Region

DUBAI — Saad Al Awlaki has taken the helm of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (aqap) after the death its former leader, looking to unite the extremist group and change course after a steep decline.

Based in war-torn Yemen’s south, the AQAP is considered by Washington as the Sunni Muslim Al Qaeda network’s most dangerous branch.

It has claimed numerous high-profile attacks in the United States and Europe, including the 2015 assault on Charlie Hebdo magazine in France’s capital that killed 12 people, but these have dropped in recent years.

The AQAP announced earlier this month that Awlaki had succeeded Khalid Batarfi, who died after a long illness, according to Yemeni sources close to the group. Like other sources AFP has spoken to, they requested anonymity to discuss the extremist group.

Assem Al Sabri, an expert on jihadist groups, said the decline in the AQAP’s actions was due to internal divisions, “a financial crisis” and fighting against rival Yemeni forces.

Awlaki, a Yemeni national wanted by the United States, could herald “a major renewal for the organisation”, Sabri said.

The new leader has good relations with powerful Yemeni tribes — particularly in his home governorate of Shabwa, an AQAP stronghold — that could revitalise the group, a tribal official told AFP.

Born in 2009 from the merger of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi factions, the AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of Yemen’s war which since 2015 has pitted Iran-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led coalition.

But the AQAP is now just one of many armed groups in southern Yemen, including Daesh group jihadists and UAE-trained separatist militias who back the internationally recognised government against the Houthis.

Since the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack — AQAP’s most notorious — and a 2019 mass shooting at a US naval base in Florida, internal crises have put a brake on its operations abroad, Sabri said.

In February 2020, the AQAP suffered a major blow when its powerful leader Qassim Al Rimi was killed in a US strike.

Rimi was replaced with Batarfi, who was in turn succeeded by Awlaki — wanted over calls “for attacks against the United States and its allies”, according to the US State Department.

Washington is offering a reward of up to $6 million for information leading to his identification or location.

As the new leader, Awlaki will work to close the group’s ranks, according to Sabri, who said the AQAP under his rule may even seek to relaunch attacks in Western countries.

Awlaki, a member of the AQAP’s advisory council, has broad support from its religious and military leaders who now look to him to mobilise fighters, Yemeni sources close to the group told AFP.

A tribal source said that Awlaki may use his ties with local leaders “to restore the organisation’s tribal base, especially in Shabwa”, once a launching pad for its operations, and to “rebuild its strongholds that were destroyed by government forces”.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — The southern Gaza Strip came under intense Israeli bombardment overnight, despite international pressure for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territory where famine is looming.

Besieged Gaza is in desperate need of aid and the United States said it would continue airdrops, despite pleas from Hamas to stop the practice after the Islamist group said 18 people had died trying to reach food packages.

A fireball lit up the night sky in the southern city of Rafah, the last remaining urban centre in Gaza not to have been attacked by Israeli ground forces. About 1.5 million people are crammed in the area, many having fled south towards the border with Egypt.

The sound of explosions was also heard and smoke was seen rising in Gaza City in the north, where Israeli troops have been attacking the city's largest hospital for more than a week.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said early Wednesday that 66 people had been killed overnight, including three killed in Israeli air strikes in and around Rafah.

The fighting went on unabated two days after the UN Security Council passed its first resolution calling for an "immediate ceasefire" and urging the release of the roughly 130 hostages Israel says remain in Gaza, including 34 captives who are presumed dead.

Israeli forces have also surrounded two hospitals in Khan Yunis, where the health ministry said 12 people, including some children, were killed in an Israeli strike on a camp for the displaced.

The Palestinian Red Crescent has warned that thousands were trapped in the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis and "their lives are in danger".

Underscoring the desperation of civilians trapped by the fighting, Hamas has asked donor countries to stop their airdrops after 12 people drowned trying to recover parachuted food aid from the sea off Gaza’s Mediterranean coast.

Hamas and the Swiss-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor also said another six people were killed in stampedes trying to get aid.

“People are dying just to get a can of tuna,” Gaza resident Mohamad Al Sabaawi told AFP, holding a can in his hand after a scramble over an aid package.

