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Delegations from Hamas, Israel and the United States are due to convene in Egypt for talks on Monday, with US President Donald Trump calling on negotiators to “move fast” to end the nearly two-year war in the Gaza Strip.The envoys are set to meet in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, on the eve of the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the war.Both Hamas and Israel have responded positively to Trump’s roadmap to end the fighting and release captives in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, though the details still need to be ironed out.A senior Hamas official told AFP that the group was “very keen to reach an agreement to end the war and immediately begin the prisoner exchange process in accordance with the field conditions”.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, said he hoped the hostages could be released within days.Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that “there have been very positive discussions with Hamas” and other parties over freeing the captives and ending the war.The talks were “proceeding rapidly”, he said, adding that “the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST”.Trump has sent two emissaries to help finalise the deal: his special envoy Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, arrived in Egypt late on Sunday at the head of the delegation, the group said in a statement.The Israeli delegation will depart for Egypt on Monday, according to Netanyahu.After months of stalled mediation efforts by the United States, Egypt and Qatar aimed at ending the devastating war, foreign ministers from several countries expressed optimism at the latest diplomatic push in a joint statement, calling the negotiations a “real opportunity” to achieve a sustainable ceasefire.On Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Israel to stop bombing Gaza ahead of the discussions, saying “you can’t release hostages in the middle of strikes”.Israel’s continued attacks on Sunday killed at least 20 people across the Palestinian territory, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency.Cairo has said the new talks will aim to lay “the ground conditions and details of the exchange of all Israeli detainees and Palestinian prisoners”.- Hostage-prisoner exchange -Hamas fighters are ready to “halt their military operations” once Israel halts theirs, according to a Palestinian source close to the group.Trump has said that once the hostage-prisoner exchange is complete, “we will create the conditions for the next phase of withdrawal”.In addition to a halt to hostilities, the US plan calls for the release of hostages, both living and dead, within 72 hours.Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages during their October 7 attack, 47 of whom are still in Gaza. Of those, the Israeli military says 25 are dead.In return for the hostages, Israel is expected to release 250 Palestinian prisoners with life sentences and more than 1,700 detainees from the Gaza Strip who were arrested during the war.The next step of the plan would be a gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’s disarmament — something the group has frequently described as a red line in the past.Hamas has insisted it should have a say in the territory’s future, though Trump’s plan stipulates that it and other factions “not have any role in the governance of Gaza”.Under the proposal, administration of the territory would be taken up by a technocratic body overseen by a post-war transitional authority headed by Trump himself and including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.burs-bha/smw/mjw

Local committees in Syria cast their ballots for members of a transitional parliament in a process criticised as undemocratic, with a third of the new lawmakers to be appointed directly by interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.The assembly’s formation is expected to consolidate the power of Sharaa, whose Islamist forces led a coalition that toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December after more than 13 years of civil war.Members of the local committees queued up to vote at Syria’s National Library, formerly the Assad National Library, with the electoral commission saying in the evening that “the voting has ended and the counting is underway”. A member of the Damascus elections committee told AFP that while some early results could trickle in Sunday night, the final list of winners was not due until Monday.Around 6,000 people took part in Sunday’s selection process.According to the commission, more than 1,500 candidates — just 14 percent of them women — are running for the assembly, which will have a renewable 30-month mandate.Sharaa is to appoint 70 representatives to the 210-member body.The other two-thirds are being selected by local committees appointed by the electoral commission, which itself was appointed by Sharaa.But southern Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida province, which suffered sectarian bloodshed in July, and the country’s Kurdish-held northeast are excluded from the process for now as they are outside Damascus’s control, and their 32 seats will remain empty.”I support the authorities and I’m ready to defend them, but these aren’t real elections,” said Louay al-Arfi, 77, a retired civil servant sitting with friends at a Damascus cafe. “It’s a necessity in the transitional phase, but we want direct elections” to follow, he told AFP.The new authorities dissolved Syria’s rubber-stamp legislature after taking power.Under a temporary constitution announced in March, the incoming parliament will exercise legislative functions until a permanent constitution is adopted and new elections are held.Sharaa has said it would be impossible to organise direct elections now, pointing to the large number of Syrians who lack documentation after millions fled abroad or were displaced internally during the civil war.Speaking from the National Library on Sunday, Sharaa appeared to acknowledge criticism of the process, saying that while “it is true that the electoral process is incomplete… it is a moderate process that is appropriate for the current situation and circumstances in Syria”.