Jordan eyes increased exports to Iraq amid strengthening economic ties
Jordan eyes increased exports to Iraq amid strengthening economic ties/node/2588648/middle-east
Jordan eyes increased exports to Iraq amid strengthening economic ties
A Jordanian delegation arrived in Baghdad on Saturday to bolster economic cooperation and explore new opportunities in the Iraqi market, with a focus on expanding Jordanian exports. (Jordan News Agency)
Jordan eyes increased exports to Iraq amid strengthening economic ties
Delegation arrives in Baghdad to take part in Jordanian-Iraqi business forum
70 Jordanian firms to take part in forum as business leaders seek growth in bilateral trade
Updated 14 sec ago
Arab News
BAGHDAD: A Jordanian delegation arrived in Baghdad on Saturday to bolster economic cooperation and explore new opportunities in the Iraqi market, with a focus on expanding Jordanian exports, the Jordan News Agency reported.
The visit, organized by the Jordan Chamber of Industry in partnership with Jordan Export House, coincided with the Baghdad International Fair, where Jordanian industrial firms are set to showcase their products in a dedicated pavilion.
The delegation will also participate in a Jordanian-Iraqi business forum, facilitating discussions between key industrial and commercial figures from both nations.
JCI Chairman Fathi Jaghbir said the initiative aimed to restore Jordanian exports to Iraq to previous levels, when the Iraqi market accounted for roughly 20 percent of Jordan’s total exports.
He described Iraq as a “strategic depth” for Jordanian industries, and highlighted the chamber’s commitment to increasing trade between the two countries.
The forum will be attended by Jordan’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Supply, Yarub Qudah, alongside Iraq’s Minister of Industry and Minerals, Khaled Batal, and will feature a dialogue session on Jordan-Iraq trade, titled “Visions and a Bright Future,” to highlight the growing collaboration between the public and private sectors.
Jaghbir said that ongoing efforts between Jordanian and Iraqi business leaders have begun to show “tangible” results, with Jordanian exports to Iraq rising by 45 percent over the past year.
He also pointed to past initiatives, such as a specialized Jordanian industries exhibition in Baghdad and multiple bilateral forums, which have led to new agreements and the establishment of joint business chambers.
Ihab Qadiri, head of the JCI’s Iraq focus, underscored the country’s strategic importance for Jordanian exports, noting that 70 Jordanian companies are taking part in the business forum.
Official data shows Jordan’s exports to Iraq reached 830 million dinars ($1.17 billion) in the first 11 months of last year, a 45.6 percent increase over the same period in 2023. Iraq also accounted for 25.4 percent of Jordan’s total exports to the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, valued at 3.25 billion dinars.
Tears and cheers for freed West Bank Palestinian prisoners
During Saturday’s fourth prisoner release since the January 19 Gaza ceasefire began, an eager crowd gathered to see 25 Palestinian prisoners released in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
A total of 183 prisoners, almost all Palestinians except for one Egyptian, were released on Saturday
Updated 56 min 59 sec ago
AFP
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Stepping off a bus with two dozen other released Palestinian prisoners on Saturday after 23 years imprisonment in Israel, Ata Abdelghani had more than his freedom to look forward to.
The 55-year-old was also to meet his twin sons, Zain and Zaid, for the first time.
The encounter was made possible by his release in an ongoing hostage-prisoner exchange as part of a January ceasefire deal for the Gaza Strip agreed by Israel and Hamas.
The twins, now 10 years old, were conceived while Abdelghani was incarcerated after his sperm was smuggled out of his prison.
He had been serving a life sentence on a number of counts including murder, according to a list released by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club in Ramallah.
“These children are the ambassadors of freedom, the future generation,” Abdelghani said as he hugged the boys tightly.
During Saturday’s fourth prisoner release since the January 19 Gaza ceasefire began, an eager crowd gathered to see 25 Palestinian prisoners released in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Wearing grey prison tracksuits and with their heads shaved, the prisoners looked weary as they arrived, but many were hoisted onto people’s shoulders by the crowd and carried along in a heroes’ welcome.
