Bahrain’s long-serving PM Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, 84, passes away

News Network
November 11, 2020

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Manama, Nov 11: Bahrain’s long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa has died, the state media reported. He was 84.

“The Royal Court mourns His Royal Highness … who passed away this morning at Mayo Clinic Hospital in the United States of America,” the Bahrain News Agency said on Wednesday, without elaborating.

The Gulf state’s King Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa announced official mourning for a week during which flags will be flown at half-mast, the agency said.

The burial ceremony will take place upon the repatriation of his body and the funeral will be limited to a specific number of relatives, it said.

Sheikh Khalifa was one of the world’s longest-serving prime ministers who led his island nation’s government for decades and survived the 2011 Arab Spring protests that demanded his removal over corruption allegations.

His stern response to the pro-democracy protests and criticism of similar unrest across the Arab world underlined what for many was the defining characteristic of his career, namely a stalwart defence of dynastic rule. The Al Khalifa family has ruled Bahrain since 1783.

In August, Sheikh Khalifa left the kingdom for what official media called at the time “a private visit abroad”. Earlier this year, he spent time in Germany for unspecified medical treatment, returning to Bahrain in March.

Bahrain, a staunch ally of neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the United States, is also the home base of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Controversial figure

Sheikh Khalifa’s power and wealth could be seen everywhere in Bahrain. His official portrait hung for decades on walls alongside the country’s ruler.

He had his own private island where he met foreign dignitaries, complete with a marina and a park that had peacocks and gazelle roam its grounds.

“Khalifa bin Salman represented the old guard in more ways than just age and seniority,” said Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute.

“He represented an old social understanding rooted in royal privilege and expressed through personal patronage.”

The son of Bahrain’s former ruler, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who ruled from 1942 to 1961, Sheikh Khalifa learned governance at his father’s side as the island remained a British protectorate.

His brother, Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, took power in 1961 and served as monarch when Bahrain gained its independence from Britain in 1971. Under an informal arrangement, Sheikh Isa handled the island’s diplomacy and ceremonial duties while Sheikh Khalifa ran the government and economy.

The years that followed saw Bahrain develop rapidly as it sought to move beyond its dependence on dwindling oil reserves. Manama at that time served as what Dubai in the United Arab Emirates ultimately became, a regional financial, service and tourism hub.

The opening of the King Fahd Causeway in 1986 gave the island nation its first land link with its rich and powerful neighbour, Saudi Arabia, and offered an escape for Westerners in the kingdom who wanted to enjoy Bahrain’s alcohol-soaked nightclubs and beaches.

But Sheikh Khalifa increasingly saw his name entangled in corruption allegations, such as a major foreign corruption practices case against aluminium producer Alcoa over using a London-based middleman to facilitate bribes for Bahraini officials. Alcoa agreed to pay $384m in fines to the US government to settle the case in 2014.

The US embassy in Manama similarly had its own suspicions about Sheikh Khalifa, writing in cables that the prince had “off-the-books access to income from the state-owned enterprises” such as the Bahrain Petroleum Co and Aluminium Bahrain, the country’s aluminium producer.

“I believe that Shaikh Khalifa is not wholly a negative influence,” wrote former US Ambassador Ronald E Neumann in 2004 in a cable released by WikiLeaks. “While certainly corrupt, he has built much of modern Bahrain.”

Those corruption allegations fuelled discontent, particularly among Bahrain’s Shia majority. In February 2011, protesters inspired by the Arab Spring demonstrations across the Middle East filled the streets and occupied the capital Manama’s Pearl Roundabout to demand political reforms and a greater say in the country’s future.

While some called for a constitutional monarchy, many others pressed for the removal of the long-ruling prime minister and other members of the Sunni royal family altogether, including King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

At one point during the height of the unrest in March 2011, thousands of protesters besieged the prime minister’s office while officials met inside, demanding Sheikh Khalifa step down.

Protesters also took to waving one Bahraini dinar notes over allegations the prime minister bought the land on which Bahrain’s Financial Harbour development sits for just a single dinar.

Bahraini officials soon crushed the protests with the backing of troops from neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Low-level unrest continued in the years that followed, with Shia protesters frequently clashing with riot police.

In recent years, Sheikh Khalifa’s influence waned as he faced unexplained health problems.

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Nasir ahmmed
 - 
Thursday, 26 Nov 2020

Please sir i need green signal because i need go back abudhabi please sir

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News Network
November 17,2024

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An Israeli airstrike on the office of Syria’s Baath party in Lebanon’s capital Beirut has killed the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah's Media Relations Officer, Mohammad Afif, reports say.

Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA) reported that the Israeli raid struck the Ba'ath party’s building in central Beirut district of Ras Al-Naba'a on Sunday, adding that the strike was an attempt to assassinate the leader of the resistance media front.

