World News

By Nilutpal Timsina

JOHANNESBURG, May 26 (Reuters) – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has filed a legal challenge against a panel report that found he may have committed misconduct in a scandal in which bundles of cash were stolen from a sofa on his farm, broadcaster eNCA reported on Tuesday.

Ramaphosa wants the finding in 2022 that he may have violated the constitution set aside, arguing that the report was based on hearsay evidence and the panel misunderstood its mandate, eNCA said, citing papers filed in court.

Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Ramaphosa, in office since 2018, has always denied wrongdoing in the scandal, dubbed “Farmgate” by local media.

The theft raised questions about how Ramaphosa initially acquired the $580,000 in cash that he said had been stolen from his farm in 2020, whether it was properly declared, and why it was stashed in furniture rather than deposited in a bank.

A wealthy businessman before he became president, Ramaphosa said the money was proceeds from the sale of buffaloes, and a central bank investigation found he had not contravened exchange control regulations.

TOP COURT REVIVES IMPEACHMENT PROCESS

The scandal has been a major embarrassment for the president, who came to power on a pledge to fight corruption and clean up the image of his African National Congress (ANC) party.

In 2022, ANC lawmakers blocked impeachment proceedings against Ramaphosa, but earlier this month the constitutional court said the parliamentary vote was invalid and that the allegations should be probed further.

Ramaphosa, 73, has said he respects the ruling and faced down calls from some opponents to resign.

His presidential term is due to end in 2029, and political analysts say he is likely to survive if the impeachment process goes to a vote in parliament.

The ANC this month reiterated its support for Ramaphosa, strengthening his chances of weathering any revived impeachment effort.

An impeachment vote would require a two-thirds majority to pass and, even though the ANC lost its parliamentary majority in a 2024 election, it still has about 40% of the seats in the National Assembly.

(Additional reporting by Sfundo Parakozov;Editing by Alexander Winning and Keith Weir)

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May 26 (Reuters) – Iranian hackers were responsible for a disruptive computer breach in March that forced Los Angeles’ transit system to shut down parts of its network, Israeli researchers say.

The saboteurs stole at least 700 gigabytes of emails, backups, and other files from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA), according to Gambit Security, a Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm that said it discovered the misappropriated data after it was inadvertently exposed online.

In a report published on Tuesday, the company said a digital trail of evidence tied the server where the data was discovered to a previously known hacking operation that Israeli officials and researchers attributed to Tehran.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not return messages seeking comment. Israel’s National Cyber Directorate did not return messages.

The Los Angeles transit authority didn’t respond to questions about the findings. In a statement shared last month, its officials said they were working with law enforcement and cyber specialists as they brought their systems back online. “Attribution is part of the investigation and we will not speculate,” the statement said.

Digital security specialists have suspected an Iranian hand in the operation against the LACMTA ever since responsibility was claimed by an obscure pro-Iran outfit calling itself Ababil of Minab. The group’s name refers to the bombing of a girls’ school in the Iranian city of Minab that officials there say killed more than 175 children and teachers, and its rhetoric and modus operandi are characteristic of self-styled vigilante hacker groups that U.S. and Israeli researchers allege are cut-outs for Iranian spies.

Eyal Sela, Gambit’s director of threat intelligence, said a connection between Ababil and the Iranian state “has been a working assumption.”

“What our research adds is the forensic evidence to support it,” he said.

Gambit, a security startup founded in part by veterans of Unit 8200, Israel’s equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency, said it had alerted relevant authorities to its findings.

Ababil did not return messages left via a form on its website. The FBI said it was aware of the LACMTA incident and was “coordinating with partners in response.” The FBI declined further comment. The U.S. civilian cyber defense body, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, did not return messages seeking comment.

IRANIAN HACKERS ALLEGEDLY ACTIVE SINCE START OF WAR

The intrusion at LACMTA was detected around March 16, its officials said in their statement. About two weeks later, Ababil materialized online and claimed to have wiped an enormous amount of data in a destructive cyberattack, publishing a video that purported to show them rampaging through the transit system’s network.

