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ASSAMAKA: A long line of people appears in silhouette, walking along the flat desert in northern Niger.
The strong walkers are at the front. The weakest at the rear.
Every week hundreds more migrants thrown out of Algeria end up here in Assamaka, the first village on the Niger border.
More than 4,500 of them so far have washed up in this tiny windswept corner of the Sahara — Malians, Guineans and Ivorians mainly, but also Syrians and even Bangladeshis.
They have marched across 15 km of wasteland only to enter a new purgatory.
A transit center run by the UN’s International Organization for Migration cannot cope with the numbers and only handles about a third of arrivals.
“When we got here we were told we were not recognized as migrants by the IOM and so we had to pay for our own transport to return home,” said Abdoul Karim Bambara from the Ivory Coast.
Assamaka’s water tanks are nearly dry, food rations insufficient and shelter from the cruel sun is in short supply.
In temperatures that can nudge 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit), thousands seek shade beneath walls or under tarpaulins.
The migrants say that they were stripped of their possessions in Algeria, the stepping-stone to a hoped-for new life in Europe.
They cannot afford to pay for travel home, or even to phone relatives.
They are stranded in what is an open prison in the desert, sometimes for months.
Their numbers include talented and educated people — doctors, students and traders.
But around the barbed-wire walls of the IOM compound, individual traits are forgotten as an angry crowd of needy people forms, pushing and shoving in visceral despair.
“We have become like cattle,” said Herman, also from Ivory Coast.
Many of the migrants are physically ill, ravaged by scabies or suffering infected wounds. All are hungry.
“You saw that?” one man said, showing a lump of fly-infested sticky rice. “Would you eat that? We are falling sick from that.”
Off to the side, two groups of hungry men are throwing stones at each other amid a cloud of dust.
Fights are common. Days earlier, the death of a Cameroonian ignited a riot that was put down with tear gas. The IOM centre was ransacked by the protesters.
“We are all traumatised. People can no longer control themselves, they are losing their minds, there’s nothing here. People are dying,” raged Aboubacar Cherif Cisse from Sierra Leone.
“If there was enough to eat, people wouldn’t fight, but there is no food — what can they do? If they have nothing, they will fight each other just to stay alive,” said Mohamed Mambu, who represents Sierra Leoneans at another transit centre at Arlit, 200 km away.
The 1,500 residents of Assamaka are overwhelmed by the migrant situation.
“They are everywhere in the village, near the health centre, by the walls,” said Francois Ibrahim who works with an NGO called Alarme Phone Sahara, which helps migrants stranded in the desert.
Ibrahim said the migrants steal animals from residents and kill them for food.
The number of migrants pushed into Niger has been increasing since the start of the year, creating an “unprecedented situation,” according to the French charity Doctors without Borders known as MSF.
Niger’s regional capital Agadez, 350 km from Assamaka, has a third transit centre, but all three are overwhelmed.
The roads heading south are threatened by armed jihadist groups, which means migrants have to be flown out on charter flights for their safety.
“The flights are often cancelled … Yet every week people are expelled” from Algeria, said Ousmane Atair, a manager at the Arlit center.
Migrants are taken by road from Assamaka to Arlit and then on to Agadez in convoys organized by IOM sub-contractors.
The region seems to be paying the price for its relative stability.
“The road from Assamaka to Arlit is the best protected and that’s why the migration flow heads this way,” said Arlit mayor Abdourahamane Maouli.
With demand for international aid soaring globally, the EU, eager to keep migrants away, has become the main financial support for the IOM in the region.
“The IOM plays a key role in the policy of EU states to externalize their borders to African territory,” said Alarme Phone Sahara.
Tari Dogo, secretary of the regional council, said Agadez became the “last gateway” to Europe after the Libyan crisis erupted in 2011, but the EU had failed to act decisively to tackle the migrant flow.
“The European Union bears its share of responsibility for this situation,” he said.
NEW DELHI: India’s wild tiger population has risen above 3,000, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday, as the country boosted conservation efforts and launched the International Big Cat Alliance to further protect the endangered species.
In 1973, India began a flagship conservation program known as Project Tiger to revive the country’s dwindling number of the big cats, after the wild population, estimated at around 40,000 at the time of independence from Britain in 1947, was found to have shrunk to about 1,800.
India’s tiger population has nearly doubled in the decades since to 3,167 as of Sunday, according to the 2022 tiger census released on the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger.
“India is the largest tiger range country in the world,” Modi said at a commemoration event in the southern Indian city of Mysuru. “The success of Project Tiger has been an achievement not only for India, but for the entire world.”
After officials found that India’s tigers were fast going extinct, Project Tiger began introducing anti-poaching measures and relocated human habitation and villages from forests, expanding and improving tiger reserves and buffer areas.
India’s wild tiger population is by far the largest in the world, and its Project Tiger success has led to discussions with Cambodia to help revive the big cat population there, which was wiped out by poaching and hunting.
Modi, launching the International Big Cat Alliance, said conservation efforts of the tiger can be further strengthened through an international grouping.
“Wildlife protection is not a one-country issue but a universal one,” he said. “The focus of the International Big Cat Alliance will be on the conservation of the world’s seven major big cats, including (the) tiger, lion, leopard, snow leopard, puma, jaguar and cheetah.”
In India, years of extensive hunting and habitat loss had not only dwindled tiger numbers drastically, but led to local extinction of cheetahs in 1952.
