Mali’s military government has suspended the activities of political parties “until further notice”, days after a rare pro-democracy rally.
The decree signed on Wednesday by the transitional president, General Assimi Goita, cited “reasons of public order” and covered all “associations of a political character”, according to state media.
It was issued a week after authorities announced the repeal of a law governing the operation of political parties – a decision interpreted by legal experts as a step towards their dissolution.
In response, a coalition of dozens of parties formed to “demand the effective end of the political-military transition no later than December 31” as well as a return to constitutional order.
On Saturday, the new coalition mobilised several hundred people to protest in the capital, Bamako, against the military government’s move. Another protest had been expected later this week.
Cheick Oumar Doumbia, one of the leaders of the weekend demonstration, said he was “not surprised” by the decree.
“I expected this because this is their way of preventing us from carrying out our activities, but we will continue to defend democracy in Mali,” he told The Associated Press news agency. “We are a people committed to democracy.”
Goita seized power after coups in 2020 and 2021. Last week, a national political conference said he should be installed as president for a renewable five-year term.
My beloved mother, I began writing this piece in the first month after your passing.
I gathered my words and my pain to pour into this text, but my tears would choke me, and I’d close the file.
I came back to it two months later, then six, then again at the end of the year, but I still couldn’t finish it.
Each time I returned to it, I carried new burdens, new grief, and new tears as the war wove itself into our lives, adding sorrows.
One time, I opened the file crying, between joy and heartbreak, with news you had waited so long to hear: A ceasefire had been announced. But you were no longer there, and I closed the file that day, too.
Now, I gather my strength to write this on the first anniversary of your death.
Eulogising our loved ones is not a choice, it’s a form of preservation.
A war without your prayers
Can you imagine, Mama – the war stopped, only to return with even more force?
Today marks 570 days of it.
The killing, bombing, and displacement weren’t enough for them. Now, people are dying from hunger.
How can I explain that, as much as I miss you, I’m relieved you don’t have to see these unimaginable days?
In our family home in the north, there’s only half a bag of flour left. They guard it fearfully and try to make it last. The canned food is running out, and the struggle to find food is daily.
I can imagine your agony if you were calling us now, worrying that we are starving.
Many have starved to death, and thousands are lining up at charity kitchens and communal food stations. The crossings have been closed for over two months, with food, medicine, aid – all banned by Israel.
Mama, my tears defeat me often, my fear that this war will go on even longer without your prayers, your constant prayers for our safety and protection, which I say every day now.
Life is hard, and while some things can be endured, war without a mother’s prayers seems especially unbearable.
Mama, I went to our family home in the north. The whole house was burned, shattered – except your room, your clothes, your things.
We gathered them and keep them like treasures that still carry your scent. We prioritise them in case, God forbid, we have to flee again.
Maram and her mother in the background with her sister Mayar and Maram’s daughter, Banias, in the foreground, in September 2021, two years after her mother’s diagnosis with pulmonary fibrosis]Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
Recently, I’ve been thinking about your last days in the ICU, how I struggled to stay on my feet, distracting myself with work.
But that was a false escape. This is the conclusion of a year of grief.
Illness, displacement, and loss in war
My mother passed away on May 7, 2024.
That morning, we woke up to images of tanks storming the Rafah border crossing as the Israeli assault on Rafah started. The one way out of Gaza was blocked, we were trapped.
Then, like a thunderbolt amid the darkness of that day, came the news of my mother’s death in Egypt, five months after her medical evacuation there.
We wept, for her and because we, like thousands of others, were paying the price for simply existing in this besieged land.
We were denied a final farewell to the one we loved. Denied a funeral, denied burial, denied condolences. All we could do was weep and pray.
My mother suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, a severe respiratory illness. She needed an oxygen pump, an electric one, which meant any power outage was life-threatening.
Since October 7, it felt like we were living through multiple wars. Electricity was cut off at the start of the war, generators gradually stopped working, and the healthcare system was collapsing.
We moved her around in Gaza City, from our family home to my brother’s house, then to my aunt’s.
Regardless of relentless Israeli strikes, she needed the same thing: a place on the ground floor and a reliable power source, like solar panels. But just as she settled, Israeli orders would come, expelling people to the south.
So we went to my grandfather’s house in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza. We teased my father that he had made a “strategic” decision marrying someone from the south – otherwise, our displacement would’ve been even harder.
But the bombs followed us. An expulsion order was issued for a house next to my uncle’s and we ran, carrying the oxygen tank and propping my mother up.
