Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder

Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder
Palestinian Aziz Salha raises his handcuffs to the camera in an undated picture provided by the Israeli security services in 2001 following his arrest in connection with the October 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. (AFP)
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Updated 03 October 2024
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Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder

Israel says kills Palestinian involved in soldier murder
  • Abdelaziz Salha was killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah early on Thursday
  • Salha in 2004 was sentenced to life for his part in the killing of Israeli soldier Vadim Norzich in the West Bank

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said a strike on Gaza on Thursday killed a Palestinian who had waved his blood-stained hands at a crowd after a deadly attack on Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank more than two decades ago.
The civil defense agency in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip confirmed Abdelaziz Salha’s death, saying he was killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah early on Thursday.
Salha in 2004 was sentenced to life for his part in the killing of Israeli soldier Vadim Norzich in the West Bank city of Ramallah four years earlier, in an incident caught on camera by an Italian television crew and broadcast across the globe.
A second soldier, Yossi Avrahami, was also killed in the October 2000 attack.
The widely shared footage — one of the most well-known images from the start of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising — showed Salha standing in an upstairs window of the Ramallah police station, waving his blood-stained hands at a crowd.
Announcing his death in an air strike, the military said that since his release from prison in 2011 and “over the past few years, Salha was involved in terrorist activity” in the West Bank.
The army statement said he was “involved in Hamas terrorist activity to this day.”
Salha was sent to Gaza by Israeli authorities after being released from jail, one of 1,027 Palestinians freed in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was taken hostage by Gaza militants in 2006.


Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran

Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran
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Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran

Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Sunday it carried out a ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen involved in Iranian networks. It was the first time in the current war that Israel has announced sending troops into Syria.
Syria did not immediately confirm the announcement.
Israel has carried out airstrikes in Syria multiple times over the past year, targeting members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and officials from Iran, the close ally of both Hezbollah and Syria. But it has not previously made public any ground forays into Syria.
The raid comes as Israel has waged an escalated campaign of bombardment in Lebanon for the past six weeks, as well as a ground invasion along the countries’ shared border, vowing to cripple Hezbollah, On Saturday, an Israeli military officials said naval forces carried out a raid in a northern Lebanese town, seizing a man they called a senior Hezbollah operative.
The army in its statement Sunday did not specify where in Syria the raid took place or when. It identified the man it seized as Ali Soleiman Al-Assi, saying he lives in the southern Syrian region of Saida. It said the man had been under military surveillance for many months and was involved in Iranian initiatives targeting areas of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights near the border with Syria.
Body camera footage of the raid released by the army showed soldiers seizing a man in a white tank top inside a building. The man was brought to Israel for interrogation, the military said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the border with Lebanon on Sunday, saying his focus was trying to keep Hezbollah from rearming itself through the “oxygen lifeline” of Iranian weapons transferred to Lebanon via Syria. Israel says its campaign in Lebanon aims to push Hezbollah away from the border and put an end to more than a year of fire by the group into northern Israel.
Israel’s strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 2,500 people over the past year. In Israel, 69 people have been killed by Hezbollah projectiles.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued their campaign in Gaza. In the southern part of the territory, an Israeli strike hit a group of people gathered outside in an eastern district of Khan Younis, killing at least eight Palestinians, including four children and a woman, the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency services said. The city’s Nasser Hospital, which received most of the bodies, confirmed the figures.
Palestinian officials said an Israeli drone strike on Saturday hit a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio, wounding six people including four children. The Israeli military denied responsibility.
Dr. Munir Al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, told The Associated Press that a quadcopter struck the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City early Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes after a United Nations delegation left the facility.
The World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency, known as UNICEF, which are jointly carrying out the polio vaccination campaign, expressed concern over the reported strike.
“The reports of this attack are even more disturbing as the Sheikh Radwan Clinic is one of the health points where parents can get their children vaccinated,” said Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for UNICEF.
“Today’s attack occurred while the humanitarian pause was still in effect, despite assurances given that the pause would be respected from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said that “contrary to the claims, an initial review determined that the (Israeli military) did not strike in the area at the specified time.”
It was not possible to resolve the conflicting accounts. Israeli forces have repeatedly raided hospitals in Gaza over the course of the war, saying Hamas uses them for militant purposes, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials. Hamas fighters are also operating in the north, battling Israeli forces.
Northern Gaza has been encircled by Israeli forces and largely isolated for the past year. Israel has been carrying out another offensive there in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
A scaled-down campaign to administer a second dose of the polio vaccine began Saturday in parts of northern Gaza. It had been postponed from Oct. 23 due to lack of access, Israeli bombings and mass evacuation orders, and the lack of assurances for humanitarian pauses, a UN statement said.
The administration of the first dose was carried out in September across the Gaza Strip, including areas of northern Gaza that are now completely sealed off. Health officials said the campaign’s first round, and the administration of the second dose across central and southern Gaza, were successful.
At least 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate from areas of north Gaza toward Gaza City in the past few weeks, but around 15,000 children under the age of 10 remain in northern towns, including Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, which are inaccessible, according to the UN
The final phase of the polio vaccination campaign had aimed to reach an estimated 119,000 children in the north with a second dose of the oral polio vaccine, the agencies said, but “achieving this target is now unlikely due to access constraints.”
They say 90 percent of children in every community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.
The campaign was launched after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization said the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.