Although Los Angeles transit officials said the breach did not interrupt circulation of trains or buses, local media said it disabled at least some arrival screens and prevented customers from putting money on their transit cards. 

Ababil also has claimed credit for hacks affecting South Florida’s Tri-Rail commuter transit system, vehicle tracking company Vyncs, and Saudi infrastructure firm Unimac.

In a statement, Tri-Rail confirmed it had been hacked “about a month ago,” but said that none of the affected data was critical. Vyncs owner Agnik said it had detected its breach on April 2 but declined to comment on the nature of the data stolen by the hackers. Both Tri-Rail and Agnik said the FBI was involved, with Agnik saying in an email that the bureau “has a pretty good understanding of who these criminals are.” Unimac did not return messages seeking comment.

The group behind Ababil has hacked other organizations whose identity it has not publicized, Gambit Security said, citing its analysis of other data left online by the spies. Sela said they included a media organization and educational institution in Israel and an insurance brokerage in Turkey, but he declined to identify them further.

Iranian hackers allegedly have carried out a drumbeat of digital operations since the U.S. and Israel launched a war against Iran in late February, including a damaging attack on the medical device company Stryker and the leak of personal emails belonging to FBI Director Kash Patel. Iranian hackers also are suspected of having remotely tampered with fuel gauges at gas stations, CNN reported earlier this month.

(Reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and AJ Vicens in Detroit; Additional reporting by Jana Winter in Washington; Editing by Paul Simao)

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By Mussa Qawasma

MASAFER YATTA, West Bank, May 26 (Reuters) – Palestinian shepherd Sameeha Rasheed was planning for the sacred ritual of sacrificing her family’s sheep for the Eid al-Adha holiday, one of the holiest occasions in Islam, but West Bank Jewish settlers stole them in a pre-dawn raid, she said. 

 Instead of celebrating, Rasheed has been left with nothing and has also been deprived of the income she would have received from selling the sheep not used by her family. 

The settlers stole around 45 sheep from her home in Masafer Yatta, a collection of Palestinian hamlets near Hebron, she said. Before the theft, they stole the family’s guard dogs, so no one was alerted when the men broke in before dawn on May 21 and herded the animals away.

“This is our livelihood, my husband and I live from the income from these sheep. I don’t have anything to get treatment for my husband or spend on myself,” Rasheed, whose husband has cancer, told Reuters.

Eid al-Adha, one of Islam’s two main festivals, marks the climax of the annual Haj pilgrimage, when Muslims slaughter animals to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim, or Abraham, to sacrifice his son on God’s command, often distributing meat to the poor.

PEPPER GAS SPRAYED AT HOMES AND CHILDREN

Rasheed said settlers had been carrying out near-daily attacks on shepherds in the area, spraying pepper gas toward homes and children. 

CCTV footage obtained and verified by Reuters showed masked men moving sheep out of the farm at night. Reuters verified the location as near Masafer Yatta by matching buildings, structures and terrain to archive and satellite imagery. 

Settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the Gaza war began in October 2023. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid has called it “Jewish terror” and a national disgrace.

Asked for comment on the sheep theft, the Israeli military said it had deployed troops to the area but did not see any settlers and it had handed the case to the Israeli police. 

A spokesperson for the Yesha Council, which represents municipal councils of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

About 4,000 head of livestock have been stolen by settlers since the start of 2026, according to Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture spokesperson Mahmoud Fatafta. He added that Palestinian farmers had lost more than $5 million due to settler attacks.

Israel’s far-right governing coalition has enabled a rapid expansion of settlements, with some ministers openly advocating for the annexation of the West Bank. Most countries deem the settlements, built on land captured in the 1967 war, illegal. Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land.

Palestinians have long sought an independent state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, ​territories Israel captured and occupied in 1967. 

More than 700,000 settlers live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, among more than three million Palestinians, according to a European Union report in 2024.

