Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that a deal to return hostages held in the Gaza Strip has been reached. The announcement early came a day after Netanyahu’s office said there were last minute snags in talks to free hostages in return for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu said he will convene his security Cabinet on Friday and then the government to approve the ceasefire agreement.
On Thursday, Netanyahu's office said the Cabinet won’t meet to approve the agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of dozens of hostages until Hamas backs down, accusing the group of reneging on parts of the agreement in an attempt to gain further concessions.
Meanwhile, Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 72 people since the ceasefire deal was announced, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy Israeli bombardment overnight as people were celebrating the ceasefire deal. In previous conflicts, both sides have stepped up military operations in the final hours before ceasefires go into effect as a way to project strength.
Under the deal expected to begin Sunday, 33 hostages are set to be released over the next six weeks, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The remainder, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second phase that will be negotiated during the first. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 46,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Health Ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were militants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Netanyahu says deal to return hostages from Gaza reached
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Netanyahu says deal to return hostages from Gaza reached
- Israeli PM said he will convene his security cabinet on Friday, then the government will approve the ceasefire agreement
- Meanwhile, Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 72 people since the ceasefire deal was announced
Sudan war destroys world’s only research center on skin disease mycetoma: director
- Mycetoma is a neglected tropical disease common among farmers
- It is caused by bacteria or fungus and usually enters the body through cuts
CAIRO: The world’s only research center on mycetoma, a neglected tropical disease common among farmers, has been destroyed in Sudan’s two-year war, its director and another expert say.
Mycetoma is caused by bacteria or fungus and usually enters the body through cuts. It is a progressively destructive infectious disease of the body tissue, affecting skin, muscle and even bone.
It is often characterised by swollen feet, but can also cause barnacle-like growths and club-like hands.
“The center and all its infrastructure were destroyed during the war in Sudan,” Ahmed Fahal, director of the Mycetoma Research Center (MRC), told AFP.
“We lost the entire contents of our biological banks, where there was data from more than 40 years,” said Fahal, whose center had treated thousands of patients from Sudan and other countries.
“It’s difficult to bear.”
Since April 15, 2023, Sudan’s army has been at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces throughout the northeast African country.
The MRC is located in the Khartoum area, which the army last month reclaimed from the RSF during a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million.
Sudan’s health care system has been left at the “breaking point,” according to the World Health Organization.
Among the conflict’s casualties is now the MRC, established in 1991 under the auspices of the University of Khartoum. It was a rare story of medical success in impoverished Sudan.
A video provided by the global Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) shows collapsed ceilings, shelves overturned, fridges open and documents scattered about.
AFP was not able to independently verify the MRC’s current condition.
The center had grown to include 50 researchers and treat 12,000 patients each year, Fahal said.
Mycetoma is listed as a neglected tropical disease by the WHO.
The organisms that cause mycetoma also occur in Sudan’s neighbors, including Chad and Ethiopia, as well as in other tropical and sub-tropical areas, among them Mexico and Thailand, WHO says.
For herders, farmers and other workers depending on manual labor to survive, crippling mycetoma infections can be a life sentence.
Drawing on the MRC’s expertise, in 2019 the WHO and Sudan’s government convened the First International Training Workshop on Mycetoma, in Khartoum.
“Today, Sudan, which was at the forefront of awareness of mycetomas, has gone 100 percent backwards,” said Dr. Borna Nyaoke-Anoke, DNDi’s head of mycetoma.
Sudan displacement camp ‘nearly emptied’ after RSF takeover: UN
- The agency reported hundreds of thousands of people fleeing famine-hit Zamzam arriving in nearby areas, including El-Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur state that remains under army control
CAIRO: Western Sudan’s Zamzam displacement camp has been “nearly emptied” of its inhabitants, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA warned Thursday, less than two weeks after it was taken by paramilitary forces locked in a two-year war against the army.
The agency reported hundreds of thousands of people fleeing famine-hit Zamzam arriving in nearby areas, including El-Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur state that remains under army control.
“Zamzam IDP (internally displaced persons) camp, which housed at least 400,000 people prior to the exodus, has been nearly emptied,” OCHA said in a statement, adding satellite images showed widespread fires there, with paramilitary forces reportedly preventing some from leaving.
“The displacement from Zamzam is now spreading to multiple locations... About 150,000 displaced people have arrived in Al Fasher locality and another 181,000 people moved to Tawila.”
The war in Sudan erupted on April 15, 2023 between the regular army, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
It has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered what aid agencies describe as the world’s largest displacement and hunger crises.
Famine was first declared in Zamzam in August and has since spread to two more displacement camps near El-Fasher.
The RSF holds sway over much of western and southern Sudan while the army has consolidated its grip on the east and north.
After the army recaptured the capital Khartoum in March, the paramilitaries have intensified their offensives in the vast Darfur region, which is almost entirely under their control.
Tunisia burns sub-Saharan African migrant tents in latest clearance effort
- Many migrants arrived in Tunisia after crossing the deserts of Algeria and Mali, hoping to reach Italy
- For nearly two years, El Amra town served as informal camps for thousands of the migrants
EL AMRA: Tunisian authorities on Thursday set fire to tents housing sub-Saharan African migrants, an AFP correspondent said, in a new drive to clear their informal camps.
Many migrants arrived in Tunisia after crossing the deserts of Algeria and Mali, hoping to reach Italy. But tighter controls on the sea route have left them stranded.
For nearly two years, olive groves around El Amra, a town near the city of Sfax, served as informal camps for thousands of the migrants but on April 4 authorities began dismantling the camps.
