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CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has extended the term of acting central bank governor Hasan Abdalla for a third year, the official gazette said on Monday.
Abdalla, who was head of Cairo-based Arab African International Bank for 16 years, was appointed for an initial year in August 2022 after the surprise resignation of long-serving Tarek Amer. Abdalla’s appointment was renewed in 2023.
BAGHDAD: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has slammed the West, saying that Israel is “committing massacres” in the war in Gaza and using European and American weapons to do so.
Pezeshkian, who spoke in Baghdad at the start of his first visit abroad since taking office, hopes to cement Tehran’s ties to Baghdad.
“The Israeli entity is committing massacres against women, children, young men, and the elderly. They bomb hospitals and schools,” Pezeshkian said.
“All these crimes are being committed by using European and American ammunition and bombs,” he added.
Ahead of Pezeshkian’s arrival, an explosion struck a site near Baghdad International Airport used by the US military on Tuesday night. There were no reported casualties, and the circumstances of the explosion were unclear.
The US Embassy later described it as an “attack” on the Baghdad Diplomatic Services Compound, an American diplomatic facility, and that it was “assessing the damage” and the cause of the explosion. It did not provide further details.
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Wednesday issued sanctions on a Lebanese network it accused of smuggling oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to help fund the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels that the US Treasury Department said were overseen by a senior leader of Hezbollah’s finance team and used profits from illicit LPG shipments to Syria to aid generate revenue for the group.
Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith, in a statement, said Hezbollah “continues to launch rockets into Israel and fuel regional instability, choosing to prioritize funding violence over taking care of the people it claims to care about, including the tens of thousands displaced in southern Lebanon.”
CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Gaza prompted condemnations on Wednesday from across the region and beyond.
The strike hit Al-Mawasi in the southern Gaza Strip, which Israel had designated as a humanitarian zone early in the war.
Egypt condemned the bombardment in the strongest terms.
A statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Emigration and Egyptian Expatriates also called for “intensifying efforts to restore hope to the Palestinian people in achieving self-determination and regaining their freedom.”
Al-Mawasi has been turned into the main displacement and refuge area for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, who have been ordered by the Israeli military to leave their homes.
The Egyptian statement denounced the “continued Israeli massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip in the absence of any effective international action to put an end to such human suffering.”
It said Israeli actions “challenge the credibility of all humanitarian standards and values and constitute a violation of the most basic rules of international humanitarian law and human rights.”
It also said Egypt “considers that the continuation of these crimes and the disregard for the lives of innocents and civilians has become a threat to regional and international peace and security and calls on all global stakeholders to shun the policy of double standards and assume their humanitarian and moral responsibilities to halt this human tragedy immediately.”
The statement said Egypt “reminds all parties that putting an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people in a just manner and restoring regional security and stability will not only be achieved by reaching a full ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, but also by achieving a just and lasting settlement to this conflict — the sole foundation of which is the two-state solution based on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Tor Wennesland, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process since 2021, also condemned the strike, saying international humanitarian law “must be upheld at all times.”
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said a soldier was killed Wednesday when the driver of “a Palestinian truck” rammed into “forces conducting operational activity” in the occupied West Bank.
The suspected assailant was “neutralized” by Israeli forces “and an armed civilian” at the scene of the attack near the Jewish settlement of Givat Assaf, north of Ramallah, an army statement said.
It later identified the dead soldier as 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Geri Gideon Hanghal.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and is separated from the Gaza Strip by Israeli territory, has seen a surge of violence during nearly a year of the Israel-Hamas war, though Palestinian car-ramming attacks have been rare.
The latest incident comes days after a Jordanian truck driver shot dead three Israeli guards at a West Bank crossing with Jordan.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 24 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
The West Bank is home to some three million Palestinians as well as 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements that are illegal under international law.
