BEIRUT: A Lebanese submarine has found the remains of at least 10 migrants who drowned when their boat sank earlier this year off the coast of Lebanon with about 30 people on board, the navy announced Friday. The boat, carrying dozens of Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians trying to migrate by sea to Italy, went down more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the port of Tripoli, following a confrontation with the Lebanese navy. Ten bodies were recovered that night, including one of a child, while 48 survivors were pulled from the Mediterranean Sea. According to navy estimates, 30 people were believed to have gone down with the boat. Since Monday, the small, 3-person underwater craft — a Pisces VI submarine — has been searching for the remains. The wreck was located on Wednesday, at a depth of some 450 meters (about 1,470 feet). The circumstances of the vessel's sinking are disputed to this day. Survivors say their vessel was rammed by the Lebanese navy, while the military claims the migrants’ boat collided with a navy vessel while trying to get away. Capt. Scott Waters, who operated the craft, told reporters at a press conference in Tripoli Friday that the first body they found was outside the wreck but much of it had decayed since the sinking, with mostly bits of clothing and some bones remaining intact. He said the second body was found coming up from the wreckage. Waters said the crew identified four more bodies inside the wreckage and a substantial amount of debris around the vessel. At least four other bodies were found away from the wreck. Some of the people who tried to escape the boat, he assumed, got “tangled in that debris.” “One of the very last footage and images we took," he added, was of the remains of a person, an arm around another. “They died holding each other.” Tom Zreika, a Lebanese-Australian and the chairman of Australian charity AusRelief that helped bring the submarine to Lebanon, said the boat was a “fair degree under silt,” making it difficult to retrieve it. Zreika said what’s next is for Lebanon to bring the sunken boat out but that remains a difficult task. Lebanon's navy chief, Col. Haitham Dinnawi, said all the video footage from Waters' crew will be handed over to the judiciary as it investigates the sinking. Tripoli lawmaker Ashraf Rifi helped lease the submarine for cash-strapped Lebanon through Zreika and his own brother, Jamal Rifi, who lives in Sydney. Rifi and Zreika told The Sydney Morning Herald last month that an anonymous donor had given just over $295,000 to lease the submarine. The April sinking was the greatest migrant tragedy for Lebanon in recent years and put the government further on the defensive at a time when the country is in economic free fall and public trust in the state and its institutions is rapidly crumbling. With a population of about 6 million people, including 1 million Syrian refugees, Lebanon has been mired since 2019 in an economic meltdown that has plunged three quarters of the population into poverty. Once a country that received refugees, Lebanon has become a launching pad for dangerous migration by sea to Europe. As the crisis deepened, more Lebanese, as well as Syrian and Palestinian refugees have set off to sea, with security agencies reporting foiled migration attempts almost weekly.

RABAT: Morocco has recalled its ambassador in Tunis for consultations and canceled its participation in a pan-African investment conference, it said Friday, after Tunisia’s president hosted the head of the Polisario movement. The Polisario wants an independent state in the Western Sahara, a vast stretch of strategically valuable, mineral-rich desert Morocco sees as a sovereign part of its own territory. Polisario chief Brahim Ghali, who is also president of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, met with President Kais Saied after arriving in Tunisia on Friday to attend the Japanese-African investment conference TICAD. In a statement, Morocco’s foreign ministry said the move was “hostile and prejudicial to the fraternal relations that the two countries have always maintained” and that it would “immediately” recall its ambassador and withdraw from the TICAD summit. “The welcome rolled out by the Tunisian head of state for the head of a separatist movement (Polisario chief Brahim Ghali) is a grave and unique act that deeply hurts the feelings of the Moroccan people,” it said. “Tunisia, against the advice of Japan and in violation of the process of preparation and established rules, decided unilaterally to invite” the Polisario, it said. A Moroccan diplomatic source told AFP that the move was “new, unacceptable and above all unnecessarily provocative.” “Tunisia has allowed itself to harm a cause that is sacred for all Moroccans,” the source said. The move came as French President Emmanuel Macron was visiting Morocco’s arch-rival and Polisario backer Algeria for a high-profile, three-day visit aimed at fixing ties with the former French colony. It is not the first time that Ghali’s travels have sparked Moroccan anger. In April 2021, he headed to Spain to be treated for Covid-19, sparking a year-long diplomatic row between Spain and the North African kingdom. That only ended after Madrid dropped its decades-long stance of neutrality over the Western Sahara — a former Spanish colony — and backed a Moroccan plan for limited self-rule there.  

INSTANBUL: Turkey on Friday said Sweden and Finland renewed their commitment to fight “terror,” at the first meeting aimed at addressing Ankara’s conditions for accepting their NATO membership bids. The talks in the Finnish capital Helsinki were the first since the three sides signed an agreement on the sidelines of the NATO summit in June paving the way for the Nordic countries’ drive to join the Western defense alliance. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then immediately threatened to freeze their membership applications unless the two Nordic states handed over dozens of people Ankara views as “terrorists.” Erdogan’s foreign policy adviser Ibrahim Kalin — the co-chair of Turkish delegation — said after the meeting that Finland and Sweden were receptive to Ankara’s demands.