Israeli authorities probe suspected Gaza intelligence leak by Netanyahu aide

The father of hostage Idan Shtivi and the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker hug following a court ruling.
The father of hostage Idan Shtivi and the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker hug following a court ruling.
Updated 9 min 59 sec ago
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Israeli authorities probe suspected Gaza intelligence leak by Netanyahu aide

The father of hostage Idan Shtivi and the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker hug following a court ruling.
  • On Friday, court confirmed that suspects had been arrested as part of probe into suspected “security breach caused by the illegal provision of classified information”

RISHON LE-ZION, Israel: A suspected leak of classified Gaza documents involving an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has jolted Israeli politics and outraged the families of hostages held by Hamas who have been pushing for a deal to get their loved ones home.
Details of the case have been trickling out only slowly because of a gag order.
But a court ruling partially lifting the order has provided an initial glimpse of the case which the court said had compromised security sources and may have harmed Israel’s war effort.
On Friday, the magistrates’ court confirmed that a number of suspects had been arrested as part of the probe into a suspected “security breach caused by the illegal provision of classified information.”
Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing by his office staffers and said in a statement on Saturday that he was only made aware of the leaked document by the media. The suspects could not be reached for comment.
Details from the document in question were published by the German Bild newspaper on Sept. 6, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, one of the media outlets that had appealed the court to lift the gag order.
The article, labelled as an exclusive, purportedly outlined the negotiation strategy of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist militant group which Israel has been fighting in Gaza for more than a year.
Around that time, the United States, Qatar and Egypt were mediating ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas, that were to include a deal to release hostages held in Gaza.
But the talks faltered with Israel and Hamas trading blame for the deadlock. The article in question largely corresponded with Netanyahu’s allegations against Hamas over the impasse.
It was published days after six Israeli hostages were found executed in a Hamas tunnel in southern Gaza. Their killing sparked mass protests in Israel and outraged hostage families, who accused Netanyahu of torpedoing the ceasefire talks for political reasons.
On Saturday, some of the families joined the Israeli journalists’ appeal to lift the gag order.
“These people have been living on a rollercoaster of rumors and half-truths,” said their lawyer, Dana Pugach.
“For the last year they have been waiting to hear any intelligence or any information about negotiations for the release of those hostages. If some of that information had been stolen from army sources then we think that the families have the right to learn about any relevant detail,” she added.
In another session on Sunday about the investigation by the Shin Bet domestic security service, police and the military, the court ordered one suspect be released, while keeping others in remand, according to Israeli Channel 13 News.
Asked about the investigation, Bild said that it does not comment on its sources. “The authenticity of the document known to us was confirmed by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) immediately after publication,” it said.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to the enclave, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s retaliatory offensives have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced much of Gaza to rubble.


