Region

PORT SUDAN — In the safety of Sudan's eastern coast, residents preparing for Ramadan were struggling to afford basic holiday staples as the war raging elsewhere in the country has sent prices soaring.

The situation was much direr in areas hit directly by the nearly two-year war, where famine, displacement, severe shortages and looting overshadowed the usual spirit of generosity and community of the holy Muslim month that began on Saturday.

At a market in Port Sudan, a relative safe haven in the east, prices are out of reach for many families.

Sugar, widely used in drinks and sweets to break the daily dawn-to-dusk fast, goes for 2,400 Sudanese pounds per kilo.

A kilo of veal costs 24,000 pounds, and mutton 28,000, according to consumers.

"We are struggling to afford Ramadan goods," said resident Mahmoud Abd El Kader, protesting the "extremely expensive" prices.

Another resident, Hassan Osman, told AFP that "prices are too high, goods are too expensive, and people cannot afford them."

According to labour unions, the average monthly pay is around $60, but public workers in some Sudanese states have gone without pay during the war.

Those who did have had to grapple with the plummeting value of the local currency, down from about 600 pounds to the US dollar to 2,400 pounds on the parallel market, and inflation that hit 145 per cent in January according to official figures.

In some parts of Sudan, there were pressing concerns not about the prices of food, but about whether it was available at all.

The fighting since April 2023 between the forces of rival generals, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million, has also pushed entire areas of Sudan into hunger and cut off crucial supply routes.

ISTANBUL — Outlawed Kurdish militants on Saturday declared a ceasefire with Turkey following a landmark call by jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan asking the group to disband.

It was the first reaction from the PKK after Ocalan this week called for the dissolution of his Kurdistan Workers' Party [PKK] and asked it to lay down arms after fighting the Turkish state for over four decades.

"In order to pave the way for the implementation of leader Apo's call for peace and democratic society, we are declaring a ceasefire effective from today," the PKK executive committee said in a statement quoted by the pro-PKK ANF news agency, referring to Ocalan.

"We agree with the content of the call as it is and we say that we will follow and implement it," the committee said.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, has waged an insurgency since 1984 with the aim of carving out a homeland for Kurds, who account for around 20 percent of Turkey's 85 million people.

Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999 there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed, which has cost more than 40,000 lives.

After the last round of peace talks collapsed in 2015, no further contact was made until October when a hard-line nationalist ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered a surprise peace gesture if Ocalan rejected violence.

While Erdogan backed the rapprochement, his government cranked up pressure on the opposition, arresting hundreds of politicians, activists and journalists.

After several meetings with Ocalan at his island prison, the pro-Kurdish DEM party on Thursday relayed his appeal for PKK to lay down its weapons and convene a congress to announce the organisation's dissolution.

GAZA CITY, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — The first phase of the Israel-Hamas truce is drawing to a close on Saturday, but negotiations on the next stage, which should secure a permanent ceasefire, have so far been inconclusive.

The ceasefire took effect on January 19 after more than 15 months of war sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in the country's history.

Over the initial six-week phase, Gaza militants freed 25 living hostages and returned the bodies of eight others to Israel, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

A second phase of the fragile truce was supposed to secure the release of dozens of hostages still in Gaza and pave the way for a more permanent end to the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sent a delegation to Cairo, and mediator Egypt said "intensive talks" on the second phase had begun with the presence of delegations from Israel as well as fellow mediators Qatar and the United States.

But by early Saturday, there was no sign of consensus, and Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the group rejected "the extension of the first phase in the formulation proposed by the occupation [Israel]".

He called on mediators "to oblige the occupation to abide by the agreement in its various stages".

Max Rodenbeck, of the International Crisis Group think tank, said the second phase cannot be expected to start immediately.

"But I think the ceasefire probably won't collapse also," he said. 

