‘Mercy tables’ in Egypt suffer from economic crisis as Ramadan nears

Egyptians look for traditional lanterns, locally known as ‘Fanous Ramadan’, in central Cairo on February 21, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 29 February 2024
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‘Mercy tables’ in Egypt suffer from economic crisis as Ramadan nears

CAIRO: Rising food prices and shortages may lead to fewer donations and less food for “tables of mercy” in Egypt during Ramadan.

Such tables are usually seen on Egypt’s streets to provide lower-income people with free iftar.

“There are many philanthropists in Egypt, but the high prices of food items constrain them,” said Kamal Khairy, a cook who worked at the tables in previous years.

A kilogram of meat is now priced at 450 Egyptian pounds ($14.56) in some areas, while a kilogram of rice costs 40 pounds. The price of vegetables has risen to unreasonable levels, Khairy told Arab News.

The meal cost has increased significantly, causing some philanthropists to withdraw from setting up tables this year.

“Before the COVID-19 outbreak, I used to cook at different tables upon request by philanthropists,” he said.

“In one year, I cooked for three tables — one in the morning, another in the afternoon, and the third before sunset. However, no one has asked me this year.”

A 50-year-old Egyptian, who declined to be named, told Arab News: “In previous years, I used to set up a free iftar table near my factory in Al-Azhar. However, I cannot afford the extra expense due to financial constraints this year.”

He said the factory was struggling financially, so he had been cutting expenses.

A car park attendant on Hoda Shaarawi Street in Cairo who gave his name as Uncle Ahmed told Arab News: “Due to the nature of my job, I cannot go home during Ramadan. Therefore, I rely on the ‘mercy table’ set up on the street, where I am a regular guest.”

The man, nearing 60, added: “I used to sit at a table alongside people from diverse social backgrounds, such as delivery workers, nurses, conscripts, and passersby.

“The table used to accommodate more than 500 people but now fits only 50.”

He said that in the past, a meal would typically consist of a meat dish (such as chicken or kofta), a vegetable dish, a salad and rice or pasta.

“There is only one dish that contains rice and vegetables this year, and the size of the chicken and meat has been reduced. Additionally, the salad portion has been reduced."

Ahmed added: “The crisis affects everyone, and we don’t expect more from the philanthropists. I excuse them.

“I pray that our crises in Egypt will be resolved.”

Farid Jamal, a worker at a charity hosting a table, said: “In previous years, people would arrive an hour before the Maghrib prayer, but now they come three hours earlier.

“The social composition has also changed. I see young men and men from good social levels wearing relatively elegant clothes and women who appear to be in a good situation, all reserving their places at the table to get an iftar meal.”


Israel launches a ground operation to retake part of a key corridor in northern Gaza

Updated 10 sec ago
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Israel launches a ground operation to retake part of a key corridor in northern Gaza

  • Israel used the Netzarim corridor as a military zone which bisected northern Gaza from the south.

DEIR AL-BALAH: Israel said Wednesday it launched a “limited ground operation” in northern Gaza to retake part of a corridor that bisects the territory, and the country's defense minister warned that the army plans to step up the attacks that shattered a two-month ceasefire "with an intensity that you have not seen.”
The military said it had retaken part of the Netzarim corridor, which bisects northern Gaza from the south and from where it had withdrawn as part of the ceasefire with Hamas that began in January.
Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Palestinians in Gaza that the army would again order evacuations from combat zones soon, and that its attacks against Hamas would become more fierce if dozens of hostages held for more than 17 months weren’t freed.
The move appeared to deepen a renewed Israeli offensive in Gaza, which shattered a ceasefire with Hamas.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 436 people, including 183 children and 94 women, have been killed since Israel launched the strikes early Tuesday. It said another 678 people have been wounded.
The military says it only strikes militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas. Gaza’s Health Ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The military said in a statement that as part of the new offensive, it struck dozens of militants and militant sites on Wednesday, including the command center of a Hamas battalion.
The war in Gaza, which was paused in January by an internationally-mediated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, has been among the deadliest conflicts ever for humanitarian workers, according to the UN.
The resumption of fighting launched by Israel early Tuesday risks plunging the region back into all-out war. It came weeks after the end of the first phase of the ceasefire, during which Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages for prisoners and were set to negotiate an extension to the truce that was meant to bring about an eventual end to the war.
But those negotiations never got off the ground. Hamas has demanded that Israel stick to the terms of the initial ceasefire deal, including a full withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war. Israel, which has vowed to defeat Hamas, has put forward a new proposal that would extend the truce and free more hostages held by Hamas, without a commitment to end the war.


