BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi authorities on Saturday were investigating the killing of a well-known social media influencer, who was shot by an armed motorcyclist in front of her home in central Baghdad.

Ghufran Mahdi Sawadi, known as “Um Fahad,” was popular on the social media sites TikTok and Instagram, where she posted videos of herself dancing to music and was followed by tens of thousands of users.

An Iraqi security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said that the assailant opened fire as Sawadi parked her Cadillac in front of her house on Friday, killing her, then took her phone and fled the scene.

The killing took place in Zayoona, the same neighborhood where a prominent Iraqi researcher and security expert Hisham al-Hashimi was gunned down in 2020. Before the U.S. invasion of 2003, the neighborhood was home to military leaders and considered a prestigious area in Baghdad. In recent years, many militia leaders have taken up residence there.

Sawadi isn’t the first prominent social media figure to be gunned down in central Baghdad. Last year, Noor Alsaffar or “Noor BM,” a transgender person with a large social media following, was also fatally shot in the city.

A neighbor of Sawadi who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Adam or “father of Adam,” said he came out to the street after hearing two shots fired and saw “the car’s door open and she was lying on the steering wheel.”

“The woman who was with her (in the car) escaped, and security forces came and sealed off the entire area, and they took the victim’s body and towed her car,” he said.

In Iraq, the role of social media influencers has broadened from promoting beauty products and clothing to government projects and programs. Official government invitations classify these influencers as key business figures at sports, security and cultural gatherings.

Videos featuring a prominent influencer during the 93rd anniversary on Thursday of the Iraqi air force’s founding sparked a backlash, with many criticizing the Ministry of Defense for allowing them to record and publish videos from sensitive military sites. The ministry defended itself, saying that in the era of social media, like defense ministries worldwide, it uses influencers alongside traditional media to communicate with the public.

Last year, an Iraqi court sentenced Sawadi to six months in prison for posting several films and videos containing obscene statements and indecent public behavior on social media as part of a recent push by the Iraqi government to police morals.

Separately on Saturday, the Iraqi parliament passed an amendment to the country’s prostitution law — widely criticized by human rights groups — that would punish same-sex relations with a prison term ranging from 10 to 15 years. A previous version of the law would have imposed the death penalty.

The law also bans any organization that promotes “sexual deviancy,” imposing a sentence of at least seven years and a fine of no less than 10 million dinars (about $7,600).

The acting parliamentary speaker, Mohsen Al-Mandalawi, said in a statement that the vote was “a necessary step to protect the value structure of society” and to “protect our children from calls for moral depravity and homosexuality.”

Rasha Younes, a senior researcher with the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, said the law’s passage “rubber-stamps Iraq’s appalling record of rights violations against LGBT people and is a serious blow to fundamental human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and association, privacy, equality, and nondiscrimination.”

A report released by the organization in 2022 accused armed groups in Iraq of abducting, raping, torturing, and killing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people with impunity and the Iraqi government of failing to hold perpetrators accountable.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s parliament passed a law criminalising same-sex relationships with a maximum 15-year prison sentence on Saturday, in a move it said aimed to uphold religious values but was condemned by rights advocates as the latest attack on the LGBT community in Iraq.

The law aims to “protect Iraqi society from moral depravity and the calls for homosexuality that have overtaken the world,” according to a copy of the law seen by Reuters.

It was backed mainly by conservative Shi’ite Muslim parties who form the largest coalition in mainly Muslim Iraq’s parliament.

The Law on Combating Prostitution and Homosexuality bans same-sex relations with at least 10 years and a maximum of 15 years in prison, and mandates at least seven years in prison for anybody who promotes homosexuality or prostitution.

It also imposes between one and three years in prison for anyone who changes their “biological gender” or wilfully dresses in an effeminate manner.

The bill had initially included the death penalty for same-sex acts but was amended before being passed after strong opposition from the United States and European nations.

