Africa
Haiti quake death toll rises to 1,419, injured now at 6,000
A hospital in southwestern Haiti, where a powerful earthquake flattened homes, shops and other buildings over the weekend, was so overwhelmed with patients that many had to lie in patios, corridors, verandas and hallways. Then a looming storm expected to bring heavy rains Monday night forced officials to relocate them as best they could given the hospital’s poor conditions.
Even those patients were somewhat fortunate. Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency on Monday raised the death toll from Saturday’s earthquake to 1,419 and the number of injured to 6,000, many of whom have had to wait under the burning heat, even on an airport tarmac, for help.
“We had planned to put up tents (in hospital patios), but we were told that could not be safe,” said Gede Peterson, director of Les Cayes General Hospital.
Read: Death toll of powerful earthquake in Haiti soars to 1,297
It is not the first time that staff has been forced to improvise. The refrigeration in the hospital’s morgue has not worked for three months, but after the earthquake struck Saturday, staff had to store as many as 20 bodies in the small space. Relatives quickly came to take most to private embalming services or immediate burial. By Monday only three bodies were in the morgue.
The quake, centered about 125 kilometers (80 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, nearly razed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts in a country that is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti already was struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, gang violence, worsening poverty and the political uncertainty following the July 7 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse when the earthquake sent residents rushing to the streets.
The devastation could soon worsen with the arrival of Tropical Depression Grace, predicted to bring strong winds, heavy rain, mudslides and flash flooding. Les Cayes began to see light rain Monday evening, but it could reach 15 inches (38 centimeters) in some areas, the Civil Protection Agency said. Port-au-Prince was already seeing heavier rains.
“We are working now to ensure that the resources we have are going to get to the places that are hardest hit,” said agency head Jerry Chandler, referring to the towns of Les Cayes and Jeremie and the department of Nippes, which are in the country’s southwestern portion.
Injured earthquake victims continued to stream into Les Cayes’ overwhelmed general hospital, three days after the earthquake struck. Patients waited to be treated on stair steps, in corridors and the hospital’s open veranda.
“After two days, they are almost always generally infected,” said Dr. Paurus Michelete, who had treated 250 patients and was one of only three doctors on call when the quake hit.
Read: At least 304 dead, 1800 hurt as powerful quake slams Haiti
Meanwhile, rescuers and scrap metal scavengers dug into the floors of a collapsed hotel Monday in this coastal town, where 15 bodies had already been extracted. Jean Moise Fortunè, whose brother, the hotel owner and a prominent politician, was killed in the quake, believed there were more people trapped in the rubble.
But based on the size of voids that workers cautiously peered into, perhaps a foot (0.3 meters) in depth, finding survivors appeared unlikely.
As work, fuel and money ran out, desperate Les Cayes residents searched collapsed houses for scrap metal to sell. Others waited for money wired from abroad, a mainstay of Haiti’s economy even before the quake.
Anthony Emile waited six hours in a line with dozens of others trying to get money his brother had wired from Chile, where he has worked since Haiti’s last quake.
“We have been waiting since morning for it, but there are too many people,” said Emile, a banana farmer who said relatives in the countryside depend on him giving them money to survive.
Efforts to treat the injured were difficult at the general hospital, where Michelete said pain killers, analgesics and steel pins to mend fractures were running out amid the crush of patients.
“We are saturated, and people keep coming,” he said.
Josil Eliophane, 84, crouched on the steps of the hospital, clutching an X-ray showing his shattered arm bone and pleading for pain medication.
Michelete said he would give one of his few remaining shots to Eliophane, who ran out of his house as the quake hit, only to have a wall fall on him.
Nearby, on the hospital’s open-air veranda, patients were on beds and mattresses, hooked up to IV bags of saline fluid. Others lay in the garden under bed sheets erected to shield them from the brutal sun. None of the patients or relatives caring for them wore face masks amid a coronavirus surge.
Officials said the magnitude 7.2 earthquake left more than 7,000 homes were destroyed and nearly 5,000 damaged from the quake, leaving some 30,000 families homeless. Hospitals, schools, offices and churches also were destroyed or badly damaged.
Underlining the dire conditions, local officials had to negotiate with gangs in the seaside district of Martissant to allow two humanitarian convoys a day to pass through the area, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. The agency called Haiti’s southern peninsula a “hot spot for gang-related violence,” where humanitarian workers have been repeatedly attacked.
The agency said the area has been “virtually unreachable” over the past two months because of road blocks and security concerns. Agency spokeswoman Anna Jefferys said the first convoy passed through Sunday with government and U.N. personnel. and the U.N. World Food Program plans to send in food supplies via trucks Tuesday.
Prime Minister Ariel Henry declared a one-month state of emergency for the whole country and said the first government aid convoys had started moving help to areas where towns were destroyed and hospitals were overwhelmed.
UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said humanitarian needs were acute, with many Haitians urgently needing health care, clean water and shelter. Children separated from their parents also needed protection, she said.
“Little more than a decade on, Haiti is reeling once again,” Fore said, referring to the 2010 earthquake that ravaged Haiti’s capital, killing tens of thousands. “And this disaster coincides with political instability, rising gang violence, alarmingly high rates of malnutrition among children, and the COVID-19 pandemic — for which Haiti has received just 500,000 vaccine doses, despite requiring far more.”
The country of 11 million people received its first batch of U.S.-donated coronavirus vaccines only last month via a United Nations program for low-income countries.
Medical workers from across the region were scrambling to help as hospitals in Les Cayes started running out of space to perform surgeries.
“Basically, they need everything,” said Dr. Inobert Pierre, a pediatrician with the nonprofit Health Equity International, which oversees St. Boniface Hospital, about two hours from Les Cayes.
