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Spain scraps contested Israeli arms deal after uproar

Spain on Thursday cancelled a contract to buy bullets from an Israeli company following pressure from the Socialist-led government’s far-left coalition partner — a move swiftly condemned by Israel.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, one of the most outspoken critics of Israel’s military operations in Gaza, halted weapons transactions with Israel after the outbreak of the war following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.The interior ministry sought to terminate the 6.8-million-euro ($7.8 million) contract with Israeli firm IMI Systems, which was to supply bullets to the Spanish Civil Guard police force.But on Wednesday the ministry said it had abandoned its attempt to cancel the deal after state legal services advised against it “due to the advanced stage of the processing of the contract” and because it would have had to pay without receiving the bullets.The far-left Sumar party, the junior partner in Sanchez’s ruling coalition, reacted angrily, calling the reversal “a blatant violation” of the government’s pledge not to trade weapons with Israel.On Thursday government sources said the contract would be “unilaterally” terminated.”The investment board for dual-use material will deny this company permission to import this equipment to our country for reasons of general interest and, immediately afterwards, the interior ministry will terminate the contract,” the sources added.Sumar’s Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Diaz said she had personally “negotiated” with the interior minister and the prime minister to pull the plug on the contract.Spain “cannot buy arms from a government that massacres the Palestinian people”, she told reporters.Israel’s military offensive has devastated Gaza and killed more than 50,000 people in the tiny coastal territory, according to the health ministry there.Israel said it “strongly condemns” the decision to cancel the contract, and accused the Spanish government of “sacrificing security considerations for political purposes”.Spain “continues to stand on the wrong side of history — against the Jewish state that is defending itself from terrorist attacks”, Israel’s foreign ministry said in a statement to AFP. The row over the contract came as Sumar was still reeling from Sanchez’s announcement on Tuesday that Madrid will boost defence spending to two percent of annual economic output this year — the benchmark agreed by NATO allies.The government had previously aimed to meet this target in 2029 but brought it forward under pressure from Washington.Sanchez’s minority government has struggled to pass legislation since he secured a new term in 2023 by cobbling together an alliance of left-wing and regional separatist parties traditionally hostile to NATO and alignment with US foreign policy.- Conservative criticism -Spain’s main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP) criticised the government’s decision to cancel the contract.”When a state concludes a contract with another state, it must be respected,” PP leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo told reporters.”What is the price of cancelling this contract? Who is going to pay it?” he asked.The Hamas attack in Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages in their attack and 58 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.Israel’s military response in Gaza has caused a humanitarian crisis and killed at least 51,355 people, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.The United Nations considers the figures reliable.The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Tunisia burns migrant tents in latest clearance effort: AFP

Tunisian authorities on Thursday set fire to tents housing sub-Saharan African migrants, an AFP correspondent said, in a new drive to clear their informal camps.Many migrants arrived in Tunisia after crossing the deserts of Algeria and Mali, hoping to reach Italy. But tighter controls on the sea route have left them stranded.For nearly two years, olive groves around El Amra, a town near the city of Sfax, served as informal camps for thousands of the migrants but on April 4 authorities began dismantling the camps.Around 3,300 more migrants had to leave the olive groves on Thursday, said Houcem Eddine Jebabli, spokesman for the National Guard, which said around 4,000 had left in the earlier operation.”It’s the strategy of the State that Tunisia not be a place of settlement or transit for illegal migrants. Tunisia is coordinating with the countries of departure, of welcome as well as the international NGOs to ensure voluntary repatriation,” Jebabli told reporters.The makeshift shelters located a few kilometres (miles) from Tunisia’s Mediterranean coast have grown as a source of tension. Local residents complain about the camps and demand that the land be cleared.Last year, Tunisia signed a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with the European Union, nearly half of which is earmarked for tackling irregular migration.Tunisian President Kais Saied on March 25 called on the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) to accelerate voluntary returns for irregular migrants to their home countries.Among those told to leave the camps on Thursday was a Guinean, known as Mac, who has been in Tunisia for two years.”It’s very hard here,” he said.Like many migrants, he has registered with IOM to return to his homeland.The IOM said Thursday it had facilitated the voluntary return of more than 2,300 migrants from Tunisia, after nearly 7,000 throughout 2024, which was well above the combined total for 2023 and 2022.

