Libyan factions have not reached final agreement on central bank crisis, UN Libya Mission says

Former Governor of the Central Bank of Libya, Sadiq Al-Kabir speaks during an interview with Reuters in Tripoli, Libya, Sept. 1, 2021. (Reuters)
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Updated 12 September 2024
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Libyan factions have not reached final agreement on central bank crisis, UN Libya Mission says

  • Libya’s two legislative chambers agreed this month to jointly appoint a central bank governor, potentially defusing a battle for control of the country’s oil revenue
  • Libyan oil exports fell around 81 percent last week as the National Oil Corporation canceled cargoes amid a crisis over control of Libya’s central bank and oil revenue

TRIPOLI: The UN Libya mission said on Thursday that Libyan factions did not reach a final agreement in the talks aimed at resolving the central bank crisis that has slashed oil output and exports.
The two-day consultations to solve the crisis hosted by UNSMIL were between delegates from the Benghazi-based House of Representatives, the High Council of State and the Presidential Council, which are both based in Tripoli.
However, the Mission statement did not mention the presence of the delegation of the Presidential Council on the second day of the talks.
The Presidential Council, based in Tripoli, had only rarely intervened directly in Libyan politics before its head Mohammed Al-Menfi moved in August to replace veteran central bank Governor Sadiq Al-Kabir, which led eastern factions to order a halt of oil flows across Libyan oilfields in protest.
Libya’s two legislative chambers agreed this month to jointly appoint a central bank governor, potentially defusing a battle for control of the country’s oil revenue.
The Mission welcomed on Thursday the progress made between the two legislative bodies “on the principles and timeline that should govern the interim period leading to the appointment of a new governor and board of directors for the Central Bank.”
Libyan oil exports fell around 81 percent last week, Kpler data showed on Wednesday, as the National Oil Corporation canceled cargoes amid a crisis over control of Libya’s central bank and oil revenue.


Second phase of polio vaccination campaign begins in Gaza, WHO says

Updated 5 sec ago
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Second phase of polio vaccination campaign begins in Gaza, WHO says

GENEVA: The World Health Organization said on X on Monday that the second phase of a polio vaccination campaign had started in central Gaza.
Aid groups carried out a first round of vaccinations last month, after a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus in August, in the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

Iran top diplomat meets senior Houthi official in Oman: ministry

Updated 49 min 28 sec ago
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Iran top diplomat meets senior Houthi official in Oman: ministry

  • Araghchi’s visit to the Omani capital is the latest in a series of diplomatic trips in the region

TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met in Muscat on Monday with Mohammed Abdelsalam, a senior official from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement, according to his office.
The foreign ministry released pictures of their talks during Araghchi’s visit to the Omani capital, the latest in a series of diplomatic trips in the region following Israel’s vow to retaliate against an Iranian missile attack.
Araghchi held a “meeting and discussion of Mohammad Abdelsalam, the spokesman and chief negotiator of the Yemen National Salvation Government,” read the photo caption, referring to the Houthi administration.
Iran fired 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-aligned militant leaders in the region and a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israel has since vowed to respond.
Yemen’s Houthis, along with the Palestinian Hamas group in Gaza and Hezbollah, make part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” of militant groups arrayed against Israel.
Araghchi’s visit to Muscat came after a trip to Baghdad.
Last week, he visited Qatar and Saudi Arabia where talks mainly revolved around establishing a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza as well as ways to contain the conflict from spreading across the region.
On Sunday, Araghchi reiterated that Iran was “fully prepared for a war situation... but we do not want war, we want peace.”


At least 10 people killed in Israeli strikes at Gaza food distribution center

Updated 14 October 2024
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At least 10 people killed in Israeli strikes at Gaza food distribution center

GAZA: Palestinian medics said on Monday that at least 10 people were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, with casualties including women and children.


Israeli strike on hospital tent camp kills 4 and ignites a fire that burns dozens

Updated 14 October 2024
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Israeli strike on hospital tent camp kills 4 and ignites a fire that burns dozens

  • Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed 20

DEIR AL-BALAH: An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and sent flames sweeping through a packed tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.
The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter nearby that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.
The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal territory have been completely destroyed.
Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north heeded Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and have not been allowed to return.
That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there a combatant — a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law. The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it’s unclear whether it has been adopted.
With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas that has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to strike Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of an all-out regionwide war.
A Hezbollah aerial attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others Sunday, the military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
The Lebanon-based Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defense systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.
Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. With Israel’s advanced air-defense systems, it’s rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles.


Bodies rot in the streets of northern Gaza

Updated 14 October 2024
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Bodies rot in the streets of northern Gaza

  • The United Nations says no food has entered northern Gaza since Oct. 1

DEIR AL-BALAH: A year into the war with Hamas, Israel continues to strike what it says are militant targets in Gaza almost daily. A strike hit a home in the Nuseirat refugee camp late Saturday, killing parents and six children ages 8 to 23, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir Al-Balah. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies there.
“They were safe, while he was sleeping, and he and all his children died,” said the man’s brother, Mohammad Abu Ghali. Women stroked the body bags, in tears.
Israel’s military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas and other armed groups because they operate in densely populated areas.
In northern Gaza, Israeli air and ground forces have been attacking Jabaliya, where the military says militants have regrouped. Over the past year, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to the built-up refugee camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, and other areas.
Israel has ordered the full evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City. An estimated 400,000 people remain in the north after a mass evacuation ordered in the war’s opening weeks. Palestinians fear Israel intends to permanently depopulate the north to establish military bases or Jewish settlements there.
The United Nations says no food has entered northern Gaza since Oct. 1
The military confirmed that hospitals were included in evacuation orders but said it had not set a timetable and was working with local authorities to facilitate patient transfers.
Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service, said the bodies of a “large number of martyrs” remain uncollected from the streets and under rubble.
“We are unable to reach them,” he said, asserting that dogs are eating some remains.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked a year ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Around 100 hostages are still held in Gaza, a third believed to be dead.
Israel’s bombardment and its ground invasion of Gaza have killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and left much of the territory in ruins. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between militants or civilians, but says women and children make up over half the deaths.
Israel says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.