Hamas has also demanded that Israel allow more aid trucks to enter the territory, which the United Nations has warned is on the brink of a “man-made famine” after nearly six months of fighting.

The war, triggered by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, has shattered Gaza’s infrastructure and aid agencies say all of its 2.4 million people are now in need of humanitarian help.

The UN children’s fund, UNICEF, said vastly more aid must be rushed into Gaza by road rather than by air or sea to avert an “imminent famine”.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder said the necessary help was “a matter of kilometres away” in aid-filled trucks waiting across Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

The US National Security Council said in a statement it would continue trying to get aid in by road, but also said it would continue airdrops.

AFPTV footage showed crowds rushing towards aid packages on Tuesday being dropped by parachute from planes sent by Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.

‘Political isolation’ 

Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 32,414 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.

Israeli troops have shown no sign of a let-up in the fight against Hamas, with the military saying its jets had struck more than 60 targets, including tunnels and buildings “in which armed terrorists were identified”.

The UN Security Council resolution passed on Monday demanded a ceasefire for the remaining two weeks of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that should lead to a “lasting” truce.

The United States, Israel’s top ally, which had blocked previous resolutions, abstained from the vote, prompting Israel to cancel a planned US visit by senior officials.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Israel was experiencing “unprecedented political isolation” and losing US “protection” at the Security Council.

Washington has baulked at Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to launch a ground assault on Rafah, and the United States has also expressed increasing concern over the humanitarian toll.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said before meeting his Israeli counterpart that “the number of civilian casualties is far too high, and the amount of humanitarian aid is far too low” in Gaza.

Talks ‘ongoing’ 

Officials from the two warring sides are in indirect mediated talks in Qatar aimed at agreeing on a ceasefire and the release of hostages.

However, both Hamas and Netanyahu said the talks were failing and blamed each other.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari said this week the talks were “ongoing”.

In Khan Yunis, dozens of Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles surrounded the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis.

The health ministry said shots were fired around the sprawling complex but no raid had yet taken place.

Israeli troops have also been engaged in heavy fighting at Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, for nine days.

Israel said it has killed 170 Palestinian militants and arrested hundreds there.

Israel has labelled its actions “precise operational activities” and said it has taken care to avoid harm to civilians, but aid agencies have voiced concern for non-combatants caught up in the fighting.

Palestinians living near Al Shifa have reported corpses in the streets, constant bombardment and the rounding up of men who are stripped to their underwear and questioned.

Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanese group with close links to Hamas, said early on Wednesday seven people were killed in an overnight strike in south Lebanon.

Hizbollah and other Hamas allies have exchanged almost daily fire with Israeli troops since the Gaza war began.

BEIRUT — Fresh Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon on Tuesday killed two people, Lebanese official media said, after the deepest raid since cross-border hostilities erupted between Israel and Hizbollah last October.

The Israeli forces said it had struck Hizbollah targets "deep inside Lebanese territory" near Zboud, some 130 kilometres from the Israeli frontier.

Lebanon's state-run National News Agency (NNA) said "an Israeli strike targeted the Wadi Faara region" near the north-eastern city of Hermel, a similar location to the one reported by Israel.

Israeli forces have exchanged near-daily fire with Shiite Muslim movement Hizbollah following the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Hamas after the Gaza-based fighters' October 7 sudden attack on Israel.

Hizbollah says it is acting in support of its ally Hamas, while Israel has also targeted Hizbollah and Hamas officials in Lebanon, including with strikes deep into the country.

An AFP correspondent said that, after the raid around Wadi Faara, the army and Hizbollah had blocked access to the area.

A Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said the strikes targeted an uninhabited area where Hizbollah has positions.

The NNA later reported that a separate "Israeli strike" near Iaat, close to the eastern city of Baalbek, killed two people and wounded another.

In recent days, Israeli strikes have targeted the Bekaa Valley, a Hizbollah bastion deep inside Lebanese territory, where Baalbek and Iaat are located.

An AFP correspondent saw a building belonging to Hizbollah in flames and two people being taken away on stretchers, with a number of ambulances rushing to the scene.

The Israeli military said its "fighter jets struck a landing area and several military structures inside a military compound used by Hizbollah's aerial unit" at two separate sites "deep inside Lebanese territory".

