RABAT: A heatwave in Morocco has killed at least 21 people in a 24-hour period in the central city of Beni Mellal, the health ministry announced on Thursday.
The meteorology department said soaring temperatures affected much of the North African country from Monday to Wednesday, reaching 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit) in some areas.
In Beni Mellal, “the majority of deaths involved people suffering from chronic illnesses and the elderly, with high temperatures contributing to the deterioration of their health conditions,” the regional health directorate said in a statement.
The ministry was not able to immediately say if this was the highest recorded death toll from a heatwave in the country.
Beni Mellal, more than 200 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of Casablanca, was still experiencing temperatures of 43 degrees on Thursday.
Temperatures are expected to drop in the coming days, the meteorology department said. In the tourism hotspot of Marrakech, they are expected to drop by 10 degrees on Sunday.
Morocco has suffered a sixth consecutive year of drought, and record heat this past winter with January the hottest since 1940, according to the meteorology department which had recorded temperatures approaching 37C in some places.
The rising temperatures and prolonged drought, which have lowered reservoir levels, are a threat to the vital farm sector.
Water evaporation reached 1.5 million cubic meters (53 million cubic feet) per day, Water Minister Nizar Baraka said at the end of June.
The High Commission for Planning said in May that the “labor market continues to suffer from the effects of the drought” and reported that the unemployment rate had increased to 13.7 percent in the first quarter, up from 12.9 percent in the same period of last year.
Around 159,000 jobs in the agricultural sector disappeared, the figures showed.
Morocco’s record temperature — 50.4C — was set in August last year in the coastal resort city of Agadir.
Globally, Monday was the hottest day recorded since measurements began in 1940, the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program said.
It has previously predicted that daily records would be broken this summer in the northern hemisphere and that the planet would endure a particularly long period of intense heat due to climate change.
Scientists have linked climate change to more prolonged, stronger and more frequent extreme weather, including heatwaves.
Morocco heatwave kills more than 20 people in 24 hours
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Morocco heatwave kills more than 20 people in 24 hours
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- The meteorology department said soaring temperatures affected much of the North African country from Monday to Wednesday, reaching 48 degrees Celsius
- The ministry was not able to immediately say if this was the highest recorded death toll from a heatwave in the country
Turkiye’s Erdogan calls for Islamic alliance against Israel
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- “The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state terrorism is the alliance of Islamic countries,” Erdogan said
- He said recent steps that Turkiye has taken to improve ties with Egypt and Syria are aimed at “forming a line of solidarity against the growing threat of expansionism”
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Islamic countries should form an alliance against what he called “the growing threat of expansionism” from Israel.
He made the comment after describing what Palestinian and Turkish officials said was the killing by Israeli troops of a Turkish-American woman taking part in a protest on Friday against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state terrorism is the alliance of Islamic countries,” Erdogan said at an Islamic schools’ association event near Istanbul.
He said recent steps that Turkiye has taken to improve ties with Egypt and Syria are aimed at “forming a line of solidarity against the growing threat of expansionism,” which he said also threatened Lebanon and Syria.
Erdogan hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Ankara this week and they discussed the Gaza war and ways to further repair their long-frozen ties during what was the first such presidential visit in 12 years.
Ties between them started thawing in 2020 when Turkiye began diplomatic efforts to ease tensions with estranged regional rivals, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Erdogan said in July that Turkiye would extend an invitation to Syrian President Bashar Assad “any time” for possible talks to restore relations between the two neighbors, who severed ties in 2011 after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.
Israel did not immediately comment on Erdogan’s remarks on Saturday.
Israel’s military said after Friday’s incident that it was looking into reports that a female foreign national “was killed as a result of shots fired in the area. The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review.
There was no immediate comment on Friday’s incident from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
Morocco stops 45,000 migrants from crossing to Europe in 2024
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- It did not give comparative data for the same period in 2023
- Last year, Morocco stopped 75,184 people from illegally crossing to Europe, up 6 percent from a year earlier, government data showed
RABAT: Morocco has stopped 45,015 people from illegally migrating to Europe since January and busted 177 migrant trafficking gangs, Morocco’s state news agency MAP reported on Friday, citing interior ministry data.
It did not give comparative data for the same period in 2023 and the interior ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Last year, Morocco stopped 75,184 people from illegally crossing to Europe, up 6 percent from a year earlier, government data showed.
The Moroccan navy has also rescued 10,859 migrants at sea so far this year, MAP said, citing the interior ministry data.
“In 2024, Morocco continues to face an increasing migratory pressure as a direct outcome of the prevailing instability in the Sahel region and porous borders,” it quoted the ministry as saying.
The North African country has for long been a major launch pad for African migrants aiming to reach Europe through the Mediterranean, the Atlantic or by jumping the fence surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
Morocco and Spain have strengthened their cooperation in addressing illegal migration since they patched up a separate diplomatic feud in 2022.
Last month, however, hundreds of migrants took advantage of a thick mist to swim to Ceuta, according to Spanish police.
Tighter surveillance of Morocco’s northern borders is prompting an increasing number of migrants to try the riskier and longer Atlantic route to the Canary Islands.
