World Bank to decide Monday on Oct 9-15 meetings in earthquake-hit Morocco – Georgieva

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva leaves the convention centre at the G20 finance ministers' meeting venue on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India, February 25, 2023. (REUTERS)
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Updated 16 September 2023
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World Bank to decide Monday on Oct 9-15 meetings in earthquake-hit Morocco – Georgieva

  • “The Moroccan authorities are fully committed to the meetings,” Georgieva said in her first public comments on the matter since the disaster

WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund and World Bank will decide on Monday whether to proceed with Oct. 9-15 annual meetings in earthquake-hit Morocco after completing a “thorough review” of the country’s ability to host the meetings, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.
Georgieva also said in an exclusive interview that the IMF has reached a staff-level agreement with Morocco to provide a $1.3 billion loan to bolster the country’s resilience to climate-related disasters from the Fund’s new Resilience and Sustainability Trust.
Questions have swirled over whether the IMF and World Bank would still hold their annual meetings in Morocco’s tourist hub of Marrakech since a devastating, 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck in the High Atlas Mountains, killing more than 2,900 people.
Marrakech, 45 miles (72 km) from the quake’s epicenter, suffered some damage in its ancient Medina quarter, but Moroccan
officials have pressed
the IMF and World Bank to proceed with the gathering, which would bring some 10,000-15,000 to the city.
“The Moroccan authorities are fully committed to the meetings,” Georgieva said in her first public comments on the matter since the disaster.
In describing discussions with Moroccan Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, Georgieva expressed concern that the IMF and World Bank “don’t want to be a burden” to the country as it deals with recovery efforts.
But she said the prime minister told her that it would be “quite devastating” for Morocco’s hospitality sector if the meetings were not to take place in Marrakech. She added that she agreed to look for ways to simplify the meetings if they proceed in Marrakech, including possibly reducing their length and scaling back attendance.
“Stay tuned. By Monday, we will have made a decision in taking into account all factors. Obviously physical capacity, how the logistics are going to work,” Georgieva said, adding that security for participants was not a major concern.
Georgieva said the $1.3 billion RST loan for Morocco needed approval from the IMF’s Executive Board, but board consideration would likely take place in about two weeks, before the annual meetings start.
While the loan would not be directly related to the earthquake disaster, she said it would be aimed at building reslience to climate shocks, including drought, and help build the country’s overall financial capacity.
Morocco also has access to a
$5 billion flexible credit
line from the IMF, approved in April, that is aimed at strengthening the countries’ crisis prevention capabilities.

 


11 Sudanese migrants killed in a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say

Updated 4 sec ago
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11 Sudanese migrants killed in a car crash in the Libya desert, authorities say

  • Authorities say 11 Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed in a car crash in the desert in Libya
  • The dead included three women and two children. A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash
CAIRO: Eleven Sudanese migrants and a Libyan driver were killed Friday in a car crash in the desert in Libya, authorities said, the latest tragedy involving Sudanese fleeing a civil war in their home country.
The crash between the migrants’ vehicle and a truck happened early Friday in the desert, 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of the Libyan town of Kufra, the town’s Ambulance and Emergency Service said in a statement.
The dead included three women and two children, the service’s director Ibrahim Abu Al-Hassan told The Associated Press.
A 65-year-old man and his 10-year-old son were also wounded in the crash, he added.
It was the latest deadly incident involving Sudanese migrants in the Libyan desert.
Earlier this month, seven Sudanese were found dead after their vehicle broke down in the desert. The vehicle broke down in a path used by traffickers between Chad and Libya, leaving 34 migrants on board stranded for several days in the desert.
Libya was plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
It has become a main transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East to seek better lives in Europe. The country shares borders with six nations and has a long coastline along the Mediterranean.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across Libya’s borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Thousands of Sudanese have fled to Libya since April 2023 after simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into street fighting across the country.
The conflict in Sudan has turned into a civil war that killed thousands people, displaced over 14 million, and pushed parts of the county into famine.

Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

Updated 30 May 2025
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Egypt denies court ruling threatens historic monastery

  • A court in Sinai ruled on that the monastery ‘is entitled to use’ the land, which ‘the state owns as public property’
  • Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling ‘scandalous’

CAIRO: Egypt has denied that a controversial court ruling over Sinai’s Saint Catherine monastery threatens the UNESCO world heritage landmark, after Greek and church authorities warned of the sacred site’s status.

A court in Sinai ruled on Wednesday in a land dispute between the monastery and the South Sinai governorate that the monastery “is entitled to use” the land, which “the state owns as public property.”

