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DOHA: “We look forward to holding the Sustainable Development Goals Summit next September, and we see it as a unique and important milestone in our collective efforts,” Sheikha Alya Ahmed bin Saif Al-Thani, Qatar’s permanent representative to the UN, said during the Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development Follow-up 2023.
She highlighted Qatar’s continued efforts to offer help and conduct development initiatives to benefit millions of people worldwide during the meeting, Qatar News Agency reported on Sunday.
Qatar contributed more than $551 million for development projects and humanitarian aid in 2021, she added, while it was reiterated that in implementation of the goals of sustainable development, partnership for development was a top priority.
Sheikha Alya hailed the strategic partnership between Qatar and the UN, which culminated in the opening of the UN House in Doha, in March.
She went on to say that Qatar was honored to host the fifth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries that month, during which Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani offered a financial contribution of $60 million.
Qatar is the founder of the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network, into which it has invested $30 million.
Sheikha Alya added that Qatar has signed more than 50 bilateral agreements to encourage investment in developing countries, with the goal of revitalizing global partnerships for sustainable development through supplying financial resources to developing countries through remittances for expatriate workers.
JERUSALEM: A gunman fired at joggers from a passing car at a junction near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday, medics said, and the Israeli military blocked roads and launched a search in response.
Israel’s ambulance service said it treated a 28-year-old with a hand injury before transferring him to hospital. He was running with a group in memory of fallen soldiers, as Israelis commemorate their military dead on Tuesday.
The shooting occurred along Route 60, the main north-south highway in the occupied West Bank that passes along some large Israeli settlements.
It was the latest in year-long series of incidents in an upsurge in Israeli-Palestinian violence, with frequent military raids and violence by Israeli settlers amid a spate of Palestinian attacks.
On Monday, a Palestinian drove his car into a crowd on a Jerusalem street in what police said was a deliberate attack, wounding five people, including a 70-year-old man in serious condition. Earlier, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian during a raid in the occupied West Bank.
More than 90 Palestinians and at least 19 Israelis and foreigners have been killed since January.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories Palestinians want for an independent state, in a 1967 Middle East war.
DIYARBAKIR: Turkish police detained 110 people over alleged militant ties, security sources said on Tuesday, with a pro-Kurdish lawmaker saying politicians, lawyers and journalists were among those arrested in raids that he linked to elections on May 14.
The security sources said the operation was focused on Diyarbakir, the largest city in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkiye, and extended over 21 provinces, targeting people accused of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group.
The operation came less than three weeks before presidential and parliamentary votes that represent the biggest electoral challenge President Tayyip Erdogan has faced since his AK Party first came to power in 2002.
“On the eve of the election, out of fear of losing power, they have resorted to detention operations again,” Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Tayip Temel said on Twitter.
He said tens of politicians, including top members of his party, journalists, artists and lawyers were among those detained in Diyarbakir on Tuesday morning.
LONDON: The British government said it had launched a large-scale evacuation of its citizens from Sudan on Tuesday, after the North African country’s warring factions agreed to a 72-hour cease-fire.
Britain said military flights would depart from an airfield outside Khartoum, and would be open to those with British passports. Priority will be given to family groups with children, the elderly and individuals with medical conditions.
“The government has begun a large-scale evacuation of British passport holders from Sudan on RAF flights,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Twitter. “I pay tribute to the British Armed Forces, diplomats and Border Force staff.”
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the government had started contacting nationals directly and providing routes for departure out of the country.
On Monday, the government estimated around 4,000 British nationals were in Sudan and armed forces minister James Heappey said there was a military team in the east of the country doing reconnaissance on possible options for helping Britons leave.
The Foreign Office said on Tuesday British nationals should not make their way to the airfield unless they were called, and warned the situation remained volatile, meaning the ability to conduct evacuations could change at short notice.
The British armed forces
evacuated diplomatic staff
and their family members from Sudan on Saturday and the government had come under criticism from British citizens still stuck there that they were not doing enough to help others get out.
Britain said it was working with its international partners to arrange the departure and would also continue to look at other potential options for helping British nationals leave Sudan.
KHARTOUM: A 72-hour ceasefire between Sudan’s warring generals officially came into effect Tuesday after 10 days of urban combat killed hundreds, wounded thousands and sparked a mass exodus of foreigners.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) agreed to the ceasefire “following intense negotiations,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement shortly before the truce took effect from midnight (2200 GMT Monday).
