World

Overloaded trucks and cars packed with families ply narrow, bumpy mountain roads surrounding this Yemeni city long-besieged by Huthi rebels — evidence that the terms of a truce have yet to be met.

Announced just over a month ago, the truce called for warring parties to reopen the main roads into Taez, a city of roughly 600,000 people in Yemen’s southwest that has been largely cut off from the world since 2015.

So far, however, those roads remain closed, meaning truck drivers and ordinary civilians have no choice but to seek out dangerous alternative routes prone to accidents and seemingly endless traffic jams. 

In normal times, one such road, known as “Al-Aqroudh”, should allow drivers to reach the village of Al-Hawban east of Taez in just 15 minutes.

But now the trip can take up to eight hours.

“People are tired, especially children and women. We wait in traffic jams for three or four hours because of the narrowness of the road,” truck driver Abdo al-Jaachani told AFP. 

These days he only uses the road once or twice a week to avoid a rough journey that is compounded by the wear-and-tear on vehicles as well as the rising price of fuel. 

Yemen’s war pits the Iran-aligned Huthis against the Saudi-led military coalition backing the country’s internationally recognised government. 

The Huthis took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting the coalition to intervene the following year and giving rise to what the United Nations has termed the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and the country has been pushed to the brink of famine. 

Despite the coalition’s backing, forces loyal to the government have failed to prevent the Huthis from seizing control of most of northern Yemen and eyeing other strategic areas. 

– ‘Unspeakable’ situation –

The two-month renewable truce began in early April, coinciding with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. 

It has provided much of the Arab world’s poorest country with a rare respite from violence. 

Less than a week after it took effect, Yemen’s then president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi announced he was handing over power to a new eight-man leadership council, fuelling cautious optimism over a long-term ceasefire.

The truce has also seen oil tankers arriving at the port of Hodeida, potentially easing fuel shortages in Sanaa and elsewhere. 

But a deal to resume commercial flights out of Sanaa’s airport for the first time in six years has yet to materialise, with a planned inaugural flight in late April postponed indefinitely. Each side blames the other for the holdup.

And Taez remains under siege, to the dismay of civil society organisations.

Each day “civilian victims fall on rugged mountain roads”, more than a dozen groups said in a joint statement in April. 

“The horrifying scenes of vehicles and trucks falling apart with people and goods… are unspeakable.”

In a Twitter post Wednesday, the French embassy in Yemen expressed “deep concern over the siege of Taez which has lasted for several years and which places its many inhabitants in humanitarian distress”. 

Residents like Abdallah Rajeh find themselves unwilling to venture out to see relatives as such trips are “very painful because of the bumpy road and the traffic jams”. 

Like many of his neighbours, he holds out hope that the truce will eventually unblock the main roads in and out of Taez.

“If the crossings are not reopened, people will pay the price,” he told AFP. 

“All these problems and difficulties only affect ordinary people.”

Hong Kong’s next leader John Lee is inheriting a once vibrant Asian business hub mired in its third year of pandemic isolation but he may prioritise security over an economic reboot, business leaders and observers say.

Lee, a former security chief, is expected to be confirmed Hong Kong’s next chief executive on Sunday by a committee of 1,463 elites after running uncontested with Beijing’s blessing.

He has promised a “results-oriented” government and a new chapter for the southern Chinese city — although his manifesto announced few major policy shifts. 

Business leaders have expressed concern over Lee’s lack of details on how he might kickstart the city’s fortunes, including moving beyond Chinese-style travel curbs that have left the city cut off and sparked an exodus of talent.

“In order to reboot Hong Kong’s reputation as a business hub, we need a Covid exit plan,” Kristian Odebjer, head of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, told AFP.

Tara Joseph, former head of the city’s American Chamber of Commerce, said travel connectivity was a key first step for Hong Kong to regain its international stature after “so much reputation damage”.

But Lee appeared to brush aside those concerns last week, saying that he will instead prioritise reopening the border with mainland China — signalling any immediate policy U-turn is unlikely.

– ‘Stuck in the middle’ –

Lawmaker and businessman Michael Tien said the coronavirus has trapped Hong Kong’s leader between a rock and a hard place, no matter who fills that seat.

“Our country is going for zero-Covid while the rest of the world is living with the virus,” Tien told AFP.

“Hong Kong is stuck in the middle.”

The city was slammed by an Omicron-fuelled outbreak which killed more than 9,000 people and contributed to a four percent drop in economic output for the first quarter.

Siddharth Sridhar, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said Hong Kong was enjoying a “grace period between waves” and that Lee must waste no time in getting the elderly vaccinated.

