Tunisia’s Ghannouchi Starts 3-Day Hunger Strike in Prison

FILE PHOTO: Tunisia's Rached Ghannouchi is surrounded by presidential guard members upon his arrival for questioning after he was summoned by Tunisian anti-terrorism police in Tunis, Tunisia April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Tunisia's Rached Ghannouchi is surrounded by presidential guard members upon his arrival for questioning after he was summoned by Tunisian anti-terrorism police in Tunis, Tunisia April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi/File Photo
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Tunisia’s Ghannouchi Starts 3-Day Hunger Strike in Prison

FILE PHOTO: Tunisia's Rached Ghannouchi is surrounded by presidential guard members upon his arrival for questioning after he was summoned by Tunisian anti-terrorism police in Tunis, Tunisia April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Tunisia's Rached Ghannouchi is surrounded by presidential guard members upon his arrival for questioning after he was summoned by Tunisian anti-terrorism police in Tunis, Tunisia April 1, 2022. REUTERS/Zoubeir Souissi/File Photo

Jailed Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi has begun a three-day hunger strike in support of other imprisoned opposition figures, his Ennahda party said on Friday.

Ghannouchi, 82, was sentenced to a year in jail in May on charges of incitement and plotting against state security. More than 20 other opposition figures have been detained this year.

An Ennahda party statement said its leader had launched the three-day action to support fellow jailed opposition figures who are protesting at what they say is unjust imprisonment.

Jawher Ben Mbarak, a prominent opposition figure who has been detained for more than seven months, began an open-ended hunger strike this week, arguing that his jailing was politically motivated.

President Kais Saied has called his critics criminals, traitors and terrorists and warned that any judge who freed them would be considered to be abetting them.

Ghannouchi was parliament speaker from the 2019 election and his party was the biggest in the legislature until Saied sent tanks to shut it down in 2021.



Stormy Weather Sweeps Away Tents Belonging to Displaced People in Gaza

Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
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Stormy Weather Sweeps Away Tents Belonging to Displaced People in Gaza

Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
Displaced Palestinians stand in front of tents along an inundated passage, following heavy rainfall north of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on November 24, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

Weather is compounding the challenges facing displaced people in Gaza, where heavy rains and dropping temperatures are making tents and other temporary shelters uninhabitable.

Government officials in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave said on Monday that nearly 10,000 tents had been swept away by flooding over the past two days, adding to their earlier warnings about the risks facing those sheltering in low-lying floodplains, including areas designated as humanitarian zones.

Um Mohammad Marouf, a mother who fled bombardments in northern Gaza and now is sheltering with her family in a Gaza City tent said the downpour had covered her children and left everyone wet and vulnerable.

“We have nothing to protect ourselves,” she said outside the United Nations-provided tent where she lives with 10 family members.

Marouf and others living in rows of cloth and nylon tents hung their drenched clothing on drying lines and re-erected their tarpaulin walls on Monday.

Officials from the Hamas-run government said that 81% of the 135,000 tents appeared unfit for shelter, based on recent assessments, and blamed Israel for preventing the entry of additional needed tents. They said many had been swept away by seawater or were inadequate to house displaced people as winter sets in.

The UNestimates that around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services. Israeli evacuation warnings now cover around 90% of the territory.

“The first rains of the winter season mean even more suffering. Around half a million people are at risk in areas of flooding. The situation will only get worse with every drop of rain, every bomb, every strike,” UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, wrote in a statement on X on Monday.