Egyptian security forces yesterday clashed with members of a convoy led by left-wing British politician George Galloway trying to take relief supplies to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
A Reuters correspondent in the port city of Arish, 40km from Egypt’s border with Gaza, saw security forces throwing stones at about 520 people traveling with the convoy.
Members of the convoy were holding four members of the Arish harbor police, while security forces detained seven members of the convoy, who have been locked in a dispute with Egyptian authorities over the route of the 198 trucks.
PHOTO: AFP
Police used water cannons to force the protesting members of the convoy to leave Arish harbor, which they had occupied, a security source said.
Around 40 members of the convoy had minor injuries, while around 15 police officials were hurt, witnesses said.
The protest was sparked by Cairo insisting the food and other supplies should go to Gaza via an Israeli-controlled checkpoint, while the convoy’s leaders want to use the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing.
Egyptian authorities wanted 55 of the trucks to go to the Israeli checkpoint, said Galloway, the sole member of the British parliament for the Respect Party, who has long campaigned for the Palestinian cause.
“We refused this,” he told Reuters TV. “It is completely unconscionable that 25 percent of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza. Because nothing that ever goes to Israel, ever arrives in Gaza.”
Cairo has imposed strict regulations and restrictions on pro-Palestinian foreign activists, who have held protests in Egypt since late last month to mark the first anniversary of Israel’s three-week offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
It has also controlled the movement of Palestinians and some foreigners at Rafah and is building a controversial steel wall along its border with Gaza to prevent smuggling.
Alhamy Aref, a local government official in North Sinai, was trying to negotiate a deal between the two sides on releasing the detained people, the Reuters correspondent reported.
Leaders of the convoy originally refused Egypt’s condition that the aid should be shipped via Arish on the Mediterranean rather than via the Red Sea port of Nuweiba, but later relented and started arriving at Arish on Thursday.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing