Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Somalian rebels kill one and abduct five after UN helicopter’s emergency landing

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Al-Shabaab fighters attack after aircraft carrying medical professionals and soldiers lands in their territory

Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia have attacked a United Nations helicopter that made an emergency landing in rebel-held territory, killing one passenger and abducting five others.

The minister of internal security of Galmudug state in central Somalia, Mohamed Abdi Aden Gaboobe, said the helicopter made the landing in Xindheere village on Wednesday after engine failure.

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Houthis call west’s bluff with renewed Red Sea drone assault

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Barrage apparently targeting western warships suggest Hamas’s Yemeni allies are keen to test warnings from US, UK and other nations

A week ago, the US, the UK and 10 other mostly western nations told Yemen’s Houthi rebels that they would “bear the consequences” if they launched further attacks on merchant shipping in the southern Red Sea. For a brief period – six days – the Houthis paused, before at 9.15pm on Tuesday launching their most sophisticated attack yet.

Eighteen drones, described by the British as of Iranian design, and three missiles appear to have targeted a fleet of warships in and around the 18-mile-wide Bab el-Mandab strait, where the Red Sea comes closest to Houthi-controlled Yemen. Though they were all shot down, the brazen nature of the attack was not lost on western politicians.

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West Bank videos show Israeli troops killing teenager and driving over man’s body

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CCTV footage of incidents adds to concerns over military’s rules of engagement in Occupied Territories

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Two videos from the West Bank showing Israeli troops shooting a 17-year-old boy and security forces repeatedly running over the body of a man they had shot have added to concerns about the Israeli military’s rules of engagement.

The shooting of 17-year-old Osaid Rimawi in the early hours of last Friday is shown in footage from a security camera in a local shop that was obtained by the Associated Press news agency. The video also shows two earlier rounds of gunfire that injured two unarmed men. Rimawi was killed when he tried to rush to their aid.

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Blinken restates commitment to Palestinian state on West Bank visit

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US secretary of state met Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, on visit dismissed as ‘theatre’ by residents

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, restated Washington’s commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state during a brief trip to the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, a visit dismissed by many residents as “theatre”.

Blinken told Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and head of the Palestinian Authority (PA), that the US position was that a Palestinian state must stand alongside Israel, “with both living in peace and security”, a spokesperson said.

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Israeli prime minister says “no intention of permanently occupying Gaza” – as it happened

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The Times of Israel reports that Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet will meet at 7pm tonight (5pm GMT) to discuss Israeli plans for the Gaza Strip when the war has finished.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reports that at least five Palestinians were injured and one detained in an Israeli security raid on Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It cites the Palestine Red Crescent Society saying a child and an elderly woman were among the injured.

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Antony Blinken tells Israel: Palestinian rights are key to peace

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US secretary of state rejects calls for immediate ceasefire but urges ally to make ‘hard decisions’ as fighting continues

Anthony Blinken has reaffirmed the United States’ “unique bond” with Israel, and rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but told his hosts in Tel Aviv that other regional powers have made clear that a pathway to the realisation of Palestinian political rights is essential for peace in the region.

Hinting at having held difficult talks with Israeli officials on Tuesday, the US secretary of state said the exceptional friendship between the two countries demanded that the US be “as forthright as possible when the choices matter most” and called for Israel to make “hard decisions”.

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UK government accepts Israel has legal duty to provide basic supplies to Gaza

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David Cameron urges Israeli authorities to clear barriers to aid deliveries amid risk of ‘widespread hunger’

The British government has accepted that Israel as an occupying power had a duty under international humanitarian law to provide basic supplies to the people of Gaza.

The admission came when David Cameron, the foreign secretary, urged Israel to remove barriers on the delivery of humanitarian aid into the territory that were risking “real, widespread hunger”.

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Médecins Sans Frontières says strike on Gaza shelter killed staffer’s daughter, 5 – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. See all our coverage of the Middle East crisis here

Here is a photograph issued of the meeting between Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in Tel Aviv.

During the public portion of the meeting Herzog said a lawsuit filed in the international court of justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in its Gaza offensive was “atrocious and preposterous”.

Actually our enemies, Hamas, in their charter, call for the destruction of our nation, the state of Israel – the only nation state of the Jewish people.

We will be there at the international court of justice and will present proudly our case of using self-defence under our most inherent right under international humanitarian law.

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Israel and Hezbollah edge closer to war as drone hits key Israeli command base

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IDF says no damage or casualties caused after Lebanese militant group launches explosives at Safed base

Israel and Hezbollah edged closer towards full scale war on Tuesday, as the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group launched explosive drones at a key Israeli command base, declaring the attack part of its response to recent high-level Israeli assassinations in Lebanon.

Hezbollah announced it had launched “a number of explosive attack drones” at the Israeli northern military command base in Safed, the first time it has targeted the site.

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Emissions from Israel’s war in Gaza have ‘immense’ effect on climate catastrophe

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Exclusive: First months of conflict produced more planet-warming gases than 20 climate-vulnerable nations do in a year, study shows

The climate costs of war and militaries can no longer be ignored

The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, new research reveals.

The vast majority (99%) of the 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2 equivalent) estimated to have been generated in the first 60 days following the 7 October Hamas attack can be attributed to Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers in the UK and US.

