Tunisian meteorology announced on Tuesday that the summer of 2026, which witnessed repeated power and drinking water outages, will be the hottest since 1950, according to Agence France-Presse.
The National Institute of Meteorology said, in a statement that included a quarterly bulletin, on Facebook: “The summer of 2026 was classified as the hottest in Tunisia since 1950, with a difference of +2.9 degrees compared to the climate average for the period from 1991 to 2020.”
The Institute confirmed that the summer of 2026 witnessed the recording of intense and long-lasting heat waves, with their geographical scope expanding.
These waves are among the most severe heat waves recorded in Tunisia since 1950, both in terms of the rise and intensity of temperatures and their duration. Also, the country witnessed an “exceptional and continuous” rise in night temperatures.
Kairouan Governorate (central) recorded the highest temperature of 49.7 degrees Celsius last July.
Scientists link periods of extreme and prolonged heat to climate change in particular. The high temperatures affected the supply of electricity and drinking water, at a time when the authorities were cutting off the electricity supply repeatedly throughout the day. Due to a lack of energy production. Water was cut off in several areas. This caused damage to many commercial sectors and increased citizen dissatisfaction.
The Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (governmental) explained the escalating increase in energy consumption by the intense use of electric air conditioners inside homes. Also, the markets witnessed a scarcity of mineral water bottles, which Tunisians largely consume during the summer.
In late August, Tunisian President Kais Saied denounced “planned actions” aimed at “inflaming the situation” after the escalation of the water and electricity outage crisis, which has affected the livelihood of Tunisians since the beginning of the summer. The Tunisian authorities did not announce the health impact of heat waves throughout the country, but the “Tunisian Organization of Young Doctors” reported many deaths due to “heat strokes.”
For its part, the Tunisian League for the Defense of Human Rights documented 23 deaths in prisons, noting the deteriorating conditions of detention due to the heat and overcrowding inside the cells.
The Libyan House of Representatives has entered a new phase of polarization among its members, amid fears that the dispute will affect the regularity of the work of the legislative institution, after representatives moved to hold a session to discuss “reforming the Council, changing its presidency, and amending its internal regulations,” but their attempt to hold the session was met with prevention, while the Presidency of the Council denied the existence of a scheduled official session.
According to parliamentary sources, the differences center around demands to make changes within the Council, including its presidency, led by its president, Aguila Saleh, who has been in office since August 2014, which led to the formation of two camps between those who support these movements and others who reject them.
A parliamentary source familiar with the positions of the various parties within Parliament expressed concern that the intensity of polarization would push the Council into a “stage of legislative and constitutional obstruction,” warning, in his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, that the continued division may open the door to challenges to legislation issued by it.
The source, who requested to remain anonymous, said that the dispute may also reduce the chances of consensus on transforming the understandings reached by the “4+4” committee regarding electoral laws between the House of Representatives and the “state” into amendments included in the Constitutional Declaration, at a time when the Libyan parties are seeking to push for elections.
Events accelerated in Benghazi on Monday, with media reports that a military force affiliated with the authorities in eastern Libya prevented 86 representatives from entering the headquarters of the House of Representatives to hold a meeting to discuss reforming the House and amending its internal regulations.
In a statement issued later, the representatives adhered to the continuation of the “parliamentary movement,” expressing their readiness to hold a meeting in any Libyan city in which members would be able to exercise their duties, based on Article 137 of the Council’s internal regulations. The member of the House of Representatives went on to speak directly to demand a change in the presidency of Parliament.
Contrasting narratives
On the other hand, the scene inside the House of Representatives seemed governed by a clear discrepancy in the narrative of what happened. In a statement signed by 72 deputies, they denied receiving an official invitation or notification from the Council Presidency regarding holding a session, stressing that an approved agenda had not reached them, and stressing the need to distinguish between official sessions and consultative meetings.
In light of this discrepancy, Member of Parliament Abdel Moneim Al-Arfi denied the existence of movements within the Council’s headquarters aimed at changing its presidency, considering that the existing differences are limited to “personal issues” between some representatives and the Presidency, and do not reflect a general position within the Council.
As for the Council’s spokesman, Abdullah Belhaq, he took a more decisive stance, denying the existence of an official session scheduled for Monday at all, and thus the absence of a session that could be obstructed, while describing the security measures taken in the vicinity of the Council’s headquarters as “routine” and unrelated to the work of the legislative institution.
At the same time, local reports and publications by Libyan activists circulated information about a discrepancy in the positions of prominent military figures in the east of the country towards the competing blocs within the House of Representatives, with talk about each of them supporting a different approach within the House. There has been no official response yet to confirm or deny this information.
But the dispute over the future of the Council presidency is not new. Last March, representatives called for a session in Benghazi to begin implementing a “road map” that includes amendments to a law issued in 2014, allowing for changes to be made within the presidency and committees.
In a similar move, 64 representatives threatened earlier this month to hold a full session headed by the oldest member to choose a new presidency, after they boycotted the September 14 session during which the Council approved the final agreement of the “4+4” committee between the authorities of eastern and western Libya.
The aforementioned session, which was held after months of absence, was met with skepticism from the boycotting representatives at the time about the completion of a quorum for the session, and they said that a quorum requires the presence of 87 representatives, warning that the outcomes of any session that did not meet the quorum would be subject to appeal before the competent judiciary.
