DOHA: Qatar announced on Wednesday it would send an additional 15 million liters of fuel to the war-battered Gaza Strip, where a fragile ceasefire has halted the Israel-Hamas war.
The small energy-rich Gulf country would be “supplying the Gaza Strip with 15 million liters of fuel, bringing total Qatari fuel support to 30 million liters,” the official Qatar News Agency said.
A truce agreement brokered by Qatari, US and Egyptian mediators came into force on January 19, pausing fighting in the 15-month war that has devastated the Palestinian territory.
As the guns fell silent, humanitarian aid began pouring into Gaza, home to more than two million people, the vast majority of them displaced at least once by the war.
On January 20, Qatar said it would send 1.25 million liters of fuel per day to Gaza for 10 days.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, estimated in November that it needed some 160,000 liters of fuel per day for its basic humanitarian operations in Gaza.
The Israeli war on Gaza has caused a dire humanitarian crisis and the collapse of the already fragile health system in the besieged Palestinian territory.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned in late December that restoring Gaza’s health system would be “a complex and difficult task.”
Hospitals in particular are short of fuel.
“Without fuel there are no humanitarian operations at all,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian Territories, said in late November.
Israel controls everything that enters or leaves the Gaza Strip, and has imposed restrictions on goods that it considers could be used for military purposes, including fuel.
The UN and aid groups have criticized the restrictions applied to humanitarian aid.
Qatar says sending Gaza additional 15 million liters of fuel
https://arab.news/jw5wx
Qatar says sending Gaza additional 15 million liters of fuel
- Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are short of fuel
- Israel imposed restrictions on goods that it considers could be used for military purposes, including fuel
Somali president visits city claimed by breakaway region
MOGADISHU: Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Friday visited a provincial capital claimed by the breakaway region of Somaliland -- the first visit there by a sitting president in over 40 years.
The visit to Las Anod, the administrative capital of the Sool region, comes amid heightened diplomatic tensions in the Horn of Africa after Israel officially recognised Somaliland, drawing strong opposition from Mogadishu.
Mohamud was attending the inauguration of the president of the newly created Northeast State, which became Somalia's sixth federal state in August.
It was the first visit by a Somali president since 1984.
Somalia is a federation of semi-autonomous states, some of which have fraught relations with the central government in Mogadishu.
The Northeast State comprises the regions of Sool, Sanaag and Cayn, all territories Somaliland claims as integral to its borders.
Somaliland had controlled Las Anod since 2007 but was forced to withdraw in 2023 after violent clashes with Somali forces and pro-Mogadishu militias left scores dead.
Mohamud's visit "is a symbol of strengthening the unity and efforts of the federal government to enforce the territorial unity of the Somali country and its people", the Somali president's office said.
