Qatar urges Israel and Hamas to make hostage deal

Passersby are reflected by mirrors on a poster with photographs of hostages abducted by Hamas militants in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP)
Passersby are reflected by mirrors on a poster with photographs of hostages abducted by Hamas militants in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 15 November 2023
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Qatar urges Israel and Hamas to make hostage deal

Passersby are reflected by mirrors on a poster with photographs of hostages abducted by Hamas militants in Tel Aviv, Israel.
  • Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed bin Mohammed Al-Ansari said the “deteriorating” situation in Gaza was hampering mediation efforts
  • Hamas on Monday said Israel had requested the release of 100 women and children in return for 200 Palestinian children and 75 women held in Israeli prisons

DOHA: Qatar on Tuesday urged Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement on releasing hostages seized in the October 7 attack, warning that the situation in Gaza was worsening every day.
Speaking to a news conference in Doha, Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed bin Mohammed Al-Ansari said the “deteriorating” situation in Gaza was hampering mediation efforts.
“We believe there is no other chance for both sides other than for this mediation to take place and to reach a situation where we can see a glimmer of hope in this terrible crisis,” he said.
The Gulf state has led negotiations for the release of hostages and a temporary ceasefire in the war sparked by the Hamas attack on southern Israel over a month ago which Israel says killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
About 240 hostages were also seized and taken back to Gaza, Israel says.
In response Israel launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, killing 11,320 people, also mostly civilians and including thousands of children, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.
Hamas on Monday said Israel had requested the release of 100 women and children in return for 200 Palestinian children and 75 women held in Israeli prisons.
Separately, a TV station close to the Egyptian security services said the chief of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, was in Cairo to discuss a “humanitarian truce” and the release of hostages.
Israeli leaders have insisted there will be no broader ceasefire until hostages are released, with pressure mounting on them from the relatives of those held in Gaza.
“The families urgently demand the war cabinet approve a deal tonight to bring home all hostages from Gaza,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement Tuesday evening.
“You have failed. We want our children and families home — today!” said Shelly Shem Tov, whose son was abducted.
“We will burn down the country until they come home,” she said at a Tuesday press conference.
Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, said they told mediators up to 70 captives could be released “if we obtained five days of truce... and the passage of aid to all our people throughout the Gaza Strip.”
He said a higher number of hostages could not be released “because some are in the hands of different groups and factions” and accused Israel of dragging its feet.
On Tuesday, Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group fighting alongside Hamas in Gaza, issued a statement suggesting it was on the verge of backing out of the talks.
“The way negotiations over enemy prisoners are being conducted could push Islamic Jihad to leave the agreement,” said leader Ziyad Al-Nakhalah.
“We could hold onto the prisoners we have until we secure better conditions.”
It is unclear how many hostages Islamic Jihad is holding in Gaza.


Egypt’s plan to save some dough: cut the wheat in bread

Egypt’s plan to save some dough: cut the wheat in bread
Updated 27 sec ago
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Egypt’s plan to save some dough: cut the wheat in bread

Egypt’s plan to save some dough: cut the wheat in bread
  • But bakers, millers and consumers fear the product will smell and taste different

RIYADH: Egypt plans to save millions of dollars in import costs by replacing a fifth of the wheatflour in the nation’s bread with cheaper ingredients such as corn or sorghum, industry sources said on Friday.
But bakers and millers reacted with anger when the plan was put to them by the Supply Ministry, and consumers fear their bread will taste different. “The change could be unpopular, producing bread with a different texture and smell,” said Hesham Soliman, a trader in Cairo.

Bakeries oppose the plan because coarser flour requires lengthier baking and would increase labor costs. Mills are also opposed because they are paid based on how much wheat they process, which would be reduced.

Egypt has tried wheat substitution to reduce imports before. Corn was used for several years two decades ago before campaigning by industry groups pushed the government to abandon it.

In another money-saving move, the government raised the price of subsidised bread this year for the first time in decades.

