Middle Eastern Headlines at 8:53 p.m. GMT
Strike kills family as Israeli evacuation order sparks panicked flight from southern Gaza city
Strike kills family as Israeli evacuation order sparks panicked flight from southern Gaza city
The US government employees who have publicly resigned in protest of the Biden administration’s Gaza policies released a joint statement on Tuesday for the first time, stating they “stand united in a shared belief that it is our collective responsibility to speak up” and outlining steps they believe the US government should take.
The deputy leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday the only sure path to a cease-fire on the Lebanon-Israel border is a full cease-fire in Gaza. “If there is a cease-fire in Gaza, we will stop without any discussion,” Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, said in an interview with The Associated Press at the group’s political office in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Hezbollah's participation in the Israel-Hamas war has been as a “support front” for its ally, Hamas, Kassem said, and “if the war stops, this military support will no longer exist.”
Israel will create Hamas-free “bubbles” in Gaza as part of a pilot scheme for how the territory could be ruled after the terror group is defeated.
STORY: Lebanese farmer Zakaria Farah fears his fields are not safe to grow crops in.The 30-year-old worries the land has been poisoned by the Israeli military's use of white phosphorus since October.When exchanges of fire erupted between Israel and Hezbollah in parallel with the Gaza war."We are stuck sitting in our houses, it's been eight months - entering the ninth month. No one is feeling with us; no one feels for the daily suffering in our morale. We are suffering every minute. We are afraid for our future, we're afraid for the future of our children, for the future of our land. What can we eat? What can we drink? Maybe the groundwater has phosphorus, we don't know if yes or no. This is why... We are really, really, really living in hell."White phosphorus munitions are a chemical weapon and can be used in war to make smoke screens, mark targets or burn buildings.However, international conventions prohibit their use against military targets located among civilians.Lebanon is a party to those international protocols, while Israel is not.In June, Human Rights Watch said it had verified the use of white phosphorus in at least 17 municipalities in southern Lebanon since October, including some unlawfully over populated residential areas.Outside the southern town of Qlayaa, with shelling in the distance, Farah collected earth samples to send to the American University of Beirut for testing.Some farmers have left altogether. But Farah hopes he can learn whether he can plant his fields once hostilities end.“One feels sorry for his land, but what can we do?”Dr. Rami Zurayk, a soil chemist at AUB, has developed a research protocol to collect and examine the samples from various distances from the impact sites."So what we're looking for is what happens to the soils and to the plants in locations that have received white phosphorus bombing. Does the phosphorus remain? In what concentrations? Does it disappear?"They still need more samples to obtain a conclusive outcome.However farmers are unwilling to gather more soil due to the steady pace of Israeli shelling. ''We have obtained a few results. They are too few to be able to talk about the general area, but they are sufficient for us to say that our methodology is reliable."Green Southerners, a collective of ecologists and nature lovers in Lebanon's south, have filmed several incidents of shelling they say show tell-tale signs of white phosphorous attacks:Dozens of streams of white bursting out of a munition over farmlands.The group's chairman told Reuters the attacks amount to ecocide - deliberate or negligent mass destruction of a natural environment by humans.The Israeli military told Reuters the "primary smoke shells" it used do not contain white phosphorus. It said smoke shells that do include white phosphorus can be used to create smokescreens, and that it quote "uses only lawful means of warfare."
The Hamas militant group said Wednesday it had sent new "ideas" to Qatari mediators aimed at ending the nearly nine-month Gaza war with Israel.Qatar-based Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh "made contact with the mediator brothers in Qatar and Egypt about the ideas that the movement is discussing with them with the aim of reaching an agreement", the group said in a statement.
Israel has confirmed it killed a senior Hezbollah commander in an airstrike in south Lebanon, the second such assassination in recent weeks.
