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Nadia Murad Urges Kurdistan Government to Work on Rebuilding Yazidi Areas

Nadia Murad during her visit to the parliament in Erbil. Reuters
Nadia Murad during her visit to the parliament in Erbil. Reuters
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Nadia Murad Urges Kurdistan Government to Work on Rebuilding Yazidi Areas

Nadia Murad during her visit to the parliament in Erbil. Reuters
Nadia Murad during her visit to the parliament in Erbil. Reuters

Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, who won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize this week, has urged the government of the Iraqi Kurdistan region to play its role in rebuilding Yazidi areas in Sinjar District and returning the refugees back home.

Murad, 25, met on Thursday with Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan Nechirvan Barzani, whose office said in a press release that the PM congratulated the activist on her prize and wished her success.

Barzani announced his full support “to the humanitarian role she plays in service of peace and the Yazidi victims,” said the statement.

Murad briefed the PM on what she went through when she along with thousands of women and girls were captured in Sinjar and forced into sexual slavery by ISIS militants in 2014, it said.

She also briefed him on her advocacy on behalf of victims of wartime sexual violence after escaping her ISIS captives and finding refuge in Germany.

During her visit to Baghdad on Wednesday, Murad called on the Iraqi government and the US-led coalition to search for Yazidi women who were kidnapped in 2014.

"I'm wearing my Nobel Peace Prize in Baghdad to say to all Iraqis 'you are the most worthy of peace, so be peaceful to Iraq and to each other, and to the Yazidis and other Iraqi minorities who illustrate Iraq's rich cultural heritage'," she said during a meeting with President Barham Salih.

On Thursday, a report released by Amnesty International said that millions of people were killed or fled when ISIS took over parts of Iraq in 2014 and their scorched-earth tactics still devastate rural communities.

Looted livestock, burned orchards, planted land mines, sabotaged water pumps and destroyed farmland have lead to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of rural households and should be viewed as a war crime, the report said.

The damage to Iraq's countryside is as far-reaching as the urban destruction, but the consequences of the conflict on Iraq's rural residents are being largely forgotten," said Richard Pearshouse, senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International.

"ISIS carried out deliberate, wanton destruction of Iraq's rural environment."

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Arab World

Lebanon War Toll Rises to 2,055 Dead as Israel Pounds Country's South

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Deik Qanoun al-Nahr on April 12, 2026. (Photo by Kawnat HAJU / AFP)
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Deik Qanoun al-Nahr on April 12, 2026. (Photo by Kawnat HAJU / AFP)
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Lebanon War Toll Rises to 2,055 Dead as Israel Pounds Country's South

Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Deik Qanoun al-Nahr on April 12, 2026. (Photo by Kawnat HAJU / AFP)
Smoke rises from the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the southern Lebanese village of Deik Qanoun al-Nahr on April 12, 2026. (Photo by Kawnat HAJU / AFP)

Lebanese official media reported extensive Israeli strikes across the country's south on Sunday as the health ministry said at least five people were killed and the war's overall toll rose to 2,055 dead.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported Israeli attacks on around 30 locations in the country's south on Sunday, with additional strikes on the adjacent West Bekaa area.

The health ministry said an Israeli strike on Qana killed five people, including three women, and wounded 25 others, while the NNA said the raid targeted "homes and infrastructure.”

A photograph taken from the southern Lebanese area of Tyre shows rocket trails fired from Lebanon toward neighbouring Israel on April 12, 2026. (Photo by Kawnat HAJU / AFP)

An AFP photographer in the southern town saw huge destruction as an excavator worked to clear debris and first responders carried a body out from under the rubble.

The ministry raised the overall toll in Lebanon to 2,055 dead, including 165 children and 87 health workers, since war erupted on March 2.

In south Lebanon's Bazuriyeh, Hassan Berro, a rescue worker from the Risala Scout association -- which is affiliated with the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement -- said: "Our emergency center was hit and completely destroyed, along with all its contents, including beds and medical equipment."

The AFP photographer saw windows shattered and debris covering several hospital beds in the building, where walls and ceilings were also damaged.

Hezbollah said it launched attacks on Israeli targets across the border and inside Lebanon, including against troops in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, where the NNA reported heavy fighting.

Israel's army on Sunday accused Hezbollah of using the town's hospital compound "for military purposes.”

Officials from Lebanon, Israel and the United States are due to hold direct talks in Washington on Tuesday, a move Hezbollah has rejected.

Commenting on the planned talks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that "we want the dismantling of Hezbollah's weapons, and we want a real peace agreement that will last for generations.”

