Region

BAGHDAD — Iran's new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, arrived in neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday as he moves to deepen already close ties on his first foreign visit since taking office.

"Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani welcomes the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian," the Iraqi premier's office said in a brief statement alongside a picture of the two men shaking hands on the tarmac at Baghdad airport.

Pezeshkian has vowed to make relations with neighbouring countries a priority as he seeks to ease Iran's international isolation and mitigate the impact of US-led sanctions on its economy.

His visit comes after Western powers on Tuesday announced fresh sanctions on Iran for supplying Russia with short-range missiles for use against Ukraine.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani warned Britain, France and Germany that they "will face the appropriate and proportionate action" for the "hostile" move.

The visit also comes amid turmoil in the Middle East sparked by the war in Gaza, which has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups around the region and complicated Baghdad's ties with Washington.

Hours before Pezeshkian's arrival, an explosion rocked a base at the airport used by a US-led anti-jihadist coalition, Iraqi security officials said.

A spokesperson for the Iranian-backed Ketaeb Hezbollah (Hizbollah Brigades) in Iraq said the Tuesday night "attack" aimed to "disrupt the Iranian president's visit".

Ties between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled the Sunni-dominated regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"Iraq is one of our friends, brothers and Muslim countries," Pezeshkian said before leaving Iran, according to footage aired on Iranian state television.

"And for this reason, we will go to this country as the first trip," he added.

Pezeshkian has previously linked shoring up ties to sanctions pressure.

"Relations with neighbouring countries... can neutralise a significant amount of pressure of the sanctions," he said last month.

Iran has suffered years of crippling Western sanctions, especially after its arch-foe the United States, under then-president Donald Trump, unilaterally abandoned a landmark nuclear deal between the Islamic republic and major powers in 2018.

Pezeshkian, who took office in late July, has made the top diplomat who negotiated the 2015 deal, Mohammad Javad Zarif, his vice president for strategic affairs as part of his bid for a more open Iran.

Key trade partners 

Iran has become one of Iraq's leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad, where its Iraqi allies dominate parliament and the current government.

Every year, millions of Iranian pilgrims travel to Iraq's Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, and Pezeshkian will also visit the shrines there during his visit.

Non-oil trade between Iran and Iraq stood at nearly $5 billion over the five months from March 2024, Iranian media reported.

Iran also exports millions of cubic metres of gas a day to Iraq to fuel its power plants, under a regularly renewed waiver from US sanctions.

Iraq is billions of dollars in arrears on its payments for the imports, which cover 30 percent of its electricity needs.

In September last year, the two countries started construction of their first rail link -- a 32-kilometre (20-mile) line between Iraq's southern port city of Basra and the Shalamcheh border crossing, where it will join up with the Iranian rail network.

US troop drawdown 

Washington still has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in neighbouring Syria as part of an international coalition against the Daesh group.

Last winter, US-led coalition forces in both Iraq and Syria were targeted dozens of times with drones and rocket fire as violence related to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups across the Middle East.

The barrage of attacks triggered retaliatory US air strikes in both countries.

On Sunday, Iraqi Defence Minister Thabet Al Abbassi told pan-Arab television channel Al Hadath that the US-led coalition would pull out of most of Iraq by September 2025 and the Kurdish autonomous region by September 2026.

Despite months of talks, the target dates have yet to be agreed between Baghdad and Washington.

Pezeshkian will also travel to the Kurdish regional capital Arbil for talks with Kurdish officials, Iran's official IRNA news agency said.

In March last year, Tehran signed a security agreement with the federal government in Baghdad after launching air strikes against bases of Iranian Kurdish rebel groups in the autonomous region.

They have since agreed to disarm the rebels and remove them from border areas.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — An Israeli air strike on Wednesday hit a central Gaza school, with the Hamas-run territory's civil defence agency reporting 14 killed in the facility-turned-displacement shelter and the military saying it had targeted militants.

The vast majority of the Gaza Strip's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the war, triggered by Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel, with many seeking safety in school buildings.

Israeli forces have struck several such schools in recent months, saying Palestinian militants were operating there and hiding among displaced civilians, charges denied by Hamas.

The Al Jawni school in central Gaza's Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday, civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

"The number of martyrs has risen to 14," he said, updating an earlier toll of 10 killed in the "Israeli bombing of Al Jawni school" which also wounded numerous people.

AFP was unable to independently verify the toll, which the spokesman said included several women and children.

A medical source at Nuseirat's Al Awda health centre in central Gaza told AFP that 15 people killed in the strike had been brought to hospitals in the area.