In a related conservation effort, Project Cheetah was launched last September to reintroduce the world’s fastest land animal to the South Asian country. This began with the arrival of eight cheetahs from Namibia and then another 12 from South Africa.
“For decades, cheetahs had disappeared from India. We brought magnificent big cats from Namibia and South Africa,” Modi said. “Few days back in Kuno National Park, four beautiful cubs were born. After 75 years, cheetahs were born on Indian soil. That is a very auspicious start.”
Kota Ullas Karanth, a conservation zoologist and leading tiger expert based in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, said Project Tiger was “a unique conservation success globally, leading to a significant recovery of tigers until 2004.”
However, Karanth said there was a shift after 2004 due to poor quality science, changes in protection priorities and also misplaced funding across reserves.
Project Tiger, he added, now must answer the challenge on how to shift the mission back to focus and “come up with a clear-headed, scientific action plan to meet a goal of 10,000 or more tigers.”
LONDON: King Charles and senior British royals gathered at Windsor Castle for their traditional Easter service on Sunday, the first of the new monarch’s reign.
Charles was joined by his wife Camilla, the queen consort, and his extended family including son and heir Prince William, his wife Kate and their three children, in a walk from the castle to the nearby St. George’s Chapel.
Also present was the king’s younger brother Prince Andrew, who was removed from royal duties before settling a US sex abuse lawsuit last year.
The occasion, one of the few events which bring all the royals together in public, is particularly poignant this year, being the first since the death of Queen Elizabeth and also falling two years to the day since her husband Prince Philip died. Both are buried in the King George VI chapel at Windsor.
It is also the 18th wedding anniversary for Charles and second wife Camilla, who tied the knot in Windsor in 2005.
As king, Charles is the symbolic head of the Church of England as its Supreme Governor, and the Mail on Sunday newspaper reported that there was disagreement between the monarch and church leaders over the role other faiths might play in his coronation, a solemn religious occasion, on May 6.
The paper said the discussions were delaying the release of the coronation’s Order of Service, but said both Buckingham Palace and the Church had said details would be released in due course while sources had denied there was any delay.
FRANKFURT: Police warned people in Hamburg, Germany, to close their windows early Sunday after a large fire that engulfed several warehouses sent black, chemical-laden smoke drifting over the city.
German news agency dpa said the fire broke out around 4:30 a.m. in the Rothenburgsort district, located in the eastern part of Germany’s second-largest city. The smoke drifted from there toward the city center, halting long-distance trains between Hamburg and Berlin and other cities.
A public safety alert conveyed through a mobile phone app advised people in Hamburg to close windows, turn off ventilation and air conditioning, and to avoid the area. No injuries were reported.
Public broadcaster NDR said the fire involved containers with hydrogen sulfide, a toxic and foul-smelling substance, forcing firefighters and police officers in the area to wear breathing apparatus.
LONDON: Pro-Palestinian activists held an “emergency protest” outside the Israeli embassy in the UK capital, London, on Saturday demanding sanctions on Israel for its latest violence against Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa mosque.
Israeli police clashed with Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, with Israel bombarding both Gaza and Lebanon in response to rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
“Last night Israel also bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip, damaging Durra Children’s Hospital and injuring a 12-year-old child,” said the UK-based Friends of Al-Aqsa, a non-profit NGO concerned with defending the human rights of Palestinians.
“On Wednesday Israeli Occupation Forces beat worshippers with batons and rifles at the holiest site in Jerusalem for Muslims,” FOA said in a statement. “Yesterday Israeli forces attacked Palestinian men, women and children with tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets.”
It also added that “Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa are on the rise, particularly during Ramadan, under Israel’s illegal occupation and brutal apartheid regime.”
Dr. Ismail Patel, chair and founder of FOA said: “Enough is enough. We don’t need statements or words of condemnation from our MPs and leaders, we need sanctions on Israel, now.”
The protest was organized by FOA, in coordination with Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Muslim Association of Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Palestinian Forum in Britain.
“It’s time to hold Israel accountable for its repeated brutal beatings of Palestinian worshippers, ongoing crimes against Palestinians and violations of international law,” Patel said.
“If these attacks were carried out by any other country the British government would not hesitate to impose sanctions today,” he said.
WASHINGTON: The US Department of Justice on Saturday said it has begun an investigation into a trove of leaked US documents, many related to Ukraine, that have spread to the Internet.
The breach appears to include assessments and secret intelligence reports that touch not only on Ukraine and Russia but also highly sensitive analyzes of US allies.
“We have been in communication with the Department of Defense related to this matter and have begun an investigation,” a Justice Department spokesperson told AFP.
A steady drip of dozens of leaked documents and slides have made their way onto Twitter, Telegram, Discord and other social media and chat sites in recent days, and new documents continue to surface.
The Pentagon said Friday it was “actively reviewing the matter” and that it had formally referred the apparent breach to the Justice Department.
US officials told the Washington Post that some documents appeared to be manipulated but many were consistent with CIA World Intelligence Review reports that are shared at high levels within the White House, Pentagon and State Department.
Defense analysts say any breach of internal classified US documents would be both damaging and potentially embarrassing.
In addition, the leak would prove valuable to Moscow by showing how deep US intelligence has penetrated parts of the Russian military apparatus, US media said.
Other documents include apparent information about internal debate within the governments of US allies.
Among the documents, for example, were discussions about South Korea’s debate on whether to provide the United States artillery shells for use in Ukraine, The New York Times said.