Saudis permanently close only land border with Qatar

SAUDI Arabia has permanently closed its only land border with Qatar, which continues to be blockaded by the kingdom and some of its Gulf neighbours.

According to a document issued by Saudi Arabia’s customs directorate on Tuesday, the Salwa border gate had been shut permanently since Monday night. The letter said Saudi officials ordered the closure. The move comes as an ongoing diplomatic crisis nears eight months.

The gate was first closed two weeks after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of financing “terrorism” and maintaining too close a relationship with their regional rival, Iran. Doha denies the allegations.

The border was then reopened for two weeks in August for pilgrims who wished to perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage to pass through.

At the time, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani welcomed the move, but said it was a “politically motivated decision”.

Although officially well-received by Qatar, the move had sparked outrage from Qatari citizens on social media, who demanded the siege be lifted entirely.

The Arab quartet blocked direct air and land transport to and from Qatar and closed their airspace to all Qatar Airways flights after severing ties with Qatar.

Earlier this month, the annual regional summit of the six GCC countries was cut short, failing to resolve the ongoing crisis.

As part of the blockade, the Saudi-led group also asked all Qatari nationals to leave their countries, but Doha has not imposed similar restrictions on the four Arab nations.— Al Jazeera.

BETWEEN 9 000 and 11 000 people were killed in the nine-month battle to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL), an Associated Press (AP) investigation has found.

The civilian casualty rate is nearly 10 times higher than that previously reported.

The deaths are acknowledged neither by the coalition, the Iraqi government nor the ISIL’s selfstyled caliphate.

Iraqi or coalition forces are responsible for at least 3 200 civilian deaths from air raids, artillery fire or mortar rounds between October 2016 and the fall of ISIL in July 2017, according to the AP investigation.

The news agency cross-referenced morgue lists and multiple databases from non-governmental organisations.

Most of those victims are simply described as “crushed” in health ministry reports.

The coalition, which did not send anyone into Mosul to investigate, acknowledges responsibility for only 326 of the deaths.

“It was the biggest assault on a city in a couple of generations, all told. And thousands died,” said Chris Woods, head of Airwars, an independent organisation that documents air and artillery attacks in Iraq and Syria and shared its database with AP.

“Understanding how those civilians died, and obviously ISIS played a big part in that as well, could help save a lot of lives the next time something like