“When we have sheep during the time to sacrifice (during Eid Al-Adha), we sell them. But now there are no sheep, not for us to sacrifice nor even to sell,” Rasheed said.

(Reporting by Mussa Qawasma, Additional reporting by Roleen Tafakji, Writing by Ahmed Elimam; Editing by Michael Georgy and Sharon Singleton)

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By Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON, May 26 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump has repeated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him at least 107 times in the last six months, keeping the grievance front and center even as he faces new political risks from the war with Iran and looming midterm elections.

Trump devotes near-daily attention to the issue, a Reuters review of his public events, interviews and online posts found, and his comments often come in waves. One Saturday in April, amid a fragile ceasefire with Iran, Trump posted allegations about the 2020 election – when he lost to his predecessor Joe Biden – seven times on his Truth Social account.

He has rehashed his claims during at least six meetings with world leaders, two celebrations of professional sports teams and the White House observances of Hanukkah and Christmas. In unscripted remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, he said “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

He reiterated his claims of a rigged election at a White House picnic for lawmakers last week and again while speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One.

“If we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes, I would have won California,” Trump said of the reliably Democratic state he lost by 29 percentage points in 2020 and more than 20 percentage points in 2024. “But it’s a rigged vote.”

Aides and interviewers often shrug off his comments, and critics dismiss them as the musings of a sore loser.

But Trump’s relentless focus on 2020 points to a forward-looking strategy aimed at justifying new voting restrictions, reinforcing party loyalty and energizing supporters ahead of November elections that will determine control of Congress, according to two White House officials and two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to speak candidly.

By casting the 2020 election as illegitimate, he is also laying the groundwork to challenge Republican losses and undermine Democrats if they win back power, multiple election experts said.

“He’s not looking back; this is about the midterms,” said Alexandra Chandler, an election expert at the nonpartisan advocacy organization, Protect Democracy. “He’s trying to create a fog of disinformation with this. So then if he dials it up further with federal interference, the public will not react as surprised.” 

In April, despite having kicked off a national redistricting war months earlier, Trump denounced the results of Virginia’s election to redraw U.S. congressional district maps as “rigged,” without providing evidence of fraud.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

REPUBLICAN VOTERS SYMPATHETIC TO FALSE CLAIMS

Trump’s rhetoric has gained traction among Republican voters. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in April found that 63% of Republican voters believe Trump’s ​false claim that the 2020 election was ​stolen, a share that has ⁠remained largely unchanged in recent years. 

An even bigger share of Republicans – 82% – said they agreed large numbers of fraudulent ballots are cast by non-citizens in U.S. elections.

By comparison, only 9% of Democrats and 21% of independents said they believed Trump lost in 2020 due to wrongdoing, and 18% of Democrats and 38% of independents shared concerns about non-citizens casting fraudulent ballots.

Multiple courts, state officials and prior reviews found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Even so, Trump last year tapped an election-security czar to re-investigate his 2020 loss. Those fresh probes have turned up no new evidence, Reuters reported in April. Administration officials also sought last year to ban voting machines used in more than half of U.S. states as they brainstormed about how the federal government could take control over state-run elections, Reuters reported last week.

Trump’s 2020 rhetoric intensified in December after he sought to pardon Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk who was convicted by the state of tampering with voting machines after that election. He repeated the allegations as he pressed congressional Republicans to pass his Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship for voting, and again while stepping up attacks on mail-in voting. 

Though the U.S. Senate has failed to advance Trump’s nationwide voting changes, numerous states have implemented similar proof-of-citizenship requirements and stricter identification requirements. Trump has also signed executive orders trying to limit mail-in voting, but those actions are currently being challenged in court by Democrats.

SOME REPUBLICANS PUSH BACK

In the meantime, Trump has used his 2020 claims to deflect blame for intractable global conflicts and domestic policy disputes.

In December, as the war in Ukraine dragged on despite Trump’s 2024 campaign pledge to resolve it in a day, the U.S. president told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the “rigged” U.S. election allowed for Russia’s 2022 invasion. In February, he told families who had lost loved ones in immigration-related crimes that they would be “home with your son, daughter” if the election had not been “rigged.”

