UN humanitarian office spokesman says hundreds of thousands of lives could be at risk and there would be a huge impact on aid operations
Daniel Hurst is Guardian Australia’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent.
The Australian government faces a decision next week on whether to support admitting Palestine as a full member of the UN and is swapping notes with allies including South Korea and Germany.
Continue reading...Ahmed Alhashimi’s seven-year-old daughter Sara was crushed to death after group of men rushed on to dinghy
The father of a seven-year-old girl crushed to death on a small boat has said they tried to cross the Channel after being informed his young family would be deported to Iraq after spending years in Europe.
Ahmed Alhashimi, 41, lost grasp of his daughter, Sara, on an inflatable dinghy after a large group of men rushed onboard as it was pulling away from the shores of Wimereux, south of Calais.
Continue reading...US state department says law could drive away foreign investment and David Cameron calls it ‘dangerous and worrying’
Human rights groups and diplomats have criticised a law passed by the Iraqi parliament over the weekend that would impose heavy prison sentences on gay and transgender people.
The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said in a statement that the law passed on Saturday “threatens those most at risk in Iraqi society” and “can be used to hamper free speech and expression”. He warned the legislation could drive away foreign investment.
Continue reading...Amendments to anti-prostitution law also enable courts to sentence trans people to three years in prison
Iraq’s parliament has passed a bill making same-sex relations punishable by up to 15 years in prison, in a move condemned as an “attack on human rights”.
Transgender people will also be sentenced to three years in jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 out of 329 lawmakers on Saturday.
Continue reading...Officials say unidentified man killed influencer who had previously been imprisoned over dancing videos
A man on a motorbike has shot dead a social media influencer known as Om Fahad outside her Baghdad home, Iraqi security officials have said.
The unidentified attacker shot Om Fahad in her car in the Zayouna district on Friday, a security official said, requesting anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to the media.
Continue reading...Residents return to site in search of bodies of loved ones following withdrawal of Israeli forces last month. This live blog is closed
Haaretz reports that Israeli security forces have arrested two people suspected of carrying out a car ramming in Jerusalem. Three people are reported to have been injured.
Aharon Haliva, who was the general in command of the IDF’s military intelligence directorate on 7 October, has resigned over the failure of Israel’s military to prevent the attack inside southern Israel by Hamas that day, according to Israeli media reports.
Continue reading...Officials report casualties with some citing air strike on former anti-Isis unit known as Hashed al-Shaabi, which is now part of Iraq’s regular military
An explosion has hit an Iraqi military base housing pro-Iranian paramilitaries, according to security sources.
The explosion on Friday night was at the Calso base, where former pro-Iranian paramilitary group Hashed al-Shaabi – now integrated into the regular army – is stationed, an interior ministry source and a military official told Agence France-Presse.
Continue reading...Jury trial against military contractor CACI over ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton abuses’ comes 20 years after scandal broke
The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US “war on terror”.
Continue reading...US claims responsibility for killing, saying Kataib Hezbollah commander was behind attack that killed three US soldiers
A large crowd gathered in eastern Baghdad on Thursday for the funeral of Abu Bakr al-Saadi, who was killed the night before in a drone strike in a residential street in Baghdad.
Al-Saadi was a senior military commander with the Kataib Hezbollah, a prominent faction of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq with close political, religious and military ties to Iran.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed, you can read more on the Middle East here
A journalist and his son have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the central Gaza Strip, reports Al Jazeera.
Nafez Abdel Jawad, who worked for Palestine TV, was killed in a bombing of a residential building in the al-Salam neighbourhood in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip last night, says Al Jazeera. The news organisation said that his only son also died in the airstrike and other injuries had also been reported.
Continue reading...Military says ‘blatant assassination’ of three members of Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia in Baghdad risks widening conflict
The US military presence in Iraq has become a “factor for instability” and must be ended, the Iraqi military has said, as it responded angrily to a US drone strike on a car in Baghdad that killed three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia.
