Region

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian Prisoners' Club pressed Thursday for the release of a seriously ill detainee, held for decades by Israel.

Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian serving time for the kidnap and murder of an Israeli soldier, has cancer, the advocacy group said.

"He is now on artificial ventilation and his lungs and kidneys are in great distress," it said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the Israel Prison Service told AFP that Daqqa is currently at Shamir Medical Centre in central Israel.

Daqqa identifies as Palestinian although he holds citizenship from Israel, which would consider him Arab-Israeli.

Palestinians gathered in the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday for a rally in solidarity with Daqqa and other Palestinians held by Israel.

The Palestinian Prisoners' Club said it delivered a letter to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Hebron and nearby Bethlehem, calling for the organisation to intervene in Daqqa's case.

An ICRC spokeswoman told AFP it had received the letter and the organisation had previously visited Daqqa.

Daqqa, 61, was diagnosed in December with a rare form of blood cancer, myelofibrosis, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club said.

The organisation said he was also diagnosed with leukaemia in 2015 and is currently due to be freed in March 2025.

Judicial authorities in Israel did not immediately respond to an AFP request regarding Daqqa's appeals for early release on medical grounds.

KHARTOUM — Sudan's warring sides accused each other on Thursday of being behind breaches of the latest ceasefire that was negotiated by the US and Saudi Arabia, now in its third day.

The one-week truce was violated only minutes after it came into effect on Monday night, with residents of the capital Khartoum reporting air strikes and artillery fire shaking the city.

There have since been further breaches of the ceasefire agreement, which is meant to allow for much-needed humanitarian aid to reach war-ravaged parts of the north African country.

It is the latest in a series of truces that have all been systematically violated.

Since April 15, Sudan's capital and other parts of the country have been gripped by brutal urban warfare between the regular army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

But though the current ceasefire has been violated, it has allowed for a lull in fighting that has seen frightened residents cautiously venture out of their homes, some for the first time in weeks.

Many have gone out for supplies of food and water or to seek much-needed medical attention after nearly six weeks of fighting that has sharply depleted vital supplies and pushed the healthcare system to the brink of collapse.

In a statement issued late Wednesday, the RSF, which is led by Mohammed Hamdan Daglo, sought to place the blame for ceasefire breaches on the army led by Sudan’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

The army “launched a series of unwarranted attacks today”, the RSF said, adding that “our forces decisively repelled these assaults”.

“Our forces successfully shot down a SAF MiG jet fighter,” it said, reiterating however that it remained “committed to the humanitarian truce” and called on the “aggressors to respect the ceasefire”.

The army responded Thursday morning, saying it had “countered an attack on armoured vehicles by the militias of the Rapid Support Forces in a clear violation of the truce”.

The United States and Saudi Arabia, which brokered the ceasefire, on Wednesday pointed to reports “indicating that both sides violated the agreement” but said “fighting in Khartoum appeared to be less intense”.

The UN envoy for the Horn of Africa, Hanna Tetteh, expressed concern that fighting was still continuing despite the truce. “It’s unacceptable and it must stop,” she said.

‘Calamitous failure’ 

Desperately needed aid has yet to reach the capital despite the brief lull.

The conflict has so far killed more than 1,800 people, according to the latest figures from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

More than a million Sudanese people have been displaced, in addition to 300,000 who have fled to neighbouring countries, according to the United Nations.

Conditions have been particularly alarming in the western region of Darfur, already ravaged by a conflict that erupted in 2003 and saw then president Omar Al Bashir unleash the feared Janjaweed militia to crush a rebellion among ethnic minority groups.

The RSF traces its origins to the Janjaweed.

The UN’s refugee coordinator in Sudan, Toby Harward, said the town of Zalengei in Central Darfur state “has been under siege by armed militias for the last days”.

Numerous facilities “have been attacked and looted, civilians are unable to seek medical care as healthcare facilities are targeted, and gangs on motorcycles intimidate government workers and restrict civilian movements”, he added.

Representatives of the warring Sudanese generals have since early May been involved in negotiations in the Saudi city of Jeddah on the Red Sea.

But analysts have repeatedly warned that the two generals are likely prepared for a prolonged conflict.

Sudan expert Alex de Waal described the conflict as being the result of a “calamitous failure of diplomacy”.

Burhan and Daglo had in 2021 staged a coup that unseated a civilian transitional government but later fell out in a bitter power struggle.

JINDAYRIS, Syria — In a dusty Syrian camp for earthquake survivors, school pupils line up and wait for a colourful bus to pull up. Since the disaster hit, they go to a classroom on wheels.

School bags on their backs and notebooks in hand, the children took off their shoes before entering the bus, then sat down along rows of desks fitted inside.

A teacher greeted them in the mobile classroom, decorated with curtains bearing children's designs, before they broke into a song for their English class.