One of the raids came in response to an attack on the army’s “aerial control unit” in northern Israel earlier on Tuesday, the military said.

It also said that it struck Hizbollah targets in south Lebanon near the border.

Hizbollah later said three of its fighters were “martyred on the road to Jerusalem”, the phrase it uses to refer to members killed by Israeli fire, without specifying where or when they died.

The group in separate statements claimed a string of attacks on Israeli targets on Tuesday, including one with guided missiles it said targeted the Meron air control base in northern Israel.

It also said it fired “more than 50 Katyusha rockets” towards a barracks in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Since the cross-border hostilities began, at least 331 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hizbollah fighters but including at least 57 civilians, according to an AFP count.

At least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to the military.

The hostilities have raised fears of all-out conflict between Israel and Hizbollah, which last went to war in 2006.

WASHINGTON — A US envoy voiced hope on Tuesday that Sudan’s warring generals will resume talks after Ramadan and work to prevent a broader regional war, despite the failure of previous negotiations.

Tom Perriello, a former congressman recently named to a new position of US special envoy for Sudan, said after a seven-nation trip that talks co-led with Saudi Arabia could start on or around April 18.

“Anyone who thought that either side had a path to outright victory should at this point be very clear that that’s not the case,” he told reporters after returning to Washington.

“A war of attrition,” he said, “is one that is not just a disaster for civilians, but actually easily becomes a more factionalised and regional war.”

War broke out in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands, forcing millions to flee and pushing the impoverished country to the brink of famine.

Previous rounds of talks in the Saudi port city of Jeddah failed to yield any more than general promises or to halt the conflict in Sudan, which had earlier been transitioning, if uneasily, toward democracy.

Perriello, while upbeat about resuming formal negotiations, added that it was important not to “fetishise the start of talks” and said the United States and other nations were looking at incentives to end the war.

Regional players have played a key role in the war, with Sudan in December expelling diplomats from the United Arab Emirates over accusations the wealthy Gulf country has funneled military support to the RSF.

Perriello said that “they are aware, as others across the region are, that this is a situation that is quickly hurtling out of control and that the RSF is not in a position right now where it’s marching to either military or diplomatic victory”.

The RSF has also allegedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenaries, while Egypt and Turkey have backed the army.

The United States has previously voiced alarm over reports that Iran is also working with the army, which could give Tehran’s clerical state, which also backs Yemen’s Houthi rebels, new access to the Red Sea.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — The faithful walked slowly in a procession past the stone facade of Gaza’s only Catholic church on Palm Sunday, gathering to pray for peace as war raged around them.

Holy Family Church’s tranquil courtyard, filled with dozens of children and older people, belied the humanitarian crisis happening beyond its gates in Gaza City.

Inside the church, worshippers in their dress clothes lined the wooden pews decorated with palm fronds for the service marking the start of Easter week.

“Our celebration of Palm Sunday is an opportunity for hope, goodness and peace for us and for the entire world,” said a young man speaking from the pulpit.

“In order to renew our hearts and make them full of love, giving and peace,” he said, dressed in an ankle-length red robe.

Solemn-looking altar boys in the front row listened quietly, while parishioners with drawn faces after months of war filled the other rows.

The church in northern Gaza is a short drive from Al Shifa hospital and its neighbourhood, where heavy combat has raged between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.

A recent UN-backed assessment said Gaza’s northern area would fall into famine by May unless there was urgent action.

Heavy combat has made it particularly difficult to get emergency food aid to the some 300,000 the UN estimates are still in the area.

“This year, we don’t have the heart to celebrate,” Nabila Saleh, a sister at the Holy Family church told AFP.

“It’s true that we decorated, but we don’t feel the joy of other years.”

The health ministry in Hamas-run territory said the total death toll during almost six months of war now stood at 32,226 — most of them women and children.

‘Really heartbreaking’ 

Though Holy Family’s facade, courtyard and worship area inside the church are mostly intact, the site has been deeply affected by the fighting.

Christian families from Gaza have found refuge inside and in December the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem reported two Christian women were killed by Israeli fire at the church.

The Israeli army said it had “no reports of a hit on the church”, stressing it “does not target civilians, no matter their religion”.

