ATHENS: The EU naval mission protecting ships crossing the Red Sea said that its frigate Psara had destroyed an unmanned aerial drone in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday.
The Aspides mission began in February in response to drone and missile attacks by Iranian-aligned Houthi militants on vessels in the region. The Houthis describe the attacks as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s war in Gaza.
Other countries, including the United States, also have naval forces operating in the area.
EU naval mission says it destroyed aerial drone in Gulf of Aden
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EU naval mission says it destroyed aerial drone in Gulf of Aden
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Turkiye probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank
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- Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead last week while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank
- The United Nations rights office has accused Israeli forces of shooting the US-Turkish activist in the head
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was shot dead last week while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank town of Beita.
The settlements are illegal under international law but supported by right-wing members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The United Nations rights office has accused Israeli forces of shooting Eygi in the head. The Israeli army has acknowledged opening fire in the area and said it was looking into the case.
“Turkiye has opened an investigation,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.
He also said Turkiye would take the case to the United Nations and push for an independent inquiry into her death.
“We will work to ensure that the (UN) Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial and Arbitrary Executions takes immediate action, and that an independent commission of inquiry is established and prepare a report,” he said.
Tunc said Turkiye would forward that report to the UN Human Rights Council and to the ongoing case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
“We will continue to defend the right of our sister Aysenur and our Palestinian brothers,” he added.
Turkiye’s foreign ministry said the formal procedures for the transfer of the body had been concluded through its embassy in Tel Aviv and consulate in Jerusalem.
“The body of the deceased will arrive in Turkiye tomorrow,” it said, adding: “We once again condemn this murder committed by the genocidal Netanyahu government.”
Eygi’s family is still waiting for her body to arrive and is hoping to bury her in the southwestern town of Didim on Friday.
“It’s sad but it’s also a source of pride for Didim,” Eygi’s uncle Ali Tikkim, 67, said on Wednesday.
“It’s important that a young girl, martyred and sensitive to the world is buried here.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished.”
Iran president arrives in Iraqi Kurdistan on day two of visit
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- It is Pezeshkian’s first foreign trip abroad since he took office in July
- Tehran in 2022 repeatedly carried out strikes on armed groups in Kurdistan
Irbil: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived Thursday in Iraqi Kurdistan to meet the autonomous region’s leaders, on the second day of a visit aimed at deepening ties with the neighboring country.
It is Pezeshkian’s first foreign trip abroad since he took office in July.
Stepping off his plane in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Pezeshkian was welcomed by regional president Nechirvan Barzani on a red carpet lined with Kurdish Peshmerga forces standing at attention with rifles at their sides.
Pezeshkian held talks with Barzani and Kurdistan’s prime minister, Masrour Barzani, before heading to Sulaimaniyah, a city where the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) political party wields influence including in the local security services.
On Wednesday, the first leg of his three-day visit, Pezeshkian announced in Baghdad the signing of more than a dozen agreements to strengthen ties between Iran and Iraq.
His trip comes at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East due to the war in Gaza, which has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups and complicated Iraq’s relations with the United States.
Iran’s ties with Iraqi Kurdistan have improved in recent months, aided by efforts to neutralize Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, which have long operated in the region.
Tehran in 2022 repeatedly carried out strikes on armed groups in Kurdistan, before Iraq in March 2023 signed a security agreement with Iran. Baghdad committed to disarm these groups and relocate them from border areas to camps.
“We have succeeded... in regulating the security situation in the border areas,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani said on Wednesday, reiterating Iraq’s refusal to allow any acts of aggression to be launched against Iran from its territory.
Iran had accused the Iranian Kurdish opposition of smuggling weapons from Iraq and launching attacks on its security forces.
It also accused these movements of fueling protests that shook Iran after the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd arrested by the morality police.
War monitor says Israeli strike in Syria’s Golan kills two
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- The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike
Beirut: A Syria war monitor said an Israeli airstrike on Thursday in Quneitra province in the Syria-controlled Golan Heights killed two people, days after major raids elsewhere in the country.
“An Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle” on the Damascus-Quneitra road, “killing two people,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, without identifying them.
A local security source told AFP that “two charred bodies were removed” from the vehicle that was hit.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike.
Israel seized much of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognized by the international community.
Thursday’s strike came days after raids blamed on Israel killed 18 people in the central province of Hama, according to Syrian authorities.
The Observatory said those strikes killed 27 people, including six civilians, and targeted a “scientific research area” and other sites in the province’s Masyaf area.
Israel declined to comment on those reported strikes.
Hezbollah has repeatedly targeted military positions in the Israeli-held Golan in recent months as part of attacks from Lebanon in support of ally Hamas following the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Syria has sought to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, whose fallout has raised fears of a broader regional war.
Limited rocket attacks from Syria by Hezbollah-allied fighters have targeted the Israeli-held Golan since October.
Since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
Israeli raids on Syria surged after Hamas’s October 7 attack then eased somewhat after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus, prompting Iran’s first-ever direct attack against Israel.
Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military
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- Hundreds of people turned out at a beach in Washington for an evening vigil remembering Aysenur Ezgi Eygi
SEATTLE: For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.
“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”
Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.
The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.
“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.
As the sun set, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.
Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves — keffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.
Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the Israeli agression on Gaza at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflective of her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.
Eygi, who attended Seattle schools and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology this year, helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.
“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”
Eygi’s uncle told a Turkish television station that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, blocking relatives from her social media posts. Turkish officials have said they are working to repatriate her body for burial, per the family’s wishes.
Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi would pick Han up at the airport after her travels. Most recently, Eygi greeted her with a plastic baggie full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.
Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.
Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.
“I was looking around at everybody sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugs, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said. “These new relationships all sharing Aysenur as the starting seed — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”
US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah
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- The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Wednesday issued sanctions on a Lebanese network it accused of smuggling oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to help fund the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels that the US Treasury Department said were overseen by a senior leader of Hezbollah’s finance team and used profits from illicit LPG shipments to Syria to aid generate revenue for the group.
Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith, in a statement, said Hezbollah “continues to launch rockets into Israel and fuel regional instability, choosing to prioritize funding violence over taking care of the people it claims to care about, including the tens of thousands displaced in southern Lebanon.”