Region

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Envoys pushed on with efforts for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal in Cairo talks Wednesday, hoping to halt nearly five months of fighting before the start of Ramadan next week.

US President Joe Biden had urged Hamas to accept a ceasefire plan with Israel before the Muslim fasting month begins, which could be as early as Sunday, depending on the sighting of the crescent moon.

As negotiators in Egypt sought to overcome tough stumbling blocks, deadly fighting again rocked Gaza where the UN warns famine looms and desperate crowds have stopped and looted food aid trucks.

Dire shortages of food and water amid the devastating Gaza war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack have killed at least 18 people, said medics in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

Biden on Tuesday called on the Palestinian resistance group to accept the truce plan brokered by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, saying “it’s in the hands of Hamas right now”.

The proposed deal would pause fighting for “at least six weeks”, according to a White House statement on talks between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the Qatari prime minister.

It would also see the “release of sick, wounded, elderly and women hostages” and allow for “a surge of humanitarian assistance”, they said in a Washington meeting on Tuesday.

One known sticking point centres on an Israeli demand for Hamas to hand it a list of the about 100 hostages believed to still be alive, a task Hamas says it can’t complete while bombing continues.

The group said in a statement that it had “shown the required flexibility with the aim of reaching an agreement requiring a comprehensive cessation of aggression against our people”.

Biden stressed that “there’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan, if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous”.

In past years, violence has flared during Ramadan in annexed east Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque compound — Islam’s third-holiest site and Judaism’s most sacred, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Hamas has urged Muslims to flock there in great numbers, as they do every year, while some Israeli far-right politicians have argued they should be banned this year.

Israel’s government said on Tuesday that Muslim worshippers would initially be allowed to the site “in similar numbers” as in recent years, but that this would be followed by a weekly “situation assessment in terms of security and safety”.

GENEVA — An estimated 8,000 patients need evacuating out of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday, voicing frustration that few have so far been transferred outside the besieged territory.

The WHO said moving such patients out of Gaza would relieve some of the strain on the medics and hospitals that are struggling to keep functioning in a war zone.

“We estimate that 8,000 Gazans need to be referred outside Gaza,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, told a press briefing in Geneva via video-link from Jerusalem.

Of those, an estimated 6,000 are related to the conflict, including patients with multiple trauma injuries, burns and amputations, he said.

The other 2,000 are regular patients, he said, noting that before the war began, 50 to 100 patients a day were referred from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, of which around half were cancer patients.

The Gaza war began after the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have killed more than 30,600 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

‘Enormous stress’

Only 2,293 patients were referred outside Gaza for medical treatment between October 7 and February 20.

Peeperkorn said the process involved not just the WHO but also the authorities in Gaza, Israel and Egypt, plus the hospital directors.

He said the WHO had been pushing for a streamlined medical evacuation system since November and “we don’t understand... why is it essentially not happening”.

He said Egypt, other Middle Eastern countries and some in Europe had offered to receive patients and their companions.

“We would like to see, and are pushing for, an organised, sustained medevac. First of all for the patients who need it and deserve to get better treatment,” said Peeperkorn.

“But it would also help to relieve some of the enormous stress these collapsing health services are under in Gaza.”

Peeperkorn said that 23 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were not functioning, with the rest only partially or minimally operational.

Since the start of the conflict, 1,500 amputations have been performed, he added, pointing to numbers from the Gaza health ministry.

TEHRAN — Iran’s conservatives and ultra-conservatives secured a large majority in parliamentary elections, officials said on Monday, in a vote marked by a turnout of 41 per cent, the lowest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Around 25 million people participated, with a turnout of 41 percent” in Friday’s elections, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told a Tehran press conference.

Candidates categorised as conservative or ultra-conservative on pre-election lists won more than two-thirds of the seats, with around 15 per cent of contests headed for a second round.