- ‘Not elections’ -Under the rules of the selection process, candidates must not be “supporters of the former regime” and must not promote secession or partition.Those running include Syrian-American Henry Hamra, the first Jewish candidate since the 1940s.”The next parliament faces significant responsibilities, including signing and ratifying international agreements. This will lead Syria into a new phase, and it is a major responsibility,” said Hala al-Qudsi, a member of Damascus’s electoral committee who is running for a seat herself.Rights groups have criticised the selection process, saying it concentrates power in Sharaa’s hands and lacks representation for the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.In a joint statement last month, more than a dozen groups said the process means Sharaa “can effectively shape a parliamentary majority composed of individuals he selected or ensured loyalty from”.”You can call the process what you like, but not elections,” said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of the France-based Syrians for Truth and Justice, one of the groups that signed the statement.At a meeting in Damascus this week, candidate Mayssa Halwani, 48, said such criticism was normal.”The government is new to power and freedom is new for us,” she said.Nishan Ismail, 40, a teacher in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, said “elections could have been a new political start” after Assad’s fall, but “the marginalisation of numerous regions shows that the standards of political participation are not respected”.Negotiations on integrating the Kurds’ civil and military institutions into the new central government have stalled, with Damascus rejecting calls for decentralisation.Badran Jia Kurd, an official with the Kurdish administration in the northeast, argued on X on Sunday evening that the selection process “aims to legitimise a temporary authority that does not represent the entire population, risking further divisions and fragmentation of the country”.In southern Syria’s Druze-majority city of Sweida, activist Burhan Azzam, 48, also took issue with the process.The authorities “have ended political life” in Syria, he said, adding that the selection process “doesn’t respect the basic rules of democracy”.

Two Australian doctors returning from Gaza told AFP they had witnessed “slaughterhouse” scenes in the devastated territory, describing children torn apart by relentless Israeli bombardments and hospitals overwhelmed by the dead and wounded.Saya Aziz, an anaesthetist, said that while images of the destruction in Gaza have flooded global media, they still fail to capture the full reality on the ground.”The things that you didn’t get through the video was the smell, the wailing, the distress of the parents crying, witnessing their children dying, suffering in pain,” Aziz said on Saturday.What Gaza was witnessing, she added, was “mass casualty after mass casualty”.”Torn, disintegrated bodies, blood, broken heads, broken arms, chopped limbs — not just chopped, like disintegrated,” she said. “You would never see such scenes in your life, blood everywhere… It’s like a slaughterhouse.”Aziz and fellow doctor Nada Abu al-Rub, a Palestinian-Australian, had been on a four-week mission to Gaza. They left the territory on Sunday morning.Over the past two years, the devastation in Gaza has been vast, with entire neighbourhoods flattened and millions of tonnes of rubble now covering areas where families once lived.Residential buildings, hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems have been hit hard by Israeli attacks, and the humanitarian consequences for the territory’s more than two million people have been severe.Hundreds of thousands of homeless Gazans have crowded into shelters, makeshift camps and open areas, lacking even basic protections.According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 67,139 people — mostly civilians — have been killed since Israel launched its military campaign following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks.The United Nations considers the ministry’s figures reliable.The October 7 attacks on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.- Children hit hardest -While the Gaza health ministry does not specify how many of those killed were Hamas militants, a vast number of the victims are women and children, as seen from video footage and pictures.The territory’s children were suffering the most, Aziz said.”The hardest has been for the children who are unwell, unconscious, bleeding — you’re having to anaesthetise them knowing they’ve got no surviving family members left,” she said.”Who’s going to tell them, who’s going to look after them?”Rub said Israeli authorities had restricted the entry of essential supplies, including baby formula and nutritional products for children.”They basically threatened that any organisation that brings baby formula will be completely closed and no doctors” from that organisation would be allowed to enter Gaza again, Rub said.”What is scary about baby formula?”Peanut butter and total parenteral nutrition (TPN), which is critical for children recovering from major bowel surgeries, were also blocked, Rub said.”Those bottles they broke and didn’t let us bring it in.”Rub described the scenes she witnessed as “horrific”.”People are dying from explosions, their bodies shredded into pieces, whole families wiped out or having one survivor (left) with severe injuries,” she said.Every colleague she worked with had lost many family members, she added, along with their homes, personal possessions and cars.”Everything they have is just lost, nothing is left here in Gaza to survive on.”

