Middle East & North Africa

26 February 2024; MEMO: Trade and investments between Turkiye and South Africa are booming, with an increase reported annually, Turkey’s Ambassador to Pretoria said Monday, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The total volume of Turkish investments in South Africa is $32 million. In 2022, it was $ 31 million, which is an increase,” Aysegul Kandas told Anadolu in an interview at her office in the capital, Pretoria.

26 February 2024; MEMO: Israeli officials headed on Monday to Qatar, where the ruling Emir separately met the chief of Hamas, as the enemies in the Gaza war closed in on a ceasefire-and-hostage deal that Washington says is now within reach, Reuters reports.

26 February 2024; MEMO: Public hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s Occupation of Palestine concluded on Monday after a week of oral statements by dozens of countries, including Turkiye, and three international organisations, Anadolu Agency reports.

CAIRO, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Egypt will not allow any threat to Somalia, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday after Ethiopia said it would consider recognising an independence claim by Somaliland in a deal that would give it access to a sea port.

The remarks were the strongest yet made on the issue by Egypt, which already has frosty relations with Ethiopia, and were a sign that Cairo may get involved in a dispute that has raised fresh tensions in the volatile Horn of Africa.

JERUSALEM, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected conditions presented by Hamas to end the war and release hostages that would include Israel's complete withdrawal and leaving Hamas in power in Gaza.

As Israeli planes resumed bombing Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters the Israeli leader's refusal to end the military offensive in Gaza "means there is no chance for the return of the (Israeli) captives."

CAIRO, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- A medic from Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has given first-hand perspective about the challenges and experiences he had while working in a Gaza hospital during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

During a press conference held here Friday, Enrico Vallaperta, an Italian intensive care nurse with the MSF who left Gaza on Thursday, said he had worked in central Gaza's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for several weeks amid very tough and dangerous conditions.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Palestinian death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday, while the Israeli government appeared far from achieving its goals of crushing the militant group and freeing more than 100 hostages.

The level of death, destruction and displacement from the war already is without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet Israeli officials say the fighting is likely to continue for several more months.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — An Israeli strike on the Syrian capital on Saturday destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians, Syrian and Iranian state media reported.

The Syrian army said the building in the tightly guarded western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh was entirely destroyed, adding that the Israeli air force fired the missiles while flying over Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli military did not comment.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Iran said Saturday it had conducted a successful satellite launch into its highest orbit yet, the latest for a program the West fears improves Tehran’s ballistic missiles.

The announcement comes as heightened tensions grip the wider Middle East over Israel’s continued war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and just days after Iran and Pakistan engaged in tit-for-tat airstrikes in each others’ countries.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza protested Saturday outside the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing frustration over his government’s seeming lack of progress in getting the more than 100 captives released as the war in Gaza drags on.