ROME: Ten people were found dead in an overcrowded ship carrying migrants off the coast of Libya, and were believed to have suffocated, the Doctors Without Borders charity has said.

The charity said late on Tuesday that its Geo Barents rescue ship had picked up 99 survivors earlier in the day.

“At the bottom of the overcrowded wooden boat, 10 people were found dead,” tweeted the charity, known by its French initials MSF.

It described them as “10 avoidable deaths … 10 persons who died from suffocation, after 13 hours adrift at sea. The deadly central #Med route. How can we accept this in 2021?”

Tens of thousands of people seek to enter Europe each year via the central Mediterranean, leaving from Libya and Tunisia and heading most often for Italy.

The route is deadly — 1,236 people have died in the central Mediterranean so far this year, compared with 858 in the same period of 2020, according to Flavio Di Giacomo of the UN’s Migration Agency, the IOM.

He tweeted that the Geo Barents rescue “probably avoided other victims,” saying it showed “the need to increase patrols at sea.”

MSF said there were currently 186 people on board Geo Barents, including women and children, the youngest of whom is 10 months old.

“Many of them seem traumatized by the horrendous ordeal,” it said, calling for a safe port to disembark them.

AMMAN: Britain’s Prince Charles paid tribute Wednesday in Amman to the kinship between his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, and Jordan’s late King Hussein, both veteran monarchs.
“I feel this friendship in the most personal of ways, as Jordan has always been a part of my life,” Charles said in a speech at the Jordan Museum.
“His Majesty King Hussein came to the throne in 1952, the same year as my dear mother, the queen,” he said.
“They would be of great mutual support to each other through the decades ahead.”
King Hussein died in 1999 as the world’s longest ruling executive head of state.
The visit to Jordan by the prince who is heir to the throne started a day after Queen Elizabeth, 95, missed an annual remembrance service for fallen soldiers in London on Sunday “having sprained her back.”
However, Elizabeth, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, on Wednesday made her first public appearance in almost a month, hosting a reception at Windsor Castle, west of London.
Prince Charles, accompanied by his wife Camilla met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Hussein’s son and successor, Tuesday at the start of a tour of Jordan and Egypt.
On Wednesday, they also visited the Greco-Roman archaeological site of Um Qais, north of Amman.
The couple are Thursday to travel on to Egypt, which is to host the next round of the UN climate summit in its Sharm el-Sheikh resort next year.
Prince Charles is the most senior royal who travels overseas, representing the Queen, who stopped overseas tours a few years back because of her age.
There has been a heavy focus on him in recent weeks amid the concerns over the monarch’s health.

ISTANBUL: Turkish police on Wednesday detained celebrated Syrian singer Omar Souleyman and questioned him about alleged ties to outlawed Kurdish militants, his manager told AFP.

Souleyman was brought in for questioning in the southern Turkish city of Sanliurfa, where he has been running a bakery since escaping Syria’s decade-long civil war in 2011, said the manager, who asked not to be identified.

Souleyman was being questioned over local media allegations that he had ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is proscribed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, the US and EU.

The PKK has been waging a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The manager said he expected Souleyman to be released later on Wednesday.

But Turkish media said Souleyman was detained on an arrest warrant issued for “membership of a terrorist organization,” a charge that has seen tens of thousands jailed across Turkey in the past decade.

Souleyman has won international recognition for his melodic mix of dance and folk music, collaborating with artists such as Bjork and the Blur’s frontman Damon Albarn.

He performed at a Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in December 2013, and starred in a benefit concert at the prestigious South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas earlier that year.

The official video for his 2013 song “Warni Warni” has received nearly 95 million views on YouTube.

Local administration officials in Sanliurfa did not immediately respond to request for comment from AFP.

CAIRO: Israel launched two missiles targeting an empty building in southern Damascus from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Syrian state TV said early on Wednesday.
It said one of the missiles was shot down and there were no losses.
There was no immediate confirmation from Israel on the strike.

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about how they might harmonize their positions ahead of the Nov. 29 resumption of indirect US-Iranian talks on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a top US official said on Tuesday.
Officials from Iran and the six nations that struck the pact — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — will meet in Vienna to see if Tehran and Washington can agree to resume compliance with the deal under which Iran curbed its nuclear program to gain relief from US, EU and UN sanctions.
In 2018 then-President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the pact among the major powers known as the P5+1 and Iran and restored harsh US sanctions, prompting Tehran to begin violating its nuclear restrictions about a year later.
“The two presidents had the chance to talk about how we can align our perspectives heading into that (Nov. 29) meeting so that the P5+1 is united in dealing with Iran and trying to pave the way for a return to the (deal),” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a virtual think tank appearance.
The US-Iranian talks are indirect, with officials from the other nations shuttling between them, because Iran refuses direct contact with US officials.
While China favors reviving the agreement, it has tended to place the onus on the United States, rather than Iran, blaming Washington for having abandoned the deal and giving Tehran an economic lifeline by buying Iranian oil despite US sanctions.