Iraq Building Syria Wall to Keep out ISIS Fighters

An Iraqi soldier patrols the border with Syria on January 27. Reuters
An Iraqi soldier patrols the border with Syria on January 27. Reuters
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Iraq Building Syria Wall to Keep out ISIS Fighters

An Iraqi soldier patrols the border with Syria on January 27. Reuters
An Iraqi soldier patrols the border with Syria on January 27. Reuters

Iraq is building a concrete wall along part of its border with Syria to stop ISIS group militants from infiltrating, an Iraqi military source said Sunday.

In the "first stage" of construction, a wall around "a dozen kilometers (seven miles) long and 3.5 meters (11 feet) high was built in Nineveh province", in the Sinjar area of northwest Iraq, a senior officer told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Iraq, which shares a more than 600-kilometer long border with Syria, seeks to "put a stop to the infiltration of ISIS members" into its territory, the source added, without specifying how long the wall would eventually run.

Iraq in 2018 said it had begun building a fence along the Syrian border for the same reason.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the wall's construction was carried out in an area facing the town of Al-Shaddadi, in the south of Syria's Hasakeh province.

In January in the Kurdish-controlled province, ISIS fighters attacked a prison to free fellow militants, sparking days of clashes that left hundreds dead.

Many prisoners are thought to have escaped, with some crossing to neighboring Turkey or Turkish-held territory in Syria's north, the Observatory said.

ISIS overran large swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014, declaring a "caliphate" before Baghdad proclaimed victory in late 2017 after a grinding campaign.

But a low-level insurgency has persisted, flaring up particularly in rural and mountainous areas between Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region and northern outskirts of the capital.



Hundreds of Thousands at Risk in Sudan's El-Fasher, Says UN

Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)
Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)
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Hundreds of Thousands at Risk in Sudan's El-Fasher, Says UN

Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)
Internally displaced women wait in a queue to collect aid from a group at a camp in Gadaref on May 12, 2024. (AFP)

Senior United Nations officials warned on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk in the besieged Sudanese town of El-Fasher, amid signs that the fighting could soon escalate.

El-Fasher is one of five state capitals in Sudan's western Darfur region and the only one not in the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have been battling the regular army since April 2023.

The United Nations says the war across much of Sudan has created the world's largest displacement crisis, with millions uprooted, and has led to famine at a displacement camp near El-Fasher, AFP reported.

"Hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in El-Fasher are now at risk of the consequences of mass violence," Martha Pobee, the UN's Assistant Secretary-General for Africa, told the UN Security Council.

"As fighting engulfs the city, it has further exposed an extremely vulnerable population, including internally displaced persons living in large camps near El-Fasher. This violence has also affected health care facilities."

Darfur has seen some of the war's worst atrocities, and the RSF has besieged El-Fasher since May.

Sudan's war has already killed tens of thousands of people, with some estimates as high as 150,000.

"Civilians, especially women and children, have been hit," said the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Joyce Msuya.

"Civilian sites and infrastructure, including hospitals and internally displaced persons camps have been hit. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people, including more than 700,000 internally displaced people in and around El-Fasher, are at immediate threat.

"Our concern is mounting as we receive reports of intense shelling of central and western parts of El-Fasher and deployment of additional forces."

Close to 1.7 million people in the north Darfur region are facing acute food insecurity, she added.

"We are therefore horrified by signs that the fighting will intensify as the rainy season draws to a close in the coming months," Msuya said.

Independent UN experts earlier this month appealed for the quick deployment of an "impartial force" in Sudan for civilian protection.