Nine were brought to Al Awda, and six to Al Aqsa Martyrs's Hospital, in the central Gaza city of Deir Al Balah.

AFP journalists witnessed several unconscious men and women brought to Al Aqsa hospital on stretchers, or in the arms of medics in the case of children.

"Most of the people took refuge in schools and the schools were bombed and the martyrs were mostly children and women," Basil Amarneh, a local, said at the hospital.

"Where will people go?"

The Israeli military said its air force had "conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre" on the school grounds, without elaborating on its outcome or the identities of those targeted.

The Hamas government media office said about 5,000 displaced people were sheltering at the school, which used to be run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, when it was hit on Wednesday.

Al Jawni has been hit at least five times in more than 11 months of war, Bassal said.

In July, at least 16 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on the school that the military said had targeted "terrorists".

Israel's military offensive since the October 7 attack has killed at least 41,084 people in Gaza, according to the territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

The Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which also includes hostages killed in captivity.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An Israeli strike Tuesday on eastern Lebanon killed a Hizbollah commander, a source close to the group and the Israeli military said, the latest in near-daily exchanges throughout the Gaza war.

The Iran-backed Lebanese group has traded fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian fighters group's October 7 attack triggered war in the Gaza Strip, with repeated escalations during more than 11 months of the cross-border violence.

A source close to Hizbollah told AFP that Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, "a field commander" in the group's elite Radwan Force, "was targeted in an Israeli strike on a motorcycle in the Bekaa" Valley in Lebanon's east, far from the Israeli border.

Hizbollah earlier announced Shaer had been killed by Israeli fire, but did not refer to him as a commander.

The Israeli military said its air force had "eliminated the terrorist Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer in the area of Qaraoun", in the Bekaa Valley.

It referred to Shaer as "a Hizbollah Radwan Force commander".

Elsewhere in Lebanon, the health ministry said an "Israeli enemy" strike on a building in the southern city of Nabatiyeh "caused light injuries to nine people".

GENEVA — The third phase of a giant polio vaccination drive targeting children in Gaza began Tuesday in a particularly war-ravaged zone, but the WHO said a support convoy had to abort its mission.

After the first confirmed polio case in 25 years, a massive vaccination effort began last week targeting over 640,000 children under 10, aided by localised "humanitarian pauses" in fighting.

After covering central and southern Gaza, the campaign moved into its final phase in the north from Tuesday until Thursday, said World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic.

Maher Shamiya, the deputy health minister in the Gaza Strip, told AFP that 230 teams were working to provide the vaccines and that there had already been "significant turnout of families eager to vaccinate their children".

"I came to protect my children from polio," Samah Yahya, a 38-year-old mother of two from Gaza City, told AFP.

"I heard that the vaccine is safe, and thank God, the children received it."

Disease has spread with Gaza lying in ruins and the majority of its 2.4 million residents forced to flee their homes due to Israel's military assault — often taking refuge in cramped and unsanitary conditions.

A fresh campaign to provide a needed second dose is due to begin in about four weeks in Gaza, besieged for over 11 months.

Ahead of the roll-out of the third phase, "vaccines, cold chain equipment and finger markers were delivered to north Gaza yesterday," Jasarevic said.

However, "a WHO mission carrying fuel for hospitals and vehicles for the polio campaign as well as campaign monitoring experts was impeded", he said.

It had taken three hours for that mission to get a green light from the Israelis to move, "followed by five hours at the holding point, after which the mission had to be aborted", he explained.

'Sustained access' needed 

WHO also voiced concern that some areas in the north facing Israeli evacuation orders are part of the areas where humanitarian pauses had been agreed to allow the vaccination to go ahead.

"We appeal to all parties to continue ensuring these humanitarian pause zones are respected during the campaign," Jasarevic said.

He said a separate WHO mission to reach Gaza's largest hospital, Al-Shifa, in the north was also "impeded" on Monday.

That marked the fourth time in as many days that WHO was unable to reach the hospital.

"We call for safe and sustained access to the north and for a functional de-confliction system, which still remains a challenge 11 months into the war," Jasarevic said.

He said the number of denied requests for access to the north had "doubled in August compared to previous months".

UN spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters that out of 208 UN attempts to access northern Gaza in August, only 74 successfully made their scheduled aid deliveries.

"Forty-four were impeded, which means they were blocked or delayed on the ground, resulting in some of them being aborted", while 72 were "flatly denied", he said, adding that the remainder were withdrawn by the UN due to logistical, operational or security reasons.