Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Special relationship at risk if UK bans arms sales to Israel, says Trump adviser

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Robert O’Brien says UK could face US counter-embargos and put its role in F-35 fighter jet project in danger

Labour risks a serious rift in the UK’s special relationship with the US if it goes ahead with a ban on arms sales to Israel, Donald Trump’s last national security adviser has warned.

Robert O’Brien, still one of the key security voices in the Trump circle, said the UK was endangering its future role in the F-35 project as well as facing the risk of US congressional counter-embargos. The F-35 fighter jets are made in part by British arms firms and are used by Israel’s air force as part of its bombing of Gaza.

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WHO says Israel has agreed pauses in Gaza fighting to allow polio vaccinations

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Tentative announcement follows Israeli PM approving designated places to treat estimated 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has announced it has “a preliminary commitment” for humanitarian pauses in fighting in the Gaza Strip to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, with the first vaccinations to begin as early as this weekend.

The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the UN’s global health body confirmed on 23 August that at least one baby has been paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

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Five Palestinian fighters killed in West Bank mosque as Israeli assault continues

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Deaths in Tulkarm bring toll to 16 during Israel’s deadliest operation in West Bank since 7 October Hamas attack

The Israeli military said it had killed five Palestinian fighters inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in the midst of one of the largest assaults on the occupied territory for months.

The overall toll of 16 Palestinians killed in less than two days would make it the deadliest Israeli operation in the West Bank since the 7 October Hamas attack in Israel which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and ignited the Gaza war.

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Middle East crisis: Israeli troops claim five Palestinian militants killed at mosque in West Bank operation – as it happened

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Thursday’s attack follows major raids across the region which saw at least 10 Palestinians killed as part of an operation the military said could last days

Zainab Barakat woke early on Sunday morning to the sound of bombs. During more than 10 months of fighting between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) near her village of Zebqine, she had grown used to hearing the explosions that have devastated other nearby villages.

So far, Zebqine, almost 7km from the Lebanese-Israeli border, had been spared the worst of the shelling. But this time, she says, “it was right on top of us. It smashed the windows; the whole place shook. The children were panicking.”

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UN food agency suspends operations in Gaza after car hit by gunfire at Israeli checkpoint

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World Food Programme says it is the first time that one of its vehicles has been directly shot at near a checkpoint despite having security clearance

The UN’s food agency has said it is pausing movement of its staff in Gaza “until further notice” after one of its vehicles was struck by gunfire at an Israeli military checkpoint.

Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), said of Tuesday’s incident: “This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.

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Houthis to allow access to stricken Red Sea tanker amid fears of huge oil spill

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The Yemen-based militants have denied an Iranian claim that they agreed to a temporary truce but will allow a tugboat to access the Sounion tanker

Yemen’s Houthi group has agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to access a damaged crude oil tanker in the Red Sea, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said, after the Iranian-aligned militants attacked the Greek-flagged vessel last week.

The Sounion tanker is carrying 150,000 tonnes, or 1m barrels, of crude oil and poses an environmental hazard, shipping officials said. Any spill has the potential to be among the largest from a ship in recorded history.

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Israeli forces kill at least 10 Palestinians in West Bank raids

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Gun battles reported to be continuing as Israel claims all those killed in overnight raids and airstrikes were militants

Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes they said were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the West Bank operations, some of the most extensive in recent years, were likely to go on for some days, in what it described as a preventive campaign to forestall attacks on Israelis.

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US imposes sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers in West Bank

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Targeting of government-funded group active in Hebron hills brings punitive measures closer to Israeli cabinet

The US has announced new sanctions against extremist settlers in the West Bank who are funded by the Israeli government, as Washington steps up its attempt to rein in worsening settler violence.

The sanctions target one organisation and one individual with long involvement in the intimidation of Palestinians with the aim of seizing their land. The US Treasury has made them “specially designated nationals”, which means their assets are blocked and US citizens and companies are prohibited from dealing with them.

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Middle East crisis: 10 Palestinian militants killed in major West Bank raids; US announces new sanctions against Israeli settlers – as it happened

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Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators were meeting in Doha on Wednesday for “technical/working level” talks on a ceasefire in Gaza, a source with knowledge of the meeting told Reuters without giving further details.

At least 40,534 Palestinians were killed and 93,778 wounded in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, health authorities said on Wednesday.

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Red Sea tanker attack: hopes rise that major oil spill can be averted

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Waters around vessel attacked by Houthi rebels last week appear to be free of oil, EU mission Red Sea says

The area around a Greek-flagged tanker attacked last week by Yemen’s Houthi rebels appears to be free of oil, the EU mission in the Red Sea has said.

The tanker came under fire last week off Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah. The Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, said they were behind the attack.