Italian coast guard recovers bodies of 6 migrants who died in shipwreck in the Mediterranean

Updated 33 min 32 sec ago
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Italian coast guard recovers bodies of 6 migrants who died in shipwreck in the Mediterranean

  • The Red Cross said they were in good physical condition, and were receiving psychological care
  • Survivors said that some 56 people were in the dinghy when it departed from the Tunisian port of Sfax

MILAN: The Italian Coast Guard has recovered six bodies and was searching for up to 40 migrants missing after a rubber dinghy that departed from Tunisia sank in the central Mediterranean, the UN refugee agency in Italy said Wednesday.
Another 10 people, including four women, were rescued Tuesday and brought to Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa.
The Red Cross said they were in good physical condition, and were receiving psychological care.
Survivors said that some 56 people were in the dinghy when it departed from the Tunisian port of Sfax on Monday evening, the UNHCR reported.
The boat started to deflate a few hours after departure. The people on board were from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Mali, the UNHCR said.
The UN Missing Migrant Project puts the number of the dead and missing in the perilous central Mediterranean at over 24,506 from 2014 to 2024, many of whom were lost at sea. The project says that number may be greater, as many deaths go unrecorded, with the sightings of so-called ghost ships with no one aboard and remains of people washing ashore in Libya not associated with any known shipwreck.
So far this year, 8,963 migrants have arrived in Italy, according to Interior Ministry figures updated Wednesday, a 4 percent increase over the same period last year.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s center-right government has pushed for economic agreements with northern African countries aimed at prevent departures. Speaking to lawmakers this week, Meloni credited the deals with a nearly 60 percent drop of migrant arrivals in Italy last year to 66,317 from 157,651 in 2023, adding that in 2024 1,695 people were dead or missing at sea, compared with 2,526 a year earlier.
“What do these numbers mean? They tell us that reducing the departures, and curbing the traffickers’ business is the only way to reduce the number of migrants who lose their lives trying to reach Italy and Europe,” she said on Tuesday.


Medics struggle to revive Sudan’s hungry with trickle of aid supplies

Updated 19 March 2025
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Medics struggle to revive Sudan’s hungry with trickle of aid supplies

  • The patients at Alban Jadeed Hospital are in urgent need of help
  • The real situation could be worse, since fighting has prevented proper data collection in many areas, medics and aid staff say

