By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO (Reuters) -An Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia on Sunday killed Mohammad Morsi, deputy director of the Gaza Civil Emergency Service in the northern areas of the Gaza Strip, and four of his family, health officials said.

The Civil Emergency Service said in a statement that Morsi’s death raised to 83 the number of its members killed by Israeli fire since Oct. 7.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on Morsi’s death.

Residents said Israeli forces had also blown up several houses in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City 5 km from Jabalia. Medical teams said they were unable to answer desperate calls by some of the residents who had reported being trapped inside their houses, some wounded.

“We hear constant bombing in Zeitoun, we know they are blowing up houses there, we don’t sleep because of the sounds of explosions, the roaring of tanks sound close and the drones don’t stop circling,” said one resident of Gaza City, who lives around 1 km away.

“The occupation is wiping out Zeitoun, we are afraid about the people trapped in there,” he told Reuters via a chat app, refusing to be named.

Later on Sunday, the Gaza health ministry said Israeli military strikes across the enclave killed at least 15 people.

Residents of central and southern Gaza areas reported interruption in internet and communication services, which the Palestinian Telecommunication Company said was because of “the ongoing (Israeli) aggression.”

Palestinians say internet and communication outages, the first in months, impact the ability of medical staffers to dispatch ambulances to bombed areas and make it difficult for people to check on their relatives or report attacks.

Israel and Hamas continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the U.S., to broker a ceasefire. The U.S. is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides’ positions remain large.

Meanwhile on Sunday the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, extended by a day a campaign to vaccinate children in the southern Gaza Strip against polio before it moves on Monday to the north.

The campaign aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in around 25 years. Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.

U.N. officials said they were making progress, having reached more than half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when the Hamas group attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.

The Palestinian health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in its casualty reports, but health officials say that most of the fatalities have been civilians.

Israel, which has lost 340 soldiers in Gaza, says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.

By Lamine Chikhi

ALGIERS (Reuters) -Algerian authorities declared President Abdulmadjid Tebboune the overwhelming winner of Saturday’s election on Sunday, but a rival candidate alleged irregularities in the count and fewer than half of registered voters cast ballots.

Official preliminary results gave Tebboune 95% of the vote, enough to avoid a second round run-off, with Abdelaali Hassani Cherif getting 3% and Youcef Aouchiche 2%. Turnout was 48%.

Tebboune, backed by the military, was facing only nominal opposition from Hassani Cherif, a moderate Islamist, and Aouchiche, a moderate secularist, both running with the blessing of Algeria’s powerful establishment.

Hassani Cherif’s campaign said polling station officials had been pressured to inflate results and alleged failures to deliver vote-sorting records to candidates’ representatives, as well as instances of proxy group voting.

“This is a farce,” said Hassani Cherif’s spokesperson Ahmed Sadok, adding that the candidate had won far more votes than had been announced, citing the campaign’s own tallies from regions. Reuters could not immediately verify those tallies or reach Tebboune’s or Aouchiche’s campaign for comment.

However, electoral commission head Mohammed Charfi said when announcing the results that the body had worked to ensure transparency and fair competition among all candidates.

Tebboune’s re-election means Algeria will likely keep on with a governing programme that has resumed lavish social spending based on increased energy revenues after he came into office in 2019 following a period of lower oil prices.

He has promised to raise unemployment benefits, pensions and public housing programmes, all of which he increased during his first term as president.

“As long as Tebboune continues to raise wages and pensions and maintain subsidies he will be the best in my eyes,” said Ali, a cafe customer in the Ouled Fayet district of Algiers, asking not to write his family name.

First elected during the mass “hirak” (movement) protests that forced his veteran predecessor Abdulaziz Bouteflika from power after 20 years, Tebboune has backed a tough approach from the security forces, which have jailed prominent dissidents.

His election in 2019 reflected the anti-establishment mood in Algeria that year, with turnout of 40%, far below previous votes.

The protests, which brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets every week for more than a year demanding an end to corruption and the ousting of the ruling elite, were finally curtailed by the COVID pandemic.

“Turnout is very low. It shows that the vast majority is like me,” said another Ouled Fayet resident, Slimane, 24, who also asked not to give his family name. He did not vote because he does not trust politicians, he said.

UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 boosted European demand for Algerian gas and pushed energy prices back up, increasing Algerian state revenue after years of burning through foreign exchange reserves and leading to new hydrocarbons projects.

While using much of the money for social handouts, Tebboune’s government has also pushed economic reforms aimed at strengthening the private sector to create jobs.

However, while unemployment is down from its highs of around 14% during the pandemic, it remained above 12% last year and inflation is also high.