Ibrahim Kalin — the co-chair of Turkish delegation — said that Finland and Sweden were receptive to Ankara’s demands.

“Finland and Sweden have renewed their commitment to demonstrate full solidarity and cooperation with Turkey in the fight against all forms and manifestations of terror,” Kalin’s office said in a statement. The two Nordic countries broke with their decades-long military non-alignment and asked to join NATO after Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine. Their bids have already been ratified by the United States and more than half of the 30 members of NATO.  Each application must win unanimous consent from member states. Only Turkey, member of NATO since 1952, has opposed their applications, demanding the extradition of militants from outlawed groups including the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party and people implicated in a failed 2016 Turkish coup. Sweden announced the first extradition of a Turkish citizen this month as part of a deal the three countries signed in Madrid in June. But Turkey’s justice minister said last week that the extradition fell far short of Stockholm’s commitments under the deal. Kalin’s office said the three countries agreed to “intensify technical level cooperation” in order to make concrete progress at Friday’s talks in Helsinki. The next meeting is scheduled to be held in the autumn, according to a statement issued by Finland after the talks. “The participants discussed the concrete steps to implement the Trilateral Memorandum and agreed that the Mechanism will continue to meet at the expert level during the autumn,” said the Finnish statement.

KHARTOUM: After his family was massacred and home torched, Sudanese farmer Ayoub Haroun sought refuge in a school alongside some of the tens of thousands fleeing recent bitter ethnic conflict. More than a week of bloodshed last month in Sudan’s Blue Nile state left at least 105 people dead and scores wounded, as rival groups fought in a complex conflict involving deep-seated grievances, control of land and battles for power. “The gunfire was constant, all day long every day,” said Haroun, now sheltering in the former school in Blue Nile’s Damazin city, some 450 km south of the capital Khartoum. But while the violence was the culmination of long-simmering ethnic tensions — between the Hausa people and other rival groups including the Barta — it has further emphasized a wider security breakdown since a military coup last year led by army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan. Since the October coup, regular pro-democracy demonstrations across the country have been met with a crackdown by security forces that has left at least 116 people dead. Before unrest erupted in Blue Nile, the western region of Darfur had already seen months of ethnic clashes which killed hundreds of people. “We were left no option but to defend our lands,” said Al-Jaily Abdalla, from the Hamaj people. “Our homes were burnt to the ground, destruction spread everywhere, and there were multiple deaths.” Haroun, a Hausa, was left homeless, one of some 31,000 people from both sides forced to flee their houses, according to the UN. “My brother and nephew were killed and my home was burnt along with the homes of the rest of my family,” he said. Each side blames the other for starting the violence — and has accused the government of backing the other. The clashes triggered angry protests across Sudan, with Hausa people demanding justice for those killed. Other protests called for “unity” and an “end to tribalism” in the impoverished northeast African nation. In late July, senior leaders from rival groups agreed to a ceasefire, but a more permanent peace deal and reconciliation is needed. Blue Nile, a region awash with guns bordering South Sudan and Ethiopia, is still struggling to rebuild after decades of civil war. Conflict there raged from the mid-1990s to 2005, then erupted again in 2011, as ethnic minority rebels battled former President Omar Bashir. After the ouster of Bashir in 2019, rebels including from Blue Nile signed a peace deal, the latest in a string of agreements hoped to put an end to conflict. Sudanese pro-democracy demonstrators have accused the country’s military leadership and ex-rebel leaders who signed the peace pact in 2020 of exacerbating ethnic tensions in Blue Nile for personal gain. Authorities have rejected such accusations. Since the clashes, calls have intensified to suspend the agreement. “It didn’t bring any peace at all,” said Obeid Abu Shotal, a leader from the Barta, who sees the Hausa people as a non-indigenous group. But the conflict today is less about battling the government, and more about who has the right to the land. The Hausa people, prominent in West Africa, began arriving in Blue Nile over a century ago “in search of grazing lands for their cattle,” according to the International Crisis Group think tank. Today, some 3 million Sudanese are Hausa, a people with a reputation as skilled farmers. But tensions remain with groups who see the land as theirs — and violence erupted when Hausa elders asked civil authorities to manage their own affairs, said Hausa leader Abdelaziz Al-Nour. Some saw that as a means to take the land. “The land of Blue Nile is a red line for us,” said senior Barta leader Abu Shotal, insisting it “only belongs to original people” of the region. Calm was restored after a heavy deployment of troops were sent to Damazin, the state capital, and an overnight curfew remains in place. In the market, some shops are still shuttered, while other show the signs of damage from the fighting. “The market used to be busy,” said Mohamed Adam, a grocery shop owner. “Now work has been much less and everyone left.” Haroun, living in a school and mourning his murdered family members, wants just to rebuild his life. “We just want things to go back to how they were,” he said.

BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon: In the decade since Syria’s regime pronounced her jailed husband dead, Ramya Al-Sous was threatened by security forces, locked out of her spouse’s estate and forced to flee abroad. The mother of three, now a refugee living in Lebanon, was never told how her husband died and is unable to sell or rent the properties confiscated by authorities. “By virtue of me being a woman, everything becomes nearly impossible,” she said, echoing a plight shared by many wives and widows of Syrian prisoners. But the 40-year-old wants to put up a fight.

“My children would not have suffered as much if it had been me who was detained. They were left with nothing, but I insist on winning something back,” she said. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime waged a brutal crackdown on an Arab Spring-inspired uprising in 2011, sparking a war that has killed nearly half a million people. Around the same number of people, mostly men, are estimated to have been detained in regime prisons since, with tens of thousands dying either under torture or due to poor conditions. Outside prison walls, their wives are anything but free, facing a maze of red tape in a society and legal system that favors men, said Ghazwan Kronfol, a Syrian lawyer living in Istanbul. Without their husbands’ formal death certificates, widows cannot claim inheritance or property ownership, he said. Nor can they access their dead husbands’ real estate if it was confiscated or escrowed by the state, the lawyer added. Worse still, guardianship over their children is not guaranteed, with judges often granting it to a male next of kin. “All of this comes on top of financial blackmail and sexual harassment” by security officers, Kronfol said. Syria’s 2012 anti-terrorism law stipulates the government can temporarily or permanently seize the properties of prisoners accused of terrorism — a blanket charge used to detain civilians suspected of opposition links. The government is believed to have seized $1.54 billion worth of prisoner assets since 2011, according to an April report by The Association of Detainees and The Missing in Sednaya Prison. The Turkey-based watchdog was founded by former detainees held in Sednaya, a jail on the outskirts of Damascus which is the largest in the country and has become a by-word for torture and the darkest abuses of the Syrian regime. Sous’s home and farmland were among the properties escrowed after her husband was arrested in a raid in 2013 and later hit with terrorism-related charges she says were trumped up. A few months later, authorities handed her a “corpse number”, she said. Alone and poor, she spent years being bounced around from one security branch to another as she tried to clear bureaucratic hurdles. Sous said she was met mainly with harassment and intimidation. “Women are easy prey,” she said. Fearing persecution by security forces, she fled to Lebanon in 2016, clutching the old red and white plastic bag in which she keeps her property deeds and reams of other official documents. She has little money left but continues to pay bribes and lawyer fees in an attempt to reclaim assets from the state. “I want to sell them, not for me but for my children.” Salma, a 43-year-old mother of four, also fled to Lebanon after her husband disappeared inside the black hole of Syria’s prison system. The one time she enquired about his fate in 2015, security forces locked her in a room and threatened her. “I never asked about him again,” Salma said, asking to use a pseudonym due to security concerns. When she tried to sell her husband’s car and home, she found they had been seized by the state. “I sold all my jewelry to buy that house,” she said. In their ordeal, some women have found a rare silver lining with the empowerment that being left to their own devices has brought about. Tuqqa, a 45-year-old mother of five whose husband also disappeared in prison, argued her life was already hard before the war due to social and religious conservatism. “I wasn’t even allowed to open the front door of the house, let alone go out to buy groceries or bread,” she said. But all that changed when she became the sole guardian of her children. She eventually moved to Lebanon, where she secured work and attended livelihood trainings and workshops run by aid groups, a leap from her previously sheltered life. When she was sexually harassed by her landlord, she blamed herself: “That is what we were taught: women are always to blame.” Her children may not inherit a family home from their father but Tuqqa is adamant they will inherit new values from her. “I am not raising my children the way I was raised,” she said. “War has given women strength. They are learning how to say ‘no’,” said a Damascus lawyer. While the odds are stacked against her, Tuqqa said she feels ready to face the challenges ahead. “I lost a lot, but I became a strong woman,” Tuqqa said. “I am no longer the woman living behind closed doors.”

MOSCOW: Russia forces based in Syria on Friday said four Israeli jets had launched a total of four cruise missiles and 16 guided aerial bombs against a research facility in the city of Masyaf on Thursday, Russian agencies reported. Syrian troops using Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons shot down two missiles and seven guided bombs, Tass and RIA said, quoting a senior Russian officer. The attacks damaged equipment at the facility, he said. Russian forces have remained in Syria since 2015 when they helped turn the tide in a civil war in favor of President Bashar Assad. For several years, Israel has been mounting attacks on what it has described as Iranian-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have deployed to help Assad fight anti-government forces.