in military fatigues.

The ruling military council insists it did not order the violent dispersal of the sit-in.

At least 136 people have been killed across the country since the raid, including more than 100 on June 3, according to doctors close to the umbrella protest movement, the Alliance for Freedom and Change.

The health ministry says 78 people have been killed nationwide over the same period.

On Sunday, protest leaders managed to mobilise tens of thousands of supporters in the first mass protest against the generals since the raid.

The mass rally had been seen as a test for the protest leaders’ ability to mobilise crowds after the generals imposed a widespread Internet blackout and deployed security forces in the capital’s key squares and districts, its twin city Omdurman and other towns and villages. 

Protest leaders have further upped the pressure on the generals by calling for a similar mass protest on July 13, to be followed by a nationwide civil disobedience campaign a day later.

The campaign, if observed, would be the second such agitation since the June 3 raid.

The first, held between June 9 and 11, paralysed the country, hitting an already dilapidated economy hard.

GENEVA — The Red Cross warned Thursday that displaced people in and around Syria’s Al Hol camp were facing an “apocalyptic” conditions, urging countries to quickly repatriate family members of suspected foreign fighters.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRS) warned of the extreme difficulties facing those left behind after the last vestige of the Daesh’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed in northeastern Syria in March.

Around 100,000 people in Al Hol and surrounding camps, “are kept in a kind of legal limbo in an unstable place, in a disputed area”, Fabrizio Carboni, who heads the ICRC’s Near and Middle East operations, told reporters in Geneva.

“One hundred thousand people who spent the last months, if not years, under the bombs, starved, wounded, sick, traumatised,” he said, adding: “It is just apocalyptic.”

The Red Cross is one of the main humanitarian organisations providing assistance inside the overfilled Al Hol camp, which is housing more than 70,000 people, including more than 11,000 family members of suspected Daesh fighters from dozens of countries.

‘Politically toxic’ 

The issue of whether to repatriate nationals who are family members of suspected militants has been a thorny one for Western nations, which have experienced attacks by homegrown extremists and have little interest in seeing more return. 

Britain has gone so far as stripping Daesh members of citizenship, while France has said it will only repatriate children and evaluate cases individually. 

“Our position is to say to states ‘take your nationals back’,” Carboni said, condemning the stigmatisation of people, especially children, and efforts to create “categories of good victims and bad victims”.

“As if kids can be something else than just victims.”

Carboni said two thirds of the residents in Al Hol were children, mainly under 12, insisting it was unconscionable to leave them there.

“You don’t leave kids in the middle of nowhere exposed to extreme heat, extreme cold, violence,” he said.

He warned that countries needed to recognise that “at one stage there will be a price to pay”, and that if they put off dealing with this issue, “it is going to be higher”.

ICRC, which runs a field hospital in Al Hol, provides food, water and builds latrines, is doing its best to address the needs of the people stuck in a desperate situation in and around the camp, Carboni said

“But nobody should expect the ICRC to deal with 100,000... for the next 25-30 years,” he said. “This is states’ responsibility.”

He acknowledged that for many countries, repatriating family members of suspected extremists is “politically toxic”, but urged government to take responsibility.

Some of the countries which today are reluctant to bring home children in Al Hol “have for decades defended [the principle] that kids are victims and cannot be considered as combatants”, he said.

Their foot-dragging on the issue today, he said, “doesn’t look good”.

TRIPOLI — Libya’s military strongman Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive three months ago to seize the capital, the seat of the internationally recognised government.

His forces, halted at the south of the city after counter-attacks, have been blamed for an air strike that killed dozens of migrants housed in a centre on the outskirts of Tripoli late Tuesday.

Here is an overview of Haftar’s bid to take capital.

 Launched 

Haftar announces the move on Tripoli by his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) on April 4 with an online message: “The time has come.”

The retired general refuses to recognise the Government of National Accord (GNA) based in the capital, and has set up a parallel administration in eastern Libya while also controlling much of the south.

He claims his campaign is aimed at removing “terrorists”.

