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ALGIERS: Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune sacked his Finance Minister Laaziz Faid on Sunday, without giving details on the reasons behind the decision, state TV reported.
Tebboune appointed Abdelkrim Bou El Zerd to replace him.
GENEVA: More food aid is reaching Gaza but it still remains far from enough to prevent widespread starvation, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) told Reuters on Thursday.
"We're getting a little bit more food in. We're moving in the right direction ... but it's not nearly enough to do what we need to do to make sure that people are not malnourished and not starving," WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain told Reuters in an interview via video link from Jerusalem.
McCain said the WFP is now able to deliver about 100 aid trucks per day into Gaza, but this figure still falls far short of the 600 trucks that were entering daily during the ceasefire.
COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into the enclave, was not immediately available for comment on McCain's remarks. A report released on Friday by the global hunger monitor, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), said that approximately 514,000 people - nearly a quarter of Gaza's population - are currently facing famine conditions in Gaza City and surrounding areas.
Israel has repeatedly dismissed such findings as false and biased in favour of Palestinian militant group Hamas, against which it has been fighting in its almost two-year war.
'UTTER DEVASTATION'
McCain, who visited Deir al Balah and Khan Younis this week - including a clinic supporting children and pregnant and lactating women - highlighted ongoing difficulties in delivering aid to vulnerable populations deep inside Gaza.
"What we saw was utter devastation. It's basically flattened, and we saw people who are very seriously hungry and malnourished," McCain said.
"It proved my point that we need to be able to get deep into it (Gaza) so we can make sure that they can consistently have what they need," she said.
She said that a modest improvement in getting commercial food and supplies into Gaza had helped prices fall, but said that most people still cannot afford food.
McCain said she is hopeful that the WFP will have better access to Gaza after meeting on Wednesday with the Israeli military's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, during which she pressed for unfettered access, more safe routes and guarantees that trucks would not face long delays after clearance is granted.
A military statement said Zamir emphasised Israel's commitment to preventing famine and enabling humanitarian aid to reach Gazans.
The IPC report also warned that famine could spread to the central and southern districts of Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis by the end of September.
McCain described the IPC report as the "gold standard" for measuring food insecurity and urged for a scale-up of aid into the enclave.
Israel dismissed the report as "deeply flawed" and asked the IPC to retract it on Wednesday. The IPC had no immediate comment.
PARIS: A prominent French sports journalist sentenced to seven years in prison in Algeria at the end of June is in “fighting mood” but feels “isolated,” his parents told AFP after visiting their son earlier this month.
Christophe Gleizes, who is being held in the city of Tizi Ouzou, is being detained against the background of escalating political tensions between Paris and its former north African colony.
“Even if his morale is high, even if he is in fighting mood, he feels completely cut off from the world, isolated,” his mother, Sylvie Godard, told AFP in an interview at the Paris offices of media rights campaigners Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Along with his stepfather, Francis, she is calling for the case of her son, the only French journalist currently detained abroad, not to be used to “settle political scores” between France and Algeria.
Gleizes, who specializes in African football and contributes to the top-selling So Foot magazine, was convicted in Algeria of “glorifying terrorism,” a charge his parents said was “totally absurd.”
An appeal has been filed and is expected to be heard in the autumn.
Algeria has also jailed French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, sentenced to five years for damaging national unity.
As well as these two cases, there have been tit-for-tat expulsions of consular staff.
President Emmanuel Macron angered Algiers in July 2024 when he backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front.
Francis Godard described his stepson as a “kind of collateral victim of the bad relations between France and Algeria at the moment.”
“We don’t want Christophe’s case to be used to resolve political issues with which Christophe has nothing to do,” said Sylvie Godard.
JERUSALEM: Israeli forces conducted an airborne raid on a site near the Syrian capital after bombing it several times, Syrian state media reported.
Israel has not confirmed the raid, but Defence Minister Israel Katz said its forces operate "in all combat zones" to ensure the country's security.
If verified, it would be the deepest such operation Israel has carried out inside Syria since an Islamist alliance seized power in Damascus in December.
Israeli jets struck the site near Kisweh, outside Damascus on Tuesday, killing six Syrian soldiers according to the foreign ministry, and bombed it again on Wednesday according to state television.
Quoting a government source, state news agency SANA said soldiers had found "surveillance and eavesdropping devices" in the area before it was hit by Israeli strikes on Tuesday.
A defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the target was a former Syrian military base in Tal Maneh, near Kisweh.
Following the second attack on Wednesday, SANA said Israeli troops were flown into the area to carry out a raid, "the details of which are not yet known, amid continued intensive reconnaissance flights".
On Thursday in a post on X, the Israeli defence minister said: "Our forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel". He did not elaborate.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military declined to comment.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since then, and occupied much of a UN-patrolled demilitarised zone on the Syrian-held side of the armistice line between the two countries.
It has also opened talks with the interim authorities in Damascus.
UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council is set to vote Thursday on the future of the blue helmet peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon, which has faced US and Israeli opposition.
Some 10,800 peacekeepers have been acting as a buffer between Israel and Lebanon since 1978. But the usual renewal of their mandate, which expires Sunday, is facing hostility this year from Israel and its American ally, who want them to leave.
The Council is debating a French-drafted compromise that would keep the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in place until the end of next year while it prepares to withdraw.
France, which oversees the issue at the Security Council and has the support of Beirut, had initially considered a one-year extension and referred simply to an “intention” to work toward a withdrawal of UNIFIL.
But faced with a possible US veto, and following several proposals and a Monday postponement of the vote, the latest draft resolution seen by AFP unequivocally schedules the end of the mission in 16 months.
The Council “decides to extend for a final time the mandate of UNIFIL as set out by resolution 1701 (2006) until 31 December 2026 and to start an orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal from 31 December 2026 and within one year,” the text says.
At that point the Lebanese army will be solely responsible for ensuring security in the country’s south.
With US envoy Tom Barrack saying Tuesday that Washington would approve a one-year extension, it remained unclear what the US position would be come Thursday.
Under a truce that ended a recent war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, Beirut’s army has been deploying in south Lebanon and dismantling the militant group’s infrastructure there.
As part of the ceasefire, and under pressure from Washington, the plan is for Hezbollah’s withdrawal to be complete by the end of the year.
Last week Lebanese President Joseph Aoun called for the UN peacekeepers to remain, arguing that any curtailment of UNIFIL’s mandate “will negatively impact the situation in the south, which still suffers from Israeli occupation.”
The latest draft resolution also “calls on the Government of Israel to withdraw its forces north of the Blue Line” — the UN-established demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel — “including from the five positions held in Lebanese territory.”
