The Indian Panorama

Tag: World New

  • Israel hits Beirut suburb as US delivers truce proposal

    Israel hits Beirut suburb as US delivers truce proposal

    Beirut (TIP): An Israeli airstrike flattened a building near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions on November 15, shaking the city as Israel kept up its intensified bombardment of Hezbollah-controlled areas of the city. One of several airstrikes on Friday morning, the attack struck near the Tayouneh junction in an area where the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs meet other parts of the city, a more central target than most that Israel has hit.

    Israel has this week stepped up airstrikes against the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs — an escalation that has coincided with indications of movement in US-led diplomatic contacts towards ending the conflict.

    The US Ambassador to Lebanon on Thursday submitted a draft truce proposal to Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who is endorsed by Hezbollah to negotiate, two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters without providing details. The draft was Washington’s first written proposal to halt fighting between its ally Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in at least several weeks, the sources said.

    Meanwhile, a top Iranian official pledged his country’s unwavering support for Lebanon after talks Friday. (Agencies)

  • China tells NATO not to create chaos in Asia and rejects label of ‘enabler’ of Russia’s Ukraine war

    China tells NATO not to create chaos in Asia and rejects label of ‘enabler’ of Russia’s Ukraine war

    BEIJING (TIP): China accused NATO on July 11 of seeking security at the expense of others and told the alliance not to bring the same “chaos” to Asia, a reflection of its determination to oppose strengthening ties between NATO members and Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
    The statement by a Foreign Ministry spokesperson came a day after NATO labelled China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
    “NATO hyping up China’s responsibility on the Ukraine issue is unreasonable and has sinister motives,” spokesperson Lin Jian said at a daily briefing. He maintained that China has a fair and objective stance on the Ukraine issue.
    China has broken with the United States and its European allies over the war in Ukraine, refusing to condemn Russia’s invasion or even to refer to it as an act of aggression in deference to Moscow. Its trade with Russia has grown since the invasion, at least partially offsetting the impact of Western sanctions.
    NATO, in a statement issued at a summit in Washington, said China has become an enabler of the war through its “no-limits partnership” with Russia and its large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.
    Lin said China’s trade with Russia is legitimate and reasonable and based on World Trade Organization rules.
    He said NATO’s “so-called security” comes at the cost of the security of other countries. China has backed Russia’s contention that NATO expansion posed a threat to Russia, whose attack on Ukraine has only strengthened the alliance, leading to Sweden and Finland becoming formal members.
    China has expressed concern about NATO’s budding relationships with countries in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea sent their leaders or deputies to the NATO summit this week.
    “China urges NATO to…stop interfering in China’s internal politics and smearing China’s image and not create chaos in the Asia-Pacific after creating turmoil in Europe,” Lin said.
    Chinese troops are in Belarus this week for joint drills near the border with Poland, a NATO member. The exercises are the first with Belarus, an ally of Russia, with which it shares a single-party system under President Alexander Lukashenko, whose regime cracked down brutally on 2020 mass protests against his rule,
    Lin described the joint training as a normal military operation that is not directed at any particular country.
    China is a key player in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes a strong military element involving Russia and several Central Asian nations, India and, most recently, Belarus.
    That is seen as creating a bulwark against Western influence in the region, but also tensions over rising Chinese influence in what Russia considers its political backyard made up of former parts of the Soviet Union, which included Belarus.
    Earlier this month, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attended a meeting of leaders or top officials from the 10 SCO countries in Kazakhstan, at which Putin reiterated his demand that Ukraine withdraw its troops from parts of the country occupied by Russia. Ukraine has firmly rejected that, along with a Chinese peace proposal that makes no mention of the return of Ukrainian territory to the government in Kyiv.
    China and Russia have closely aligned their foreign policies to oppose the West, even as Russia grows increasingly reliant on China as a purchaser of its oil and gas, that make up the bulk of its foreign trade. (AP)

