Middle East & North Africa

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — At least 10 workers are dead after a gold mine collapsed in northern Sudan, state media has reported.

Sudan’s SUNA news said the workers died after the roof of the Jebel Al-Ahmar gold mine, near the Egyptian border, collapsed Thursday. Many other miners are still missing, it reported.

Several of the bodies, mostly of young men, have been recovered from the site and search efforts are ongoing, SUNA said. A security source cited by the state agency said workers are feared to be trapped beneath the mine’s groundwater. Few further details were given.

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: A thousand members joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkiye after the left the nationalist Good Party (IYI), led by Meral Aksener. en masse.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed them yesterday during a meeting of AKP's parliamentary bloc, which was held in the Turkish parliament.

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: The Israeli Law Professors' Forum for Democracy has found that changes introduced by the current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "validate the claim that Israel practices apartheid."

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has told the Human Rights Council that Israeli settlement expansion is linked to settler attacks against Palestinians over the past decade. Volker Turk noted that the UN has verified 3,372 incidents of settler violence that injured 1,222 Palestinians.

Turk presented his findings in a report to the council on Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, as well as the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: QatarEnergy entered into a farm-in agreement with ExxonMobil Canada for two exploration licenses gas offshore the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, Qatari media reports.

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: Turkiye's President, Tayyip Erdogan, said on Wednesday his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, may visit Turkiye on 27 April for the inauguration of the country's first nuclear power reactor built by Russia's state nuclear energy company, Rosatom, Reuters reports.

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: The separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militant organisation has announced that it will keep its ceasefire with Turkiye in place until after the upcoming Turkish elections on 14 May.­

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: Saudi Arabia and China have launched a joint venture of integrated refinery and petrochemical complex for fine chemicals and raw materials under the multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Anadolu News Agency reports.

The $12.2 billion project between China and Saudi Arabia, dubbed as a "green and low-carbon initiative", was launched in Panjin city of north-eastern Liaoning province, according to the Chinese daily, Global Times.

DAMASCUS, Mar 30 (NNN-SANA) – A fresh Israeli missile attack, targeted military sites near Damascus, the Syrian capital, early today, according to the state-run TV.

The targets are yet to be known, but the attacks triggered Syria’s air defensces, which were clearly heard in Damascus.

No further details were immediately available.

30 Mar 2023; MEMO: Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed temporary legislation last night that allows police officers to conduct house searches for illegal weapons without a warrant, particularly in Arab communities, Haaretz has reported. The objective is to "reduce the number of illegal weapons used by criminal organisations by providing tools to the Israeli police and other law enforcement authorities."