Pierre’s medical team was taking some patients to St. Boniface to undergo surgery, but with just two ambulances, they could transport only four at a time.
Working with USAID, the U.S. Coast Guard said a helicopter was transporting medical personnel from the Haitian capital to the quake zone and evacuating injured back to Port-au-Prince. Lt. Commander Jason Nieman, a spokesman, said other aircraft and ships were being sent.
At the Les Cayes hospital, Emma Cadet, 41, a carpenter’s wife, hovered over her 18-year-old son, Charles Owen, as he awaited an operation on his broken arm. He was among the lucky patients to have received pain medication.
Worse off was Nerison Vendredi, 19, lying quiet but alert. No casts or splint would help her because she apparently had suffered internal injuries and could not move.
There were some stories of miracle survivals, but they were becoming fewer as the days passed.
Jacquelion Luxama was leading his goats to a watering hole Saturday when a hillside collapsed on him, trapping him amid boulders and a rockslide that stripped skin from his hip.
“I started yelling, and luckily some other famers heard me, and they came and pulled me out, ” said Luxama, lying on a mattress at the Les Cayes hospital.
Death toll of powerful earthquake in Haiti soars to 1,297
The death toll from a 7.2-magnitude earthquake in Haiti climbed to 1,297 on Sunday, a day after the powerful temblor turned thousands of structures into rubble and set off franctic rescue efforts ahead of a potential deluge from an approaching storm.
Saturday’s earthquake also left at least 5,700 people injured in the Caribbean nation, with thousands more displaced from their destroyed or damaged homes. Survivors in some areas were forced to wait out in the open amid oppressive heat for help from overloaded hospitals.
Read: At least 304 dead, 1,800 hurt as powerful quake slams Haiti
The devastation could soon worsen with the coming of Tropical Depression Grace, which is predicted to reach Haiti on Monday night. The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned that although Grace had weakened from tropical storm strength Sunday, it still posed a threat to bring heavy rain, flooding and landslides.
The earthquake struck the southwestern part of the hemisphere’s poorest nation, almost razing some towns and triggering landslides that hampered rescue efforts in a country already struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, a presidential assassination and a wave of gang violence.
The epicenter was about 125 kilometers (78 miles) west of the capital of Port-au-Prince, the U.S. Geological Survey said, and aftershocks continued to jolt the area Sunday.
In the badly damaged coastal town of Les Cayes, Jennie Auguste lay on a flimsy foam mattress on the tarmac of the community’s tiny airport waiting for anything — space at a hospital or a small plane like the ones ferrying the wounded to the capital. She suffered injuries in the chest, abdomen and arm when the roof collapsed at the store where she worked.
“There has been nothing. No help, nothing from the government,” Auguste’s sister, Bertrande, said.
Read: Rescuers racing in Haiti as storm threatens to follow quake
In scenes widespread across the region hit by the quake, families salvaged their few belongings and spent the night at an open-air football pitch. On Sunday, people lined up to buy what little was available: bananas, avocados and water at a local street market.
Some in the town praised God for surviving the earthquake, and many went to the cathedral, which appeared outwardly undamaged even if the priests’ residence was destroyed.
“We only have Jesus now,” said Johanne Dorcely, whose house was destroyed. “If it wasn’t for Jesus, I wouldn’t be able to be here today.”
Ethiopia calls “all capable” citizens to fight in Tigray war
Ethiopia’s government on Tuesday summoned all capable citizens to war, urging them to join the country’s military to stop resurgent forces from the embattled Tigray region “once and for all.”
The call to arms is an ominous sign that all of Ethiopia’s 110 million people are being drawn into a conflict that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, once declared would be over within weeks. The deadly fighting has now spread beyond Tigray into neighboring regions, and fracturing in Africa’s second most populous country could destabilize the entire Horn of Africa region.
Tuesday’s announcement effectively ends the unilateral cease-fire the government declared in June as its military retreated from Tigray. It is also almost certain to magnify the toll of a nine-month war that has led to the massacre of thousands, widespread gang rapes and the displacement of entire communities, mostly Tigrayan. Hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray now face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade.
Read:At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’
The prime minister’s summons chilled Tigrayans, even those outside Tigray, with the statement calling on all Ethiopians to be “the eyes and ears of the country in order to track down and expose spies and agents” of the Tigray forces. Witnesses and lawyers have said thousands of Tigrayans already have been detained during the conflict for their identity alone.
“The kind of war he’s calling for is on another level, it’s for a total annihilation of Tigray,” said Teklehaymanot G. Weldemichel, whose family remains trapped in the Tigray region. “‘Once and for all’ means to finish everyone out.”
The expansion of fighting has alarmed some people of other ethnicities, such as the Amhara, who fear that the Tigray forces, now on the offensive, will take revenge.
“We know the (Tigray People’s Liberation Front) is well-armed and the losers would again be the Amhara people,” Demissie Alemayehu, a U.S.-based professor who was born in the Amhara region, said shortly after the prime minister’s call to war. Without addressing Ethiopia’s root problems, including a constitution based on ethnic differences, he said, it will be “very difficult to talk about peace.”
The deputy head of the Amhara regional government, Fenta Mandefro, asserted that hundreds of Amhara residents have already been killed. “More people will be endangered if we continue adhering to a cease-fire ignored by the TPLF,” he said.
The call to join the military is so far not compulsory, but with access to parts of Ethiopia increasingly blocked, it’s difficult to know what kind of pressure is being applied. Spokespeople for Abiy’s office, the military and the Tigray emergency task force did not respond to questions.
