Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations

Update A Palestinian boy wounded in an Israeli strike receives treatment at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, September 4, 2024. (REUTERS)
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A Palestinian boy wounded in an Israeli strike receives treatment at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, September 4, 2024. (REUTERS)
Update Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations
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Palestinian children wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip are treated in a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
Update Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations
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Displaced Palestinians gather for food distribution in Deir al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Aug. 23, 2024. (AP)
Update Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations
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Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian man during a military operation in Jenin, West Bank, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 07 September 2024
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Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 as UN pursues vaccinations
  • Numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict
  • Despite the deadlock, the UN has pursued a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Palestinian Gaza Strip killed at least 61 people in the space of 24 hours, local medics said on Saturday, as Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in the territory.

Eleven months into the war, numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.

An Israeli air strike in on the Halima Al-Sa’diyya school compound serving as a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia urban refugee camp killed at least eight people and wounded 15 others, medics said.

The Israeli military said the strike had targeted a Hamas command center inside the compound. It accused Hamas of repeatedly exploiting civilians and civilian infrastructure for military purposes, an allegation Hamas denies.

Five more people were killed in a strike on a house in Gaza City.

The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah groups said they had fought Israeli troops in Gaza City, in central areas and in the south with anti-tank rockets and mortars, and in some incidents detonated bombs to target tanks and other army vehicles.

The two warring sides continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the United States, to broker a ceasefire. The US is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides remain large. CIA Director William Burns, the chief US negotiator, told an event in London that a more detailed proposal would be made in the coming days.

PAUSES IN FIGHTING LET POLIO VACCINATIONS CONTINUE

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was incumbent on both Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which ran Gaza before the war and was responsible for the Oct. 7 killing spree against Jews in Israel that triggered it, to make concessions to reach a deal.

On Saturday, senior Hamas official Hossam Badran said the group had made no new demands and remained committed to a July 2 proposal put forward by the United States, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attaching new conditions that would not end the war.

Netanyahu says it was Hamas that introduced unacceptable conditions.

Despite the deadlock, the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, has pursued a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in around 25 years. Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.

UN officials said they were making progress, having reached over half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, the campaign will move to the northern Gaza Strip. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed over 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.


Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors

Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors
Updated 11 November 2024
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Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors

Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors
  • Ankara and its Western allies have branded the PKK a “terrorist” organization. The group has waged a bloody guerrilla war since 1984 that has left more than 40,000 dead.

ISTANBUL: More than 30 people have been charged in Turkiye after protests against the removal of three mayors in the Kurdish-majority southeast, who were then replaced by government-appointed trustees, the interior ministry said Sunday.
Those detained, after the authorities sacked the mayors on “terrorism” charges, include a journalist from news website 10Haber.
His lawyer said the reporter was arrested late Saturday following a series of articles on the removal of a mayor in a district of Istanbul.
Authorities have alleged the mayor is linked to the banned Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK).
More than 250 people have also been detained for participating in protest rallies in mainly-Kurdish southeastern Turkiye against the mayors’ removal.
The ministry said 33 of those detained had been charged, while 37 have been placed under judicial surveillance, while three others face house arrest.
Monday’s replacement of the mayors sparked widespread anger and brought a rebuke from Europe’s top rights body, the Council of Europe, which said the move undermined local democracy.”
The trio all are from the main pro-Kurdish party DEM. They were elected in March when opposition candidates won in many areas, including Istanbul.
Authorities banned rallies in several Kurdish majority provinces after the move.
Images filmed mid-week in Batman showed police officers targeted by firecrackers and dispersing demonstrators with armored vehicles equipped with water cannons.
Ankara and its Western allies have branded the PKK a “terrorist” organization. The group has waged a bloody guerrilla war since 1984 that has left more than 40,000 dead.
 

 


Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike

Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike
Updated 11 November 2024
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Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike

Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike
  • Iran's foreign ministry also called for “an arms embargo” against Israel

TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry called Sunday for an arms embargo on Israel and the expulsion of its arch-foe from the United Nations, following a deadly strike in Syria.
Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran “strongly condemned the aggressive attack carried out today by the Zionist regime against a residential building” in the Damascus area.
The strike on an apartment belonging to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, killed nine people including a Hezbollah commander, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.
Baghaei called for measures against Israel, including “an arms embargo” and its “expulsion from the United Nations.”
Regional tensions have soared since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, triggered by the Palestinian Hamas militant group’s unprecedented attack on Israel.
The conflict has drawn in Tehran-aligned militants in the region, and included rare direct attacks between Iran and Israel.
Since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and fighters including from Hezbollah.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.


Five killed in Turkish drone strikes on PKK members in northern Iraq

Five killed in Turkish drone strikes on PKK members in northern Iraq
Updated 10 November 2024
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Five killed in Turkish drone strikes on PKK members in northern Iraq

Five killed in Turkish drone strikes on PKK members in northern Iraq
  • Turkiye regularly carries out airstrikes on PKK militants in northern Iraq and has dozens of outposts in the Iraqi territory

BAGHDAD: Turkish drone strikes killed five members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in northern Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service and security sources said on Sunday.
The first Turkish strike targeted a vehicle in a mountain area near Iraq’s northern province Dohuk late on Saturday, killing three, including one person identified by the Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service statement as a “senior PKK official,” the statement added.
Another drone strike on Sunday targeted a vehicle, killing two fighters from the Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS), a militia affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), two security sources and a local official in the district of Sinjar told Reuters.
Turkiye regularly carries out airstrikes on PKK militants in northern Iraq and has dozens of outposts in the Iraqi territory.
The PKK launched an insurgency against Ankara in 1984 with the initial aim of creating an independent Kurdish state. It subsequently moderated its goals to seeking greater Kurdish rights and limited autonomy in southeast Turkiye.