Around 3,300 more migrants had to leave the olive groves on Thursday, said Houcem Eddine Jebabli, spokesman for the National Guard, which said around 4,000 had left in the earlier operation.
“It’s the strategy of the State that Tunisia not be a place of settlement or transit for illegal migrants. Tunisia is coordinating with the countries of departure, of welcome as well as the international NGOs to ensure voluntary repatriation,” Jebabli told reporters.
The makeshift shelters located a few kilometers from Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast have grown as a source of tension. Local residents complain about the camps and demand that the land be cleared.
Last year, Tunisia signed a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with the European Union, nearly half of which is earmarked for tackling irregular migration.
Tunisian President Kais Saied on March 25 called on the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) to accelerate voluntary returns for irregular migrants to their home countries.
Among those told to leave the camps on Thursday was a Guinean, known as Mac, who has been in Tunisia for two years.
“It’s very hard here,” he said.
Like many migrants, he has registered with IOM to return to his homeland.
The IOM said Thursday it had facilitated the voluntary return of more than 2,300 migrants from Tunisia, after nearly 7,000 throughout 2024, which was well above the combined total for 2023 and 2022.
Lebanon media says 8 wounded in drone strike at Syrian border
- Eight Syrian refugees were wounded and taken to hospital in the northeast area of Hermel
- The Lebanese army sent reinforcements “after gunfire was heard,” the report added
BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said eight people were wounded by in a drone attack in a border village, as Syrian Arab Republic said it responded to artillery fire from Lebanon.
Eight Syrian refugees were wounded and taken to hospital in the northeast area of Hermel after an “explosives-laden drone blew up” in the border village of Hawsh Al-Sayyed Ali, Lebanon’s National News Agency said.
The Lebanese army sent reinforcements “after gunfire was heard,” the report added.
Syrian state news agency SANA, carrying a statement from an unnamed defense ministry source, said Lebanon’s Hezbollah group had launched artillery shells at Syrian army positions in the Qusayr area of Homs province, near the Lebanese border.
“Our forces immediately targeted the sources of the fire,” the statement said.
“We are in contact with the Lebanese army to evaluate the incident and stopped targeting the sources of fire” at the Lebanese army’s request, the statement added.
Lebanon and Syria’s defense ministers signed an agreement last month to address border security threats after clashes left 10 dead.
Earlier in March, Syria’s new authorities accused Hezbollah of abducting three soldiers into Lebanese territory and killing them.
The Iran-backed group, which fought with the forces of toppled Syrian president Bashar Assad, denied involvement, but the ensuing cross-border clashes left seven Lebanese dead.
Lebanon and Syria share a porous 330 kilometer (205 mile) frontier that is notorious for the smuggling of goods, people and weapons.
Moving heaven and earth to make bread in Gaza
- Residents resort to increasingly desperate measures to feed themselves
NUSEIRAT: In Gaza, where hunger gnaws and hope runs thin, flour and bread are so scarce that they are carefully divided by families clinging to survival.
“Because the crossing points are closed, there’s no more gas and no flour, and no firewood coming in,” said Umm Mohammed Issa, a volunteer helping to make bread with the few available resources.
Israel resumed military operations in the Palestinian territory in mid-March, shattering weeks of relative calm brought by a fragile ceasefire.
The UN has warned of a growing humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in the besieged territory, where Israel’s blockade on aid since March 2 has cut off food, fuel, and other essentials to Gaza’s 2.4 million people.
Once again, residents have had to resort to increasingly desperate measures to feed themselves.
Issa said the volunteers have resorted to burning pieces of cardboard to cook a thin flatbread called “saj,” named after the convex hotplate on which it is made.
“There’s going to be famine,” the Palestinian woman said, a warning international aid groups have previously issued over 18 months of war.
“We’ll be in the situation where we can no longer feed our children.”
Until the end of March, Gazans gathered outside the few bakeries still operating each morning, hoping to get some bread.
But one by one, the ovens cooled as ingredients — flour, water, salt, and yeast — ran out.
Larger industrial bakeries central to the UN’s World Food Programme operations also closed due to a lack of flour and fuel to power their generators.
On Wednesday, World Central Kitchen, or WCK, sounded the alarm about a humanitarian crisis “growing more dire each day.”
The organization’s bakery is the only one still operating in Gaza, producing 87,000 loaves of bread daily.
“Bread is precious, often substituting for meals where cooking has stopped,” it said.
“I built a clay oven to bake bread to sell,” said Baqer Deeb, a 35-year-old father from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
He has been displaced by the fighting, like almost the entire population of the territory, and is now in Gaza City.
“But now there’s a severe shortage of flour,” he said, “and that is making the bread crisis even worse.”
There is no longer much food for sale at makeshift roadside stalls, and prices are climbing, making many products unaffordable for most people.
Fidaa Abu Ummayra thought she had found a real bargain when she bought a large sack of flour for €90 at Al-Shati refugee camp in the north of the territory.
“If only I hadn’t bought it,” the 55-year-old said. “It was full of mold and worms. The bread was disgusting.”
Before the war, a typical 25-kilo sack like the one she bought would have gone for less than €10,
“We are literally dying of hunger,” said Tasnim Abu Matar in Gaza City.
“We count and calculate everything our children eat, and divide up the bread to make it last for days,” the 50-year-old added.
“We can’t take it anymore.”
People rummage through debris searching for something to eat as others walk for kilometers (miles) to aid distribution points, hoping to find food for their families.
Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death.”
According to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, displaced people at more than 250 shelters in Gaza had no or limited access to enough food last month.
Hamas, whose unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel ignited the war, accuses Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war.
