CAIRO: Egypt was looking to establish a high-speed train network that would transform the country’s connectivity, experts have revealed.

Four lines covering 2,250 km would link more than 80 Egyptian cities and extend to neighboring countries such as Libya and Sudan.

Transport specialist Ahmed Al-Sanhouri told Arab News: “Egypt recently received the first regional express train, the Desiro HC. Manufactured by Siemens, this double-decker train has a capacity of 849 passengers and will operate at speeds of up to 160 kilometers per hour.

LONDON: Civilians in Gaza are becoming more desperate by the hour as food shortages and hunger grow in the enclave amid an Israeli bombing campaign against Hamas, the UN World Food Programme warned on Sunday.

Thousands of civilians stormed a UN-run warehouse in Gaza, where the WFP is storing food commodities.

Sunday morning’s events followed a 24-hour communication blackout and persistent access challenges that brought all WFP operations to a halt, leaving staff and partners incommunicado.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: It was neither the place nor the time for a proper goodbye, said Omar Dirawi. Not here, in this dusty field strewn with dead people wrapped in blankets and zipped up in body bags. And not now, as Israeli airstrikes crashed around him for the third week, erasing more of his neighborhood and sundering hundreds of families and friendships.
Yet on this October week in Gaza’s central town of Zawaideh, the 22-year-old Palestinian photojournalist buried 32 members of his family who were killed in Israeli air raids last Sunday.

BEIRUT: Israeli drones on Saturday fired three missiles at a site in Jabal Safi in Lebanon’s Iqlim Al-Tuffah area, about 20 km from the border demarcation line.

It was a second violation of Lebanese airspace by Israeli forces in the past 21 days amid growing tensions with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against the backdrop of the Gaza war.

A shell also struck the perimeter fence of the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura, causing minor damage.

A Hezbollah surface-to-air missile fired at one of the drones was intercepted and destroyed by an Iron Dome missile.

LONDON: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday sharply criticized the “unprecedented escalation” by Israel of the bombardments in Gaza, and repeated a call for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire for the delivery of aid.
“I was encouraged by what seemed to be a growing consensus for the need of at least a humanitarian pause in the Middle East,” Guterres said in a statement. “Regrettably, instead I was surprised by an unprecedented escalation of bombardments, undermining humanitarian objectives.”