Like many in Morocco, Abdelkabir Oubella had been watching videos of protests unfold across the country, but nothing could prepare him for the shock of discovering that his son was among three shot dead in the unrest.For more than a week, Morocco has been shaken by daily protests led mostly by young people demanding reforms in the North African country’s struggling health and education systems.The unprecedented movement erupted after the deaths of eight pregnant women admitted for Caesarean sections at a public hospital in Agadir, sparking outrage over deteriorating public services.Abdessamad Oubella, a 25-year-old film student, was killed overnight Wednesday to Thursday in Lqliaa, near Agadir in southern Morocco. Two other people were also shot dead by police.Authorities said a group had tried to attack the security forces to “steal” ammunition and weapons.”I came across a video where my son appeared — I didn’t even know it was him,” Abdelkabir Oubella told AFP.Surrounded by men from his village of Adouz Oussaoud, near Lqliaa, the 51-year-old day labourer had just buried his son in a wooden coffin.”We never imagined this could happen,” said Ayoub, Abdessamad’s brother.”My brother was there to document what was happening,” he said. “He didn’t throw stones, he didn’t take part in the unrest.”According to his father, Abdessamad was struck by a bullet to the head.The protests have been organised through a newly formed collective on the Discord web platform called GenZ 212, which has again called for rallies on Sunday night in 22 cities.- ‘Troublemakers’ -Life is modest and many people are day labourers in Lqliaa and in nearby Adouz Oussaoud, which lie in one of Morocco’s main agricultural regions and are known for tomato cultivation.In Adouz Oussaoud, a wall bears a large mural reading “Don’t open, dead inside” — a reference to the hit zombie TV series “The Walking Dead”.Among residents, sadness and disbelief prevail after the violence.Those interviewed by AFP said they supported calls for reforms in health and education — sectors that reflect Morocco’s deep inequalities — but condemned the unrest.”Health and education services here are not adequate for the size of the population. We need more support in both sectors,” said Hassan Garir, 39, of Lqliaa.”But when I saw what was happening on social media, I couldn’t sleep that night.”It’s tragic,” he said.”What those troublemakers did has nothing to do with expressing legitimate demands.”Abdessamad’s father agreed, saying “we are against vandalism and ignorance”.That night, CCTV footage released by authorities showed masked youths armed with iron bars and stones trying to force open a door.Security forces fired tear gas to disperse them, but the attackers returned and set fire to bins and tyres at the entrance of the building.The GenZ 212 collective says it only calls for non-violent protests.On Sunday, it urged supporters to speak with “one voice” and maintain “peaceful and responsible behaviour”.

Saudi Arabia, Russia and six other key members of the OPEC+ alliance are likely to agree to raise crude output when they meet virtually on Sunday, with analysts divided over the size of the expected hike.The meeting by the group of eight oil-producing countries known as the “Voluntary Eight” (V8) comes as oil prices head for weekly losses and rumours of a possible output increase of up to 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) swirl.Angered by what it dismissed as “wholly inaccurate and misleading” media reports, the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) urged news outlets in a statement on Tuesday to “exercise accuracy… in order to avoid fuelling” market speculation.Experts had initially expected a production hike of 137,000 bpd from November, which would mirror the October increase.But Commerzbank analyst Barbara Lambrecht cautioned that uncertainty remained, as “the group has frequently surprised markets with swift production hikes in the recent past”.Since April, the V8 group — comprising Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman — has boosted production by 2.5 million bpd (mbpd) in total.The group has sped up output increases at a pace very few had predicted at the beginning of the year, following a long period of producers seeking to combat price erosion by implementing production cuts to make oil scarcer.  – Prices in decline -But in recent months, OPEC+ has shifted its strategy in a bid to regain market share in the face of competition from other countries, and “with output from the United States, Brazil, Canada, Guyana and Argentina at or near all-time highs”, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its latest monthly oil report.But the IEA stressed that global demand outlook for crude “remains largely unchanged”, with growth of around 700,000 bpd expected for both 2025 and 2026.The OPEC cartel was more optimistic in its latest projections for oil demand worldwide, forecasting increases of 1.3 mbpd in 2025 and 1.4 mbpd in 2026.According to Tamas Varga of PVM, signs of a “long-awaited glut” are now “loudly knocking on the doors of our market”.Against this backdrop, the possibility of a larger increase in the grouping’s quotas has sent the price of Brent crude — the global benchmark for crude oil — plummeting below $65 a barrel, a loss of around eight percent in a week.