Ethiopia’s sharply worded statement came after weeks of mobilization by the federal government, including military recruiting and blood donation drives, as Tigray forces pushed into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. On Tuesday, the spokesman for the Tigray forces, Getachew Reda, told The Associated Press that the prime minister “wants to send militia to the war front as cannon fodder” and called it unfortunate that “ill-trained, ill-equipped people” are now being pressed into the fight.
The war began as a political dispute. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for nearly three decades, embittering many across the country by helping to put in place a system of ethnic federalism that led to ethnic tensions. When Abiy came to office in 2018, the Tigray leaders were sidelined.
Fighting began in November and took a stunning turn in June when the Tigray forces, strengthened by new recruits among Tigrayans horrified by the war’s atrocities, retook much of the region.
The Tigray forces now say they want to secure their long-blockaded region of 6 million people, end the fighting and see the prime minister leave office. Despite the resentment of many in Ethiopia, they are hoping for public support as they vow to press to the capital, Addis Ababa, if needed.
Read:Tunisia on edge as president suspends parliament, fires PM
“If his government topples, that’s icing on the cake,” spokesman for the Tigray forces told the AP last week.
Like Ethiopia’s government, they could use deprivation as means of pressure. Getachew confirmed that the Tigray forces’ aim in the Afar region is to control a crucial supply line to the rest of Ethiopia from neighboring Djibouti, on a major shipping lane. He called it “part of the game,” saying people in Tigray are starving.
“It’s not to spite the other parts of Ethiopia,” he said.
Last week the United Nations and the United States sent high-level officials to press Ethiopia’s government for more access to the Tigray, where telephone, internet and banking services remain cut off. But Ethiopia’s government has been angered by the international pressure over Tigray, especially as the fighting spreads.
Some 300,000 people have now been displaced outside Tigray, and this week the U.N. said it was “extremely alarmed” by reports that more than 200 people had been killed in attacks on displaced people in Afar. Ethiopia’s government blamed the Tigray forces, whose spokesman denied it.
The new statement from the prime minister’s office takes aim at some in the international community, blaming them for the “machinations of foreign hands” in the war, and alleging without evidence that some had been caught “red-handed supporting the (Tigray forces) under the disguise of humanitarian aid.” The government has suspended the operations of Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Committee, accusing them of “disseminating misinformation.”
The rhetoric in the government’s new statement “could well presage renewed restrictions on the humanitarian relief efforts in Tigray, reversing the already modest progress made in recent weeks,” Aly Verjee, a senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace, told the AP.
Read: Jihadis expand control to new Burkina Faso fronts
The statement also “leaves little room for dialogue, and as we have seen, a war of words does little to end the war on the ground,” he said. “When the federal government calls Tigrayan forces terrorists and traitors, it is not likely to encourage restraint on the part of the Tigrayans, who are already militarily ascendant.”
The prime minister last month referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and “cancer,” bringing a swift warning from the U.S. about dehumanizing rhetoric. Since then, Ethiopia’s government has repeatedly said it is targeting the Tigray forces alone and the TPLF, which it declared a terrorist group earlier this year.
“The battle is not with Tigray but with the terrorist forces,” its new statement said.
Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
At least 25 soldiers died saving residents from wildfires ravaging mountain forests and villages east of Algeria’s capital, the president announced Tuesday night as the civilian toll rose to at least 17.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers were “martyrs” who saved 100 people from the fires in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the North African nation’s Berber population. Eleven other soldiers were burned fighting the fires, four of them seriously, the Defense Ministry said.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
Prime Minister Aïmene Benabderrahmane later said on state TV that 17 civilians had lost their lives, raising the count of citizens from seven previously and bringing the total death toll to 42. He provided no details.
The mountainous Kabyle region, 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages and with temperatures rising has had limited water. Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and rudimentary tools. The region has no water-dumping planes.
The deaths and injuries Tuesday occurred mainly around Kabyle’s capital of Tizi-Ouzou, which is flanked by mountains, and also in Bejaia, which borders the Mediterranean Sea, the president said.
The prime minister told state television that initial reports from security services showed the fires in Kabyle were “highly synchronized,” adding that “leads one to believe these were criminal acts.” Earlier, Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud traveled to Kabyle to assess the situation and also blamed the fires there on arson.
“Thirty fires at the same time in the same region can’t be by chance,” Beldjoud said on national television, although no arrests were announced.
There were no immediate details to explain the high death toll among the military. A photo pictured on the site of the Liberte daily showed a soldier with a shovel dousing sputtering flames with dirt, his automatic weapon slung over his shoulder.
Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires
Dozens of blazes sprang up Monday in Kabyle and elsewhere, and Algerian authorities sent in the army to help citizens battle blazes and evacuate. Multiple fires were burning through forests and devouring olive trees, cattle and chickens that provide the livelihoods of families in the Kabyle region.
The Civil Protection authority counted 41 blazes in 18 wilayas, or regions, as of Monday night, with 21 of them burning around Tizi Ouzou.
A 92-year-old woman living in the Kabyle mountain village of Ait Saada said the scene Monday night looked like “the end of the world.”
“We were afraid,” Fatima Aoudia told The Associated Press. “The entire hill was transformed into a giant blaze.”
Aoudia compared the scene to bombings by French troops during Algeria’s brutal independence war, which ended in 1962.
“These burned down forests. It’s a part of me that is gone,” Aoudia said. “It’s a drama for humanity, for nature. It’s a disaster.”
Read: Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
An opposition party with roots in the Kabyle region, the RCD, denounced authorities’ slow response to the rash of blazes as citizens organized local drives to collect bottled water and other supplies. Calls for help, including from Algerians living abroad, went out on social media, one in English trending on Twitter with the hashtag #PrayforAlgeria. Photos and videos posted showed plumes of dark smoke and orange skies rising above hillside villages or soldiers in army fatigues without protective clothing.
