Justin Trudeau announced his decision to step down as prime minister of Canada in January. (Photo: David Kawai / Bloomberg via Getty Images) Israel and Hamas signalled on Saturday they were preparing for the next phase of ceasefire negotiations, as mediators pushed ahead with talks to extend the fragile 42-day truce that began in January.
Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers.
Canada Liberals to announce Trudeau’s successor amid US trade war
Canada’s Liberal Party will on Sunday announce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s successor as both party chief and head of the country’s government amid a trade war with the US that could cripple the Canadian economy.
The next prime minister will have to negotiate with US President Donald Trump as he threatens additional tariffs on Canada and may soon face the opposition Conservatives in a general election.
Trudeau announced in January he would step down after more than nine years in power as his approval rating plummeted, forcing the ruling Liberal Party to run a quick contest to replace him.
“Is it ideal in a circumstance of bilateral crisis for us? I suppose not,” said Drew Fagan, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. “But on the other hand, the process is playing out domestically as it should.”
Former central banker Mark Carney is the front-runner, with the most endorsements from party members and the most money raised among the four Liberal candidates.
Around two-thirds of Trudeau’s Cabinet publicly back Carney, and a Mainstreet poll in late February showed Carney with 43% support among Liberals compared to 31% for his main rival, former Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.
Freeland has touted her experience negotiating with Trump during his first term but has struggled to differentiate herself from Trudeau after being one of his most loyal supporters for years.
She left his government in December after Trudeau tried to replace her, and she criticised his government's spending policies.
A victory for Carney (59) would be the first time an outsider with no real political background has become Canadian prime minister.
Israel, Hamas signal readiness for next ceasefire talks
Israel and Hamas signalled on Saturday they were preparing for the next phase of ceasefire negotiations, as mediators pushed ahead with talks to extend the fragile 42-day truce that began in January.
Hamas said there were “positive indicators” for the start of the ceasefire’s second-phase talks but did not elaborate.
Israel also said it was preparing for talks. “Israel has accepted the invitation of the mediators backed by the US and will send a delegation to Doha on Monday in an effort to advance the negotiations,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
A delegation from Hamas is engaging in ceasefire talks in Cairo with Egyptian mediators who have been helping facilitate the talks along with officials from Qatar. They aim to proceed to the next stage of the deal, which could open the way to ending the war.
“We affirm our readiness to engage in the second-phase negotiations in a way that meets the demands of our people, and we call for intensified efforts to aid the Gaza Strip and lift the blockade on our suffering people,” said Hamas spokesperson Abdel-Latif Al-Qanoua.
In a later statement reporting its delegation’s meeting with the head of Egypt’s general intelligence agency, Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, Hamas affirmed the group’s approval of forming a committee of what it described as “national and independent” characters to run Gaza until elections.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi earlier said Cairo had worked in cooperation with Palestinians on creating an administrative committee of independent, professional Palestinian technocrats entrusted with the governance of Gaza after the end of the Israel-Gaza war.
His remarks came during the Arab summit which adopted Egypt’s alternative reconstruction plan for Gaza, as opposed to US President Donald Trump’s “Middle East Riviera” vision.
Even as diplomacy continued, an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians in Rafah in southern Gaza on Saturday, said medical sources.
The Israeli military said its aircraft struck a drone that crossed from Israel into southern Gaza and “several suspects” who tried to collect it in what appeared to be a botched smuggling attempt.
The strike came after an Israeli drone strike killed two people in Gaza on Friday. The Israeli military said it attacked a group of suspected militants operating near its troops in northern Gaza and planting an explosive device in the ground.
The Gaza ceasefire deal that took effect in January calls for the remaining 59 hostages in Hamas captivity to be freed in a second phase, during which final plans would be negotiated for an end to the war.
The first phase of the ceasefire ended last week. Israel has since imposed a total blockade on all goods entering the enclave, demanding that Hamas free the remaining hostages without beginning the negotiations to end the Gaza war.
Fighting has been halted since 19 January and Hamas has released 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais for some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Israeli authorities believe fewer than half of the remaining 59 hostages are still alive.
Israel's assault on the enclave has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. It has also internally displaced nearly Gaza’s entire population and led to accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies.
The assault began after Hamas-led Islamist fighters raided southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Syria hit by deadliest violence in years
Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers.
The clashes, which a war monitoring group said had already killed 1,000 people, mostly civilians, continued for a fourth day in Assad’s coastal heartland.
