Deadly Iran protests continue as Trump renews intervention threat

By JON GAMBRELL AP The death toll in violence surrounding protests in Iran has risen to at least 35 people, activists said Tuesday, as the demonstrations showed no signs of stopping. The figure came from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which said more than 1,200 people have been detained in the protests, which have been ongoing for more than a week. It said 29 protesters, four children and two members of Iran’s security forces have been killed. Demonstrations have reached over 250 locations in 27 of Iran’s 31 provinces, The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest. A wave of protests sparked by Iran’s failing economy has continued for a ninth day, as President Donald Trump renewed his threat of US intervention. Trump warned on Sunday night that Iranian authorities would be “hit very hard” if more protesters died. “We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they ...

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan settle border dispute that sparked deadly clashes

 Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two ex-Soviet Central Asian states, said on Friday that they had resolved a decades-old border dispute that had sparked clashes between different ethnic groups that had killed over a hundred people.

Top security officials from both countries signed an agreement setting down the state borders over more than 970 km (600 miles) after resolving disputes over certain sections. The document must now be signed by the countries’ presidents.

Two days of skirmishes in border regions killed more than 100 people in September 2022 and prompted the evacuation of about 140,000 residents. Similar clashes in April 2021 killed about 20 people and injured more than 200.

“The border demarcation between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is taking place after two quite bloody conflicts and this complicates the problem,” Temur Umarov, a Central Asian expert at the Berlin Carnegie centre, told Reuters.

“This is a sensitive political issue. If the documents agreed on are published, they will become of considerable public interest and groups in both countries could well oppose the newly-agreed borders.”

Border issues in Central Asia have persisted since the Soviet era, when authorities made demarcations that sought to reflect the ethnic make-up of specific regions.

But settlements in which other groups were predominant often found themselves on the wrong side of a border.

Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan host Russian military bases and maintain close ties with Moscow.

Tajikistan, with a population of 10 million and Kyrgyzstan, with more than seven million, are among the poorest countries in a region subject to unrest.

A civil war in newly-independent Tajikistan in the 1990s, pitting Russian-backed government troops against Islamist and other groups, killed tens of thousands of people.

SOURCE: REUTERS AND AGENCIES



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/rLfwdGy

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