AT LEAST four Palestinians have been killed and several others wounded after Israeli forces bombed a residential building sheltering displaced people in Gaza City in a further violation of an October “ceasefire”. The Israeli air attack took place in Gaza City’s Nassr neighbourhood and brought the number of people killed on Monday to at least seven. Footage from the scene showed emergency teams transporting casualties in ambulances as residents carried a body towards the morgue at al-Shifa Hospital. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al Khalili, reporting from Gaza City, said the targeted building had been damaged during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza…
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THE United States has issued new guidelines to US-flagged ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz, calling on them to stay away from Iran’s territorial waters amid tensions between Washington and Tehran. The advisory, released by the US Maritime Administration on Monday, also urged the captains of American ships against granting Iranian forces permission to board US vessels. “If Iranian forces board a US-flagged commercial vessel, the crew should not forcibly resist the boarding party. Refraining from forcible resistance does not imply consent or agreement to that boarding,” the guidelines read. “It is recommended that US-flagged commercial vessels transiting these…
FATAL drone strikes on civilians persist in Sudan’s Kordofan, as the central region has emerged as the latest front line in Sudan’s nearly three-year conflict, the United Nations has said. Addressing the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk painted a grim picture of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has plunged the country into widespread bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe. “We can only expect worse to come” unless decisive steps are taken by the international community to stop the fighting, Turk said,…
A RUBBER boat carrying 55 passengers, including two babies, has overturned off the coast of Libya, the UN migration agency says. The only survivors, two Nigerian women, were rescued by the Libyan authorities on Friday, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) announced on Monday. The boat was carrying migrants and refugees from various African countries, it said. The boat sank after taking on water approximately six hours after departing from the coastal city of al-Zawiya in north-western Libya. The IOM says that almost 500 migrants have been reported dead or missing trying the cross the Mediterranean Sea from Libya so…
ERLING Haaland’s stoppage-time penalty earned Manchester City a dramatic 2-1 win at Liverpool on Sunday to reduce Arsenal’s lead at the top of the Premier League back to six points. City were heading for defeat at Anfield with six minutes to go before Bernardo Silva cancelled out Dominik Szoboszlai’s stunning free-kick to spark an incredible finale. Haaland put City in front from the spot before the visitors had another goal ruled out, and Szoboszlai was sent off in the same incident after a VAR review. Victory was City’s first away to Liverpool in front of a crowd since 2003 and…
HAMAS’s political leader abroad, Khaled Meshaal, has rejected calls to disarm Palestinian factions in Gaza, arguing that stripping weapons from an occupied people would turn them into “an easy victim to be eliminated”. Speaking on the second day of the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on Sunday, Meshaal described the discussion around Hamas handing over its weapons as a continuation of a century-long effort to neutralise Palestinian armed resistance. “In the context that our people are still under occupation, talking about disarmament is an attempt to make our people an easy victim to be eliminated and easily exterminated by Israel,…
IRANIAN human rights activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison, according to her lawyers and a group that supports her. Mohammadi, 53, was on a week-long hunger strike that ended on Sunday, the Narges Foundation said in a statement. It said Mohammadi told her lawyer, Mostafa Nili, in a phone call on Sunday from prison that she had received her sentence on Saturday. “She has been sentenced to six years in prison for gathering and collusion to commit crimes,” Nili told the AFP news agency. She was also…
A BITTER war of words has escalated further after Ethiopia ordered neighbouring Eritrea to “immediately withdraw its troops” from Ethiopian territory, with the pair seemingly inching towards a new conflict. Relations between the two Horn of Africa countries have long been fraught. In recent months, Addis Ababa has accused Eritrea of supporting insurgents on Ethiopian soil — allegations Asmara denies. “Developments over the last few days indicate that the government of Eritrea has chosen the path of further escalation,” Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos told his Eritrean counterpart in a letter dated Saturday. He demanded that Asmara “withdraw its troops…
A SOUTH African man named in a major police corruption probe has died after reportedly shooting himself at a petrol station. Police are now investigating the death of Wiandre Pretorius, 41, who last week said he had survived an assassination attempt. Pretorius’s name had been mentioned at the ongoing corruption inquiry, known as the Madlanga Commission. This was in connection with the 2022 murder of a man, Emmanuel Mbense, allegedly at the hands of police officers. Four of the 12 people named as persons of interest in that killing are now dead themselves, a police spokesperson said. At 22:00 local…
PALESTINIANS in Gaza still struggle to find clean water despite four months of so-called “ceasefire”, waiting hours per day to obtain mere litres. Israeli forces stormed the eastern area of Azzun town, east of Qalqilya, in the occupied West Bank. Wafa, citing local sources, reported that army forces raided the area surrounding the eastern part of the town and seized the house of Marwan Al-Qatish, turning it into military barracks. The forces also blocked the movement of citizens in the area after detaining and interrogating them. Similarly, Israeli forces stormed the village of al-Lubban Asharqiya, south of Nablus. According to…
