AFP UK

Gaza (AFP) – “We feel happy but at the same time we’re sad because we lost many of our loved ones,” says Entissar Al-Saeedi, one of thousands of Gazans who have begun streaming towards the north of the war-battered Gaza Strip after Israel and Hamas said they had reached a deal for the release of another six hostages. On 27 January, US President Donald Trump floated an idea to “clean out” Gaza and resettle Palestinians in Jordan and Egypt, drawing condemnation from regional leaders.

Bogotá (AFP) – Scene outside the US embassy in Colombian capital of Bogota, after the country backed down and agreed to accept deported citizens sent on US military aircraft. President Donald Trump threatened painful tariffs to punish the defiance to his mass deportation plans. The issuance of visas for Colombians is still suspended. IMAGES

Peking (AFP) – China dismisses claims that the Covid-19 pandemic came from a lab, after US intelligence said it believed the virus had a “research-related origin” rather than being transmitted by animals.

Islamabad (AFP) – Pakistan’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi are appealing their convictions for graft, his lawyer says. Khan was sentenced to 14 years and his wife to seven earlier this month in the latest case to be brought against them.

Kapstadt (AFP) – Japanese adventurer Gump Suzuki arrives in Cape Town at the end of a more than six thousand kilometre journey across Africa whilst pulling a rickshaw. Suzuki began his African odyssey last summer in Kenya and has a large following on social media where he has shared regular updates of his adventures. It has been a “very good experience,” he tells AFP, despite some hairy moments such as seeing a lion and a truck hitting his rickshaw.

Warschau (AFP) – The leader of the Belarusian opposition in exile, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, marches in Warsaw, Poland, to protest the presidential election in Belarus. The election is set to hand President Alexander Lukashenko a seventh term, prolonging his three-decade authoritarian rule.

Gaza (AFP) – Hamas militants released four Israeli female soldiers after more than 15 months of captivity in Gaza, and Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli detention are welcomed by large crowds in the West Bank in the second hostage-prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel since a truce deal came into effect last Sunday.

Confins (AFP) – Brazil’s government expresses outrage as dozens of immigrants deported from the United States arrive by plane in handcuffs, calling it a “flagrant disregard” for their rights. The spat comes as Latin America grapples with US President Donald Trump’s return to power with a hard-line anti-immigration agenda, promising crackdowns on irregular migration and mass deportations.

Berlin (AFP) – Robert Habeck, German Vice-Chancellor and Green party candidate for the upcoming federal election on 23 February, criticises US President Donald Trump and proponents of “Germany first” ideas in a speech at the party’s pre-election rally in Berlin.

Munigi (AFP) – People flee the intensifying fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo region of North Kivu, as the M23, a Rwanda-backed anti-government armed group, almost completely encircles the capital of North Kivu. “People are fleeing everywhere,” says Alice Feza, a displaced woman. “We have been hearing shots and blasts all night,” she adds.

Brugelette (AFP) – Belgium’s Pairi Daiza animal park shows off Nova, a southern white rhinoceros, who was born on 2 January 2025 weighing 75 kilos. The southern white rhino is a species native to southern Africa, vulnerable to poaching and the illegal ivory trade. Thanks to conservation efforts, the population of this species is now on the increase overall (with around 20,000 in captivity and in the wild), although its existence remains fragile.

Minsk (AFP) – Early voting gets underway in Belarus’s presidential election, which promises to see the extension of President Alexander Lukashenko’s 30-year rule. An unprecedented protest movement that rose up against him following the last elections in 2020 was suppressed by force, with many Belarusians were sentenced to long prison terms and hundreds of thousands of others fled the country.