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World news, Festac Town (2025)

23/05/2024

Chad Prime Minister Masra resigns after disputed vote winner confirmed
Chadian Prime Minister Succes Masra says he has handed in his resignation, weeks after his defeat to military government chief Mahamat Idriss Deby in the presidential election.

Masra – a staunch opponent of the military government, which seized power in April 2021 – was appointed prime minister of the transitional government in January, four months before the election, in a move to appease the opposition.

06/05/2024

Any man u fan in the building?

19/10/2023

Suffering and smiling’: Festivalgoers decry state of affairs in Nigeria

Lagos, Nigeria — Last Wednesday, Nigerian rapper CDQ pranced onto the stage at a Lagos bar as hundreds of people threw their hands in the air and sang as he performed risqué lines from his discography.

As the people swayed to the loud music, vendors wandered through the crowd hawking snacks and alcohol. Outside the venue, even more food vendors were selling as frustrated drivers honked loudly to passersby, bumping shoulders as they snaked in and out of the concert.

It was the third day of Felabration, a weeklong music festival held from October 9 – 15 in honour of Fela Kuti, the pioneer of Afrobeat, a horn-driven genre influenced by jazz and highlife sounds. The concerts, usually free and televised from the New Afrika Shrine in Lagos, feature a mix of recognisable and upcoming artists from Nigeria and across the world.

Since its first edition in 1998, thousands of fans have thronged the venue yearly to partake in the festivities. This year, Sade White, a fashion entrepreneur in her late forties, was among them, dressed in a yellow shirt with Kuti’s face emblazoned on the front.

19/10/2023

Palestinian teacher says he’s determined to stay in Gaza, whatever the cost

Abdallah al-Naami cannot stop wondering what comes next as the Israel-Hamas war approaches the end of its second week.

“What kind of life will be left in Gaza after all this? It’s day 13. Around half of Gaza is wiped out,” the 23-year-old journalist, photographer and teacher told Al Jazeera. “Even if we survive the bombs, we survive starvation, what will be left?”

country declared war on Hamas, the Palestinian armed group responsible for a deadly surprise attack on October 7.

But the war has left Gaza residents like al-Naami fearful for their lives. In addition to the bombardment, Israel has announced a “total blockade” on the territory, limiting access to food, fuel and other basic supplies.

That comes on top of restrictions that predate the war. Since 2007, Israel has isolated Gaza, limiting the flow of goods and residents’ ability to travel as part of its response to Hamas taking power there. Palestinians in the territory have also experienced several Israeli attacks since 2008.

19/10/2023

Frustration, concern rise in Arab American communities amid Gaza war

Washington, DC – Civil rights advocates in the United States have been warning that dehumanising rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war could translate into attacks on Palestinian, Arab and Muslim American communities at home.

Those fears appear to have materialised in the ugliest way when a six-year-old Palestinian American child was stabbed to death in a suspected hate crime near Chicago on Saturday.

While President Joe Biden has strongly condemned bigotry “in all its forms” since the start of the war, Arab advocates say his administration’s approach to the conflict is fuelling hatred against their communities.

Addressing the current atmosphere, Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute think-tank, decried efforts to demonise support for Palestinian rights.

“We had a press secretary stand at the podium, behind the presidential seal at the White House, and say that advocacy for human rights — by calling for a ceasefire, by acknowledging the Palestinian victims — was ‘repugnant’,”

16/10/2023

Funeral in US for Palestinian-American boy killed in suspected hate crime

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News|Israel-Palestine conflict

Funeral in US for Palestinian-American boy killed in suspected hate crime

Wadea Al-Fayoume, 6, was killed by a man police say targeted him and his mother because they were Muslim and Palestinian Americans.

Wadea Al-Fayoume, 6, a Muslim boy who police say was stabbed to death in an attack that targeted him and his mother for their religion and as a response to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas [File: CAIR/Handout via Reuters]

Published On 16 Oct 202316 Oct 2023

Mourners in the United States have gathered to honour Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old boy stabbed to death by a man police say targeted him and his mother because they were Muslim and Palestinian Americans.