Climate scientists say there is little doubt climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving extreme events, such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms. A worsening drought and heat — both linked to climate change — are driving wildfires in the U.S. West and Russia’s northern region of Siberia. Extreme heat is also fueling the massive fires in Greece and Turkey.
At river where Tigrayan bodies floated, fears of ‘many more’
From time to time, a body floating down the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan was a silent reminder of a war conducted in the shadows. But in recent days, the corpses became a flow.
Bloated, drained of color from their journey, the bodies were often mutilated: genitals severed, eyes gouged, a missing limb. The Sudanese fishermen who spotted them, and the refugees from Tigray who helped pull them to shore, found many corpses’ hands bound. Some of them had been shot.
The Associated Press reported dozens of bodies floating down the Tekeze River earlier this week and saw six of the graves on Wednesday, marking the first time any reporters could reach the scene. Doctors who saw the bodies said one was tattooed with a common name in the Tigrinya language and others had the facial markings common among Tigrayans, raising fresh alarm about atrocities in the least-known area of the Tigray war.
Read:Tunisia on edge as president suspends parliament, fires PM
“They are from Tigray,” said Garey Youhanis, a Tigrayan who helped bury several bodies found on Sunday. With a piece of red cord, he demonstrated how their hands were tied behind their backs. He squatted on the rock-strewn shore, crossed himself and prayed.
The deaths are the latest massacre in a nine-month war that has killed thousands of civilians and is now spilling into other regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and the anchor of the often-volatile Horn of Africa. Though Tigray forces in June reclaimed much of the region as Ethiopian and allied forces retreated, western Tigray is still controlled by authorities from Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara region, who have cleared out many ethnic Tigrayans while saying the land is historically theirs. Witnesses have told the AP of watching mass expulsions.
More than 60,000 Tigrayans fled to Sudan, where thousands remain in makeshift camps a short walk from the river in the hope of hearing news from those who still arrive. Some scrutinized the bodies in the river for clues, and they have asked Sudanese police and the United Nations to exhume them for autopsies.
“In the last one week, 43 bodies were buried around this river,” the surgeon from the nearby Tigray town of Humera, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. He and other refugees believe the bodies were dumped into the river at Humera, which has seen some of the worst violence since the war began in November.
“Some had amputated limbs and legs,” Tewodros said. “There was a man which we buried yesterday, his genital area was completely severed. ... So this is the kind of trauma that we’re seeing of western Tigray.”
He told the AP they hadn’t heard of any new bodies since Tuesday, when at least seven were found. But he believes an active search along the river could reveal “many, many more,” perhaps hundreds.
Ethiopia’s government has accused the rival Tigray forces of dumping the bodies themselves for propaganda purposes. A “fake massacre,” the spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, told reporters on Thursday.
But the discovery has increased international pressure on the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, at a time when his government is already accused by the U.N., the United States and the European Union of besieging Tigray and blocking food and other aid to millions of people. Hundreds of thousands face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade.
Ethiopia’s prime minister in recent days referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and a “cancer,” bringing a warning from the U.N. special envoy on genocide prevention that such dehumanizing language “is of utmost concern.” Ethiopia’s government has said such talk is not meant to describe ordinary Tigrayans.
But the bodies in the river brought new fears of ethnic cleansing, or the forcing of a population from a region through expulsions and other violence.
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“We are deeply concerned by the latest developments,” the U.N. refugee agency in Sudan said on Thursday. It confirmed seeing one of the bodies pulled from the river along with “what appear to be several fresh graves.” It said it was unable to confirm the identifies of the dead or how they died.
Like other international aid organizations, the U.N. agency said it has no access on the Ethiopian side of the border region. Underlining that absence, the U.N. humanitarian agency on Wednesday tweeted a map showing no foreign aid group active in western Tigray. One that had worked there, the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders, had its operations suspended by Ethiopia on July 30, accused by the government of spreading “misinformation” and illegally using satellite radio equipment.
Ethiopia’s government has alleged that aid groups are arming and supporting the Tigray forces, without evidence.
“Those who want corridors for weapons and non-humanitarian goods to be brought into them continue to try to manipulate the realities on the ground in an attempt to convince the world that unfettered access is not happening” in Tigray, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. She called the Tigray forces, who dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for years but were sidelined when Abiy took office, a “terrorist organization that has hijacked the well-being of the people of Tigray.”
Phone, internet and banking services remain down across the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and the U.N. says more than 5 million need help now. The Tigray forces, who have pushed into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions and displaced more than 200,000 people, have said restoring basic services is a precondition to negotiations to end the war.
Tigray forces on Thursday entered the Amhara town of Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its rock-hewn churches, a resident told the AP. While they entered peacefully, “yeah, we’re scared,” he said, worried about damage to what residents call the “new Jerusalem.” He estimated thousands of fighters were there and “many people are running away.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for his safety.
With the Tigray forces pushing south after threatening to go as far as the capital if needed, the U.N. humanitarian chief and the USAID administrator in visits to Ethiopia this week urged a cease-fire and talks. Sudan has offered to play a role in mediation. Sudan also could be a direct aid corridor to Tigray.
But the prime minister’s spokeswoman called Ethiopia’s relationship with Sudan “a bit tricky,” pointing to a border dispute. “That element needs to be thoroughly addressed before Sudan can be entertained as a credible party in negotiations,” she said.
For the refugees in Sudan, each body found in the river is a reminder of loved ones trapped in the fighting.
Read:25,000 troops deployed to quell South Africa riots, 117 dead
Horrified, refugees in the Sudanese border community of Hamdayet spotted one body that looked familiar. Like most of the Tigrayans killed in the war, it was a young man.
