Sunday 22 Sep 2024 {HMC}  An explosion caused by a gas leak at a coal mine in eastern Iran has killed at least 51 people, state media said on Sunday.

More than 20 others were injured after the blast in South Khorasan province.

It is reported to have been caused by a methane gas explosion in two blocks of the mine in Tabas, 540 km (335 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran.

The explosion occurred at 21:00 local time (17:30 GMT) on Saturday, state media said.

South Khorasan’s governor Javad Ghenaatzadeh said there were 69 workers in the blocks at the time of the explosion.

According to the AP news agency, he said: “There was an explosion and unfortunately 69 people were working in the B and C blocks of Madanjoo mine.

“In block C there were 22 people and in block B there were 47 people.”

It remains unclear how many people are still alive and trapped inside the mine.

State media has now revised its earlier toll of 30 dead.

“The number of dead workers increased to 51 and the number of injured increased to 20,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

Citing the head of Iran’s Red Crescent, state TV said earlier on Sunday that 24 people were missing.

According to Reuters news agency, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed condolences to the victims’ families.

“I spoke with ministers and we will do our best to follow up,” Pezeshkian said in televised comments.

The Tabas mine covers an area of more than 30,000 square kilometres (nearly 11,600 square miles) and holds mass reserves of coking and thermal coal, according to IRNA.

It is “considered the richest and largest coal area in Iran,” IRNA said.

Local prosecutor Ali Nesaei was quoted by state media as saying “gas accumulation in the mine” has made search operations difficult.

“Currently, the priority is to provide aid to the injured and pull people from under the rubble,” Nesaei said.

He added that “the negligence and fault of the relevant agents will be dealt with” at a later date.

Last year, an explosion at a coal mine in the northern city of Damghan killed six people, also likely the result of methane leak according to local media.

In May 2021, two miners died in a collapse at the same site, local media reported at the time.

A blast in 2017 killed 43 miners in Azad Shahr city in northern Iran, triggering anger towards Iranian authorities.

SOURCE BBC

Sunday 22 Sep 2024 {HMC}  Kenya has pledged to send 600 more police officers to Haiti in the coming weeks to help fight gangs controlling much of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and nearby areas.

This would bring the Kenyan contingent, deployed incrementally since June to help the Caribbean nation’s beleaguered police force, up to 1,000.

During a visit to the country, Kenya’s President William Ruto also said he supported turning the current Kenya-led security mission into a full United Nations peacekeeping operation.

A handful of other countries have together pledged at least 1,900 more troops.

Violence in Haiti is still rife and a UN human rights expert has warned that gangs are targeting new areas, causing further displacement.

The UN Security Council is due to meet by the end of the month to decide whether to renew Kenya’s current mandate for another 12 months, paving the way for a full UN mission in 2025.

This would lead to increased funding and resources for the operation, which has been hampered by a lack of equipment.

Addressing the Kenyan police officers at their base in Port-au-Prince, President Ruto commended the force for their successes over the last few months.

“There are many people who thought Haiti was mission impossible, but today they have changed their minds because of the progress you have made.”

He said they would succeed against the gangs and he promised to try to get them better equipment.

The nearly 400 Kenyan officers on the ground were going out on patrol “working hand-in-hand with Haitian forces to protect the people and restore security”, Ruto said.

“Our next batch, an additional 600, is undergoing redeployment training. We will be mission-ready in a few weeks’ time and look forward to the requisite support to enable their deployment,” he added.

But there has been some criticism in Haiti at the lack of a decisive move against the gangs.

A UN human rights expert who has just been there said the mission was inadequately equipped and needed helicopters, as well as night vision goggles and drones.

“The Multinational Security Support Mission (MSS), authorised by the UN Security Council in October 2023, has so far deployed less than a quarter of its planned contingent,” William O’Neil said on Friday.

Despite an international embargo, arms and ammunition continued to be smuggled into the country. allowing the gangs to extend their control to new territories, he said.

The UN expert had visited the south-east of the country, where he said the police lacked the logistical and technical capacity to counter the gangs.

He quoted a policeman in Jérémie as saying: “The situation borders on the impossible. We have to learn to walk on water.”

Sexual violence had drastically increased and more than 700,000 people were now displaced, Mr O’Neil said.

“This enduring agony must stop. It is a race against time.”

He said the solutions already existed, but efforts had to be “redoubled immediately”.