The vote, which also chose members of the key Assembly of Experts, was the first since nationwide protests broke out following the September 2022 death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

Amini, an Iranian Kurd, had been arrested for allegedly flouting the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women.

The elections, in which a vetting process barred many hopefuls including moderates and reformists from running, took place as Iran suffers a severe economic crisis deepened by international sanctions.

Vahidi said the vote happened “despite the ill-wishers of the nation, including intelligence services and terrorist groups, trying very hard to undermine security”.

He also said that “in spite of the heavy and unprecedented propaganda of the enemies and the use of all tools to discourage and dissuade people from voting, and despite some economic problems, the people showed a magnificent presence”.

Iranian authorities, fearing low turnout, had attempted to rally voters, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying before the election that Iran’s “enemies want to see if the people are present”.

In contrast, a coalition of parties called the Reform Front had said it would not take part in “meaningless, non-competitive and ineffective elections”.

On Monday, Azar Mansouri, the head of the coalition, said she hoped “this election will be a lesson and the authorities in the country will find out before it is too late that the continuation of this path will cause irreparable damage to this country”, according to reformist newspaper Shargh.

45 seats for second round 

Of the 290 seats in parliament, 45 will go to a second round of voting to be held in either April or May, including 16 of 30 seats in the capital Tehran, according to the spokesman for Iran’s elections authority Mohsen Eslami.

Over 200 out of 245 elected members are conservatives or ultra-conservatives, including the two who garnered the most votes in Tehran, Mahmoud Nabavian and Hamid Rasaee.

The current speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, also a conservative, came in fourth while 35-year-old TV host Amir Hossein Sabeti secured the third place.

Centrist candidate Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, who criticised conditions in Iran ahead of the election as “not favourable”, did not gain enough votes to secure a seat.

The parliamentary elections use a list system, with large multi-member constituencies. The highest ranked candidates, up to the number of seats available, are elected.

A candidate must get at least 20 per cent of all valid votes in their constituency to be elected in the first round.

Across the country, 11 women garnered enough votes to enter parliament in the first round of the elections compared to 16 who currently sit in the unicameral legislature.

Eslami also said all the new members had been chosen for the 88-seat Assembly of Experts which is tasked with electing, supervising and, if necessary, dismissing the supreme leader, who has the final say in all matters of state in Iran.

Khamenei, now 84, has held the post since 1989.

The most high-profile absentee of the assembly election was moderate former president Hassan Rouhani who was barred from taking part after 24 years as a member.

Iran’s 2020 parliament was elected during the Covid pandemic with a turnout of 42.57 per cent, at the time the lowest since 1979.

In the 2016 parliamentary elections, turnout was above 61 per cent in the first round.

GENEVA — An aid mission to two hospitals in northern Gaza found horrifying scenes of children dying of starvation, amid dire shortages of food, fuel and medicines, the World Health Organisation said Monday.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency's visits over the weekend to the Al Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals "were the first since early October 2023 despite our efforts to gain more regular access to the north of Gaza".

The findings were "grim", he said on X, adding that "the situation at Al Awda was particularly appalling, as one of the buildings is destroyed".

The Kamal Adwan hospital, the only paediatrics hospital in northern Gaza, was overwhelmed with patients, he said.

"The lack of food resulted in the deaths of 10 children," Tedros said.

In all, the Gaza health ministry has said at least 16 children have died of malnutrition in aid-deprived northern Gaza.

The United Nations warned last week that famine in the Gaza Strip was "almost inevitable" because of the war that has been raging in the Palestinian territory since Hamas fighters carried out an unprecedented surprise attack inside Israel on October 7.

Israel's offensive against the Palestinian territory has killed more than 30,500 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

In addition to the dire lack of food at the two northern hospitals, Tedros also cautioned on X that "the lack of electricity poses a serious threat to patient care, especially in critical areas like the intensive care unit and the neonatal unit".

During the weekend mission, the UN health agency delivered 9,500 litres of fuel to each hospital, along with some essential medical supplies, he said.