“How can I not feel the death of my brother and friend?” said one of the Tigrayans who buried him, Awet, who gave only his first name. “I’m very sorry.”
The dead man’s name was Robel, the surgeon Tewodros said. By the water’s edge, his fingers tapping his graying temple in anxiety, he checked his phone for news of other bodies found.
Tunisia on edge as president suspends parliament, fires PM
Troops surrounded Tunisia’s parliament and blocked its speaker from entering Monday after the president suspended the legislature and fired the prime minister and other top members of government, sparking concerns for the North African country’s young democracy.
In the face of nationwide protests over Tunisia’s economic troubles and the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, President Kais Saied decided late Sunday to dismiss the officials, including the justice and defense ministers.
Some demonstrators cheered the firings, shouting with joy and waving Tunisian flags.
But others accused the president of a power grab, and the country’s overseas allies expressed concern that it might be descending again into autocracy. In a move sure to fuel those worries, police raided the offices of broadcaster Al-Jazeera and ordered it shut down.
READ: Tunisian president fires premier after violent protests
Tunisia, which ignited the Arab Spring in 2011 when protests led to the overthrow of its longtime autocratic leader, is often regarded as the only success story of those uprisings.
But democracy didn’t bring prosperity. Tunisia’s economy was already flailing before the pandemic hit, with 18% unemployment, and young people demanding jobs and an end to police brutality protested in large numbers earlier this year.
The government recently announced cuts to food and fuel subsidies as it sought its fourth loan from the International Monetary Fund in a decade, further fueling anger in impoverished regions.
The pandemic has only compounded those problems, and the government recently reimposed lockdowns and other virus restrictions in the face of one of Africa’s worst outbreaks.
Angry at the economic malaise and the poor handling of the pandemic, thousands of protesters defied virus restrictions and scorching heat in the capital, Tunis, and other cities Sunday to demand the dissolution of parliament. The largely young crowds shouted “Get out!” and slogans calling for an early election and economic reforms. Clashes erupted in many places.
“I must shoulder the responsibility and I have done so. I have chosen to stand by the people,” the president said in a solemn televised address.
Saied said he had to fire the prime minister and suspend parliament because of concerns over public violence. He said he acted according to the law — but parliamentary speaker Rached Ghannouchi, who heads the Islamist party that dominates the legislature, said the president didn’t consult with him or the prime minister as required. The three have been in conflict.
READ: Bangladeshi migrants among 43 missing as boat sinks off Tunisia
“We have taken these decisions ... until social peace returns to Tunisia and until we save the state,” Saied said.
While the dissolution of parliament cheered some protesters, others in Tunisia were opposed — and the composition of each camp wasn’t entirely clear. Police intervened Monday to prevent clashes outside the parliament building between demonstrators supporting the president and lawmakers from the dominant Ennahdha party and their allies who opposed the move. Both sides shouted and some threw stones, according to an Associated Press reporter.
Ghannouchi, the speaker, tried to enter parliament overnight, but police and military forces guarding the site stopped him. He sat in a car outside the building for nearly 12 hours before leaving Monday afternoon — his next steps were unclear.
He called the president’s move “a coup against the constitution and the (Arab Spring) revolution,” and insisted the parliament would continue to work.
Saifeddine Makhlouf, founder of and lawmaker in a coalition of hardline Islamists, also denounced the president’s move as a coup.
“We will not let it pass,” he said.
Tensions between the prime minister and president have been blamed for poor management of the virus, while a bungled vaccination drive led to the dismissal of the health minister this month.
To date, 7% of the population has been fully vaccinated, while more than 90% of the country’s intensive care unit beds are occupied, according to health ministry figures. Videos have circulated on social media showing bodies left in the middle of wards as morgues struggle to deal with growing deaths.
Ennahdha has been a particular target, accused of focusing on its internal concerns instead of managing the virus.
Security forces also moved in Monday on the Tunis offices of Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite news network said on its Facebook page. The reason for the move was not immediately clear.
Al-Jazeera, citing its journalists, said 10 “heavily armed police officers” entered their bureau without a warrant and asked everyone to leave. “The reporters’ phones and other equipment were confiscated, and they were not allowed back into the building to retrieve their personal belongs,” the organization said.
Qatar and its Al-Jazeera network have been viewed by some Middle Eastern nations as promoting Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood. Its offices have been shut down in other countries over that, most noticeably in Egypt after the 2013 coup that brought current President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to office.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said it hoped “the voice of wisdom” would prevail in the turmoil and that the rule of law would be established again.
Inside and outside Tunisia, from the U.N. to the European Union and beyond, concern was raised about whether the nascent democracy was taking an authoritarian turn.
Former President Moncef Marzouki called for political dialogue, saying in a Facebook video, “We made a huge leap backward tonight, we are back to dictatorship.”
U.N. officials were in touch with Tunisians “trying to see to it that all of the various parties ... do what they can to ensure that the situation does remain calm,” deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said. The already volatile region “cannot bear to have more unrest than it has presently had,” he said.
German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Adebahr said the government was in discussion with Tunisian authorities about the “worrisome” situation.
READ: Tunisian carrying Quran fatally stabs 3 in French church
“We think it’s important now to return really quickly to the constitutional order,” Adebahr told reporters in Berlin. She stopped short of calling it a coup, but said the Tunisian president appeared to be relying on a “pretty broad interpretation of the constitution” to defend his actions.
France, Tunisia’s former colonial ruler, said it counts on “respect for a state of law and the return, as soon as possible, to the normal functioning of institutions.” Paris called on all to avoid violence “and preserve democratic advances.”