Far from Gaza, Palestinian Christians marked Palm Sunday in Jerusalem with the fate of the people trapped by war weighing heavily upon them.

Thousands walked from Bethphage Church into the Old City, recreating Jesus’s arrival during which crowds laid palm fronds at his feet.

“It is very sad,” said worshipper Hanan Nasrallah, 62. “Hopefully God will bring peace to everybody and next year hopefully everybody will celebrate together.”

Palestinian Christians also criticised tightened movement restrictions on those in the occupied West Bank, which they said prevented many from joining on the festivities in Jerusalem.

“Many of my friends from the West Bank, they weren’t able to come,” said 30-year-old Palestinian Hanna Tams, a dancer and choreographer.

“The Israeli authorities are not giving them permission,” he said, calling it “really heartbreaking”.

“I wish people in Gaza all the best and I wish they were safe and I wish they were here with us,” he added.

BEIRUT — An Israeli drone strike on eastern Lebanon has targeted a Palestinian Hamas official who “escaped” the attempted killing, a Lebanese security source said on Monday.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said the strike on Sunday near the village of Suwairi in the Bekaa Valley killed a Syrian civilian in his vehicle.

The security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the Hamas official was travelling along the same road.

“A Hamas official was targeted by the Israeli drone attack on Sunday but escaped,” said the source, without naming the official.

Since war erupted between Hamas and Israel following the Gaza militants’ October 7 surprise attack, Israeli forces along the country’s northern border with Lebanon have exchanged near-daily fire with Hizbollah, a Hamas ally.

Israel has also targeted Hizbollah and Hamas officials in Lebanon, including in strikes deep into Lebanese territory.

The strike in the Suwairi area, near Lebanon’s border with Syria, was the first Israeli attack there in nearly six months of fighting.

On January 2, a strike widely blamed on Israel killed Hamas’s deputy leader Saleh Al Aruri in a southern Beirut suburb that is a Hizbollah stronghold.

He is the most high-profile Hamas figure to be killed during the war.

According to another security source, pre-dawn Israeli strikes on Sunday wounded four people, including a Hizbollah member, in Baalbek, further north in the Bekaa Valley.

The cross-border violence since early October has killed at least 326 people in Lebanon, most of them Hizbollah fighters but also 57 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

At least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to the Israeli military.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the violence in Lebanon’s south and Israel’s north.

ISTANBUL (AFP) — Turks will vote next Sunday in local elections as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, buoyed by a strong showing in last year's general elections, sets his sights on winning back Istanbul.

The secular opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) seized back control of the city — Turkey's economic powerhouse — for the first time since before Erdogan ruled it as mayor in the 1990s in watershed 2019 polls.

That vote also saw the opposition win back the capital Ankara and keep power in the crucial Aegean port city of Izmir, shattering Erdogan's image of political invincibility.

Erdogan has entrusted his former environment minister Murat Kurum to run for mayor of Istanbul in the March 31 polls as he looks to avenge the worst political defeat of his two-decade rule when CHP arch rival Ekrem Imamoglu took the town hall.

The powerful president bounced back last year to win a tough presidential election that came in the throes of an economic crisis and a massive earthquake that claimed more than 53,000 lives in Turkey.

Now, Erdogan has set his sights on winning back Istanbul — the city where he grew up and where he launched his political career as mayor in 1994.

Imamoglu edged out an Erdogan ally in a 2019 election that gained international headlines for being controversially annulled.

He won a re-run vote by a massive margin that turned him into an instant hero for the opposition and a formidable foe for Erdogan.

'Glimmer of hope'

The 52-year-old is widely seen as the opposition's best bet at winning back the presidency from Erdogan's AKP party in 2028.

"Imamoglu is an effective political operator and at this point in time represents one of the very few glimmers of hope for constituents who oppose Erdogan and the AKP," Anthony Skinner, director of research at geopolitical advisory firm Marlow Global, told AFP.

But last year’s poor general election showing fractured the opposition and prompted the pro-Kurdish DEM Party — the third largest in parliament — to submit its own candidates in the local polls.

This could cost the opposition.

“The underperformance of the political opposition at the May 2023 elections demonstrated its failure to effectively challenge the political status quo, and, by extension the resilience and resourcefulness of Erdogan,” Skinner said.

