CAIRO: More than 100 Europe-bound migrants are feared dead in a boat wreck off Libya, independent rescue groups said, in the latest loss of life as attempts to cross the Mediterranean increase during the warmer months.
Humanitarian organizations have accused the Libyan coast guard and European authorities of failing to meet their responsibilities to save lives.
A Libyan coast guard official told The Associated Press that they searched for the boat but could not find it with their limited resources.
SOS Mediterranee, which operates the rescue vessel Ocean Viking, said late Thursday that the capsized rubber boat, which was initially carrying around 130 people, was spotted in the Mediterranean Sea northeast of the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
The aid vessel did not find any survivors, but could see at least ten bodies near the wreck.
“We think of the lives that have been lost and of the families who might never have certainty as to what happened to their loved ones,” it said in a statement.
The migrant traffic has raised the question among European Union countries and Libya over who is responsible for saving those at sea.
The European humanitarian organization said that those missing will likely join the 350 people who have drowned in the sea so far this year.
It accused governments of failing to provide search and rescue operations.
In the years since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ousted and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi, war-torn Libya has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. Smugglers often pack desperate families into ill-equipped rubber boats that stall and founder along the perilous Central Mediterranean route.
“These are the human consequences of policies which fail to uphold international law and the most basic of humanitarian imperatives,” tweeted Eugenio Ambrosi, Chief of Staff for the International Organization for Migration.
Alarm Phone, a crisis hotline for migrants in distress in the Mediterranean, said that it had been in contact with the boat in distress for nearly ten hours before it capsized.
Alarm Phone said in a statement that it had notified European and Libyan authorities of the GPS position of the boat but only non-state rescue groups actively searched for it.
Alarm Phone accused European authorities of refusing to coordinate a search operation, leaving it solely in the hands of the Libyan Coast Guard.
Libya Coast Guard Spokesman Commander Masoud Ibrahim Masoud described allegations that they had been negligent as untrue.
“We coordinated the search operation,” he told The Associated Press. “The ships kept searching in the sea for more than 24 hours but the waves were very rough.”
Masoud told the AP that the Libyan coast guard had received around noon on Wednesday two rescue alerts from two different rubber boats in distress to the east of Tripoli. A patrol vessel was immediately dispatched and rescued 106 migrants, including women and children, who were aboard one of the two boats. Two bodies were also pulled out of the water near the capsized boat. He said the same vessel continued to search, but visibility was low and seas rough. He said the vessel eventually returned to port so that the other migrants onboard could receive medical attention.
In the meantime, he said Libyan authorities asked three merchant ships and Ocean Viking to look for the missing rubber boat, until the Libyan patrol vessel could join them again.
In recent years, the European Union has partnered with Libya’s coast guard and other local groups to stem such dangerous sea crossings. Rights groups, however, say those policies leave migrants at the mercy of armed groups or confined in squalid detention centers rife with abuses.
“We are not as equipped as the US coast guard and the support we get from the EU does not meet our needs,” said Masoud.
130 Europe-bound migrants feared dead off Libyan coast
https://arab.news/8nb5q
130 Europe-bound migrants feared dead off Libyan coast
- An aid vessel did not find any survivors, but could see over 10 bodies near the wreck
- Alarm Phone accused European authorities of refusing to coordinate a search operation, leaving it to Libyan Coast Guard
Israeli army maneuvers on Lebanese border amid claims of dismantling Hezbollah military structures
- Lebanon interior minister: New checkpoints at Beirut Airport to control all incoming items
BEIRUT: Security authorities at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport effectively fulfill their responsibilities, caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said on Monday.
Mawlawi’s assurance followed his meeting with the Central Security Council.
In response to Israeli claims that Hezbollah was receiving cash through the airport, Mawlawi emphasized that the council had set up new checkpoints to inspect all items entering through the airport.
He stressed that the Lebanese army was fulfilling its duties to control the Lebanese border with the Syrian Arab Republic “despite the challenges” and urged increased cooperation from Syrian authorities.
Syria’s Ministry of Interior announced on Sunday that it had seized shipments of weapons intended for smuggling into Lebanon through land routes in the Talkalakh area of Homs.
On Jan. 26, Syrian security forces reportedly discovered a missile depot at a former regime site in Homs. They also seized a weapon shipment that was “intended for Hezbollah.”
There are six official border crossings between the Syrian Arab Republic and Lebanon and numerous illegal crossings along a 375-km border.
On Monday, the Israeli army said that it was continuing its “defensive operations” in southern Lebanon, under agreements with Lebanon, to maintain the operational gains in the region.
Recently, the Israeli army said it conducted extensive operations to eliminate threats in the region, “dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure, and prevent any potential dangers to Israel and its citizens.”
The announcement came a day after Defense Minister Israel Katz toured Israeli military positions in southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces continue to violate the ceasefire agreement.