Israel has said it is "evaluating" new comments put forward by Palestinian group Hamas aimed at bringing about a long-awaited ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas militant group said Wednesday it has sent new "ideas" to Qatari mediators aimed at ending the nearly nine-month Gaza war with Israel.Israel confirmed that it was "evaluating" Hamas "comments" on a deal to free its hostages in the Palestinian territory and would reply.With the death toll mounting and conditions worsening daily for Gaz
Russia said Wednesday its forces had captured a district in the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar near Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow has been pressing for months.The defence ministry said its troops had "liberated" the Novy district of Chasiv Yar, but it was unclear if it was claiming its forces had crossed a canal which runs through the eastern part of the town.
French prosecutors have requested the country's highest court to rule on the validity of the international arrest warrant for Syrian President Bashar Assad for alleged complicity in war crimes during Syria’s civil war, according to a statement on Tuesday. Judges at the Court of Appeal last week ruled that the arrest warrant issued by France for Assad in November is valid and remains in place, rejecting the prosecutors' argument that he has absolute immunity as a serving head of state.
The Israeli leader has rejected the idea of starting a ceasefire in Gaza while Hamas remains in power, after a New York Times article cited current and former security officials who said a truce would give Israeli troops time to prepare for a potential land war with Hezbollah.
Activist claims she was threatened with release of the footage in order to silence her, amid multiple reports of sexual violence inflicted upon imprisoned Afghan women
Twenty-five soldiers accused of "fleeing the enemy" while fighting M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo were sentenced to death Wednesday during a one-day trial, according to their lawyers. In early May, eight Congolese soldiers, including five officers, were sentenced to death in Goma for "cowardice" and "fleeing the enemy". sm-mbb/at/fjb/giv/des
Clashes on the southern Lebanese border have raised the possibility of a direct conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli military.
Protests continued in Kenya's capital and elsewhere Tuesday over a finance bill that would raise the cost of living, even after the president said he would not sign it in the wake of the storming of parliament last week. Police fired tear gas at protesters in Nairobi as many businesses remained closed for fear of looting. The main highway to Kenya's second-largest city, Mombasa, was closed as protesters lit bonfires.
STORY: :: July 1, 2024Israeli forces bombarded several areas of the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday - in what could be part of its final push in nine months of war.It comes after Israel ordered residents of several towns and villages surrounding Khan Younis and Rafah to evacuate the day before."An evacuation of such a massive scale will only heighten the suffering of civilians and drive humanitarian needs even higher. ":: October 13, 2023United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said it was the largest evacuation order in the Strip since 1.1 million people were told to leave the north of the enclave in October, citing figures from the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA.“People are left with the impossible choice of having to relocate, some most likely for the second or even the third time, to areas that have barely any space or services, or stay in an area where they know the fighting will take place."Thousands who had not heeded evacuation orders were forced to flee their homes overnight during the Israeli bombardment.Gaza’s European Hospital in Khan Younis, which the emergency department director says has provided continuous daily services since the beginning of the war, was forced to evacuate.This man whose sick daughter was being treated there says it was their last resort as many hospitals have been destroyed. “Whoever gets wounded, will die,” he says.Israel's leaders have said they were winding down the phase of intense fighting against Hamas, the Islamist group that has governed Gaza since 2007, and would soon shift to more targeted operations.:: October 7, 2023The war in Gaza began when Hamas burst into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.The offensive launched by Israel in retaliation has killed nearly 38,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and has left the coastal enclave in ruins.
Palestinians in Gaza are openly criticising the armed group both on the streets and online.
The plan for post-war Gaza that Israel pitched to U.S. allies is to run the strip in cooperation with powerful local families. Israel is under pressure from Washington to end the loss of human life and wind down its military offensive after nearly nine months, but does not want Hamas in charge after the war. Israeli officials have therefore been trying to plot a path ahead for the day after the fighting stops.
Israel killed a senior commander in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Wednesday, the second top field leader killed in less than a month, and the group said it retaliated by firing scores of rockets at Israeli military positions near the border. The Israeli military estimated that around 100 rockets were fired, and said there were no reports of casualties. International diplomats are scrambling to prevent the near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, which is Hezbollah's main backer.
Joe Biden "has prioritized politics over just and fair policymaking" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, former government officials argued in their first joint statement since quitting.
Patients have left a hospital and tent camps as Israel appears poised to launch another assault on the city.