In 2019, CHP’s Imamoglu received support from a wide range of political parties that included the right-wing IYI, Kurds and Socialists who oppose Erdogan.

But the lack of unity this time will likely cost Imamoglu several percentage points.

‘Biggest prize’

Erdogan is leading the AKP campaign and his rallies are broadcast daily on television, whereas the opposition candidates are given little airtime.

They use social media instead.

The Erdogan government’s failure to get soaring inflation of 67 per cent under control could hurt his Kurum’s chances.

Erdogan is due to hold a major rally in Istanbul on Sunday, hoping to unite supporters behind Kurum.

Berk Esen, an associate professor at Istanbul’s Sabanci University, portrayed Istanbul as “the biggest prize in Turkish politics” and said winning back the city was extremely important for Erdogan, 70, who said the March local elections would be his last.

“Obviously, this is his city,” Esen said. “But it goes beyond that”.

“Istanbul is a city with enormous municipal resources that provides services to 16 million citizens”, he said.

Polls suggest it will be a close-run affair.

But Erman Bakirci from Konda polling company insisted that “Imamoglu is ahead” in Istanbul and suggested there could be “a gap between the polls and the actual election results”.

Osman Nuri Kabaktepe, AKP’s Istanbul head, told AFP that Istanbul was crucial because it is “our gateway to the world”, comparing it to the importance of New York and Berlin.

In the capital Ankara, CHP Mayor Mansur Yavas appears to be ahead but “a very tight race” could play out, political communications expert Eren Aksoyoglu said, adding that AKP’s nationalist allies are “putting all their weight into the battle”.

Observers say the DEM Party — accused by authorities of links with outlawed Kurdish militants — will sweep large towns in the Kurdish majority southeast including Diyarbakir.

But Aksoyoglu said that some voters may be disillusioned with the political system after 52 mayors in the southeast elected in 2019 on the HDP (now DEM) ticket were replaced by state-appointed administrators.

BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon — An Israeli strike on a car near the Syrian border killed a man Sunday, a security source said, after overnight fire wounded four people in Lebanon's east, a second security official said.

Israel and Hizbollah, a Lebanese militant group allied to Hamas, have been exchanging cross-border fire almost daily since the Gaza war between Hamas and Israel began last October.

But fears have surged of an all-out conflict in recent weeks with Israel launching air strikes deeper into eastern Lebanon, targeting Hizbollah strongholds in the Bekaa Valley area several times.

"Israeli aircraft targeted a vehicle in... Suwairi, killing its Syrian driver," a security source told AFP, requesting anonymity because of security concerns.

Earlier on Sunday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency had said a strike on a vehicle in Suwairi, in Lebanon's east, injured the driver, before reporting that he had been killed.

The NNA said he had been delivering food in a car that belonged to a supermarket owner.

Images from the scene showed a burnt-out blue vehicle and a streak of blood on the ground nearby.

Overnight Saturday, Israeli jets struck a Hizbollah centre that had been deserted for some time, the second security source told AFP. Four residents in nearby buildings had been wounded by the strikes, the source added.

The strike at Al Osseira, about 100 kilometres from the Israel-Lebanon border, ended a period of relative calm that had lasted around 10 days.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its fighter jets “struck a HIzbollah manufacturing site containing weapons in the area of Baalbek”, referring to the main city in the Bekaa Valley.

The NNA had earlier reported three people injured in the Israeli strikes.

Later, HIzbollah said it fired “more than 60 Katyusha-type rockets” at two Israeli military positions in the occupied Golan Heights in response to the Israeli strikes.

The Israeli military also said “approximately 50 launches were identified from Lebanon toward northern Israel”.

“A number of launches were intercepted while the rest fell in open areas,” the military added.

Hizbollah began launching near-daily attacks against Israel on October 8 in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, whose attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza.

Hizbollah said on Saturday it had carried out several more strikes and announced later, without giving details, that one of its fighters had died.

It says it will only end its attacks on Israel if there is a ceasefire in Gaza.

At least 325 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hizbollah fighters but including more than 50 civilians, according to an AFP count.

At least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to the military.

The exchanges of fire, initially confined to areas close to the border, have displaced tens of thousands in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.