The February 6 quake killed nearly 6,000 people in Syria, many of them in the war-torn country's rebel-held northwest, and also left tens of thousands dead in Turkey.

The Syrian town of Jindayris, in Aleppo province near the Turkish border, was among the worst hit, with homes destroyed and school buildings either levelled or turned into shelters.

“We were living in Jindayris and the earthquake happened... and then we didn’t have homes anymore,” said 10-year-old Jawaher Hilal, a light pink headscarf covering her hair.

“We came to live here and the school was very far away,” said the fifth-grader now staying with her family at the displacement camp on the outskirts of town.

As relief services were set up, she told AFP, “the buses came here and we started to study and learn. The buses are really nice, they teach us a lot.”

The travelling classrooms are a project of the non-profit Orange Organisation and service more than 3,000 children at some 27 camps, said education officer Raad Al Abd.

“The mobile classrooms offer educational services as well as psychological support to children who were affected by the quake,” he said.

‘Desperate conditions’ 

More than three months after the quake, 3.7 million children in Syria “continue to face desperate conditions and need humanitarian assistance”, says the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF.

“Almost 1.9 million children have had their education disrupted, with many schools still being used as shelters,” it added in a statement this month.

In northwest Syria alone, “a minimum of 452 primary and secondary schools” were reportedly damaged to varying degrees, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said weeks ago.

“More than 1 million school-aged children need education support and are at risk of being out of school,” it said, adding that at least 25,000 teachers are also in need of help, including “mental health and psychosocial support”.

On another bus, boys and girls enthusiastically interacted with the teacher, balloons hanging from the ceiling, for lessons that included Arabic, math and science.

Outside in the bare dirt, children sang in a circle and clapped along with the educators.

As the buses left, pulling out through the road running between the camps’ tents, adjacent structures and trees, the children yelled out and waved goodbye.

Jawaher’s father Ramadan Hilal expressed relief and gratitude for the initiative.

“After the earthquake there were no more schools or anything else,” he said. “Even though they wanted to establish schools, they are far away.”

ISTANBUL — A feminist voice rings out from behind the mounds of strawberries and olives in an Istanbul bazaar: "Let's get rid of Erdogan!"

"Defend your rights in the second round on May 28," Rojda Aksoy, a slender figure in faded baggy clothes, calls out.

"Reis [the chief] will win!" barks back another woman who supports the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the "chief" who has ruled Turkey for two decades and fell just short of reelection in the first round of the vote on May 14.

The exchange was just one salvo in the battle for half of Turkey's 64.1 million voters in its most consequential election of modern times.

With Erdogan being hot favourite, the opposition is searching for votes to push secular leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu over the line in Sunday's presidential run-off.

And if they are to do that they will have to win over women, particularly working class housewives — the bedrock of Erdogan's support.

'Turkey is secular' 

Erdogan's removal of restrictions on religion in the mostly Muslim but officially secular republic turned the Islamic-rooted leader into a hero among Turkey's conservatives.

His support among housewives, who can now wear the veil where they want, reached 60 per cent in the last election in 2018, according to an Ipsos survey, nearly eight points above his national vote.

But shopping with liras that lost value sharply in the past five years, these women are also sensitive to the price shocks of Turkey's worst economic crisis since the 1990s.

This gives Aksoy an opening as she moves between stalls of secondhand clothes and artichoke hearts, looking for political converts.

"We remind them that even if [Erdogan and his party] have been in power for more than 20 years, even if they have all the propaganda tools at their disposal, they still didn't win outright," Aksoy said.

Boosted by a viral social media clips recorded from his kitchen, the leftist Kilicdaroglu picked up 44.9 per cent of the vote on May 14, forcing Erdogan into his first run-off.

At first, Kilicdaroglu failed to convince Cidgem Ener, a 50-year-old whose first round vote went to Sinan Ogan, an ultra-nationalist who won 5.2 per cent and endorsed Erdogan this week.

"Turkey is secular," Ener said, pointing out that Turkish woman won the right to vote nationally in 1934.

'Last drop of blood' 

"And look at the lamentable state Erdogan dragged us into, bringing his Huda-Par friends into a parliament," Ener added.

Erdogan struck a controversial alliance with with the fringe Kurdish Islamic party in order to keep control of parliament.

Huda-Par's rejection of women's rights and ties to groups implicated in extrajudicial killings infuriates Ener, who seems just as angry at today's price of cheese.

Ener will now be voting for Kilicdaroglu.

Tijyen Alpanli will be doing the same, driven in part by fear of the hardline Islamic figures Erdogan brought into his coalition.

"Women are being murdered and almost none of the murderers are being punished," the 60-year-old said.

But not all are swayed.

Raziye Kuskaya, 50, said she and her daughter will support Erdogan "to our last drop of blood".

"We may not be able to buy everything we want, but that's okay," Kuskaya said.

