MOSCOW: Egypt’s president on Friday called on Russia and Ukraine to find “urgent solutions” to allow the resumption of Ukraine grain exports to Africa, after Moscow’s withdrawal led to the collapse of a Black Sea pact.
The Ukraine grain deal was agreed last year and allowed around 33 million tons of grain to leave Ukrainian ports, helping to stabilize global food prices and avert shortages.
“I underline the importance of finding urgent solutions to furnish food and fertilizer at prices that will help Africa to surmount this crisis,” Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said at a Russia-Africa summit in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg.
“I hope to come to a consensual solution on a grain export agreement, taking into account the requests and interests of all the parties, in order put an end to the rise in price,” he said.
Russia last week refused to extend a deal brokered by UN and Turkiye, under which Ukrainian grain exports passed through the Black Sea to reach global markets, including Africa, easing pressure on food prices.
Moscow withdrew from the agreement after protesting for months that the parts of the deal that allowed for the export of Russian fertilizer were not honored.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday opened a two-day summit in Saint Petersburg with African leaders, offering free grain to six countries on the continent.
Russia has sought in recent years to increase its influence in Africa and its Wagner mercenary group has been an active player in several African countries in recent years.
Egypt urges renewal of Black Sea grain export deal
https://arab.news/c534d
Egypt urges renewal of Black Sea grain export deal
- “I underline the importance of finding urgent solutions to furnish food and fertilizer at prices that will help Africa to surmount this crisis,” Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said
- Russia last week refused to extend a deal brokered by UN and Turkiye
Syrian leader discusses regional affairs with Bahrain’s king
- Al-Sharaa’s leadership has been improving ties with Arab and Western countries
BEIRUT: The president of the Syrian Arab Republic flew to Bahrain on Saturday where he discussed mutual relations and regional affairs with King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa on his latest trip abroad since taking office in January.
Al-Sharaa’s leadership has been improving ties with Arab and Western countriesSyria’s state news agency, SANA, said President Ahmad Al-Sharaa was heading a high-ranking delegation to Bahrain.
Bahrain’s news agency said the two leaders discussed mutual relations and ways of boosting them, as well as regional affairs and ways of backing Syria’s security and stability.
Al-Sharaa’s visit to Bahrain comes days before US President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the region for talks with leaders of Gulf Arab nations.
Since taking office, Al-Sharaa has visited Arab and regional countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Turkiye.
Earlier this week, he made his first trip to Europe where he met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and announced that his country is having indirect talks with Israel.
After Assad’s fall, Syria and its neighbors have been calling for the lifting of Western sanctions that were imposed on Assad during the early months of the country’s conflict that broke out in March 2011.
The lifting of sanctions would open the way for the Gulf countries to take part in funding Syria’s reconstruction from the destruction caused by the conflict that has killed nearly half a million people.
The UN in 2017 estimated that it would cost at least $250 billion to rebuild Syria. Some experts now say that number could reach at least $400 billion.
In April, Saudi Arabia and Qatar said they will pay Syria’s outstanding debt to the World Bank, a move likely to make the international institution resume its support to the war-torn country.
Since the fall of Assad, a close ally of Iran, Syria’s new leadership has been improving the country’s relations with Arab and Western countries.
Situation in Gaza ‘unbearable,’ Berlin says
BERLIN: Germany’s new top diplomat Johann Wadephul called on Saturday for “serious discussions for a ceasefire” in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation “is now unbearable.”
Ahead of a visit to Israel, Wadephul said it was “imperative to start” talks “to free all hostages and to ensure that supplies reach the population of Gaza,” according to comments reported by his ministry.
While reaffirming Germany’s unwavering support for Israel, the official said he would “inquire about the strategic objective of the fighting that has intensified since March.”
In Israel, Wadephul is expected to meet his counterpart Gideon Saar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced “considerable concern” about the Gaza conflict and demanded that Israel “respect its humanitarian obligations.”
“In the West Bank as well, Palestinians need political and economic future prospects so that hatred and extremism no longer find fertile grounds,” Wadephul said. His visit comes at a time when Israel and Germany are preparing to celebrate 60 years of joint diplomatic relations.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is expected in Berlin on Monday, while his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier will visit Israel on Tuesday.
Hamas releases video of two Israeli hostages alive in Gaza
- Israeli media identified the pair in the undated video as Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana
- The three-minute video released by Hamas shows one of the hostages visibly weak
JERUSALEM: Hamas’s armed wing released a video on Saturday showing two Israeli hostages alive in the Gaza Strip, with one of the two men calling to end the 19-month-long war.
Israeli media identified the pair in the undated video as Elkana Bohbot and Yosef Haim Ohana, who were kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
The three-minute video released by Hamas’s Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades shows one of the hostages, identified by media as 36-year-old Bohbot, visibly weak and lying on the floor wrapped in a blanket.
Bohbot, a Colombian-Israeli, was seen bound and injured in the face in video footage from the day of the Hamas attack. After a video of him was released last month, his family said they were “extremely concerned” about his health.