In recent weeks outgoing leader Carrie Lam has eased some pandemic restrictions, including reducing quarantine to seven days and allowing non-residents in for the first time in some two years.

Last week Lee told reporters he would continue “a good balancing act” between keeping the virus out and the economy afloat.

His 44-page manifesto did not specifically address the coronavirus, aside from vowing to learn from the pandemic and set up a new emergency procedure to deal with future threats.

– Security background –

Lee spent some four decades within Hong Kong’s security services, prompting questions over his business acumen in a city that markets itself as the financial gateway between China and the world.

“The choice of John Lee illustrates Beijing’s priorities of security and control in Hong Kong,” former US chamber head Joseph said. 

“He will be the first HK leader with no business background.” 

Lawmaker Tien said Lee would be receptive to outside opinions — a compliment echoed by many of Lee’s supporters.

“Lee won’t listen in matters of security, but in other areas he has no choice, he must listen and consider opinions,” Tien said.

Discussing his own governance style, Lee said he was a pragmatist eager to streamline procedures for greater efficiency.

Pro-Beijing business mogul Allan Zeman, who praised Lee’s policy ideas, said “(Lee) came from the police and police used to make things happen”.

– Democrats shut out –

Lee was among 11 top Hong Kong and Beijing officials sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2020 in the wake of China’s imposition of a sweeping security law aimed at snuffing out dissent.

Last month, YouTube suspended Lee’s campaign channel citing the need to comply with sanctions.

Lee has defended his role in crushing the 2019 democracy protests and recently said his government will prioritise livelihood issues over democratisation.

He has presented himself as a no-nonsense leader who can get things done and cut through red tape. 

Kenneth Chan, a political scientist from Baptist University, warned that style could lead to even less public say and participation in how the city is governed.

Lee has also shown little appetite so far in reaching across political lines to heal social divisions. 

“He’s determined… to shut out democrats, to put pressure on civil society and to basically kill the entire issue of democratic reform in the coming five years,” Chan said.

“This is going to be a door shut very tightly.”

Israeli forces launched a manhunt Friday for attackers who killed three people in the central city of Elad as the country marked the anniversary of its founding, in the latest incident of deadly violence.

The search — backed by a large deployment of security personnel, helicopters, drones and roadblocks — was seeking what police described as “one or two terrorists”, who remained at large hours after the attack. 

No details on the alleged assailants had emerged, but Defence Minister Benny Gantz announced measures to stop the attackers from “escaping and travelling” to the occupied West Bank, comments that pointed to possible Palestinian suspects.  

The Magen David Adom emergency response service, which confirmed the deaths, said four others were wounded after the incident, which follows a series of fatal attacks committed by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in recent weeks.

“We will get our hands on the terrorists… and ensure they pay the price,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said “the joy of independence day had been interrupted in an instant”, condemning the “murderous attack in Elad”.

Gantz announced that a closure of the West Bank — in place for the Israeli independence day — would remain in force through Sunday.  

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that the United States “vehemently condemn(s) the terrorist attack in Israel today”. 

“Our hearts are with the victims and the loved ones of those killed. May the memories of those who passed be a blessing,” he added. 

– ‘Complex scene’ –

Prior to Thursday’s incident, a string of attacks since March 22 had killed 15 people, including an Arab-Israeli police officer and two Ukrainians, in separate attacks inside Israel.

Two of the deadly attacks were carried out in the Tel Aviv area by Palestinians.

A total of 27 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs have died during the same period, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli security forces in West Bank operations.

Specifics on how Thursday’s violence unfolded remained unclear, but several Israeli media reports said the assailants carried knives, or an axe. Other reports suggested the attackers had used firearms.

MDA paramedic Alon Rizkan, a first responder, described it as a “complex scene”, identifying all of the dead as men in their early 40s.

The majority of Elad’s 50,000 residents are members of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, known as haredim, hundreds of whom had gathered at the attack, wearing crisp white shirts amid a swarm of medical personnel and police. 

Another majority haredi city, Bnei Brak, which also lies on the outskirts of the coastal city of Tel Aviv, was targeted in March.

– Warnings of spiralling violence –

For Palestinians, the anniversary of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence marks the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, when more than 700,000 fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel’s creation. 

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned “the killing of Israeli civilians” in Elad, warning it could lead to spiralling violence. 

But Hamas Islamists who control the Israeli-blockaded Gaza strip and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian armed group, praised the Elad attack, calling it a consequence of unrest at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound. Neither group claimed responsibility. 

“This operation demonstrates our people’s anger at the occupation’s attacks on holy sites,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said of the Elad attack. 

“The storming of the Al-Aqsa mosque cannot go unpunished.”

Fresh clashes broke out earlier Thursday at Al-Aqsa, which is also the holiest site in Judaism, in which it is known as the Temple Mount. 