The crises came one after another: contaminated water that hurt her kidneys, a shortage of gas to cook for her, medicines running out, then we ran out of electricity for her oxygen pump.
She would struggle through nights when the electricity was out, trying to breathe until the sun rose and the solar panels could work.
The oxygen tank became my brother’s and my daily companion – we took it to Al-Aqsa Hospital to refill until the hospital announced it had no fuel and could no longer operate its oxygen stations.
The only solution was for Mama to leave Gaza through the patient travel lists – any way possible.
Mayar in the ambulance with her mother]Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
We did everything to get her name on the list, with my sister Mayar as her companion, and miraculously, it worked and she left on December 6, 2023 – in an ambulance with a permit to cross the border.
I said goodbye to my mother, and that was the last time I saw her. I cried that day, as the ambulance drove away, worrying it might be the last time.
We didn’t realise that illness wasn’t her greatest enemy – it was the fear and psychological torment caused by the war.
In every call after she reached Egypt, her face and voice were pale and shaky, the result of countless failed attempts to reach us due to network outages that lasted days.
We tried to tell her not to worry, that we were alive.
But asking a mother to ignore her overwhelming fear for her children and grandchildren living through genocide is impossible. She spent her days glued to the news, grilling my sister for news, especially about Deir el-Balah.
For her, I would sneak up to the hospital’s roof to get some network on my eSIM, hide behind water barrels near the dangerous eastern border, and message my sister: “We’re OK. Tell Mama we’re OK”.
And her voice would come back like a lifeline to a drowning soul, thanking God and begging us to be careful.
She would tell me not to go to the hospital, not to put myself in danger.
We walked long distances to connect to the internet near a hill by the sea, moving left and right to catch a signal just to send the same message: “We’re OK, Mama. Don’t worry”.
We’d send her pictures, and when the signal was strong enough, we did voice calls.
But the world around my mother in Egypt moved in one direction, while she moved in another – her heart, mind, and soul still here with us.
Survival drenched in fear
It wasn’t the illness that killed my mother, it was heartbreak, distance, and worry that exhausted her and stole her will to live.
My mother died with only one wish in her heart: That the war would end, and she would see us again, alive and safe. But death was nearer than that impossible wish.
Mama, in a few months, the war will enter its second year, and it only grows more brutal.
The days have become heavier in your absence.
Every day I stood before the bodies of victims at the hospital, watching people break down at the news of their loved ones ‘ deaths. I watched their tears, their screams, their final goodbyes.
Relatives of Palestinian child Hasan Munir Hamad, who was killed by the Israeli army when it attacked Beit Hanoon, carry his shrouded body for burial in Jabalia on May 6, 2025]Ramez Habboub/Anadolu Agency]
Sometimes, I envied them, they at least got to say goodbye, as my heart wept for them and with them.
Mama, we, the tormented in this land, are in a free-for-all festival of death.
Yesterday, Mama, they bombed a school full of displaced people. In a moment, they killed more than 30 people.
The world has grown used to our mass deaths on live broadcast. But who said we’ve gotten used to it?
Mama, there is no rest, not these days, and not in those to come.
How can we continue living when we are dying slowly? The only thing that comforts us is that those who have gone are finally at peace.
My beloved mother, I began writing this piece in the first month after your passing.
I gathered my words and my pain to pour into this text, but my tears would choke me, and I’d close the file.
I came back to it two months later, then six, then again at the end of the year, but I still couldn’t finish it.
Each time I returned to it, I carried new burdens, new grief, and new tears as the war wove itself into our lives, adding sorrows.
One time, I opened the file crying, between joy and heartbreak, with news you had waited so long to hear: A ceasefire had been announced. But you were no longer there, and I closed the file that day, too.
Now, I gather my strength to write this on the first anniversary of your death.
Eulogising our loved ones is not a choice, it’s a form of preservation.
A war without your prayers
Can you imagine, Mama – the war stopped, only to return with even more force?
Today marks 570 days of it.
The killing, bombing, and displacement weren’t enough for them. Now, people are dying from hunger.
How can I explain that, as much as I miss you, I’m relieved you don’t have to see these unimaginable days?
In our family home in the north, there’s only half a bag of flour left. They guard it fearfully and try to make it last. The canned food is running out, and the struggle to find food is daily.
I can imagine your agony if you were calling us now, worrying that we are starving.
Many have starved to death, and thousands are lining up at charity kitchens and communal food stations. The crossings have been closed for over two months, with food, medicine, aid – all banned by Israel.
Mama, my tears defeat me often, my fear that this war will go on even longer without your prayers, your constant prayers for our safety and protection, which I say every day now.
