Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will visit Russia on Aug. 12-14, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a diplomatic source.
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CAIRO: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Cairo early Wednesday, an AFP reporter said, as efforts to secure an elusive ceasefire in Gaza were further complicated by a wave of blasts in Lebanon.
On his 10th trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, Blinken will address negotiation efforts with Egyptian officials, according to the US State Department.
Blinken is expected to meet with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and hold a press conference with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, but will not be visiting Israel in this round of diplomacy.
US officials say privately that they do not expect any breakthroughs at Wednesday’s talks in Cairo, but Blinken’s visit will aim to keep up the pressure campaign for a deal between Israel and Hamas.
“He’ll be meeting with Egyptian officials about a number of things, but squarely on the agenda is how we get a proposal that we think would secure agreement from both parties,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
His visit comes after a series of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding about 2,800 in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.
The United States was “not involved” and “not aware of this incident in advance,” according to Miller.
Israel recently announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along the country’s border with Lebanon.
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s Gold Apollo did not make the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday, the company’s founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters on Wednesday.
At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.
Hsu said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand.
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on Sudan’s warring parties to re-engage in negotiations to end a war that has been ongoing for more than 17 months.
“We call for all parties to this conflict to end this violence and refrain from fueling it, for the future of Sudan and for all of the Sudanese people,” Biden said in a statement.
“I call on the belligerents responsible for Sudanese suffering— the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)— to pull back their forces, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and re-engage in negotiations to end this war.”
More than 12,00 people have been killed across Sudan since the war started on April 15, 2023.
The conflict began when competition between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which had previously shared power after staging a coup, flared into open warfare.
Biden said the RSF’s assault is disproportionately harming Sudanese civilians and called on the armed forces to stop “indiscriminate” bombings that are destroying civilian lives and infrastructure.
The US previously determined that the two sides committed war crimes and sanctioned 16 individuals and entities tied to the war.
Biden said the United States will continue to evaluate further atrocity allegations and potential additional sanctions.