Italy, likewise, appealed for respect of the Tunisian Constitution and the rule of law, while Turkey hoped “democratic legitimacy” is soon restored.
The president invoked a constitutional article that allows him to assume executive power and freeze parliament for an unspecified period of time in cases of “imminent danger threatening the institutions of the nation and the independence of the country and hindering the regular functioning of the public powers.”
Jihadis expand control to new Burkina Faso fronts
Florent Coulibaly, a soldier in Burkina Faso’s army, says he hasn’t been sleeping well for the past few months as he is often roused at 3 a.m. to fight jihadi rebels.
Until recently life was peaceful in western Burkina Faso’s Comoe province, but an increase in attacks by extremist groups in the country’s west has put the military on edge.
“It tires us. It gives us a lot of work. It scares us, too,” said Coulibaly, 27. “We don’t know where (the jihadis) are going to come from. They see us, but we don’t see them. They know us, but we don’t know them.”
Also read: Burkina Faso says at least 100 civilians killed in attack
Over the past six months, his battalion has doubled its patrols from once a week to twice, but Coulibaly says the men are ill-equipped, overworked and worry the area could be overrun by jihadis.
Burkina Faso is experiencing an increase in extremist violence by groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Last month, at least 11 police officers were killed when their patrol was ambushed in the north. The country also experienced its deadliest violence in years when at least 132 civilians were killed in an attack in its Sahel region.
The jihadi rebels are also expanding their reach within Burkina Faso. Extremist violence centered in the country’s north and east has spread into the west and southwest areas near Mali and Ivory Coast, bringing residents and security forces in those areas to brace for more conflict.
The move into western Burkina Faso makes strategic sense for the groups who can use it as a base to extend their operations in West Africa. The thick vegetation gives them cover and the area can give them territorial control over the smuggling route between Gulf of Guinea countries and Mali.
Attacks in three regions of Burkina Faso’s south and southwest quadrupled from four to 17 between 2018 and 2019, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. There were nine attacks last year — a reduction that analysts attribute to increased military operations as well as the expansion of violence across the border in neighboring Ivory Coast.
In June, a soldier was killed in northeastern Ivory Coast on the border with Burkina Faso, and in March there was an attack by 60 gunmen on two security outposts in Ivory Coast, killing three people.
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“This attack confirmed the intention of armed groups to target the north of coastal countries. This is likely a new phase in the groups’ strategy to expand into these areas,” said Florent Geel, deputy director-general for Promediation, an international organization focused on mediation.
During a trip in April to the towns of Banfora and Gaoua in the west and southwest, as well as one village near the border with Ivory Coast, local defense groups and security forces told The Associated Press they didn’t have the manpower to stem the violence and felt like it was just a matter of time until the area was inundated by jihadis. Civilians also say they’ve started living in fear.
Last year, for the first time, jihadis posted notes on classroom doors warning students and teachers to stay away, said a 35-year-old primary teacher in a village in Comoe province who didn’t want to be named for fear of his safety. While his village hasn’t been attacked, it has become militarized with checkpoints stoking paranoia among residents.
“The situation is deteriorating .. In the past you could leave (the village) at midnight with your motorbike ... But today you are not going to take the risk ... When you’re sleeping you’re on the lookout, when you hear a strange noise you startle, but before it wasn’t like that,” he said.
Large numbers of teachers, including himself, are asking to transfer from less secure villages, which are easier for jihadis to attack, into larger towns like Banfora, he said.
Burkina Faso’s army is also trying to work with the Ivorian military by conducting joint patrols and sharing intelligence, but during at least one clash with jihadis, the Ivorian soldiers refused to fight, the military said.
Some areas have no security presence and rely on local defense groups to stave off extremists. In Gaoua, a group of Dozos — traditional hunters who operate across the region — said they’re often the first to arrive when there is an attack, with the army showing up three hours later or not at all.
“It’s discouraging,” said Noufe Sansan, a Dozo chief. Pointing to a text message on his phone that he received from a security officer informing him that there are more than 60 extremists hiding in a nearby forest, he said news of attacks in the once peaceful area have become almost daily.
The Dozos are trying to strengthen their forces and alert the community of the potential for future violence, but want help from the government. Two years ago, they asked for 24 motorbikes to increase mobility to better respond to attacks, but have yet to receive anything, he said.
Meanwhile, civilians who escaped the volatility in the north in hopes of rebuilding their lives in more peaceful parts of the country, say they’re fed up from fleeing.
Seated on the ground in Niangoloko village, 15 kilometers (nine miles) from Ivory Coast’s border, Saydou Gamsore described how he fled his home last year because of the extremist violence and said if he’s attacked again, he’d rather die than keep moving.
“We are tired of running away,” said the 76-year-old. “Even if it means death … I will stay here.”
25,000 troops deployed to quell South Africa riots, 117 dead
In one of the largest deployments of soldiers since the end of white minority rule, 25,000 South African troops began taking up positions Thursday to help quell weeklong riots sparked by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma. At least 117 people have been killed in the violence, authorities said.
The government said 10,000 soldiers were on the streets by Thursday morning patrolling alongside police, and the South African National Defence Force had also called up all of its reserve force of 12,000 troops.
In a show of strength, a convoy of more than a dozen armored personnel carriers brought soldiers into Gauteng province, South Africa’s most populous, which includes the largest city, Johannesburg, and the capital, Pretoria.
Buses, trucks, airplanes and helicopters were also being used to move the large deployment of troops to trouble spots in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal province that have seen violence in mainly poor areas.
The unrest erupted last week after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court for refusing to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry investigating allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.
Protests in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal quickly escalated into a spree of theft in township areas, although it has not spread to South Africa’s seven other provinces, where police are on alert.
