ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria's constitutional court on Saturday certified the landslide victory of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in last weekend's election after retabulating vote counts that he and his two opponents had called into question.
The court said that it had reviewed local voting data to settle questions about irregularities that Tebboune’s opponents had alleged in two appeals on Monday.
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Algeria's constitutional court, in the capital Agiers, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Presidential candidate of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), Abdelali Hassani Cherif, prepares to cast his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Presidential candidate and leader of the FFS party, Youcef Aouchich, casts his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential elections, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria. (AP Photo)
CORRECTS DATE - A voter prepares to cast his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Election officials wait for voters inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
A ballot showing Algerian president and candidate for re-election Abdelmajid Tebboune, inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Algeria's constitutional court, in the capital Agiers, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
“After verification of the minutes of the regions and correction of the errors noted in the counting of the votes," it had lowered Tebboune's vote share and determined that his two opponents had won hundreds of thousands more votes than previously reported, said Omar Belhadj, the constitutional court's president.
The court's decision makes Tebboune the official winner of the Sept. 7 election. His government will next decide when to inaugurate him for a second term.
The court's retabulated figures showed Tebboune leading Islamist challenger Abdellali Hassan Cherif by around 75 percentage points. With 7.7 million votes, the first-term president won 84.3% of the vote, surpassing 2019 win by millions of votes and a double-digit margin.
Cherif, running with the Movement of Society for Peace, won nearly 950,000 votes, or roughly 9.6%. The Socialist Forces Front's Youcef Aouchiche won more than 580,000 votes, or roughly 6.1%.
Notably, both challengers surpassed the threshold required to receive reimbursement for campaign expenses. Under its election laws, Algeria pays for political campaigns that receive more than a 5% vote share. The results announced by the election authority last week showed Cherif and Aouchiche with 3.2% and 2.2% of the vote, respectively. Both were criticized for participating in an election that government critics denounced as a way for Algeria's political elite to make a show of democracy amid broader political repression.
Throughout the campaign, each of the three campaigns emphasized participation, calling on voters and youth to participate and defy calls to boycott the ballot. The court announced nationwide turnout was 46.1%, surpassing the 2019 presidential election when 39.9% of the electorate participated.
Algeria's constitutional court, in the capital Agiers, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Presidential candidate of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), Abdelali Hassani Cherif, prepares to cast his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Presidential candidate and leader of the FFS party, Youcef Aouchich, casts his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential elections, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria. (AP Photo)
CORRECTS DATE - A voter prepares to cast his ballot inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Election officials wait for voters inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
A ballot showing Algerian president and candidate for re-election Abdelmajid Tebboune, inside a polling station during the presidential election, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Algiers, Algeria. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
Algeria's constitutional court, in the capital Agiers, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Fateh Guidoum)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Lebanese Red Cross says an Israeli airstrike in northern Lebanon has killed at least 18 people.
The strike hit a small apartment building in the village of Aito on Monday, and was one of the northernmost strikes since Israel invaded Lebanon earlier this month.
The Hezbollah militant group is mainly present in the south of the country and the southern suburbs of Beirut.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.
The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Several secondary explosions could be heard after the initial strike, but it was not immediately clear if they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.
The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal territory have been completely destroyed.
Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north heeded Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and have not been allowed to return.
That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there a combatant — a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law.
The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it's unclear whether it has been adopted. The military says it has not received such orders.
Israeli rights groups on Monday called on the international community to prevent Israel from carrying out the plan, saying there are “alarming signs” that Israel is beginning to implement it.
The statement, signed by B'Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, warned that states “have an obligation to prevent the crimes of starvation and forcible transfer."
With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas that has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to strike Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of an all-out regionwide war.
A Hezbollah aerial attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers — all of them 19 years old — and severely wounded seven others Sunday, the military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defense systems during the assault by drones.
Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. It’s rare for so many people to be wounded by drones or missiles, most of which are intercepted by Israel's multitiered air defenses or fall in open areas.
Magdy reported from Cairo.
Find more of AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Palestinians react to a fire after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Israeli soldiers mourn Sgt. Yosef Hieb, killed Sunday by a Hezbollah drone attack that wounded dozens and killed four soldiers, while at his funeral in Tuba Zangariyye, Israel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Israeli soldiers mourn Sgt. Yosef Hieb, killed Sunday by a Hezbollah drone attack that wounded dozens and killed four soldiers, while at his funeral in Tuba Zangariyye, Israel, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians look at the damage after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
An Israeli Apache helicopter fires a missile towards southern Lebanon as seen from northern Israel, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Israeli soldiers display what they say are Hezbollah ammunition and explosives found during their ground operation in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
Israeli soldiers display what they say is an entrance to a Hezbollah tunnel found during their ground operation in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
Israeli soldiers are seen during a ground operation in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
Israeli soldiers display what they say is an entrance to a Hezbollah tunnel found during their ground operation in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
Israeli soldiers are seen during a ground operation in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Sam McNeil)
Palestinians try to extinguish fire caused by an Israeli strike that hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish a fire caused by an Israeli strike that hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians try to extinguish a fire caused by an Israeli strike that hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinian firefighters try to extinguish a fire caused by an Israeli strike that hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians react to a fire after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians inspect the damage at a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital, hit by an Israeli bombardment on Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A Palestinian man reacts to a fire after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians react to a fire after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians react to a fire after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians react to a fire after an Israeli strike hit a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