The 2020 election has also become a loyalty test for many of Trump’s nominees for key federal roles, including judicial picks, who have refused under oath to tell Democratic senators that Biden won. Instead, they say only that Congress certified the election in his favor. 

Nevertheless, some Republicans are pushing back.

RightCount, a group of Republicans in battleground states, recently relaunched a campaign to defend the integrity of state-administered elections and counter Trump’s efforts to nationalize them. 

“All the accusations that have been made have all been refuted, but he doesn’t want to listen,” said former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a supporter of Trump and a member of the group.  

After losing his Republican primary in Louisiana last week after Trump refused to back him, U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy took aim at the president’s election rigging claims in his concession speech. Cassidy drew the president’s wrath by supporting his impeachment after the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack by Trump supporters trying to stop the 2020 election certification.

“When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to,” Cassidy said. “But you don’t pout. You don’t whine. You don’t claim the election was stolen.”  

(Reporting by Bo Erickson; Additional reporting by Nandita Bose; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Deepa Babington)

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired more than 100 drones and two ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday, as the country’s foreign ministry noted that Moscow’s recent threat to hit Kyiv especially hard from the air brought nothing new.

Russia on Monday urged foreign citizens, including members of diplomatic missions, to leave the Ukrainian capital as quickly as possible and told residents to steer clear of military and government facilities. It said that “systemic strikes” on Kyiv were being prepared.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio by phone Monday that the U.S. should evacuate its diplomatic staff from Kyiv, a foreign ministry statement said. Rubio didn’t say whether the State Department would take that step, but expressed concern during a trip to India that the “terrible” war in Ukraine could escalate further.

The Trump administration has tried for more than a year to stop the fighting that broke out after Russia’s February 2022 invasion. But its efforts yielded no significant breakthrough and are now on ice as Washington focuses on the Iran war.

There were no announcements of diplomatic departures from Kyiv. The European Union, French and Polish delegations publicly said that they would not leave.

The level of security threats posed by Russia to Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities “remains the same as in previous years and months,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement late Monday.

Russia has continuously launched missile and drone attacks on the capital for more than four years, it pointed out, adding that Ukraine was prepared to assist diplomatic missions seeking additional security measures.

Russia said its biggest missile attack of the year last weekend was a response to Friday’s deadly Ukrainian drone strike on what Moscow said was a college dormitory in Starobilsk, a city in Ukraine’s Russia-occupied Luhansk region.

But the Ukrainian General Staff said that its strike in Starobilsk hit the local headquarters of the Russian military’s special drone unit.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that sophisticated American-made air defense systems that Ukraine needs to stop Russian ballistic missiles are in short supply due to the Iran war.

“Unfortunately, there has been no progress for a long time with America on expanding the production of anti-ballistic capabilities,” Zelenskyy said on social media late Monday, adding that Kyiv is working with Europe to improve its own anti-ballistic capabilities in sufficient quantities.

He noted that Ukrainian battlefield gains in recent months have enabled it to “stabilize” the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, suggesting that Kyiv’s forces are holding their own against Russia’s bigger army.

Russia’s spring offensive is floundering as Ukraine’s midrange drone strikes disrupt its rear supply lines, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Moscow’s warning of major strikes aims to distract public attention from its “poor battlefield performance” and an economic pinch caused by war costs and international sanctions, the Washington-based think tank said late Monday.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Elise Morton in London contributed.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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BEIRUT (AP) — Israel’s air force targeted sites belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon, including in the country’s eastern Bekaa Valley, late on Monday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to intensify attacks on the Lebanese militant group.

Netanyahu’s warning came as Hezbollah has been firing fiber optic drones — a weapon used widely in the war in Ukraine — at Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and northern Israel in recent weeks.

“We will hit them. It’s true that they are shooting drones at us, fiber optic drones. We have a special team working on that and we will solve that too,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media. “What this requires of us now is to increase the blows, to increase the intensity. We will smite them hip and thigh.”