More than 2,200 people have been arrested for theft and vandalism and 117 people have died, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, acting minister in the presidency said Thursday. Many were trampled to death in chaotic stampedes when shops were being looted, according to police.
“These are not demonstrations. This is economic sabotage and we are investigating with a view to apprehending the instigators,” Ntshavheni said at a briefing Thursday. One person has been arrested and 11 others are under surveillance for inciting and planning the unrest, she said.
The armed patrols have brought stability to Gauteng, authorities said. Army troops stood guard at the large Maponya mall in Soweto, which was one of the few retail centers not badly hit by the rampage but remained closed.
Volunteer groups cleaned up shattered glass and debris from shops that had been stormed and looted in Johannesburg’s Soweto, Alexandra and Vosloorus areas.
“I spoke to some of the guys who are unemployed in my area to come and help. The mayor supported us with transport to get here. We came here with two buses,” said George Moswetsa, a resident of Vosloorus in eastern Johannesburg who was helping to clean up a mall that had been trashed.
The unrest, however, continued Thursday in KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s home province. There were renewed attacks on shopping centers and several factories and warehouses were smoldering after being hit by arson attacks.
Police discovered more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition in Durban on Wednesday night, which Minister of Police Bheki Cele said belonged to people who were instigating the violent riots in the province.
The continued violence in KwaZulu-Natal appears well-planned, said South African analyst William Gumede.
Also read: Rioting, looting continues in South Africa, deaths up to 32
“In KwaZulu-Natal, it’s well-coordinated, well-funded. If you look at it, strategic commercial hubs were blocked, strategic roads were blocked at really key points. It was very organized,” said Gumede, chairman of the Democracy Works Foundation, a group supporting governance in Africa.
Zuma, throughout his political career, including his nine years as president, acquired many allies in South Africa’s military and security services who were reluctant to respond to the violence in his home province, Gumede said.
“The arson, the looting and then the burning of malls, the burning of warehouses, I mean, that indicates a really strategic destruction of the economy of KwaZulu-Natal,” said Gumede. “There’s a whole lot of organization behind that.”
Soldiers and police worked to reopen the N2 and N3 toll highways, which have been closed for days as burned-out trucks blocked the roads. The highways are important transport routes carrying fuel, food and other goods to all parts of the country and their prolonged closure threatens to cause shortages of essential goods.
The rail line to the strategic Indian Ocean ports of Durban and Richard’s Bay was also closed by the unrest, the state-owned transportation company, Transnet said. The 688-kilometer (427-mile) rail line ferries hundreds of tons of goods weekly to the ports, including vehicles, gold ore, aviation fuel, petrol, wheat and citrus fruit. The goods are then shipped to markets in Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Security forces increased their presence in the Durban suburb of Phoenix, where the riots caused racial tensions to flare. The predominantly Indian residents of Phoenix had been patrolling their area against the unrest and are accused of shooting Black people suspected of being rioters.
“Lives have been lost. The communities have a standoff and are in a bad way because it is the Indian community and the neighboring communities, who are African,” Cele told a news conference in Phoenix, where he said 15 people had been killed.
Gumede said the way forward for South Africa is to prosecute the perpetrators, both those that stole property and those who may have instigated the violence.
“This is going to be very important,” the analyst said. “First to restore the rule of law in South Africa and to prevent impunity, because if people can get away with looting without being prosecuted, they will do it again. ... So it’s going to be very important. I think we may have to set up special courts.”
In neighboring Zimbabwe, the police issued a warning Thursday against people getting goods stolen from South Africa.
“With sad events happening in South Africa, the Zimbabwe Republic Police will not hesitate to arrest anyone who has received or is in possession of stolen goods from South Africa,” the police statement said, advising people to have receipts for verification that goods were purchased legally. “A criminal in South Africa is a criminal in Zimbabwe.”
The largest deployment of soldiers since South Africa won democracy in 1994 was in March 2020, when 70,000 army troops were sent out to enforce the country’s strict lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19.
‘I was in tears’: South Africans take stand against looting
Surveying the uneasy standoff between South African soldiers and huddles of young men faced off Wednesday across the rubble-strewn street in front of Soweto’s Maponya mall, Katlego Motati shook her head sadly.
“I’m standing here against vandals and hooligans,” the 32-year-old said of the weeklong unrest and looting sparked by the imprisonment of ex-President Jacob Zuma, which has left at least 72 people dead.
She was one of scores of residents who came out to stand against the rioting that has rocked poor areas of South Africa for the past week.
“When I saw the destruction on the news, I was in tears, seeing how all this has panned out,” Motati said. “At the end of the day, we will be struggling because of this. Our economy is going to be really damaged.”
South African police and the army grappled to bring order Wednesday to impoverished areas in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu-Natal provinces that have been hit by rioting and theft sparked by Zuma’s imprisonment last week.
Read:Rioting, looting continues in South Africa, deaths up to 32
More than 200 violent incidents happened overnight, the government said.
The government dramatically increased to 25,000 the number of army soldiers deployed to assist police in restoring order, Minister of Defense Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula announced Wednesday night, an acknowledgment that widespread patrols may be needed to prevent renewed attacks by gangs of poor youths.
Some 1,234 people have been arrested in the mayhem, and many of the deaths were caused by chaotic stampedes as thousands of people ransacked shops, stealing food, electrical appliances, liquor and clothes, police said.
Motati said she knows some of those who took part in the looting.
“People my age, in my neighborhood, are bragging about stealing things and getting shopping carts full of stuff,” she said. “Soon they will be coming to my place to borrow sugar. Those things won’t help them.”
Motati, a trained chef with her own catering business, said it is hard to find clients amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“The pandemic has worsened things, for sure, but poverty, unemployment was bad already,” she said of the economy, which was in recession before the pandemic.