Obsession with division
Observers fear that the dispute will go beyond the issue of the presidency of the Council and lead to a division in the institution itself. Former Supreme Court advisor Jumaa Abu Zeid warned that continued polarization could lead to a “split of the House of Representatives,” such that there would be one chamber in Benghazi and another in one of the cities in western Libya.
Abu Zeid said, in a post on his Facebook account, that the House of Representatives “is the only body that remains united” after other institutions in the country were divided, warning that its division “will move to the state itself,” which could lead to the existence of two legislative authorities bearing the name Libya.
He called for giving priority to existing tracks, including the initiative of US envoy Massad Boulos and the “4+4” committee, considering that approving the necessary amendments to the Constitutional Declaration could pave the way for holding presidential and parliamentary elections and ending the transitional phase.
In light of the two camps' adherence to their positions, a parliamentary source believes that containing the dispute requires reaching a consensus formula, through the intervention of political, social and tribal figures to bring viewpoints closer together.
The source concluded that among the proposed settlement formulas was “making changes within the Council’s committees and injecting new blood into them for a period of 6 months until new elections for the presidency of the Council are held, in parallel with providing guarantees and clear commitments from the parties to prevent the dispute from moving to disrupting the legislative institution.”
Supporters of Khaled Al-Hishari, the former director of a prison in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, who is currently appearing before the International Criminal Court, escalated their protests against the head of the interim “national unity” government, Abdul Hamid Al-Dabaiba, demanding that the Attorney General take immediate action to return Al-Hishari and try him in the country.
Khaled Al-Hishari (48 years old), nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” faces 17 charges related to war crimes and others against humanity, believed to have been committed in Mitiga prison, which he supervised in Tripoli, between February 2015 and the beginning of 2020.
Since his arrest, Al-Hishari’s case has placed Al-Dabaiba in the “position of the accused,” and his opponents have poured their anger on him amid political disputes, while the United Nations Support Mission in Libya welcomed Al-Hishari’s arrest in Germany in July 2025, and his transfer to the court’s detention center in The Hague.
On September 14, the Criminal Court set the date of May 4 for Al-Hishari’s trial, making him the first Libyan suspect to be tried before the International Criminal Court within the framework of the investigation that was opened in Libya with a mandate from the United Nations in 2011.
Supporters of Al-Hishari gathered, on Sunday evening, in front of the Social Council of the Souq Al-Jumaa area and the four districts of the capital, Tripoli. Denounced his trial, and said that they “will not remain silent or back down, and will knock on all legal doors, and follow peaceful means to return him to Libya and try him before its judiciary.” Then work to hold everyone who caused his arrest accountable.”
The crowd consisted of sheikhs and young people from the people of Souq al-Jumaa, the four districts, and the components of Greater Tripoli, and one of them read a statement in which he expressed his anger at Al-Hishari’s appearance before the International Criminal Court, and said that he was “not a criminal, but rather he was one of the men who came forward when the state was absent, lawlessness spread, and honorable people were called out.”
Public prosecutors previously told Criminal Court judges that Al-Hishari was known to “torture without mercy.” This prompted the detainees to call him “Azrael.”
In a previous session held by the Criminal Court on May 4, public prosecutors stated that Al-Hishari was supervising the women’s wing of Mitiga prison, which was run by the “Deterrence Service for Combating Terrorism and Organized Crime” in Libya, adding that “thousands of victims were arrested and detained without a legal basis in inhumane conditions, and were subjected to systematic abuse and torture.”
The people of Souq al-Jumaa, the stronghold of the “deterrence apparatus,” directed their message to “Libyan and international public opinion, and to every honorable free person,” saying: “We raise our voice loudly after a long silence, and after enough is enough, to denounce and condemn in the strongest terms the unjust arrest of the son of Tripoli, Khaled Al-Hishari.”
The protesters held the Dabaiba government “fully responsible” for what they described as “complicity in this shameful act, and for giving the green light to the Criminal Court to arrest Al-Hishari, even though Libya has not signed or ratified the Rome Statute.” They also held the German government “responsible for facilitating his extradition,” while it is fully aware that the file is purely political.”
On September 14, Judge Althea Windsor expressed her desire for the trial to be “fair and speedy... and without any unjustified delays,” noting that at least six years have passed since the alleged crimes occurred, while Al-Hishari’s victims demand that his trial begin as soon as possible.
However, his supporters believe that he “was on the front lines confronting organized crime, ISIS, and forced kidnappings and robberies.” They added in their statement: “What Al-Hishari did, and we are proud of it and will not back down from it, is an honor, not a crime, and honoring, not criminalizing. The timing of his arrest, after the events and demonstrations that took place in Tripoli in May 2025, leaves no doubt that the file is political.”
The indictment against Al-Hishari includes acts of torture, murder, attempted murder, flagrant assault on personal dignity, cruel and inhuman treatment, as well as rape and other forms of violence against detainees.
In the session held on May 4, Al-Hishari’s lawyer conveyed that his client denied all the charges against him, indicating that he had also filed an appeal against his trial on the grounds that his case was not within the court’s jurisdiction, but the latter dropped the appeal.
It is noteworthy that the “unity” government announced on June 20, 2024, through an official correspondence from the Ministry of Justice to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, that it accepted the latter’s jurisdiction under Article 12, paragraph 3, of the Rome Statute, which is the paragraph that allows non-member states to refer, or accept, the court’s consideration of crimes occurring on their territory.