“It is crucial to stifle the gangs by giving the MSS Mission the means to be effective in supporting the operations of the Haitian National Police, as well as to implement the other measures provided for by the United Nations Security Council, including the sanctions regime and the targeted arms embargo.”

SOURCE BBC

Sunday 22 Sep 2024 {HMC} Israeli soldiers have raided Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank and ordered the Doha-based news network to shut down operations amid a widening Israeli crackdown on media freedom.

Heavily armed and masked Israeli soldiers forcefully entered the building housing Al Jazeera’s bureau and handed the 45-day closure order to the network’s West Bank bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, early on Sunday.

Al-Omari said the Israeli military’s closure order accused the network of “incitement to and support of terrorism”.

Al Jazeera’s Jivara Budeiri said Israeli forces used tear gas in the vicinity of the Al Jazeera bureau and al-Manara Square in the heart of the occupied West Bank city. She added that Israeli soldiers confiscated their cameras. Budeiri said she feared the military might try to destroy Al Jazeera’s archives, which are stored in the office.

Israeli military vehicles left Ramallah after the raid.

Speaking over the phone from Ramallah, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said the West Bank raid and the closure order come “as no surprise” after the earlier ban on reporting from inside Israel.

“We’ve heard Israeli officials threatening to close down the bureau. We’ve heard the government discussing this, asking the military ruler in the occupied West Bank to close down and shut down the channel. But we [had] not been expecting it to happen today,” Ibrahim said.

‘To erase the truth’
Sunday’s raid comes just months after the Israeli government banned Al Jazeera from operating inside Israel in May in the wake of its devastating war in Gaza, which has been turned into ruins by nonstop bombardment for the past 11 months.

That initial closure order was also for 45 days, but it was renewed and Al Jazeera journalists are still unable to report from inside the country.

After the raid, bureau chief al-Omari raised concerns about what Israeli soldiers may do to the office.

“Targeting journalists this way always aims to erase the truth and prevent people from hearing the truth,” he said.

The Government Media Office in Gaza called the Israeli move a “deafening scandal”.

“We call on all media organisations and groups that deal with human rights in the world to condemn this heinous crime … that is a blatant violation of press and media freedom,” it said.

Mostafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said Israel has no right, legally speaking, to close any office in Ramallah, which falls in Area A under the security and civil administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA). He added that Al Jazeera’s operating license was issued by the PA.

“This is the real face of Israel, a country that claims to be a democracy and claims to be supporting freedom of press,” he said.

Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, described the closure order as “a retaliatory measure against its professional role in exposing the occupation’s crimes against our people”.

He said, “The closure of Al Jazeera’s office is the culmination of the declared war against journalists who are subjected to systematic Zionist terrorism aimed at hiding the truth.”

Killing and silencing journalists

Media rights groups have slammed the Israeli government for its restrictions and attacks on journalists, particularly Palestinian reporters on the ground in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing war on the besieged enclave.

Since the start of the war in October last year, Israeli forces have killed 173 journalists, according to a tally from the Government Media Office. International journalists have not been allowed to report independently from Gaza.

Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul and Samer Abudaqa are among the journalists killed.

Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail Abu Omar was also severely injured in an Israeli strike in February.

Attacks against Al Jazeera reporters predate the war in Gaza, however.

In 2022, Israeli forces killed veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh while she was reporting from Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

A year earlier, the Israeli military also bombed a tower housing the network’s offices in Gaza.

Al Jazeera condemned the ban on reporting inside Israel earlier this year, calling it a “criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of information”.

“Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law,” the network said in a statement in May.

“Israel’s direct targeting and killing of journalists, arrests, intimidation and threats will not deter Al Jazeera from its commitment to cover.”

Sunday’s raid highlights Israel’s tight control over the occupied West Bank, including areas purported to be under PA jurisdiction, such as Ramallah.

It comes two days after the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for an end to the Israeli occupation.

Rami Khouri, a fellow at the American University of Beirut, also said the raid is part of a longstanding Israeli policy of seeking to “prevent real news about Palestinians or about what the State of Israel is doing to Palestinians” from coming out.

But Khouri told Al Jazeera that the bureau’s closure won’t “stop the world from knowing what’s going on, because of the hundreds of brave Palestinian journalists” and other foreign journalists in the West Bank and Israel.

Source: Al Jazeera