Region

TEHRAN — Iran began counting ballots on Saturday after a vote for parliament and a key clerical body, with local media estimating a low turnout and conservatives expected to dominate.

Friday's elections were the first since widespread protests triggered by the September 2022 death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurd. She had been arrested for allegedly violating the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.

Iran has also been badly affected by international sanctions that have led to an economic crisis since the last elections in 2020.

State TV reported early Saturday the "start of vote counting" after polling stations closed at midnight. Voting hours had been extended several times during the day, the official IRNA news agency reported.

A record figure of 15,200 hopefuls were competing for seats in the 290-member parliament. Another 144 candidates sought a place in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which is exclusively made up of male Islamic scholars.

The Assembly selects or, if necessary, dismisses Iran’s supreme leader. Many potential candidates for the chamber were disqualified.

Local Fars news agency estimated turnout at “more than 40 per cent”, among 61 million eligible voters.

President Ebrahim Raisi welcomed the voters’ “enthusiastic” participation as “another historic failure to [Iran’s] enemies”, according to IRNA.

Iran considers the United States, its Western allies and Israel enemies of the state and accuses them of seeking to intervene in its internal affairs.

Reformist daily Ham Mihan ran an opinion piece titled “The Silent Majority”, which said turnout was “estimated to be lower than” in previous elections.

Iran’s 2020 parliament was elected during the Covid pandemic with a turnout of 42.57 per cent — the lowest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A state TV poll had found more than half of respondents were indifferent about this year’s elections.

Candidates for parliament are vetted by a body, the Guardian Council, whose members are determined by the supreme leader.

The present parliament is dominated by conservatives and ultra-conservatives, and analysts expected a similar makeup in the new assembly.

Despite Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s appeal for people to cast ballots, many Iranians were split on whether or not to do so.

Former reformist president Mohammad Khatami was among people who avoided the poll, according to a coalition of parties called the Reform Front.

In February the conservative Javan daily quoted Khatami as saying Iran is “very far from free and competitive elections”.

BEIRUT — Israel killed a Hizbollah fighter in a strike on Syria, close to the Lebanese border, also hitting near Damascus Thursday, a war monitor said, hours after similar attacks.

Hizbollah holds sway over Lebanon's eastern border with Syria, as well as some regions on the other side of the border including Qusayr, the target of Thursday's strike.

"An Israeli drone strike on a truck killed a Hizbollah fighter in the Qusayr area near the Syrian-Lebanese border," said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At the same time, Israeli strikes targeted Syrian air defence and radar sites near Damascus, said the Britain-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.

An AFP correspondent in Damascus heard faraway explosions.

Syrian state media did not report the strikes.

Hizbollah and other Iran-backed groups have been fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces following the eruption of civil war.

Since Syria's war began in 2011, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes against its northern neighbour, primarily targeting pro-Iran forces, among them Lebanon's Hizbollah and the Syrian army.

But the strikes have multiplied during the almost five-month-old war between Israel and the Palestinian fighter group Hamas.

Hizbollah said Thursday it had also fired a volley of rockets at a north Israel kibbutz, in retribution for earlier Israeli strikes that killed civilians in Lebanon's south.

The group said it fired "volleys of Katyusha rockets at the Eilon" kibbutz, near the southern border, in response for Israeli strikes on Kafra that killed a couple in their 70s on Wednesday night.

Tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border have been displaced by nearly five months of fighting.

On Wednesday evening, Israel struck near Damascus, killing two Syrian pro-Hizbollah fighters, the observatory had said.

Last week, an Israeli strike on a truck in Syria near the Lebanese border killed two Hizbollah members, also according to the observatory.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria.

Syria’s war has claimed the lives of more than half-a-million people and displaced millions since it broke out in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces in war-torn Gaza opened fire on Palestinians scrambling for food aid in a chaotic melee on Thursday that the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said killed 104 people.

The Gaza health ministry condemned what it called a "massacre" before dawn in Gaza City in which 104 people were killed and more than 750 others wounded.

A witness told AFP the violence unfolded when thousands of people desperate for food rushed towards aid trucks at the city's western Nabulsi roundabout.

"Trucks full of aid came too close to some army tanks that were in the area and the crowd, thousands of people, just stormed the trucks," the witness said, declining to be named for safety reasons.

"The soldiers fired at the crowd as people came too close to the tanks."

President Joe Biden said the United States was checking "competing versions" of the incident. "I don't have an answer yet."

Asked if the death toll was likely to complicate efforts by US and other mediators to broker a truce, Biden replied: "I know it will."

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said he was "appalled at the reported killing and injury of hundreds of people during a transfer of aid supplies west of Gaza City".

"Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed," he wrote on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

Saudi Arabia strongly condemned what it called the "targeting" of unarmed civilians "as a result of the occupation forces' bombing of humanitarian aid queues in Gaza".

