Prosecution of three high-ranking Syrian officials to be tried in absentia could pave way for president’s case
At midnight on 3 November 2013, five Syrian officials dragged arts and humanities student Patrick Dabbagh from his home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus.
The following day, at the same hour, the same men, including a representative of the Syrian air force’s intelligence unit, returned with a dozen soldiers to arrest the 20-year-old’s father Mazzen.
Continue reading...Benny Gantz’s threat to withdraw his opposition party from coalition calls into question future of government
The Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to resign if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to adopt an agreed plan for Gaza, calling into question the future of the Israeli government.
During a press conference on Saturday, Gantz announced that if a plan for postwar governance of the territory is not consolidated and approved by 8 June, his opposition National Unity party will withdraw from the coalition government.
Continue reading...IDF says ‘senior terrorist operative’ Islam Khamayseh was killed in strike on the city of Jenin
Israel says its jets have struck 70 targets across Gaza in the past 24 hours, while an airstrike in Jenin killed a “significant” Islamic Jihad figure who operated as the head of logistics for the organisation’s brigade in the city.
The strike, carried out on Friday night by a fighter jet and a helicopter, killed Islam Khamayseh, a “senior terrorist operative in the Jenin camp” who was responsible for a series of attacks in the area, the IDF said.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our Israel-Gaza war coverage here
Israel on Friday attacked South Africa’s case against it in the international court of justice as an “obscene exploitation” of the genocide convention, claiming it aimed not to protect Palestinian civilians but to defend Hamas militants.
Israel’s representatives told the court their country was fighting a war of self-defence it “did not want and did not start”. They said Israel had made “extraordinary” efforts to protect civilians, and had complied with orders from the court to let more aid into Gaza.
Continue reading...With thousands now held without charge, lawyers say Israel is
signalling that no detainee is safe
Marwan Barghouti spends his days huddled in a cramped, dark, solitary cell, with no way to tend to his wounds, and a shoulder injury from being dragged with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Barghouti holds almost mythic status within Palestinian politics, seen as a figure whose potential to unify different factions has only grown during his 24 years in prison.
Continue reading...Samantha Power says barely 100 trucks of aid a day enter Gaza, far less than 600 needed to address threat of famine
Humanitarian assistance has begun to arrive in Gaza along a US-made pier, but the US aid chief said the new sea corridor could not be a substitute for land crossings, and warned that deliveries of food and fuel entering Gaza had slowed to “dangerously low levels”.
The White House national security spokesperson, John Kirby, confirmed on Friday that truckloads of humanitarian aid, including food from the United Arab Emirates, sent by ship from Cyprus, had been unloaded on the Gaza coast and handed over to the control of the UN.
Continue reading...Bodies of Amit Buskila and Itzhak Gelerenter also recovered from Gaza as Israel says 129 hostages remain in captivity
The bodies of three hostages kidnapped by Hamas, including the German-Israeli Shani Louk, have been retrieved from Gaza by the Israeli military, it announced.
The other two hostages were identified as Amit Buskila, 28, and Itzhak Gelerenter, 56, according to the military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, who said the three victims were taken to Gaza after being killed by Hamas at the Nova music festival.
Continue reading...Israel complains of ‘obscene exploitation’ of genocide convention and asks judges to throw out bid to halt Rafah offensive
Israel on Friday attacked South Africa’s case against it in the international court of justice as an “obscene exploitation” of the genocide convention, claiming it aimed not to protect Palestinian civilians but to defend Hamas militants.
Israel’s representatives told the court their country was fighting a war of self-defence it “did not want and did not start”. They said Israel had made “extraordinary” efforts to protect civilians, and had complied with orders from the court to let more aid into Gaza.
Continue reading...Israel is appearing at international court of justice after South Africa asked it to urgently order end to assault on Rafah
Yemen’s Houthis said they downed a US MQ9 drone on Thursday evening over the south-eastern province of Maareb, the group’s military spokesperson said on Friday.
According to Reuters, the Iran-aligned group said they would release images and videos to support their claim and added that they had targeted the drone using a locally made surface to air missile.
Continue reading...Exclusive: The director of The Seed of the Sacred Fig details how he discarded electronic devices and fled over the mountains on foot after authorities sentenced him to eight years in prison and flogging
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof escaped imminent imprisonment in Iran by discarding all trackable electronic devices and walking across a mountainous borderland on foot, the film-maker has told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.