The funeral took place on Monday at the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, a community southwest of Chicago with a large Palestinian population. The suspected attacker, 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, has been charged with murder and hate crimes.

“This is a heavy day. It is a worst nightmare come true. It is something we’ve tried to warn against,” Ahmed Rehab, the executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said on Monday. “It pains me that the sacrificial lamb to this atmosphere was this beautiful young six-year-old boy.”

Hanaan Shahin, the boy’s mother, was attacked by Czuba after she said they should “pray for peace” as Israel and Palestine are engulfed in the most dire fighting in decades.

Czuba then attacked her with a knife and when she tried to escape by running into the bathroom, he found Wadea and stabbed him 26 times, killing him. Shahin, 32, suffered multiple wounds but is expected to survive.

16/10/2023

Up to 250 captives held in Gaza, Hamas says

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Hamas’s Qassam Brigades says that up to 250 captives are being held in Gaza, and that it is prepared to release captives with foreign nationalities as soon as “circumstances allow”.

The World Health Organization warns there are only “24 hours of water, electricity and fuel left” in the besieged Gaza Strip as Israeli bombardment continues.

After sirens blare in Jerusalem, Hamas claims firing rockets towards Israel.

Israel and Hamas both deny reports of a ceasefire in southern Gaza after security sources in Egypt said such a deal was due.

Israel has deployed thousands of troops, tanks and weaponry along the border fence with Gaza amid expectations it will soon begin a ground invasion.

14/10/2023

France bans pro-Palestine rallies, cracks down on protesters amid Gaza war

The French police have used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters who took to the streets in support of the Palestinians, shortly after the government moved to ban all such rallies.

Police broke up a rally in capital Paris on Thursday, following orders from Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin to ban all pro-Palestine demonstrations in the name of “public order”. Critics called the order an attack on civil liberties.

14/10/2023

Gaza doctors warn of a humanitarian catastrophe after Israeli attacks

After seven days of relentless Israeli bombardment, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is rapidly deteriorating.

Hospitals in the northern part of the besieged enclave have received evacuation orders ahead of a looming ground offensive, while medical facilities throughout the densely populated territory are overwhelmed by wounded patients and sheltering residents.

14/10/2023

Iran tells Israel to stop before ‘it’s too late’

Iran has warned Israel to immediately halt its “war crimes” against Gaza or it could face “a huge earthquake” of resistance.

More than 320 Palestinians have been killed in the past 24 hours, including many women and children killed in Israeli air raids on convoys fleeing Gaza City, according to health officials.

The rising toll comes as Israel continues bombing Gaza a day after telling 1.1 million residents to head south ahead of a looming ground offensive following Hamas’s attack inside Israel last week.

At least 2,215 Palestinians have been killed and 8,714 wounded in Israeli air attacks on Gaza. The number of people killed in Israel has reached 1,300, with more than 3,400 wounded.

In the occupied West Bank, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the past week has topped 50. More than 1,000 have been wounded and hundreds arrested.

13/10/2023

Dozens killed while fleeing Gaza homes as Israel conducts ground raids

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air raids while trying to flee the northern Gaza Strip, according to Hamas officials, after the Israeli military ordered more than one million residents to evacuate in a demand rejected by the United Nations as “impossible”.

The media office of Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs the besieged Gaza Strip, said 70 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the air raids on cars leaving Gaza City. It said the vehicles were targeted in three places.

13/10/2023

‘Nowhere safe to go’: Confusion, fear after Israel’s warning to evacuate

Twenty-one-year-old Mohammed Elewa has barely gotten any sleep this past week in the Gaza Strip.

The sound of Israeli bombs and Palestinian ambulance sirens is a constant background noise as Israel pounds the Strip in revenge for a surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7.