Lacking the resources of Erdogan's ruling party, which has a stranglehold on the media, the opposition depends on social media to reach voters across the vast country, a strategy with particular drawbacks.

"We are aware that there are masses that we can't reach, especially housewives," Istanbul's opposition Mayor Ekrem Kilicdaroglu admitted last week.

'Allowed to hope' 

In contrast, Erdogan has been sending legions of female supporters to knock on doors since the days of his successful run to become mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s.

Emine Erdogan, the president's wife, was one of the leaders of this vast grassroots network of political Islam.

Erdogan believed his female activists "could go into women's homes and convince them [to vote for him] because of their shared gender, values and class", said Prunelle Ayme, a political scientist at CERI-Sciences Po in Paris.

Erdogan's ruling AKP claims more than five million members.

Outside campaign season, this army of activists pays courtesy visits for births, weddings or funerals, developing bonds and collecting intricate data on the makeup of various neighbourhoods, Ayme said.

Working-class housewives are also the main beneficiaries of classes and social centres set up by the AKP, the analyst added.

Still, while Erdogan's coalition maintained its control of parliament, his AKP lost around 20 seats.

"So we're allowed to hope," Aksoy said.

KHARTOUM — Fighting had eased but not stopped in Sudan on Wednesday, the second full day of a US and Saudi-brokered ceasefire that has raised cautious hopes among its beleaguered civilians that aid corridors and escape routes will open soon.

Sporadic artillery fire has still echoed across the capital but the two foreign powers observing the one-week truce said that "fighting in Khartoum appeared to be less intense" since it entered into force late Monday.

Washington and Riyadh voiced "concern" however that the warring sides had sought to gain military advantage in the lead-up to the truce and pointed to reports "indicating that both sides violated the agreement".

Nonetheless, they stressed that preparations were unde rway "to deliver lifesaving assistance" to the people of Sudan, who have endured more than five weeks of fighting that has claimed more than 1,000 lives.

The war broke out on April 15, sparking frantic mass evacuations of thousands of foreigners and forcing more than a million Sudanese to flee their homes internally and across borders.

The fighting pits Sudan's de facto leader, the army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, against his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, nicknamed "Hemeti", who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The chaos has left millions hunkering down in their homes to hide from the combatants and roaming looters amid intense summer heat, power blackouts and desperate shortages of food, medicines and other staples.

"The whole country has been taken hostage," said the UN's expert on human rights in Sudan, Radhouane Nouicer. "People feel alone and abandoned."

'Trajectory of collapse' 

Hopes for quick relief from the fighting and suffering were dimmed by the fact that a series of earlier ceasefires were all quickly broken, with both sides trading blame for the violations.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned that "if the ceasefire is violated, we'll know" and pledged to "hold violators accountable through our sanctions and other tools at our disposal".

A mass exodus of Sudanese has meanwhile continued into neighbouring countries, including Chad, Egypt and South Sudan, sparking regional fears the conflict will spread across borders because of transnational ethnic ties.

Fighting has been especially deadly in the western Darfur region where Sudan’s then dictator Omar Al Bashir unleashed the notorious Janjaweed militia in the early 2000s and some 300,000 people were killed.

The latest violence in Al Geneina, West Darfur state, has left all 86 reception centres for displaced people “completely burned down” and 85,000 people there on the move yet again, UN agencies have reported.

Sudan expert Alex de Waal warned that the “trajectory of state collapse” is now threatening “to turn Sudan as a whole, including Khartoum, into something that resembles the Darfur of 10-15 years ago”.

He pointed to Daglo’s roots in the Janjaweed and said that this “is the environment within which Hemeti thrived, where money and guns determine everything, this is the future of Sudan if this carries on”.

‘Somali scenario’ 

Medical aid workers meanwhile voiced alarm about dire shortages as fighting has left most hospitals destroyed, ransacked and even used as fire bases, particularly in Khartoum and Darfur.

“After the looting of one of our medical warehouses in Khartoum, fridges were unplugged and medicines removed,” said Jean-Nicolas Armstrong Dangelser of aid group Doctors Without Borders. “The entire cold chain was ruined so the medicines are spoiled and can’t be used to treat anyone.”

He added: “We are experiencing a violation of humanitarian principles and the space for humanitarians to work is shrinking on a scale I’ve rarely seen before.”

Like many Sudanese citizens, Yasser Abdelaziz, a civil servant in the northern town of Shendi, said he fears a war worse than other Middle East conflicts and more like the turmoil seen elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.

“I’m afraid that the scenario to come will not be Syria, Libya or Yemen,” he said, “but the Somali scenario, with people driven by racism and tribalism”.

TRIPOLI, Libya — Oil-rich but war-scarred Libya has for years been ruled by two rival governments, but now some analysts see faint signs of progress toward reconciliation between them.

