Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Sudan protesters demand military hands over power at once

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New military rulers say they plan to give power to civilian government in two years

A pledge by Sudan’s ruling military council to hand over power to a civilian government has been rejected by the country’s main protest group, which said the army was “not capable of creating change”.

In a press conference broadcast on state television, Omar Zein Abideen, a senior army officer and member of the military council, said Sudan’s new rulers had no ambition to hold on to power and had intervened to remove President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday in response to the wishes of the people.

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Abandoned at sea: the crews cast adrift without food, fuel or pay | Karen McVeigh

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Seafarers on board the Azraqmoiah have spent 18 desperate months stranded off the coast of UAE, owed $260,000 in wages

When Captain Ayyappan Swaminathan set off from his home in Kumbakonam, southern India, in January 2017, to work on a ship in the Persian Gulf, he told his four-year-old daughter, Aniha: “Don’t worry, I’ll be back shortly.”

But the merchant seaman’s hope of returning home soon with good money for his family turned into a nightmare. His cargo ship, the MV Azraqmoiah, became a floating prison from which he and his 10-man crew could not escape without losing their claim to thousands of dollars in unpaid wages.

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Benjamin Netanyahu: the enduring hardman of Israeli politics

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Ultranationalist PM has been at heart of backlash against peace efforts during 13 years in power

It was a win by the slimmest margin. Back in 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu took the Israeli election by less than 1% of the total votes.

Twenty-three years later, he has pulled off more knife-edge election acrobatics, securing a fifth term even though he tied in the election, after his main rival conceded.

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‘We have not managed to land successfully’: Israel’s moonshot fails

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Spacecraft crashes in to lunar surface after engine and communications breakdown

An Israeli spacecraft has crashed into the lunar surface, ending the first privately funded attempt to land on the moon.

About the size of a washing machine, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander experienced an engine and communication failure in the last seconds of touchdown.

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Mood in Sudan shifts to anger as the army prepares to seize power

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Demonstrators in Khartoum insist a civilian government must replace Omar al-Bashir

As rumours spread that their long-time ruler was finally on his way out, the atmosphere on the streets of Khartoum was victorious.

“The regime has fallen,” people chanted. Flags waved, people danced and sang, and everyone’s hands were up in victory signs. “Freedom, peace and justice,” read one banner. On Wednesday morning, it seemed that the long-fought battle for these values might be on the point of being won.

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Sudan’s defence minister announces state of emergency after arrest of President Bashir – video

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On Thursday Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan in autocratic style for 30 years, was overthrown and arrested in a coup by the armed forces, said Sudan's defence minister, Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, in a televised address. He also announced a two-year period of military rule to be followed by presidential elections.

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Sudan’s army removes President Bashir after 30 years in power

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President arrested after months of protests that escalated with mass sit-in on Saturday

Sudan’s army has removed President Omar al-Bashir from power after 30 years, following months of protests that escalated at the weekend when demonstrators began a sit-in outside the defence ministry compound in central Khartoum.

Bashir had been arrested “in a safe place”, the Sudanese defence minster and army general Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf said in a statement broadcast on state media. A military council will take control of the country for two years, after which elections would be held, Ibn Auf added.

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Europe split over how to respond to Haftar assault on Tripoli

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France blocked draft EU resolution condemning warlord and calling for his retreat from Libyan capital

European divisions over how to respond to General Khalifa Haftar’s violent assault on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, have been exposed after France blocked a draft EU resolution that would have condemned him and called for him to retreat.

France, a supporter of the warlord over the past two years, blocked the draft despite new UN figures showing 56 reported dead, hundreds injured and more than 6,000 displaced by the fighting.

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Pompeo flounders on why annexation is good for the Golan but not for Crimea

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Trump’s decision to recognise Israeli sovereignty over territory it seized from Syria sets a troubling precedent, experts fear

Under intense questioning about why the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights was good but the Russian seizure of Crimea was bad, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told senators that there was an “international law doctrine” which would be explained to them later.

It turned out there was no doctrine. The state department’s clarification of Pompeo’s remarks contained no reference to one, and experts on international law said that none exists.

