WASHINGTON (AP) — White House says Israeli operation near Gaza-Egypt border is 'limited' and isn't Rafah assault Biden has warned against.
Demonstrators arrived outside Driscoll House in New Kent Road, Southwark
A member of Israel's three-man war cabinet has threatened to resign from the government if it does not adopt a new plan for the war in Gaza. The move by Benny Gantz escalates a divide within Israel's leadership more than seven months into the war. Israel is yet to accomplish its stated goals of dismantling Hamas and returning scores of hostages abducted during the attack on 7 October.
Chants of “intifada revolution” rang out and a smoke bomb was set off at a large pro-Palestinian demonstration in central London on Saturday.
With thousands now held without charge, lawyers say Israel is signalling that no detainee is safe
The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, has faced calls to resign over the force’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests.
Heavy clashes and bombardment Saturday rocked Gaza's southern city of Rafah as the Israeli military announced the first humanitarian aid had entered the besieged territory via a US-built pier.The Israeli army said 310 pallets began moving ashore in "the first entry of humanitarian aid through the floating pier".
At least four people - including three tourists - have been killed by gunmen in Afghanistan's Bamiyan province, the Taliban's interior ministry has said. A further four foreign nationals and three Afghans were injured in the attack, which saw several gunmen open fire in the mountainous region, they added. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said three of its nationals died in the attack and that at least one more had been injured.
A powerful ethnic armed group fighting Myanmar’s military government in the country’s western state of Rakhine claimed Saturday to have seized a town near the border with Bangladesh, marking the latest in a series of victories for foes of the country’s military government. Members of the state’s Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, targets of deadly army-directed violence in 2017, appear to have been the main victims of fighting in the town of Buthidaung, where the Arakan Army claims to have chased out forces of the military government. Khaing Thukha, a spokesperson for the Arakan Army, told The Associated Press by text message from an undisclosed location that his group had seized Buthidaung after capturing all the military’s outposts there.
Israeli troops and tanks pushed on Saturday into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old war, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, medics and residents said. Israel's forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city by the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush hold-outs of Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas has alarmed Cairo and Washington. Exposing further cracks in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, Benny Gantz, a centrist member of the war cabinet, threatened to resign if the right-wing leader does not agree by June 8 to a day-after plan that would include how Gaza might be ruled after the war with Hamas.
Intense gunfire and explosions rang out in the Ukrainian frontline town of Vovchansk on Thursday, May 16, as Ukrainian armed forces engaged advancing Russian forces in street battles.This video was published by Ukrainian Military Intelligence, who said it shows soldiers from the “Stugna” group of the special forces unit Timur GUR exchanging close-range gunfire with Russian forces while moving through rubble-filled streets and buildings in the northeastern border town.Fighters can be seen carrying an injured soldier under gunfire.According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, fighting in the northeast was concentrated around Lyptsi and Vovchansk, as Russian forces rained down a total of 32 airstrikes and 181 artillery barrages across Kharkiv region. Credit: Defense Intelligence of Ukraine via Storyful
Palestinian militant group Hamas said Friday that a "commander" was killed in an Israeli strike on an eastern district of Lebanon near the Syrian border.The attacks have been intensifying, with Israeli forces increasingly striking deep into Lebanese territory, while Palestinian factions and other allied groups in Lebanon have also claimed cross-border attacks.
Ron Binyamin was seized during the October 7 attack.
The Israeli army said Saturday that troops had retrieved the body of hostage Ron Benjamin from the war-torn Gaza Strip after he was "murdered" during the October 7 Hamas attack.Benjamin was "murdered during the October 7th massacre at the Mefalsim intersection, and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas militants", the military said in a separate statement.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels hit an oil tanker in the Red Sea with a ballistic missile early Saturday, damaging the Panama-flagged, Greek-owned vessel in their latest assault over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, officials said.
Grant Shapps said ministers backed police to take action if marches spill over into antisemitism and hate speech.