Families flee intense fighting near Sudan’s Khartoum
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- Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces attacked the Hattab base in Khartoum North, also known as Bahri, on Wednesday
- The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Hundreds of families fled a northern suburb of Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Saturday after fighting between the army and paramilitaries intensified around a key military base, witnesses said.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces attacked the Hattab base in Khartoum North, also known as Bahri, on Wednesday.
The army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, is locked in conflict with the RSF led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
The war began in April 2023 and has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
“Since this morning, the army has been firing artillery toward the south of Hattab while military planes are flying over” the area, one witness said on Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Nasr El-Din, a resident who asked that only his first name be used for security reasons, said the RSF “attacked houses south (of the Hattab base), capturing citizens and killing others.”
“Since early morning, hundreds of families have left for the north, carrying their belongings on their heads,” he added in an account corroborated by another witness.
UN experts on Friday called for the deployment of an “independent and impartial force” to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes in Sudan.
After an independent fact-finding mission mandated by the Human Rights Council, the UN experts said “harrowing” violations by both sides had been uncovered, “which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Meanwhile more than 25 million people — upwards of half Sudan’s population — face acute hunger, with full-blown famine declared in a camp for displaced people in the volatile western region of Darfur.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Saturday began a two-day visit to Port Sudan, the de facto seat of government after fighting forced the authorities out of Khartoum.
He met a health minister and will also meet other officials and visit health facilities, an AFP correspondent on the ground reported.
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations
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- Numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict
- Despite the deadlock, the UN has pursued a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Palestinian Gaza Strip killed at least 61 people in the space of 24 hours, local medics said on Saturday, as Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in the territory.
Eleven months into the war, numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.
An Israeli air strike in on the Halima Al-Sa’diyya school compound serving as a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia urban refugee camp killed at least eight people and wounded 15 others, medics said.
The Israeli military said the strike had targeted a Hamas command center inside the compound. It accused Hamas of repeatedly exploiting civilians and civilian infrastructure for military purposes, an allegation Hamas denies.
Five more people were killed in a strike on a house in Gaza City.
The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah groups said they had fought Israeli troops in Gaza City, in central areas and in the south with anti-tank rockets and mortars, and in some incidents detonated bombs to target tanks and other army vehicles.
The two warring sides continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the United States, to broker a ceasefire. The US is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides remain large. CIA Director William Burns, the chief US negotiator, told an event in London that a more detailed proposal would be made in the coming days.
PAUSES IN FIGHTING LET POLIO VACCINATIONS CONTINUE
On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was incumbent on both Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which ran Gaza before the war and was responsible for the Oct. 7 killing spree against Jews in Israel that triggered it, to make concessions to reach a deal.
On Saturday, senior Hamas official Hossam Badran said the group had made no new demands and remained committed to a July 2 proposal put forward by the United States, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attaching new conditions that would not end the war.
Netanyahu says it was Hamas that introduced unacceptable conditions.
Despite the deadlock, the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, has pursued a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in around 25 years. Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.
UN officials said they were making progress, having reached over half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip.
On Sunday, the campaign will move to the northern Gaza Strip. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed over 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.
Algeria votes with Tebboune eyeing easy re-election
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ALGEIRS: Algerians began voting on Saturday in a presidential election widely expected to bring a second term for the incumbent Abdelmadjid Tebboune who is hoping for a high turnout.
Tebboune, 78, is heavily favored to see off moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche.
Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) and are set to close at 7:00 pm.
Preliminary results could come as early as Saturday night, with the electoral authority, ANIE, bound to announce the official results on Sunday at the latest.
“The winner is known in advance,” political commentator Mohamed Hennad posted on Facebook before voting began, referring to Tebboune.
Tebboune’s opponents stood little chance because of low support and the “conditions in which the electoral campaign took place, which is nothing more than a farce,” Hennad wrote.
The incumbent’s main challenge is to boost the turnout in the North African country, after he won in 2019 with 58 percent of the vote, but amid a record abstention rate of more than 60 percent.
“The president is keen to have a significant turnout,” Hasni Abidi, an analyst at the Geneva-based CERMAM Study Center. “It’s his main issue.”
The low turnout in 2019 followed the Hirak pro-democracy protests, which toppled former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika before they were quashed with ramped-up policing and the jailing of hundreds of people.
Campaign rallies have struggled to generate enthusiasm in the nation of 45 million, partly due to the summer heat.
More than 850,000 Algerians living abroad have been able to vote since Monday.
With young people making up more than half the population, all candidates are targeting their votes with promises to improve living standards and reduce dependence on hydrocarbons.
Tebboune has touted economic successes during his first term, including more jobs and higher wages in the country, Africa’s largest exporter of natural gas.
His challengers have vowed to grant Algerians more freedoms.
Aouchiche says he is committed “to release prisoners of conscience through an amnesty and to review unjust laws,” including on media and terrorism.
Hassani has advocated “freedoms that have been reduced to nothing in recent years.”
Political analyst Abidi said Tebboune should address the major deficit in political and media freedoms as politics is “absent from the scene,” with Algerians having “divorced from current politics” after the Hirak protests ended.
Five years later, rights group Amnesty International said Algerian authorities were “committed to maintaining a zero-tolerance approach toward dissenting opinions.”