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Former Egyptian Minister Infected with Coronavirus

Egyptian security forces cordon off roads during curfew hours as prevention measures due to the coronavirus outbreak, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP)
Egyptian security forces cordon off roads during curfew hours as prevention measures due to the coronavirus outbreak, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP)
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Former Egyptian Minister Infected with Coronavirus

Egyptian security forces cordon off roads during curfew hours as prevention measures due to the coronavirus outbreak, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP)
Egyptian security forces cordon off roads during curfew hours as prevention measures due to the coronavirus outbreak, in Cairo, Egypt. (AP)

Egypt’s former Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Sameh Fahmy has contracted the novel coronavirus, reported state media.

A source close to the official told Al-Ahram daily on Tuesday that he was diagnosed three days ago.

Fahmy, 70, has since been self-isolating at home and is being monitored by doctors.

He was in stable condition, his brother told the media.

Fahmy served as minister from 1999 to 2011.

In 2015, an Egyptian court acquitted him of charges of selling cheap gas to Israel and squandering public funds and threw out his 15-year jail sentence. He was first arrested and held in custody in April 2011.

Egypt has reported 13,484 virus cases and 659 deaths.

Lebanon on Wednesday reported seven new virus cases, taking its total to 961. Three of the new infections were reported among Lebanese returning from abroad.

The country has registered 251 recoveries and 26 fatalities. Earlier this week, it extended health emergency measures to June 7.

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Israeli Soldiers Open Fire inside a West Bank Hospital While Searching for Fighters’ Bodies

Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
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Israeli Soldiers Open Fire inside a West Bank Hospital While Searching for Fighters’ Bodies

Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)

Israeli soldiers opened fire inside a hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday during a raid to seize the bodies of alleged fighters targeted in earlier airstrikes, a Palestinian doctor working at the hospital told The Associated Press.

Soldiers entered the Turkish Hospital complex in Tubas after the bodies of two Palestinians killed and one wounded in airstrikes in the northern West Bank on Tuesday were brought there, said Dr. Mahmoud Ghanam, who works in the hospital’s emergency department. The troops briefly handcuffed and arrested Ghanam and another doctor.

“The army entered in a brutal way, and they were shooting inside the emergency department,” said Ghanam. “They handcuffed us and took me and my colleague.”

The military confirmed that its troops were operating around the hospital searching for those targeted in the airstrikes, which they said had hit a militant cell near the Palestinian town of Al-Aqaba in the Jordan Valley. It denied that troops had entered the hospital building or fired gunshots inside.

The soldiers left after learning that the wounded man had been transferred to another hospital, Ghanam said. The soldiers wanted to take the bodies of the two men killed in the strike, but the hospital’s manager refused to hand over the bodies, Ghanam said.

Israeli raids on hospitals in the West Bank are rare but have grown more common since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. In Gaza, Israeli troops have systematically besieged, raided and damaged many hospitals.

About 800 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the war there. Israel has carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank that it says are aimed at preventing attacks on Israelis — attacks which have also been on the rise.

Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three territories for an independent state.