  • Twelve children killed in South African school minibus crash

    JOHANNESBURG (TIP): Twelve children were killed in South Africa early July 10 when a minibus taking them to school near Johannesburg overturned and caught fire after being hit by another vehicle, the government said.
    The driver of the minibus was also killed and seven other children were rushed to hospital, the Gauteng provincial government said in a statement.
    It could not immediately give the ages of the children. Television images showed that the minibus was totally destroyed by the fire in the early morning crash in Merafong, more than 70 kilometres west of the city.
    The statement said “a private scholar transport minibus was involved in a tragic accident in the Kokosi-Wedela area in Merafong, claiming the lives of the 12 learners and their driver.
    “Additionally, seven other learners have been rushed to a medical facility for urgent medical attention.”
    “I am profoundly saddened by this tragic event. The loss of our children is a devastating blow to our community, and our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the deceased and injured learners,” Gauteng education minister Matome Chiloane said in the statement.
    South Africa has one of the most developed road networks on the continent but also has one of the worst road safety records. (AP)

  • Israeli strikes hit UN agency’s building in Gaza City

    Gaza (TIP):Israeli forces launched more deadly strikes across Gaza on July 10, according to medical sources and the military, which said it targeted Hamas militants operating from inside a UN agency building.
    The Israeli army also said it was reviewing an attack on Tuesday in which hospital sources said at least 29 people were killed in a nearby school in the southern Khan Yunis area — the fourth attack on a school building in four days. Early on Wednesday, four people were killed and one critically wounded in the bombing of a house in the central town of Nuseirat, a hospital source told AFP. And two people were killed and six injured in another strike on a home in Bani Suhaila, near Khan Yunis, according to another hospital source.
    Israel has stepped up air and ground attacks in Gaza City and southern Gaza since issuing evacuation orders for tens of thousands of people in the war-stricken Palestinian territory.
    The heightened military strikes come as Israeli officials start talks in Qatar on Wednesday on reaching a truce in the war raging since the October 7 Hamas attacks.
    The Israeli military said that one overnight attack in Gaza City targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets operating from inside the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinians UNRWA.
    The UN agency has not had control of the building since October. Israeli forces said in February they had found a Hamas tunnel underneath the headquarters. The military said the militants were “operating inside UNRWA’s headquarters in the area and using it as a base to conduct attacks on IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) troops in the central Gaza Strip”. It said that militants had been “eliminated” and “large amounts of weapons” found.
    UNRWA had no immediate comment on the attack, but has said it has “no way to verify” claims that its facilities are being used by Hamas and its allies.
    Meanwhile Tuesday’s deadly strike near the Al-Awda school in Abasan, near Khan Yunis, brought new condemnation from Hamas over the Israeli military tactics.
    The Hamas government said a “majority” of the dead were women and children.
    The Israeli military said the air force had “struck a terrorist from Hamas’ military wing who took part, among other terrorist activities, in the October 7 brutal massacre” in southern Israel.
    It was the fourth time in four days that Gaza school buildings sheltering the displaced had been hit. (AFP)

  • Russia adds Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya to ‘terrorists and extremists’ blacklist

    MOSCOW (TIP): Russia on July 11 added opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya to its list of “terrorists” and “extremists,” two days after it issued an arrest warrant for the exiled dissident.
    Navalnaya has vowed to continue the work of her husband Alexei Navalny, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s main opponent who died in an Arctic prison in unclear circumstances in February.
    Her personal details appeared Thursday in an online blacklist maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, a state agency designed to combat the financing of people and organisations Moscow deems “terrorists” or involved in “extremist activity”.
    Russian officials frequently apply such labels to opposition figures and those who campaign against the Kremlin or its offensive on Ukraine.
    Navalny’s organisations were outlawed in Russia and are labelled “extremist.”
    The opposition leader himself was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of “extremism.”
    A court in the capital Moscow on Tuesday ordered Navalnaya arrested in absentia, also on charges of “extremism.”
    Following her husband’s death, Navalnaya, 47, vowed to take up his work and has lobbied against Putin’s government from abroad.
    “If they’re making such a fuss, then Yulia is doing everything right,” Kira Yarmysh, Navalnaya’s press secretary, said on social media after she was added to the blacklist. Navalnaya, an economist, stood by her husband as he galvanised mass protests in Russia, flying him out of the country when he was poisoned before defiantly returning to Moscow with him in 2021, knowing he would be jailed.
    Like much of Russia’s opposition, Navalnaya lives in exile and would be detained if she set foot in Russia. (AFP)