According to Baath Secretary-General Ali Hijazi, Afif was having a meeting in the Baath Party headquarters when Israel carried out the attack.

"Afif did not fight with weapons and did not lead a military unit in Hezbollah. Rather, he led a media unit," he said.

Reuters, Sky News, Al Jazeera and a number of Henrew-language media reported that Afif was killed in the Israeli strike.

However, Hezbollah has not yet confirmed Afif’s death or whether he was present at the site or not.

Earlier, the Lebanese Health Ministry said at least one person was killed and three others injured after an Israeli strike targeted a central district in Beirut.

Lebanon's al-Mayadeen television network reported that five people were killed in the attack.

The latest development came after Afif said Hezbollah was behind the Caesarea operation and targeting Netanyahu’s home during a speech at the Ghobeiry area in the southern suburbs of Beirut on October 22.

This was the second assassination attempt on Afif in the last two months, after he survived an attack on the Hezbollah media relations office several weeks ago.

Israel launched a ground assault and massive air campaign against Lebanon in late September after a year of exchanging fire across the Lebanese border in parallel with the Gaza war.

At least 3,287 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon over the past year, with the vast majority in the past seven weeks. Another 14,222 have been wounded, mostly women and children.

In response to the ongoing aggression, the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of retaliatory strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli forces trying to advance on southern Lebanese areas.

The movement has vowed to sustain its strikes until the regime ends the escalation.

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.

It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.

The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.

Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.

“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.

Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.

As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Beirut: The Israeli army on Tuesday continued to launch attacks against civilians in Lebanon, targeting them in several areas without prior evacuation warnings.

However, 13 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the space of only three hours were preceded by evacuation warnings.

The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in widespread destruction of residential buildings and commercial, medical and educational centers.

The airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Bekaa region, reaching Akkar in Lebanon’s far north, erased any hope of a near-term ceasefire settlement.

The strikes were accompanied by an announcement on Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Israeli army has expanded its operations in southern Lebanon to areas it had not reached since the beginning of the ground operation.”

About 50 days have passed since Israel intensified its hostile operations in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The death toll from these confrontations and attacks has passed 3,200, with more than 14,000 wounded.

For the first time, an airstrike targeted a mountainous area between Baalchmay and Aabadiyeh on the road leading to Aley, destroying a building housing displaced people.

The mayor of Baalchmay, Adham Al-Danaf, confirmed that “the airstrike targeted a residential building in the Dhour Aabadiyeh area.”

The initial toll from the Ministry of Health showed “five people killed and two injured.”

The raids that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in the morning, unlike nightly raids before, caused huge destruction. Those who evacuated their homes after Israeli warnings, used their phones to record the collapse of empty buildings in Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, Mrayjeh, Laylaki and Hadath.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Tyre, where a strike on a building killed three people and injured many others, while a raid on Tefahta killed a man identified as Kifah Khalil and his family.

Attacks were widespread, with Yater and Zebqine subject to artillery shelling, a civilian being killed in Hermel, and further attacks on Bouday and an area between the towns of Srifa and Arsoun.

A raid on the town of Siddiqin killed two people and injured several others, while an attack on the Mechref farm led to one fatality and multiple injuries.

The search for those missing after an Israeli raid on the town of Ain Yaacoub in Akkar, in the northernmost part of Lebanon, continued until dawn.

During the operation, 14 bodies were retrieved, identified as those of residents displaced from the town of Arabsalim in the Iqlim Al-Tuffah area of the south, along with members of a Syrian family, a mother and three of her children. Additionally, there were 10 people in critical condition.

The targeted residence belongs to a Lebanese citizen, Hussein Hashim, who is reported to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

An airstrike on the town of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon region on Monday night resulted in yet another tragedy.

It appeared that the intended target was the Shoumer family, who just days before lost Hussein Amin Shoumer and his two sisters in a drone strike near Al-Awali River.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued additional evacuation warnings for towns in the southern region along the Litani River, which, according to estimates from the mayors, are currently 90 percent uninhabited.

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced its continued efforts to “combat the intrusions of Israeli forces and to strike military installations and towns in the north.”

Hezbollah said in a statement that it confronted “an Israeli Hermes 450 drone in the airspace of Nabatieh and forced it to leave Lebanese airspace.”

The party also announced that it targeted “Kfar Blum settlement with a rocket salvo.”

On the Israeli side, air raid sirens sounded in areas of Upper and Western Galilee and in the town of Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.

The Israeli army confirmed that “a drone exploded in Nesher, east of Haifa, without activating the air raid sirens,” and that “a drone launched from Lebanon crashed into a school in Gesher HaZiv, north of Nahariya.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported the Israeli military’s assessment regarding Hezbollah’s military strength, claiming that the group currently possesses approximately 100 precision missiles, thousands of artillery shells, and hundreds of rockets. Additionally, it was highlighted that “there are around 200 Lebanese towns that remain unvisited.”

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