Israel says ‘senior Hezbollah operative’ seized in commando raid

Lebanese intelligence officers leave a building in Batroun, northern Lebanon, where Imad Amhaz was taken by Israeli forces.
Lebanese intelligence officers leave a building in Batroun, northern Lebanon, where Imad Amhaz was taken by Israeli forces.
Updated 29 min 46 sec ago
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Israel says ‘senior Hezbollah operative’ seized in commando raid

Lebanese intelligence officers leave a building in Batroun, northern Lebanon, where Imad Amhaz was taken by Israeli forces.
  • Lebanon condemns ‘blatant violation,’ launches urgent inquiry
  • Strikes on Baalbek, southern regions, while Hezbollah targets 10 settlements

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces on Sunday took statements from eyewitnesses after Israeli commandos abducted a man said to be a senior Hezbollah naval operative.

In one of the most dramatic raids of the current conflict, Imad Amhaz was taken from a chalet he rented with his family in the coastal town of Batroun, northern Lebanon, by Israeli special forces who escaped by speedboat in the early hours of Friday.

Amhaz’s wife and a neighbor were among those interviewed by Lebanese security forces.

The abduction was kept secret in Lebanon until leaked footage of the operation appeared showing about 20 Israeli soldiers, fully equipped, leading Amhaz away.

Israel said that the raid, which took place about 40 km north of Beirut, lasted only a few minutes.

However, Lebanon denies Amhaz has links with Hezbollah, and has said it will file an urgent complaint with the UN Security Council.

Ali Hamieh, caretaker minister of public works and transport, on Sunday described the Batroun raid as “a blatant violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”

He said the government is still waiting on a detailed report into the incident, and added that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is “making contacts to neutralize the land and sea crossings from Israeli attacks.”

In a social media post and interviews with local television, Amhaz’s father, Fadel, called on the Lebanese government, navy, and UNIFIL forces to pursue his son’s case and work to have him released.

He said that his son is a civilian boat captain and had been studying in Batroun at the Marsati Institute for Marine Sciences, where he had undertaken courses since 2013.

“Imad usually works on civilian ships that transport either livestock or cars. He spends most of his time at sea. He has no connection to parties and does not interfere in politics,” his father said.

He called on the International Red Cross and UNIFIL forces to “communicate with the kidnappers to return my son to his family safely.”

Israeli Army Radio on Sunday said the naval commando operation in Batroun resulted in “the arrest of a Hezbollah leader.”

According to the military outlet, the operation had been planned for a long time, with Israeli intelligence services “waiting for an opportunity that would allow a high degree of certainty for its success.”

The radio reported that “the investigators, who speak Arabic, conducted a preliminary interrogation of the Hezbollah member who was arrested to confirm that he was the person targeted, he is a key member of Hezbollah and a figure fully involved in the party’s activities, and not an innocent Lebanese citizen as some parties in Lebanon tried to portray him.”

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes continued on Sunday in southern Lebanon and the Baalbek region.

A raid on a house in the town of Joya killed two people and injured several others. Raids also targeted towns in the Tyre, Nabatieh, Iqlim Al-Tuffah, Zahrani, and Sidon districts.

Three people were killed and nine injured in a raid on the town of Harat Saida, according to the Ministry of Health.

The Israeli army evacuated areas near the border town of Khiyam, according to Hezbollah, but retreated “after receiving severe blows from the party’s fighters.”

The Israeli army said that it had killed Farouk Amin Al-Asi, a Hezbollah company commander in Khiyam, while Youssef Ahmed Noun, a platoon commander in the Radwan Force in the Khiyam area, was also targeted.

A UNIFIL force and paramedics on Saturday reached Wata Al-Khiam, where dozens of civilians were believed to be sheltering in a house following clashes more than a week ago.

However, it turned out that the house had been leveled. Some bodies were recovered, while others remain beneath the rubble.

Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee claimed in a post that “the Israeli army found on Sunday inside a children’s room in a house in the heart of a village in the south, which he did not name, rockets and combat equipment and destroyed them.”

Adraee said: “The forces of the 91st Division continued their specific ground activities in the south to thwart and destroy the infrastructure and eliminate Hezbollah elements.”

Israeli troops warned residents of Baalbek and the surrounding areas on Sunday to leave their homes.

The warning gave a four-hour deadline, but Israeli attacks began before the deadline expired with raids on the city of Baalbek and Douris, one of which struck the government hospital in Baalbek. 


