Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Ministers from 17 countries meet for Saudi talks on speeding aid to Damascus

Posted on by

Riyadh meeting also discussed keeping pressure on Syria’s new leadership to meet commitment to inclusive transition

Ministers from 17 Middle East and western countries have met in Riyadh to discuss how to speed aid to the new Syrian government while keeping pressure on the caretaker leadership to meet its commitment to run an administration representative of all religions and ethnic groups.

The meeting on Sunday came as protesters in Syria called on the west to move faster on lifting economic sanctions, and so persuade more refugees to return from Europe and the states surrounding the country.

Continue reading...

Somalia and Ethiopia agree to restore diplomatic ties after year-long rift

Posted on by

Somalia severed relations over sea access agreement Ethiopia signed with separatist region of Somaliland

Somalia and Ethiopia have agreed to restore diplomatic representation in their respective capitals, more than a year after Somalia severed ties over a sea access agreement landlocked Ethiopia signed with the separatist northern Somali region of Somaliland.

In a joint statement after an unexpected visit by Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, both countries committed to “restore and enhance bilateral relations through full diplomatic representation in their respective capitals”.

Continue reading...

Sudan’s army recaptures Wad Madani from rebel Rapid Support Forces

Posted on by

Strategic city fell into control of RSF, which has been accused of genocide by the US, in December 2023

Sudan’s military and its allies have taken back a strategic city from the rebel Rapid Support Forces, officials said.

The recapture of Wad Madani, the capital of Gezira province, took place more than a year after it fell to the RSF. Wad Madani had previously been a haven for displaced families in the early months of the war.

Continue reading...

Gaza death toll 40% higher than official number, Lancet study finds

Posted on by

Analysis estimates death toll by end of June was 64,260, with 59% being women, children and people over 65

Research published in the Lancet medical journal estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was about 40% higher than numbers recorded by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry.

The peer-reviewed statistical analysis was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions, using a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis.

Continue reading...

Lebanon elects Joseph Aoun as president after two-year vacancy

Posted on by

Army commander’s election increases confidence that ceasefire with Israel will hold

Lebanon’s parliament has elected the army commander Joseph Aoun as the country’s new president, ending a more than two-year vacancy and increasing confidence that a ceasefire with Israel will hold.

Aoun received 99 out of 128 votes in the 13th attempt by a deeply divided parliament to elect a new head of state after the departure of the former president Michel Aoun, who is no relation, in October 2022. Aoun was the favoured candidate of international powers such as Saudi Arabia, France and the US, which enjoyed good relations with him in his role as head of Lebanon’s armed forces.

Continue reading...

Kurdish general urges Trump to leave US troops in north-east Syria

Posted on by

Exclusive: SDF leader says removal of 2,000-strong force would leave door open for Islamic State resurgence

The leader of the Kurdish forces that control north-eastern Syria has called on Donald Trump to maintain a US military presence in the region, warning that a retreat would risk a resurgence of Islamic State in the country.

Gen Mazloum Abdi, the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said IS had increased its strength in the desert after seizing arms from the collapsed Assad regime, while the Kurdish forces were coming under increased pressure from Turkey and its Syrian proxies.

Continue reading...

British IS members in Syria should be allowed home, says Trump’s counter-terror pick

Posted on by

Sebastian Gorka says letting people in prison camps return to Britain would benefit the ‘special relationship’ with US

British nationals being held in Syrian prison camps for fighting on behalf of Islamic State should be allowed to return to the UK, Donald Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief has said.

Any country that wants to be a “serious ally” to the United States should commit to the international fight against the extremist group by repatriating its citizens, according to Sebastian Gorka.

Continue reading...

Quaker group pulls NYT ad over paper’s refusal to let it call Israel’s Gaza bombing ‘genocide’

Posted on by

Organization said paper’s refusal ‘outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth’, choosing ‘silence over accountability’

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization that advocates for peace, said on Monday the group cancelled a planned advertisement in the New York Times in response to the paper refusing to allow it to refer to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

“The refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth,” said Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary for the AFSC, in a press release. “Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability. It is only by challenging this reality that we can hope to forge a path toward a more just and equitable world.”

Continue reading...

Inclusive transition best path to lifting of Syria sanctions, says UN special envoy

Posted on by

Geir Pedersen tells security council the HTS administration has great opportunities but also risks making missteps

A credible process leading to a new transitional government involving all strands of Syrian society is the best way for the country’s caretaker administration to secure a smooth lifting of sanctions, the UN special envoy Geir Pedersen has told the UN security council.

Giving his assessment of how the government led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was meeting its commitment to inclusiveness, Pedersen said it had tremendous opportunities but also risked making missteps.

Continue reading...

Gaza Cola launched by Palestinian activist to rebuild destroyed hospital

Posted on by

Sales of fizzy drink from London hoped to raise money and send a message to big firms ‘investing in armed trade’

Gaza’s healthcare is on the brink of “total collapse”, according to the UN, because of the targeting of hospitals by Israel. While it is still impossible to say how much time and money it will take to rebuild, one Palestinian activist has plans to piece one small part of it back with the help of a soft drink.

Osama Qashoo, the creator of Gaza Cola, hopes to use profits from his Coca-Cola alternative, recently launched in London, to rebuild al Karama hospital, which used to stand in northern Gaza. “It’s been reduced to rubble for no just reason, like all of these hospitals in Gaza,” according to the 43-year-old film-maker, human rights advocate and, now, fizzy-drink maker.