But even though he has found shelter in Germany and is optimistic about attending next week’s Cannes premiere of the film that nearly saw him jailed for eight years, Rasoulof said he still expects to return to his home country “quite soon” and sit out his sentence.
Continue reading...Foreign ministry says it will reject all such stopovers because ‘the Middle East does not need more weapons, it needs more peace’
Spain has refused permission for a ship carrying arms to Israel to dock at a Spanish port, its foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said on Thursday.
“This is the first time we have done this because it is the first time we have detected a ship carrying a shipment of arms to Israel that wants to call at a Spanish port,” he told reporters in Brussels.
Continue reading...Lawyers urge international court of justice to issue urgent measures over assault on Gaza’s southernmost city
South Africa has asked the international court of justice (ICJ) to urgently order Israel to end its assault on Rafah, halt its military campaign across Gaza, and allow international investigators and journalists into the territory.
In a court hearing, lawyers for South Africa expanded a written request for judges to issue an emergency order to stop the offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.
Continue reading...Aid agencies poised to receive supplies and distribute to territory where people face imminent starvation
The US military has said the installation of a floating pier for the delivery of humanitarian aid off Gaza has been completed, with officials ready to begin ferrying supplies into the territory, where much of the population faces imminent starvation owing to the continuing Israel-Hamas war.
Ordered two months ago by the president, Joe Biden, the US military transported the system overnight from the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of Gaza.
Continue reading...Discovery of the branch, which ran alongside 31 pyramids, could solve mystery of blocks’ transportation
Scientists have discovered a long-buried branch of the Nile River that once flowed alongside more than 30 pyramids in Egypt, potentially solving the mystery of how ancient Egyptians transported the massive stone blocks to build the monuments.
The 40-mile-long (64km) river branch, which ran by the Giza pyramid complex among other wonders, was hidden under desert and farmland for millennia, according to a study revealing the find on Thursday.
Continue reading...ICRC is denied access to prisoners in what is said to be breach of Geneva conventions but critics say UK plan may weaken rule of law
Red Cross officials are to hold talks with the UK over a Foreign Office plan to visit Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Critics say this bypasses a duty on Israel under the Geneva conventions to give the Red Cross access to detainees.
Israel has suspended the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from access to Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack on 7 October, and says it will not rescind the policy until Hamas grants access to Israeli hostages.
Continue reading...Manuel Guerrero Aviña thought he was meeting a date, but was confronted by police who charged him for drug possession
The family of a gay man who was arrested in Qatar say that he was “trapped” by a fake Grindr account and that he urgently needs access to HIV medicine or his health could collapse.
Manuel Guerrero Aviña, who has dual Mexican-British citizenship, was arrested in February after arranging to meet a man named “Gio” on the dating app. When he showed up to the meeting in his apartment lobby, Aviña was instead confronted by police officers.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more of our coverage of the war here
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group says it has launched “more than 60” rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for overnight air strikes on the country’s east, AFP reports
Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.
Continue reading...With a widespread telecoms blackout already in place, emergency help and humanitarian aid at risk if satellite service withdrawn, say NGOs
Nearly 100 humanitarian groups in Sudan have warned Elon Musk he risks “collectively punishing” millions of Sudanese by shutting down his vital Starlink satellite internet service in the war-ravaged country.
Sudan has been grappling with a widespread telecommunications blackout for several months, with many aid groups using Starlink to operate during the humanitarian crisis which the UN has warned is the largest in decades.
Continue reading...Lily Greenberg Call, special assistant to chief of staff, accused the president of using Jewish people to justify US policy in the conflict
An interior department staffer on Wednesday became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the interior department, accused Joe Biden of using Jewish people to justify US policy in the conflict.
Continue reading...Yoav Gallant, who Benjamin Netanyahu tried to fire in 2023, says he will not allow Israeli rule of Gaza
A long-festering split at the heart of Israel’s war cabinet has burst into the open with the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, challenging the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to come up with plans for the “day after” the war in Gaza, and saying he would not permit any solution where Israeli military or civil governance were in the territory.
Gallant’s comments, immediately backed by his fellow minister Benny Gantz, plunged Israel’s leadership into a highly public row, in the midst of the Gaza conflict, calling into question Gallant’s future in the Israeli government and Netanyahu’s fractious coalition.
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