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said that after Netanyahu’s post, some residents started leaving Beirut’s southern suburbs where Hezbollah has large presence. The agency also said several airstrikes hit the eastern town of Mashghara in the Bekaa region on Monday night.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah said that it carried out eight attacks earlier in the day, including a drone attack on Israeli troops in Misgav Am in northern Israel.

The daily attacks between Israel and Hezbollah have been ongoing despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in place since April 17.

A U.S. State Department official said earlier on Monday that Hezbollah has ignored repeated requests to stop firing at Israel, including a recent ultimatum. The official, who was not authorized to talk to the media and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity, added that Israel will never be expected to passively absorb attacks on its forces and civilians.

Since the ceasefire went into effect, Hezbollah has fired over a thousand drones and over 700 rockets to try and derail ongoing negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, the official said, adding that “the status quo is untenable.”

Last month, Lebanon and Israel began their first direct talks in more than three decades with meetings held in Washington. Lebanese and Israeli military officials are to meet again on Friday, at the Pentagon, to discuss the ceasefire. Israel and the United States are seeking to have Hezbollah disarmed.

The State Department official said the direct Lebanon-Israel talks and the implication that Lebanon stands to get significant support from the U.S. is a threat to the Iran-backed Hezbollah, along with a challenge to its narrative of resistance against Israel.

“A successful ceasefire led by the government of Lebanon would strip Hezbollah of their power and their narrative,” the official said.

Earlier Monday, an Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Kfar Rumman killed four people and wounded three, the Lebanese NNA reported. It said Israeli drone strikes on other parts in the south — including one on a road near the municipality of Kfar Rumman — killed three people.

The Israel military said that throughout the day, it struck more than 70 Hezbollah infrastructure sites.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, two days after the U.S. and Israel began their attacks on Iran.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest fighting, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Also, 22 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon, and two civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to Netanyahu’s office.

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Lee reported from New Delhi. Associated Press journalists Isaac Scharf in Jerusalem and Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel contributed to this report.

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OTTAWA, May 25 (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday told Israeli President Isaac Herzog that the treatment of activists detained by Israel had been “appalling” and described the situation in Gaza as “catastrophic,” Carney’s office said in a statement.

“The Prime Minister reiterated that the appalling treatment of civilians, including Canadian citizens, aboard the Gaza-bound flotilla was unacceptable, and he called for an independent investigation,” the statement said.

Carney, it said, also reaffirmed Canada’s opposition to illegal Israeli settlement expansion, settler violence in the West Bank, and violence against Palestinian civilians.

Although Carney last week denounced Israel’s handling of the flotilla members, the broad scope of his condemnation on Monday underlines how strained ties have become between Israel and some of its closest allies.

The Israeli embassy in Ottawa was not immediately available for comment.

Activists released after being detained on a flotilla trying to bring aid to Gaza were subjected to abuse, organizers said, with several hospitalized with injuries and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape. Israel’s prison service denied the allegations.

Israel’s ambassador to Canada last week told the Globe and Mail newspaper that bilateral government-to-government relations were the worst they had ever been.

Separately, Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said she had spoken to her Israeli counterpart, Gideon Saar, on Monday and told him Ottawa would provide Israel evidence of the mistreatment of Canadians on the flotilla.

“I raised that denying Canadian citizens access to consular services while they were detained violates the Vienna Convention and must never happen again,” she said in a post on X.

For his part, Saar said he had told Anand the activists had been inspired by Hamas.

“I also highlighted the horrific antisemitic wave in Canada – an average of 19 incidents a day. The Canadian government must take steps against antisemitic incitement and attacks,” he said in a post on X.    

(Reporting by David LjunggrenEditing by Rod Nickel)

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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal ‘s president on Monday appointed a former banking executive as the new prime minister after his predecessor was sacked last week, a move that comes at a particularly tense moment as the African country grapples with debt and an internal crisis in the ruling party.