SHARG ELNIL, Sudan: In a nutrition ward at a hospital in Sudan’s war-stricken capital, gaunt mothers lie next to even thinner toddlers with wide, sunken eyes.
The patients at Alban Jadeed Hospital are in urgent need of help after nearly two years of battles that have trapped residents and cut off supplies, but doctors have to ration the therapeutic milk and other products used to treat them.
The war that erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has created what the United Nations calls the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis.
About half of Sudan’s population of 50 million now suffer some degree of acute hunger, and famine has taken hold in at least five areas, including several parts of North Darfur State in western Sudan.
The real situation could be worse, since fighting has prevented proper data collection in many areas, medics and aid staff say.
In Sudan’s greater capital, where the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri are divided by the Nile, the warring factions have prevented deliveries of aid and commercial supplies, pushing the prices of goods beyond most people’s reach.
Alban Jadeed Hospital, in Bahri’s Sharg Elnil district, received more than 14,000 children under five years old suffering from severe acute malnutrition last year, and another 12,000 with a more mild form, said Azza Babiker, head of the therapeutic nutrition department.
Only 600 of the children tested were a normal weight, she said.
The supply of therapeutic formula milk via UN children’s agency UNICEF and medical aid agency MSF is insufficient, Babiker said, as RSF soldiers twice stole the supplies.
Both sides deny impeding aid deliveries.
The sharp reduction of USAID funding is expected to make things worse, hitting the budgets of aid agencies that provide crucial nutritional supplies as well as community kitchens relied upon by many, aid workers say.
The army recently captured Sharg Elnil from the RSF, as part of recent gains it has made across the capital.
Fruit and vegetables have become extremely scarce. “Aside from the difficulty of getting these products in, not all families can afford to buy them,” Babiker said.
Many mothers are unable to produce milk, often due to trauma resulting from RSF attacks, or their own malnutrition, said Raneen Adel, a doctor at Alban Jadeed.
“There are cases who come in dehydrated ... because for example the RSF entered the house and the mother was frightened so she stopped producing breast milk, or she was beaten,” she said.
The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A lack of nutrition and sanitation has led to cases of blood poisoning and other illnesses, but the hospital has also run out of antibiotics.
“We had to tell the patients’ companions to get (the drugs) from outside, but they can’t afford to buy them,” Adel said.


Jordan’s king says Israel’s resumption of Gaza attacks a ‘dangerous step’

Updated 19 March 2025
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Jordan’s king says Israel’s resumption of Gaza attacks a ‘dangerous step’

  • French President Macron also said that the new Israeli strikes on Gaza were a 'dramatic step backwards'

PARIS: Jordan’s King Abdullah called on Tuesday for the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza to be restored and for aid flows to resume.
“Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza is an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation,” he said, standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

Israel’s resumption of strikes on the Gaza Strip represents a major step in the wrong direction after its ceasefire with Hamas earlier this year, President Emmanuel Macron said alongside King Abdullah II.
“The resumption of Israeli strikes yesterday, despite the efforts of mediators, represents a dramatic step backwards,” Macron said ahead of talks in Paris with Abdullah, who in turn called the strikes “an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation.”


Gaza strike kills an international UN staffer and wounds 5 others

Updated 19 March 2025
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Gaza strike kills an international UN staffer and wounds 5 others

  • The head of the UN Office for Project Services declined to say who carried out the strike
  • “Israel knew this was a UN premise, that people were living, staying and working there”

GAZA: The United Nations says an international staffer was killed and five others wounded in a strike in the Gaza Strip.
Jorge Moreira da Silva, head of the UN Office for Project Services, declined to say who carried out the strike but said the explosive ordnance was “dropped or fired” and the blast was not accidental or related to demining activity.
UNOPS operates the mechanism tracking aid trucks into Gaza, does demining and helps bring fuel in. He did not provide the nationalities of those killed and wounded.
The Israeli military, which has carried out a heavy wave of airstrikes since early Tuesday, denied earlier reports that it had targeted the UN compound.
But Moreira da Silva said strikes had hit near the compound on Monday and struck it directly on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, when the staffer was killed.
He said the agency had contacted the Israeli military after the first strike and confirmed that it was aware of the facility’s location. “Israel knew this was a UN premise, that people were living, staying and working there,” he said.
The attack came a day after Israel carried out a wave of heavy strikes that killed over 400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, shattering the ceasefire with Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the wave of strikes Tuesday was “only the beginning” and that Israel would press ahead until it achieves all of its war aims — destroying Hamas and freeing all hostages held by the militant group since its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel ignited the fighting.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 436 people, including 183 children and 94 women, have been killed since Israel launched airstrikes Tuesday.
Zaher Al-Waheidi, head of the ministry’s records department, described it as the deadliest day in Gaza since the start of the war. Its records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.