A Syrian security source said the pace of fighting had slowed around the cities of Latakia, Jabla and Baniyas, while forces searched surrounding mountainous areas where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were hiding.
Interim president Sharaa urged Syrians not to let sectarian tensions further destabilise the country.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” said Sharaa in a circulated video, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah, in Damascus.
“Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival. What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”
Rebels led by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group toppled Assad’s government in December. Assad fled to Russia, leaving behind some of his closest advisers and supporters, while Sharaa’s group led the appointment of an interim government and took over Syria’s armed forces.
Assad’s overthrow ended decades of dynastic rule by his family marked by severe repression and a devastating civil war that began as a peaceful uprising in 2011.
The war — in which Western countries, Arab states and Turkey backed the rebels while Russia, Iran and militias loyal to Tehran backed Assad — became a theatre for proxy conflicts among a kaleidoscope of armed factions with different loyalties and agendas. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions of Syrians.
After months of relative calm following the ouster of Assad, violence spiralled this week as forces linked to the new Islamist rulers began a crackdown on a growing insurgency from Assad’s Alawite sect in the Mediterranean provinces of Latakia and Tartous.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said on Saturday more than 1,000 people had been killed in the two days of fighting. It said 745 were civilians, 125 members of the Syrian security forces and 148 fighters loyal to Assad.
Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the observatory, said the civilians included Alawite women and children.
Abdulrahman told Reuters on Sunday that the death toll was one of the highest since a chemical weapons attack by Assad's forces in 2013 which killed some 1,400 people in a Damascus suburb.
Syrian security sources said at least 200 of their members were killed in the clashes with former army personnel owing allegiance to Assad after coordinated attacks and ambushes on their forces that were waged on Thursday.
The attacks spiralled into revenge killings when thousands of armed supporters of Syria’s new leaders from across the country descended to the coastal areas to support beleaguered forces of the new administration.
The authorities blamed the summary executions of dozens of youths and deadly raids on homes in villages and towns inhabited by Syria's once-ruling minority on unruly armed militias who came to help the security forces and have long blamed Assad's supporters for past crimes.
Clashes continued overnight in several towns where armed groups fired on security forces and ambushed cars on highways leading to main towns in the coastal area, a Syrian security source told Reuters on Sunday.
A security source added that the pro-Assad insurgents had staged hit and run attacks on several public utilities in the last 24 hours.
They damaged a main power station that cut electricity across parts of the province, while a main water pumping station and several fuel depots were disrupted.
“They are now trying to create havoc, disrupt life and attack vital installations,” he added.
In Latakia, police mounted new checkpoints inside the city. Two residents said sounds of gunfire and artillery could be heard on the outskirts of the coastal city.
The Damascus authorities were also sending reinforcements to beef up their security presence in the mountainous province, where thick forests in rugged terrain were helping the anti-government fighters, another police source said.
Russian soldiers creep through gas pipeline to strike Ukrainian forces in Kursk
Russian special forces crept kilometres through a gas pipeline near the town of Sudzha in an attempt to surprise Ukrainian forces as part of a major offensive to eject Ukrainian soldiers from the western Russian region of Kursk, said pro-Russian war bloggers.
The ruse was among moves aimed at cutting off thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the region ahead of Ukrainian talks with the US on a possible peace deal to end the war.
Ukrainian troops seized about 1,300 sq km of Russia’s Kursk region in August last year in what Kyiv said was an attempt to gain a bargaining chip in future negotiations and to force Russia to shift forces from eastern Ukraine.
Russia has been pressing its push to regain control of the region with some success in recent days. Open source maps on Friday showed Kyiv’s contingent in Kursk nearly surrounded after rapid Russian advances.
“The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed,” said former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Telegram. “The offensive continues.”
Yuri Podolyaka, a Ukrainian-born, pro-Russian military blogger, said Russian special forces crept nearly 16km along the inside of the 1.5m wide gas pipeline and spent several days in the pipe before surprising Ukrainian forces from the rear near Sudzha.
Pro-Russian war blogger Two Majors said a major battle was under way for Sudzha and that Russian forces had surprised Ukrainian soldiers by entering the area via a major gas pipeline.
A statement from Ukraine’s airborne assault forces said that Russian soldiers had used the pipeline in an attempt to gain a foothold, but the Russians were promptly detected and attacked with rockets, artillery and drones. DM