Adopted orphan brings couple ‘paradise’ in war-ravaged Gaza

Rami Arrouki and his wife Iman Farahat interact with their newly-adopted five-month-old orphaned baby Jannah, at their home in Gaza City on March 6, 2025. (AFP)
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Rami Arrouki and his wife Iman Farahat interact with their newly-adopted five-month-old orphaned baby Jannah, at their home in Gaza City on March 6, 2025. (AFP)
Iman Farahat carries five-month-old Jannah, an orphaned baby that she and her husband Rami Arrouki adopted, in Gaza City on March 6, 2025. (AFP)
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Iman Farahat carries five-month-old Jannah, an orphaned baby that she and her husband Rami Arrouki adopted, in Gaza City on March 6, 2025. (AFP)
Rami Arrouki interacts with five-month-old Jannah, an orphaned baby that he and his wife Iman Farahat adopted, in Gaza City on March 6, 2025. (AFP)
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Rami Arrouki interacts with five-month-old Jannah, an orphaned baby that he and his wife Iman Farahat adopted, in Gaza City on March 6, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 10 March 2025
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Adopted orphan brings couple ‘paradise’ in war-ravaged Gaza

Rami Arrouki and his wife Iman Farahat interact with their newly-adopted five-month-old orphaned baby Jannah.
  • Farhat, 45, and her husband Rami Al-Arouqi, 47, adopted the well-behaved and chubby baby in January
  • “At first, we had mixed feelings of both joy and fear, because it is a huge responsibility and we had never had a child,” said Arouqi

GAZA CITY: In their home in war-devastated Gaza City, Iman Farhat and her husband cherish the “paradise” brought by their newly-adopted baby, one of many orphans in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Wrapping five-month-old Jannah in a brightly colored blanket, Farhat gently sang as she rocked her to sleep.
“I chose Jannah just as she was,” the new mother said smiling, explaining the couple simply wanted to adopt a young child without preference for gender or physical appearance.
“Her name was Massa, and I officially changed her name from Massa to Jannah,” which means “paradise” in Arabic, she added.
Farhat, 45, and her husband Rami Al-Arouqi, 47, adopted the well-behaved and chubby baby in January.
“At first, we had mixed feelings of both joy and fear, because it is a huge responsibility and we had never had a child,” said Arouqi, a Palestinian Authority employee.
The couple already owned a cat.
“The idea of adopting a child had crossed our minds, but it was cemented during the war” which “wiped out entire families and left only orphans,” he added.
In September, the United Nations children’s fund, UNICEF, estimated there were 19,000 children who were unaccompanied or separated from their parents in Gaza, Jonathan Crickx, UNICEF’s spokesman for the Palestinian territories, told AFP.
Data for the number of adoptions in Gaza was not immediately available.
The war sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel left more than 69 percent of Gaza’s buildings damaged or destroyed, displaced almost the entire population and triggered widespread hunger, according to the United Nations.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 48,446 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures reliable.
Farhat and her husband said that before Jannah’s adoption, she was taken care of by the SOS Children’s Villages — an international NGO which looks after children in need.
After the NGO’s premises in the southern Gaza city of Rafah were destroyed in the war, the organization had to move to nearby Khan Yunis where “they could not house all the children in buildings, so they set up tents for them,” Farhat said.
Her husband Arouqi told AFP that another motive for adopting a child came from the idea that “Palestinians should stand by each other’s side.”
“The whole world has abandoned and let us down, so we shouldn’t let each other down,” he added.
Once the pair took Jannah home, “our life was turned upside down in a beautiful and pleasant way,” he said.
“Her name is Jannah and our world has truly become a paradise.”
A fragile truce took effect on January 19, largely halting the devastating fighting between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants.
The ceasefire’s first phase ended last weekend.
While Israel has said it wants to extend the first phase until mid-April, Hamas has insisted on a transition to the deal’s second phase, which should lead to a permanent end to the war.


At least 143 dead in DR Congo boat fire

At least 143 dead in DR Congo boat fire
Updated 22 sec ago
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At least 143 dead in DR Congo boat fire

At least 143 dead in DR Congo boat fire
  • Rescuers said packed wooden boat caught fire and capsized near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, where the Ruki and the vast Congo river meet

KINSHASA, DR Congo: At least 143 people died and dozens more went missing after a boat carrying fuel caught fire and capsized in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials said Friday.
Hundreds of passengers were crowded onto a wooden boat on the Congo River in northwest DRC on Tuesday when the blaze broke out, according to Josephine-Pacifique Lokumu, head of a delegation of national deputies from the region.
The disaster occurred near Mbandaka, capital of Equateur Province, at the confluence of the Ruki and the vast Congo river — the world’s deepest.
“A first group of 131 bodies were found on Wednesday, with a further 12 fished out on Thursday and Friday. Several of them are charred,” Lokumu told AFP.
Joseph Lokondo, a local civil society leader who said he helped bury the bodies, put the “provisional death toll at 145: some burned, others drowned.”
Lokumu said the blaze was caused by a fuel explosion ignited by an onboard cooking fire.
“A woman lit the embers for cooking. The fuel, which was not far away, exploded, killing many children and women,” she said.