The incident came after aid agencies had intensified warnings over Gaza's humanitarian situation, with famine threatening particularly in the north.

Looting of aid trucks had previously occurred in northern Gaza, where residents have taken to eating animal fodder and even leaves to try to stave off starvation.

The Gaza City incident adds to a Palestinian death toll from the war which the health ministry earlier on Thursday said had topped 30,000.

It came after mediators said a truce deal between Israel and Hamas fighters could be just days away.

In a reflection of increased concern at the White House, the administration is considering air-dropping aid into Gaza, US news site Axios reported early Thursday.

Biden said later that a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was now unlikely to happen by Monday, the timeline that he had predicted earlier this week.

Fears of famine

Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been seeking a six-week pause in the war.

Negotiators hope a truce can begin by around March 10 or 11 when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins, depending on the lunar calendar.

The proposals reportedly include the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza by fighters in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Short of the complete withdrawal Hamas has called for, a source from the group said the deal might see Israeli forces leave “cities and populated areas”, allowing the return of some displaced Palestinians and humanitarian relief.

Biden is “pushing all of us to try to get this agreement over the finish line”, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

The United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA described the food security situation as “extremely critical across Gaza, particularly in northern Gaza.”

The World Food Programme said humanitarian groups have been unable to deliver aid to the north for more than a month. The UN agency accused Israel of blocking access.

“If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” WFP’s Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau said.

Israeli officials have denied blocking supplies.

In the south, nearly 1.5 million people trying to flee the fighting are now packed into Rafah city, also short of food, as Israel threatens to send in troops against Hamas fighters.

Intense fighting has taken place in Khan Yunis city a few kilometres from Rafah.

On Thursday, Israel’s military said it had also killed fighters in central Gaza as well as in Gaza City’s Zeitun area.

While fighting continued, Muhammad Yassin, 35, battled to find flour in Zeitun.

“I found thousands of people waiting for long hours just to get a kilo or two kilos of flour,” he said.

“We have not eaten a loaf of bread for two months. Our children are starving.”

A group of 150 Israelis have started a four-day march from Reim, near the Gaza border, to Jerusalem, calling for the government to reach a deal.

CAIRO — Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan on Thursday met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in Cairo, as the former’s war with his deputy-turned-rival approaches one year.

The pair “will hold joint bilateral discussions” and “discuss ways to strengthen bilateral relations”, according to a statement from Sudan’s ruling sovereignty council.

Since last April, Burhan has been at war with his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

In footage broadcast by the presidency, Sisi embraced Burhan — Sudan’s de facto leader since he and Daglo led a joint coup in 2021 — at the airport in Cairo and received him in the presidential palace with the ceremony reserved for heads of state.

The presidency also said the pair would discuss “deescalating the situation” in Sudan.

Burhan and his government have retreated to the country’s east, governing from the coastal city of Port Sudan, while the RSF controls much of the capital Khartoum, nearly the entire western Darfur region and much of the country’s south.

The war has killed tens of thousands, including up to 15,000 in a single West Darfur town, according to United Nations experts.

It has also decimated the economy, destroyed infrastructure and forced over 8 million people from their homes, according to UN figures.

For months, Cairo was Burhan’s strongest ally in his war against the paramilitary.

When Burhan finally exited a four-month RSF siege of his Khartoum military headquarters in August, Egypt’s northern city of El Alamein was his first destination abroad.

The warring generals have since chased each other around regional capitals, each trying to position himself as lead statesman.

But in recent months, the RSF’s Daglo appears to have gained the diplomatic upper hand, while his troops made aggressive advances on the ground, pushing the army to retreat and prompting Egypt to distance itself from Burhan, according to analysts.

The Sudanese government, loyal to the army, has on the other hand drawn closer to Iran, with Sudan’s foreign minister visiting Tehran earlier this month.

The United States has in turn voiced concern over “reports about resumed ties between Sudan and Iran that could reportedly include Iranian material support” to the army, which this month managed to regain control of parts of greater Khartoum.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities, including indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas, torture and obstructing humanitarian aid.

Since the war began, Western governments and aid groups have warned that international actors could be exacerbating the conflict, with the United Arab Emirates accused of funnelling arms to the RSF.

Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories — The Gaza war's reported Palestinian death toll neared 30,000 Wednesday as fighting raged in the Hamas-run territory despite mediators insisting a truce with Israel could be just days away.

Another 91 people were killed in overnight Israeli bombardment, the health ministry said.

Mediators from Eygpt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to find a path to a ceasefire amid the bitter fighting, with negotiators seeking a six-week pause in the nearly five-month war.

After a flurry of diplomacy, mediators said a deal could finally be within reach, reportedly including the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza since Hamas's October 7 surprise attack in exchange for several hundred Palestinian detainees held by Israel.