Until Saturday, Iraq didn’t explicitly criminalise gay sex, though loosely defined morality clauses in its penal code had been used to target LGBT people, and members of the community have also been killed by armed groups and individuals.

“The Iraqi parliament’s passage of the anti-LGBT law rubber-stamps Iraq’s appalling record of rights violations against LGBT people and is a serious blow to fundamental human rights,” Rasha Younes, deputy director of the LGBT rights programme at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.

Iraqi officials who oversee human rights could not immediately be reached for comment.

Major Iraqi parties have in the past year stepped up criticism of LGBT rights, with rainbow flags frequently being burned in protests by both ruling and opposition conservative Shi’ite Muslim factions last year.

More than 60 countries criminalise gay sex, while same-sex sexual acts are legal in more than 130 countries, according to Our World in Data.

(Reporting by Timour Azhari and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad; Editing by David Holmes)

By Humeyra Pamuk

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some senior U.S. officials have advised Secretary of State Antony Blinken that they do not find “credible or reliable” Israel’s assurances that it is using U.S.-supplied weapons in accordance with international humanitarian law, according to an internal State Department memo reviewed by Reuters.

Other officials upheld support for Israel’s representation.

Under a National Security Memorandum (NSM) issued by President Joe Biden in February, Blinken must report to Congress by May 8 whether he finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of U.S. weapons does not violate U.S. or international law.

By March 24, at least seven State Department bureaus had sent in their contributions to an initial “options memo” to Blinken. Parts of the memo, which has not been previously reported, were classified.

The submissions to the memo provide the most extensive picture to date of the divisions inside the State Department over whether Israel might be violating international humanitarian law in Gaza.

“Some components in the department favored accepting Israel’s assurances, some favored rejecting them and some took no position,” a U.S. official said.

    A joint submission from four bureaus – Democracy Human Rights & Labor; Population, Refugees and Migration; Global Criminal Justice and International Organization Affairs – raised “serious concern over non-compliance” with international humanitarian law during Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war.

The assessment from the four bureaus said Israel’s assurances were “neither credible nor reliable.” It cited eight examples of Israeli military actions that the officials said raise “serious questions” about potential violations of international humanitarian law.

These included repeatedly striking protected sites and civilian infrastructure; “unconscionably high levels of civilian harm to military advantage”; taking little action to investigate violations or to hold to account those responsible for significant civilian harm and “killing humanitarian workers and journalists at an unprecedented rate.”

The assessment from the four bureaus also cited 11 instances of Israeli military actions the officials said “arbitrarily restrict humanitarian aid,” including rejecting entire trucks of aid due to a single “dual-use” item, “artificial” limitations on inspections as well as repeated attacks on humanitarian sites that should not be hit.

Another submission to the memo reviewed by Reuters, from the bureau of Political and Military Affairs, which deals with U.S. military assistance and arms transfers, warned Blinken that suspending U.S. weapons would limit Israel’s ability to meet potential threats outside its airspace and require Washington to re-evaluate “all ongoing and future sales to other countries in the region.”

Any suspension of U.S. arms sales would invite “provocations” by Iran and aligned militias, the bureau said in its submission, illustrating the push-and-pull inside the department as it prepares to report to Congress.

The submission did not directly address Israel’s assurances.

Inputs to the memo from the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and U.S. ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said they assessed Israel’s assurances as credible and reliable, a second U.S. official told Reuters.

The State Department’s legal bureau, known as the Office of the Legal Adviser, “did not take a substantive position” on the credibility of Israel’s assurances, a source familiar with the matter said.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the agency doesn’t comment on leaked documents.

“On complex issues, the Secretary often hears a diverse range of views from within the Department, and he takes all of those views into consideration,” Miller said.

MAY 8 REPORT TO CONGRESS

When asked about the memo, an Israeli official said:  “Israel is fully committed to its commitments and their implementation, among them the assurances given to the U.S. government.”

