Category Archives: Israel

US and UK strike Houthi sites in Yemen in response to ‘unprecedented’ attacks

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Joe Biden says he ‘will not hesitate to direct further measures’ to protect international waterways after attacks on Red Sea shipping

The US and the UK launched air and missile strikes in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, aimed at halting attacks on ships in the Red Sea, Washington and London announced overnight.

Joe Biden, the US president, said American and British forces, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, were involved in the attack, striking at least 60 targets in 16 locations around Yemen.

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Ten countries involved in air strikes on Yemen’s Houthis – as it happened

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The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) authority has posted to social media that it has received a report of a vessel being boarded off the coast of Oman.

While the exact circumstances remain unclear, UKMTO reports “hearing unknown voices over the phone along with the masters voice” and says it is “unable to make further contact with vessel at this time”.

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Human rights in decline globally as leaders fail to uphold laws, report warns

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Human Rights Watch’s annual report highlights politicians’ double standards and ‘transactional diplomacy’ amid escalating crises

Human rights across the world are in a parlous state as leaders shun their obligations to uphold international law, according to the annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In its 2024 world report, HRW warns grimly of escalating human rights crises around the globe, with wartime atrocities increasing, suppression of human rights defenders on the rise, and universal human rights principles and laws being attacked and undermined by governments.

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Most want to flee ‘pressure cooker’ of southern Gaza, UN refugee deputy says

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Deputy leader of UN agency for Palestinian refugees says situation in territory is ‘full-time emergency’

Southern Gaza is turning into a “pressure cooker”, where the majority of people – faced with dwindling food, inadequate water sanitation, overcrowding and a crumbling hospital service – want to flee, the deputy director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.

Scott Anderson of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), who is engaged in daily negotiations to gain Israeli permissions for aid convoys to enter and move around Gaza, said it was in “a full-time emergency” and just six of the 21 planned convoys to the north of the territory had been granted access since January despite a UN security council resolution in December calling for relief to be stepped up.

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Israel shows ‘chilling’ intent to commit genocide in Gaza, South Africa tells UN court

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Case opens in The Hague with judges shown pictures and video as evidence of alleged genocide

Israel has shown “chilling” and “incontrovertible” intent to commit genocide in Gaza, with full knowledge of how many civilians it is killing, the UN international court of justice in The Hague has heard, at the opening of a case Israel has described as baseless.

South Africa, which has brought the case, alleged “grave violence and genocidal acts” by Israel on the first morning of the two-day hearing, amid a febrile atmosphere outside the court in The Hague. It called on the judges to order an immediate ceasefire.

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Hearings to begin at The Hague in case claiming Israel’s Gaza war is genocide

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International Court of Justice will hear complaint brought by South Africa, which is asking for urgent ‘provisional measures’

A legal hearing into the war in Gaza opens in The Hague on Thursday as the international court of justice (ICJ) hears arguments alleging that Israel is committing genocide in the territory.

South Africa, which has brought the case, is asking the UN court to act urgently “to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the genocide convention, which continues to be violated with impunity”.

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Red Sea crisis: UN security council demands immediate end to Houthi attacks

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Resolution calling for cessation of attacks on shipping vessels by Yemen’s Houthis adopted despite abstentions from Russia and China

The UN security council has called for an immediate end to attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea, adopting a resolution despite abstentions from Russia and China.

The resolution also called on the Houthis to release the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese-operated vehicle carrier linked to an Israeli businessman that the group commandeered on 19 November, along with its 25 crew.

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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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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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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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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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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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