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s office defended the ruling Thursday, saying it “consolidates” the site’s “unique and sacred religious status,” after the head of the Greek Orthodox church in Greece denounced it.

Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens called the court ruling “scandalous” and an infringement by Egyptian judicial authorities of religious freedoms.

He said the decision means “the oldest Orthodox Christian monument in the world, the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine in Mount Sinai, now enters a period of severe trial — one that evokes much darker times in history.”

El-Sisi’s office in a statement said it “reiterates its full commitment to preserving the unique and sacred religious status of Saint Catherine’s monastery and preventing its violation.”

The monastery was established in the sixth century at the biblical site of the burning bush in the southern mountains of the Sinai peninsula, and is the world’s oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery.

The Saint Catherine area, which includes the eponymous town and a nature reserve, is undergoing mass development under a controversial government megaproject aimed at bringing in mass tourism.

Observers say the project has harmed the reserve’s ecosystem and threatened both the monastery and the local community.

Archbishop Ieronymos warned that the monastery’s property would now be “seized and confiscated,” despite “recent pledges to the contrary by the Egyptian President to the Greek Prime Minister.”

Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis contacted his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty on Thursday, saying “there was no room for deviation from the agreements between the two parties,” the ministry’s spokesperson said.

In a statement to Egypt’s state news agency, the foreign ministry in Cairo later said rumors of confiscation were “unfounded,” and that the ruling “does not infringe at all” on the monastery’s sites or its religious and spiritual significance.

Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said “Greece will express its official position ... when the official and complete content of the court decision is known and evaluated.”

He confirmed both countries’ commitment to “maintaining the Greek Orthodox religious character of the monastery.”


Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

Updated 30 May 2025
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Israel aid blockage making Gaza ‘hungriest region on earth’, UN office says

BERLIN: Israel is blocking all but a trickle of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, with almost no ready-to-eat food entering what its spokesperson described as “the hungriest place on earth.”
Spokesperson Jens Laerke said only 600 of 900 aid trucks had been authorized to get to Israel’s border with Gaza, and from there a mixture of bureaucratic and security obstacles made it all but impossible to safely carry aid into the region.
“What we have been able to bring in is flour,” he told a regular news conference on Friday. “That’s not ready to eat, right? It needs to be cooked... 100 percent of the population of Gaza is at risk of famine.”
Tommaso della Longa, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, added that half of its medical facilities in the region were out of action for lack of fuel or medical equipment.


Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

Updated 30 May 2025
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Hamas receives Israeli response to US Gaza proposal and is reviewing it

  • Hamas: Israeli response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands”

DUBAI: Hamas has received Israel’s response to a US proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal and is thoroughly reviewing it, even though the response fails to meet any of the Palestinian “just and legitimate demands,” group’s official Basem Naim said on Friday.


Daesh claims first attack on Syrian government forces since Assad’s fall

Updated 30 May 2025
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Daesh claims first attack on Syrian government forces since Assad’s fall

  • Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa
  • Daesh was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled

BEIRUT: The Daesh group has claimed responsibility for two attacks in southern Syria, including one on government forces that an opposition war monitor described as the first on the Syrian army to be adopted by the extremists since the fall of Bashar Assad.

In two separate statements issued late Thursday, Daesh said that in the first attack, a bomb was detonated targeting a “vehicle of the apostate regime,” leaving seven soldiers dead or wounded. It said the attack occurred “last Thursday,” or May 22, in the Al-Safa area in the desert of the southern province of Sweida.

Daesh said that the second attack occurred this week in a nearby area during which a bomb targeted members of the US-backed Free Syrian Army, claiming that it killed one fighter and wounded three.

There was no comment from the government on the claim of the attack and a spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the attack on government forces killed one civilian and wounded three soldiers, describing it as the first such attack to be claimed by Daesh against Syrian forces since the fall of the 54-year Assad family’s rule in December.

Daesh, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was once the head of Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria and fought battles against Daesh.

Over the past several months, Daesh has claimed responsibility for attacks against the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast.

Daesh was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled. Since then, its sleeper cells have carried out deadly attacks, mainly in eastern and northeast Syria.

In January, state media reported that intelligence officials in Syria’s post-Assad government thwarted a plan by Daesh to set off a bomb at a Shiite Muslim shrine south of Damascus.

Al-Sharaa met with US President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia earlier this month during which the American leader said that Washington would work on lifting crippling economic sanctions imposed on Damascus since the days of Assad.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement after the meeting that Trump urged Al-Sharaa to diplomatically recognize Israel, “tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria” and help the US stop any resurgence of the Daesh group.