On Friday morning, he woke up to the news that the Israeli military had issued evacuation orders for more than a million people in the northern Gaza Strip – nearly half of a total of 2.3 million residents.

The directive comes ahead of a feared ground invasion, but Elewa did not feel there was any point in leaving.

“There’s nowhere safe to go. Where am I supposed to go?” asks Elewa on the phone from his home.

He is one of many in Gaza City who say they have to stay because they cannot make their way to the south.

12/10/2023

Under Israeli bombs, Gaza’s Palestinians worry they may die of hunger

In the mornings that we are lucky enough to wake up after another night of Israel’s bombardment, we look at one another as if to make sure we are there.

Then, we start our grim tally: Who lost a friend? Who lost their family? Who lost their home?

We reminisce about the beautiful places we’ve been in the Gaza Strip, where the sand meets the foaming sea. We replay our memories, trying to hold on to them in hopes that one day we will live them again.

12/10/2023

Israel is manufacturing a case for genocide

Israeli and American officials, like many of their supporters, have called the Hamas incursion on Saturday “Israel’s 9/11”, drawing parallels between Hamas and al-Qaeda and between Israel and the United States.

“If the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing,” President Joe Biden said, “our response would be swift, decisive and overwhelming.” The “brutality” and “the bloodthirstiness” of Hamas, he added, “brings to mind the worst rampages of ISIS”. He even repeated the sensationalist and unsubstantiated claims that Hamas fighters had “raped women” and “beheaded babies”.

12/10/2023

Palestinian man, son attending funeral procession in West Bank shot dead

Israeli settlers have killed a Palestinian man and his son in the occupied West Bank during a funeral procession, the Palestinian Ministry of Health says.

Ibrahim Al-Wadi and his son Ahmed Al-Wadi were shot on Thursday when settlers opened fire at a funeral for four Palestinians killed on Wednesday by settlers and Israeli soldiers in the village of Qusra near Nablus.

The two were killed as a group of Palestinian men tried to remove car tyres put on the street by settlers to block the funeral procession.

Ibrahim’s brother, Abdul Azim, told Al Jazeera that the father and son confronted the settlers along with other Palestinian men as they tried to clear the way for the funeral. He said some men threw rocks to clear the road.

The Israeli army intervened at that point, Azim said, and both settlers and Israeli soldiers opened fire on the Palestinians attending the funeral, killing the father and son.

11/10/2023

Niger military rulers order UN official out within 72 hours

Niger’s post-coup military rulers have demanded in a statement seen by AFP on Wednesday that the United Nations coordinator in the West African country leave Niger within 72 hours.

The foreign ministry said in the statement dated Tuesday that the government had ordered Louise Aubin, the UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator, “to take all necessary measures to leave Niamey within 72 hours”.

It pointed to “obstacles” which it said were presented by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “with a view to thwarting the full and complete participation of Niger” at last month’s UN General Assembly.

11/10/2023

Israel army says ‘aerial infiltration’ on Lebanon border was a false alarm

The Israeli army says an “error” was behind reports of a suspected “aerial infiltration” from Lebanon, ruling out any major incident near the border.

“There are no launches at this point from Lebanon. There are no alerts,” army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised statement on Wednesday.

“This has been an error that we are looking into … We will check whether it’s a technical malfunction or a human error.”

Earlier on Wednesday, northern Israel was put on full alert after the army reported a suspected “infiltration from Lebanon into Israeli airspace”.

Sirens blared in large areas near the border with Lebanon and the Israeli army instructed people in the north to stay in shelters until further notice.

11/10/2023

Israeli PM Netanyahu, opposition leader Gantz to form emergency unity gov’t

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and centrist opposition leader Benny Gantz have agreed to form an emergency unity government.

Netanyahu and Gantz, a former defence minister and military chief of staff, agreed to form a war cabinet comprising Netanyahu, Gantz and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, a joint statement from Gantz’s National Unity party said on Wednesday.

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