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Families Flee After New Israeli Evacuation Orders in Gaza as Ceasefire Hopes Dim

Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip August 26, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip August 26, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
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Families Flee After New Israeli Evacuation Orders in Gaza as Ceasefire Hopes Dim

Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip August 26, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Mourners react during the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip August 26, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Israel issued new evacuation orders for Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip late on Sunday, forcing more families to flee, saying forces intended to act against the group Hamas and others operating in the area. In recent days, Israel has issued several evacuation orders across Gaza, the most since the beginning of the 10-month war, prompting an outcry from Palestinians, the United Nations and relief officials over the reduction of humanitarian zones and the absence of safe areas.
The Deir Al-Balah municipality says Israeli evacuation orders have so far displaced 250,000 people, Reuters reported.
Israeli military strikes killed at least seven Palestinians on Monday, medics said. Two were killed in Deir Al-Balah, where around a million people were sheltering, two at a school in the Al-Nuseirat camp and three in the southern city of Rafah, near the border with Egypt.
The new orders forced many families and patients to leave Al-Aqsa Hospital, the main medical facility in Deir Al-Balah, where hundreds of thousands of residents and displaced people had taken shelter, for fear of bombardments.
The hospital is close to the area covered by the evacuation notice.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said in a statement on X on Sunday night that an explosion approximately 250 meters (820 feet) away from the MSF-supported Al-Aqsa Hospital triggered panic.
"As a result, MSF is considering whether to suspend wound care for the time being, while trying to maintain life-saving treatment."
From around 650 patients, only 100 remain in the hospital, with seven in intensive care unit, it said, citing Gaza's health ministry.
"This situation is unacceptable. Al Aqsa has been operating well beyond capacity for weeks due to the lack of alternatives for patients. All warring parties must respect the hospital, as well as patients' access to medical care," it added.
DIPLOMATIC IMPASSE
Sawasn Abu Afesh said she and her children had now been displaced 11 times.
"I left half of my children behind me near my furniture and I am now with my little ones and my daughter. Only God can help us...I have no money for transportation. I will go to area 17 where my family is staying on my foot. I took my kids and three are left behind. No idea where," the woman said.
The escalation comes with little hope of an end in sight to the war as diplomacy by mediators, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States has so far failed to close the gap between Israel and Hamas, whose leaders traded blame over responsibility for the lack of accord.
Neither Hamas, nor Israel, agreed to several compromises presented by mediators at talks in Cairo on Sunday, two Egyptian security sources said.
A senior US official, however, described the talks as "constructive," saying they were conducted in a spirit on all sides to reach "a final and implementable agreement."
Hamas official Osama Hamdan said the group rejected new conditions made by Israel during the talks, which the group didn't attend, and added that US comments over an imminent ceasefire deal were false and aimed to serve election purposes.
US President Joe Biden and his administration have faced growing protests in the US over aid for Israel ahead of November elections.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza's health ministry. The crowded enclave has been laid to waste and most of its 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times and face acute shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian agencies say.
The war was triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people, by Israeli tallies, with more than 250 taken hostage.

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Arab World

Iraq Hands Over Two Cleared ISIS Suspects to US, Finland

US military vehicles move along a road in a convoy transporting ISIS group detainees being transferred to Iraq from Syria, on the outskirts of Qahtaniyah in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on February 7, 2026. (AFP)
US military vehicles move along a road in a convoy transporting ISIS group detainees being transferred to Iraq from Syria, on the outskirts of Qahtaniyah in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on February 7, 2026. (AFP)
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Iraq Hands Over Two Cleared ISIS Suspects to US, Finland

US military vehicles move along a road in a convoy transporting ISIS group detainees being transferred to Iraq from Syria, on the outskirts of Qahtaniyah in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on February 7, 2026. (AFP)
US military vehicles move along a road in a convoy transporting ISIS group detainees being transferred to Iraq from Syria, on the outskirts of Qahtaniyah in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province on February 7, 2026. (AFP)

Iraq's judiciary said Tuesday it had handed over two detained foreigners, from Finland and the United States, to their countries after finding that had not been ISIS group members.

Many prisons in Iraq are packed with ISIS suspects.

In February, the United States completed the transfer of 5,700 ISIS detainees, including hundreds of foreigners, from Syria to Iraq.

The National Center for International Judicial Cooperation (NCIJC) said it has handed "two suspects -- a minor from Finland and another from the United States -- to the competent authorities in their countries after it was confirmed that they don't belong to the ISIS terrorists."

"The handover took place after all legal and judicial procedures were completed," the judiciary said in a statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency (INA).

The judiciary did not specify whether the two detainees referred to were among those who had been transferred from Syria.

Upon the detainees' arrival in Iraq, the judiciary began interrogations before taking legal action against suspects from some 60 countries.

These include 3,543 Syrians, 467 Iraqis and 710 detainees from other Arab nations.

There are also more than 980 foreigners including from Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States.

ISIS swept across Syria and Iraq in 2014, committing massacres. Iraq, backed by US-led forces, proclaimed victory over ISIS in the country in 2017, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces ultimately defeated the group in Syria two years later.

Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death sentences and life terms to those convicted of terrorism offences, including foreign fighters.