"My hope is by next Monday we'll have a ceasefire" but "we're not done yet", US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday.

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari said Doha was “hopeful, not necessarily optimistic, that we can announce something” before Thursday.

But he cautioned that “the situation is still fluid on the ground”.

Doha has suggested the pause in fighting would come before the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which starts on March 10 or 11, depending on the lunar calendar.

Hamas had been pushing for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, a demand rejected outright by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But a Hamas source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the deal might see the Israeli military leave “cities and populated areas”, allowing the return of some displaced Palestinians and humanitarian relief.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 29,954 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

‘Almost inevitable’ starvation 

Since the war began on October 7, hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced, with nearly 1.5 million people now packed into the far-southern city of Rafah, where Israel has warned it plans to launch a ground offensive.

Those who remain in northern Gaza have been facing an increasingly desperate situation, aid groups have warned.

“If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” the World Food Programme’s (WFP’s) Deputy Executive Director Carl Skau told the UN Security Council Tuesday.

His colleague from the UN humanitarian office OCHA, Ramesh Rajasingham, warned of “almost inevitable” widespread starvation.

The WFP said no humanitarian group had been able to deliver aid to the north for more than a month, with aid blocked from entering by Israeli forces.

“I have not eaten for two days,” said Mahmud Khodr, a resident of Jabalia refugee camp in the north, where children roamed with empty pots.

“There is nothing to eat or drink.”

Ongoing strikes 

Most aid trucks have been halted, but foreign militaries have air dropped supplies including on Tuesday over Rafah and Gaza’s main southern city Khan Yunis.

What aid does enter Gaza passes through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt, fuelling a warning from UN chief Antonio Guterres that any assault on the city would “put the final nail in the coffin” of relief operations in the territory.

Israel has insisted it would move civilians to safety before sending troops into Rafah but it has not released any details.

Egypt has warned that an assault on the city would have “catastrophic repercussions across the region”, with Cairo concerned about an influx of refugees.

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday that Israel will “listen to the Egyptians and their interests”, adding that Israel “cannot conduct an operation” with the current large population in Rafah.

Ahead of the threatened ground incursion, the area has been hit repeatedly by Israeli air strikes.

An AFP correspondent reported that overnight several air strikes hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah, as well as Zeitun in central Gaza.

The army said it had “killed a number of terrorists and located weapons” in Zeitun.

It said two more soldiers had died in the fighting in Gaza, taking its overall toll to 242 since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.

BEIRUT — More than 120 individuals and groups on Wednesday called for a United Nations probe into Israeli attacks on journalists in south Lebanon, where three were killed last year.

An appeal addressed to UN rights chief Volker Turk expressed concern over "the Israeli forces' apparent deliberate targeting of journalists and media workers in Lebanon".

An AFP investigation into strikes on October 13 that killed Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah and wounded six others, including AFP photographer Christina Assi critically and AFP video journalist Dylan Collins, pointed to a tank shell only used by the Israeli army in the border region.

On November 21, Farah Omar and Rabih Maamari from the pro-Iranian channel Al Mayadeen were killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, the broadcaster and official media said.

The letter to Turk urged "an investigation to establish the facts and circumstances" around the attacks and for the findings to be published "with a view to holding those responsible accountable".

Signatories included the Committee to Protect Journalists, local and regional rights groups, Lebanese lawmakers and media outlets including Al Jazeera, as well as AFP's Collins and Assi.

A separate letter, sent to UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay, urged her office to “advocate for accountability for the apparent war crimes committed by Israel in south Lebanon”.

In December, Israel’s forces said the October strikes occurred in an “active combat zone” and were under review.

Following the November strike, the Israeli military said it was aware of a claim regarding journalists in the area who were killed as a result army fire. 

It added that there were “active hostilities” in the area and that the incident was under review.

The AFP investigation into the October strikes, jointly conducted with Airwars, an NGO that investigates attacks on civilians in conflict situations, found the attack involved a 120mm tank shell only used by the Israeli forces in this region.

A Reuters investigation found that two Israeli tank rounds fired from the same position across the border were used in the attack.

Human Rights Watch concluded that the October strikes were “apparently deliberate attacks on civilians, which is a war crime” and which “should be prosecuted or may be prosecuted for war crimes”.

France’s foreign ministry in December said “all light” must be shed on the October 13 strikes, while US top diplomat Antony Blinken welcomed an Israeli investigation into the strike as “important and appropriate”.

WASHINGTON — Operatives from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hizbollah are working inside Yemen to support Houthi insurgents' attacks on international shipping, a US official said on Tuesday.

Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, told a Senate subcommittee that Iran's clerical state was "equipping and facilitating" the Houthi attacks, which have triggered retaliatory US and British strikes on Yemen.