His forces briefly seize Tripoli’s international airport, unused since it was destroyed in fighting in 2014, but are pushed back on April 5.

First air strikes 

On April 6, GNA forces launch the first air strikes on Haftar’s positions around 50 kilometres south of Tripoli.

The next day Haftar’s forces say they carried out their first air strike on a Tripoli suburb. 

Pro-GNA forces announce a counteroffensive called “Volcano of Anger”.

On April 8, LNA warplanes carry out an air strike against Tripoli’s only functioning airport, Mitiga.

Rockets hit central Tripoli late on April 16, for the first time since the offensive was launched and killing six people. Haftar’s forces are blamed.

International involvement 

On April 19, the White House says that President Donald Trump recognised Haftar’s “significant role in fighting terrorism and securing Libya’s oil resources”.

Clashes south of Tripoli intensify.

On April 24, Sarraj accuses France of backing Haftar, saying its support prompted him to move on Tripoli. France rejects the accusations.

On May 23, UN envoy Ghassan Salame says between “six and 10 countries” are funnelling arms, cash and military advice to Libya.

Political initiative 

On June 16, Sarraj announces a new political initiative to end the conflict, including elections before the end of the year.

Haftar’s “army has been broken”, he claims.

But on June 20 Haftar dismisses Sarraj’s proposition and vows to press on. He announces his own plan to revive the “democratic process”, which also includes elections.

Haftar base seized 

On June 26, GNA forces retake the town of Gharyan, the main supply base for Haftar’s LNA since the start of their offensive.

The LNA accuses Turkey of a role in the surprise attack on the town, about 100 kilometres southwest of Tripoli.

Turkish ships and interests had become “legitimate targets”, they say on June 29. 

Ankara responds that it will retaliate with force to any attacks. 

The following day it announces that the LNA is holding six Turkish nationals; it demands their release, saying otherwise “Haftar elements will become legitimate targets”.

The six, who are sailors, are freed on July 1.

Migrant massacre 

Late on Tuesday an air strike hits a migrant detention centre in a Tripoli suburb, killing nearly 40 people and wounding at least 70. 

There is no claim of responsibility but the GNA blames the air raid on Haftar’s anti-government forces.

ZARZIS, Tunisia — More than 80 migrants have gone missing and only four were rescued after their boat capsized off Tunisia crossing the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, Tunisia’s coast guard said on Thursday.

A Malian survivor, still in a state of shock, said their inflatable sank on Monday, Wajdi Ben Mhamed, an official of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said after meeting the man in his 20s.

He said the boat, with 86 people on board, started to leak and tipped over only hours after setting out to sea from the Libyan town of Zuwara, west of Tripoli, as passengers switched to one side of the vessel.

“We spent two days like that, clinging to a piece of wood,” the Malian told the IOM representative for southern Tunisia.

“He doesn’t know what happened to the others. They’re missing and there’s a high probability that they drowned,” Ben Mhamed said.

The Red Crescent and the navy told AFP that three Malians and an Ivorian were rescued off Zarzis in southern Tunisia on Wednesday by the coast guard who had been alerted by local fishermen.

The Ivorian, however, died in hospital and one of the Malians has also been hospitalised in intensive care.

“About 80 migrants are feared dead. More updates are needed in order to confirm what happened and the actual number of missing,” Flavio Di Giacomo, an IOM spokesman, Tweeted.

Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed veteran dictator Muammar Qadhafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants, especially from Sub-Saharan Africa, desperate to reach Europe.

On Tuesday night, 44 migrants were killed in an air strike on their detention centre in a Tripoli suburb.

LONDON — A 3,000-year-old bust of Egyptian “Boy King” Tutankhamun goes under the hammer on Thursday in London despite an outcry from Cairo.

Christie’s auction house expects the 28.5-centimetre quartz relic to fetch more than £4 million ($5 million, 4.5 million euros) at one of its most controversial auctions in years.

The famous pharaoh’s finely-chiselled face — its calm eyes and puffed lips emoting a sense of eternal peace — comes from the private Resandro Collection of ancient art that Christie’s last sold in 2016 for £3 million.