Egypt needs about 8.25 million tonnes of wheat a year to make subsidised bread available to more than 70 million people. It is one of the world’s largest wheat importers, mostly from Russia, at a cost of more than $2 billion a year.


The International Criminal Court unsealed war crimes arrest warrants for 6 Libyan suspects

The International Criminal Court unsealed war crimes arrest warrants for 6 Libyan suspects
Updated 20 min 58 sec ago
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The International Criminal Court unsealed war crimes arrest warrants for 6 Libyan suspects

The International Criminal Court unsealed war crimes arrest warrants for 6 Libyan suspects
  • Khan said that 3 of the suspects were leaders or senior members of the Al Kaniyat militia that controlled Tarhunah from at least 2015 to June 2020, and 3 others were Libyan security officials associated with the militia at the time of the alleged crimes

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The International Criminal Court unsealed arrest warrants Friday for six men allegedly linked to a brutal Libyan militia blamed for multiple killings and other crimes in a strategically important western town where mass graves were discovered in 2020.
Libya has been in political turmoil since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Since then, Libya has been split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by militias and foreign governments.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said his investigation has gathered evidence “indicating that Tarhunah residents have been subjected to crimes amounting to war crimes, including murder, outrages upon personal dignity, cruel treatment, torture, sexual violence, and rape.”
The court unsealed warrants against six men: Abdelrahim Al-Kani, Makhlouf Douma, Nasser Al-Lahsa, Mohammed Salheen, Abdelbari Al-Shaqaqi and Fathi Al-Zinkal.
Khan said that three of the suspects were leaders or senior members of the Al Kaniyat militia that controlled Tarhunah from at least 2015 to June 2020, and three others were Libyan security officials associated with the militia at the time of the alleged crimes.
Warrants for four of the suspects were issued in April 2023 and two more in July of that year but were kept under seal.
“It is now my view that arrest and surrender can be achieved most effectively through the unsealing of these warrants,” Khan said in a statement.
The mass graves were found in Tarhunah after the militia’s withdrawal following the collapse of a 14-month campaign by military commander Khalifa Haftar to wrest control of Tripoli from an array of militias allied with the former UN-recognized government.
The ICC does not have a police force and relies on cooperation from its 124 member states to enforce arrest warrants. Khan said his office is “seeking to work closely with Libyan authorities so that these individuals can face the charges against them in a court of law” and working with court officials to seek their arrest.
The court opened an investigation in Libya in 2011 at the request of the UN Security Council. It quickly issued warrants for suspects including former dictator Qaddafi, but he was killed before he could be detained and sent for trial. Qaddafi’s son, Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, also is wanted by the court.

 


Deadly Israeli strike in West Bank highlights spread of war

Deadly Israeli strike in West Bank highlights spread of war
Updated 04 October 2024
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Deadly Israeli strike in West Bank highlights spread of war

Deadly Israeli strike in West Bank highlights spread of war
  • What’s happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders. Faisal Salam Community leader

TULKARM: The ruins of a coffee shop in the West Bank city of Tulkarm show the force of the airstrike on Thursday night that killed a senior local commander of the militant group Hamas — and at least 17 others.
The strike in Tulkarm’s Noor Shams refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the occupied West Bank, destroyed the ground floor shop entirely, leaving rescue workers picking through piles of concrete rubble with the smell of blood still hanging in the air.
Two holes in an upper-level show where the missile penetrated the three-story building before reaching the coffee shop, where a mechanical digger was clearing rubble.
The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago and one of the biggest since the second “intifada” uprising two decades ago.

What’s happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders.

