Israel orders evacuations in northern Gaza as Trump calls for war to end

-
By Nidal Al-Mughrabi Reuters  The Israeli military ordered Palestinians to evacuate areas in northern Gaza on Sunday before intensified fighting against  Hamas , as U.S. President Donald Trump called for an end to the  war  amid renewed efforts to broker a ceasefire. “Make the deal in Gaza, get the hostages back,”  Trump  posted on his Truth Social platform early on Sunday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to hold talks later in the day on the progress of Israel’s offensive. A senior security official said the military will tell him the campaign is close to reaching its objectives, and warn that expanding fighting to new areas in Gaza may endanger the remaining Israeli hostages. But in a statement posted on X and text messages sent to many residents, the military urged people in northern parts of the enclave to head south towards the Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis, which Israel designated as a humanitarian area. Palestinian and U.N. offi...
Post a Comment

Iran warns Israel against retaliation for missile attack

-

By Elwely Elwelly and Maya Gebeily Reuters

The commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards warned Israel on Thursday against attacking the Islamic Republic in retaliation for a missile barrage as its arch-foe stepped up its offensive in Lebanon against Tehran-backed Hezbollah.

Fears of a wider Middle East conflict have grown as Israel plans its response to the Oct. 1 missile attack carried out by Iran after Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-allied militants.

“We tell you (Israel) that if you commit any aggression against any point we will painfully attack the same point of yours,” Hossein Salami said in a televised speech, adding that Iran can penetrate Israel’s defences.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday about Israel’s operations in Lebanon and Gaza, aiming to avert a regional war. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi landed in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials as part of a Middle Eastern tour as tension builds.

The European Union held its first summit with Gulf states and issued a statement calling for calm: “We underscore the importance of diplomatic engagement with Iran –– to pursue regional de-escalation,” it said.

Israel shows no signs of easing its military campaigns against Hezbollah in Lebanon after assassinating several of its leaders, and Hamas in Gaza and it has vowed to punish Iran for its Oct. 1 attack.

Qatar, which has mediated in talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, said there had been no engagement with any parties for the last three to four weeks on the issue.

Israeli airstrikes killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza City on Thursday, medics said, while Israeli forces sent tanks into Jabalia in the north, where Palestinians and United Nations officials expressed alarm over shortages of food and medicine.

Residents of Jabalia said Israeli forces blew up clusters of houses from air, by tank shells and by placing bombs in buildings before blowing them up remotely.

On its northern front in Lebanon, Israel has said it will not stop fighting a now weakened Hezbollah before it can safely return its citizens to their homes near the Lebanese border and said any ceasefire negotiations will be held “under fire”.

The Israeli military said on Thursday that over the past 24 hours it had killed 45 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, including a battalion commander, and seized many weapons.

ATTACK ON MUNICIPAL HEADQUARTERS

The mayor of a major town in south Lebanon was among 16 people killed on Wednesday when an Israeli airstrike destroyed its municipal headquarters in the biggest attack on an official Lebanese state building since the Israeli air campaign began.

Lebanese officials denounced the incident, which also wounded more than 50 people in Nabatieh, a provincial capital, saying it was proof that Israel’s campaign against the Hezbollah armed group was now shifting to target the Lebanese state.

The Israelis “intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council to discuss the city’s service and relief situation” to aid people displaced by the Israeli campaign, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said.

Israel and Hezbollah have been fighting since the militant group began firing missiles at its arch-foe a year ago in support of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza and the conflict has sharply escalated in recent weeks.

Israeli operations in Lebanon have killed at least 2,350 people over the last year, according to the health ministry, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced. The death toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but includes hundreds of women and children.

Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in the same period, according to Israel.

Abdelnaser, a man displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, which Israel has repeatedly bombed, was on the waterfront early on Thursday morning.

“War has become normal for us. We know that every 10 years Lebanon gets built, and every 10 years it gets destroyed again,” he said.



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/eNigLlW

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Israel-Hezbollah attacks continue despite international pressure for ceasefire

-
By Timour Azhari and James Mackenzie Reuters  Israel rejected global calls on Thursday for a ceasefire with the Hezbollah movement, defying its biggest ally in Washington and pressing ahead with strikes that have killed hundreds in Lebanon and heightened fears of an all-out regional war. Despite Israel’s stance, the U.S. and France sought to keep prospects alive for an  immediate 21-day  truce they proposed on Wednesday, and said negotiations continued, including on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in New York. An Israeli warplane struck the edges of the capital Beirut, killing two people and wounding 15, including a woman in critical condition, Lebanon’s health ministry said. That took deaths overnight and on Thursday to 28 and over 600 since Monday. The strike killed the head of one of Hezbollah’s air force units, Mohammad Surur, Hezbollah said, the latest senior Hezbollah commander to be targeted in days of assassinations among the group’s top ranks. On t...
Read more

Bolivia wildfires burn record area, scorching homes and farms

-
Image
By Monica Machicao and Daniel Ramos Reuters Wildfires in Bolivia have burned through more than 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) this year, mostly in the country’s tropical east, smashing records for its worst-ever fire season and scorching an area the size of Iceland or Cuba. The new figures released on Monday by non-governmental organization Tierra Foundation represent the equivalent of nearly 19 million American football fields. Fires in recent months have propelled Bolivia past devastating fire years in 2010 and 2019. Santa Cruz, a wealthy farming region in the country’s eastern lowlands near Brazil, has been the hardest hit, accounting for almost 7 million hectares of the total, followed by the nearby department of Beni, with 3 million hectares. “What’s happened in recent months in eastern Bolivia, and will continue to occur at least through October, is a disaster of a magnitude unprecedented in the country,” Juan Pablo Chumacero, researcher at the Tierra Foundation, to...
Read more