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM - Israel said Thursday that it will implement what it called "safety restrictions" at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins over the weekend.
During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians come to pray at Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam located in East Jerusalem -- a sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
This year, Ramadan coincides with a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has largely halted fighting after a devastating war that left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory.
"The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year," Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said in an online briefing to journalists.
Last year, amid the Gaza war, Israeli authorities imposed restrictions on visitors coming to Al-Aqsa, particularly on those Palestinians coming from the occupied West Bank.
Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque compound "for security reasons," while thousands of Israeli police officers were deployed across Jerusalem's Old City.
Mencer indicated that precautions would be taken again this year.
"What we cannot, of course, and no country would countenance is people seeking to foment violence and attacks on anyone else," he said, without detailing this year's police deployment.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
By longstanding convention, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray in the compound, which they revere as the site of their second temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
In recent years, growing numbers of Jewish ultranationalists have defied the rules, including far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who publicly prayed there while serving as national security minister in 2023 and 2024.
The Israeli government has said repeatedly that it intends to uphold the status quo at the compound but Palestinian fears about its future have made it a flashpoint for violence.
Last year, Israel allowed Muslims to worship at Al-Aqsa in the same numbers as in previous year despite the war raging in Gaza.

GENEVA - Sudan is facing the abyss and potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths unless the devastating war in the country ends and aid pours in, the United Nations warned Thursday.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk painted a bleak outlook for Sudan, where famine has already taken hold and millions have fled their homes amid intense fighting between rival forces.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

"I cannot overstate the seriousness of the situation in Sudan; the desperate plight of the Sudanese people; and the urgency with which we must act to ease their suffering," Turk told the UN Human Rights Council.

"Since the armed conflict began in 2023, a devastating human rights crisis has generated the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe," he said.

"We are looking into the abyss. Humanitarian agencies warn that without action to end the war, deliver emergency aid, and get agriculture back on its feet, hundreds of thousands of people could die."

Laying out the situation in Sudan, Turk said more than 600,000 people were "on the brink of starvation", with famine reported to have taken hold in five areas, including the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur.

The medical charity Doctors Without Borders suspended operations in and around Zamzam on Monday due to escalating violence, and the UN's World Food Programme followed suit on Wednesday.

Turk said five more areas could face famine in the next three months, while a further 17 are considered at risk.

He said an estimated 8.8 million people had been forced from their homes to camps and other locations within Sudan, while 3.5 million more have fled across borders.

"This is the biggest displacement crisis in the world," he said.

"Some 30.4 million people need assistance, from healthcare to food and other forms of humanitarian support. Less than 30 percent of hospitals and clinics are still working, and outbreaks of disease are rampant in displacement camps."

Turk urged the international community to work together to find a path to peace.

ISTANBUL — Jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan on Thursday called for his Kurdish militant group to lay down its weapons and dissolve itself in a landmark declaration read out in Istanbul.

"All groups must lay down their arms and PKK must dissolve itself," he said in a declaration drawn up in his cell on Imrali prison island where he has been held in solitary confinement since 1999. 

The call came four months after Ankara offered an olive branch to the 75-year-old who founded the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has cost tens of thousands of lives.

"I am making a call for the laying down of arms, and I take on the historical responsibility of this call," he said in a statement.

His words were read out by a delegation of lawmakers from the pro-Kurdish DEM party who visited him earlier on Thursday, the declaration sparking spontaneous applause inside the packed hall.

In the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir in the southeast, where around 3,000 people had gathered at a square to listen to an audio broadcast of Ocalan's call, some broke into spontaneous applause while others broke down in tears.

"Ocalan's call for the PKK to disarm and disband represents a seismic shift. Not just for Turkey, which has waged a decades-long war against the group, but for the region at large," said Hamish Kinnear, senior analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. 

But his words elicited a cautious response from a senior figure within President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AKP. 

"If the terrorist organisation heeds this call, lays down its arms and dissolves itself, Turkey will be freed from its shackles," Efkan Ala, AKP's deputy chairman was quoted as saying by the state news agency Anadolu.