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Biden administration officials repeatedly have said they have not found Israel in violation of international law.

Blinken has seen all of the bureau assessments about Israel’s pledges, the second U.S. official said.

Matthew Miller on March 25 said the department received the pledges. However, the State Department is not expected to render its complete assessment of credibility until the May 8 report to Congress.

Further deliberations between the department’s bureaus are underway ahead of the report’s deadline, the U.S. official said.

USAID also provided input to the memo. “The killing of nearly 32,000 people, of which the GOI (Government of Israel) itself assesses roughly two-thirds are civilian, may well amount to a violation of the international humanitarian law requirement,” USAID officials wrote in the submission.

USAID does not comment on leaked documents, a USAID spokesperson said.

     The warnings about Israel’s possible breaches of international humanitarian law made by some senior State Department officials come as Israel is vowing to launch a military offensive into Rafah, the southern-most pocket of the Gaza Strip that is home to over a million people displaced by the war, despite repeated warnings from Washington not to do so.

Israel’s military conduct has come under increasing scrutiny as its forces have killed 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health authorities, most of them women and children.

Israel’s assault was launched in response to the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 250 others taken hostage.

The National Security Memorandum was issued in early February after Democratic lawmakers began questioning whether Israel was abiding by international law.

The memorandum imposed no new legal requirements but asked the State Department to demand written assurances from countries receiving U.S.-funded weapons that they are not violating international humanitarian law or blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance.

It also required the administration to submit an annual report to Congress to assess whether countries are adhering to international law and not impeding the flow of humanitarian aid.

If Israel’s assurances are called into question, Biden would have the option to “remediate” the situation through actions ranging from seeking fresh assurances to suspending further U.S. weapons transfers, according to the memorandum.

Biden can suspend or put conditions on U.S. weapons transfers at any time.

He has so far resisted calls from rights groups, left-leaning Democrats and Arab American groups to do so.

But earlier this month he threatened for the first time to put conditions on the transfer of U.S. weapons to Israel, if it does not take concrete steps to improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

(This story has been refiled to remove an extraneous paragraph)

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Don Durfee and Suzanne Goldenberg)

MADRID (AP) — Thousands of supporters and party members of Spain’s Socialist party rallied outside the party’s national headquarters in Madrid on Saturday to show their support for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and urge him not to step down.

Sánchez stunned Spain on Wednesday when he announced that he was canceling his itinerary while he considers whether or not to resign after what he described as a “smear campaign” against his wife. He said he would reveal his future plans on Monday.

Sánchez’s shocking announcement came hours after a Spanish judge opened a preliminary investigation into allegation of corruption made against Sánchez’s wife by a group aligned with right-wing interests. The Spanish leader said the allegations were “spurious” and that they formed the worst attack in what he described as an orchestrated campaign to discredit him by targeting his family. The Madrid regional prosecutor’s office recommended the allegations to be thrown out.

The crowd packing the downtown street of Madrid on Saturday shouted “You are not alone!” and waved party flags. Socialist leaders and the leaders of other left-wing parties have urged Sánchez not to resign. Prime minister since 2018, Sánchez has over three years left on his term.

The right-of-center opposition Popular Party, however, said Sánchez’s behavior was a desperate attempt to draw attention away from his wife and to win support in upcoming regional and European elections.

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said a Russian attack on his country’s energy sector on Saturday had targeted gas facilities important for supply to the European Union.

Russia continues to supply gas to the EU via Ukraine under a transit deal with Russia’s Gazprom that is set to expire in December. Ukraine’s energy minister said last month that Kyiv had no plans to extend or replace the arrangement with Moscow, which pays Ukraine to export its gas to the EU.

“The main target was the energy sector, various facilities in the industry, both electricity and gas transit facilities, in particular, those gas facilities that are crucial to ensuring safe delivery to the European Union,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

Zelenskiy, who is campaigning for supplies of defensive weapons systems from his international partners, said that Ukrainian forces had “managed to shoot down some” of the 34 Russian missiles of various types.

