BEIRUT: Iran’s acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri discussed “proposed solutions” for ending the Gaza war with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group said.
The two men “reviewed the latest regional political and security developments, especially on the Gaza and Lebanon fronts, and the proposed solutions,” a Hezbollah statement said.
US President Joe Biden outlined a three-stage roadmap toward a full ceasefire on Friday that he said was a new offer from Israel that he urged Hamas to accept.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took issue with Biden’s presentation of what was on the table, stressing that the war would continue until all of Israel’s “goals are achieved.”
Netanyahu said that included the destruction of Hamas’s capacity to govern Gaza or pose a military threat to Israel.
Bagheri arrived in Lebanon Monday on his first foreign trip since being named caretaker minister following the death of his predecessor Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash last month that also killed president Ebrahim Raisi.
At a press conference on Monday, Bagheri said the United States should halt all aid to Israel rather than propose a ceasefire.
He said he had chosen Lebanon for his first official visit “because Lebanon is the cradle of resistance” against Israel.
Bagheri was due to hold talks in Damascus later Tuesday with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad and President Bashar Assad.
Iran’s Tasnim news agency said Bagheri “talked with the leaders of the Palestinian resistance groups in Syria” at the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
Iran acting FM discusses Gaza war with Hezbollah chief
https://arab.news/yabhj
Iran acting FM discusses Gaza war with Hezbollah chief
Aid workers ‘cannot access’ many areas of war-battered Sudan: Red Cross
“Improving access will help millions of people“
PORT SUDAN: Large parts of war-torn Sudan are inaccessible to aid workers, a Red Cross official said Wednesday as devastating fighting between the army and paramilitaries rages on.
“There are plenty of areas we cannot access, sometimes because they are very dangerous, and sometimes we do not receive permission,” said Pierre Dorbes, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“Improving access will help millions of people,” Dorbes told journalists in Port Sudan, the Red Sea city where the army, government and UN agencies are now based.
War has raged since April 2023 between the regular army under Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The conflict has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than ten million people, according to the United Nations.
A recent UN-backed report said nearly 26 million people, or slightly more than half of the population, were facing high levels of “acute food insecurity.”
Volunteer groups in some areas consumed by the violence have set up communal kitchens, supported by international organizations.
“We provide about 2,000 meals a day, and this number is increasing daily,” Esmat Mohamed, who supervises one such initiative in the capital Khartoum, told AFP.
But international groups face logistical hurdles in transferring funds to volunteers on the ground, said one employee requesting anonymity for security reasons.
In the town of Dilling, near the South Sudan border, Kinda Komi is one of the volunteers providing meals to those in need.
“Since the start of the war, no food aid has reached the town, and the roads connecting it to the rest of the country have been cut due to the clashes,” she said.
According to her, “half of those in need leave without receiving meals.”
Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill 20 Palestinians amid push for ceasefire deal
- Some casualties took place in area declared “safe zone” by Israel, say hospital authorities
- US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators hold talks for long-elusive ceasefire with Israeli officials in Doha
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli airstrikes early Wednesday killed 20 Palestinians in central Gaza, including six children and three women, some of them inside a purported “safe zone” declared by the Israeli military, hospital authorities said.
This second straight night of deadly strikes in the central town of Deir Al-Balah and nearby refugee camps came as US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators as well as Israeli officials came together in the Qatari capital, Doha, for talks trying to push through a long-elusive deal for a ceasefire and hostage release.
Israel and Hamas had appeared to narrow the gaps in recent days, but obstacles remain.
Strikes early Wednesday hit three houses in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 12 people including five children, said authorities at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the casualties were taken. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies.
The camp, like others around Gaza, was originally erected to house Palestinians driven from their homes during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It has grown into an urban neighborhood in the decades since.
A fourth strike early Wednesday killed four men, three women and a child when it hit a home in Deir Al-Balah, an area that is located within the “humanitarian safe zone” where Israel has told Palestinians to seek refuge as it conducts offensives in multiple parts of the Gaza Strip.
The overnight bombardment came hours after Israeli warplanes struck the entrance of a school sheltering displaced families outside the southern city of Khan Younis. The toll from the strike rose to 31 people killed, including eight children, and more than 50 wounded, officials at the nearby Nasser Hospital said Wednesday.
