Palestinians in Israeli jails end hunger strike after 40 days

Compiled from news services

JERUSALEM — Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails ended a hunger strike late Friday after 40 days, as their health was deteriorating and after, news media reports said, officials agreed to at least one of the prisoners’ demands.

About 1,000 men had taken part in the strike, and Israeli officials said this past week that nearly every prisoner had needed hospital care, including the leader of the strike, Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian politician convicted of five murders in the Palestinian uprising that began in 2000.

In a statement Saturday, Barghouti confirmed the end of the hunger strike, timed to coincide with the beginning of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month of fasting. But he did not specify any agreements with Israeli authorities. The statement called the strike an “important step toward full respect of the rights of Palestinian prisoners.” Israeli prison officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

The strikers, among 6,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, had demanded more family visits, an end to solitary confinement, better health care and greater access to education. Media reports said Israeli authorities had agreed to prisoners’ demand for a second monthly family visit.

Israeli officials accused Barghouti of staging the strike to raise his position in the volatile struggle over leadership among Palestinians. Polls show that Barghouti, 57, who has been in prison since 2002, is the most popular choice to replace Mahmoud Abbas, 82, president of the Palestinian Authority.

IS claims Egypt attack

MINYA, Egypt — Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack on a bus loaded with Coptic Christians the day before near the southern city of Minya, which officials said killed 29 people.

“A security team of caliphate soldiers set up an ambush for dozens of Christians as they headed to the church of St. Samuel,” the militant group said Saturday through Amaq, its media arm.

The bus passengers were shot to death on their way to volunteer at a monastery. Twenty-five other Coptic Christians were wounded.

Friday’s attack, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, led Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah elSissi to launch airstrikes on what officials said were militant training camps in the northeastern Libyan city of Derna. Mr. el-Sissi, a former general, said the gunmen had trained and planned the attack in Libyan camps, although Islamic State has not controlled Derna for two years.

In a Saturday phone call, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that officials found “information and evidence that terrorist elements involved in the Minya incident trained in these camps,” a statement said.

The military strikes did little to reassure Coptic Christians in Minya, a city on the banks of the Nile about 140 miles south of Cairo where about 40 percent of the population is Christian – four times the percentage of the Muslim country’s population of 92 million. They have watched with dread this year as Islamic State militants advanced from strongholds in northern Sinai south beyond the capital.

Anti-Indian protests

SRINAGAR,India — One civilian was killed and dozens of others injured Saturday after massive anti-India protests and clashes erupted in Indian-controlled Kashmir following the killing of a prominent rebel commander and his associate in a gunbattle with government forces in the disputed region.

Rebel leader Sabzar Ahmed Bhat and a fellow militant were killed after troops cordoned off the southern Tral area overnight following a tip that rebels were hiding there, police said.