World
Syria’s Assad wins 4th term with 95% of vote, in election the West calls fraudulent
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad won a fourth term in office with 95.1% of the votes in an election that will extend his rule over a country ruined by war but which opponents and the West say was marked by fraud.
Assad’s government says the election on Wednesday shows Syria is functioning normally despite the decade-old conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven 11 million people – about half the population – from their homes.
Head of parliament Hammouda Sabbagh announced the results at a news conference on Thursday, saying voter turnout was around 78%, with more than 14 million Syrians taking part.
The election went ahead despite a U.N.-led peace process that had called for voting under international supervision that would help pave the way for a new constitution and a political settlement.
The foreign ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States said in a statement criticising Assad ahead of the election that the vote would not be free or fair. Turkey, an Assad adversary, has also said the election was illegitimate.
The win delivers Assad, 55, seven more years in power and lengthens his family’s rule to nearly six decades. His father, Hafez al-Assad, led Syria for 30 years until his death in 2000.
Assad’s years as president have been defined by the conflict that began in 2011 with peaceful protests before spiralling into a multi-sided conflict that has fractured the Middle Eastern country and drawn in foreign friends and enemies.
“Thank you to all Syrians for their high sense of nationalism and their notable participation. … For the future of Syria’s children and its youth, let’s start from tomorrow our campaign of work to build hope and build Syria,” Assad wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page.
Assad’s biggest challenge, now that he has regained control of around 70% of the country, will be an economy in decline.
Tightening U.S. sanctions, neighbouring Lebanon’s financial collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic hitting remittances from Syrians abroad and the inability of allies Russia and Iran to provide enough relief, mean prospects for recovery look poor.
Rallies with thousands of people waving Syrian flags and holding pictures of Assad while singing and dancing took place all day Thursday in celebration of the election.
Officials have told Reuters privately that authorities organised the large rallies in recent days to encourage voting, and the security apparatus that underpins Assad’s Alawite minority-dominated rule had instructed state employees to vote.
The vote was boycotted by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces who administer an autonomous oil-rich region in the northeast and in northwestern Idlib region, the last existing rebel enclave, where people denounced the election in large demonstrations on Wednesday.
Assad was running against two obscure candidates, former deputy Cabinet minister Abdallah Saloum Abdallah and Mahmoud Ahmed Marei, head of a small, officially sanctioned opposition party.
Marei got 3.3% of the vote, while Saloum received 1.5%, Sabbagh said.
World
Death toll from migrant rush into Spanish enclave in North Africa rises to 72
Authorities have reinforced police and army patrols. A 500-metre (1,600-foot) floating barrier was installed off Ceuta on Saturday.
The death toll from a mass rush of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta last week reached at least 72 on Sunday, as five more bodies were found along the North African coast, officials said, Reuters reported.
The number of fatalities was considerably higher than what was announced by Moroccan authorities on Sunday.
More than 50,000 people crossed into Ceuta by land and sea in an unprecedented surge that began on Thursday at one of the European Union’s only two land borders with Africa, prompting alarm across the bloc. More than 48,000 returned to Morocco within 48 hours and more did so over the weekend, Spanish authorities said.
The Spanish government representative in Ceuta, Miguel Angel Perez, told reporters on Sunday that, in addition to the 72 fatalities, more than 1,000 people had been treated by health services. The situation in the enclave had improved markedly, he said, but more remained to be done to re-establish normality.
Some migrants drowned and others were crushed while trying to climb a breakwater and border fence. Many had been driven to migrate by economic hardship and encouraged by social media rumours.
Morocco’s Interior Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that 11 people had died, mostly by drowning while trying to cross into Spanish territory, noting that it was fact-checking reports on deaths from the other side of the border, read the report.
The ministry blamed the rush of migrants on social media misinformation, human trafficking networks and misinterpretation of a Spanish ruling banning immediate returns of migrants intercepted at sea. That statement is similar to the Spanish Foreign Ministry’s comments on the matter.
Moroccan authorities set the number of those involved in the crossing at 40,000, far lower than the figure used by Spanish officials, adding that 1,135 were stopped from entering Melilla, another Spanish enclave.
The statement reiterated that Morocco was committed to countering illegal migration and called for the burden of managing migration to be shared.
“It pains me deeply that young people are dying at sea. It’s not right that, in the year 2026, women with children as young as two months old should be crossing the sea only to die,” Karima Abenaz, a French national in Ceuta with family in Morocco, said while holding back tears.
“In Morocco, there’s food, there’s everything we need,” she added. “If we don’t have a decent job, we should go on strike and demand our rights from the government. We shouldn’t be dying at sea, it’s not right.”
Ceuta leader Juan Jesus Vivas told the newspaper El Pais the city’s morgue had received 88 corpses, including some who had died in earlier, smaller attempts to reach the territory in hazardous night-time swims over the past two weeks. He said Moroccan authorities were also recovering bodies from the sea, but no official information was available.
Authorities have reinforced police and army patrols. A 500-metre (1,600-foot) floating barrier was installed off Ceuta on Saturday.
Twenty-two European Union member states wrote a letter asking for coordinated action to protect external borders and other measures after the Ceuta incident. Italy suspended passport-free Schengen travel arrangements with Spain for one month, Reuters reported.
Spain has adopted a more open stance on migrants than most other EU countries, introducing a programme to grant residency to more than half a million undocumented people.
It has rejected suggestions that the scheme encouraged the rush into Ceuta, saying that those who entered the enclave irregularly could not travel on to mainland Spain or elsewhere in the Schengen zone.
World
Three killed, two injured in shooting at Idaho shopping center
Authorities said at least two other people were wounded and transported for medical treatment. Their conditions were not immediately released.
Three people, including the suspected gunman, were killed and at least two others were injured after a shooting at a busy shopping area in Twin Falls, Idaho, on Saturday, local authorities said.
The incident occurred at around 2:30 p.m. local time near an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in a high-traffic commercial district, according to Josh Palmer, the city’s public information coordinator.
Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks said the suspected shooter was among the dead and confirmed that the threat to the community had been eliminated.
“At this point, the shooter is no longer a threat,” Hicks told reporters, adding that investigators are working to identify the suspect and determine a motive for the attack.
Authorities said at least two other people were wounded and transported for medical treatment. Their conditions were not immediately released.
Following the shooting, the Twin Falls Police Department temporarily closed roads surrounding the scene, including a nearby bridge, as officers secured the area and launched an investigation.
Twin Falls, with a population of about 47,400, is located in Idaho’s Magic Valley region.
Police have not yet released additional details about the victims or the circumstances surrounding the shooting, and the investigation remains ongoing.
World
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