Life is hard, and while some things can be endured, war without a mother’s prayers seems especially unbearable.
Mama, I went to our family home in the north. The whole house was burned, shattered – except your room, your clothes, your things.
We gathered them and keep them like treasures that still carry your scent. We prioritise them in case, God forbid, we have to flee again.
Maram and her mother in the background with her sister Mayar and Maram’s daughter, Banias, in the foreground, in September 2021, two years after her mother’s diagnosis with pulmonary fibrosis [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
Recently, I’ve been thinking about your last days in the ICU, how I struggled to stay on my feet, distracting myself with work.
But that was a false escape. This is the conclusion of a year of grief.
Illness, displacement, and loss in war
My mother passed away on May 7, 2024.
That morning, we woke up to images of tanks storming the Rafah border crossing as the Israeli assault on Rafah started. The one way out of Gaza was blocked; we were trapped.
Then, like a thunderbolt amid the darkness of that day, came the news of my mother’s death in Egypt, five months after her medical evacuation there.
We wept, for her and because we, like thousands of others, were paying the price for simply existing in this besieged land.
We were denied a final farewell to the one we loved. Denied a funeral, denied burial, denied condolences. All we could do was weep and pray.
My mother suffered from pulmonary fibrosis, a severe respiratory illness. She needed an oxygen pump, an electric one, which meant any power outage was life-threatening.
Since October 7, it felt like we were living through multiple wars. Electricity was cut off at the start of the war, generators gradually stopped working, and the healthcare system was collapsing.
We moved her around in Gaza City, from our family home to my brother’s house, then to my aunt’s.
Regardless of relentless Israeli strikes, she needed the same thing: a place on the ground floor and a reliable power source, like solar panels. But just as she settled, Israeli orders would come, expelling people to the south.
So we went to my grandfather’s house in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza. We teased my father that he had made a “strategic” decision marrying someone from the south – otherwise, our displacement would’ve been even harder.
But the bombs followed us. An expulsion order was issued for a house next to my uncle’s and we ran, carrying the oxygen tank and propping my mother up.
The crises came one after another: contaminated water that hurt her kidneys, a shortage of gas to cook for her, medicines running out, then we ran out of electricity for her oxygen pump.
She would struggle through nights when the electricity was out, trying to breathe until the sun rose and the solar panels could work.
The oxygen tank became my brother’s and my daily companion – we took it to Al-Aqsa Hospital to refill until the hospital announced it had no fuel and could no longer operate its oxygen stations.
The only solution was for Mama to leave Gaza through the patient travel lists – any way possible.
Mayar in the ambulance with her mother [Maram Humaid/Al Jazeera]
We did everything to get her name on the list, with my sister Mayar as her companion, and miraculously, it worked and she left on December 6, 2023 – in an ambulance with a permit to cross the border.
I said goodbye to my mother, and that was the last time I saw her. I cried that day, as the ambulance drove away, worrying it might be the last time.
We didn’t realise that illness wasn’t her greatest enemy – it was the fear and psychological torment caused by the war.
In every call after she reached Egypt, her face and voice were pale and shaky, the result of countless failed attempts to reach us due to network outages that lasted days.
We tried to tell her not to worry, that we were alive.
But asking a mother to ignore her overwhelming fear for her children and grandchildren living through genocide is impossible. She spent her days glued to the news, grilling my sister for news, especially about Deir el-Balah.
For her, I would sneak up to the hospital’s roof to get some network on my eSIM, hide behind water barrels near the dangerous eastern border, and message my sister: “We’re OK. Tell Mama we’re OK.”
And her voice would come back like a lifeline to a drowning soul, thanking God and begging us to be careful.
She would tell me not to go to the hospital, not to put myself in danger.
We walked long distances to connect to the internet near a hill by the sea, moving left and right to catch a signal just to send the same message: “We’re OK, Mama. Don’t worry.”
We’d send her pictures, and when the signal was strong enough, we did voice calls.
But the world around my mother in Egypt moved in one direction, while she moved in another – her heart, mind, and soul still here with us.
Survival drenched in fear
It wasn’t the illness that killed my mother, it was heartbreak, distance, and worry that exhausted her and stole her will to live.
My mother died with only one wish in her heart: That the war would end, and she would see us again, alive and safe. But death was nearer than that impossible wish.
Mama, in a few months, the war will enter its second year, and it only grows more brutal.
The days have become heavier in your absence.
Every day I stood before the bodies of victims at the hospital, watching people break down at the news of their loved ones’ deaths. I watched their tears, their screams, their final goodbyes.
