President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent out a strong message against Israeli violence that martyred at least 62 Palestinians during the ongoing extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Friday.

A large number of heads of state and government, including Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Afghan President Ashraf Gani, Kuwaiti Amir Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah and Mauritanian President Mohammad Veled Abdulaziz participate in the summit meeting.

Erdogan, OIC Secretary General Yousef al-Othaimeen, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Hamdallah are expected to deliver speeches at the ongoing conference.

The event will enable the Muslim leaders to show a dedicated and joint stance against Israeli actions. A final declaration will be released afterwards.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu will also

A total of 15 OIC members state foreign ministers are attending the gathering, including from Iran, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt.

Monday’s protests in Gaza coincided with Israel’s 70th anniversary – an event Palestinians refer to as Nakba or the “Catastrophe” – and the relocation of the US Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Since the mass Gaza rallies began on March 30, more than 100 Palestinian protesters have been martyred by Israeli army gunfire.

Last week, the Israeli government claimed that the ongoing Gaze protests constitute a “state of war” in which international humanitarian law does not apply.

The Ugandan military said its peacekeeping mission in Somalia is still ongoing, refuting reports that the troops are not making progress.

Despite some challenges which are being addressed, the AMISOM remains on course and significant successes have since 2007 been achieved, Brig. Richard Karemire, the Ugandan military spokesman said in a tweet.

AMISOM is an acronym of the African Union Mission in Somalia.

Karemire was responding to a lead story in the local Daily Monitor on Monday quoting David Muhoozi, Uganda’s military chief as saying that the military was stuck in the Somali mission.

The report alleged that Ugandan soldiers deployed in the Horn of Africa country to fight the al-Shabab militants are stranded due to underfunding, logistical deficits and a challenged Somali national force.

Uganda was the first to deploy troops in Somalia in March 2007 and still has the largest number of soldiers in the 22,000-strong African Union peacekeeping operation. Other troop contributors include Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya.

The troop contributing countries met in Uganda in February this year and urged the international community to support the mission warning that the military gains made may be reversed

A contingent of 145 police officers from Sierra Leone arrived in Somalia yesterday as part of a surge capacity that will implement policing programmes in south central Somalia.

All the 145 officers from the Formed Police Unit (FPU), travelled to the port city of Kismayo to join an advance team of 15 officers who had arrived earlier.

This is Sierra Leone’s biggest police contingent to Somalia since it started deploying peacekeepers to the Horn of Africa country. The additional officers have been deployed in response to the United Nations Security Council Resolution adopted in 2017, which approved an increase to a maximum of 1,040, in the number of police officers serving under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The additional officers will start supporting their Somali counterparts in keeping law and order in the outstations of the Jubbaland Administration.

“Their coming is going to be a boost to the Jubbaland State Police Force. In 2016, we trained 600 police officers in Jubbaland and the Sierra Leone FPU will help them build and empower their policing operations,” Ms. Christine Alalo, the Acting AMISOM Police Commissioner, who received the contingent at the airport said.