They point to discord within one of the camps, based in the east and backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, where the parliament last week suspended its former premier Fathi Bashagha.

Paradoxically, the observers say, Bashaga’s political demise could signal that the Haftar camp is moving towards rapprochement with the internationally recognised government in the capital Tripoli.

Some observers even suggest this could aid United Nations-led efforts urging new elections this year in the country that has been torn by bloody chaos since the 2011 overthrow Muammar Qadhafi.

The political rupture in the east has reversed the fortunes of Bashagha, who a year ago launched an attack on Tripoli that was repelled after a day of deadly street fighting.

Bashagha was suspended on May 16 by the eastern-based parliament, which also announced an investigation against him for unspecified reasons.

The move against Bashagha “sealed the end of the political life of this former strongman”, said analyst Hasni Abidi of the Geneva-based Institute for Arab and Mediterranean Cultures.

His “humiliating departure... reflects the differences in the eastern camp, in particular between the Haftar clan represented by his children and the parliament”, Abidi said.

Tripoli-based interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah has meanwhile used the “paralysis of the eastern government to consolidate his grip on political and economic life in Libya”, he said.

Decade of violence 

The North African country was plunged into more than a decade of bloody violence following Qadhafi’s ouster in a NATO-backed popular uprising in which the veteran dictator was killed.

The ensuing chaos drew in warlords, jihadists and foreign mercenaries and claimed countless lives while leaving the country awash with guns.

Haftar, a Qadhafi-era soldier turned exile, and since backed by Egypt and other foreign powers, launched an assault on Tripoli in 2019 that left thousands more dead but ultimately failed.

The warring parties reached a formal ceasefire in October 2020.

Since then, the United Nations has resumed its efforts for new elections, to bring stability to the troubled country, but these have been repeatedly delayed.

Bashaga, from the port city of Misrata and formerly a political heavyweight in the western camp, had sought Haftar’s support in late 2021, vowing to work for “national reconciliation”.

Bashagha’s suspension comes ahead of a mid-June deadline declared by the United Nations for the rival political forces to agree on a framework to hold elections before the end of the year.

‘A new dynamic’ 

Bashagha “always had an expiry date”, said Emadeddin Badi of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, a Switzerland-based research body.

“His usefulness ended the day he lost the possibility of establishing himself in Tripoli,” the analyst said.

Libyan media have meanwhile reported that talks have been held between representatives of Haftar and Dbeibah.

Dbeibah’s nephew and one of Haftar’s sons “have been in almost continuous talks for months”, researcher Jalel Harchaoui told AFP.

“The desire of these two Libyan personalities to accommodate one another is one of the reasons for Bashagha’s fall,” he said.

Badi said Haftar had offered to suspend Bashagha, a move that had the “blessing” of Egypt.

The head of the UN Support Mission in Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, has said he hopes for an agreement “by mid-June” to hold elections before the end of this year.

He told the UN Security Council last month that “intensive consultations have taken place amongst security actors” and said “there has been a new dynamic in Libya”.

Libyan political analyst Abdallah Al Rayes said the rival camps’ new understandings are the culmination of “discreet negotiations in Cairo” with a view to “forming a new coalition government”.

“This is a step that precedes any agreement on the polls,” he added.

Harchaoui, however, was less optimistic and said “the elites already well in place today ... have absolutely no intention of leaving power in order to allow credible and authentic elections”.

NILIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces on Tuesday demolished the West Bank home of a Palestinian fighter who was killed after allegedly carrying out a deadly shooting in the heart of Tel Aviv in March.

"Forces of the army and the border police destroyed the home in the village of Nilin of the terrorist Mutaz Khawaja, who carried out a shooting attack on March 9, 2023 in Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv," an army statement said.

Khawaja, 23, was a member of the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group which rules Gaza.

He was shot dead by Israeli forces after the attack, which killed one Israeli and wounded two more.

His home village lies close to the Green Line which separates Israel from the occupied West Bank, and barely 20 kilometres from Tel Aviv.

Nilin Mayor Yusef Khawaja said Israeli forces made all residents of the four-storey apartment block leave their homes before demolishing the shooter's first floor flat at dawn.

The army released video of troops setting explosive charges before blowing up the apartment.

Large portraits of Khawaja had been draped over the side of the building, commemorating him as a “martyr”, an AFP photographer reported.

Forces clashed with “rioters” during the operation, the army said. The mayor said three people were injured.

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, routinely demolishes the homes of individuals it blames for deadly attacks on Israelis.

Human rights activists say the policy amounts to collective punishment, as it can render non-combatants, including children, homeless.

Khawaja’s father Salah was defiant after the Israeli operation. “This hateful act will only strengthen our love for the homeland... Jerusalem and the faith (Islam), and, with God’s help, our roots will remain anchored here,” he told AFP.