Author: AFP

In their home in war-devastated Gaza City, Iman Farhat and her husband cherish the “paradise” brought by their newly-adopted baby, one of many orphans in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas. Wrapping five-month-old Jannah in a brightly coloured blanket, Farhat gently sang as she rocked her to sleep. “I chose Jannah just as she was,” the new mother said smiling, explaining the couple simply wanted to adopt a young child without preference for gender or physical appearance. “Her name was Massa, and I officially changed her name from Massa to Jannah,” which…

Kyiv will propose an aerial and naval ceasefire with Russia during talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, a Ukrainian official told AFP on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has floated the proposal as a way to initiate talks to halt more than three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “We do have a proposal for a ceasefire in the sky and ceasefire at sea because these are the ceasefire options that are easy to install and to monitor and it’s possible to start with them,” the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. Zelensky, whose officials are…

The Palestinian Authority on Monday said Israel’s decision to halt the electricity supply to Gaza was “an escalation in the genocide” in the war-ravaged territory. The Palestinian foreign ministry said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the Israeli Ministry of Energy’s decision to cut electricity to the Gaza Strip, considering it an escalation in the genocide, displacement and humanitarian disaster in Gaza”, which is controlled by Hamas and not the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

The German government said Monday that Israel’s decision to halt aid deliveries and cut off the electricity supply to Gaza could prompt a fresh humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory. Referring to the decision to stop aid, foreign ministry spokeswoman Kathrin Deschauer told a regular press conference Gaza was “again threatened with a food shortage”. “We note with great concern the cutting off of electricity and the discussion about stopping the water supply,” she said. “Such steps are or would be unacceptable and incompatible with (Israel’s) obligations under international law,” Deschauer added. She said that Germany “calls on the Israeli…

Russia on Sunday claimed the capture of a village in Ukraine’s Sumy region after mounting a cross-border offensive while battling Ukrainian troops in its Kursk region. The defence ministry said in a briefing that its forces had “liberated” the small village of Novenke in Sumy region near the border with Kursk region.

Greece’s parliament on Friday rejected a no-confidence motion brought against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government over its handling of the country’s worst rail disaster in 2023. Following two days of acrimonious debates and mass protests, the chamber’s deputies voted against the motion, brought by the main opposition socialist Pasok party, by 157 to 136 lawmakers.

A Pakistani man has been charged with murder after allegedly shooting the administrator of a community WhatsApp group who removed him from the chat, police said Saturday. Mushtaq Ahmed was shot dead on Thursday evening in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that borders Afghanistan, which has a history of bloody sectarian violence. A man named only as Ashfaq has been charged with his murder, according to police documents seen by AFP and a local police official. Mushtaq allegedly kicked Ashfaq out of the WhatsApp group following an argument, according to a statement by Mushtaq’s brother seen by…

Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani has warned that an attack on Iran’s Gulf coast nuclear facilities would leave countries across the region without water. In an interview with right-wing United States media personality Tucker Carlson, who is close to US President Donald Trump, the premier said Doha had simulated the effects of an attack, The sea would be “entirely contaminated” and Qatar would “run out of water in three days”, he said. The construction of reservoirs since then had increased water capacity, he added, but the risk remained for “all of us” in the region.…

International support grew on Saturday for an Arab counterproposal to US President Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and displace its residents, with Muslim nations endorsing it and European governments giving their backing. Unlike the Trump plan, the Arab proposal aims to rebuild Gaza without displacing the territory’s 2.4 million inhabitants, who endured more than 15 months of devastating conflict before a fragile ceasefire took effect on January 19. The 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation formally adopted the counterproposal at an emergency meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, three days after the Arab League ratified it at a summit in…

An apparently drunken man somehow survived after being struck Saturday by a cargo train while sleeping along train tracks in Peru, local authorities said. “The train knocked him over but through some miracle did not kill him,” General Javier Avalos, a security official for the town of Ate in Lima province, told AFP. “He apparently was in a state of intoxication, fell asleep along the train tracks and did not feel the train coming,” Avalos said. The train was on a regular run toward the Peruvian Andes when it struck 28-year-old Juan Carlos Tello, he said, adding that it stopped…