Iraqi Armed Factions End Truce with American Forces

Members of the Nujaba movement are seen at a rally in Baghdad in support of the people in Gaza on October 8. (AFP)
Members of the Nujaba movement are seen at a rally in Baghdad in support of the people in Gaza on October 8. (AFP)
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Iraqi Armed Factions End Truce with American Forces

Members of the Nujaba movement are seen at a rally in Baghdad in support of the people in Gaza on October 8. (AFP)
Members of the Nujaba movement are seen at a rally in Baghdad in support of the people in Gaza on October 8. (AFP)

The “Coordination of the Iraqi Resistance” announced the end of the deadline for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

In a statement on Wednesday, it added that it will resolve this file “through all available means.”

It made its announcement hours after Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned of a war without restraints against Israel and threatened to open a front on the Mediterranean.

Before his remarks, Asharq Al-Awsat had revealed that Iraqi factions were ready to fight in Lebanon should a wide-scale war erupt there and should Hezbollah agree to their involvement.

The Coordination of the Iraqi Resistance said it had held an extraordinary meeting to review the developments in the region and Iraq in order to inform the people of “what is going on around them.”

It stated that it reviewed the deadline granted by the Iraqi government to the US forces to pull out from the country four months ago.

The armed factions have been committed to a truce with the American troops and refrained from launching attacks against them in wake of the assassination of a leading member of the Nujaba movement in an American strike in Baghdad in January.

Various factions, such as the Nujaba and Hezbollah Brigades, had expressed their opposition to the truce.

The Coordination of the Iraqi Resistance underscored on Wednesday the need to forge ahead in “achieving the country’s sovereignty given the enemy’s stalling and intransigence that is aimed at maintaining its occupation and control over its security and economic decisions.”

The Coordination underlined its determination to end the American military deployment in Iraq.

“The Iraqi people and resistance, loyal politicians, tribal members and MPs are capable of ending this file by using all means at their disposal in order to restore security and stability and achieve complete sovereignty,” it stressed.

In wake of the announcement, activists close to the ruling pro-Iran Coordination Framework spoke of the return of resistance operations without specifying the target of these operations.



Opposition Candidates File Court Appeal Questioning Algerian Presidential Election Outcome 

Algerian presidential candidate Youcef Aouchiche speaks during a press conference in Algiers on September 9, 2024. (AFP)
Algerian presidential candidate Youcef Aouchiche speaks during a press conference in Algiers on September 9, 2024. (AFP)
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Opposition Candidates File Court Appeal Questioning Algerian Presidential Election Outcome 

Algerian presidential candidate Youcef Aouchiche speaks during a press conference in Algiers on September 9, 2024. (AFP)
Algerian presidential candidate Youcef Aouchiche speaks during a press conference in Algiers on September 9, 2024. (AFP)

The two opposition candidates who ran in Algeria's presidential race legally challenged on Tuesday the provisional result while harshly rebuking election officials and disputing the vote count.

Islamist Abdellali Hassani Cherif and socialist Youcef Aouchiche filed appeals with Algeria's Constitutional Court, taking the first step required to challenge the results of the election, which incumbent President Abdelmadjid Tebboune won with a 94.7% share of the vote.

Algerian law provides the court 10 days from the announcement of provisional election results to rule on the appeals. A verdict could require the election authority to recalculate each candidate’s totals without calling into question Tebboune’s victory, for which he has already begun receiving congratulatory messages from Algeria’s foreign allies.

A day before lodging their appeals, both candidates took aim at Mohamed Charfi, the President of Algeria’s National Independent Electoral Authority (ANIE) for how the results of Saturday’s election were reported.

"President Tebboune didn’t need this stuffing. We knew he’d be reelected, but with these results, ANIE hasn’t done him any favors," Cherif said. "We want our votes — the votes of the people who voted for us — to be returned to us. I know it won’t change the outcome of the vote, but it will go down in history."

Meanwhile, Aouchiche held a news conference where his campaign manager showed graphics that he said proved the results had been distorted and called the outcome a "shameful and gross manipulation."

"These results, which do not correspond at all to the number of votes communicated to us by the regional delegations of the same ANIE, are a disgrace for the Algeria of 2024, taking us back to the 1970s," he said, referencing a time when the country's only legal political party ran its chosen candidate unopposed.

The two challengers have taken issue with discrepancies between the number of votes used to tally the results and the turnout figures that election officials published a day earlier. Late Sunday, Tebboune joined them in denouncing ANIE, aligning himself with popular anger that his challengers had drummed up against it.

In a shared statement, campaign managers for Tebboune, Aouchiche and Cherif called into question the results that ANIE had reported and how they didn't correspond with the regional figures that local authorities had reported.

"We inform national public opinion that inaccuracies, contradictions, ambiguities and inconsistencies were noted in the figures when the provisional results of the presidential election were announced by the chairman of the National Independent Election Authority," they wrote.