Footage aired by Al-Jazeera television showed kids playing soccer in the school’s yard when a sudden boom shook the area, prompting shouts of “a strike, a strike!”
The Israeli army said the airstrike near the school and reports of civilian casualties were under review, and claimed it was targeting a Hamas militant who took part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, though it provided no immediate evidence. The military blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants fight in dense, urban areas. But the army rarely comments on what it is targeting in individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
In nine months of bombardment and offensives in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 38,200 people and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. Nearly the entire population has been driven from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.
Israel’s onslaught was triggered by Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7, during which militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity, with about a third said to be dead.
This week, Israeli troops have also been waging a new ground assault in Gaza City in the north of the territory — its latest effort to battle Hamas militants regrouping in areas the army previously said had been largely cleared.
Large parts of Gaza City and urban areas around it have been flattened or left a shattered landscape by previous Israeli assaults, and much of the population fled earlier in the war. But the latest incursions and bombardment prompted a new flight of people.
After Israel on Monday called for an evacuation from eastern and central parts of Gaza City, staff at two hospitals — Al-Ahli and the Patients Friends Association Hospital — rushed to move patients and shut down, the United Nations said.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it told hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza City they did not need to evacuate. But hospitals in Gaza have often shut down and moved patients at any sign of possible Israeli military action, fearing raids.
In the past nine months, Israeli troops have attacked at least eight hospitals, causing the deaths of patients and medical workers along with massive destruction to facilities and equipment. Israel has claimed Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, though it has provided only limited evidence.
Only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and those only partially, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian office.
International mediators were making a new concerted effort to push through a proposed ceasefire deal.
An Egyptian official said the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel, went to Doha to join discussions over the deal. The official said US and Israeli officials were also attending. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press on the meetings.
A day earlier, CIA Director William Burns, who has led the American mediation, met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo
Obstacles remain in the talks, even after Hamas agreed to relent on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a permanent ceasefire.
Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact. Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations,” including the operations in Gaza City.
Armed bandits interrupt a rescue of migrants in the Mediterranean off Libya, an aid group says
- SOS Mediterranee filmed the incident Tuesday and said it occurred about 46 nautical miles north of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast
- Volunteers were helping transfer the 93 passengers from the wooden boat onto their rescue vessel when two rubber dinghies approached
ROME: An aid group that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean says one of its missions was interrupted by armed bandits who boarded the overloaded smugglers’ boat and sped away with it after the migrants threw themselves into the sea.
SOS Mediterranee filmed the incident Tuesday. The group said it occurred about 46 nautical miles north of Zuwara on Libya’s western coast, a frequent launching point for smuggling operations to bring migrants to Europe.
According to the video, SOS Mediterranee volunteers were helping transfer the 93 passengers from the wooden boat onto their rescue vessel when two rubber dinghies approached.
A masked bandit leapt onto the migrant boat, sparking panic among the remaining passengers, who threw themselves into the sea. The bandit took control of the empty boat and steered it away from the scene as the SOS Mediterranee crew plucked people from the sea.
It wasn’t clear if the bandits were trying to recover the boat for future smuggling operations. Often, when Italian maritime authorities encounter such boats, they intentionally sink them as a matter of maritime safety.
But Valeria Taurino, general director of SOS Mediterranee, said governments are providing fewer resources to rescue operations, leaving aid groups to do the job in increasingly dangerous situations.
“The lack of rescue vessels left by the states in recent years in the central Mediterranean has generated a reckless increase in armed presence and illegal and dangerous actions for both the fleeing shipwrecked people and aid workers,” she said in a statement.
Italian authorities say the presence of humanitarian rescue ships in the Mediterranean only encourages migrants to take the risky voyages, a charge they deny.
The rescue was one of several reported by rescue groups this week, as smugglers appear to be taking advantage of summer’s often calm seas. That said, the number of migrants arriving in Italy this year by boat – 27,744 – is less than half the 72,036 who had arrived by this time last year, according to interior ministry statistics.
The right-wing government of Premier Giorgia Meloni has made limiting migration a priority. It has signed deals with individual African countries to block departures, imposed limits on the work of humanitarian rescue ships, cracked down on traffickers who reach Italy and taken other measures to deter would-be migrants from setting off.