Previous bids to pause the conflict failed to take hold, but both sides confirmed they had agreed to the three-day halt.
“This ceasefire aims to establish humanitarian corridors, allowing citizens and residents to access essential resources, health care, and safe zones, while also evacuating diplomatic missions,” the RSF paramilitary tweeted.
In a statement on Facebook, the SAF said it would also abide by the ceasefire on condition its rivals did so.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned earlier that Sudan was on “the edge of the abyss” and that the violence “could engulf the whole region and beyond.”
The fighting has pitted forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against those of his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the RSF.
The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed militia that then-president Omar Al-Bashir unleashed in Darfur, leading to war crimes charges against Bashir and others.
The Forces of Freedom and Change, the main civilian bloc which the two generals ousted from power in a 2021 coup, said the truce would allow for “dialogue on the modalities of a permanent ceasefire.”
At least 427 people have been killed and more than 3,700 wounded, according to UN agencies.
Among the latest to die was the assistant administrative attache at Cairo’s embassy in Khartoum, Egypt’s foreign ministry said.
The official was killed while heading from home to the embassy to follow up on evacuation procedures, it said.
More than 4,000 people have fled the country in foreign-organized evacuations that began on Saturday.
The United States and European, Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations launched emergency missions to bring to safety their embassy staff and Sudan-based citizens by road, air and sea.
But millions of Sudanese are unable to flee what is one of the world’s poorest countries, with a history of military coups.
They are trying to survive acute shortages of water, food, medicine and fuel as well as power and Internet blackouts.
UN agencies reported some Sudanese civilians were able to escape “to Chad, Egypt and South Sudan.”
“We must all do everything within our power to pull Sudan back from the edge of the abyss,” Guterres said.
He had also, again, called for a ceasefire.
Britain requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Sudan, which was expected to take place Tuesday, according to a diplomat.
A UN convoy carrying 700 people completed an arduous 850-kilometer road trip to Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast from the capital, where they left behind gunfire and explosions.
The United Nations head of mission Volker Perthes said the convoy arrived safely.
“Thirty-five hours in a not-so-comfortable convoy are certainly better than three hours’ bombing and sitting under the shells,” he said.
A UN statement separately said he and other key staff will “remain in Sudan and will continue to work toward a resolution to the current crisis.”
With Khartoum airport disabled after battles that left charred aircraft on the tarmac, many foreigners were airlifted from smaller airstrips to countries including Djibouti and Jordan.
US special forces swooped in with Chinook helicopters Sunday to rescue diplomats and their dependents, while Britain launched a similar rescue mission.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said more than 1,000 EU citizens had been taken out during a “long and intense weekend” involving airlift missions by France, Germany and others.
China said it had “safely evacuated” a first group of citizens and would “try every means to protect the lives, properties and safety of 1,500 plus Chinese compatriots in Sudan.”
Japan said it had evacuated 45 of its nationals and their spouses and temporarily closed its embassy in Khartoum.
The capital, a city of five million, has endured “more than a week of unspeakable destruction,” Norway’s ambassador Endre Stiansen wrote on Twitter after his evacuation.
One evacuee, a Lebanese man, said after being bussed to Port Sudan that he left only “with this T-shirt and these pyjamas, all that I have with me after 17 years.”
Those Sudanese who can afford to are also fleeing Khartoum on crowded buses for the more than 900-kilometer desert drive north to Egypt.
Among the 800,000 South Sudanese refugees who previously fled civil war in their own country, some are choosing to return, with women and children crossing the border, said the UN refugee agency.
In the capital, street battles have left the sky often blackened by smoke from shelled buildings and torched shops.
“There was a rocket strike in our neighborhood… it is like nowhere is safe,” said resident Tagreed Abdin, an architect.
Experts have long drawn links between the RSF and Russian mercenary group Wagner. Blinken earlier on Monday voiced “deep concern” that Wagner risked aggravating the war in Sudan.
The military toppled Bashir in April 2019 following mass citizen protests that raised hopes for a transition to democracy.
The two generals seized power in the 2021 coup, but later fell out, most recently over the planned integration of the RSF into the regular army.