Yehia Rasool, the spokesperson for the commander of the military forces, accused the US of conducting “a blatant assassination through an airstrike in the heart of a residential neighbourhood in the capital, Baghdad, showing no regard for civilian lives or international laws.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For more on today’s news, you can read our latest report:
At least 27,585 Palestinians have been killed and 66,978 wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the health ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday.
127 Palestinians were killed and 143 wounded in the past 24 hours, the ministry added.
Continue reading...Iraqi, 24, rescued with her children from al-Hawl camp after being abducted then raped and forced into marriage
US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria have liberated a Yazidi woman who had been held for a decade by Islamic State (IS), where she was raped and forced to marry extremists.
The 24-year-old woman was rescued with her son and daughter during a security operation by Kurdish fighters in Syria’s al-Hawl camp, which houses tens of thousands of people, mostly the wives and children of Islamic State fighters, the Syrian Democratic Forces said on Monday.
Continue reading...Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia, claims attack after at least six fighters killed
At least six US-backed Kurdish fighters have been killed in a drone strike on a US base in eastern Syria claimed by Iranian-backed militia that was the target of US airstrikes on Friday.
The deaths are the latest indicator of how conflict is seeping across the Middle East since the beginning of the war in Gaza, with ever less predictable consequences for regional stability.
Continue reading...Six members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have reportedly been killed at a base which also houses US forces
Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum report for the Guardian:
Shaadi Muqtasen’s family live in the centre of old Hebron, one of the most heavily contested, heavily militarised places in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. For Palestinian residents there, life all but stopped when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.
Continue reading...Guardian report found staff allegedly sought bribes in return for helping people win deals as part of $1.5bn construction programme
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is dispatching a team to Iraq to assess allegations of corruption in its $1.5bn (£1.2bn) construction programme following a Guardian investigation.
According to an internal document obtained by the Guardian, the UNDP’s administrator, Achim Steiner, has “commissioned a management review and assessment of the allegations” after revelations its staff were allegedly taking kickbacks in return for helping business people obtain lucrative construction contracts.
Continue reading...Joint operation to further disable militias follows attacks on US and international interests amid war in Gaza
The United States and Britain struck at least 30 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in another wave of assaults meant to further disable Iran-backed groups that have attacked US and international interests in response to the Israel-Hamas war.
Ships and fighter jets on Saturday launched strikes against the Houthis. It followed an air assault in Iraq and Syria on Friday targeting other Iran-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US troops – William Jerome Rivers, Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Breonna Alexsondria Moffett – in Jordan last weekend.
Continue reading...Attacks on Friday also described as ‘a strategic mistake’ by Iran, which insisted no Revolutionary Guards were present in areas hit
The US reprisal strikes in Syria and Iraq will have disastrous consequences for the region, the military spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, has warned. Maj Gen Yahya Rasool’s response was one of many from inside the Iraqi government that furiously condemned a violation of its sovereignty.
The US military launched airstrikes on Friday against more than 85 targets linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the militias it backs, in retaliation for last weekend’s drone attack in Jordan that killed three US troops. Iraq’s Anbar Operations Command reported 16 fatalities and 25 injuries, but no official death toll has been issued.
Continue reading...The carefully planned raids were the largest yet against Iran’s proxies and are likely to continue until threats to US personnel are neutralised
US retaliation, when it came, was broad and deep, and telegraphed five days in advance.
The White House, the Pentagon and state department had spent the best part of a week talking about the response to Sunday’s drone attack on a US base in northern Jordan, which killed three Americans and wounded more than 30.
Continue reading...President says ‘If you harm an American, we will respond’ as US forces strike in what is expected to be first of multiple attacks
Joe Biden has warned “if you harm an American, we will respond” as US forces attacked more than 80 targets in Iraq and Syria in a wide-ranging air assault on sites belonging to Iran-linked militias and Tehran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The US president said the strikes had been launched in retaliation for the drone strike that killed three US troops in Jordan, adding: “Our response began today. It will continue at times and places of our choosing.”
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