Faisal Salam, Community leader

“We haven’t heard this sound since 2002,” said Nimer Fayyad, owner of the cafe, whose brother was killed in the strike.
“The missiles targeted a civilian building, and a family was wiped from the civil registry. What was their fault?
“There is no safe place for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves.”
Residents said the strike occurred after a rally by armed fighters in the middle of the camp.
When the rally ended, some went to the coffee shop.
The Israeli military said the strike killed Zahi Yaser Abd Al-Razeq Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, a volatile city in the northern West Bank that has seen repeated clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.
It said the attack joined “a number of significant counterterrorism activities” conducted in the area since the start of the war.
Residents said another commander from Islamic Jihad was also killed, but there was no immediate confirmation from either faction.
But Palestinian emergency services said at least 18 people had died in all, including a family of five in an apartment in the same building.
The missiles penetrated the ceiling and their kitchen floor, leaving many of the cabinets incongruously intact.
With the first anniversary approaching of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the strike on Tulkarm underlined how widely the war has now spread.
As well as fighting in Gaza, now vastly reduced to rubble, Israeli troops are engaged in southern Lebanon while parts of the West Bank, which has seen repeated arrest sweeps and raids, have in recent weeks come to resemble a full-blown war zone.
Flashpoint cities in the northern West Bank, like Tulkarm and Jenin, have suffered repeated large-scale operations against Palestinian militant groups that are deeply embedded in the area’s refugee camps.
“What’s happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders,” said Faisal Salam, head of the camp refugee council.
More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the past year, many of them armed fighters but many also unarmed youths throwing stones during protests or civilian passersby.
At the same time, dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the West Bank and Israel by Palestinians, most recently in Tel Aviv, where two Palestinians killed seven people from the West Bank with an automatic weapon.

 


Medical NGO urges Gaza aid to end ‘impossible’ situation

A Palestinian nurse feeds a newborn in an incubator at a hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. (Reuters)
A Palestinian nurse feeds a newborn in an incubator at a hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. (Reuters)
Updated 04 October 2024
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Medical NGO urges Gaza aid to end ‘impossible’ situation

A Palestinian nurse feeds a newborn in an incubator at a hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. (Reuters)
  • More than 2 million people were living “virtually outdoors,” she said, with only plastic sheets for cover

PARIS: Humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza, where life is becoming “impossible” for the population, the Medecins Sans Frontieres charity urged on Friday.
On her return from southern Gaza, the organization’s president for France, Isabelle Defourny, said aid deliveries needed to be “sufficient to address the emergencies” suffered by the civilian population there.
“We have said again and again that the Gaza Strip has become uninhabitable, but now it’s becoming impossible to live there,” she said.
More than 2 million people were living “virtually outdoors,” she said, with only plastic sheets for cover.
“As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly,” she said, adding that current humanitarian aid had been “in no way sufficient.”
The comments came ahead of the first anniversary of Palestinian militant group Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
Ongoing Israeli bombardments and the continuing destruction of infrastructure had left formerly busy transport routes in ruins, Defourny said.
MSF called on Israel to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to allow aid and basic foodstuffs to get through, she said.
Cogat, an Israeli government agency, said this week that aid was getting into Gaza continuously, and more than a million tons had been delivered in total since the start of the war, but Defourny said this was still insufficient.
On Thursday, MSF had already reiterated its call for Israel to open “vital land borders” with Gaza.
In a statement, it also called for a “sustained ceasefire” and an immediate end “to the mass killing of civilians.”

 


Escalating Sudan conflict likely to worsen humanitarian crisis

Children play on a street in Tokar in the Read Sea State on Thursday following recent heavy flooding in eastern Sudan. (AFP)
Children play on a street in Tokar in the Read Sea State on Thursday following recent heavy flooding in eastern Sudan. (AFP)
Updated 04 October 2024
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Escalating Sudan conflict likely to worsen humanitarian crisis

Children play on a street in Tokar in the Read Sea State on Thursday following recent heavy flooding in eastern Sudan. (AFP)
  • Army has advanced across bridges in capital
  • RSF expected to benefit from the dry season

DUBAI: After almost 18 months of war, fighting in Sudan is escalating as seasonal rains end with the army using intensified airstrikes and allied fighters to shore up its position ahead of a likely surge by the rival Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.

