Global News

By Jay DESHMUKH AFP | Posted by TOE Hamas said Friday it had agreed to a deal announced by US President Donald Trump to end the war with Israel, that includes it handing over its weapons to a Palestinian governing committee and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Israel did not immediately comment on the announcement, but shortly beforehand an Israeli political source had told AFP the proposed agreement did not “satisfactorily” address Israeli demands for the full demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip. The source also said that “the issue of Gaza did not come up at all” in this week’s meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump in Washington. The Palestinian Islamist group’s weapons have been one of the key sticking points in implementing a ceasefire deal in place since October, but Trump announced late Thursday an agreement for Hamas’s “complete disarmament”, calling it a critical st...

By Lucía DIAZ AFP | Posted by TOE Madrid said on Thursday it would despatch soldiers to Ceuta to ensure security after hundreds of migrants entered Spain’s north African exclave from neighbouring Morocco and hundreds more headed there. The Spanish government’s delegation in the enclave told AFP that the bodies of nine migrants who died while trying to reach Ceuta by swimming had been recovered. Migration from Morocco into Spain’s two north African territories, Ceuta and Melilla, has long been a politically sensitive issue between the two countries, as thousands cross the border at times. Italy called on Thursday for Spain to be suspended from Europe’s open-borders Schengen zone, prompting a backlash from Spain, which summoned the Italian envoy to Madrid. AFP reporters saw a stream of adults and children, most of them soaked, entering the town of Ceuta after having swum there. Discarded flotation rings and clothes were discarded on the shore n...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Congo said a Rwandan armed group operating in eastern Congo had signed a protocol committing to ‌disarmament, but Rwanda rejected the move as inconsistent with a U.S.-brokered ‌peace agreement between the two countries. • Congo’s government said the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of ​Rwanda (FDLR), a group founded by ethnic Hutu fighters including some linked to the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, had signed a protocol on disarmament, demobilisation and cantonment. • The FDLR is a central issue in a peace deal signed by Congo ‌and Rwanda in Washington ⁠last year aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Congo. The agreement commits the parties to implement a plan providing for ⁠the neutralisation of the FDLR and the disengagement of Rwandan forces in eastern Congo, making progress on the group a key test of the deal. • Rwanda has ​long accused ​Congo of cooperating with the group, ​while Kinshasa accuses Kigali of backin...

BY RODNEY MUHUMUZA REUTERS | POSTED BY TOE Authorities in Uganda declared the East Africa nation free of  Ebola  on Tuesday following the discharge of the country’s last patient in mid-June, a delicate milestone as the virus continues to plague neighboring Congo. Uganda has maintained since the outset that its cases were linked to  the larger outbreak  in eastern Congo’s remote province of Ituri, which borders Uganda. The first cases in Uganda were  Congolese who crossed the border  to seek treatment for an unknown illness before it was known they had Ebola, health authorities have said. After what health officials believe was weeks of transmission, Congo announced its outbreak on May 15, the same day that Uganda confirmed two Ebola cases — including a man who had already died. While a total of 20 cases were reported in Uganda, health authorities say there is currently no indication of further spread within the country. The ...

By DYEPKAZAH SHIBAYAN, Associated Press Gunmen attacked a community in northwestern Nigeria, killing at least 30 people and injuring several others, residents said Monday, in the latest violence in the conflict-hit region. The attack occurred late Sunday night in the Naridon village in Kaduna state’s Kaura council area, said Derek Christopher, chairman of the civil society group Southern Kaduna Peace and Security Network. “The same community was attacked last year around this time,” Christopher said in a statement, suggesting that the government has abandoned any intention of protecting the area from attacks by armed groups. “I don’t know who these people have left to fight for them,” he said. Raphael Joshua, a resident who was helping the injured, told The Associated Press that bodies of the victims had been deposited at a nearby hospital and that arrangements were being made for their burials. The commissioner for home affairs and internal security in Kaduna Stat...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Five Bosnian climbers died on Russia’s Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, ‌after being caught in a violent storm, but the ‌bodies of three people have not yet been evacuated due to bad ​weather, RIA Novosti reported on Sunday citing Russian authorities. Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has said rescuers evacuated the bodies of two dead climbers who were located on the mountain at an altitude of ‌5,350 metres (17,550 feet), after ⁠first saving two other climbers who were evacuated from the mountain and taken for medical ⁠care. The regional branch of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation said rescuers had recovered the bodies of three more deceased ​climbers but ​that they have not yet ​been evacuated due to ‌bad weather, RIA Novosti reported. Though the Russian authorities did not specify their nationality, the regional law enforcement agencies told RIA Novosti the climbers who died on Elbrus came from Bosnia...

