Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations

Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations
Pedestrians walk past the 'Adani House' corporate building in Gurgaon on November 27, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 28 November 2024
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Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations

Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue investments after US bribery allegations
  • Adani Group holds a 70 percent stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country
  • US last week accused Adani Group of being part of scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure contracts, misleading US investors 

HYDERABAD, India: Israel wants India’s Adani Group to continue to invest in the country, Israel’s envoy to India said on Thursday, affirming the nation’s support for the ports-to-media conglomerate whose billionaire founder is facing bribery allegations in the United States.

“We wish Adani and all Indian companies continue to invest in Israel,” Ambassador Reuven Azar said in an interview with Reuters, adding that allegations by US authorities were “not something that’s problematic” from Israel’s point of view.

The Adani Group holds a 70% stake in Haifa port in northern Israel and is involved in multiple other projects with firms in the country, including to produce military drones and plans for the manufacture of commercial semiconductors.

US authorities last week accused Gautam Adani, his nephew, and Adani Green’s managing director of being part of a scheme to pay bribes of $265 million to secure Indian power supply contracts and misleading US investors during fund raising efforts there.

Adani Group has denied all the accusations, calling them “baseless.”

Still, shares and bonds of Adani companies were hammered last week and some partners began to review joint projects.

“I am sure Adani Group will resolve its problems,” Azar said on the sidelines of an event in the southern city of Hyderabad.


North Gaza hospital director says Israeli strikes hit facility

North Gaza hospital director says Israeli strikes hit facility
Updated 20 min 52 sec ago
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North Gaza hospital director says Israeli strikes hit facility

North Gaza hospital director says Israeli strikes hit facility
  • Beit Lahia has been the site of an intense Israeli military operation for the past two months
  • The Israeli army has stormed Kamal Adwan on several occasions since the start of their offensive nearly 14 months ago

BEIT LAHIA, Palestinian Territories: The director of north Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital and the territory’s civil defense agency said Israel conducted several strikes on Friday that hit the facility, one of the last functioning health centers in the area.

“There was a series of air strikes on the northern and western sides of the hospital, accompanied by intense and direct fire,” Hossam Abu Safieh said, adding that four staff were killed and no surgeons were left at the site.

The Israeli army has not yet responded to AFP requests for comment on the strikes.

Mahmud Bassal, Gaza’s civil defense spokesman, said on Friday morning that the Israeli army entered Kamal Adwan hospital, evacuated patients and arrested several Palestinians.

The city of Beit Lahia has been the site of an intense Israeli military operation for the past two months that has intensified in recent days, forcing thousands to flee amid bombing, the civil defense agency said.

The Israeli army has stormed Kamal Adwan on several occasions since the start of the war nearly 14 months ago, while the hospital said that its intensive care unit director Ahmad Al-Kahlut was killed in an air strike late last month.

The army’s storming of Kamal Adwan comes just days after the UN’s World Health Organization said an emergency medical team had reached it for the first time in 60 days.

With little to no aid reaching Kamal Adwan since the start of the Israeli operation in Gaza’s far north in early October, the hospital had run out of most supplies, including fuel.

The Israeli army says its operation in the north aims to keep Hamas militants from regrouping there.

Rights groups have accused it of pursuing a plan to evacuate or starve all those remaining there, which it denies.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Thursday that residents of the north would not be allowed to move back there as long as the military operations are ongoing.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s surprise October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has resulted in at least 44,580 deaths, mostly civilians, according to data from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.


UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 so far

UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 so far
Updated 06 December 2024
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UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 so far

UN says Syria fighting has displaced 280,000 so far
  • UN’s Samer AbdelJaber: ‘The figure we have in front of us is 280,000 people since November 27’
  • ‘That does not include the figure of people who fled from Lebanon during the recent escalations’

GENEVA: The escalation in fighting in Syria has displaced around 280,000 people in just over a week, the United Nations said on Friday, warning that numbers could swell to 1.5 million.
“The figure we have in front of us is 280,000 people since November 27,” Samer AbdelJaber, head of emergency coordination at the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), told reporters in Geneva.
“That does not include the figure of people who fled from Lebanon during the recent escalations” in fighting there, he added.
The mass displacement has happened since militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched their lightning offensive a little more than a week ago.
That occurred just as a tenuous ceasefire in neighboring Lebanon took hold between Israel and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ally Hezbollah, following two months of full-blown war that drove hundreds of thousands to flee into Syria.
WFP warned that the fresh mass-displacement inside Syria, more than 13 years after the country’s civil war erupted, was “adding to years of suffering.”
AbdelJaber said the WFP and other humanitarian agencies were “trying to reach the communities wherever their needs are,” and that they were working “to secure safe routes so that we can be able to move the aid and the assistance to the communities that are in need.”
He also stressed the urgent need for more funding to ensure humanitarians are “ready for any scenario basically in terms of displacements that could evolve in the coming days or months.”
AbdelJaber cautioned that “if the situation continues evolving (at the current) pace, we’re expecting collectively around 1.5 million people that will be displaced and will be requiring our support.”


