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18 Aug 2021
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Lebanon buries victims of Akkar fuel tank blast

August 18, 2021

Families laid to rest Wednesday victims of a fuel tank blast that killed at least 28 people in northern Lebanon amid anger and sorrow over the crisis-hit country’s latest tragedy.The explosion on Sunday in Al-Tleil in the Akkar region scorched crowds clamoring for petrol that the army was distributing in light of severe fuel shortages that have paralyzed a country also beset by medicine, gas and bread shortages.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.The victims included soldiers and Akkar residents who darted to Al-Tleil after midnight to fill gasoline in plastic containers straight from a fuel tank that exploded in circumstances that remain unclear.The tank was among supplies confiscated by the military, which has lately wrested supplies from alleged fuel hoarders across the country.The disaster came on top of an economic crisis branded by the World Bank as one of the planet’s worst in modern times and follows an explosion of poorly stored fertilizer at Beirut port last summer that killed more than 200 people and destroyed swathes of the capital.Akkar, one of Lebanon’s poorest regions, buried around 15 blast victims on Wednesday, according to an AFP correspondent, after their corpses were identified and transported from hospitals hit by power and telecom outages, with even landlines disrupted.The Akkar village of Al-Daouseh held funerals for four of its dead, all of whom are from the Shraytih family.“They died for petrol -- if we had fuel this would have never happened,” said Mouin Shraytih who was burying two sons -- one 16 and the other 20.“Political leaders and officials should consider what it is like to have two young boys and find them burned and charred in front of your own eyes,” the man in his fifties told AFP at the funeral.Dozens had gathered at the family’s home when a convoy of vehicles carrying the corpses arrived from a nearby hospital, an AFP correspondent said.Fawaz Shraytih, a relative of Mouin, was burying two brothers, both army soldiers.“What happened is because of deprivation, Akkar is a deprived region,” he said.But “all we do is pay with our blood,” he added, explaining that soldiers make up the bulk of Al-Daouseh’s male population.There are eight soldiers among his own immediate family, he said.Nearly 80 people were injured in the blast, medics said, many with burns that further overwhelmed hospitals struggling to function without electricity.Foreign countries and UN agencies have scrambled emergency aid to help exhausted health workers cope with the new influx of serious injuries and run DNA tests to identify charred remains.Read more:Power outages in Lebanon aggravate heatwave conditions, public healthExplosion in Beirut electricity grid, authorities call for evacuation of nearby homesLebanese president Aoun says on the brink of forming new government
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Lebanon buries victims of Akkar fuel tank blast

19 Aug 2021
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Amid chaos in Afghanistan, Taliban says: We're keeping our word on evacuations

August 19, 2021

The Afghan Taliban are "keeping their word" by providing foreign powers with their full support in evacuating their nationals from Kabul airport, a Taliban official said on Thursday. “We are facilitating safe-exit passage not just for foreigners but also to Afghans,” the official told Reuters.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.“We are preventing any form of violent, verbal clash at the airport among Afghans, foreigners and Taliban members.”Flag-waving protesters took to the streets of more Afghan cities on Thursday as popular opposition to the Taliban takeover spread, and a witness said several people were killed when the militants fired on a crowd in Asadabad in the east.“Our flag, our identity,” a crowd of men and women waving black, red and green national flags shouted in the capital Kabul, a video clip posted on social media showed, on the day Afghanistan celebrates independence from British control in 1919.A witness reported gunshots fired near the rally, but they appeared to be armed Taliban shooting in the air.One woman walked wearing an Afghan flag around her shoulders, and those marching chanted "God is greatest". At some protests elsewhere, media have reported people tearing down the white flag of the Taliban.Some of the demonstrations are small, but combined with the ongoing scramble by thousands of people to get to Kabul airport and flee the country, they underline the challenge the Taliban face to govern the country.Read more:‘My life is in danger’: Afghan female presenter says Taliban refused to let her workAfghan female politicians stand their ground against Taliban, refusing to fleeOn Independence Day, Afghan protestors show defiance as Taliban struggles to govern
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Amid chaos in Afghanistan, Taliban says: We're keeping our word on evacuations