The second hostage, said to be Ohana, 24, speaks in Hebrew in the video, urging the Israeli government to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all remaining captives — a similar message to statements made by other hostages, likely under duress, in previous videos released by Hamas.
Bohbot and Ohana, both abducted by Palestinian militants from the site of a music festival, are among 58 hostages held in Gaza since the 2023 attack, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Hamas also holds the remains of an Israeli soldier killed in a 2014 war.
Israel resumed its military offensive across the Gaza Strip on March 18, after a two-month truce that saw the release of dozens of hostages.
Since the ceasefire collapsed, Hamas has released several videos of hostages, including of the two appearing in Saturday’s video.
Israel says the renewed offensive aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives, although critics charge that it puts them in mortal danger.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Saturday that at least 2,701 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,810.
Qataris search for bodies of Americans killed by Daesh in Syria
- Search mission discussed in Qatari trip to US, source says
- Daesh beheaded a number of Western hostages
- Qatari mission begins before Trump visit to Doha
A Qatari mission has begun searching for the remains of US hostages killed by Daesh in Syria a decade ago, two sources briefed on the mission said, reviving a longstanding effort to recover their bodies.
Daesh, which controlled swathes of Syria and Iraq at the peak of its power from 2014-2017, beheaded numerous people in captivity, including Western hostages, and released videos of the killings.
Qatar’s international search and rescue group began the search on Wednesday, accompanied by several Americans, the sources said. The group, deployed by Doha to earthquake zones in Morocco and Turkiye in recent years, had so far found the remains of three bodies, the sources said.
One of the sources — a Syrian security source — said the remains had yet to be identified. The second source said it was unclear how long the mission would last.
The US State Department had no immediate comment.
The Qatari mission gets under way as US President Donald Trump prepares to visit Doha and other Gulf Arab allies next week and as Syria’s ruling Islamists, close allies of Qatar, seek relief from US sanctions.
The Syrian source said the mission’s initial focus was on looking for the body of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by Daesh in 2014 in Dabiq in northern Syria. The second source said Kassig’s remains were among those they hoped to find.
US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among other Western hostages killed by Daesh. Their deaths were confirmed in 2014.
US aid worker Kayla Mueller was also killed in Daesh captivity. She was raped repeatedly by Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi before her death, US officials have said. Her death was confirmed in 2015.
“We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “We thank all those involved in this effort.”
The families of the other hostages, contacted via the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The extremists were eventually driven out of their self-declared caliphate by a US-led coalition and other forces.
APRIL VISIT
Plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during a visit to Washington in April by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the Minister of State for the foreign ministry, Mohammed Al Khulaifi — a trip also designed to prepare for Trump’s visit to Qatar, one of the sources said.
Another person familiar with the issue said there had been a longstanding commitment by successive US administrations to find the remains of the murdered Americans, and that there had been multiple previous “efforts with US government officials on the ground in Syria to search very specific areas.”
The person did not elaborate. But the US has had hundreds of troops deployed in northeastern Syria that have continued pursuing the remnants of Daesh.
The person said the remains of Kassig, Sotloff and Foley were most likely in the same general area, and that Dabiq had been one of Daesh’s “centerpieces” — a reference to its propaganda value as a place named in an Islamic prophecy.
Mueller’s case differed in that she was in Baghdadi’s custody, the person said.
Two Daesh members, both former British citizens who were part of a cell that beheaded American hostages, are serving life prison sentences in the United States.
Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar Assad in December, battled Daesh when he was the commander of another jihadist faction — the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front — during the Syrian war.
Sharaa severed ties to Al-Qaeda in 2016.
33 killed in Sudan strikes blamed on paramilitary RSF
PORT SUDAN: At least 33 people have been killed in Sudan in attacks blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army since April 2023, first responders said Saturday.
The attacks came after six straight days of RSF drone strikes on the army-led government’s wartime capital Port Sudan damaged key infrastructure including the power grid.
On Friday evening, at least 14 members of the same family were killed in an air strike on a displacement camp in the vast western region of Darfur, a rescue group said, blaming the paramilitaries.
The Abu Shouk camp “was the target of intense bombardment by the Rapid Support Forces on Friday evening,” said the group of volunteer aid workers, which also reported wounded.
“Fourteen Sudanese, members of the same family, were killed” and several people wounded, it said in a statement.
The camp near El-Fasher, the last state capital in Darfur still out of the RSF’s control, is plagued by famine, according to the United Nations.
It is home to tens of thousands of people who fled the violence of successive conflicts in Darfur and the conflict that has been tearing Africa’s third largest country apart since 2023.
The RSF has shelled the camp several times in recent weeks.
Abu Shouk is located near the Zamzam camp, which the RSF seized in April after a devastating offensive that virtually emptied it.
The United Nations says nearly one million people had been sheltering at the site.
On Saturday, an RSF strike on a prison in the army-controlled southern city of El-Obeid killed at least 19 people and wounded 45, a medical source said.
The source told AFP that the jail in the North Kordofan state capital was hit by a RSF drone.
The war, which began as a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has spiralled into what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
It has effectively divided the country in two with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF and its allies dominate nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south.
