Browsing: Region
One person was killed Monday in an Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon.Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported that a young man was killed in the morning when an Israeli drone truck near his home in Hanin municipality in Bint Jbeil district, In a separate development, an Israeli force advanced at dawn into the outskirts of the municipalitiesآ of Ayta ash Shab and Ramyeh in the Bint Jbeil district, where it rigged a house with explosives and detonated it, destroying it completely. A ceasefire agreement in southern Lebanon took effect on Nov. 27, 2024, stipulating the withdrawal of Israeli forces from border villages and towns in southern Lebanon within 60 days. The Lebanese government later agreed to extend the deadline until Feb. 18, 2025. However, the Israeli occupation army remained in five locations and have continued violations, which have exceeded 7,000 airspace breaches and more than 2,400 military activities in the area of ​​operations of United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon since November 2025 Source link
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) murdered at least 72,063 Palestinian civilians and injured at least 171,726 others since the beginning of the genocide that the Israeli occupation has been committing against the Gaza Strip in October 2023.Palestinian medical sources reported on Monday that the hospitals across the Gaza Strip received two martyrs and 11 injured civilians over the past 24 hours, pointing out that many victims remain trapped under the rubble and scattered on the streets, as the IOF has been preventing ambulance and civil defense crews from reaching them.The sources also indicated that, since the ceasefire agreement went into affect in October 2025, the IOF murdered at least 603 Palestinians, and injured at least 1,618 others, while 726آ bodies have been pulled out of the rubble Source link
he Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has warned that recent measures by Israeli occupation authorities in the occupied West Bank risk undermining prospects for a two-state solution.In a statement issued on Monday from its headquarters in Jeddah, the 57-member bloc condemned Israel’s “illegal procedures and decisions”, citing in particular the launch of land settlement processes in parts of the occupied West Bank under the designation of “state land”.The OIC said the move was part of a broader effort to consolidate control over Palestinian territory, expand settlements and weaken the viability of a future Palestinian state.It rejected and denounced the measures, arguing that they target the presence and rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination. The organization reiterated its support for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state along the lines of June 4,1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The OIC called on the international community, particularly the UN Security Council, to intervene immediately to compel Israel, as the occupying power, to halt illegal actions. It also urged that Israel be held accountable for violations against the Palestinian people, their land and holy sites. Source link
Iran’s foreign minister has arrived in Geneva ahead of a second round of negotiations with the United States, Iranian state television said Monday, as Washington keeps up pressure on the Islamic republic.According to Tehran, “indirect” Iran-US nuclear talks mediated by Oman will be held on Tuesday, although Washington has previously pushed for other topics to be discussed including Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies. Tehran and Washington restarted negotiations this month after previous talks collapsed when Israel launched an unprecedented bombing campaign against Iran last June.Considerable uncertainty surrounds the fate of Iran’s stockpile of more than 400 kilogrammes of 60-percent enriched uranium that was last seen by nuclear watchdog inspectors in June.”The foreign minister has arrived in Geneva at the head of a diplomatic and expert delegation to take part in the second round of nuclear negotiation,” Iran’s state-run IRIB wrote on its Telegram channel.The top diplomat, Abbas Araghchi, later wrote on X that he would meet in Geneva with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, “for deep technical discussion”.He is also set to hold talks with his Swiss and Omani counterparts as well as other international officials, Iran’s foreign ministry said. Source link
A Palestinian was martyred Monday as a result of Israeli artillery shelling targeting the Shujaâ€iyya neighborhood east of Gaza City.Palestinian news agency (WAFA) reported that Israeli forces have continued artillery shelling in the eastern areas of the city since the morning hours. Since the ceasefire agreement took effect last October, the death toll has risen to 603, with a total of 1,607 injured. Source link
Mohammad Mustafa, Prime Minister of the State of Palestine, addresses the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union at the AU Headquarters in…
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, discussed the process of US-Iran negotiations in a phone call on Saturday.The two sides also addressed various issues of mutual concern during the call. Source link
