AL-ARISH: UN Security Council ambassadors arrived Monday in Egypt to visit the Rafah border crossing with the besieged Gaza Strip, days after the United States vetoed a council resolution for a ceasefire.
The informal one-day trip organized by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt comes amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza, described as a “graveyard” by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Around a dozen ambassadors are taking part in the visit from countries including Russia and the United Kingdom.
But the United States, which vetoed Friday the Security Council resolution did not send a representative as did France.
“There is no justification to turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza,” an Egyptian foreign ministry official told the envoys during a briefing following their arrival.
Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’s envoy to the Security Council, said member states were taking part in the trip in their “national and personal capacities.”
She said the visit aims to help them “understand not only the suffering and destruction experienced by the people of Gaza but also their hope and their strength.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA briefed the envoys on the harrowing humanitarian situation in Gaza before he headed to the embattled territory for his third visit since the start of the war in October between Israel and Hamas militants.
There is “deep frustration disappointment, and some outrage also that... we can’t even reach a consensus for a ceasefire,” Lazzarini said after the meeting.
“There is no real safe place in the Gaza Strip, even the UN premises currently hosting more than 1 people have been hit,” he said.
The situation for Palestinians, Lazzarini said, is desperate.
“Hunger is prevailing in Gaza. More and more people haven’t eaten for one day, two days, three days... people lack absolutely everything.”
The diplomats are due to visit the Rafah crossing, the only gateway into the narrow enclave, as well as a hospital treating Palestinian patients in the Egyptian town of El-Arish near the Gaza border.
The war on Gaza was triggered when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas carried out the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures, and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel has responded with a military offensive that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 17,997 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced — roughly half of them children — by the war and Israel’s intense bombing campaign that has reduced vast areas to rubble.
The war and siege have taken a heavy toll on basic services, especially health care, with only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, and dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine.
Israel had urged civilians to seek refuge in Gaza’s far south, but the army has kept striking targets throughout the territory, leading to UN warnings that there is no safe place left in Gaza.
UN council envoys to visit Gaza crossing as crisis spirals
https://arab.news/mubqw
UN council envoys to visit Gaza crossing as crisis spirals
- The informal one-day trip organized by the UAE and Egypt comes amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza
- The US, which vetoed Friday the Security Council resolution, did not send a representative as did France
Gaza rescuers say 31 killed by Israel fire near aid center
GAZA: The Gaza civil defense agency said 31 people were killed and “about 200” wounded Wednesday when Israeli troops fired on people waiting to enter a food distribution center.
“We transported at least 31 martyrs and about 200 wounded as a result of Israeli tank and drone fire on thousands of citizens... on their way to receive food from the American aid center,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. The Israeli army did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel
- Arrest warrant for Cafer Mahiroglu, owner of Halk TV, issued as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal organization
- Several main opposition CHP members including district mayors were arrested under the investigation
ANKARA: An Istanbul court has issued an arrest warrant for the owner of a television channel aligned with Turkiye’s main opposition party on charges of bid-rigging, the prosecutor’s office said late on Tuesday.
The arrest warrant for Cafer Mahiroglu, owner of Halk TV, was issued as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal organization suspected of rigging public tenders by bribing public officials.
Several main opposition CHP members including district mayors were arrested under the investigation, part of a widening legal crackdown against the jailed mayor of Istanbul, President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, and the opposition.
Mahiroglu, a Turkish businessperson who lives in London, denied the charges in a post on X.
“I am being accused based on the fabricated false statements and slander of someone I have never met or seen in my life,” he said, adding that he has been living abroad for 35 years.
“So, there is a price to be the owner of Halk TV, the people’s television, and to defend democracy, rights and law.”
He did not say if he would return to Turkiye to contest the charges.
Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who leads Erdogan in some opinion polls, was jailed in March pending trial on corruption charges, which he denies.
His arrest triggered mass protests, economic turmoil and broad accusations of government influence over the judiciary and anti-democratic applications. The government has denied the accusations and said the judiciary is independent.
Since his arrest, authorities have detained dozens of CHP members, officials from the Istanbul municipality, and other CHP-run municipalities.