He did not say which specific facilities were targeted, nor whether missiles hit those targets.

Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas firm Naftogaz said Russia had attacked its facilities but that no-one was hurt and supplies to Ukrainian consumers and clients were unaffected.

Maksym Kozytskyi, the governor of Lviv region, which borders Poland, said his region had suffered strikes during an attack by cruise missiles and Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, though Ukrainian forces shot down three missiles.

He said two critical energy infrastructure objects in Stryi and Chervonohrad districts were damaged and caught fire, though emergency services quickly extinguished the flames.

Zelenskiy repeated his previous plea for defensive missiles, particularly Patriot systems, saying Ukraine needed at least seven defensive systems.

“The trajectories of the missiles and the nature of the strike were calculated by Russian terrorists in a way to make the work of our air defence system as difficult as possible,” he said. “Each downed rocket today is a significant result.”

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth in Kyiv and Elaine Monaghan in Washington; editing by David Evans)

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council on Saturday expressed its “deep concern” over an imminent attack on al-Fashir in Sudan’s North Darfur region by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

War erupted in Sudan one year ago between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary RSF, creating the world’s largest displacement crisis.

Al-Fashir is the last major city in the vast, western Darfur region not under control of the RSF. The RSF and its allies swept through four other Darfur state capitals last year, and were blamed for a campaign of ethnically driven killings against non-Arab groups and other abuses in West Darfur.

The Security Council, in a statement, “expressed their deep concern over an imminent offensive by the Rapid Support Forces and their allied militias” against the city of al-Fashir.

“They called on the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces to end the build-up of military forces and to take steps to de-escalate the situation,” the statement said.

Top U.N. officials warned the Security Council last week that some 800,000 people in al-Fashir were in “extreme and immediate danger” as worsening violence advances and threatens to “unleash bloody intercommunal strife throughout Darfur.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Chris Reese)

By Sergio Goncalves

LISBON (Reuters) – President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said on Saturday Portugal could use several methods to pay reparations for atrocities committed during transatlantic slavery and the colonial era, such as cancelling the debt of former colonies and providing financing.

From the 15th to the 19th century, 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to Brazil.

The president said on Tuesday that Portugal was responsible for crimes committed during transatlantic slavery and the colonial era, and suggested there was a need for reparations.

His words sparked strong criticism from right-wing parties, including the junior partner of the Democratic Alliance government coalition, CDS-Popular Party, and the far-right Chega.

The leader of the parliamentary bench of the CDS-Partido Popular, Paulo Nuncio, said on Thursday that his party “does not need to revisit colonial legacies, reparation duties, which seem imported from outside”.

Chega leader Andre Ventura said that the behavior of the president was “a betrayal of the country”.

“We cannot put this under the carpet or in a drawer. We have an obligation to pilot, to lead this process (of reparations)”, the president told reporters on Saturday.

He said the country must take “responsibility for the bad and good of what happened in the empire and draw consequences.”

The country’s colonial era lasted more than five centuries, with Angola, Mozambique, Brazil, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, East Timor and some territories in Asia subject to Portuguese rule.

The decolonisation of the African countries and the end of the African empire only happened months after the “Carnation Revolution” on April 25, 1974, which toppled the longest fascist dictatorship in Europe and ushered in democracy.

Rebelo de Sousa said that reparations can take several types, “such as debt forgiveness” for countries that were colonised, “credit lines, financing or special cooperation programs”.

(Reporting by Sergio Goncalves; editing by David Evans)

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian court has ordered another suspect to be held in custody following the arrest of an ally of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on suspicion of taking bribes, TASS news agency reported on Saturday.

It cited court documents as saying Anton Filatov, a subordinate of Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, had been ordered to be held in custody.

Ivanov was detained on Tuesday at work by the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, and accused of accepting large bribes.