  • ‘We have nothing’: Palestinians return to utter destruction in Gaza City after Israeli withdrawal

    ‘We have nothing’: Palestinians return to utter destruction in Gaza City after Israeli withdrawal

    GAZA (TIP): Palestinians returned to breathtaking scenes of destruction in the Gaza City district of Shijaiyah after Israeli troops withdrew, ending a two-week offensive there. Civil defense workers said on July 11 that so far, they had found the bodies of 60 people in the rubble.
    Families who fled the assault ventured back into Shijaiyah to see the condition of their homes or salvage whatever they could.
    Nearly every building was flattened to rubble for block after block, leaving giant piles of concrete and twisted rebar. Here and there, grey gutted concrete frames still stood a few stories high. The ever-present buzzing sound of Israeli military drones hung in the hot summer air as people on bicycles or horse-drawn carts made their way over dirt paths where the streets had apparently been bulldozed away.
    Sharif Abu Shanab found his family’s four-story building collapsed. “I can’t enter it. I can’t take anything out of it, not even a can of tuna. We have nothing, no food or drink,” he said.
    Since fleeing the district, his family sleeps in the streets, he said. “Where do we go and to whom? … We have no home or anything,” he said in despair. “There’s only one solution, hit us with a nuclear bomb and relieve us of this life.”
    Palestinian women walk through debris amid the destruction from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
    The Israeli military has invaded Shijaiyah several times in the nine-month war against Palestinians in Gaza. Its latest assault began in late June, when it said it was pursuing militants who had regrouped in the district. The assault sent some 80,000 people fleeing Shijaiyah, most into nearby areas, and it is not known how many people remained in the district during the fighting.
    The Israeli military said in a statement Wednesday evening that its operations in Shijaiyah had ended. It said its troops had killed dozens of militants and destroyed eight tunnels in the area. Those claims could not be independently confirmed.
    Gaza’s Civil Defense organization said that during Israel’s offensive, its emergency crews had largely been unable to respond to calls for help from residents in destroyed buildings. After the Israeli pullout, its crews entered and recovered 60 bodies, it said, adding that the search was ongoing. More bodies were believed buried under rubble, but the organization has little heavy equipment to clear debris.
    Palestinian women walk through debris amid the destruction from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
    The United Nations estimated earlier this week that about 300,000 Palestinians were still in northern Gaza, after much of the population left earlier in the war. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now experiencing widespread hunger while crammed into squalid tent camps.
    Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
    The top United Nations court has ordered Israel to take steps to protect Palestinians as it examines genocide allegations against Israeli leaders. Israel denies the charge. (AP)

  • Missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels damages ship in Red Sea

    Missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels damages ship in Red Sea

    Jerusalem (TIP): A missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels damaged a ship in the Red Sea on april 29, authorities said, the latest assault in their campaign against shipping in the crucial maritime route.
    The attack happened off the coast of Mokha, Yemen, the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre said. The ship was damaged in the attack, the UKMTO said, though its crew was safe and heading to its next port of call. The agency urged vessels to exercise caution in the area.
    There was “an explosion in close proximity to a merchant vessel,” the UKMTO said. “Vessel and crew are reported safe.”
    The US military’s Central Command identified the ship damaged as the Cyclades, a Malta-flagged, Greece-owned bulk carrier. The military separately shot down a drone on a flight path toward the USS Philippine Sea and USS Laboon, the military said Tuesday.

    Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree claimed the attack on the Cyclades and targeting the US warships in a statement early Tuesday.
    Meanwhile Monday, the Italian Defence Ministry said its frigate Virgino Fasan shot down a Houthi drone that morning near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
    “A missile exploded in the water in the vicinity of the escorted vessel, causing only minor superficial damage,” the Italian Defence Ministry said, not identifying the commercial vessel being escorted.
    “The frigate Fasan and the protected merchant vessel are continuing their southward route as planned to exit the Red Sea.” Saree did not acknowledge that attack, though he claimed the Houthis also targeted a ship in the Indian Ocean. There was no immediate report or evidence to support that claim.
    The Houthis say their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are aimed at pressuring Israel to end its war against Hamas in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians there. The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage.
    The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sunk another since November, according to the US Maritime Administration.
    Houthi attacks have dropped in recent weeks as the rebels have been targeted by a US-led airstrike campaign in Yemen. Shipping through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has declined because of the threat.
    American officials have speculated the rebels may be running out of weapons as a result of the US-led campaign against them and after firing drones and missiles steadily for months. However, the rebels have renewed their attacks in the past week. Early Sunday morning, the US military shot down five drones in the air over the Red Sea, its Central Command said.
    The drones “presented an imminent threat to US, coalition, and merchant vessels in the region,” Central Command said in a statement.
    The Houthis on Saturday claimed they shot down another of the US military’s MQ-9 Reaper drones, airing footage of parts that corresponded to known pieces of the unmanned aircraft.
    US Air Force Lt. Col. Bryon J. McGarry, a Defence Department spokesperson, acknowledged to The Associated Press on Saturday that “a US Air Force MQ-9 drone crashed in Yemen.” He said an investigation was underway, without elaborating. (AP)

  • South Korea’s parliament approves independent investigation of the devastating 2022 Halloween crush

    SEOUL (TIP): South Korea’s parliament on May 2 approved legislation mandating a new, independent investigation into the 2022 Halloween crush in Seoul that killed 159 people.
    The single-chamber National Assembly passed the bill by a 256-0 vote. It will become law after it is signed by President Yoon Suk Yeol and promulgated by his government agency — steps that are considered formalities because the president and his ruling party already agreed on the legislation.
    The bill is meant to delve into the root cause of the crush, details about how authorities handled the disaster and who should be blamed for it. It also envisages the creation of a fact-finding committee with nine members that would independently examine the disaster for up to 15 months. Once the committee determines who is responsible and who should face charges, it would report them to the government’s investigation agencies. The agencies would then conclude investigations of the suspects within three months, according to the bill.
    The crush, one of the biggest peacetime disasters in South Korea, caused a nationwide outpouring of grief. The victims, who were mostly in their 20s and 30s, had gathered in Seoul’s popular nightlife district of Itaewon for Halloween celebrations. In the aftermath of the tragedy, there was also anger that the government had again ignored safety and regulatory issues despite the lessons learned since the 2014 sinking of the ferry Sewol, which killed 304 people — mostly teenagers on a school trip.
    In early 2023, a police special investigation concluded that police and municipal officials failed to formulate effective crowd control steps, despite correctly anticipating a huge number of people in Itaewon. At the time, investigators said police had also ignored hotline calls by pedestrians who warned of swelling crowds before the surge turned deadly.
    More than 20 police and other officials have been on trial over the disaster but few top-level officials have been charged or held accountable, prompting bereaved families and opposition lawmakers to call for an independent probe.
    President Yoon had previously opposed a new investigation of the disaster. However, during a meeting with liberal opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Monday, Yoon said he would not oppose it, should some existing disputes be resolved, such as whether the fact-finding committee can request arrest warrants. (AP)