The economic difficulties faced by ordinary Algerians may have contributed to the low turnout on Saturday.

“Turnout at 48% versus 40% in 2019 clearly shows that the gap between rulers and the people is still to be filled,” said political analyst Farid Ferrari (NYSE:).

In foreign policy, Tebboune’s record is patchy.

Despite Algeria’s key role in Europe as a gas provider, arch regional rival Morocco has succeeded in winning over Spanish and French acceptance of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, where Algiers backs the Polisario separatists. Morocco has won over some African and Arab states too.

Meanwhile, Algeria’s push for membership of the BRICS group when it expanded in January was thwarted, with the bloc instead inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates to join. Algeria instead joined the BRICS development bank last month.

Its efforts to bring greater stability in Africa’s Sahel region also ran adrift, with an attempt to mediate between rival forces in Niger following a coup last year failing to deliver progress.

However, Algeria remains a major military power in the region and seems unlikely to shift from its traditional stance balancing ties between Western powers and Russia.

By Ana Cantero and Vivian Sequera

MADRID/CARACAS (Reuters) -Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez flew into Spain on Sunday to seek asylum, Madrid said, hours after quitting his country amid a political and diplomatic crisis over July’s disputed election.

Gonzalez – who has challenged President Nicolas Maduro’s declaration of victory – arrived at the Torrejon de Ardoz military base with his wife, Spain’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The exit of the 75-year-old – seen by the U.S., the EU and other powers in the region as the winner of the vote – came a week after Venezuelan authorities issued an arrest warrant for him, accusing him of conspiracy and other crimes.

“Today is a sad day for democracy in Venezuela,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a statement. “In a democracy, no political leader should be forced to seek asylum in another country.”

Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said on Instagram authorities had given Gonzalez safe passage in a bid to restore “political peace”. Spain’s foreign ministry said there had been no official talks with the Venezuelan government on Gonzalez’s exit.

Venezuela’s opposition say the July 28 election resulted in a resounding victory for Gonzalez, and published vote tallies online that they say show he won.

Maduro has dismissed all such assertions and says there was a right-wing plot to sabotage his government.

Gonzalez’s move to Spain marked another jolting shift in the fortunes of the former diplomat who came out of retirement and took over the candidacy in March, initially as a placeholder after opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and then another replacement could not stand.

Machado confirmed on X that Gonzalez was now in Spain, adding he had fled to protect his “freedom, his integrity and his life”.

“The increasing threats, summons, arrest warrants and even the attempts at blackmail and coercion to which he has been subjected show that the regime has no scruples or limits in its obsession to silence him and try to break him,” she wrote.

Gonzalez would continue to fight for the opposition from Spain, while she would continue to do so within Venezuela, Machado said, and vowed that he would be sworn in on Jan. 10, 2025, when the next presidential term begins.

EMBASSIES, TALKS

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish TV he had told Gonzalez “any person whose physical integrity or fundamental rights may be endangered would be welcomed in Spain and its embassy.”

He added that his relocation to Spain had been planned for days and the foreign ministry said Gonzalez’s asylum process would now start.

Gonzalez had sought refuge in the Dutch and then the Spanish embassy in Venezuela after the election, Dutch and Venezuelan officials said.

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said in a letter to his parliament on Sunday that Gonzalez had urgently requested refuge in the Dutch embassy the day after the election.

“At the beginning of September, Edmundo Gonzalez indicated that he … wanted to leave and continue his fight from Spain”, Veldkamp added.

Spanish officials, including former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, linked to diplomatic relations in the South American country in the past, were involved in a week of negotiations with Venezuelan authorities for Gonzalez to leave the country, a source with knowledge of the talks told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

OPPOSITION PRESSES FOR MORE PROTESTS

That Maduro allowed Gonzalez’s departure despite the arrest warrant he was facing may soften some harsh recent international criticism of him.

Machado, though, remains subject of an investigation and has largely been sequestered at an unknown location since the vote, emerging only occasionally to lead rallies. Gonzalez’s departure came less than 24 hours after security forces surrounded Argentina’s former embassy in Caracas, now being protected by Brazil, where six opposition staffers have been sheltering since warrants were issued for them in March.

Attorney General Tarek Saab, who met with Gonzalez’s lawyer this week and who has been one of the opposition’s most strident accusers, is set to hold a press conference later on Sunday.

The opposition is pressing for more street protests and international pressure for its victory to be recognized, but so far those tactics have borne no fruit, with military leaders lining up behind Maduro, and no stepped-up sanctions or other international action since the vote amid waning attendance at anti-government rallies.