“It’s hard to describe in words,” Abdelghani said.
“My thoughts are scattered. I need a great deal of composure to control myself, to steady my nerves, to absorb this overwhelming moment.”
He added that the situation in prison had been “difficult, tragic.”
A total of 183 prisoners, almost all Palestinians except for one Egyptian, were released on Saturday.
Seven serving life sentences and an Egyptian were deported to Egypt, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club. Of the remainder, 150 were sent to Gaza.
The prisoners were released in exchange for three Israelis taken hostage during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Riad Marshoud, another freed prisoner, cried when he hugged his two sons, who were boys when he was jailed 22 years ago.
After hugging them tightly, he sat on a chair while relatives made video calls to cousins and uncles who had not been able to come to see him released.
One relative was in Jordan and another in the United Arab Emirates.
All tried to catch a glimpse of the dazed and tired but elated Marshoud as he received congratulations.
“The first moment when the bus doors opened and I stepped out was very difficult — it’s hard to describe it in mere words,” he told the crowd.
The dense throng that had come to see Marshoud parted when his father arrived wearing a traditional keffiyeh around his head.
The father greeted his son with tearful kisses.
Marshoud had been jailed on charges of membership of an illegal organization, shooting and conspiracy to commit murder, according to Israel’s justice ministry.
Shortly after the families in Ramallah took their released relatives home, three busloads of prisoners arrived in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, an AFP journalist reported.
The 150 prisoners were greeted as they got off the bus by chants from the crowd — “In blood and spirit, we shall redeem you, prisoner!“
At least 56 killed as fighting grips greater Khartoum
Source at Al-Nao Hospital said wounded were “still being brought to the hospital” following attack by RSF
Hospital one of the last medical facilities operating in the area, has been repeatedly attacked
Updated 01 February 2025
AFP
PORT SUDAN: Artillery shelling and air strikes killed at least 56 people across greater Khartoum on Saturday, according to a medical source and Sudanese activists.
Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023 that has intensified this month as the army fights to take all of the capital Khartoum and its sister cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North.
RSF shelling killed 54 people at a busy market in Omdurman on Saturday, overwhelming the city’s Al-Nao Hospital, a medical source told AFP.
“The shells hit in the middle of the vegetable market, that’s why the victims and the wounded are so many,” one survivor told AFP.
Across the Nile in Khartoum, two civilians were killed and dozens wounded in an air strike on an RSF-controlled area, the local Emergency Response Room (ERR) said.
Although the RSF has used drones in attacks including on Saturday, the fighter jets of the regular armed forces maintain a monopoly on air strikes.
The ERR is one of hundreds of volunteer committees across Sudan coordinating emergency care.
In addition to killing tens of thousands of people, the war has uprooted more than 12 million and forced most health facilities out of service.
A volunteer at Al-Nao Hospital told AFP it faced dire shortages of “shrouds, blood donors and stretchers to transport the wounded.”
The hospital is one of the last medical facilities operating in Omdurman and has been repeatedly attacked.
After months of stalemate in greater Khartoum, the army retook several bases in Khartoum last month, including its pre-war headquarters, pushing the RSF increasingly into the city’s outskirts.
Witnesses said Saturday’s bombardment of Omdurman came from the city’s western outskirts, where the RSF remains in control.
A resident of a southern neighborhood reported rocket and artillery fire on the city’s streets.
Saturday’s bombardment came a day after RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo vowed to retake the capital from the army.
“We expelled them (from Khartoum) before, and we will expel them again,” he told troops in a rare video address.
Greater Khartoum has been a key battleground in nearly 22 months of fighting between the army and the RSF, and has been reduced to a shell of its former self.
An investigation by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that 26,000 people were killed in the capital alone between April 2023 and June 2024.
Entire neighborhoods have been taken over by fighters as at least 3.6 million civilians have fled, according to United Nations figures.
Those unable or unwilling to leave have reported frequent artillery fire on residential areas, and widespread hunger in besieged neighborhoods blockaded by opposing forces.
At least 106,000 people are estimated to be suffering from famine in Khartoum, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, with a further 3.2 million experiencing crisis levels of hunger.
