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Rocket fire continues to strike Israel from Gaza.
Israeli media have reported that gunmen opened fire on passers-by in the town of Sderot, in southern Israel, and footage circulating on social media appeared to show clashes in city streets as well as gunmen in jeeps roaming the countryside.
Continue reading...Israel responds after Palestinian Islamist group launches surprise attack and incursion
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has launched a surprise attack on Israel, its biggest in years.
Here is what we know so far:
Hamas militants entered Israeli territory in the early hours of Saturday morning, appearing to take control of various communities in the south of the country. Fighting is still going on in some areas.
Hamas fired thousands of rockets towards Israel, according to Israeli authorities. The Hamas military commander, Mohammed Deif, said 5,000 had been fired, but an Israeli military spokesperson said 2,500 had been fired.
The death toll in Israel is at least 40, according to the Israeli national rescue service. The country’s health ministry said at least 561 wounded were being treated in hospital, according to an Associated Press count based on public statements and calls to hospitals.
The Palestinian health ministry says at least 198 people have been killed and 1,610 wounded in Gaza by Israeli retaliation after the Hamas attack.
There are reports of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
“We are at war and we will win it,” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a video address to the country.
The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said he was “shocked by this morning’s attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens”. “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself,” he said.
Adrienne Watson, the spokesperson for the US national security council, said: “The US unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. We stand firmly with the government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks.”
Saudi Arabia, which has been in talks with the US about normalising relations with Israel, called on both sides to exercise restraint.
Continue reading...Majid Tavakoli, taken from his family in handcuffs, urges dissidents to ‘frankly analyse’ why opposition to the regime has successively failed
One of Iran’s foremost public intellectuals and critics of the Iranian regime was taken to prison in handcuffs on Saturday to start serving a five-year sentence.
Majid Tavakoli, who has a three-year-old child, was found guilty of spreading propaganda against the state. His dispatch to jail had been deferred for three weeks, but security officials came to take him away on Saturday, the day after another jailed Iranian human rights activist, Narges Mohammadi, was given the Nobel peace prize.
Continue reading...Israel’s advanced surveillance of Palestinians makes scenes of Hamas gunmen moving through its streets all the more astounding
Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages.
In the space of several hours, dozens of Gaza militants broke through the border fence into southern Israel, surprising local military positions.
Continue reading...Activists and Democrats condemn rapprochement – aimed at heading off China – with ‘autocratic, sociopathic government’
Joe Biden is facing accusations of betraying a pre-election promise to re-evaluate ties with Saudi Arabia over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in favour of pursuing a rapprochement with the kingdom aimed at repelling a challenge from China to US primacy in the Middle East.
The charge, from human rights campaigners and some Democrats, follows the fifth anniversary of Khashoggi’s death at the hands of Saudi regime agents and comes amid mounting criticism of a proposed new defence treaty between Washington and Riyadh that could result in Saudi Arabia granting official recognition to Israel.
Continue reading...Twenty-two Israelis confirmed dead so far and 545 injured, with death toll likely to rise, after aerial and ground attack
Israel and Hamas are once again at war after the Palestinian militant group launched a large aerial and ground operation from the blockaded Gaza Strip, its biggest attack in years.
Sirens sounded across Israel and as far north as the contested city of Jerusalem from about 7am on Saturday after volleys of what Hamas claimed were 5,000 rockets launched from the blockaded enclave. A ground infiltration by Hamas gunmen into Israeli towns and villages on the periphery – an unprecedented development in the 16 years since the Islamists took over the strip – is ongoing, with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) saying seven villages and towns are under Hamas control. The Israeli army put the number of projectiles at around 2,200.
Continue reading...The UK government has been asked to reveal what steps it has taken to investigate whether Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, assisted wealthy Russians on whom it has imposed sanctions in moving their assets to the United Arab Emirates.
Lawyers acting on behalf of a Ukrainian activist – who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from Russia – have written to the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, to ask whether investigations have been carried out to determine whether Mansour, the UAE’s deputy prime minister, should be identified as a “designated person” subject to financial sanctions under the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
Continue reading...Vandalism stirs concern about safety of collections amid rise in attacks on cultural heritage in Jerusalem
Israeli police have arrested an American tourist at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem after he hurled works of art to the floor, defacing two second-century Roman statues.
The vandalism late on Thursday raised questions about the safety of the priceless collections and stirred concern about a rise in attacks on cultural heritage in Jerusalem.
Continue reading...Mohammadi wins prize for her fight against oppression of women in Iran and to promote human rights for all
Narges Mohammadi, the most prominent of Iran’s jailed women’s rights advocates, has vowed to stay in the country and continue her activism after winning the 2023 Nobel peace prize.
“I will never stop striving for the realisation of democracy, freedom and equality,” she said in a prewritten statement released after the announcement. “Surely, the Nobel peace prize will make me more resilient, determined, hopeful and enthusiastic on this path, and it will accelerate my pace.”