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More civilian casualties recorded in 2023 than any year since 2010

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Action on Armed Violence says 33,846 were killed or wounded by airstrikes, bombs or artillery, the most it has recorded

More civilians were recorded as being killed or injured by airstrikes, bombs or artillery during 2023 than in any other year for more than a decade due to the high number of casualties from the three-month war in Gaza, an annual study has said.

Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a monitoring group, said 33,846 non-combatants had been killed or wounded during 2023, an increase of 62% on last year, and the largest amount it had counted since it began its annual survey in 2010.

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Antony Blinken arrives in Israel amid fresh US push to stop war spreading

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US secretary of state poised for meetings with leaders who have so far proved resistant to pressure from Washington

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has landed in Israel for potentially difficult meetings with Israeli leaders and officials who have repeatedly proved resistant to pressure from Washington over their conduct of the war against Hamas.

Blinken flew late on Monday night from the Saudi oasis town of AlUla where he held talks with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on a Middle East tour aimed at reaching a consensus on Gaza’s future.

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Three Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces in West Bank, says health ministry

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The World Health Organization (WHO) said it had been compelled to cancel a mission to bring medical supplies to northern Gaza on Sunday after failing to receive security guarantees, Reuters reports.

It was the fourth time WHO had had to call off a planned mission to bring urgently needed medical supplies to Al-Awda Hospital and the central drug store in northern Gaza since 26 December it said.

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Palestinians desperate to flee Gaza pay thousands in bribes to ‘brokers’

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Fixers with alleged links to Egyptian intelligence are making a fortune in ‘fees’ from people hoping to exit through the Rafah crossing

Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory through Egypt, according to a Guardian investigation.

Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing but those trying to get their names on the list of people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked to pay large “coordination fees” by a network of brokers and couriers with alleged links to the Egyptian intelligence services.

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Ex-White House interns urge Biden to support immediate ceasefire in Gaza

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A group comprising 2022 and 2023 interns signed a letter accusing the president of having ‘betrayed’ his promise by supporting Israel

A group of former White House interns signed an open letter to Joe Biden imploring his administration to support an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.

The signatories, which include interns who worked in the White House and executive office of the president during 2022 and the summer of 2023, accuse the president of having “betrayed” his promise to pursue equality and justice by supporting Israel’s bombardment in Gaza.

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The numbers that reveal the extent of the destruction in Gaza

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From death tolls to destroyed buildings and lost hospital beds, these are the figures that cut through the fog of war

The situation in Gaza over the last three months has been so chaotic that much of the data available comes with some sort of asterisk: it might be incomplete, or out of date, or drawn from a source that is claimed to be unreliable.

But on even the most frequently disputed point – casualty figures from Gaza’s Hamas-run ministry of health – there are few plausible critiques of the broad scale of what is being shown. And in many cases, the numbers published by the UN, independent aid agencies and others are likely to be at the low end of the possible range. So it is reasonable to view the picture presented by these sources as a conservative account of the situation, rather than conclude that the reality is hopelessly occluded by the fog of war.

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Israel says Gaza fighting could last a year, amplifying fears of regional war

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Comments from senior defence officials come during tour by US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, intended to defuse tensions

Israeli defence officials and former senior intelligence officers have said they expect fighting in Gaza to continue for at least a year, raising the prospect of thousands more civilian casualties, a deepening humanitarian crisis and a continuing grave threat to regional stability.

In a briefing, R Adm Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said the centre and south of Gaza, where military efforts are now focused, was “dense and saturated with terrorists” with “an underground city of branching tunnels”.

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Two journalists have been killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza – as it happened

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At least 113 Palestinians have been killed and 250 others injured over the past 24 hours in Israeli strikes on Gaza, the health ministry in Gaza said in a statement on Sunday, Reuters reports.

Sunday’s tally brings the death toll in Gaza to 22,835 Palestinians killed and 58,416 injured since 7 October, the statement added.

Israeli bombardment [claimed] civilian lives in the southern city of Khan Yunis and in the Rafah area near the Egyptian border, where many of the territory’s displaced people have sought refuge, AFP correspondents reported.

Relatives were mourning the dead at Khan Yunis’ European hospital, among them Mohamed Awad, who wept over the body of a 12-year-old boy and listed other family members killed.

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UK accused of hypocrisy in not backing claim of genocide in Gaza before ICJ

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Experts say submission to international court of justice on Myanmar six weeks ago makes stance ‘wholly disingenuous’

The UK is facing accusations of double standards after formally submitting detailed legal arguments to the international court of justice in The Hague six weeks ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group through its mass mistreatment of children and systematically depriving people of their homes and food.

The UK made its 21-page “declaration of intervention” jointly with five other countries, but it is not supporting South Africa as it prepares to try to convince the ICJ on Thursday that Israel is at risk of committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

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Blinken returns to Middle East and warns of risk war could spread

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US secretary of state begins visit to region as fears grow Israel could expand Gaza conflict to Lebanon

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has returned to the Middle East for the fourth time in three months as he warned Israel’s war against Hamas risked spreading throughout the region.

Recent intensifying violence between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, increasing attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and strikes by Tehran-linked groups on US bases in Iraq, have created an increasingly febrile atmosphere across the Middle East.

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