This blog is closing now. Here is a summary of today's events...
Demonstrators arrested outside Netanyahu’s Jerusalem home. Five Israeli demonstrators protesting for the release of hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 have been arrested outside the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
Gaza Health Minstry reported that Israel detained hospital a director in northern Gaza on Saturday. However, the director of Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, denied he was arrested.“All that is being circulated about Dr. Hussam Abu Safia being arrested is false news,” his Instagram account posted.
Almost one in five children live in conflict zones, says Unicef. Nearly one in five of the world’s children live in areas affected by conflicts, with more than 473 million children suffering from the worst levels of violence since the second world war, according to figures published by the UN. “The impact on children’s mental health is also huge,” Unicef said. A study backed by the charity War Child earlier this month reported that 96% of children in Gaza felt that their death was imminent and almost half wanted to die as a result of the trauma they had been through.
A senior official from Libya’s UN-recognised government met Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday and discussed issues including diplomatic relations, energy and migration. “We expressed our full support for the Syrian authorities in the success of the important transitional phase,” Libyan Minister of State for Communication and Political Affairs Walid Ellafi told reporters after the meeting.
A delegation from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party visited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on Saturday for the first time in 10 years, the Agence France-Presse reports. Ocalan is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015. “The delegation left in the morning,” a party source told AFP, without disclosing how they would reach the island over security concenrs.
The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday he was not sure he was going to survive, Reuters reports. Speaking after his ordeal at the Sanaa International Airport in Yemen on Thursday, which was bombed by Israeli forces targeting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the air raid was so deafening that his ears were still ringing over a day later.
The WHO has reiterated its call for a ceasefire. “This raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital comes after escalating restrictions on access for WHO and partners, and repeated attacks on or near the facility since early October,” the WHO said. “Such hostilities and the raids are undoing all our efforts and support to keep the facility minimal functional. The systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza is a death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”
45,436 Palestinians killed since war began. At least 45,436 Palestinian people have been killed and 108,038 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 37 Palestinians were killed and 98 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said.
Turkey’s pro-Kurd party meets jailed PKK leader
A delegation from Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party visited jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on Saturday for the first time in 10 years, the Agence France-Presse reports. Ocalan is serving a life sentence on a prison island off Istanbul
DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015.
“The delegation left in the morning,” a party source told AFP, without disclosing how they would reach the island over security concenrs.
Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) nearly 50 years ago and has served his time in solitary confinement for 25 years after originally being sentenced to death. He escaped the gallows after Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004
Turkey, the United States and the EU regard the PKK as a “terror” organisation.
The DEM party delegation is made up of two lawmakers - Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan. DEM’s co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan said he hoped the talks with Ocalan would “open a new era” for a democratic settlement to the Kurdish problem.
“While I speak here, our delegation is currently meeting with Mr Abdullah Ocalan at Imrali (island). We believe it’s important,” he told reporters in the Uludere district near the Iraqi border.
“Imrali’s door must be unlocked,” Bakirhan said.
“I hope that the discussions there will enable the Kurdish issue to be resolved through democratic means and on a democratic basis.”
Saturday’s rare was made possible after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli invited Ocalan to visit parliament to renounce “terror” and to disband the militant group.
President Erdogan backed the unprecedented appeal as a “historic window of opportunity”.
“My dear Kurdish brothers, we expect you to firmly grasp (Bahceli’s) sincerely outstretched hand,” he said in October, urging them to join in efforts to build what he called the “century of Turkey”.