Sudanese army accuses Libya’s Haftar forces of border attack
- Haftar forces denied involvement in the attack and accused a force affiliated with the Sudanese armed forces of attacking a military patrol
- The war between Sudan’s army and the RSF has drawn in multiple foreign countries
CAIRO: The Sudanese army accused forces under eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar of attacking border posts on Tuesday, the first time it has accused its northwestern neighbor of direct involvement in the country’s two-year war.
The war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, whom the military also accused of involvement in the border attack, has drawn in multiple foreign countries, while international attempts at bringing about peace have so far failed.
Sudan had early in the war accused eastern Libya’s Haftar of supporting the RSF via weapons deliveries.
Haftar forces denied involvement in the attack and accused a force affiliated with the Sudanese armed forces of attacking a military patrol while it was carrying out “its legitimate duty to secure the Libyan side of the border.”
“These allegations are a blatant attempt to export Sudan’s internal crisis and create a virtual external enemy,” the General Command of the National Libyan Army added in a statement.
Egypt, which has also backed Haftar, has long supported the Sudanese army.
In a statement, the Sudanese army said the attack took place in the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border triangle, an area to the north of one of the war’s main front lines, Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur.
‘What wrong did he do?’ Gaza family mourn three-year-old shot dead
- In Gaza, “There’s no hope or peace”
KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: Gazan mother Amal Abu Shalouf ran her hand over her son’s face and hair, a brief farewell before a man abruptly sealed the body bag carrying the three-year-old who was killed just hours earlier on Tuesday.
“Amir, my love, my dear!” cried his mother, struggling to cross the crowded courtyard of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, where several bodies lay in white plastic shrouds.
According to the civil defense agency, at least nine people were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip as Israeli forces carried out military operations, more than 20 months into the war triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel.
Contacted by AFP, the military did not respond to a request for comment about Amir Abu Shalouf’s death.
At the hospital, a man carried the boy’s body in his arms through a crowd of dozens of mourners.
“I swear, I can’t take it,” his teenage brother, Ahmad Abu Shalouf, said, his face covered in tears.
“What wrong did he do?” said another brother, Mohammad Abu Shalouf. “An innocent little boy, sitting inside his tent, and a bullet struck him in the back.”
Mohammad said he had “found him shot in the back” as he returned to the tent that has become the family’s home in Al-Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Yunis that is now a massive encampment for displaced Palestinians.
The devastating war has created dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza, where the United Nations has warned that the entire population is at risk of famine.
The grieving mother, comforted by relatives, said her young son had been begging for food in recent days and dreaming of a piece of meat.
“There is no food, no water, no clothing,” said Amal, who has eight children to take care of.
Amal said she too was injured in the pre-dawn incident that killed her son.
“I heard something fall next to my foot while I was sitting and baking, and suddenly felt something hit me. I started screaming,” she said.
Outside the tent at the time, she said she tried crawling and reaching for other family members.
“Then I heard my daughter screaming from inside the tent... found them holding my son, his abdomen and back covered in blood.”
A group of men formed lines to recite a prayer for the dead, their words almost drowned out by the noise of Israeli drones flying overhead.
In the second row, Ahmad Abu Shalouf held his hands over his stomach in prayer, unable to hold back a stream of tears.
Similar scenes played out at the hospital courtyard again and again over several hours, as the day’s dead were mourned.
At one point, an emaciated man collapsed in front of the shrouded bodies.
One mourner pressed his head against one of the bodies, carried on a stretcher at the start of a funeral procession, before being helped up by others.
At a distance, a group of women supported Umm Mohammad Shahwan, a grieving mother, with all of them in tears.
“We need the war to end,” said Amal Abu Shalouf.
In Gaza, she lamented, “there’s no hope or peace.”
Syria rescuers say two killed in drone strikes on northwest
- During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh
DAMASCUS: Two people were killed in separate drone strikes Tuesday on a car and a motorcycle in the northwestern bastion of the Islamist former rebels who now head the Syrian government, rescuers said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the twin drone strikes in the Idlib region but a US-led coalition in Syria has carried out past strikes on terrorists in the area.
Earlier this year, the United States said it killed several commanders of Al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate Hurras Al-Din in the area.
The group had recently announced it was breaking up on the orders of the interim government set up by the rebels after their overthrow of Bashar Assad in December.
US troops are deployed in Syria as part of a US-led coalition to fight the Daesh group.
When contacted by AFP, a US defense official said they were aware of the reports but had “nothing to provide” at the time.
During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh.