South Africa’s jobless rate of 32%, is even higher among people younger than 35. Although the country of 60 million has Africa’s most developed economy, it is one of the most unequal in the world, with more than 50% of people living in poverty and many suffering chronic food insecurity, according to the World Bank.
South Africa’s poverty has grown since 1994 when apartheid, the brutal system of racial oppression, ended with democratic elections exacerbating frustrations.
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“The pandemic and lockdowns put even more people out of work. ... This was just an opportunity for people to take whatever they could get,” Motati said. “I don’t think it stems from Zuma being locked up — it was building before that. Then one person kicks down the door and others follow suit.”
The violence erupted last week after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court for refusing to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry investigating allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.
The protests in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu-Natal provinces escalated into a spree of theft in township areas, although it has not spread to South Africa’s other seven provinces, where police are on alert.
KwaZulu-Natal, the eastern province that is Zuma’s home area and where the protests first ignited, has seen significant violence. Trucks going to and from Durban, South Africa’s largest port, may have to travel in convoys protected by the army, business leaders said.
The province is the center of South Africa’s largest ethnic group, the Zulus, where Zuma has drawn considerable support. However, the Zulu monarch, King Misuzulu kaZwelithini, appealed Wednesday for an end to the mayhem and for peace to be restored.
“My father’s people are committing suicide,” he said. “When food cannot be delivered because trucks and warehouses are burned, our people will go hungry.”
The violence “has brought shame to all of us,” he said.
Arson has damaged several factories and the government ordered gasoline not be sold in containers to discourage illegal fires.
A tense order appeared to have been achieved Wednesday by security forces in Gauteng, South Africa’s most populous province which includes the largest city, Johannesburg.
“I can confirm that currently it’s calm in Gauteng,” said army Col. Mmathapelo Maine, as soldiers brandishing rifles stood by, protecting the large Maponya mall in Soweto.
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“We have control of the situation and this is with the cooperation of the community,” Maine said.
Across the street, scores of residents lined up to buy bread from a truck selling directly to people instead of delivering to shops that had been closed.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met online Wednesday with National Assembly political party leaders to urge all to work together to restore order.
Ramaphosa has had consultations over the past two days “with different sectors of society to develop a society-wide response to the current outbreaks of public violence and economic damage,” said Tyrone Seale, the president’s acting spokesman.
“The president said the destruction witnessed by the nation hurt all South Africans, not only those in the affected areas,” he said. “And it hurt the poor, the elderly, and the vulnerable the most.”
At Soweto’s Diepkloof shopping center, business owners assessed the damage.
“It’s just like being raped,” said Thandi Johnson, looking at her shop, TWJ Events Supply, that had been cleaned out the day before by rioters. “And then you see the rapist walking past you,” she said gesturing toward residents walking by.
“Twelve years I’ve been working on this business and it’s destroyed in one day,” she said, shaking with anger as she looked at where she had sold balloons and decorations for children’s parties and other events.
“They pushed me aside,” she said of the rioters. “I pleaded with them that I am one of them, but they just came in and took everything. Look!” she said pointing to the bare shelves. “I didn’t come here by train, I’m a Sowetan! I’m born here.”
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Johnson said she is worried that insurance will not cover her losses because she is not covered for political violence. “I’ll be finished,” she said.
At the same shopping center, a band of young men was sweeping up broken beer bottles and trash in front of a liquor store that had been looted the day before.
“We’re trying to be the youth who bring hope back to our country,” said Thando Matsepe, 24, of the Zodwa Khoza Foundation, a youth development group.
“Yesterday this place was destroyed. So we are trying to clean up and get the country back up on its feet,” he said.
“This was crime. It was not a ‘Free Zuma’ campaign. It started with Zuma, but this is not how things should be done in South Africa. They have the right to protest peacefully, nicely. But this brings destruction. Everybody will suffer.”
Rioting, looting continues in South Africa, deaths up to 32
South Africa’s rioting continued Tuesday with the death toll rising to 32 as police and the military struggle to quell the looting and violence in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.
Many of the deaths occurred in chaotic stampedes as scores of people looted food, electric appliances, liquor, and clothing from retail centers, KwaZulu-Natal premier Sihle Zikalala told the press on Tuesday morning.
“Yesterday’s events brought a lot of sadness. The number of people who have died in KwaZulu-Natal alone stands at 26. Many of them died from being trampled on during a stampede while people were looting items,” said Zikalala.
Also read: Former South African president Zuma to face corruption trial
In Gauteng, South Africa’s most populous province which includes the largest city, Johannesburg, six people have died, said officials.
The deployment of 2,500 soldiers to support the South African police has not yet stopped the rampant looting although arrests are being made at some areas in Johannesburg, including Vosloorus in eastern Johannesburg.
Looting continued Tuesday in Johannesburg shopping malls in township areas including Jabulani Mall and Dobsonville Mall in Soweto. There were also reports of continued looting in centers in KwaZulu-Natal.
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The violence started in KwaZulu-Natal last week as protests against the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, who began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court. He was convicted of defying a court order to testify before a state-backed inquiry probing allegations of corruption during his term as president from 2009 to 2018.
The sporadic pro-Zuma violence spiraled into a spree of criminal theft in poor, township areas of the two provinces, according to witnesses. So far the lawlessness has not spread to South Africa’s other nine provinces.
The Constitutional Court, the country’s highest court, heard Zuma’s application to have his sentence rescinded on Monday. Zuma’s lawyer presented his arguments that the top court made errors when sentencing Zuma to prison. After 10 hours of testimony on Monday, the court judges said they would study the arguments and announce their decision at a later date.