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‘I couldn’t believe it was my son who did it’: boy, 4, smashes bronze age jar in Israel museum

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Instead of chastising family over breakage, director of the Hecht Museum invites them back

A rare bronze age jar – its history stretching back at least 3,500 years – had long graced the entrance of the Hecht Museum in Haifa, Israel, offering visitors a closeup look at an intact artefact believed to predate the biblical King David and King Solomon.

That is, until it was accidentally smashed by a four-year-old earlier this week.

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US and UN call for talks in Libyan dispute over control of central bank

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UN-backed institutions in west of Libya show no sign of backing down over dismissal of bank’s governor of 20 years

A crisis in the Libyan economy sparked by an escalating and sometimes violent contest over the control of the country’s central bank can only be cured through diplomacy, the US embassy in Libya has said, as it backed efforts by the UN to convene an emergency meeting of the groups involved.

The embassy, led by the ambassador Richard Norland, pleaded with all sides to heed a UN call to hold talks, saying the contest over the administration of the bank “undermines confidence in Libya’s economic and financial stability in the eyes of Libyan citizens and the international community, and increases the likelihood of harmful confrontation”.

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Middle East crisis: Gaza hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi rescued in ‘complex operation’, says IDF – as it happened

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The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.

Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.

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Israeli Bedouin kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October reunited with his family

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Israeli forces spoke of Qaid Farhan Alkadi’s rescue from tunnel though some reports suggest he may have initially escaped

A member of Israel’s Bedouin minority who was kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October last year has been reunited with his family amid conflicting accounts about his rescue from Gaza.

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, who was abducted in the Hamas attack while he had been working as a security guard at a packing factory on a kibbutz.

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Gaza polio vaccine rollout hindered by Israeli evacuation orders, says UN

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Aid workers preparing to distribute medicine to children in effort to contain outbreak call for pause in fighting

The UN has said its ability to function in Gaza is being crippled by a flurry of Israeli evacuation orders, forcing Palestinians into ever smaller and more remote areas, days before a critical effort to contain a polio outbreak.

Aid workers warn that without a humanitarian pause, a vaccination drive due to begin this weekend could fail to reach enough children to stop the spread of the virus, which was detected there this month for the first time in 25 years. A baby has already been partly paralysed by the disease, and health experts have warned it could spread rapidly given the terrible sanitation and overcrowding in camps for Gaza’s exhausted, displaced population.

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Flood surge in Sudan bursts dam, destroying villages and killing dozens

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One report says 150-200 people missing after heavy rain led to Arbaat dam giving way in area already hit by civil war

Surging waters have burst through a dam in eastern Sudan, wiping out at least 20 villages and leaving at least 30 people dead but probably many more, the UN has said, devastating a region already reeling from months of civil war.

Torrential rains caused floods that on Sunday overwhelmed the Arbaat dam, which is 25 miles (40km) north of Port Sudan, the de facto national capital and base for the government, diplomats, aid agencies and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

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Netanyahu faces Israeli calls for broader strikes against Hezbollah

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Benny Gantz and Itamar Ben-Gvir say prime minister needs to remove the threat in the north completely

Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a political backlash in Israel for the limited nature of Sunday’s airstrikes against Hezbollah, amid calls for a broader offensive in Lebanon.

Some of the fiercest criticism came from the far-right wing of the prime minister’s own fractious coalition, which is also increasingly divided over the status of Jerusalem’s holiest site.

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‘Frightening’ Taliban law bans women from speaking in public

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New vice and virtue restrictions offer ‘a distressing vision of Afghanistan’s future’, says UN

New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.

The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.

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Macklemore cancels Dubai show to protest UAE role in Sudan civil war

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US rapper says he will not perform in United Arab Emirates until it ‘stops arming’ the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, where thousands have been killed

Macklemore has cancelled an upcoming October concert in Dubai over the United Arab Emirates’ role “in the ongoing genocide and humanitarian crisis” in Sudan through its reported support of the paramilitary force that has been fighting government troops there.

The announcement by the US rapper reignited attention to the UAE’s role in the war gripping the African nation. While the UAE repeatedly has denied arming the Rapid Support Forces and supporting its leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, UN experts reported “credible” evidence in January that the Emirates sent weapons to the RSF several times a week from northern Chad.

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Netanyahu says attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon ‘not the end of the story’

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Israeli air raids on rocket sites are part of dangerous rise in hostilities, increasing fears a major conflict could erupt

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israeli air raids targeting Hezbollah rockets in southern Lebanon in the early hours of Sunday morning were “not the end of the story”, after the two sides exchanged their heaviest fire since the war in Gaza began, raising fears of an all-out regional conflict.

The Israeli prime minister did not specify what further action, if any, was planned after the intense exchanges but he suggested Israel’s moves would be aimed at “changing the situation in the north”.

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