FORMER US president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton are calling for their congressional testimony on ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to be held publicly to prevent Republicans from politicising the issue. The couple had been ordered to give closed-door depositions before the House Oversight Committee, which is probing the deceased financier’s connections to powerful figures and how information about his crimes was handled. Hillary Clinton will appear for her deposition on February 26, while Bill Clinton will appear on February 27, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in a statement. Democrats…
SOUTH Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen has said he will not seek re-election as the party’s leader in April – a move that may threaten the stability of the coalition government. The DA, South Africa’s second largest party, entered into a coalition with its arch rival the African National Congress in 2024 after the ANC lost its parliamentary majority. Steenhuisen took over leadership of the pro-business DA in 2019 and currently serves as agriculture minister in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government. The 49-year-old was widely expected to run again but was reportedly forced to abandon his bid because of…
THE impact of a flourish of the US president’s pen in Washington a year ago continues to be felt on individual lives some 13,000km (8,000 miles) away in South Africa. There was a collective gulp among some in the health sector here when, hours after he was inaugurated, President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing US aid commitments. For South Africa that meant the potential loss of an estimated $400m (£295m) that the US contributed each year to the country’s HIV programmes – representing about a fifth of what it was spending on the issue. Last year, the government…
FOR decades, football fans in Nigeria have lived in the distant memories of the mid-to-late 90s and the early 2000s. That era had Kanu Nwankwo as an “Invincible” with Arsenal; Sunday Oliseh anchoring the midfield for teams like Juventus and Borussia Dortmund; and Austin Okocha dancing with the ball at the Reebok Stadium. It was a period when Nigerian players were regulars at some of the most hallowed football cathedrals in Europe. But after years of seeing the country’s players relegated to the periphery of the global game, that sense of relevance for Nigerian footballers may have just returned. Ademola…
MIKEL Arteta has apologised to Liam Rosenior after the Chelsea boss accused Arsenal of a lack of respect before their League Cup semi-final clash. Rosenior was angry that Arsenal staff encroached onto the Chelsea half of the pitch during the pre-match warm-up at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday. He was seen shouting for them to stay in their own half and later said, “I’ve never asked my team or coaches to encroach on the opposition’s territory. In that moment, I didn’t think it was right where they were operating; they were affecting our warm-up. “I asked them, maybe not politely,…
THE Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally partially opened this week after two years of Israeli-mandated closure. The news offers relief for many particularly those Palestinians in urgent need of treatment abroad. But for many elderly Palestinians in Gaza, staying in the enclave is an act of survival, resistance, and historical memory. Rafah may be open, but they are not planning to go anywhere. In Kefaya al-Assar’s mind, that decision to stay is an effort to correct what she perceives to have been a historical mistake made by her parents – fleeing their village of Julis, which was…
US President Donald Trump triggered global outrage on Friday after he posted a video depicting Barack Obama, the first Black president in American history, and his wife Michelle as monkeys. Top Democrats condemned the post as “racist,” even as the White House rejected what it called “fake outrage” and said the video posted late Thursday on Trump’s Truth Social account was from an “internet meme.” Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Republican Trump’s 2020 election loss, the Obamas are shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second. The song “The Lion…
EIGHTEEN Senegalese football fans detained in Morocco over “hooliganism” during last month’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) final have begun a hunger strike pending their trial. Lawyer Patrick Kabou said his clients told him they have been “waiting to learn the charges against them since January 18”, the day they were arrested after a heated AFCON final in which Senegal beat Morocco in Rabat. Kabou, speaking to the news agency AFP, said the group complained that police officers had questioned them in French and Arabic, whereas they “only speak Wolof”, their native language. Minutes before the end of last month’s…
A 52-YEAR-OLD fisherman has died after being attacked by a crocodile while fleeing a herd of elephants in eastern Zambia, police say. Dean Nyirenda was returning from a fishing trip with two friends on Wednesday when they bumped into the elephants. They ran away, with Nyirenda diving into a stream near the Luangwa River. “That is when he was attacked by a crocodile by biting his right thigh,” local police chief Robertson Mweemba told journalists. The southern African country has a thriving elephant population and clashes between humans and wildlife have claimed many lives in recent years. Police said Nyirenda…
ATLETICO Madrid advanced to the last four of the Copa del Rey on Thursday with an emphatic 5-0 win at Real Betis as new signing Ademola Lookman scored on his Rojiblanco debut. Diego Simeone’s side join holders Barcelona, 2024 winners Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad in the semi-finals of the cup competition. A barnstorming first-half performance in Seville by Atletico set up the victory as they raced into a 3-0 lead thanks to goals from David Hancko, Giuliano Simeone and Lookman. The 28-year-old Nigerian joined Atletico on deadline day from Serie A outfit Atalanta on a reported 40-million-euro ($47 million)…