But angry Egyptian officials want the sale halted and the treasure returned.

Christie’s decision “contradicts international agreements and conventions,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

Former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass told AFP that the piece appears to have been “stolen” in the 1970s from the Karnak Temple complex.

“We think it left Egypt after 1970 because in that time other artefacts were stolen from Karnak Temple,” Hawass said.

Christie’s counters that Egypt had never before expressed the same level of concern about a bust whose existence has been “well known and exhibited publicly”, for many years.

“The object is not, and has not been, the subject of an investigation,” it said in a statement to AFP on Wednesday.

The auction house has published a chronology of how the relic changed hands between European art dealers over the past 50 years.

Its oldest attribution from 1973-74 places is in the collection of Prince Wilhelm of Thurn and Taxi in modern-day Germany.

Yet, that account was called into doubt by a report from the Live Science news site last month suggesting that Wilhelm never owned the piece.

Wilhelm was “not a very art-interested person”, his niece Daria told the news site.

A journalist and art historian who knew Wilhelm told Live Science site that the prince had no arts collection at all.

 ‘Clear ownership’ 

Tutankhamun is thought to have become a pharaoh at the age of nine and to have died about 10 years later.

His rule would have probably passed without notice were it not for the 1922 discovery by Britain’s Howard Carter of his nearly intact tomb.

The lavish find revived interest in ancient Egypt and set the stage for subsequent battles over ownership of cultural masterpieces unearthed in colonial times.

Tutankhamun became commonly known as King Tut and made into the subject of songs and films.

International conventions and the British government’s own guidance restrict the sale of works that were known to have been stolen or illegally dug up.

The British Museum has been wrangling for decades with Greece over its remarkable room full of marble Parthenon friezes and sculptures.

Egypt’s own campaign to recover lost art gained momentum after numerous works went missing during the looting that accompanied former president Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power in 2011.

Cairo has managed to regain hundreds of looted and stolen artefacts by working with both auction houses and international cultural groups.

But Egypt has been unable to substantiate its case with firm proof that the Tutankhamun bust was illegally obtained.

Christie’s told AFP that it would “not sell any work where there isn’t clear title of ownership”.

WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner hinted on Wednesday that his Middle East peace plan will seek to better integrate Palestinian refugees inside Arab countries as he finalises proposals despite being shunned by the Palestinian leadership.

A week after he convened an economic workshop in Bahrain that dangled the prospect of $50 billion in investment under a peace deal, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser said he will announce the next steps "probably next week".

Kushner, promising a fresh approach to Middle East peacemaking after decades of failed attempts, said the Trump administration deliberately opened with economic incentives and will later give details on core political questions.

But in a conference call with Arab media, Kushner appeared to favour normalisation of the status of Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced out of Israel when Israel was created in 1948, as well as their descendants.

Asked about Lebanon — where Palestinian refugees are mostly denied citizenship and many live in squalid camps — Kushner said he believed that the country wanted a “fair” solution.

“I also think that the Palestinian refugees who are in Lebanon, who are denied a lot of rights and don’t have the best conditions right now, would also like to see a situation where there is a pathway for them to have more rights and to live a better life,” Kushner said.

Israel has adamantly opposed a right of return by Palestinian refugees, saying it would effectively end Israel.

Wide Palestinian suspicion 

The Palestinians accuse Trump administration of trying to use money to force pro-Israel solutions and are suspicious of Kushner, a family friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump took the landmark step of recognising occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Kushner earlier suggested that his plan would not mention a Palestinian state, a long-time goal of US diplomacy.

A poll released Wednesday by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research of 1,200 adults across the West Bank and Gaza Strip found that an overwhelming 90 per cent of Palestinians do not trust Trump administration in its stated goal in Bahrain of helping the Palestinian economy.

Kushner said that Trump, who values personal interaction, was open to meeting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Trump “likes him very much personally and, at the right time, if they’re willing to engage I believe that they’ll find that they will have an opportunity”, Kushner said.

