Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that he would continue in office in response to a graft probe of his wife that he says amounts to a campaign of harassment.

Sanchez announced last Wednesday that he was mulling resignation after a Madrid court opened a preliminary probe into suspected influence peddling and corruption targeting his wife Begona Gomez.

“I need to stop and think whether I should continue to head the government or whether I should give up this honour,” he wrote in a four-page letter posted on X, formerly Twitter.

Thousands of supporters massed outside the headquarters of Sanchez’s Socialist party in Madrid on Saturday chanting “Pedro, stay!”

Sanchez has said the move against his wife is part of a campaign of “harassment” against them both waged by “media heavily influenced by the right and far right” and supported by the conservative opposition.

Spain’s public prosecutor’s office on Thursday requested the dismissal of the investigation.

But Sanchez, an expert in political survival who has made a career out of taking political gambles, has suspended all his public duties and retreated into silence.

Last Thursday, he had been due to launch his party’s campaign for the May 12 regional elections in Catalonia in which his Socialists hope to oust the pro-independence forces from power.

‘Harassment’ campaign

The court opened its investigation into Sanchez’s wife in response to a complaint by anti-corruption pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), whose leader is linked to the far right.

The group, which has presented a litany of unsuccessful lawsuits against politicians in the past, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had based its complaint on media reports and could not vouch for their veracity.

While the court did not give details of the case, online news site El Confidencial said it was related to her ties to several private companies that received government funding or won public contracts.

Sanchez has been vilified by right-wing opponents and media because his minority government relies on the support of the hard-left and Catalan and Basque separatist parties to pass laws.

They have been especially angered by his decision to grant an amnesty to hundreds of Catalan separatists facing legal action over their roles in the northeastern region’s failed push for independence in 2017.

That amnesty, in exchange for the support of Catalan separatist parties, still needs final approval in parliament.

The opposition has since Wednesday mocked Sanchez’s decision to withdraw from his public duties for a few days, dismissing it as an attempt to rally his supporters.

“A head of government can’t make a show of himself like a teenager and have everyone running after him, begging him not to leave and not to get angry,” the head of the main opposition Popular Party, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, said on Thursday.

Sanchez, he said, had subjected Spain to “international shame”. 

At least 42 people died when a dam burst its banks near a town in Kenya’s Rift Valley, the local governor told AFP on Monday, as heavy rains and floods battered the country.

The dam burst near Mai Mahiu in Nakuru county, washing away houses and cutting off a road, with rescuers digging through debris to find survivors.

“Forty-two dead, it’s a conservative estimate. There are still more in the mud, we are working on recovery,” said Nakuru governor Susan Kihika.

Monday’s dam collapse raises the total death toll over the March-May wet season to 120 as heavier than usual rainfall pounds East Africa, compounded by the El Nino weather pattern.

Meanwhile, the Kenya Red Cross said Monday it had retrieved two bodies after a boat carrying “a large number of people” capsized at the weekend in flooded Tana River county in eastern Kenya, adding that 23 others had been rescued.

Video footage shared online and broadcast on television showed the crowded boat sinking, with people screaming as onlookers watched in horror.

On Saturday, officials said 76 people had lost their lives in Kenya since March.

Flash floods have submerged roads and neighbourhoods, leading to the displacement of more than 130,000 people across 24,000 households, many of them in the capital Nairobi, according to government figures released Saturday.

Schools have been forced to remain shut following mid-term holidays, after the education ministry announced Monday that it would postpone their reopening by one week due to “ongoing heavy rains”.

“The devastating effects of the rains in some of the schools is so severe that it will be imprudent to risk the lives of learners and staff before water-tight measures are put in place to ensure adequate safety,” Education Minister Ezekiel Machogu said.

“Based on this assessment, the Ministry of Education has resolved to postpone the reopening of all primary and secondary schools by one week, to Monday, May 6, 2024,” he said.

Turmoil across the region
The monsoons have also wreaked havoc in neighbouring Tanzania, where at least 155 people have been killed in flooding and landslides.

In Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries, around 96,000 people have been displaced by months of relentless rains, the United Nations and the government said earlier this month.

Uganda has also suffered heavy storms that have caused riverbanks to burst, with two deaths confirmed and several hundred villagers displaced.

Monday’s dam collapse comes six years after a similar accident at Solai in Nakuru county killed 48 people, sending millions of litres of muddy waters raging through homes and destroying power lines.

The May 2018 disaster involving a private reservoir on a coffee estate also followed weeks of torrential rains that sparked deadly floods and mudslides.

El Nino is a naturally occurring climate pattern typically associated with increased heat worldwide, leading to drought in some parts of the world and heavy rains elsewhere.

Late last year, more than 300 people died in rains and floods in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, just as the region was trying to recover from its worst drought in four decades that left millions of people hungry.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said in March that the latest El Nino is one of the five strongest ever recorded.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said on Monday talks on a ceasefire in Gaza were progressing as he joined US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Saudi Arabia on a diplomatic push to ease the war between Israel and Hamas.

Sejourne was expected to hold talks in Riyadh with ministers of Arab and other Western countries as well as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Things are moving forward but you always have to be careful in these discussions and negotiations. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic and we need a ceasefire,” Sejourne told Reuters on the sidelines of a World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting.

“We will discuss the hostages, humanitarian situation and the ceasefire. Things are progressing, but we must always remain prudent in these discussions and negotiations.”

Blinken arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday, the first stop in a broader trip to the Middle East.

Hamas fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel retaliated by imposing a total siege on Gaza, then mounting an air and ground assault that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Palestinians have been suffering from severe shortages of food, fuel and medicine in a humanitarian crisis that has accompanied an Israeli military offensive that has demolished much of the impoverished strip.

Blinken, speaking at the opening of a meeting with Gulf Arab states, said the most effective way to address the humanitarian crisis and create space for a more lasting solution was to get a ceasefire that allowed the release of hostages held by Hamas.

“We still need to get more aid in and around Gaza. We need to improve deconfliction with the humanitarian assistance workers. And we have to find greater efficiency and greater safety, and deconfliction is at the heart of that,” he said.

In Riyadh, Blinken is expected to discuss with Arab foreign ministers what the governance of the Gaza Strip might look like after the Israel-Hamas war ends, according to a senior State Department official.

Blinken is also expected to bring together Arab and European countries and discuss how Europe can help reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip, which has been reduced to a wasteland in a six-month-long Israeli bombardment.

Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al Khasawneh said all parties needed to find a path towards a two-state solution to the conflict or the Middle East risked another catastrophe.

“What we have to look at is an irreversible pathway towards realising a two-state solution ..so that we are not in this bind again in a couple of years and drag the region and perhaps the entire world into further tension and endanger global peace and security,” he said at the WEF meeting in Riyadh.

Israeli airstrikes on three houses in the southern Gaza city of Rafah killed at least 20 Palestinians and wounded many others, medics said on Monday, as Egyptian and Qatari mediators were expected to hold a new round of ceasefire talks with Hamas leaders in Cairo.

An assault on Rafah, which Israel says is the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza, has been anticipated for weeks but foreign governments and the United Nations have expressed concern that such action could result in a humanitarian disaster given the number of displaced people crammed into the area.

Conversations about Gaza’s rebuilding and governance have been going on for months with a clear mechanism yet to emerge.

The United States agrees with Israel’s objective that Hamas needs to be eradicated and cannot play a role in Gaza’s future, but Washington does not want Israel to re-occupy the enclave.

Instead, it has been looking at a structure that will include a reformed Palestinian Authority – which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank – with support from Arab states.

Blinken will also discuss with Saudi authorities efforts for a normalisation accord between the kingdom and Israel, a deal that includes Washington giving Riyadh agreements on bilateral defence and security commitments as well as nuclear cooperation.

In return for normalisation, Arab states and Washington are pushing for Israel to agree to a pathway for Palestinian statehood, something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.

From Riyadh, Blinken will head to Jordan and Israel and the focus of the trip will shift to the efforts to improve the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.