Abu Dhabi, Dubai ranked MENA region’s most liveable cities
Eight of the top 10 cities in the region were from Gulf countries
Updated 10 August 2024
Arab News
DUBAI: Abu Dhabi and Dubai have been ranked as the most liveable cities in the Middle East and Africa, with both improving their scores in healthcare and education, according to the 2024 Global Liveability Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Abu Dhabi secured the top spot in the region, with Dubai close behind in second place, reflecting significant progress in these key areas, Emirates News Agency reported.
According to Numbeo’s “Crime and Safety Indexes,” Abu Dhabi is also ranked as one of the safest cities globally, achieving first place on the Safety Index with a score of 88.2 points, and recording the lowest score on the Crime Index at 11.8 points.
Dubai ranked fifth globally on the list of the world's safest cities.
In healthcare, a report from the Dubai Health Authority revealed that the total number of licensed and operational healthcare facilities in Dubai reached 5,020 during the first quarter of 2024, with 13,370 licensed doctors.
In Abu Dhabi, the number of healthcare facilities stood at 3,323 during the same period, including 67 hospitals, 1,136 health centres, 765 clinics, 1,068 pharmacies, and 287 other healthcare establishments. By the end of 2022, Abu Dhabi had 12,922 licensed doctors.
In education, Abu Dhabi hosted 459 schools, encompassing private, public, and mixed institutions, during the 2023-2024 academic year, while Dubai had 220 private schools.
The Global Liveability Index evaluates 173 cities worldwide across five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure.
Eight of the top 10 cities in the region were from Gulf countries, reflecting their growing stability and influence on the global stage. Among these were Kuwait City, Doha, and Bahrain’s Manama, ranking third, fourth, and fifth, respectively.
’Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza
Updated 3 sec ago
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel
TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza. In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants. All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war. Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel. “My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster. Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive. “I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears. Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.” They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack. In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive. Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.” “Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said. “But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.” So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody. The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military. In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza. In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return. “Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.” “This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.
Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media
Moscow welcomed the freeing of Alexander Trufanov and expresses its gratitude to Hamas
Updated 15 February 2025
AFP
MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Saturday said it was grateful to Palestinian militant group Hamas for freeing a Russian-Israeli hostage from Gaza in another prisoner exchange with Israel.
“Moscow welcomes the freeing of Alexander Trufanov (identified by Israel as Sasha Trupanov) and expresses its gratitude to the Hamas leadership for taking this decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south
An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike targeting the outskirts of Ainata, said NNA
Updated 15 February 2025
AFP
BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said an Israeli drone struck the country’s south on Saturday, without reporting casualties, days before a deadline in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike” targeting the outskirts of the town of Ainata, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that “nobody was hurt” and that “drones and surveillance aircraft are still flying over the area at low altitude.”
Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange
Exchange of hostages and prisoners maintains ceasefire, with buses carrying freed Palestinians arriving to cheering crowds in Ramallah, Gaza
The swap takes place after negotiations, with both sides focusing on the next phase to return the remaining hostages and end the war
Updated 15 February 2025
Reuters
KHAN YOUNIS: Hamas released Israeli hostages Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel Chen and Sasha (Alexander) Troufanov in Gaza on Saturday and Israel freed some 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange, after mediators helped avert a collapse of the fragile ceasefire.
The three Israelis were led onto a stage with Palestinian Hamas militants armed with automatic rifles standing on each side of them at the site in Khan Younis, live footage showed, before they were taken back into Israel by Israeli forces.
Shortly afterwards, buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners and detainees departed Israel’s Ofer jail in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The first bus arrived in Ramallah to a cheering crowd, some waving Palestinian flags.
Freed Palestinian prisoners gesture from a bus after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)
“We didn’t expect to be freed, but God is great, God set us free,” said Musa Nawarwa, 70, from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, who was serving two life terms for killings of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
Buses carrying some of the hundreds of Palestinian freed prisoners and detainees, some flashing victory signs as they hung from the windows, arrived later at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
A few were returning to an enclave they have not seen for years, before it was blasted into rubble by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in 15 months of war. But most were rounded up after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The ceasefire’s second phase would usher in negotiations to return the remaining living hostages among the 251 seized that day, and complete an Israeli military withdrawal before a final end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.
Israeli hostages Iair Horn, 46, left, Sagui Dekel Chen, 36, center left, and Alexander Troufanov, 29, right, are escorted by Hamas on a stage before being handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
Argentina-born Iair Horn, 46, was taken captive together with his younger brother Eitan. Horn appeared to have lost considerable weight in captivity.
“Now, we can breathe a little. Our Iair is home after surviving hell in Gaza. Now, we need to bring Eitan back so our family can truly breathe,” Horn’s family said in a statement.
The swap of the three Israelis for the 369 Palestinians allayed growing alarm that the ceasefire agreement could unravel before the end of the 42-day first stage of the truce pact in effect since January 19.
In what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, people broke into cheers and tears after hearing the Red Cross was on its way to deliver the three to Israeli military forces.
Dekel Chen, a US-Israeli, Troufanov, a Russian Israeli, and Horn along with his brother Eitan were seized in Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities near Gaza’s border that were overrun by Hamas gunmen on October 7, 2023.
Some of the dozens of masked Islamist Hamas fighters deployed at the handover site carried rifles seized from the Israeli military during the October attack, Hamas sources said.
On the handover stage in Khan Younis, the hostages were made to give short statements in Hebrew and militants presented Horn with an hourglass and photo of another Israeli hostage still in Gaza and his mother, reading “time is running out (for the hostages still in Gaza).”
Troufanov was abducted with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend — all of whom were released during a brief November 2023 pause in hostilities. His father was killed in the attack on Nir Oz, one of the worst-hit communities, where one in four people either died or were taken hostage.
A freed Palestinian prisoner is hugged by a boy after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)
On October 7, Dekel Chen, 36, left his pregnant wife and two little daughters in the family safe room to go out and fight gunmen rampaging through the kibbutz.
He embraced his tearful wife Avital tightly and said “perfect” with a big smile when she told him the name of their baby daughter, who he has not yet seen, was Shahar Mazal, Hebrew for “dawn” and “luck,” in a video released by the military.
Nineteen Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released so far, with 73 still in captivity, around half of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Prospects for the ceasefire surviving have been shaken by US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be resettled permanently out of Gaza, and for the tiny enclave to be turned over to the US to be redeveloped as a seaside resort. That idea has been rejected out of hand by Palestinian groups, Arab states and Western allies of Washington.
Israel army chief says ‘preparing offensive plans’ amid efforts to secure hostages’ release
Lt. General Halevi said they are making immense efforts to bring the captives back
Updated 15 February 2025
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel’s army chief said on Saturday the military was “preparing offensive plans” even as efforts to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza continue.
Following the latest prisoner-hostage swap under a truce deal with Hamas militants, Lt. General Herzi Halevi said, referring to the captives who remain in Gaza: “We are making immense efforts to bring them back while simultaneously preparing offensive plans.”
