BEIRUT: Cairo Radio announced tonight [July 1] that UAR forces were engaged in fighting with Israeli troops on the east bank of the Suez Canal at 2100 hours Beirut time (1900 GMT).

At 2110 (1910 GMT) Cairo Radio interrupted its programmes to report that Israeli troops tried to advance from Kantara on the east bank of the Suez Canal towards Port Fouad at the north end opposite Port Said, but “UAR forces faced them east of the Canal”. The Radio, quoting a communiqué of the High Command of the UAR armed forces added that the UAR troops were still fighting the enemy at the time the communiqué was issued.

Meanwhile, Israel accused UAR of sending its forces across the Suez Canal, and said fighting had broken out twice in the zone area. An Israeli army spokesman claimed the UAR troops violated the cease-fire agreed by both sides after last month’s war. He said today’s fighting took place near Port Said. — Agencies

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies in Cairo,] Mr Anwar El Sadat, President of the UAB’s National Assembly, inaugurated here today [July 1] the Afro-Asian solidarity conference with the grim warning that Arab-Israeli war was “an indivisible part” of an international struggle between imperialism and forces of liberation.

Mr Sadat, an old comrade of President Nasser, opened the emergency session of the organisation of the Afro-Asian people’s solidarity in the imposing hall of the Arab Socialist Union on the bank of the Nile. Some 50 delegations from Asia and Africa and about 20 observers from various organisations from Eastern Europe and Latin American heard Mr Sadat’s appeal for unity to realise the aim of “a better world in which will prevail freedom, justice and peace”.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2017