Arab World

UN Official: War Pushes Seven in 10 Sudanese Into Poverty

Saddam Najwa, a malnourished, 17-month-old internally displaced child reaches out for a cup of water at the paediatric ward of the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, near Kauda, within the Sudan's People Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) controlled area of the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Sudan June 25, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo
Saddam Najwa, a malnourished, 17-month-old internally displaced child reaches out for a cup of water at the paediatric ward of the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, near Kauda, within the Sudan's People Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) controlled area of the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Sudan June 25, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo
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UN Official: War Pushes Seven in 10 Sudanese Into Poverty

Saddam Najwa, a malnourished, 17-month-old internally displaced child reaches out for a cup of water at the paediatric ward of the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, near Kauda, within the Sudan's People Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) controlled area of the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Sudan June 25, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo
Saddam Najwa, a malnourished, 17-month-old internally displaced child reaches out for a cup of water at the paediatric ward of the Mother of Mercy Hospital in Gidel, near Kauda, within the Sudan's People Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) controlled area of the Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan, Sudan June 25, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo

Around seven in 10 people in Sudan are now living in poverty, a senior UN official told AFP on Tuesday, nearly twice as many as before the war between the army and paramilitary forces broke out three years ago.

"Before the war, we were probably looking (at) around 38 percent of people living in poverty, and now we are estimating about 70 percent," said the UN Development Programme's Sudan representative Luca Renda, as the agency released a new report on poverty timed to coincide with the anniversary of the start of the war.

The figures Renda cited were based on a poverty line of about $4 a day, while at least a quarter of the population is believed to be surviving on less than half that, he said.

Conditions are particularly severe in some of the worst-affected areas, including parts of southern Kordofan, now the war's main battleground, and North Darfur, where as many as 70 to 75 percent of people are living in deprivation, Renda added.

Now in its fourth year, the war between Sudan's army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced more than 11 million, and thrust several areas into hunger and famine.

Donors are due to gather in Berlin on Wednesday for an international conference on the conflict, aimed at reviving faltering peace talks and mobilizing aid for one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"Three years into this conflict, we are not just facing a crisis -- we are witnessing the systematic erosion of a country's future," Renda said.

The UNDP report found that nearly seven million people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2023 alone, while average incomes have fallen to levels last seen in 1992. Extreme poverty rates are now worse than in the 1980s, according to the report.

"These figures are not abstract," Renda said. "They reflect families torn apart, children out of school, livelihoods lost and a generation whose prospects are steadily diminishing."

More than 21 million people in Sudan face acute food insecurity, while two-thirds of the population urgently needs assistance, according to the UN.

Analysts, meanwhile, see little sign of de-escalation, with fighting intensifying in the Kordofan region and Blue Nile state, and drone attacks killing more than 500 civilians between January and mid-March, the UN said.

Arab World

Iraq's Coordination Framework Close to Naming Candidate for PM's Post

02 November 2025, Iraq, Najaf: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani delivers a speech during a campaign rally of his Reconstruction and Development Coalition in Najaf. (dpa)
02 November 2025, Iraq, Najaf: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani delivers a speech during a campaign rally of his Reconstruction and Development Coalition in Najaf. (dpa)
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Iraq's Coordination Framework Close to Naming Candidate for PM's Post

02 November 2025, Iraq, Najaf: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani delivers a speech during a campaign rally of his Reconstruction and Development Coalition in Najaf. (dpa)
02 November 2025, Iraq, Najaf: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani delivers a speech during a campaign rally of his Reconstruction and Development Coalition in Najaf. (dpa)

Iraq's pro-Iran Coordination Framework is leaning towards nominating Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani for a second term days after the election of Nizar Amedi as president.

This would mean abandoning the nomination of former PM Nouri al-Maliki, whose chances of becoming premier are nil after US President Donald Trump’s declaration that he opposes his candidacy.

Sudani is not the only name being floated. Head of the Justice and Accountability Commission Bassem al-Badri and former PM Haidar al-Abadi are seen as “consensus” candidates.

A leading source in the Framework told Asharq Al-Awsat that the coalition has no more than two weeks to decide on a candidate.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the coalition wants to take advantage of the truce between the United States and Iran to name a candidate and form a government.

A new candidate may be named very soon, he added.

He acknowledged the complex relations and divisions within the Framework, stressing however that time was running out for its members to name a candidate before the US-Iran war erupts again.

The source highlighted the “pivotal” role played by President of the Supreme Judicial Council Faiq Zaidan in trying to overcome differences and ensure that a candidate is named within the constitutional deadline.

On the possible candidates, the source said it was difficult to identify who has the greatest chances, but it is certain that Maliki is out of the race.

Sudani remains a strong candidate, while Abadi and Badri are also in the running. A fourth figure may also emerge as a candidate, he revealed.

On why Maliki continues to cling on to his nomination, the source explained that the former PM is awaiting the Framework to withdraw his candidacy because it named him in the first place.

He believes that there is no justification for him to pull out from the race unless the Framework decides so to avoid being viewed as having yielded to American pressure, the source said.

Meanwhile, Maliki appears to have become isolated within the Framework and he is now seeking to obstruct efforts to nominate Sudani and Abadi in an effort to portray himself as playing a major role in naming a prime minister.

Reports said that Maliki had informed the Framework of his readiness to quit the race in exchange for the coalition refraining from nominating Sudani for a second term.

He also demanded that it refrain from naming a former PM to the post, a reference to Abadi who was a member of Maliki’s Dawa party.

President of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Humam Hamoudi said on Sunday the Framework has no more than two weeks to name a candidate, urging consensus or a majority agreement over the issue.

“The new government will have fundamental challenges ahead of it, starting with building an army capable of defending Iraq’s sovereignty and activating diplomacy to bolster partnerships with neighboring countries to help consolidate regional security and stability,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, Sudani and his Construction and Development Coalition are committed to his candidacy.

Sources within his alliance believe he is “close to being appointed” by the president to form a new government.

Leading member of the coalition Khalid Walid told local media on Monday that Sudani enjoys the support of the majority of the members of the Framework.

He believes that the coming 48 hours will be decisive for Sudani’s candidacy, especially amid the challenges facing Iraq that demand the formation of a government that enjoys broad political support and that can overcome the crises at hand.