By AFP | Posted by TOE Iran passed another night without US airstrikes on Sunday, as Washington paused a war nearing its fifth month and reports emerged that concerns over dwindling munitions were restraining plans for further escalation. The lull has revived hopes of a return to negotiations after nearly two weeks of consecutive nightly US bombardments, although US media reported the pause could also reflect pressure on stockpiles of Patriot interceptors and other defensive weapons. Fighting over the strategic Strait of Hormuz derailed diplomatic efforts between Washington and Tehran, but the conflict then expanded beyond the vital energy corridor to include attacks on US bases, regional shipping and Gulf allies. Iran’s army warned on Sunday that the war would widen even further if the US chose to press ahead with attacks, ahead of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington on Tuesday. “If the Americans once again fall for the Zi...

By AFP | Posted by TOE Ukrainian drones struck a Siberian oil refinery in a fresh wave of strikes Saturday, as Kazakhstan’s president told Russia’s Vladimir Putin the Ukraine war should end during a forum in Siberia’s Omsk.  In occupied Ukraine, Russian-installed authorities said a Ukrainian strike had killed 12 people at a seaside “tourist camp”, as well as one more in a Moscow-held town and two in Russian border villages. Kyiv said Russian attacks had killed five people in eastern and southern Ukraine, and two crew members were missing after a Russian strike on a cargo ship carrying corn. The deaths come as the UN has warned of civilians dying in larger numbers recently in the almost 4.5-year war.  Moscow said Ukraine — which has intensified its retaliatory strikes — launched more than 300 drones into Russia Saturday, including on far-flung regions.  The governor of Siberia’s Tyumen region said a l...

By Associated Press | Posted by TOE A  suicide bomber backed by gunmen attacked  a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan, killing 15 members of the security forces, the military said Friday. In a statement, the military said troops repelled the overnight assault in Tank, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and killed 12 militants. The military blamed the attack on the  Pakistani Taliban , known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers. Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing sanctuary to TTP militants, an allegation Kabul denies. There was no immediate comment from the group. According to the military, the attackers attempted to storm the checkpoint but were pushed back by security forces before ramming an explosives-laden vehicle into the perimeter wall, triggering a powerful blast that severely damaged the checkpoint. The military said those ...

By Ahmed Kingimi Reuters Armed bandits riding motorcycles killed at least 24 farmers and ​wounded several others in an ‌attack on remote farming villages in northwest Nigeria’s Zamfara state, residents told Reuters on Thursday. The attackers stormed communities in the Sauna district ‌of ​the Talata Mafara local ⁠government area at ⁠about 1300 GMT on Tuesday and opened fire on people working on their farms, residents told Reuters. “They killed at ​least 24 innocent farmers. We are still counting the losses,” resident ⁠Auwal Sani said by ⁠phone. Zamfara is at the centre ​of a security crisis in Nigeria’s northwest, ​where armed gangs locally known as ‌bandits frequently raid villages, kidnap residents for ransom and steal livestock. Residents said the gunmen travelled nearly 50 km (31 ⁠miles) along the Mayanchi-Anka highway, a key trade route, before reaching Sauna without encountering security ⁠forces. Police and ‌military authorities were not ⁠immediately avai...

BY AP | POSTED BY TOE More than 1,000 people have died in the Ebola outbreak in Congo, according to Africa’s top health body, a grim toll in the fastest Ebola outbreak in history, as conflict, community resistance and an uneven response fuel its spread. Speaking at a health summit in Ghana on Wednesday, Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said 1,031 deaths have been confirmed. “These are people dying. They are dying because we don’t have vaccines, we don’t have medicine, we don’t have funding,” he added. The latest update from Congo’s Ministry of Health showed that as of Monday, 2,473 cases had been recorded in the latest outbreak. At least 737 patients were in isolation or hospitalized, it said. The outbreak, which was declared on May 15, is unlike most previous Ebola outbreaks because the Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or treatments. It h...