The total number of passengers on board the doomed vessel was not known but Lokumu said it was in the “hundreds.”
Some survivors were rescued and admitted to hospital, Lokondo said.
But on Friday, he added, “several families were still without news of their loved ones.”
A vast Central African nation, the Democratic Republic of Congo suffers from a lack of practicable roads.
As a result travel often occurs on lakes, the Congo River and its tributaries, where shipwrecks are frequent and the death tolls often heavy.
A chronic absence of passenger lists often complicates search operations.
In October 2023, at least 47 people died after a boat navigating the Congo sank in Equateur.
More than 20 people died in October last year when a boat capsized on Lake Kivu in eastern DRC, according to local authorities.
Another shipwreck on Lake Kivu claimed around 100 lives in 2019.
 


Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief

Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief
Updated 19 April 2025
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Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief

Republican congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief
  • Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar and met with Christian religious leaders
  • They were toured around by Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government

DAMASCUS, Syria: Two Republican members of the US Congress were in the Syrian capital Friday on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit, the first by US legislators since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
Also Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa in his first visit since Assad’s fall and since the beginning of the Syrian uprising-turned-civil-war in 2011.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman of Indiana and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida visited the Damascus suburb of Jobar, the site of a historic synagogue that was heavily damaged and looted in the civil war, and the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma, where they met with Christian religious leaders. They also were set to meet Al-Sharaa and other government officials.

 

The Trump administration has yet to officially recognize the current Syrian government, led by Al-Sharaa, an Islamist former insurgent who led a lightning offensive that toppled Assad. Washington has not yet lifted harsh sanctions that were imposed during Assad’s rule.
Mills, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Associated Press that it was “very important to come here to be able to see it for myself, to be with various governmental bodies, to look at the needs of the Syrian people, to look at the needs for the nation for stability.”
Mills said he expected discussions with Al-Sharaa to include the issue of sanctions, as well as the government’s priorities and the need for the transitional administration to move toward a “democratically elected society.”
“Ultimately, it’s going to be the president’s decision” to lift sanctions or not, he said, although “Congress can advise.”
The Congress members came at the invitation of the Syrian American Alliance for Peace and Prosperity, a nonprofit based in Indiana that describes its mission as fostering “a sustainable political, economic, and social partnership between the people of Syria and the United States.”
Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, the only woman and only Christian serving in the transitional government, joined the congressional team on a visit to Bab Touma, which she said was “very important” to Syrians.

US Congressman Cory Mills, Syrian Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Kabawat, and others walk on a street during a visit to Bab Touma, a geographic landmark of Christianity, in the Old city of Damascus on April 18, 2025. (Reuters photo)

The US State Department, meanwhile, issued a statement Friday reiterating its warning against US citizens visiting Syria. The statement said the State Department “is tracking credible information related to potential imminent attacks, including locations frequented by tourists.”
Palestinian leader visits as Israeli troops remain in Syria
The Palestinian official news agency Wafa said that Abbas’s visit, his first since 2007, was “aimed at strengthening Palestinian-Syrian relations and discussing pressing regional developments.”
Abbas and Al-Sharaa discussed the ongoing war in Gaza and international efforts to move forward long-stalled efforts to reach a two-state solution to the to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “agreed to form joint committees aimed at enhancing bilateral cooperation across multiple sectors,” it said.
Syria has a population of about 450,000 Palestinian refugees. The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was once widely considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before it was largely destroyed in the war.

Accompanied by unidentified members of the delegation, US congressman Cory Mills, second from right, walks in the Old City of Damascus on April 18, 2025. (AP Photo)

Palestinian refugees in Syria have never been given citizenship, ostensibly to preserve their right to go back to the homes they fled or were forced from during the 1948 creation of the state of Israel. But in contrast to neighboring Lebanon, where Palestinians are banned from owning property or working in many professions, in Syria, Palestinians historically had all the rights of citizens except the right to vote and run for office.
Syria does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. While the new Syrian authorities have said publicly that they are not interested in entering a conflict with Israel, the Israeli government regards the Islamist former insurgents now in power in Damascus with suspicion.
Israeli forces seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone inside Syria after the rebels toppled Assad and have launched an extensive series of airstrikes on military facilities in Syria. Israeli officials have said that they will not allow the new Syrian military south of Damascus.
Abbas’ arrival in Damascus was delayed after Israeli authorities denied permission for a helicopter to land in Ramallah that was supposed to arrive from Jordan to take the Palestinian president, said a Palestinian official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. Israeli officials did not respond to a request for comment on the incident.
 


Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce

Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce
Updated 19 April 2025
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Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce

Hamas says ‘no’ to new Israeli bid to rewrite Gaza truce

GAZA: Hamas on Friday rejected Israel’s latest attempt to renegotiate the Gaza ceasefire as at least 43 more Palestinians died in airstrikes.

Among the victims were 10 members of the Baraka family killed in an attack on their home near Khan Younis.

The Israeli military said its troops were operating in the Shabura and Tel Al-Sultan areas near the southern city of Rafah, and in northern Gaza, where it has taken control of large areas east of Gaza City.

Last month Israel ended a two-month truce that had largely halted fighting, and it has since seized about a third of the enclave. A new Israeli offer to renew the truce for 45 days included demands that Hamas release 10 Israeli hostages and lay down its arms. The militants dismissed the proposal on Friday as imposing “impossible conditions.”

“Partial agreements are used by Benjamin Netanyahu as a cover for his political agenda ... we will not be complicit in this policy,” a Hamas spokesman said on Friday.

Hamas sought “a comprehensive deal involving a single-package prisoner exchange in return for halting the war, a withdrawal of the occupation from the Gaza Strip, and the commencement of reconstruction,” the spokesman said.

Egyptian mediators have been trying to revive the original January ceasefire deal but there has been little sign the two sides have moved closer on fundamental issues.


Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest

Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest
Updated 18 April 2025
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Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest

Tunisian court set to rule in conspiracy trial, lawyers protest
  • Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case
  • “It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous,” lawyer Ahmed Souab said

TUNIS: A Tunisian court is set to issue a ruling in the conspiracy case against prominent opponents, as lawyers protested and described the trial as a farce, while others called the proceedings a symbol of President Kais Saied’s authoritarian rule.
Rights groups say the trial highlights Saied’s full control over the judiciary since he dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree before later dissolving the independent Supreme Judicial Council.
Forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, are being prosecuted in the case. More than 20 have fled abroad since being charged.
Some of the opposition defendants — including Ghazi Chaouachi, Issam Chebbi, Jawahar Ben Mbrak, Abdelhamid Jlassi, Ridha BelHajj and Khyam Turki — have been in custody since being detained in 2023.
Following the judge’s decision to clear the courtroom in preparation for deliberation and the issuance of rulings, dozens of lawyers protested, raising slogans calling for freedom and justice.
“In my entire life, I have never witnessed a trial like this. It’s a farce, the rulings are ready, and what is happening is scandalous and shameful,” Lawyer Ahmed Souab told reporters.
Journalists and civil society groups were barred from attending the trial.
Some of the country’s most prominent opposition politicians — including Nejib Chebbi, the leader of the main National Salvation Front opposition coalition — face a range of conspiracy charges in the trial that started in March and has been postponed twice.
“The authorities want to criminalize the opposition. I wouldn’t be surprised if heavy sentences are issued tonight,” Chebbi told reporters before going into the court.
Authorities say the defendants, who also include business people and former officials including the former head of intelligence, Kamel Guizani, tried to destabilize the country and overthrow Saied.
Activists and families of the defendants shouted “free the prisoners,” “stop the farce” and other slogans.
“This authoritarian regime has nothing to offer Tunisians except more repression,” the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Hamma Hammami, said.


Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound rifts over brutal war

Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound  rifts over brutal war
Updated 18 April 2025
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Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound rifts over brutal war

Protest letters from former Israeli soldiers lay bare profound  rifts over brutal war
  • Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war

TEL AVIV: When nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed an open letter last week calling for an end to the war in Gaza, the military responded immediately, saying it would dismiss any active reservist who signed the document.
But in the days since, thousands of retired and reservist soldiers across the military have signed similar letters of support.
The growing campaign, which accuses the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home the remaining hostages, has laid bare the deep division and disillusionment over Israel’s fighting in Gaza.
By spilling over into the military, it has threatened national unity and raised questions about the army’s ability to continue fighting at full force.
It also resembles the bitter divisions that erupted in early 2023 over the government’s attempts to overhaul Israel’s legal system, which many say weakened the country and encouraged Hamas’ attack later that year that triggered the war.
“It’s crystal clear that the renewal of the war is for political reasons and not for security reasons,” said Guy Poran, a retired pilot who was one of the initiators of the air force letter.
The catalyst for the letters was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision on March 18 to return to war instead of sticking to a ceasefire that had facilitated the release of some hostages.
In their letters, the protesters have stopped short of refusing to serve. And the vast majority of the 10,000 soldiers who have signed are retired in any case.
Nonetheless, Poran said their decision to identify themselves as ex-pilots was deliberate — given the respect among Israel’s Jewish majority for the military, especially for fighter pilots and other prestigious units.
Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students, and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war.
“We are aware of the relative importance and the weight of the brand of Israeli Air Force pilots and felt that it is exactly the kind of case where we should use this title in order to influence society,” said Poran.