The United States has also severely slashed funding for the UN refugee body that provides education and health services to five million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The Trump administration has called for the 70-year-old United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees to be dismantled, with its work taken over by host countries.

TRIPOLI — Calls for an independent probe mounted Wednesday after more than 40 migrants were killed in an air strike on a detention centre in Libya that the UN said could constitute a war crime.

UN chief Antonio Guterres denounced the "horrendous" attack and demanded "an independent investigation", his spokesman said, as the Security Council was to hold urgent talks about the situation in Libya.

It came as the internationally-recognised government and its arch-foe strongman Khalifa Haftar traded blame for the deadly assault, which the European Union called a "horrific" attack.

Bodies were strewn on the floor of a hangar in the Tripoli suburb of Tajoura, mixed with the belongings and blood-soaked clothes of migrants, an AFP photographer said.

"There were bodies, blood and pieces of flesh everywhere," a survivor, 26-year-old Al Mahdi Hafyan from Morocco, told AFP from his hospital bed where he was being treated for a leg wound.

Tuesday night’s strike left a hole around 3 metres in diameter at the centre of the hangar, surrounded by debris ripped from the metal structure by the force of the blast.

At least 44 people were killed and more than 130 severely injured, the UN said.

Guterres recalled that the United Nations had shared the coordinates of the Tajoura detention centre east of Tripoli with the warring sides to ensure that civilians sheltering there were safe.

The UN chief “condemns this horrendous incident in the strongest terms”, said a statement from his spokesman.

He “calls for an independent investigation of the circumstances of this incident, to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice, noting that the United Nations had provided exact coordinates of the detention centre to the parties”.

His envoy to Libya Ghassan Salame said earlier: “This attack clearly could constitute a war crime, as it killed by surprise innocent people whose dire conditions forced them to be in that shelter.”

‘Heinous crime’ 

Around 600 migrants and refugees were held in the Tajoura detention centre, the head of the compound Noureddine Al Grifi said, adding that people were wounded in another hangar.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) denounced the attack as a “heinous crime” and blamed it on the “war criminal Khalifa Haftar”, who launched in early April an offensive to seize the capital.

But on Wednesday evening a spokesman for the strongman said “the [pro-Haftar] forces deny their responsibility in the attack on the migrant centre of Tajoura”.

Ahmad Al Mesmari blamed the attack on the GNA.

The European Union — as well as Turkey and Qatar — called for an independent probe, while France urged a “de-escalation” and the Arab League a “halt” to fighting between Haftar and GNA forces.

“Those responsible should be held to account,” EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn and Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said in a statement.

The UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are seen as Haftar’s key supporters while he accuses Turkey and Qatar of supplying weapons to his rivals.

The GNA accused pro-Haftar forces — who control much of eastern and southern Libya — of having carried out a “premeditated” and “precise” attack on the migrant centre.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The suburb of Tajoura, which has several military sites belonging to pro-GNA armed groups, is regularly targeted in air raids by Haftar’s forces. 

Migrants ‘at risk’ 

“Migrants and refugees must NOT be detained; civilians must NOT be a target; Libya is NOT a safe place of return” for migrants and refugees, the head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi Tweeted.

UNHCR spokesperson Charlie Yaxley said in Geneva the agency had asked to have the centre evacuated a few weeks ago after “a near miss from a similar air strike”.

The centre was thought to have been used to store weapons, he added.

The UN’s mission in Libya has said around 3,500 migrants and refugees held in detention centres near the combat zone are at risk.

Wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising against dictator Muammar Qadhafi, Libya has become a major conduit for migrants seeking to reach Europe.

Rights groups say migrants face horrifying abuses in Libya, which remains prey to a multitude of militias vying for control of the oil-rich country.

The plight of migrants has worsened since Haftar launched the offensive against Tripoli.

More than 700 people have been killed and 4,000 wounded since the assault began in early April, while nearly 100,000 have been displaced, according to UN agencies. 

The two rival camps accuse each other of using foreign mercenaries and enjoying military support, especially air, from foreign powers.