Arab World

Israeli Strike Kills Infant Girl in South Lebanon during Father's Funeral

A member of civil defense personnel holds the body of Taleen Saeed, 1.5 years old, killed in an Israeli strike in the village of Srifa, at the Al Kharab mosque in Tyre, Lebanon, April 12, 2026. REUTERS
A member of civil defense personnel holds the body of Taleen Saeed, 1.5 years old, killed in an Israeli strike in the village of Srifa, at the Al Kharab mosque in Tyre, Lebanon, April 12, 2026. REUTERS
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Israeli Strike Kills Infant Girl in South Lebanon during Father's Funeral

A member of civil defense personnel holds the body of Taleen Saeed, 1.5 years old, killed in an Israeli strike in the village of Srifa, at the Al Kharab mosque in Tyre, Lebanon, April 12, 2026. REUTERS
A member of civil defense personnel holds the body of Taleen Saeed, 1.5 years old, killed in an Israeli strike in the village of Srifa, at the Al Kharab mosque in Tyre, Lebanon, April 12, 2026. REUTERS

Wrapped in bloodied bandages, Aline Saeed, seven, barely survived the Israeli strike on her home in south Lebanon last week. She was there to bury her father as hopes of a truce spread across the region, but a new strike killed her infant sister and other relatives.

The strike on the Saeed family home in the village of Srifa took place on Wednesday, the first day of a US-Iran ceasefire that many in Lebanon hoped would apply to their country, too. Instead, Israeli strikes killed more than 350 across Lebanon and left the Saeed family with four more relatives to bury.

"They said it was a ceasefire. Like all these people, we went up to the village. We went to the casket to read the prayers and walk home... suddenly we felt like a storm was landing right on us," said Nasser Saeed, Aline's 64-year-old grandfather, who also survived, Reuters reported.

On Sunday, he joined other relatives in the southern port city of Tyre to pick up the bodies wrapped in green cloth. One of them, a fraction the size of the rest, contained his granddaughter Taleen, Aline's sister.

She had not yet turned two.

With bandages to his head and right hand and scratches on his face, Saeed mourned in silence as the women around him turned their faces up to the sky and screamed in agony.

The Israeli military said that it did not have enough details to look into the incident, adding that it takes measures to reduce harm to civilians in its strikes against Hezbollah militants.

TALEEN 'BORN IN WAR AND DIED IN WAR'

"This isn't humanity. This is a war crime," Saeed told Reuters at the hospital where Aline's mother, Ghinwa, was still being treated.

"Where are the human rights? If a child - a child! - is wounded in Israel, the whole world jumps up. Are we not people? Are we not humans? We're like them!" he said.

Taleen was born in 2024, in the last round of fierce clashes between Hezbollah and Israel.

"She was born in the war and died in the war," said Mohammed Nazzal, Ghinwa's father.

FIERCE BOMBARDMENT CONTINUES

Iran wants a ceasefire for Lebanon as part of talks with the United States, which concluded on Sunday without a breakthrough. But Israel wants to pursue talks with Lebanese officials through a separate track.

Heavy bombardment on Lebanon has continued, with nearly 100 people killed on Saturday.

Dr. Abbas Attiyeh, head of emergency operations at Tyre's Jabal Amel hospital, said last week's bombardment was one of the heaviest in recent years and many of the patients arriving at his hospital were children.

"The challenges we're facing now are the numbers of wounded that come at the same time, within the same 30 minutes or hour," Attiyeh told Reuters.

Arab World

Ben Gvir, Settlers Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir - REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir - REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
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Ben Gvir, Settlers Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir - REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir - REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday morning with a group of settlers, under the protection of Israeli police.

The Palestinian News Agency (WAFA) reported that “during the incursion, settlers performed Talmudic prayers in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in a new provocative step aimed at imposing a new religious reality at the site and entrenching temporal and spatial division.”

The Jerusalem Governorate said the move comes amid escalating violations against Islamic and Christian holy sites in occupied Jerusalem, and continued restrictions on worshippers’ access.

In a video filmed at the site and published by his office, Ben Gvir said: “Today, I feel that I am the owner of this place,” according to Reuters.

He added: “There is still more to be done, and more that needs to be improved. I continue to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more. We must continue to move forward step by step.”

Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the visit in a statement, describing it as “a flagrant violation of the historical and legal status quo at the Noble Sanctuary, a desecration of its sanctity, an escalation that is condemned, and an unacceptable provocation.”

A spokesperson for Ben Gvir said the minister is seeking to secure more entry permits for Jewish visitors and to allow prayers at the site.

The spokesperson added that Ben Gvir prayed at the site. Netanyahu’s office has not yet commented. Previous visits and statements by Ben Gvir had prompted Netanyahu to issue statements affirming that there is no change in Israel’s policy of maintaining the status quo.