Israeli forces rescued bodies of three hostages taken by Hamas from the Nova music festival on October 7
Heavy clashes and bombardment rocked Rafah on Saturday, as Israel pressed an assault against Hamas militants that has led hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee the southern Gaza city.The Israeli military said its air forces hit more than 70 targets across the Gaza Strip while ground troops conducted "targeted raids" in eastern Rafah, killing 50 militants and locating dozens of tunnel shafts.Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, said it fired a barrage of rockets towards the Israeli city of Ashkelon and targeted an Israeli command centre at the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip.An AFP reporter said air strikes and artillery shells pounded eastern Rafah as warplanes criss-crossed over the city on Gaza's border with Egypt.More than 10 days into what the army called a "limited" operation in Rafah that sparked an exodus of Palestinians, fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants has also flared again in northern Gaza.Israel said in early January it had dismantled Hamas's command structure in the north, but the army said Hamas -- whose October 7 attack sparked the war -- had been "in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago".Hamas slammed what it called Israel's "intensified brutal raids" on Jabalia, saying they had killed dozens of civilians and wounded hundreds more while targeting schools and shelters."The escalating crimes of the occupation will not succeed in breaking the will of our brave resistance or in deterring our proud people from their decision to stand firm on their land," it said.- First aid via pier -The Israeli incursion into Rafah, launched despite overwhelming international opposition and as mediators were hoping for a breakthrough in stalled truce talks, has worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis, aid groups say.With key land crossings closed or operating at limited capacity due to the fighting, some relief supplies began flowing into Gaza via a temporary, floating pier constructed by the United States.The Israeli army said 310 pallets began moving ashore in "the first entry of humanitarian aid through the floating pier".Satellite pictures taken on Saturday showed more than a dozen trucks lining up on the approach road to the pier.In the coming days, around 500 tonnes of aid are expected to be delivered to Gaza through the pier, according to US Central Command.But UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned sea or air deliveries cannot replace far more efficient truck convoys into Gaza, where the United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine.The European Union welcomed the first shipment from Cyprus to the Gaza pier, but called on Israel to "expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings".The Rafah crossing, a vital conduit for humanitarian assistance, has been closed since Israel launched its operation in the city last week.The war began after Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.The toll includes at least 83 deaths over the past 24 hours, said a ministry statement on Saturday.Out of 252 people taken hostage from Israel during the October 7 attack, 125 remain held in Gaza including 37 the army says are dead.- 'Advancing and retreating' -The army said troops in Gaza had recovered late Thursday the bodies of three hostages whom it said had been killed on October 7.Israel has vowed to defeat remaining Hamas forces in Rafah, which it says is the last bastion of the Iran-backed group.The looming Israeli assault has prompted nearly 640,000 of the 1.4 million people who had been sheltering in the southern city to flee to other areas, the UN has said.Palestinian sources in Rafah said Israeli forces were operating in the city's Al-Salam and Jenina neighbourhoods as well as on the Philadelphi route along the Egyptian border."Troops are advancing and retreating around these areas," a security source said.Cairo, which has been involved in mediation efforts during the war, says a potential Israeli takeover of Philadelphi could violate its landmark 1979 peace deal with Egypt.In northern Gaza's Beit Lahia, witnesses reported air strikes near Kamal Adwan hospital on Saturday.The hospital's director Hussam Abu Safiya said Friday the facility had received "large numbers" of casualties from nearby Jabalia and was running low on supplies.The fuel aid that had reached the hospital was "barely enough for a few days", Abu Safiya told AFP.The World Health Organization has received no medical supplies in Gaza since the Rafah operation began on May 6, spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said Friday.- Biden aide visits -On the diplomatic front, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was heading to the region for weekend talks.Sullivan will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.Meanwhile, Israel said it killed two senior Islamic Jihad militants in separate air strikes in the northern West Bank and in Rafah.The armed wing of Islamic Jihad confirmed a local commander was killed in an overnight strike on the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp.But there was no immediate comment from the group, which has fought alongside Hamas, on the army's announcement that a "significant" operative was killed in Rafah.A military statement did not name the slain militant and said he had been involved in "preparing... for operations against IDF (army) ground troops in the area".burs-lb/ami/dv
Former NATO commander James Stavridis criticized the pro-Palestinian protestors Sunday, claiming they should not be the ones who are applauded. “The young men and women who built that pier are the young Americans who should be applauded,” Stavridis told host John Catsimatidis in an interview Sunday on “The Cats Roundtable, adding “Not these protesters on…
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike killed 27 people in central Gaza, mostly women and children, and fighting with Hamas raged across the north on Sunday as Israel's leaders aired divisions over who should govern Gaza after the war, now in its eighth month. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces criticism from the two other members of his War Cabinet, with his main political rival, Benny Gantz, threatening to leave the government if a plan is not created by June 8 that includes an international administration for postwar Gaza. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was meeting with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders on Sunday to discuss an ambitious U.S. plan for Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel and help the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza in exchange for a path to eventual statehood.
Ireland’s deputy premier Micheal Martin is visiting Lebanon to meet Irish troops serving with the United Nations.
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