"Credible public reports suggest a significant number of Iranian and Lebanese Hizbollah operatives are supporting Houthi attacks from inside Yemen," Lenderking said.

"I can't imagine the Yemeni people want these Iranians in their country. This must stop," he said.

The White House said in December that Iran was “deeply involved” in planning the attacks, which the Houthis say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in the Hamas-Israel war.

Lenderking, who has dealt with the Houthis since the start of President Joe Biden’s administration as he helped diplomacy to freeze a brutal civil war, acknowledged that the rebels have not been deterred.

“The fact that they continue this, and have said publicly that they will not stop until there’s a ceasefire in Gaza, is an indication that we’re not yet at the point, unfortunately, where they do intend to dial back,” Lenderking said.

The bombing campaign drew skepticism from some senators from Biden’s Democratic Party.

Chris Murphy, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Middle East, agreed that the United States has “an obligation to respond” to attacks on shipping but added, “I do worry about the efficacy.”

He noted that US and UK strikes have hit a number of sites struck by a massive 2015-2022 Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthis.

“If 23,000 air strikes by the Saudis weren’t effective in moving the needle militarily and restoring deterrence, how can we be confident that our campaign of air strikes is going to have a different outcome?” Murphy asked.

The Houthis, who control war-torn Yemen’s most populated areas, have previously reported the death of 17 fighters in Western strikes targeting their military facilities.

The Houthi attacks have had a significant effect on traffic through the busy Red Sea shipping route, forcing some companies into a two-week detour around southern Africa.

Last week, Egypt said Suez Canal revenues were down by up to 50 per cent this year.

RENK, South Sudan — A new truck arrives in the South Sudanese town of Renk, packed with dozens of elderly men, women and children, their exhausted faces betraying the strain of their traumatic journey out of war-ravaged Sudan.

They are among more than half-a-million people who have crossed the border into South Sudan, which is struggling to accommodate the new arrivals.

Renk is just 10 kilometres from Sudan, where fighting broke out in April last year between army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Since then, Renk's two UN-run transit centres have been overwhelmed by an uninterrupted influx of frightened people, fleeing for their lives.

The journey is rife with danger, said Fatima Mohammed, a 33-year-old teacher who escaped with her husband and five children from El Obeid city in central Sudan.

"The bullets were entering our house. We were trapped between crossfire in our own street. So we understood that we needed to leave for the good of our kids," she told AFP, describing the situation in Sudan as "unsustainable".

It took them five days to make their escape, with Sudanese soldiers and RSF fighters "making [it] difficult for us to leave the country".

"They took all our phones at one checkpoint, a lot of our money (at) another one. We saw abuses happening at those checkpoints," she said.

 'Stuck here' 

Since the start of the conflict, nearly eight million people, half of them children, have fled Sudan.

Around 560,000 of them have taken refuge in South Sudan, according to the United Nations, which estimates that around 1,500 new arrivals turn up in the country every day.

Many spend months waiting in the transit camps, hopeful that someday soon they will be able to return home.

Iman David fled fighting in Sudan's capital Khartoum with her then three-month-old daughter, leaving her husband behind.

“It was supposed to be a short stay, but I am still stuck here in Renk after seven months,” the 20-year-old told AFP.

“My hope is to go back to Khartoum and reunite with my husband but I don’t know his fate.”

The war has claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, according to UN figures.

Around 25 million people, more than half of Sudan’s population, need humanitarian assistance, while around 3.8 million children under the age of five are suffering from malnutrition, the UN says.

 ‘Better than Khartoum’ 

While many in Renk long to return home, others hope to travel onwards to the town of Malakal in Upper Nile state, which is also hosting a huge number of refugees.

At Renk port, hundreds of people lined up under the oppressive glare of the midday sun, waiting hours to hop aboard the metal boats which make the trip at least twice a week.

As she waited, Lina Juna, a 27-year-old mother of four, told AFP her final destination was the South Sudanese capital Juba.

“I have nothing to do in Juba, no family members or friends, no business or work to take care of because I have spent all my life in Sudan,” she said.

“But I still expect Juba to be much better than Khartoum,” she added, recalling days spent struggling to find food as heavy fighting rocked the city.

Several hours later, she managed to board a boat, one of two carrying some 300 people each.

“Today is a good day for us,” said Deng Samson, who works for the International Organisation for Migration.

“Some weeks we have seen ourselves completely overwhelmed,” he told AFP, adding that the approaching monsoon made him nervous.

“We are truly afraid of what will happen when the rainy season comes, with waters rising from the river and disrupting the normal functioning of the port.”

With up to 10 trucks and buses turning up in Renk every day, the UN is trying to mobilise the international community, launching an appeal for $4.1 billion this month to respond to the most urgent humanitarian needs.