Nationwide, famine has been declared in five areas — most of them in the mainly RSF-controlled western region of Darfur — and is expected to take hold of five more by May.
Before leaving office, the Joe Biden administration sanctioned Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals and using starvation as a weapon of war.
That designation came a week after Washington sanctioned the RSF commander for his role in “gross violations of human rights” in Darfur, where the State Department said his forces had “committed genocide” against non-Arab minority groups.
Syria vows ‘no leniency’ after detainee death: state media
The man, identified as Louai Tayara, was arrested on Wednesday for “not settling his legal status, and for carrying undeclared weapons“
The city has seen security sweeps since Assad was toppled, with hundreds of people arrested
Updated 01 February 2025
AFP
DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have opened an investigation and vowed no leniency after a detainee died in Homs, state media reported on Saturday, less than two months after rebels ousted Bashar Assad.
The man, identified as Louai Tayara, was arrested on Wednesday for “not settling his legal status, and for carrying undeclared weapons,” the SANA news agency said, citing the head of the General Security department in the central Syrian city.
Without identifying the security chief by name, SANA said Tayara had been a member of the National Defense, a militia affiliated with the former government, in Homs.
The city has seen security sweeps since Assad was toppled, with hundreds of people arrested.
Tayara was transferred to a detention center but “some security personnel assigned with transporting him” carried out “violations,” leading to his death, the news agency reported.
“An official investigation was opened” and “all personnel responsible were arrested and referred to the military judiciary,” it said.
SANA cited the security official as saying that the incident “is being dealt with in all seriousness, and there will be no leniency.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Tayara had been “hit in the head with a sharp object.”
Since Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad on December 8, Syria’s new authorities have sought to provide assurances that will be no revenge for Assad-era brutality.
However, they have also begun operations against “regime remnants,” amid reports of violence including extra-judicial killings.
Assad ruled Syria with an iron fist, and his bloody crackdown down on anti-government protests in 2011 sparked a war that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
The new authorities have also sought to reassure religious and ethnic minorities that they will not be harmed, with members of Assad’s Alawite sect in particular fearing a backlash.
Civil Peace Group, a civil society organization, called Tayara’s death a “crime” and an “attack on human values and dignity and the right to life.”
In a statement, it described the incident as a “threat to stability in the city.”
SANA reported the official as saying that “General Security affirms its full commitment to protecting citizens’ rights... and all legal measures will be taken to guarantee justice and transparency.”
“Justice will take its compete course, irrespective of the identity of the person concerned or their previous affiliation,” it said, adding that the results of the investigation would be announced promptly.
The Observatory said on Saturday that it had documented 10 deaths in custody in Homs province since Tuesday, including Tayara.
It also said that gunmen on Friday killed 10 people in a “massacre” in an Alawite village in Hama province, north of Homs.
Israel demands ‘information’ from mediators on Bibas family after father’s release
“Yarden has returned home. But his wife Shiri and his children Ariel and Kfir have not,” Gal Hirsch, Israel’s hostage coordinator, said
“We continue to demand information about their condition from the mediators“
Updated 01 February 2025
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel on Saturday demanded information from mediators who brokered the ceasefire in Gaza about the fate of three family members of freed hostage Yarden Bibas.
“Yarden has returned home. But his wife Shiri and his children Ariel and Kfir have not. We have been searching for them for a long time, tracking their traces and investigating their fate,” Gal Hirsch, Israel’s hostage coordinator, said in a statement.
“The Bibas family... has been living in constant fear for their lives for a long time... We continue to demand information about their condition from the mediators.”
Like Bibas, his wife Shiri and their two boys were seized by militants on October 7, 2023 during Hamas’s attack on Israel and taken to Gaza.
Bibas’s sons — Kfir, the youngest hostage, whose second birthday fell in January, and his older brother Ariel, whose fifth birthday was in August — have become symbols of the hostages’ ordeal.
Hamas has previously declared that Shiri and the children were killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023, but Israel has not confirmed their deaths.
Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners released in latest Gaza exchange
Latest stage in multi-phase ceasefire deal to end Gaza war
At the newly reopened Rafah crossing, Palestinian patients to be allowed to leave Gaza
Updated 01 February 2025
Reuters
GAZA/CAIRO: Palestinian militant group Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Saturday, and dozens of Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released in exchange, in the latest stage of a truce aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza.
Ofer Kalderon, a French-Israeli dual national, and Yarden Bibas were handed over to Red Cross officials in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis before being transferred to Israel. Israeli-American Keith Siegel was separately handed over at the Gaza City seaport.
Hours later, 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released in the exchange. Among them, 150 arrived in Gaza while 32 got off a bus in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where they were greeted by large crowds. One freed prisoner will be exiled to Egypt, according to the Hamas prisoners’ media office.
“I feel joy despite the journey of pain and hardship that we lived,” said Ali Al-Barghouti, who was serving two life sentences in an Israeli jail.
“The life sentence was broken and the occupation will one day be broken,” added Barghouti, as the crowd around him in Ramallah chanted “Allah Akbar (God is the most great).”
Ofer Kalderon, center, is released by Hamas militants in this still image taken from a video in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 1, 2025. (Reuters/Reuters TV)
At the newly reopened Rafah crossing on the southern border, [alestinian patients to be allowed to leave Gaza for medical treatment in Egypt.
Mohammad Zaqout, a senior official in Gaza’s health ministry, however, criticized the limited number of patients allowed to travel for treatment, saying that around 18,000 people needed better health care.
In Israel, crowds gathered at the location in Tel Aviv known as Hostage Square to watch the release in the morning of the Israeli hostages on giant outdoor screens, mixing cheers and applause with tears as the three men appeared.
Kalderon, whose two children Erez and Sahar were released in the first hostage exchange in November 2023, and Bibas both briefly mounted a stage in Khan Younis, in front of a poster of Hamas figures including Mohammad Deif, the former military commander whose death was confirmed by Hamas this week, before being handed over to the Red Cross officials.
“Ofer Kalderon is free! We share the immense relief and joy of his loved ones after 483 days of unimaginable hell,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement.
Saturday’s handover saw none of the chaotic scenes that overshadowed an earlier transfer on Thursday, when Hamas guards struggled to shield hostages from a surging crowd in Gaza.
But it was once again an occasion for a show of force by uniformed Hamas fighters who paraded in the area where the handovers took place in a sign of their re-established dominance in Gaza despite the heavy losses suffered in the war.
Israeli hostage Yarden Bibas waves on a stage before being handed over to members of the Red Cross in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 1, 2025. (AFPTV/ AFP)
Negotiations on release of remaining hostages
The total number of hostages freed so far is 18, including five Thais who were part of an unscheduled release on Thursday.
After Saturday’s exchange, Israel will have released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including militants serving life sentences for deadly attacks as well as some detained during the war but not charged.
As the fighting has abated, diplomatic efforts to build a wider settlement have stepped up.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet US President Donald Trump on Tuesday with the ceasefire in Gaza, and a possible normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia as part of a postwar deal likely to be a focus.
During the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 children, women and older male hostages as well as sick and injured, were due to be released, with more than 60 men of military age left for a second phase which must still be worked out.
Negotiations are due to start by Tuesday on agreements for the release of the remaining hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in a second phase of the deal, which is intended to lead to a final end of the war in Gaza.
The initial six-week truce, agreed with Egyptian and Qatari mediators and backed by the United States, has mostly remained intact despite incidents that have led both sides to accuse the other of violating the deal.
Netanyahu’s government, which has hard-liners who opposed the ceasefire deal, and Hamas say they are committed to reaching an agreement in the second phase.
But prospects for a durable settlement remain unclear. The war started with a Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, and saw more than 250 taken as hostages. The Israeli military campaign has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians. Gaza is in ruins and a deep legacy of bitterness and mistrust remains.
Israeli leaders continue to insist that Hamas cannot remain in Gaza, but the movement has taken every opportunity to demonstrate the control it continues to exert despite the loss of much of its former leadership and thousands of fighters during the war.