Thousands flee Homs as Syrian militants push on lightning offensive

Thousands flee Homs as Syrian militants push on lightning offensive
Updated 9 min 15 sec ago
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Thousands flee Homs as Syrian militants push on lightning offensive

Thousands flee Homs as Syrian militants push on lightning offensive
  • Militants have captured two major cities so far and are now thrusting toward Homs
  • Seizing Homs would cut off Damascus from the coast, a longtime redoubt of Bashar Assad

BEIRUT/AMMAN: Thousands of people fled the central Syrian city of Homs overnight and into Friday morning, a war monitoring group and residents said, as militant forces sought to push their lightning offensive against government forces further south.

The head of the Syrian faction leading the sweeping assault told CNN that his group — a former Al-Qaeda affiliate now known as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) — aimed to “build Syria” and bring Syrian refugees back home from Lebanon and Europe.

It was Abu Mohammed Al-Golani’s first interview since his group began seizing territory from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces on Nov. 27. Militants have captured two major cities so far and are now thrusting toward Homs, a key crossroads city linking the capital Damascus to Assad’s coastal heartlands.

After years locked behind frozen front lines, the insurgents have burst out of their northwestern Idlib bastion to reel off the swiftest battlefield advance by either side since a street uprising against Assad mushroomed into civil war 13 years ago.

Assad regained control of most of Syria after his key allies — Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group — came to his support. But all have recently been diverted by other crises, giving Syrian Sunni Muslim militants a window to fight back.

Hezbollah sent a small number of “supervising forces” from Lebanon to Syria overnight to help prevent anti-government fighters from seizing the strategic city of Homs, two senior Lebanese security sources told Reuters.

A Syrian military officer and two regional officials close to Tehran also said that elite forces from Iran-backed Hezbollah had crossed over from Lebanon overnight and had taken up positions in Homs.

Hezbollah has suffered major blows in its war with Israel in Lebanon, which assassinated some of its top leaders.

Meanwhile, the militants said they had taken over the towns of Talbisa and Rastan, bringing them within kilometers of Homs.

In another alarming development for Assad, the head of the US-backed Syrian Kurdish force said the radical Daesh group, which ran a reign of terror in large swathes of Iraq and Syria until it was defeated by a US-led coalition in 2017, had now taken control of some areas in eastern Syria.

“Due to the recent developments, there is increased movement by Islamic State mercenaries in the Syrian desert, in the south and west of Deir Ezzor and the countryside of Al-Raqqa,” Mazloum Abdi told a press conference, referring to areas in the east of the country.

FLIGHT FROM HOMS

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said thousands of people had begun fleeing from Homs on Thursday night toward the Mediterranean coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus, strongholds of the government.

A coastal resident said thousands of people had begun arriving there from Homs, fearing the militants’ rapid advance.

Seizing Homs would cut off Damascus from the coast, a longtime redoubt of Assad’s minority Alawite sect and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base.

Russian bombing overnight destroyed the Rustan bridge along the M5 highway, the main route to Homs, to prevent militants using it to advance, a Syrian army officer said.

“There were at least eight strikes on the bridge,” he added. Government forces were bringing reinforcements to positions around Homs, he added.

Assad relied heavily on Russian and Iranian military backing during the most intense years of the civil war, helping him to claw back most territory and Syria’s largest cities before front lines hardened in 2020.

But Russia has been focused on its full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 2022. And many in the top leadership of Hezbollah, the most powerful Iran-aligned militia force, were killed by Israel over the past two months. Hezbollah’s new leader, Naim Qassem, pledged to stand by Syria in a television statement.

MILITANT LEADER SPEAKS

Amid concerns that HTS would seek to impose strict Islamist rule in the new areas it controls, Golani told CNN that his group “may dissolve at any time. It’s not an end in itself but a means to perform one important task: Confronting this regime.”

Golani said that through its offensive, HTS aims to return Syrian refugees from the civil war who are dispersed across the Middle East and Europe back to their homes.


Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon

Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon
Updated 06 December 2024
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Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon

Israeli strikes hit two Syria border crossings with Lebanon
  • Strikes hit the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes early on Friday hit two border crossings linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh said.
The strikes hit just across the border on the Syrian side of both the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon, Hamieh said.
Both crossings are important access points to Syria’s Homs province, where anti-government rebels are seeking to advance against government forces after sweeping through northern Syria.


Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West
Updated 06 December 2024
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Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West

Iran says it conducted a successful space launch in program long criticized by West
  • Iran conducted the launch using its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had seen a series of failed launches

MANAMA, Bahrain: Iran said Friday it conducted a successful space launch, the latest for its program the West alleges improves Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
Iran conducted the launch using its Simorgh program, a satellite-carrying rocket that had seen a series of failed launches. The launch took place at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Spaceport in rural Semnan province.
There was no immediate independent confirmation the launch was successful.
The announcement comes as heightened tensions grip the wider Middle East over Israel’s continued war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and as an uneasy ceasefire holds in Lebanon.