According to a statement read on national television, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye named Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo as the head of government, replacing Ousmane Sonko.

Sonko was sacked on Friday, after months of simmering tensions between him and the president. The sacking triggered the resignation of all the members of the government and its dissolution.

Lo will now have to form a new government. He was formerly an executive at the Central Bank of West African States, where he played a significant role in shaping monetary and economic policies at the regional level. He also served as state minister to the president and secretary-general of Sonko’s government.

Faye and Sonko had openly disagreed on key policies over the past few months, including about the negotiations for a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Earlier in May, Faye said Sonko would only keep his job if he did it properly.

The two were former allies from the party known as Pastef, an acronym from its French name, Patriotes Africains du Sénégal pour le Travail, l’Éthique et la Fraternité.

Pastef had ridden into office in the March 2024 parliamentary election after a fierce campaign against the then-ruling party, Alliance pour la République, and widespread speculation that former President Macky Sall wanted to use a 2016 constitutional change to revise his term in office.

Sonko, who heads Pastef, was barred from running after a defamation conviction was upheld by Senegal’s supreme court, and the Constitutional Court dismissed his candidacy. Faye ran instead of Sonko, and subsequently appointed Sonko as prime minister.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

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CAIRO, May 25 (Reuters) – Explosions were heard in Iran’s Bandar Abbas city and coastal areas near the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian media reported on Monday, adding that the cause was unknown.

Iran’s Mehr news agency said the situation in Bandar Abbas was under control and there was no cause for concern after the explosions were heard east of the city. It said official sources had not yet commented.

The Tasnim news agency said three explosions were heard in Bandar Abbas, while the Fars news agency said similar sounds were heard close to Sirik and Jask near the strategic waterway.

(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din, Muhammad Al Gebaly, Enas Alashray and Elwely Elwelly; Editing by Edmund Klamann, Rod Nickel and Cynthia Osterman)

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By Diadie Ba, AyenDeng Bior and Anait Miridzhanian

DAKAR, May 25 (Reuters) – Senegal President Bassirou Diomaye Faye named a seasoned economist as prime minister on Monday, three days after dismissing the old government led by a firebrand populist who had spoken out against debt restructuring.

The new prime minister, Ahmadou Al Aminou Lo, formerly served as head of the Senegal branch of the Central Bank of West African States.

Appearing on state television for the announcement of his appointment, Lo said he wanted to reassure the local private sector and foreign investors even as he acknowledged Senegal’s difficult financial position.

“We must all be aware of the state of emergency our country currently finds itself in. In particular, the state of public finances and its impact on the economy,” he said.

“Senegal is a safe and reliable country and intends to remain so.”

The International Monetary Fund ​froze Senegal’s $1.8 billion lending program following the discovery of misreported debt, pushing the country’s end-2024 debt level to 132% of its economic ​output.

Ousmane Sonko, the outgoing prime minister, had opposed any restructuring of ‌the debt, ⁠estimated at $13 billion, which he said the IMF was advocating, while Faye has been less vocal on the issue.

Faye fired Sonko, the man who helped the president’s political rise, on Friday after months of mounting tensions.

POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY

In March, Sonko warned he could take the ruling Pastef party, which dominates the National Assembly, into opposition if the president strayed from the party’s agenda, a threat that looms over the government’s ability to pass any reforms needed to unlock IMF support.

The National Assembly is due to meet on Tuesday to discuss “reintegrating” Sonko as a lawmaker. The resignation of the National Assembly speaker on Sunday has fueled speculation Sonko himself could fill the role.

In his remarks on Monday, Lo said his appointment did not signal a retreat from Senegal’s commitment to “systemic transformation” under Faye, but instead reflected a new approach aligned with the president’s vision.

He also offered conciliatory words for Sonko, praising the record of the government he led, including an economic recovery plan announced last year that featured a heavy reliance on domestic funding.

(Reporting by Diadie Ba, Ayen Deng Bior and Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Paul Simao)

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