The latest morning violence at the flashpoint site came following a tense April, in which nearly 300 people were injured in clashes between police and Palestinians at Al-Aqsa.

It’s spring planting season in Ukraine, but this year farmers require more than fuel and fertiliser –- they also need flak jackets and deminers to destroy the bombs that have already killed or maimed others in their fields.

One of the unexploded rockets lay on an island of undisturbed black soil in Igor Tsiapa’s field in the nation’s southwest and posed a deadly threat to getting his corn crop planted on land that was otherwise ploughed and waiting.

“We first spotted the projectile a week and a half ago but just didn’t touch this part of the field and continued on getting ready for planting,” he told AFP on Thursday, a few metres from the deminers prepping the device for destruction.

“Everything has to be done on schedule if you want to have a more or less proper harvest… We had to keep working,” the nearly 60-year-old added in the area of the village of Grygorivka.

Farmers in Ukraine have found themselves on the front line of a Russian invasion that has tainted swathes of the country with undetonated mines, shells and rockets.

That’s because they face a unique risk of setting off one of the devices while working the soil, one more piece of worrying news for next year’s harvest in Europe’s breadbasket.

Police said the latest injury was in the Kyiv area where a farmer in the village of Gogoliv hit a mine on his tractor while in the fields on Wednesday.

Maria Kolesnyk, with analytics firm ProAgro Group, told AFP that about 20 incidents had been recorded of farmers being struck by accidental explosions of war ordnance, but it wasn’t clear how many instances were fatal.

“In the agro community today the most sought-after profession is the sappers,” she said. “We desperately need the help of the international community because Ukrainian professionals are working 24/7.”

– Improvised bomb markers –

In Tsiapa’s field the rocket was left where it landed, and the blue-helmeted sappers placed orange fist-sized blocks of explosives along its explosive payload before shovelling a mound of dirt over it.

“Every day since the start of the war we have been finding and destroying unexploded ammunition,” Dmytro Polishchuk, one of the deminers, told AFP before heading into the field.

“After farmers began working in the fields, we started getting regular calls from people alerting us to new devices,” he said, noting the team destroyed up to three per day.

He added people have not always waited for overstretched demining crews to arrive, noting some farmers have marked the explosives with sticks bearing plastic bottles or bags as warning and went on ploughing.

Leaving the unexploded missiles untouched is not a guarantee that they won’t explode, Polishchuk said, noting some have a self-destruct setting where they can go off at any time.

For Tsiapa, farmers in areas that haven’t been occupied have to pick up some of the slack, despite the risks, for places where planting could be disrupted by Russia’s invasion.

“So we here have double responsibility and double pressure to grow a good harvest. Things are that way because we don’t have active combat here, so we can work,” he added.

Ukraine is the world’s top producer of sunflower oil and a major exporter of wheat, yet the war’s disruption of labour and displacement of farmers from their land as well as fuel shortages have all raised worries.

Before the war, Ukraine was the world’s fourth largest exporter of corn and was set to become the third biggest exporter of wheat after Russia and the United States.

Russia and Ukraine alone account for 30 percent of global wheat exports.

In Tsiapa’s field, the deminers’ work came to an abrupt end with a controlled blast that sent up a puff of black smoke and thudded through the valley, where spring weather has begun to turn trees and grass back to green.

When the blast was over with, Tsiapa hopped into his red van and drove off. He had to get back to work.

The United States said Thursday that Brazilians needed “confidence” in their democracy after President Jair Bolsonaro cast doubt on the integrity of upcoming elections.

The far-right incumbent was one of former US president Donald Trump’s closest allies and has taken a page from his playbook, alleging without evidence rampant fraud in Brazil’s electronic voting system.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States has “high confidence in Brazil’s democratic institutions.”

“Brazil has a strong track record of free and fair elections with transparency and high levels of voter participation,” Price told reporters.

“It’s important that Brazilians, as they look forward to their elections later this year, have confidence in their electoral systems and that Brazil once again is in a position to demonstrate to the world through these elections the enduring strength of Brazil’s democracy,” he said.

Bolsonaro is trailing in polls ahead of the October elections to former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist icon who was jailed in a controversial corruption case.

Bolsonaro enjoys a large social media following and his supporters have spoken with admiration about the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, raising fears for the conduct of the election in the Western Hemisphere’s second most populous nation.

President Joe Biden has sought to avoid public flare-ups with Bolsonaro and has sought cooperation where possible, including on climate — a crucial issue for Brazil.

Bolsonaro has publicly acknowledged a quiet visit last year by the CIA chief, William Burns, who has often served to send sensitive messages from the Biden administration.