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63 boys circumcised free via foreign-assisted mission in Maguindanao del Norte

DOHA, Qatar — Mediation efforts are continuing to secure a new Gaza ceasefire and free more hostages held by Hamas despite ongoing Israeli bombardment that is “narrowing the window” for a successful outcome, Qatar’s prime minister said Sunday.

“Our efforts as the state of Qatar along with our partners are continuing. We are not going to give up,” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told the Doha Forum, adding that “the continuation of the bombardment is just narrowing this window for us”. 

Israel declared war on Hamas after the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages, according to Israeli figures, in an unprecedented attack on October 7.

The Israeli offensive has killed at least 17,700 p eople in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, many of them women and children.

Qatar was a key mediator in negotiations that resulted in a seven-day truce, which saw scores of Israeli hostages exchanged for Palest inians prisoners and humanitarian aid, until it ended at the start of the month.

“We are going to continue, we are committed to have hostages released, but we are also committed to stop the war,” Qatar’s prime minister said. 

But, he added, “we are not seeing the same willingness from both parties”. 

Addressing the Doha Forum earlier, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Security Council was “paralysed by geostrategic divisions” that were undermining solutions to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The body’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by its delayed response to the war, he said two days after a US veto prevented a resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire.

“I reiterated my appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared,” he told the forum.

“Regrettably, the Security Council failed to do it,” he added.

“I can promise, I will not give up.”

Guterres had convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council after two months of fighting in Gaza.

He deployed the rarely-used Article 99 of the United Nations Charter that allows the secretary-general to bring to the council’s attention “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

The rule had not been invoked by a UN chief in decades.

“We are facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system,” Guterres told the Doha Forum. 

“The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region.”

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Up to 63 boys from marginalized Moro families studying in a religious school in Maguindanao del Norte were circumcised for free in an outreach mission this weekend by Singaporean benefactors and local partners.

Barangay officials told reporters on Sunday that the medical outreach activity that benefited pupils of the Mahad Al Islah Al Arabie School in Barangay Matingen in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte, among them schoolgirls treated for common ailments, was facilitated by Singaporean benefactors and their counterparts Deseret Surgimed Hospital and a member of the Bangsamoro parliament, the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Sinolinding Jr.

A total of 44 cataract patients, mostly elderly Muslims, were also treated for free during the activity, Matingen barangay leaders and municipal officials confirmed on Sunday.

The Singaporean peace advocates who supported the day-long medical service mission via a well-coordinated long distance engagement, had reportedly promised to fund local humanitarian projects during the Ramadan fasting season in March 2024.

Ramadan is a holy month for Muslims where they fast from dawn to dusk for one lunar cycle, about 28 to 29 days, as a religious sacrifice, reparation for wrongdoings and to inculcate among them the value of self-restraint to achieve spiritual perfection.

Sinolinding, appointed in August last year by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as member of the 80-seat parliament of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, is most known as “doctor in the parliament” among residents in BARMM’s six provinces.

Sinolinding and his staff in the BARMM parliament and volunteers from the Surgimed Hospital in Kabacan town in Cotabato province and the Deseret Ambulatory Referral Center Foundation Inc. had, in the past 17 months, provided 3,309 poor Muslims, Christians and indigenous people from across the Bangsamoro region and nearby towns in Region 12 with free treatment for eye problems and cataract and pterygium surgeries.

“I am very grateful to our Singaporean brothers and sisters in faith abroad and to the office of the Member of Parliament Sinolinding for having facilitated the circumcision of my son and his classmates,” a 40-year-old mother, Fatima Oro Madsid, said on Sunday in Filipino, in a heavy Iranun accent.

The office of Sinolinding is slated to conduct at least 10 more eye care missions in several Bansgamoro barangays in Cotabato province in Region 12 before yearend.

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