Continue reading...Turkey’s defence ministry says the device did not belong to the country’s armed forces
The US has shot down an armed Turkish drone that was operating near its troops in Syria, the first time Washington has brought down an aircraft of its Nato ally.
A Turkish defence ministry official said the drone did not belong to the Turkish armed forces, but did not say whose property it was.
Continue reading...Civilians and military killed by drone-delivered bombs in Homs, shortly after defence minister left graduation ceremony
More than 100 people have been killed in an attack on a military academy in Syria, a war monitor and an official said, with weaponised drones bombing the site minutes after Syria’s defence minister left a graduation ceremony there.
It was one of the bloodiest attacks ever against a Syrian army installation, and unprecedented in its use of weaponised drones in a country that has endured 12 years of civil war.
Continue reading...Former diplomat said senator’s allegedly corrupt actions could have put embassy staff in the sights of Egyptian intelligence
The lives of staff at the US embassy in Cairo may have been put in jeopardy by the indicted Democratic senator Bob Menendez’s alleged sharing of sensitive personnel information with the Egyptian government, according to former senior US officials who said the charges represented a grave betrayal of trust.
The New Jersey senator temporarily stepped down from his powerful position as chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee in September after he was indicted by federal prosecutors in New York on corruption charges, including allegations that he accepted cash bribes and gold bars in exchange for breaching his duties “in ways that benefited the government of Egypt”.
Continue reading...Group says party ‘freed of the stain of antisemitism’ can promote two-state solution and reverse Tory apathy to Middle East
An incoming Labour government “freed of the stain of antisemitism” can seek an Israeli settlement freeze, promote a two-state solution and call out democratic backsliding not only by the Palestinian Authority, but also by the Israeli government, according to a pamphlet from Labour Friends of Israel.
The pamphlet is designed to mark a breakpoint from Labour’s debilitating debates about antisemitism, and promote a detailed policy solution to the Israel-Palestine question around which the majority of people in the party can gather.
Continue reading...Justice department claimed ownership of the ordnance on the grounds that they were being smuggled to Yemeni Houthi forces, breaching a UN embargo
The United States has supplied Ukraine with more than a million rounds of Iranian ammunition confiscated in the Gulf late last year.
The transfer of the ordnance followed a civil forfeiture case pursued by the justice department to gain ownership on the grounds that the bullets were seized as they were being smuggled to Yemeni Houthi forces in violation of a UN arms embargo.
Continue reading...Influx of injuries may suggest deliberate targeting by Israel’s army, which human rights groups say is unlawful
Medics in the Gaza Strip have reported treating an influx of protesters who appear to have been deliberately targeted in the ankle in recent unrest at the volatile boundary of the blockaded Palestinian enclave.
At least one person has been killed and dozens more wounded since demonstrations by groups of young men, some of them throwing stones and molotov cocktails, began in mid-September.
Continue reading...Statement at UN human rights council voices ‘disappointment’ after host country refuses to change restrictive laws
The UK has asked the United Arab Emirates, one of its closest Gulf allies, to explain how it will guarantee free speech around the UN Cop28 climate summit in Dubai after the country refused to change its restrictive laws.
The refusal came after a four-yearly UN review of the UAE’s human rights record.
Continue reading...Intimidating behaviour beside procession of worshippers seen as another sign of victimisation and was condemned by Netanyahu
A video of ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on the ground beside a procession of foreign Christian worshippers carrying a wooden cross in the holy city of Jerusalem has ignited intense outrage and a flurry of condemnation in the Holy Land.
The spitting incident, which the city’s minority Christian community lamented as the latest in an alarming surge of religiously motivated attacks, drew rare outrage on Tuesday from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other senior figures.
Continue reading...Incident puts country back on edge a year after mass protests over death in custody of Mahsa Amini
The hospitalisation of a 16-year-old girl in Tehran has led to accusations by a rights group and activists that she was beaten into a coma by Iran’s feared “morality police”, putting the country back on edge a year after mass protests erupted over the treatment of women.
Footage of the incident showed a girl being carried off a train by other girls at a metro station and placed on the platform, where she stays still, apparently unconscious.
Continue reading...At least 5.4 million people have been displaced by the fierce fighting that broke out in the country in April
Humanitarian officials say the widening conflict in Sudan has left them trying to “plan for the apocalypse” as aid supply lines are disrupted and more people are displaced both internally and across the country’s borders.
At least 5.4 million people have already been displaced by the fighting that broke out in April between between the Sudanese armed forces, led by Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces loyal to his rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo – known as Hemedti.
Continue reading...Khalifa was one of Syria’s most acclaimed contemporary novelists, though his six novels were banned in the country
Syrian author, poet and screenwriter Khaled Khalifa, whose novels set in Aleppo memorialised a city ruined by civil war, has died aged 59.
The writer died from cardiac arrest at his home in Damascus, a close friend told the French news agency AFP.
Continue reading...