Lebanon awaits outcome of peace negotiations as Israeli airstrikes continue
- Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Atty and his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi warned of the dangers of the war expanding in Lebanon
- Five Israeli airstrikes on the outskirts of the town of Nabi Sheet in the Baalbek region on Tuesday night resulted in civilian casualties
BEIRUT: Lebanon is waiting for the outcome of the Doha negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza and the withdrawal of the army from its southern front.
Israel has renewed its threats of a wide-scale war in Lebanon, which have hindered negotiations.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdel Atty and his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi warned of the dangers of the war expanding in Lebanon.
Abdel Atty warned during a joint press conference with Safadi in Cairo of “the dangers of escalation that could destabilize Lebanon and lead the region into an all-out war.”
Safadi emphasized the importance of “preserving Lebanon, its security, stability, and preventing the war from spreading there.”
Military operations in southern Lebanon did not stop on Wednesday.
Artillery shelling in the town of Markaba and the outskirts of Hunin caused a fire in a house.
While the Islamic Health Organization’s firefighting teams affiliated with Hezbollah were working to extinguish the flames, an Israeli warplane dropped a bomb in the vicinity, injuring one person.
Israeli warplanes targeted an uninhabited house in the town of Tair Harfa.
Later, Israeli Channel 14 said that “about 20 missiles were detected coming from Lebanon toward Upper Galilee. Sirens sounded in Dan Dafna HaGoshrim Snir and Sha’ar Yashuv in the Finger of the Galilee.”
Al-Manar TV channel, affiliated with Hezbollah, reported that “fires broke out in the northern slopes of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights after missiles fell on the enemy’s artillery site in Zaoura.”
Israeli airstrikes intensified at dawn on the border town of Kafr Kila. There were five raids in less than an hour.
The Israeli army announced that it targeted “two Hezbollah sites used by air defense systems in Jinta in the Lebanese interior and Baraachit in the south, without recording any casualties.”
Five Israeli airstrikes on the outskirts of the town of Nabi Sheet in the Baalbek region on Tuesday night resulted in civilian casualties.
Al-Arabiya TV channel reported that an Israeli security source said: “The Israeli army is ready for a ground operation on several fronts.”
The source said: “Israel has detected thousands of militia members affiliated with Iran on Syrian territory, and we expect difficult fighting days on the Lebanon and Syrian fronts.”
The source added: “Three additional teams of Israeli ground forces are ready in the Northern Command, and the Israeli General Staff is ready with the air and naval arms.”
Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy secretary-general of Hezbollah, said in a statement: “The Israeli aggression would not have lasted nine months had America not supported it with everything at the military, media, cultural, and political levels, and international sponsorship and pressure on the UN Security Council.”
Qassem added: “Currently, there is talk about the possibility of an agreement, but if America continues to act in the same way, Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli premier) will not respond because he believes that the Americans are not applying enough pressure on him.”
He said that if the Americans applied “real pressure,” Netanyahu would have to end the war. “Currently, they are making it easier for him to commit atrocities by killing children and women in Gaza. The Gaza experience is before us. The Israelis initially planned to destroy Gaza in three months, but it’s been nine months now and they haven’t succeeded. If they continue, they won’t succeed, and Israel shouldn’t expect the Palestinians to give up.”
Addressing “some major countries looking for a solution,” Qassem said: “The solution begins with a ceasefire, and any other option will not lead to a solution. Either the fighting continues or there is a ceasefire. As for us in Lebanon, if they stop in Gaza, we will stop, and if they continue, we will continue.”
Morocco reports 14 percent increase in tourist arrivals in Jan-June
- Last year, the country welcomed a record 14.5 million tourists
RABAT: The number of tourists visiting Morocco in the first six months this year grew to 7.4 million, up 14 percent compared with the same period last year, Morocco’s tourism ministry said on Wednesday.
Last year, the country welcomed a record 14.5 million tourists. It expects to attract 17.5 million tourists in 2026 and 26 million by 2030, when Morocco will co-host the World Cup together with Spain and Portugal, according to official figures.
Tourism accounts for 7 percent of Morocco’s gross domestic product and is a key source of foreign currency.