 


Egypt hosts 1.2 million Sudanese, with ‘hundreds’ arriving daily: UN

Sudanese who fled the war in their country cool off on the banks of the Nile river in the Egyptian city of Aswan. (File/AFP)
Sudanese who fled the war in their country cool off on the banks of the Nile river in the Egyptian city of Aswan. (File/AFP)
Updated 10 November 2024
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Egypt hosts 1.2 million Sudanese, with ‘hundreds’ arriving daily: UN

Sudanese who fled the war in their country cool off on the banks of the Nile river in the Egyptian city of Aswan. (File/AFP)
  • Egypt currently hosts 546,746 Sudanese refugees who are officially registered with the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR

CAIRO: Hundreds of people fleeing war-torn Sudan arrive in neighboring Egypt every day, a UN official said Sunday, adding to more than 1.2 million who have found refuge there, according to official figures.
The war between rival Sudanese generals since April 2023 has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, with 3.1 million of them seeking shelter beyond the country’s borders, according to the UN.
Egypt currently hosts 546,746 Sudanese refugees who are officially registered with the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR, as well as others who are awaiting registration, said Christine Bishay, associate external relations officer at UNHCR Egypt.
A UNHCR report issued on Friday said that “recent data from the government of Egypt indicates that more than 1.2 million Sudanese have sought international protection in Egypt.”
This has made the North African country the largest host of Sudanese refugees despite imposing stricter entry requirements during the war in Sudan, which shares a long border with Egypt.
Sudanese nationals “now make up two-thirds of the country’s total registered refugee population” of 827,644 people representing 95 nationalities, including Syria, South Sudan and Eritrea, she said.
“Initially, at the very beginning of the conflict, thousands of Sudanese arrived in Egypt on a daily basis, before stabilising to a few hundreds per day,” Bishay added.
Cairo had initially waived visa requirements for Sudanese women, children and men over 50 at the start of the war.
But a month after the conflict erupted, the Egyptian government introduced visa entry requirements for all Sudanese, leaving many to resort to irregular crossings.
In September this year, Egypt further tightened entry requirements, obliging people entering from Sudan to obtain “prior security clearance” alongside a consular visa, according to Egypt’s interior ministry.
Raga Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a 27-year-old Sudanese woman who crossed into Egypt illegally in August, told AFP she had paid about 500,000 Sudanese pounds ($830) to travel in a pick-up truck with 16 others.
The desert journey, which took a gruelling day and a half, was “exhausting and terrifying,” Abdel Rahman said.
“We were constantly afraid of being stopped by RSF forces,” she added, referring to the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces who have been battling the regular army.
Hundreds of thousands of others who fled Sudan have sought refuge primarily in neighboring countries, including Chad, South Sudan and Libya.
In the report published on Friday, UNHCR Egypt warned that the humanitarian crisis caused by Sudan’s war has placed “immense pressure on Egypt’s resources and infrastructure.”
Hanan Hamdan, UNHCR representative to Egypt’s government and the Arab League, said that “the burden on Egypt is unsustainable and requires immediate and substantial international assistance to ensure the protection and well-being of those affected by the conflict.”
UNHCR also noted that so far, just over half of the funding needed for an aid scheme for Sudanese refugees has been secured.
The Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan 2024 “has received $1.52 billion in funding, which is 56.3 percent of the required $2.7 billion,” the UN agency said.
“Despite this significant contribution, the funding gap remains substantial.”


Five Iranian security forces killed in attack in Sistan-Baluchistan province

Five Iranian security forces killed in attack in Sistan-Baluchistan province
Updated 10 November 2024
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Five Iranian security forces killed in attack in Sistan-Baluchistan province

Five Iranian security forces killed in attack in Sistan-Baluchistan province
  • Iranian forces launched a major operation in the area after an attack on October 26 killed 10 police officers

TEHRAN: At least five members of Iran’s security forces were killed Sunday in a “terror attack” in the restive southeast, where authorities have been conducting operations against rebels, local media reported.
The Fars news agency reported that in a “terror attack in Saravan county, in the south of the Sistan-Baluchistan province, five members of the security forces were killed.”
Sistan-Baluchistan borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces. It is one of the few mainly Sunni Muslim provinces in Shiite-dominated Iran.
For years it has faced unrest involving drug-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and extremists.
Fars said that after the attack in Saravan, “units stationed in the region were quickly deployed to pursue the criminals.”
Iranian forces launched a major operation in the area after an attack on October 26 killed 10 police officers.
That attack was later claimed by the Pakistan-based Sunni jihadist group Jaish Al-Adl (Arabic for Army of Justice).
Local media reported that those behind the October attack have been killed in the current security operation.
Some 15 militants have been reported killed in Sistan-Baluchistan province since the October attack, including three on Sunday, state television said.
It also said more than 30 suspects have been arrested.
Formed in 2012 by Baluch separatists, Jaish Al-Adl is designated a terrorist organization by both Iran and the United States.