The ceasefire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah was extended at Israel’s request through US mediation until Feb. 18.
Israel is exerting pressure on Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah and eliminate its military presence south of the Litani line. Israeli threats to disarm Hezbollah extend beyond this region to areas north of the Litani and even to the Lebanese border with Syria.
Since the ceasefire began, Israeli airstrikes have repeatedly targeted vehicles transporting weapons and ammunition, as well as storage facilities for stockpiling arms.
In its statement, the Israeli army clarified that during a survey operation in the border area, troops from the 769th Brigade discovered weapons storage facilities. These facilities contained mortar shells, rockets, explosives, firearms, and a significant amount of military equipment. All the weapons were confiscated, and the storage sites were dismantled.
The statement indicated that Israeli soldiers “eliminated several Hezbollah members in the area and apprehended suspects who posed a threat to Israeli forces.”
The Israeli army announced it was conducting a military exercise on Monday in the Upper Galilee region, which has remained in a state of tension following months of military operations against Hezbollah.
The Israeli army issued a warning against civilian entry into areas expected to see “increased military activity.”
Israeli media reports indicate that residents of northern settlements in Israel have begun repairing their homes after damage caused by “fire from Hezbollah.”
The Israeli military has withdrawn from the western region of southern Lebanon and from certain villages in the central area while still maintaining its presence in other towns.
At the same time, it is engaged in bulldozing and demolition activities in the eastern sector, where it has not retreated from any villages.
It seems likely that the military will continue to occupy strategic positions in southern Lebanon.
Former MP Mustafa Alloush stated that Israel’s release of information about the significance of maintaining control over strategic heights and five key points overlooking the southern territories, as well as a substantial portion of occupied Palestine, was quite plausible.
He stated that Hezbollah was giving Israel reasons to justify its actions, evident both in the deployment of drones and in the group’s insistence on maintaining resistance without disarming.
Additionally, remarks from Hezbollah’s leadership, including statements made by its secretary-general, ministers, and MPs, emphasized that the resistance was regaining its strength and readiness.
Alloush claimed that Israel was leveraging this situation to conduct its daily airstrikes, which have targeted areas from Nabatieh and the Bekaa to northern Lebanon.
The Israeli army still holds El-Hamames Hill, located at the southwestern entrance to the town of Khiam.
This strategic hill overlooks the entire town of Khiam and the Hasbaya region, all the way to Ebel Al-Saqi.
It also holds the strategic Awida Hill, between Adaisseh and Taybeh, in the Marjeyoun district.
It overlooks the entire western sector up to Tyre and the whole central sector up to the Litani River and the western Bekaa from the direction of Jezzine.
The Israeli army also holds the hill of Khallet Wardeh, a strategic point located southwest of the town of Aita Al-Shaab in the Bint Jbeil district and overlooking the southern coast from Tyre to Naqoura and the western sector up to Tayr Harfa and Al-Jbein.
Israeli forces are still penetrating the strategic Shebaa and Kfar Shuba hills, which overlook the entire Arqoub region and the western Bekaa to the north, Hasbaya and Marjeyoun to the west, and Mount Hermon and Syrian lands to the west.
Syrian president says elections could take up to five years
- Ahmed Al-Sharaa said infrastructure for the vote needs rebuilding
- A transitional government has been installed to steer Syria until March 1
DAMASCUS: Syrian Arab Republic President Ahmed Al-Sharaa said Monday that organizing elections could take up to five years, the week after he was appointed interim president and less than two months after ousting Bashar Assad.
“My estimate is that the period of time will be approximately between four and five years until the elections,” Sharaa said in a pre-recorded interview broadcast on a private Syrian television channel.
In late December, he told Al Arabiya TV the election process could take four years.
The infrastructure for the vote “needs to be re-established, and this takes time,” Sharaa added on Monday.
He also promised “a law regulating political parties,” adding that Syria would be “a republic with a parliament and an executive government.”
Military commanders last Wednesday appointed Sharaa interim president, after opposition factions toppled Assad on December 8, ending more than five decades of the family’s iron-fisted rule.
Sharaa’s appointment has been welcomed by key regional players Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and Saudi Arabia.
Sharaa was also tasked with forming an interim legislature, and the Assad-era parliament was dissolved, along with the Baath party, which ruled Syria for decades.
Syria’s constitution was also repealed, and the Assad-era army and security forces were dissolved, as were armed groups, including Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
A transitional government has been installed to steer Syria until March 1.
Russia tells Hamas to ‘keep promises’ on hostage release
- Russia has called for the release of dual Russian-Israeli citizen Alexander Trufanov and Maxim Herkin, an Israeli man from Donbas area of Ukraine with Russian relatives
MOSCOW: A deputy Russian foreign minister met Monday with a senior Hamas official in Moscow and urged Hamas to keep “promises” to release a Russian hostage, the ministry said.
Mikhail Bogdanov, who is also President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on the Middle East, met with Musa Abu Marzuk, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau.