Response 

The big question is how his message will be received by fighters whose military leadership is mostly based in the mountains of northern Iraq.

French historian Boris James, who specialises in the Kurds, said the response could be nuanced. 

"The PKK's military leaders may accept it without it having any practical impact in the field," he told AFP. 

Of particular concern are those fighters allied with the US-backed Syrian Defence Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria -- a force under pressure from Damascus to disarm but which is fighting off attacks by Turkish-backed militia groups.

But Kinnear said much would depend on the response of the Turkey-based PKK elements.

"If the bulk of the Turkey-based PKK adhere to Ocalan's call, PKK militants in Iraq and PKK-aligned groups in Syria are likely to follow suit," he said. 

Since Ocalan was jailed in 1999, there have been various attempts to end the bloodshed which erupted in 1984 and has cost more than 40,000 lives. 

The last round of talks collapsed amid violence in 2015. 

After that, there was no contact until October when hardline nationalist MHP leader Devlet Bahceli offered Ocalan a surprise peace gesture if he would reject violence in a move endorsed by Erdogan. 

Although Erdogan extended his full support for the rapprochement in late October, he has said little since.

And his government has cranked up pressure on the opposition, arresting hundreds of politicians, activists and journalists and removing 10 recently-elected DEM mayors, all of whom have been charged with "terror ties". 

Despite the wave of arrests, many are hoping Ocalan's call will ultimately result in concessions for the Kurds, who make up around 20 per cent of Turkey's 85 million population.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hizbollah's parliamentary bloc on Tuesday gave its support to Lebanon's new government, which in a ministerial statement ahead of a confidence vote vowed a state monopoly on arms and the country's neutrality.

"We give our confidence to the government," said Mohammed Raad, the head of Hizbollah's parliamentary bloc, expressing hope the new administration would "succeed in opening the doors to real rescue for the country".

"We are keen on cooperating to the greatest extent to preserve national sovereignty and its stability and achieve reforms and take the state forward," Raad told a two-day parliamentary session that began on Tuesday and will culminate in a vote of confidence in the new government.

Hizbollah, once the country's most powerful military and political force, suffered major setbacks in more than a year of hostilities with Israel including two months of all-out war, including an Israeli ground invasion, that halted with a November 27 ceasefire.

Israel killed a slew of senior commanders including the group's longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah and pounded the group's strongholds in the country's south and east and in Beirut's southern suburbs.

The ministerial statement, an outline of the new government's work plan that was read out by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, vowed to extend "state sovereignty across all its territories exclusively with its own forces".

It also committed to deploy the army "in internationally recognised Lebanese border areas", and emphasised the need to work to implement a commitment by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on "the state's duty in monopolising the bearing of weapons" and "deciding on war and peace".

Hizbollah was the only faction to keep its weapons after the Lebanese civil war, using them to fight the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon that ended in 2000. It also fought a major war with Israel in 2006.

'Make Lebanon neutral' 

The ministerial statement noted the need to take "all the necessary steps to liberate all Lebanese territories from Israeli occupation".

Israel has maintained its troops in five "strategic" points along the shared border despite the ceasefire deal requiring its forces to withdraw completely.

Raad said the aim of the latest war was "to finish with Hizbollah... and end its resistance presence" against Israel, adding, "That attempt failed".

The new government has pledged to create a fund for rebuilding damaged and destroyed areas and is hoping for foreign assistance with the reconstruction effort, with the country mired in a five-year economic crisis.

The ministerial statement also pledged to adopt a "foreign policy that works to make Lebanon neutral from axis conflicts" and ensure "Lebanon is not used as a platform for attacking" Arab and friendly countries.

Hizbollah has been a key player in Iran's so-called "axis of resistance" against Israel and the United States.

A number of Arab states including Saudi Arabia have for years accused Hizbollah of having too much control over Lebanese politics and being involved in activities that threatened their countries' security.