Relatives of Palestinian child Hasan Munir Hamad, who was killed by the Israeli army when it attacked Beit Hanoon, carry his shrouded body for burial in Jabalia on May 6, 2025 [Ramez Habboub/Anadolu Agency]
Sometimes, I envied them, they at least got to say goodbye, as my heart wept for them and with them.
Mama, we, the tormented in this land, are in a free-for-all festival of death.
Yesterday, Mama, they bombed a school full of displaced people. In a moment, they killed more than 30 people.
The world has grown used to our mass deaths on live broadcast. But who said we’ve gotten used to it?
Mama, there is no rest, not these days, and not in those to come.
How can we continue living when we are dying slowly? The only thing that comforts us is that those who have gone are finally at peace.
India captain Rohit Sharma has announced his retirement from Test cricket with immediate effect but says he will continue playing one-day internationals (ODIs), which have been his strong suit.
The 38-year-old had quit Twenty20 internationals immediately after leading India to their second 20-overs World Cup title in the West Indies last year.
“Hello everyone, I would like to share that I am retiring from Test cricket,” Rohit posted on Instagram on Wednesday.
“It’s been an absolute honour to represent my country in whites. Thank you for all the love and support over the years. I will continue to represent India in the ODI format.”
Jasprit Bumrah, Rohit’s deputy in the Test squad, led the side in two Tests in Australia last season in Rohit’s absence, but the Board of Control for Cricket in India may not task a fast bowler with full-time captaincy, given their injury-prone nature.
India will kick off their Test season with a five-match series in England beginning in Leeds on June 20.
A late bloomer in the long format, Rohit retires with 4,301 runs, including 12 hundreds from 67 Tests with an average of 40.57.
Rohit is a 50-overs stalwart with three 200-plus scores, including a 264 against Sri Lanka, which remains the highest individual score in men’s ODIs.
An elegant right-hander when on song, Rohit could not reach the same heights in Test cricket, though, and had just one hundred in his last 19 innings.
His prolonged run drought forced the India captain to take the drastic step of dropping himself from a Sydney Test against Australia this year.
Rohit led India to the final of the 50-overs World Cup in 2023 and also captained them to their Champions Trophy victory this year.
Rohit Sharma’s aggressive batting style in Tests allowed India to dominate the long format of the game [File: Gareth Copley/Getty Images]
Benetton have denied that star centre Tommaso Menoncello will move to French giants Toulon this summer.
According to Gazzettino di Treviso, the 22-year-old, who won the 2024 Six Nations player of the tournament award, is close to agreeing a deal to play at the Stade Mayol from the end of the current season,
However Benetton issued an official statement describing the newspaper’s report as “completely unfounded”.
Menoncello scored two tries for Italy in this season’s Six Nations, crossing against France and England, and was nominated for the tournament’s individual accolade once again, losing out to France wing Louis Bielle-Biarrey.
His contract with Treviso expires at the end of next season and he has been open in his desire to test himself in the Top 14.
La Rochelle, coached by Ireland legend Ronan O’Gara, have also been linked with Menoncello.
However, Toulon have reportedly already secured the services of Juan Ignacio Brex, Menoncello’s midfield foil for both club and country, for the start of next season.
Toulon, who signed 42-year-old former All Black centre Ma’a Nonu as a medical joker in February, could also offer Menoncello the chance to work with ex-France international Mathieu Bastareaud, who is team manager at the club.
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Coral Barry
Combat Sports Senior Journalist
Dakota Ditcheva will face Sumiko Inaba in a non-title bout at the PFL’s first fight night in Cape Town, South Africa on 26 July.
The Manchester fighter has not competed since winning the PFL flyweight world title last November and publicly berated the MMA promotion for failing to book her.
Ditcheva, 26, will fight alongside former Bellator champion Johnny Eblen. He will be fighting in a ‘ world title ‘ bout despite the Bellator titles being scrapped earlier this year.
The PFL told Ditcheva and many of her fellow PFL 2024 champions and Bellator belt holders that they would be featuring at their PFL Champions Series events in 2025.
Ditcheva and Eblen will headline the PFL’s inaugural event in Africa, overseen by Francis Ngannou.
The PFL Champions Series portion of the event will be after the opening round of an all-African tournament across several weight classes.
Unbeaten American fighter Eblen, 33, will defend his world title against the Netherlands ‘ Costello van Steenis.
Inaba, 34, was a regular in the Bellator flyweight division but was not part of the PFL’s 2024 flyweight tournament.
Ditcheva ran through the competition to become the first British woman to win a major MMA world title.