Sudan war destroys world’s only research centre on skin disease mycetoma: director

The world’s only research centre on mycetoma, a neglected tropical disease common among farmers, has been destroyed in Sudan’s two-year war, its director and another expert say.Mycetoma is caused by bacteria or fungus and usually enters the body through cuts. It is a progressively destructive infectious disease of the body tissue, affecting skin, muscle and even bone.It is often characterised by swollen feet, but can also cause barnacle-like growths and club-like hands.”The centre and all its infrastructure were destroyed during the war in Sudan,” Ahmed Fahal, director of the Mycetoma Research Centre (MRC), told AFP.”We lost the entire contents of our biological banks, where there was data from more than 40 years,” said Fahal, whose centre had treated thousands of patients from Sudan and other countries.”It’s difficult to bear.” Since April 15, 2023, Sudan’s army has been at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces throughout the northeast African country.The MRC is located in the Khartoum area, which the army last month reclaimed from the RSF during a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 12 million.Sudan’s health care system has been left at the “breaking point”, according to the World Health Organization.Among the conflict’s casualties is now the MRC, established in 1991 under the auspices of the University of Khartoum. It was a rare story of medical success in impoverished Sudan.A video provided by the global Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) shows collapsed ceilings, shelves overturned, fridges open and documents scattered about.AFP was not able to independently verify the MRC’s current condition.The centre had grown to include 50 researchers and treat 12,000 patients each year, Fahal said.Mycetoma is listed as a neglected tropical disease by the WHO.The organisms that cause mycetoma also occur in Sudan’s neighbours, including Chad and Ethiopia, as well as in other tropical and sub-tropical areas, among them Mexico and Thailand, WHO says.For herders, farmers and other workers depending on manual labour to survive, crippling mycetoma infections can be a life sentence.Drawing on the MRC’s expertise, in 2019 the WHO and Sudan’s government convened the First International Training Workshop on Mycetoma, in Khartoum.”Today, Sudan, which was at the forefront of awareness of mycetomas, has gone 100 percent backwards,” said Dr. Borna Nyaoke-Anoke, DNDi’s head of mycetoma. 

Israel army warns of ‘larger’ Gaza assault as strikes kill 55

Gaza rescue teams and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 55 people on Thursday, as the military threatened an even larger offensive if hostages were not freed soon. Israel resumed its military assault in the Gaza Strip on March 18, after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire that had brought a temporary halt to fighting in the blockaded Palestinian territory.Israel’s army chief, visiting troops in Gaza on Thursday, threatened to expand the offensive in Gaza if hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel were not released.”If we do not see progress in the return of the hostages in the near future, we will expand our activities to a larger and more significant operation,” Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said.The warning came as the army issued fresh evacuation orders for northern areas of Gaza ahead of a planned attack.Earlier in the day, six members of one family — a couple and their four children — were killed when an air strike levelled their home in northern Gaza City, the civil defence agency said in a statement.Nidal al-Sarafiti, a relative, said the strike happened as the family was sleeping.”What can I say? The destruction has spared no one,” he told AFP.Nine people were killed and several wounded in another strike on a former police station in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, according to a statement from the Indonesian hospital, where the casualties were taken.”Everyone started running and screaming, not knowing what to do from the horror and severity of the bombing,” said Abdel Qader Sabah, 23, from Jabalia.Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas “command and control centre” in the area but did not say whether it was the police station.In another deadly attack, the bodies of 12 people were recovered after the Hajj Ali family home, also in Jabalia, was struck, the civil defence said.Another 28 people were killed in strikes across the territory, medics and the civil defence agency reported.They came as the Israeli military ordered Palestinians living in the northern areas of Beit Hanoun and Sheikh Zayed to evacuate ahead of an attack.”Due to ongoing terrorist activities and sniper fire against IDF troops in the area, the IDF is intensely operating in the area,” the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.The United Nations has warned that Israel’s expanding evacuation orders across Gaza are resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking areas.Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began. – Killed ‘one by one’ -In the aftermath of a strike in Khan Yunis, AFP footage showed bodies on the ground, including those of a young woman and a boy in body bags, surrounded by grieving relatives kissing and stroking their faces.”One by one we are getting martyred, dying in pieces,” said Rania al-Jumla who lost her sister in another strike in Khan Yunis.Since Israel resumed its military operations, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, raising the overall death toll to at least 51,355 since the war began, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.The military acknowledged on Thursday that Israeli tank fire had killed a UN worker in the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah last month, according to an investigation’s initial findings.It had initially denied operating in the area where a Bulgarian employee of United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) was killed on March 19.Bulgaria said it had received an “official apology” from Israel over the killing.The findings came after the military on Sunday reported on a separate probe into the killing of 15 Palestinian emergency workers in Gaza.It admitted that operational failures led to their deaths, and said a field commander would be dismissed.The war was ignited by the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.During the attack, militants also abducted 251 people and took them to Gaza. Of those, 58 remain in captivity, including 34 the military says are dead.Israeli officials maintain that the ongoing military campaign is essential to securing the release of the remaining hostages. However, many families of the captives, along with thousands of protesters, have strongly criticised the authorities for pressing ahead with the offensive rather than striking a deal.