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Trump basks in Netanyahu’s victory by highlighting their personal alliance

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US president tweeted a picture of people waving Trump banners at the Israeli leader’s election celebrations

Donald Trump welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory by underlining the personal alliance between the two men, tweeting a picture of people waving Trump banners at the Israeli leader’s celebrations.

Related: 'The future is dark': Palestinians react to Israel's election

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Israel election: Netanyahu wins fifth term as rival concedes

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Benjamin Netanyahu has already begun to broker deals with religious and far-right parties

Benjamin Netanyahu is set to serve a fifth term as Israel’s prime minister after his main rival conceded that he had lost the election.

With 97% of votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Blue and White party, led by former army general Benny Gantz, had tied with 35 seats each in the 120-seat house, the Knesset. However, the rightwing bloc that Netanyahu is part of had 65 in total, a comfortable majority.

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Iraq seeks multibillion dollar fee to receive Isis prisoners

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Baghdad in talks with US to receive remnants of terror group held in detention centres in Syria

Baghdad and Washington are in talks to transfer and place on trial tens of thousands of suspected Isis fighters and their families from detention centres in Syria to prison camps in Iraq, with Iraqi officials seeking a multibillion dollar fee to receive remnants of the terror group captured over five years of war.

Discussions about what to do with Isis members, among them thousands of foreign men, women and children, have been pushed intensively by US officials, who have also lobbied coalition partners to remove their citizens from two cramped detention centres in Syria’s north-east, which one former senior US official described as a “volcano”.

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‘I was raised to love our home’: Sudan’s singing protester speaks out

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Alaa Salah, 22, talks to the Guardian about having her image seen around the world

The young woman in a photo that has come to symbolise the protest movement in Sudan has been identified as Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old architecture student in Khartoum.

Salah told the Guardian she was happy that the image, taken on Monday evening at a demonstration in the Sudanese capital, had been viewed so widely.

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Netanyahu will now feel free to pursue hardline agenda of confrontation | Simon Tisdall

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Election victory gives Israeli PM confidence he will get his way on Iran and Palestine

His supporters call him a magician. And there is truly something uncanny about how Benjamin Netanyahu has conjured up three-way US, Russian and Arab support for his hardline security and nationalist agenda. For a small country, Israel packs an ever bigger punch – and pugnacious Bibi’s likely fifth term presages a new era of escalating confrontation.

First in line for the Netanyahu treatment is Iran. He claimed credit on Monday for Donald Trump’s unprecedented decision to brand Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, including its al-Quds force, a foreign terrorist organisation. The provocative move, akin to singling out the US marine corps for punishment, bought a vengeful riposte from Tehran.

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Israel election: Netanyahu and rival Gantz tied with 97% of vote counted – live updates

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Polling suggests the race for prime minister will be tight, as Benjamin Netanyahu runs against Benny Gantz

Our correspondent, Oliver Holmes, has this wrap of the night’s results.

Related: Israel election: Netanyahu appears on track for victory despite tied result

It appears that Arab parties have lost three seats in the Knesset in this election, after calls within the Arab community, which makes up almost a fifth of Israel’s population, to boycott the election.

Likud was censured on Tuesday for sending monitors with body-cameras to polling stations with Arab constituents, which Arab politicians condemned as voter intimidation. A Likud party official defended the move, saying the cameras were deployed to ensure there would be no vote rigging.

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Israel election: Netanyahu appears on track for victory despite tied result

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Major parties neck and neck but incumbent has path to form majority government with right-wing allies

Benjamin Netanyahu was on track on Wednesday morning to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, despite his Likud party winning the same number of seats as his rivals.

With 97% of votes counted, both Likud and the Blue and White party, led by former army general Benny Gantz, had won 35 seats in the 120-seat parliament, the Knesset.

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Why should we Yemenis stop having babies and surrender to war? | Elle Kurancid, Elham Hassan and Amira Al-Sharif

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Four years into the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis, three Yemeni women ask – exactly what is required of people living in warzones?

A news report from December 2018 lays bare the depths of the crisis gripping Yemen. Mothers watch doctors measure the arms of their children. “When the tape shows red,” the TV correspondent narrates, “it means they’re severely malnourished.” After more than four years of a civil war and proxy conflict, these Yemeni children, mothers, and doctors are trapped in what the UN has called “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time”.

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