UN experts say Houthis collaborated with Al-Qaeda to weaken Yemeni government

Supporters of Yemen’s Houthis attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in Sanaa on November 1, 2024.(AFP)
Supporters of Yemen’s Houthis attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in Sanaa on November 1, 2024.(AFP)
Updated 53 min 33 sec ago
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UN experts say Houthis collaborated with Al-Qaeda to weaken Yemeni government

Supporters of Yemen’s Houthis attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in Sanaa on November 1, 2024.(AFP)
  • UN Panel of Experts on Yemen said in report that the Houthis and Al-Qaeda agreed to put aside their differences and focus on weakening Yemeni government

AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia has armed Al-Qaeda militants, provided them with a haven, and facilitated attacks on Yemeni government-controlled areas, UN experts said. The Houthis have also made millions of dollars through sea piracy.

Disclosing the strange partnership between the Houthis and Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, including Al-Shabaab in Somalia, the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen said in their report that the Houthis and Al-Qaeda agreed to put aside their differences and focus on weakening the Yemeni government by transferring weapons, coordinating attacks on Yemeni government forces, cooperating to smuggle weapons into Yemen, sharing intelligence information, and providing haven for the other’s fighters.

“That opportunistic alliance is characterized by cooperation in security and intelligence, offering safe havens for each other’s members, reinforcing their respective strongholds and coordinating efforts to target the Government’s forces,” the report said, adding that the Houthis also released incarcerated Al-Qaeda fighters convicted of terrorism and provided Al-Qaeda with drones and rockets.

“Since the beginning of 2024, the two groups have coordinated operations directly. They agreed that the Houthis would transfer four uncrewed aerial vehicles, as well as thermal rockets and explosive devices, and that the Houthis would provide training to AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula) fighters.”

Citing deadly drone attacks by Al-Qaeda in Abyan, Yemeni military commanders have lately accused the Houthis of supplying Al-Qaeda with drones and other weapons, as well as sheltering Al-Qaeda militants who stage hit-and-run attacks on government troops.

The 537-page report, which covers the period from Sept. 1, 2023, to July 31, 2024, described Hezbollah as “one of the most important” supporters of the Houthis in Yemen, assisting them in decision-making, field military support through the use and assembly of weapons and fighting techniques, increasing their financial revenues, recruitment and brainwashing techniques, and managing Houthi media propaganda.

The Houthis have a variety of revenue sources to support their military efforts, including selling rare and valuable antiques and antiquities abroad, minting coins and printing currencies, imposing levies on telecom companies in areas under their control, confiscating assets of companies, including Yemenia airways revenues, smuggling weapons and banned pesticides, and imposing levies on oil imports to the country.

“The Houthis have been amassing substantial illegal resources through the organized smuggling of various items such as weapons, drugs, telecommunications equipment, prohibited goods such as banned pesticides, non-permissible medicines, and cultural heritage property,” the report said.

It added: “The Panel's investigations revealed that Houthi-appointed authorities collected approximately 994 billion Yemeni rials in the name of customs duties on imports of fuel through ports under their control during the period from April 1, 2022, to June 30, 2024, under the exchange rate prevailing in government-controlled areas.”

However, during the Houthi campaign against ships that the Yemeni militia claimed were in support of the Palestinian people, the Houthis have collected approximately $180 million a month from ships to allow them to sail in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden without being attacked, and a high-ranking Houthi leader facilitated the transfer of the money from the shipping agencies to the militia’s coffers.

“The sources estimate the Houthis’ earnings from these illegal safe-transit fees to be about $180 million per month. The Panel has not been able to verify this information independently.”

The UN experts also accused the Houthis of recruiting and exploiting Ethiopian migrants — who arrive in the country by the thousands each year — to fight alongside them against the Yemeni government while also facilitating drug trafficking.

The Yemeni government, as well as local and international rights groups, have previously said that the Houthis recruited thousands of African migrants to fight the Yemeni government.  

“Other sources informed the Panel that the Houthis have also recruited mercenaries from the Tigray and Oromo Ethiopian tribes, at salaries ranging from $80 to $100. The Panel has been unable to verify that information and continues to investigate,” the experts said.

The Yemeni government welcomed the findings of the UN report and urged the world to designate the Houthis as a terrorist organization and cut off their financial resources. 

Yemen’s Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryani said in a post on X that the collusion between the Houthis and other terrorist organizations is intended to “weaken the Yemeni state, destabilizing security and stability in liberated areas,” thereby undermining maritime navigation security.