Moscow’s Basmanny District Court on Wednesday ordered Ivanov to be kept in custody until June 23.

(Reporting by Reuters, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

(Reuters) – Three police officers were killed on Saturday in southern Chile during what President Gabriel Boric called a cowardly attack that led him to declare three days of national mourning.

The attack occurred in the municipality of Canete, in Arauco province, when the officers responded to three false emergency calls, authorities said.

The officers were attacked in their vehicle with heavy-caliber weapons and burned, the authorities said.

The region where the attack took place is home to long-running tensions between the state and the South American country’s Mapuche Indigenous people.

“This morning we received the serious and painful news of an attack in the province of Arauco, in which three police officers were killed. We coordinated immediate actions to respond to this cowardly attack,” Boric said in a message via social media platform X, before traveling to where the attack took place.

“We will find the whereabouts of the perpetrators of this terrible crime,” he said.

(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Chris Reese)

BERLIN (AP) — Several German parties on Saturday kicked off their campaigns for the election of the European Parliament in June with a focus on issues such as the war in Ukraine and support by many European voters for far-right nationalist parties across the continent.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ’s center-left Social Democrats, or SPD, launched their official campaign for the June 9 EU election with a rally in Hamburg, Scholz’s longtime home city.

Responding to many German voters’ fears their country could be drawn into Ukraine’s war with Russia if it’s too proactive in its military support for the eastern European country, Scholz tried to alleviate such concerns.

The chancellor reiterated that Germany would continue to stand by Ukraine’s side under his leadership as the second-largest arms supplier after the U.S., but would avoid a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

“To those who are worried, who are afraid, I say: you can rest assured that no matter how the debates go, the German Chancellor, the government I lead, will not abandon the course of prudence, the course of balanced action and ensuring peace and security in Europe,” he said, according to German news agency dpa.

“Peace” is one of the central terms on the SPD’s election posters, on which Scholz and European election top candidate Katarina Barley can be seen together.

The European Parliament is the only publicly elected body in the European Union. The EU was created after World War II to foster peace, and now has 450 million people and the world’s second-largest economy. Far-right parties and their discourse are expected to weigh heavily on election campaigning.

The far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, officially kicked off its campaign for the elections at an event in the southwestern town of Donaueschingen. The party’s top candidate in the elections, Maximilian Krah, canceled plans to speak after an assistant was arrested on suspicion of spying for China earlier this week.

Krah’s party has been polling strongly in Germany in recent months as discontent is high with Scholz’s three-party coalition government. It has long been criticized as having Russia-friendly positions.

However, the AfD’s poll ratings have recently gone down compared with what they were before a media report in January about a plan by far-right politicians, including some by the AfD, to deport millions of people of non-German ancestry. The report triggered months of mass protests in the country against the rise of the far-right.

In Munich, the Christian Social Union, the smaller, Bavaria-only party in Germany’s main conservative opposition bloc, also held a convention ahead of the European Parliament election.

The head of the party and governor of Bavaria, Markus Soeder, sharply assailed the AfD for alleged links of some party members to Russia and China, dpa reported.

“Obviously, half of the AfD is involved in some kind of espionage activities or money transfers from other countries,” Soeder told party members.

“The fact that active politicians are possibly being paid by Russia while at the same time calling for the end of NATO (makes them) nothing more than Kremlin servants, traitors to the fatherland and not patriots, dear friends. Away with them,” he added.

AfD leader Tino Chrupalla has called on his party to stand united following German media reports of possible involvement with Russia and China by leading AfD politicians, dpa reported.

“We will use the election campaign to show that we cannot be brought down so quickly and that we stand together as one,” said Chrupalla in Dnoaueschingen.

Referring to the recent accusations, he tried to depict his far-right party as a victim of smear campaigns.

“It has become adventurous to see the means by which our party is to be destroyed, how our party is to be damaged, how unrest and mistrust are to be created,” Chrupalla said.