- Russia in uncomfortable position -Russia, the second-largest producer in OPEC+ behind Saudi Arabia, could oppose a sizeable increase in quotas from next month, amid fears it could cause crude oil prices to fall further.Following last month’s decision, Rystad Energy analyst Jorge Leon explained that “Russia depends on high prices to fund its war machine” and unlike Riyadh, the Kremlin has limited potential to increase production due to Western sanctions.Russia, which currently produces around 9.25 mbpd, has a “maximum production capacity of 9.45 mbpd” compared to around 10 mbpd before the war, Homayoun Falakshahi at Kpler told AFP.Moreover, Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries have intensified since August, translating into “rising crude exports from Russia, as the oil cannot be used domestically”, and making Moscow even more dependent on selling its crude abroad, said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen of Global Risk Management.

UK pro-Palestinian protests went ahead Saturday despite a plea from Prime Minister Keir Starmer, two days after a deadly car-ramming and knife attack on a synagogue.Four people — two men and two  women — remained in custody on suspicion of terrorism-linked offences following Thursday’s attack.An 18-year-old woman and a 43-year-old man who had been held earlier were released and would face no further action, police said.Two people were killed and three others seriously wounded in the assault in the northwestern city of Manchester on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.Police shot dead assailant Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old UK citizen of Syrian descent, within minutes of the alarm being raised.The attack has heightened fear among Britain’s Jewish community.Police said they were patrolling places of worship across the city “with a particular focus on providing a high-visibility presence within our Jewish communities”.The attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in north Manchester was one of the worst antisemitic incidents in Europe since the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel led by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed at least 66,288 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to health ministry figures in the occupied territory that the United Nations considers reliable.The conflict has inflamed passions in Britain, with frequent pro-Palestinian rallies in cities that some critics allege have stoked antisemitism.Around 1,000 people on Saturday gathered in Trafalgar Square in central London to show their support for the banned Palestine Action group, organisers Defend Our Juries said.A spokesperson said the group “stood in solidarity” with the Jewish community over the attack, adding that “cancelling peaceful protests lets terror win”.A smaller demonstration organised by Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine attracted about 100 people in the city.- Accidental shooting -Ahead of the demonstrations, Starmer urged protesters not to join the rallies.”I urge anyone thinking about protesting this weekend to recognise and respect the grief of British Jews. This is a moment of mourning. It is not a time to stoke tension and cause further pain,” he said on X.Police said the total number of people arrested  at the London protest “for supporting a proscribed organisation” stood at 488.The oldest person arrested was 89, the Met said.Four people had been arrested for other offences.Some 297 remained in custody while the rest had been bailed, the force added.Since the government banned the group in early July, supporting it has become a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 and hundreds of people have been arrested at multiple protests.”I’m ready to be arrested,” a 21-year-old student, who did not want to be named, told AFP.”The ban of Palestine Action is undemocratic. It shouldn’t be a terrorist group, they haven’t killed anybody,” he said.David Cannon, 73, chair of the Jewish Network for Palestine said the demonstration was “totally separate” from what had happened in Manchester.”There’s nothing Jewish about genocide, about apartheid, about ethnic cleansing,” he said.The UK police watchdog, meanwhile, said it would probe the police shooting of attacker Shamie.The investigation would also examine the shooting dead, most likely by police, of one of the incident’s two victims who suffered a fatal gunshot as well as a third person who was shot but survived.The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said there was no evidence anyone other than police used firearms at the scene, meaning both were accidentally shot by armed officers as they tackled Shamie.”Our independent investigation will look at circumstances surrounding the fatal police shooting of Jihad Al-Shamie,” it said in a statement.”A post mortem has today (Friday) concluded another man who died at the scene suffered a fatal gunshot wound.”