BY HANNA ARHIROVA AP | POSTED BY TOE President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday named a young major general, Mykhailo Drapatyi, as the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military after days of street protests, marking the biggest shake-up in the country’s military ‌leadership since its war with Russia began. President  Volodymyr Zelenskyy  on Tuesday fired Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief of  Ukraine’s armed forces  and named his replacement, following days of mass protests in Kyiv, the country’s capital, and other cities across the nation demanding his removal. It was the  second major change  Zelenskyy has made under street pressure, after protests last summer forced him to undo a law weakening Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs. Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Drapatyi as  the new army chief , according to a statement on social media. “Our shared wish is one — victory over the enemy and conditions at the front a...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Militants linked to al Qaeda and a Tuareg-led separatist group ambushed a military convoy in northern Mali over the weekend, and a source close to the rebels said more than 50 soldiers and allied Russian fighters were killed and others taken hostage.  The attack marked the latest in a series of escalating assaults by the two groups, which joined forces for nationwide attacks in April that killed the defence minister and hit the airport in the capital Bamako, and launched a second wave this month aimed at seizing the town of Anefis. The incident occurred on Saturday between Anefis and the city of Gao in the north, according to statements from Mali’s armed forces, the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), and the al Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM). Mali’s army said the ambush happened in the Tabrichat area and was followed by retaliatory airstrikes that killed at least 20 insurgents. The FLA statement said ...

By AFP | Posted by TOE Russian strikes killed one person and wounded 13 others in Ukraine’s capital on Sunday after Kyiv launched a deadly wave of drones that struck e-commerce warehouses in Russia. The latest bombardment highlights a dual challenge for Ukraine in its fifth year of war, facing almost daily Russian attacks alongside rare domestic political instability triggered by a sudden wartime shakeup of its military leadership. AFP journalists in Kyiv heard explosions moments after the Ukrainian air force warned residents via Telegram of incoming ballistic missiles. One of the explosions was so powerful it set off alarms of cars parked in the city centre, an AFP journalist said. Ukraine’s state emergency services said on Telegram that one person was killed and 13 others wounded in the attack that police said had targeted six districts. According to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko and local authorities, an apartment building in the Solomianskyi distri...

By Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Enas Alashray Reuters An Israeli airstrike killed at least eight Palestinians and wounded 20 attending a funeral in Nuseirat in the ​central Gaza Strip on Friday for a person killed by another Israeli strike on ‌the area earlier in the day, Gaza health officials said. Those deaths, along with at least three Palestinians killed in separate Israeli airstrikes elsewhere in the enclave, brought Friday’s toll to at least 12, medics said. Hamas condemned the ​Nuseirat strike as a “brutal massacre” against mourners and urged mediators, as well as the ​United Nations, to act to halt Israeli attacks in Gaza. Asked about the attack ⁠in Nuseirat, the Israeli military said it struck a cell belonging to the Islamic Jihad ​militant group, which holds sway in parts of the enclave along with Hamas. The military said it was “aware ​of the claims that several uninvolved individuals were harmed as a result of the strike”. ISRA...

By DPA | Posted by TOE Uganda discharged its last Ebola patient – a citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo who has fully recovered – the Ugandan Health Ministry said on Thursday on X. It said the Congolese patient can now return home. The discharge triggered a 42-day period required under international guidelines after which Uganda can declare the Ebola outbreak over, provided no new cases occur. Still, the health ministry urged the public to remain alert for possible Ebola symptoms such as fever, vomiting, diarrhoea or unexplained bleeding. Situation in the Congo While Uganda is hoping for an end to the outbreak, the virus continues to spread in neighbouring Congo. Since mid-May, more than 2,000 people there have been confirmed to have contracted Ebola. The Congolese Information Ministry said the number of confirmed cases currently stands at 2,073, including 796 deaths. At present, 737 patients are being treated in hospitals and isolation centr...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days, ​UN agencies said on Thursday, as refugees from the ‌war-torn country continue to make perilous maritime journeys in search of safety and better opportunities. “According to preliminary information, the two vessels departed from ​Myanmar’s Rakhine State in late June carrying mostly Rohingya ​passengers, reportedly including some who had travelled from refugee ⁠camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh,” the International Organization for Migration ​and the UN Refugee Agency said in a joint statement, saying ​more than 500 were feared dead. Two boats carrying more than 500 people may have capsized off the coast of Myanmar in recent days, ​UN agencies said on Thursday, as refugees from the ‌war-torn country continue to make perilous maritime journeys in search of safety and better opportunities. “According to preliminary inform...

Nine killed in Pakistan-administered Kashmir clashes By Tariq Maqbool Reuters | Posted by TOE Clashes between security forces and supporters of a ‌banned protest group in Pakistan-administered Kashmir killed ‌nine people on Tuesday, officials said, a day before ​the group planned a march against controversial electoral arrangements ahead of regional elections later this month. The violence stems from a dispute over 12 seats ‌reserved in the ⁠regional assembly for refugees who live elsewhere in Pakistan, a system protesters ⁠say dilutes local representation. Poonch Divisional Commissioner Waheed Khan said protesters blocked a security convoy and attacked ​officials in ​the Poonch sector. “Police ​and security officials responded ‌in self-defence,” Khan told Reuters. Six protesters and one police officer were killed in Tararkhal, while a protester and a security official died in a separate clash in Rawalakot, he said. The Joint ‌Action Committee (J...

By Clement Bonnerot Reuters Congo’s AFC/M23 rebels have used a small Ebola outbreak in territory they control to showcase their ability to govern, mounting a response largely separate from authorities in Kinshasa and supported in part by neighbouring Rwanda, according to response teams and official documents. The response has highlighted how the rebels have extended ‌parallel administrative structures into areas captured during a lightning advance last year. Analysts, however, say the war-torn country’s fragmented response could complicate containment efforts should the outbreak spread further. Reuters reviewed documents ‌from Congo’s Health Ministry and spoke to eight sources involved in the Ebola response in rebel-held areas, including one AFC/M23 official, two members of the technical coordination committee for the response and five aid workers, most of whom spoke on condition ​of anonymity because they feared being seen as legitimising the rebel group...

By ANTON L. DELGADO and JINTAMAS SAKSORNCHAI, Associated Press  A huge fire tore through a music bar in Bangkok overnight, killing at least 27 people and leaving 25 hospitalized in critical condition in the Thai capital’s most deadly blaze in 17 years. Photos from the Rong Beer Na Ladprao bar in a northern part of the Thai capital showed people fleeing as flames shot out the single-story building and thick black smoke billowed into the sky. Shoes lost and scattered as their owners sought to flee could be seen in pictures from the aftermath of the tragedy. Bangkok city officials said the fire broke out shortly before midnight Sunday, and it was about half an hour until firefighters brought it under control. By daylight Monday morning, the site had been cordoned off as dozens of Thai forensic officers combed through the burned remains for clues about what caused the fire. The building’s street-facing windows had been blown out and debris littered the sidewalk, in...

By Associated Press | Posted by TOE Typhoon Bavi  weakened to a severe tropical storm after making landfall in eastern  China’s  Zhejiang province but was still bringing strong winds and heavy rain to eastern China on Sunday. It weakened early Sunday with maximum sustained winds of around 101 kph (63 mph) near its center, according to China’s national weather center, and is expected to move northwestward across eastern China. Bavi passed north of  Taiwan  on Saturday but did not make a direct landfall. Taiwan’s fire department said at least 134 people across the island were injured as of 7 a.m. Sunday, some sustaining injuries while riding motorcycles or bicycles under strong winds or due to slippery road surfaces. Strong winds and heavy rain are expected to impact many eastern Chinese cities on Sunday, China’s National Meteorological Center said. Shanghai evacuated more than 290,000 people from at-risk areas, state media reported. ...

