LYON: Some 1,000 people rallied in the French city of Lyon on Sunday in support of unprecedented anti-regime protests in Iran, AFP journalists saw.
The protesters walked through the streets of the eastern city carrying a banner that read “Woman, life, freedom” and chanting the words, which have become the slogan of the protests.
Demonstrations in Iran began after the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22. She had been arrested by morality police who enforce a strict dress code which requires women to wear a scarf-like covering over their hair and neck.
The protests have escalated into calls for an end to the Islamic regime, posing the biggest challenge for the clerics since the 1979 revolution deposed the shah.
Authorities have responded with deadly violence that has left hundreds dead.
Thousands have been arrested and 14 detainees sentenced to death, many for killing or attacking security force members, according to the judiciary. Four have been executed, the latest two on Saturday.
Many of Sunday’s protesters in France had a personal connection to the country.
“I am here to demand freedom in Iran,” Sholeh Golrokhi, 49, said. “When I was little, they arrested all of my family.”
“We are here to ask Western countries to be the voice of our people” and “expel Iranian ambassadors,” said Samane Ramezanpanah, 35.
In late December a 38-year-old Iranian man drowned in the Rhone river that flows through Lyon, saying on social media that he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the crackdown of the protests in Iran.
Hundreds rally in French city in support of Iran protests
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Hundreds rally in French city in support of Iran protests
- The protesters walked through the streets of the eastern city carrying a banner that read “Woman, life, freedom”
- Many of Sunday’s protesters in France had a personal connection to the country
Italian coast guard recovers bodies of 6 migrants who died in shipwreck in the Mediterranean
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
- 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’
- 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
- 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.
Hamas says open to talks as Israel keeps up Gaza strikes
- Hamas is open to talks on getting the ceasefire back on track but will not renegotiate the agreement that took effect on January 19
- Negotiations have stalled over how to proceed with a ceasefire whose first phase expired in early March
GAZA CITY: Hamas said it remained open to negotiations while calling for pressure on Israel Wednesday to implement a Gaza truce after its deadliest bombing since the fragile ceasefire began in January.
Israel carried out fresh air strikes on Gaza on Wednesday, killing 13 people according to the territory’s civil defense agency, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday’s raids were “only the beginning.”
The United Nations and countries around the world condemned the high civilian death toll in the renewed strikes, which have killed more than 400 people, according to Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Hamas is open to talks on getting the ceasefire back on track but will not renegotiate the agreement that took effect on January 19, an official from the militant group said.
“Hamas has not closed the door on negotiations but we insist there is no need for new agreements,” Taher Al-Nunu told AFP.
“We have no conditions, but we demand that the occupation be compelled to immediately halt its aggression and war of extermination, and begin the second phase of negotiations.”
Negotiations have stalled over how to proceed with a ceasefire whose first phase expired in early March, with Israel and Hamas disagreeing on whether to move to a new phase intended to bring the war to an end.
Instead, Israel and the United States have sought to change the terms of the deal by extending stage one.
That would delay the start of phase two, which was meant to establish a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and was swiftly rejected by Hamas, which demanded full implementation of the original deal.
“There is no need for new agreements in light of the existing agreement signed by all parties,” Nunu said.
Israel and the United States have portrayed Hamas’s rejection of an extended stage one as a refusal to release more Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu’s office said he ordered the renewed strikes on Gaza after “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages.”
In a televised address late Tuesday, the premier said: “From now on, negotiations will take place only under fire... Military pressure is essential for the release of additional hostages.
“Hamas has already felt the strength of our arm in the past 24 hours. And I want to promise you — and them — this is only the beginning.”
The White House said Israel consulted US President Donald Trump’s administration before launching the strikes, while Israel said the return to fighting was “fully coordinated” with Washington.
The intense Israeli bombardment sent a stream of new casualties to the few hospitals still functioning in Gaza and triggered fears of a return to full-blown war after two months of relative calm.
The roads were once again filled with Palestinian civilians on the move as families responded to evacuation warnings from the Israeli army.
“Today I felt that Gaza is a real hell,” said Jihan Nahhal, a 43-year-old from Gaza City, adding some of her relatives were wounded or killed in the strikes.
“Suddenly there were huge explosions, as if it were the first day of the war.”
The Gaza health ministry said the bodies of 413 people had been received by hospitals, adding people were still under the rubble.
A spokeswoman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF said medical facilities that “have already been decimated” by the war were now “overwhelmed.”
Governments in the Middle East, Europe and beyond called for the renewed hostilities to end.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Israel’s raids on Gaza “are shattering the tangible hopes of so many Israelis and Palestinians of an end to suffering on all sides.”
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she told her Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar that the new strikes on Gaza were “unacceptable.”
Both Egypt and Qatar, which brokered the Gaza ceasefire alongside the United States, condemned Israel’s resort to military action.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said the strikes were part of “deliberate efforts to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and force the Palestinians into displacement.”
Trump has floated a proposal to move Palestinians out of Gaza, an idea rejected by Palestinians and governments in the region and beyond, but embraced by some Israeli politicians.
Israel’s resumption of military operations in Gaza, after it already halted all humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza this month, drew an immediate political dividend for Netanyahu.
The far-right Otzma Yehudit party, which quit his ruling coalition in January in protest at the Gaza ceasefire, rejoined its ranks with its firebrand leader Itamar Ben Gvir again becoming national security minister.
The war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliation in Gaza has killed at least 48,577 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry.
Of the 251 hostages seized during the attack, 58 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