Israel PM vows to respond ‘firmly’ to Hezbollah in visit to Lebanon border

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a ceremony at an army base.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a ceremony at an army base.
Updated 03 November 2024
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Israel PM vows to respond ‘firmly’ to Hezbollah in visit to Lebanon border

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant attend a ceremony at an army base.
  • Israel’s military said more than 100 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory on Sunday
  • Hezbollah said it was acting in support of Palestinian militants Hamas

JERUSALEM: Lebanon said Sunday an air strike killed three people near Sidon in the south as more bombs hit the east and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited his country’s northern border.

The latest attacks on eastern Lebanon came after Israel warned it would again hit Hezbollah targets there.

Netanyahu’s office said the premier “visited the Lebanon border today,” his second such trip in a month.

He vowed to respond “firmly” to Hezbollah’s attacks and to prevent the group from rearming, his office said.

“I want to be clear: with or without an agreement, the key to restoring peace and security in the north, the key to bringing our northern residents back home safely, is first and foremost to push Hezbollah back beyond the Litani River, secondly to target any attempt to rearm, and thirdly to respond firmly to any action taken against us,” Netanyahu told soldiers at the border, according to a statement from his office.

It came as Israel’s military said more than 100 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory on Sunday.
Several were intercepted, and some fell in unpopulated areas.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon have been at war since September 23, when Israel escalated cross-border air raids after a year of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire. A week later it sent in ground troops on “targeted raids.”
Hezbollah said it was acting in support of Palestinian militants Hamas, whose unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 last year triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
“The Israeli enemy’s raid on Haret Saida resulted in an initial death toll of three people killed and nine others injured,” Lebanon’s health ministry said, referring to a densely populated area near Sidon.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported another Israeli strike south of Sidon, on the town of Ghaziyeh.
That strike hit a residential building, according to an AFP correspondent, who said a child was rescued from the rubble.
NNA said other Israeli strikes hit near a hospital in Tebnine, a town in the south Lebanon district of Bint Jbeil. Tebnine’s major told AFP the hospital was significantly damaged.
Neither the Haret Saida strike nor those in Lebanon’s south were preceded by an Israeli evacuation warning.
Israel’s military did issue a warning for Lebanon’s Baalbek area, which includes east Lebanon’s main city and UNESCO-designated Roman ruins, saying it would be targeting Hezbollah-linked facilities.
An AFP correspondent later reported at least three strikes in the Baalbek area, where Hezbollah holds sway and which has seen heavy air raids in the past few days.
Also on Sunday, Lebanese state media reported the recovery of five bodies from the flashpoint southern town of Khiam.
They were among 21 bodies that have been trapped under rubble in Khiam for around one week, according to the NNA.
The war has killed more than 1,930 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Israel’s military says 38 soldiers have been killed in the Lebanon campaign since it began ground operations.
Iran and Israel have recently attacked each other directly, heightening fears of even wider conflict.
But Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday said a potential ceasefire with its allies “could affect the intensity and type of our response.”
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had on Saturday warned Israel and the United States they “will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response.”
Israel has warned Iran against responding to its October 26 attack.
On Sunday demonstrators burned Israeli and US flags outside the former American embassy in Tehran to mark the anniversary of the 1979 hostage crisis that has shaped relations between Washington and Tehran ever since.
American B-52 bombers have arrived in the Middle East, the US military said on Saturday, as part of reinforcements being deployed in a warning to Iran.
In Gaza Israel’s military again reported “dozens” of militants killed in the northern Jabalia area where, Israeli forces have since October 6 carried out a major air and ground assault to stop Hamas from regrouping.
In central Gaza on Sunday, people crowded to receive sacks of flour from a distribution point of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Deir el-Balah.
Israel’s parliament last Monday banned UNRWA — the main aid agency in Gaza — from operating in Israel and occupied east Jerusalem, despite international objections.
If implemented, the ban would hit humanitarian work in Gaza, experts say.
The ban came after the United States on October 15 warned Israel it could withhold some of its billions of dollars in military assistance unless it improves aid delivery to Gaza within 30 days.
Also in Deir el-Balah on Sunday, relatives at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital mourned a father and son killed during Israeli bombardment.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s military response against Hamas has killed 43,341 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations consider to be reliable.