Continue reading...

The UN wants to influence a pluralist Syria – but will the country listen?

Posted on by

Syrians are suspicious after allegations of complicity with the brutal Assad regime during 14 years of civil war

The UN special envoy for Syria will urge the security council to back a transition to a pluralist democratic Syria, but faces resistance within the country. The interim government fears the lifting of sanctions will be tied to excessive demands imposed by the west, with suspicion of the UN deeply embedded after what are seen as its failures during 14 years of civil war.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, the country’s de facto leader, has told Gulf and western states that his group, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), long ago transformed itself from a Salafi jihadi group in Idlib province to a technocratic force willing to accommodate all Syrians.

Continue reading...

US transfers 11 Yemeni prisoners from Guantánamo to Oman

Posted on by

Major resettlement reduces population in US detention facility in south-eastern Cuba to just 15 people

The United States has sent 11 Yemeni detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention center to Oman, the Pentagon said on Monday, in a major resettlement that nearly halves the detention facility’s remaining number of prisoners.

The released men include Tawfiq al-Bihani, who had been cleared for transfer since 2010; Khalid Qassim, a long-term hunger striker who has spoken about spending most of his adult life in Guantánamo; and Hassan bin Attash, who was captured in a security raid in Pakistan in 2002.

Reuters contributed reporting

Continue reading...

Reports of optimism about Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal

Posted on by

US secretary of state says he is confident agreement can be reached in renewed push before Donald Trump takes office

Israel and Hamas appear to be edging closer towards a ceasefire and hostage release deal that could bring the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip to an end amid reports of optimism among decision makers.

The latest round of negotiations intended to broker a lasting truce in the 15-month-old conflict resumed in Qatar on Sunday. Hamas said on Monday that it had given mediators a list of 34 Israeli captives seized during the group’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, who could be freed as part of the “first phase of a prisoner exchange deal”.

Continue reading...

Middle East crisis: Israeli forces ‘fired on World Food Programme convoy in Gaza’ – as it happened

Posted on by

Statement from UN agency ‘strongly condemns horrifying incident’ on Sunday which it says risked lives of staff

Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, has told a news conference that it was “only a matter of time” before Syrian Kurdish fighters - seen by the west as essential in the fight against Islamic State jihadists - will be wiped out.

Speaking in a joint press conference with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi, he told journalists:

Conditions in Syria have changed. We believe it’s only a matter of time before PKK/YPG is eliminated.

Continue reading...

Social order in Gaza will collapse if Israel ends cooperation with UN aid agency, official says

Posted on by

Unrwa senior officer describes 60,000 people sheltering in school buildings sharing 12 bathrooms, but says without aid things will get worse

Social order in Gaza is likely to collapse further if Israel goes ahead with its threat this month to end all cooperation with the UN refugee agency for Palestinians, Louise Wateridge, its senior emergency officer, has warned.

Wateridge, who has just returned from Gaza, described the territory as increasingly fractured and said the two Knesset bills due to come into force at the end of the month blocking cooperation with the agency would make it impossible for Unrwa to operate or to distribute aid in a war zone.

Continue reading...

Hamas releases video it says is of Israeli hostage held in Gaza since 2023 attack

Posted on by

Family of now 19-year-old conscript Liri Albag appeals to PM to ‘take decisions as if it were your own children there’

The armed wing of Hamas has released a video it says is of an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since its October 2023 attack.

Liri Albag, described by local media as a soldier, was 18 when she was captured by Palestinian militants at the Nahal Oz base on the Gaza border along with six other women conscripts, five of whom remain in captivity.

Continue reading...

Syria to resume international flights at Damascus airport

Posted on by

First commercial flights since overthrow of Assad regime to begin from Tuesday, aviation chief says

Syria’s main airport in Damascus is to resume international flights after commercial trips were halted following the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We announce we will start receiving international flights to and from Damascus international airport from [Tuesday],” the state news agency Sana reported, quoting Ashhad al-Salibi, the head of the General Authority of Civil Aviation and Air Transport.

Continue reading...

About 30 killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza as truce talks set to resume

Posted on by

‘Harsh day’ of bombardments with several children among dead, says Gaza’s civil defence agency

Gaza’s civil defence agency said about 30 people were killed in Israeli bombardments on Friday, as Hamas said indirect negotiations for a truce in the war were set to resume in Qatar.

The Israeli military said three rockets targeted its territory from the Gaza Strip, the latest in a flurry of launches by militants in the devastated Palestinian territory.

Continue reading...

French and German ministers to meet Syria’s de facto leader

Posted on by

Jean-Noël Barrot and Annalena Baerbock in highest-level visit by major western powers since rebels toppled Assad

The foreign ministers of France and Germany are to meet Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus in the highest-level visit by major western powers since rebels toppled the regime of President Bashar al-Assad last month.

Jean-Noël Barrot and Annalena Baerbock, who arrived separately in the Syrian capital on Friday, would hold talks with the head of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on behalf of the EU, their ministries said.

Continue reading...

‘Safe zone’ among areas targeted as Israeli airstrikes kill at least 43 in Gaza

Posted on by

Director general of Gaza police among 11 reportedly killed in al-Mawasi encampment, designated a civilian safe zone

Israeli airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in the sprawling al-Mawasi tent encampment designated as a humanitarian safe zone for civilians.

Among those killed in the al-Mawasi strike was the director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry.

Continue reading...