Writings and correspondence from jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti will be collected in a new book due out later this year, with his family expressing hope yesterday that it would give a new audience insight into his mindset.”Unbroken: In Pursuit of Freedom for Palestine” will be published in November and feature “private letters to his family, letters to public figures, press interviews, public statements, important historical documents” and personal photos, according to publisher Penguin Random House’s Vintage division.It will also include excerpts from his previous book, 2011’s “1000 Days in Solitary Confinement”, which was previously only available in Arabic, Vintage said.Sometimes called the “Mandela of Palestine” by his supporters, Marwan Barghouti, 66, was one of the leaders of the second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s, and is often cited as a possible successor to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.In June 2004, an Israeli court sentenced him to five life sentences after finding him guilty of involvement in four attacks.”We just want to raise the awareness about who he is, why is he important for the Palestinian cause,” Arab Barghouti, who lives in the occupied West Bank, told AFP. “These are his writings so everyone can have access to them.”He added that his mother Fadwa, who has campaigned for her husband’s release over the years and wrote the book’s introduction, also hoped the publication would broaden the reach of Marwan Barghouti’s thoughts.”She really wishes that people can hear from him and see what he thinks and see his writings, especially his grandchildren,” Arab said.The book’s publication will come roughly a year after his family and supporters launched a new campaign to secure Barghouti’s release, after his imprisonment caught US President Donald Trump’s attention.In an interview with Time magazine in October 2025 — shortly after a US-brokered ceasefire went into effect in Gaza — Trump was asked if he thought Barghouti, as a potentially unifying Palestinian leader, should be released from prison.Trump responded that he had previously been approached with that question and would be “making a decision” on the matter, but did not elaborate.Though Arab Barghouti has not been allowed to speak to his father in three years, he said the elder Barghouti represents Palestinian unity and the best chance for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Source link
File photo shows displaced Sudanese people who left El-Fasher after its fall, sitting in the shade in Tawila amid the remains of a fire that broke…
he African Union (AU) holds its annual summit in Ethiopia this weekend at a time of genocide, myriad insurgencies and coups stretching from one end of the continent to the other, for which it has few answers.The AU, formed in 2002, has 55 member states who are often on opposing sides of conflicts. They have routinely blocked attempts to hand real enforcement power to the AU that could constrain their action, leaving it under-funded and under-equipped.It has missed successive deadlines to make itself self-funding — in 2020 and 2025. Today, it still relies for 64% of its annual budget on the US and European Union, who are cutting back support.Its chairman, Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, is reduced to expressing “deep concern” over the continent’s endless crises — from wars in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo to insurgencies across the Sahel — but with limited scope to act.”At a time when the AU is needed the most, it is arguably at its weakest since it was inaugurated,” said the International Crisis Group (ICG) in a recent report.With 10 military coups in Africa since 2020, the AU has been forced to ignore the rule in its charter that coup-leaders must not stand for elections. Gabon and Guinea, suspended after their coups, were reinstated this past year despite breaking that rule.Meanwhile, there has been no “deep concern” over a string of elections marred by rigging and extreme violence.Youssouf was quick to congratulate Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan after she won 98% in a vote in October in which all leading opponents were barred or jailed and thousands of protesters were killed by security forces.The AU praised the “openness” of an election in Burundi in June described by Human Rights Watch as “dominated by repression (and) censorship”.The problem, said Benjamin Auge, of the French Institute of International Relations, is that few African leaders care about how they are viewed abroad as they did in the early days after independence.”There are no longer many presidents with pan-African ambitions,” he saidP.”Most of the continent’s leaders are only interested in their internal problems. They certainly don’t want the AU to interfere in domestic matters,” he added.AU representatives point out that its work stretches far beyond conflict, with bodies doing valuable work on health, development, trade and much more.Spokesman Nuur Mohamud Sheekh told AFP that its peace efforts went unnoticed because they were measured in conflicts that were prevented.”The AU has helped de-escalate political tensions and support dialogue before situations descend into violence,” he said, citing the work done to prevent war between Sudan and South Sudan over the flashpoint region of Abyei.But African states show little interest in building up an organisation that might constrain them.Power remains instead with the AU Assembly, made up of individual heads of state, including the three longest-ruling non-royals in the world: Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (46 years), Paul Biya of Cameroon (44) and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (40).”The African Union is weak because its members want it that way,” wrote two academics for The Conversation last year.This weekend, the rotating presidency of the AU assembly passes to Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, fresh from his party’s 97% election victory.Coups, conflicts and rights abuses may get discussed, but the main theme is water sanitation. Source link