 By Associated Press | Posted by TOE An islandwide blackout struck  Cuba  on Friday for the  second time this week  as the nation of nearly 10 million people grapples with a crumbling power grid and fuel shortages stemming from a U.S. energy blockade. While total blackouts have become increasingly common in the Caribbean country, it’s unusual for back-to-back ones to hit just days apart. Cuba’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on X. Authorities in Cuba said the cause of the blackout was a “fluctuation in the parameters” following a failure in a line connecting the provinces of Santa Clara and Sancti Spíritus. The electrical grid in Cuba is particularly fragile, both due to the lack of maintenance of its aging infrastructure — some power plants are over 30 years old — and the scarcity of the fuels on which it depends. “It has been another very difficult week under the impact of the energy blockade: two disconnections of the National E...

By AFP | Posted by TOE The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is the “fastest growing” ever, African health authorities said Thursday, as the World Health Organization said it had killed 600 people. Updated numbers issued by the UN health agency showed there have been 1,759 confirmed cases in DR Congo since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, including 600 confirmed deaths. “This is the fastest growing Ebola outbreak ever, not only among the previous Bundibugyo outbreaks, but all the different viruses that are causing Ebola,” Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) told reporters. The deadliest Ebola outbreak — in 2013-16 in West Africa — had 994 cases in the first six weeks, compared to 1,596 in the current one, he said.  “Unfortunately the virus is still ahead of our response. It’s moving faster than deployi...

By Humeyra Pamuk, Gram Slattery and Tala Ramadan Reuters | Posted by TOE Iran says it attacked “US bases and strategic centres” in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar after the US bombed Iranian cities for a second consecutive night. The US attacks have killed 14 people and wounded 78 over two days with blasts reported in Iranian cities along the Strait of Hormuz, including Bushehr, Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, and Sirik. The U.S. military said on Wednesday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war. The latest round of attacks, which the U.S. said was carried ‌out in response to Tuesday’s assault on three cargo ships transiting the strait, came hours after President Donald Trump said he believed an interim ceasefire with Iran to be “over.” “U.S. Central Command ‌forces have started conducting additional strike...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Sudan’s RSF forces carried out mass killings, abductions of women and girls, mass gang rapes and forced starvation in a city they besieged and captured last year, as part of an intentional policy amounting to genocide, a UN probe said on Wednesday. The Rapid Support Forces, which are battling the Sudanese army in a civil war, committed the crimes in al-Fashir in north Darfur, which they captured last year after a long siege, the UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan found. Survivors described to the mission being raped in rooms where bodies of recently killed civilians, including their own family members, were still lying on the ground. The report found that the RSF and allies committed the war crime of starvation by imposing a prolonged siege on the city, impeding relief supplies, and shelling food production systems. The RSF has denied such abuses in over three years of civil war, saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies ​a...

By Dave Sherwood and Ayose Naranjo Reuters Scattered protests broke out across Havana on Tuesday evening, with residents banging pots, honking horns and shouting “turn on the lights” as millions ‌of Cubans remained without power amid a six-month-long U.S. fuel blockade. Cuba experienced a nationwide outage on ‌Monday — its third this year — but while authorities said most of the country had been reconnected to the island’s grid by late ​Tuesday, many remained in the dark and without electricity as the island doesn’t have enough fuel. The country’s grid operator UNE said it had reconnected the grid from Pinar del Rio, in far western Cuba, to Holguin in the east. Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city, remained disconnected and without power, authorities said. The U.S. in January ‌cut off Cuba’s fuel supply, then ⁠imposed fresh sanctions that have prompted an exodus of foreign businesses and a near-complete collapse o...

By ABDUL SATTAR AP | Posted by TOE Dozens of militants attacked a police post overnight in southwestern  Pakistan,  triggering an intense gunbattle that killed nine police officers and wounded some others, officials said Tuesday in the latest escalation of militant violence in the region where insurgents have stepped up attacks on security forces. The attack took place in a remote area of Ziarat district in Balochistan province, police said, without providing further details. The assailants also abducted eight police officers, but all were later recovered by security forces, said Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government. He said a subsequent clearance operation by security forces ended with 15 militants killed. Rind said intelligence-based operations against militants would continue and vowed that authorities would respond decisively to any such attacks on security forces. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack, though...