Russia has called for the release of dual Russian-Israeli citizen Alexander Trufanov and Maxim Herkin, an Israeli man from the Donbas area of Ukraine with Russian relatives.
At their talks, Bogdanov “again placed particular stress on the necessity of carrying out the promises given by Hamas’s leadership on releasing from imprisonment Russian citizen Trufanov and other hostages,” the ministry said.
Trufanov, known as Sasha, was abducted on October 7, 2023, with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border.
His father was killed in the attack and his mother and grandmother were abducted and released in November 2023. The family had emigrated to Israel from Russia in the late 1990s.
Islamic Jihad, a militant group allied with Hamas, published undated clips of Trufanov in November 2024.
Herkin emigrated to Israel from Ukraine with his mother and was taken from the Supernova rave music festival.
Marzuk told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency Monday that “Trufanov will definitely be released in the near future. He will be released despite the fact that he is a soldier but the decision was taken to release him in the first stage of the deal.”
“That is our answering gesture to Russia’s position on the Palestinian question,” Marzuk was quoted as saying in translated comments.
Talks on releasing Herkin will be held at a “second stage,” he added.
The Russian ministry said the two also discussed “the progress of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, with the stress on the importance of increasing humanitarian aid to the suffering Palestinian population.”
Gaza’s reunited twins speak of loss and joy
- The two men, from the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, were split up early in the conflict that began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023
GAZA: The emotional reunion of twin brothers in Gaza after Israel allowed movement within the enclave as part of a ceasefire deal provided a visceral image of Palestinian survival after 15 gruelling months of death, separation and destruction.
Video of the twins’ ecstatic, tearful embrace amid the crowds of people trekking home a week ago from displacement camps was widely viewed around the world. But Ibrahim and Mahmoud Al-Atout had both endured loss and hardship that tinged the joy of their reunion.
“I didn’t want to let go of him. It’s like the soul returned to the chest, the soul returned to the heart,” said one of the 30-year-old twins, Mahmoud, speaking about their experience days later in a video obtained by Reuters.
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The two men, from the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, were split up early in the conflict that began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and seizing about 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza killed more than 47,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and levelled much of the enclave.
Early on, Israel ordered civilians to leave the north, where its military operations were most intense, but not everybody did so. Those who did travel south were barred from returning until last week as part of the deal for a ceasefire and hostage release.
Ibrahim had ended up in the south, while Mahmoud stayed in the north.
When news came late one night that he could go back to Jabalia, Ibrahim phoned Mahmoud, who quickly dressed and rushed to a meeting point on a main road into northern Gaza.
“Imagine: I stood on my feet for six hours, standing around looking like this (and wondering) ‘where is Ibrahim? Where is Ibrahim?,’” said Mahmoud in the video obtained by Reuters.
People coming up from the south kept mistaking him for his brother, Mahmoud said, surprised he had come north so quickly. They then would tell him to wait longer because Ibrahim was traveling with his six young daughters and had to go slowly.
“He called out to me ‘Mahmoud’, and I couldn’t comprehend. I ran quickly and we hugged each other,” he said, describing their moment of reunion.
Together again
Now reunited, the two men and their families say they spend time picking through the ruins of their family home, destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in November 2023 that killed one of Ibrahim’s daughters and injured another in her head and legs.
Palestinians accuse Israel of indiscriminate bombardment. Israel says Hamas hides among the civilian population and it tries to hit the group while minimizing harm to civilians.
Ibrahim had not wanted to go south. But Israeli forces had moved toward north Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital while he was there with his family and the Red Crescent moved them all to a bigger hospital in the south where better treatment was available.
As each man spoke in the video obtained by Reuters, using big arm movements to illustrate their points, the other sat still and quiet, taking it in.
Things were hard for Ibrahim and his family in the south without home or possessions, and communications were cut off for about four months.
“I was devastated to the point where I lost weight,” said Mahmoud of that time.
Together again, they sat in the evening with a fire by the rubble of their home, cooking bread on a metal shelf, their small children gazing at them with delight.
Emir of Kuwait receives BlackRock CEO
- Larry Fink highlights importance of collaborating with Kuwait
LONDON: Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, the emir of Kuwait, received Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock, in the presence of Crown Prince Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah.
Fink and his accompanying delegation were received at Bayan Palace on Monday, the Kuwait News Agency reported.
During the meeting, Sheikh Meshal highlighted the importance of fostering investment in Kuwait and enhancing cooperation with foreign companies.
He highlighted the significance of attracting capital to support the national economy and create job opportunities for youth to advance the country’s development.
Fink, the CEO of the US-based multinational investment company established in 1988, highlighted the importance of enhancing collaboration with Kuwait and supporting the country’s Vision 2035.
Minister of Finance Noora Al-Fassam and the Director-General of the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority Sheikh Meshaal Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah attended the meeting.
