Month: April 2023

Morocco condemned Wednesday the intervention of Israeli police in the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and denounced “the aggression and terror of the faithful in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Cherifian kingdom stressed “the need to respect the legal, religious and historical status of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the Holy Places and to avoid all practices and violations that are likely to destroy all chances for peace in the region,” according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Israeli police announced Wednesday that they had “arrested more than 350 people” during violent clashes overnight after the police intervened inside one of the world’s most revered Muslim places of worship to dislodge worshipers.

Rabat “reiterates its rejection of this kind of practice which only complicates and exacerbates the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and undermines efforts to ease tensions and restore confidence,” the Moroccan statement concluded.

Morocco, an ally of Israel, has tried to regularly reiterate its commitment to the Palestinian cause under the leadership of King Mohammed VI, who chairs the Al-Quds Committee, responsible for “preserving the Arab-Muslim character” of Jerusalem.

This does not prevent it from developing an all-round partnership with Israel, focused on military and security cooperation, since the normalization of bilateral relations in December 2020 within the framework of the Abraham Accords, an agreement between Israel and several Arab countries negotiated by the United States.

However, the rise to power in Israel of ultra-nationalist currents and the violence in the occupied territories have become an obstacle to this rapprochement.

Although militant mobilization has weakened, the Palestinian cause continues to arouse immense sympathy among the Moroccan population.

Continued clashes in Jerusalem and the West Bank could ultimately undermine the foundations of the Abraham Accords.

In fact, a Negev summit, a forum that was to have brought together the heads of U.S., Israeli, Egyptian, Moroccan, Emirati and Bahraini diplomacy in March in Morocco, has been postponed indefinitely, according to Moroccan media.

Dakar is seeking to identify the remains of “about twenty” Senegalese who drowned at the end of March in the sinking of their boat off Tunisia, said an official statement on Monday.

A Senegalese mission went to Sfax, the starting point in central-eastern Tunisia of the shipwrecked boat, for a mission to identify the bodies, according to a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For the moment, “none of the remains recovered by the Tunisian coast guard corresponds to our compatriots” missing in this shipwreck which occurred “on the night of March 23 to 24 off the Mediterranean”, indicates the ministry, which does not indicate the number of bodies.

The Senegalese embassy in Tunis “will remain in permanent contact with the (Tunisian) authorities and the Tunisian Red Crescent to monitor the recovery and identification of victims”, the statement added.

Several dozen migrants have died in a series of shipwrecks and others have been missing since President Kais Saied ‘s violent speech on February 21 on illegal immigration.

After this speech, a significant part of the 21,000 nationals of sub-Saharan Africa officially registered in Tunisia, most of them in an irregular situation, lost their jobs, which are generally informal, and their housing overnight, as a result of the campaign against the illegals.

Most African migrants arrive in Tunisia to then attempt to illegally immigrate from Europe by sea, with some stretches of Tunisia’s coastline being within 150 kilometers of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

In mid-March, Dakar had repatriated 76 compatriots from Tunisia and neighbouring Libya after the words of the Tunisian leader.

At least 12 people have been killed and several others injured or kidnapped in a series of attacks in northeast and central Nigeria, police and officials said on Monday.

Insecurity is a major concern in Africa’s most populous country as a new president is to be sworn in next month following an opposition-contested election.

In the state of Adamawa (northeast) unidentified gunmen burst into the village of Dabna in the district of Hong, and killed three people, according to the spokesman of the local police Suleiman Nguroje, who added that houses were burned.

No group had claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday. But Boko Haram jihadists regularly launch attacks in the region from their lair in the Sambisa forest in neighbouring Borno state.

Also on Monday, suspects attacked localities in central Kogi State. The governor’s spokesman, Muhammed Onogwu, claimed that a local politician was killed and others were “affected by this awful and unfortunate attack”.

Gunmen entered a church in the village of Akenawe-Tswarev in east-central Benue state on Sunday, killing one worshiper and kidnapping three others, according to local official Salome Tor.

Two other people were seriously injured and are hospitalized, according to the same source, which did not give details on the possible persons responsible for the attack. Benue State has been the scene of violence between herders and farmers for years.

In central-western Niger state on Saturday, armed men attacked several villages in Mashegu and Munya districts, killing at least seven people and abducting 26 others, according to a local official.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who leaves office in May, leaves to his successor Bola Tinubu a country that has to deal with a jihadist insurgency in the northeast, criminal gangs in the northwest and center and secessionist unrest in the South East.