"This is a fraction of the urgent lifesaving needs."

The WHO chief reiterated an appeal to Israel to "ensure humanitarian aid can be delivered safely, and regularly".

TEHRAN — Iranian conservatives secured the bulk of seats in elections for a key clerical body and the national legislature, local media reported on Sunday, estimating a record low turnout.

Authorities were still counting ballots two days after Friday's vote for members of parliament and for the Assembly of Experts, which selects the Islamic republic's supreme leader.

The vote was the first since protests broke out over the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurd who had ben arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.

The election, in which a vetting process barred many hopefuls from running, took place with Iran suffering a severe economic crisis deepened by international sanctions.

The official IRNA news agency put the turnout at around "41 per cent" among 61 million eligible voters. No official figure had yet been announced. 

The reformist daily Shargh predicted the next parliament would be "in the hands of radical conservatives" who "took advantage of the opportunity created by the low participation".

Etemad, another reformist newspaper, reported that turnout was lower in Iran's bigger cities than its smaller ones, and that there was a significant number of "blank votes". 

Fears of a low turnout had swirled ahead of the elections after a state TV poll found more than half of respondents were indifferent about the elections.

 ‘Wake-up call’ 

Turnout in the capital Tehran was around 25 per cent, according to Iranian media, which reported that ultraconservative candidates secured 12 of the 30 parliament seats alloted to the capital.

Some seats have gone to a second round, which will take place in either April or May, IRNA reported.

The pro-government Iran Daily said authorities should see the low turnout as a “wake-up call and redouble their efforts to fortify their support base”.

Reformist daily Ham Mihan said that “the soul of the elections was lost” and that turnout was “far from victorious” which could have “political repercussions” for Iran’s system.

Political analyst Mohammad Mohajeri said conservatives and ultraconservatives will emerge as the main winner in the elections due to “sharp decline in the participation rate”.

A record figure of 15,200 hopefuls were competing for seats in the 290-member parliament. 

Another 144 candidates sought a place in the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which is exclusively made up of male Islamic scholars.

By allowing a large pool of candidates, the government wanted “to create local competition and increase participation” to help attract voters, journalist Maziar Khosravi earlier told AFP. 

Iran’s 2020 parliament was elected during the COVID pandemic with a turnout of 42.57 per cent — at the time the lowest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. 

Former moderate president Hassan Rouhani cast his ballot on Friday despite his disqualification from running for the Assembly of Experts after 24 years of membership. 

Another former president, the reformist Mohammad Khatami, was among those who did not vote, according to a coalition of parties called the Reform Front. 

In February, Khatami had said on his official website that Iran is “very far from free and competitive elections”. 

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — As men searched for survivors beneath a Gaza home pummelled by an air strike, Rania Abu Anza gazed down on Sunday at two children who did not survive: Her infant twins.

The Palestinian woman said she had gone through multiple rounds of fertility treatment to achieve her dream of becoming a mother, only to have it taken away by the carnage in the Gaza Strip. 

"Who will call me mother from now on? Who will call me mother?" she said through tears on Sunday as she clutched her lifeless babies, the face of one still spattered with blood. 

The health ministry in Gaza said Wissam and Naeem, not yet six months old, were among 14 people killed in the overnight strike in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which it blamed on Israel. 

All of the dead were members of the Abu Anza family. 

They joined the 30,410 fatalities, most of them women and children, reported by the ministry since Israel launched military operations to eliminate Hamas last October. 

The campaign came in response to the Palestinian group's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, according to an AFP tally of official figures. 

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to AFP's request for comment on the Rafah strike. 

'All of them children' 

While Rania Abu Anza waited to bury her son and daughter, back at the rubble of the family home men shouted the names of those they hoped had survived: "Yasser! Ahmed! Sajjar!" 

Israel says its campaign is intended to eliminate Hamas fighters, but Shehda Abu Anza, who said the home belonged to his uncle, insisted it housed only civilians. 

“They were sleeping at eleven-o-clock at night. All of them children. Honestly there was no military presence in the house, only civilians,” he said. 

“No soldiers, only civilians.” 

Another relative, Arafat Abu Anza, bemoaned the lack of equipment to extract possible survivors. 

“There are 15 people in the house... I’m cleaning the area. We are trying to extract people, to see where they are. Four floors fell.” 

Nearly 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge in Rafah, raising fears of mass casualties should Israel go ahead with a planned invasion of the city. 

Mediators are trying to lock in a truce that would at least temporarily halt the fighting before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins on March 10 or 11, depending on the lunar calendar. 

A senior Hamas official told AFP the group had sent a delegation to Cairo, and Egyptian state-linked media said envoys from the United States and Qatar had also arrived for talks on Sunday. 

Any deal will come too late for Rania Abu Anza, who recounted the chaos of the strike and how she was told her children were gone. 

“I started shouting, ‘My children, my children,’” she said. 

ANTALYA, Turkey — Turkish Cypriots will not sit at any negotiating table unless their sovereignty and equal status is recognised, the leader of the breakaway self-declared state in northern Cyprus told AFP on  Sunday.

This year marks the 50th anniversary since an Athens-backed coup aimed at uniting Cyprus with Greece triggered a Turkish invasion that divided the island in 1974.

Only Ankara recognises the statehood of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which was proclaimed by Turkish Cypriot leaders in 1983.

Efforts to reunify the island have been at a standstill since the last round of United Nations-backed talks collapsed in 2017.

"We are saying, after all these years, and all these fatal negotiations which proved nothing, we are only able to resume or to restart negotiations if our sovereign equality and equal international status is reaffirmed or acknowledged," TRNC leader Ersin Tatar said on the margins of an annual diplomacy gathering in Turkey's Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

"Otherwise, we are not going to sit at the negotiating table again, because there is no point," he added.

For Tatar, European Union member the Republic of Cyprus has walked away from negotiations after the collapse of every reunification attempt.

"Because in the past there have been many attempts where we sat again at the table, and at the end of the day the table collapsed — they walked out as the Republic of Cyprus and we just stayed as a community with no gain whatsoever," he said.

"And every time we sit [at talks] we lose something. That's how we feel," he said.

"So unless we get our sovereignty right, the acknowledgement of our sovereignty, we are not going to get involved in any negotiations."

Tatar on Sunday also ruled out any prospect of reunification for the divided island.

"There is no hope for reunification. We are talking about a two-state solution. This is our new policy after many many years of unfortunately fruitless negotiations," he said.

Tatar said that despite political impediments, the TRNC was able to extend its relationship with many countries with Turkey’s support.

“Obviously we have difficulties, but we have no alternative.

“The alternative is to give up, and we will never give up because giving up sovereignty and being basically amalgamated into a pure Greek republic would mean that that would be the end of us.”

After years of tension over immigration, energy rights and maritime borders, Greece and Turkey restarted high-level talks in December when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid his first visit to Athens since 2017.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is set to visit Ankara in May.

Asked if Turkish-Greek rapprochement could have a positive impact on the island, Tatar said he hoped Greece would say to the Greek Cypriots that “enough is enough, let’s wake up to the reality of Cyprus that there are two peoples and the states”.

“And the best way forward after all these years is cooperation of the two states so that we can have prosperity and enjoy the resources of the eastern Mediterranean,” he added.

“I think if we were to find a solution, Cyprus can be probably bigger [economically] than Dubai.”

Tatar said the Turkish Cypriots could not forget about past events which triggered the Turkish military operation five decades ago.

“In 1974 Turkey came in with troops, and now we will be celebrating the 50th year in July. So it’s not easy for us to forget all this, especially with Europe now in Gaza” where Israel and Hamas are engaged in a nearly five-month war.

“Therefore, we have to be very careful.”