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Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda sign US-brokered peace deal – but doubts over success linger
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda have signed a peace deal which Donald Trump said he brokered – resulting in the US getting “a lot” of mineral rights in the process.
The deal has been touted as an important step towards ending the decades-long conflict in eastern DRC which has caused the deaths of six million people.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio called it “an important moment after 30 years of war”.
The Congo-Rwanda conflict explained
Earlier on Friday, President Trump said he was able to broker a deal for “one of the worst wars anyone’s ever seen”.
“I was able to get them together and sell it,” Mr Trump said. “And not only that, we’re getting for the United States a lot of the mineral rights from Congo.”
‘Great deal of uncertainty’
The Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, the most prominent armed group in the conflict, has suggested that the agreement won’t be binding for them.
It hasn’t been directly involved in the planned peace deal.
Donald Trump with DRC’s Therese Kayikwamba Wagner (R) and Rwanda’s Olivier Nduhungirehe (L) at the White House. Pic: Reuters
DRC foreign minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner invoked the millions of victims of the conflict in signing the agreement with Rwandan foreign minister Olivier Nduhungirehe.
The agreement, signed by the foreign ministers during a ceremony with Mr Rubio in Washington, pledges to implement a 2024 deal that would see Rwandan troops withdraw from eastern DRC within 90 days, according to a copy seen by Reuters.
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“Some wounds will heal, but they will never fully disappear,” Ms Wagner said. “Those who have suffered the most are watching. They are expecting this agreement to be respected, and we cannot fail them.”
Mr Nduhungirehe noted the “great deal of uncertainty” because previous agreements were not put in place.
“There is no doubt that the road ahead will not be easy,” he said. “But with the continued support of the United States and other partners, we believe that a turning point has been reached.”
The chief of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has called figures by the United Nations on people killed at aid hubs “disinformation”.
The UN said at least 410 Palestinians have been killed seeking food since Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade on 19 May, while the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said at least 549 people have been killed.
Johnnie Moore, executive director of GHF, told Sky News that there is a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip, fuelled by “some figures” coming out every day.
Mr Moore, an evangelical preacher who served as a White House adviser in the first Trump administration, said his aid group has delivered more than 44 million meals to Gazans since it began operations in May.
Palestinians carry humanitarian aid packages distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in Khan Younis.
Pic: AP
The controversial group, backed by Israel and the United States, has been rejected by the UN and other aid groups, which have refused to cooperate with the GHF.
The aid agencies claim Israel is weaponising food, and the new distribution system using the GHF will be ineffective and lead to further displacement of Palestinians.
They also argue the GHF will fail to meet local needs and violate humanitarian principles that prohibit a warring party from controlling humanitarian assistance.
The GHF is distributing food packages, which they say can feed 5.5 people for 3.5 days, in four locations, with the majority in the far south of Gaza.
GHF chief was ‘really political, really punchy’ in Sky News interview
It was really political, really punchy, and I think the heart of the matter here is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is too political.
The principle of aid, when applied traditionally, is that it has to be applied neutrally and that is what used to happen.
Trucks would go into Gaza, and the UN would distribute that food. Israel, for a long time, said that’s not working and they blame Hamas for that.
At a briefing by the Israeli prime minister’s office yesterday, they were saying that Hamas was still looting those aid vehicles, and it was coming out with a plan to stop that. It didn’t provide evidence for that.
When we asked for evidence, they said we shouldn’t swallow Hamas disinformation. That’s a word that’s been used. That’s very, very political.
This is a different model of doing things. And that is the concern: that rather than just handing it over to a neutral body, this is too close to Israel, it’s too close to the US, and is backed financially by the US.
What does that actually imply? Well, if you’re choosing where those sites are, it means people are going to move down there if you’re not putting them in certain places.
The number of distribution sites has dwindled. It’s attenuated. And so, actually, if there are only a few and if there are any in the south of Gaza, that encourages people to move there, that might fit a political goal as well as a humanitarian one.
Thousands of Palestinians walk for hours to reach the aid hubs and have to move through Israeli military zones, where witnesses say the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) regularly open fire with heavy barrages to control the crowds.
Both figures from the UN and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry say hundreds of people have been killed or wounded.
In response to Mr Moore’s comments, Rachael Cummings, Save the Children’s team leader in Gaza, told Sky News that people in Gaza “are being forced into the decision to go to retrieve food from the American- and Israeli-backed, militarised, food distribution point”.
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Doctors on the frontline
“We’re not contesting at all that there have been casualties in the Gaza Strip. I mean, there’s no ceasefire. This is an active conflict,” Mr Moore said.
“I think people may not understand as clearly what it means to operate a humanitarian operation on this scale, in an environment this complex, in a piece of land as small as the Gaza Strip, and may not appreciate that almost anything that happens in the Gaza Strip is going to take place in proximity to something.”
Mr Moore said that the GHF was not denying that there had been “those incidents”, but said the GHF was able to talk to the IDF, which would conduct an investigation, while Hamas was “intentionally harming people for he purpose of defaming what we’re doing”.
Palestinians carry humanitarian aid packages near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution centre in Khan Younis.
Pic: AP
He said the GHF, “an independent organisation operating with the blessing of the US government”, was “achieving its aims” by feeding Gazans.
It comes after the US State Department announced on Thursday that it had approved $30m in funding for the GHF as it called on other countries to also support the controversial group delivering aid in Gaza.
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Gazans risk ‘death traps’ for aid
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A spokesperson from the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs told Sky News that they are “open to any practical solutions that address the crisis on the ground” and are “happy” to talk to the GHF.
The spokeswoman added that the aid distribution in Gaza was not “currently a dignified process and that the format doesn’t follow humanitarian principles”.
She said that people have to walk for miles, and that there is no scalability, with aid not reaching everyone in need.
A man guilty of murdering nine people, most of whom had posted suicidal thoughts on social media, has been executed in Japan.
Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the “Twitter killer”, was sentenced to death in 2020 for the 2017 killings of the nine victims, who he also dismembered in his apartment near Tokyo.
His execution was the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years and it was carried out as calls grow to abolish the measure in Japan since the acquittal of the world’s longest-serving death-row inmate Iwao Hakamada last year.
He was freed after 56 years on death row, following a retrial which heard police had falsified and planted evidence against him over the 1966 murders of his boss, wife and two children.
Eight of Shiraishi’s victims were women, including teenagers, who he killed after raping them. He also killed a boyfriend of one of the women to silence him.
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Police arrested him in 2017 after finding the bodies of eight females and one male in cold-storage cases in his apartment.
Investigators said Shiraishi approached the victims via Twitter, offering to assist them with their suicidal wishes.
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Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi’s hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict’s “extremely selfish” motive for crimes that “caused great shock and unrest to society”.
“It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed,” Mr Suzuki said.
There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.
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