An uptick in fighting will aggravate an already dire humanitarian crisis in which famine has been confirmed and over 10 million people — one-fifth of the population — are displaced, more than anywhere else in the world.
UN agencies have often been unable to deliver aid.
“There won’t be a decisive breakthrough,” said a senior Western diplomat in the region.
“What we expect to come into the fall more and more is much more fragmentation, to see more armed groups getting involved ... And this will make the situation in general much more difficult.”

BACKGROUND

The RSF has had the upper hand during much of the conflict but last week the army launched its biggest offensive yet in Khartoum, advancing across a key bridge over the Nile.

The RSF has had the upper hand during much of the conflict but last week the army, after shunning US-led talks in Switzerland, launched its biggest offensive yet in Khartoum, advancing across a key bridge over the Nile.
In Darfur, former rebel groups and volunteers from displacement camps have rallied to defend the densely populated city of Al-Fasher, the army’s last holdout in the western region, against waves of RSF attacks.
Two army sources said the army had worked for months to replenish weaponry, including drones and warplanes, and train new volunteers to strengthen its position on the ground before any negotiations.
Three residents in the capital, which is made up of Khartoum and its adjoining cities of Omdurman and Bahri, said that in recent days, the army had been carrying out more air bombardments with more drones and fighter jets than before.
While the army has used its superior air power at the end of the rainy season to pound RSF-held territory in the capital, Darfur and El Gezira state, the RSF’s more effective ground troops are expected to regain an edge as the dry season starts and roads become more passable.
On Monday, the RSF released a video with its fighters promising a “hot winter” for its rivals in Sennar, where the rains had slowed its progress earlier.
Witnesses there and in the capital reported heavy fighting on Thursday.
Both sides have reinforced militarily as the conflict in Africa’s third largest country by land area has deepened, drawing on material support from foreign backers, diplomats and analysts say.
The war began in April 2023 as the army and the RSF jostled to protect their power and wealth ahead of a planned political transition toward civilian rule and free elections.
The RSF, which has its roots in the so-called Janjaweed militias that helped the government crush a rebellion in Darfur in the early 2000s, quickly occupied much of the capital before consolidating its grip on Darfur and seizing El Gezira state, south of Khartoum.
Earlier this year, the army gained ground in Omdurman after acquiring Iranian drones.
But it showed little sign of building on the advance before the surprise offensive it began last week on the day that its commander, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, told the UN that the RSF had to withdraw and lay down its arms for there to be peace.
The army now has control of the capital’s Halfaya bridge, allowing it to build a foothold in Bahri from its bases in Omdurman.
It has also weathered heavy clashes and sniper fire to advance across another Nile bridge that leads to the heart of the capital, military sources and witnesses said.
For months, the RSF has besieged Al-Fasher, which is crammed with some 1.8 million residents and displaced people. Activists and diplomats have warned of ethnically charged bloodletting if the city falls after similar violence that was blamed on the RSF and its allies elsewhere in Darfur.
Two witnesses in Al-Fasher said that the RSF had been shelling large areas of the city as the army responded with air strikes.
The battle has dragged on as non-Arab former rebel groups and volunteers from displacement camps who are better equipped for ground combat than the army fight to protect themselves and their families, the witnesses said.
A local group representing displaced people in Darfur said this week that the fighting had exacerbated the humanitarian situation in two dozen camps across the Darfur region, “all of which suffer from a lack of the most basic daily necessities,” and that disease and starvation were spreading.
Aid workers and human rights activists say there has been little increase in humanitarian relief despite pledges by both sides to improve access to aid.
Sudan, often overlooked amid armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, received some diplomatic attention at the UN General Assembly last week.
But USAID Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman said there had been little progress getting outside players to stop fueling the war.
“Both of the actors in this conflict, both sides of this, have outside support which they believe is going to tip the scales to their advantage,” she said.