Foreign News
Thousands take part in pro-Palestine protests across the world
Thousands of people have taken to the streets around the world to protest against the war in Gaza as Israel pledges to go forward with its offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza.
Waving pro-Palestinian flags and banners, thousands marched through the streets of Madrid, Spain to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The crowd snaked through closed-off streets in the Spanish capital from Atocha train station to the central Plaza del Sol square behind a large banner that read: Freedom for Palestine. Many carried signs that read “Peace for Palestine” and “Don’t ignore Palestinian suffering”.
At least six ministers from Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s cabinet also took part in the demonstration, five from the left-wing Sumar party, his junior coalition partners, as well as Transport Minister Oscar Puente of the prime minister’s Socialist party.
“We need an immediate ceasefire, an end to the killing and attacks against innocents, we must achieve the release of all hostages,” Puente told reporters at the start of the march.
In the UK’s capital London, approximately 250,000 people took part in the protest demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett said that according to organisers the demonstration taking place in London is expected to be among the top three in terms of size since the start of the war in Gaza in October. “This could be an indication of the increasing concern about the situation in Gaza, on the cusp of Israel’s intended intensification of military operations in Rafah in the south. YouGov has issued a poll saying that two-thirds of people in the UK now support an immediate ceasefire,” Fawcett said.
Fawcett said that the main body of the march arrived outside the Israeli Embassy, where solidarity speeches and a static protest took place.
The organisers also timed the beginning of the march to ensure that an event at a nearby Jewish synagogue was over.
More than 1,500 police officers were on the streets in London to police the protest.
According to the Metropolitan Police, 12 people were arrested for placard-related offences, assaults on officers and refusal to remove face coverings. “Despite these arrests, the overwhelming majority who took part were peaceful and acted entirely with the law,” the police said in a statement on the social media platform X.
Pro-Israeli groups have attempted to paint the mass pro-Palestinian movement in the UK as anti-Semitic. The protest movement regards that as an attempt to whitewash Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has now killed almost 29,000 people.
Pro-Palestine protests also took place in Sweden and other countries, where people demanded that Israel stop its offensive on Rafah and called for a ceasefire.
Demonstrations in Israel
Protests also took place in Israel’s capital Tel Aviv and outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in West Jerusalem with demonstrators calling for a captive-prisoner exchange deal and immediate elections in the country.
The rallies took place in the wake of Netanyahu’s decision last week not to send an Israeli delegation to Cairo for further negotiations on a deal to release more than 100 captives still held in Gaza.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called the decision a “death sentence” for the remaining captives.
But in a news conference on Saturday, Netanyahu denounced the possibility of elections in Israel right now. He also said that Israel’s military “pressure is working” against Hamas, claiming the army has “reached areas in Gaza that the enemy never imagined”.
“Whoever is telling us not to operate in Rafah is telling us to lose an ear,” he added, saying that the Israeli army would attack Rafah – a city in southern Gaza that now hosts more than one million displaced Palestinians – even if a deal to release captives is reached with Hamas.
(Aljazeera)
US President Donald Trump’s administration has exempted smartphones, computers and some other electronic devices from “reciprocal” tariffs, including the 125% levies imposed on Chinese imports.
US Customs and Border Patrol published a notice late on Friday explaining the goods would be excluded from Trump’s 10% global tariff on most countries and the much larger Chinese import tax.
The move comes after concerns from US tech companies that the price of gadgets could skyrocket, as many of them are made in China.
This is the first significant reprieve of any kind in Trump’s tariffs on China, with one trade analyst describing it as a “game-changer scenario”.
[BBC]
A notorious bandit kingpin and 100 of his suspected followers have been killed in a joint military operation in north-west Nigeria, authorities say.
Gwaska Dankarami was said to have been a high-value target who reportedly served as second-in-command to an Islamic State-linked leader.
The alleged gang leader had been hiding in the Munumu Forest, with authorities reporting that several other criminal hideouts were also destroyed across the state on Friday.
His apparent death comes after bandits kidnapped 43 villagers and killed four others in a deadly attack on a village called Maigora in the northern Katsina State earlier this week.
The police had said that it deployed security forces in pursuit of the kidnappers.
However, this is not the first time Dankarami’s death has been reported.
In 2022, the Nigerian Airforce claimed to have killed him in a similar operation.
The Katsina State commissioner for internal security and home affairs, Nasir Mua’zu, said the killing was a significant milestone in the fight against banditry in the state.
“It is expedient to state that this successful mission has significantly disrupted the criminal networks that have long terrorised communities across Faskari, Kankara, Bakori, Malumfashi, and Kafur,” Mua’zu added.
Security forces said they had also recovered and destroyed two machine guns and locally fabricated shotguns.
In a separate operation on Thursday, security forces killed six bandits, including their commander, while several other bandits escaped with bullet wounds.
Seven motorcycles were also intercepted and recovered during the intelligence-led operation.
Katsina, the home state of former Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, has witnessed sporadic attacks by bandits and kidnappers that have claimed many lives.
The state governor, Malam Dikko Umaru Radda, has expressed the government’s determination to eliminate criminals and ensure every forest is thoroughly monitored to protect residents.
The authorities said that the operations are part of a broader effort to restore stability in the state and the north-west region of Nigeria, which has witnessed repeated banditry attacks.
[BBC]
At least three suspected rebel fighters and one Indian soldier have been killed in separate firefights in Indian administered Kashmir less than a week after Interior Minister Amit Shah visited the disputed territory.
The Indian army said on Saturday that Indian soldiers killed three fighters in a gun battle that began on Wednesday in a remote forest in Kishtwar in southern Kashmir.
Senior Indian army official Brigadier JBS Rathi said troops had displayed “great tactical acumen”.
“In the gun battle, three terrorists were neutralised,” he told reporters on Saturday in a commonly used term for rebels opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir.
Weapons and “war-like stores” were recovered from the site, the army’s White Knight Corps posted on social media platform X.
A soldier was killed in a separate incident late on Friday night in Sunderbani district along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border that cuts Indian-administered Kashmir into two.
The White Knight Corps said on X troops had “foiled an infiltration attempt” there.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, with both claiming the territory in full but governing only part of it.
India has an estimated 500,000 soldiers deployed in the territory after an armed uprising against Indian rule in the late 1980s.
Thousands of people, most of them Kashmir civilians, have been killed as rebel groups have fought Indian forces, seeking independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
In 2019, a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights accused India of human rights violations in Kashmir and called for a commission of inquiry into the allegations. The report came nearly a year after the then UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Husseincalled for an international investigation into abuses in the Muslim-majority region.
Last month, four police officers and two suspected rebels were killed in the region in a clash that also wounded several police officers.
The territory has simmered in anger since 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended the region’s semi-autonomy and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms while intensifying military operations.
Thousands of additional troops, including special forces, were deployed across southern mountainous areas last year following a series of deadly rebel attacks that killed more than 50 soldiers over three years.
India regularly blames Pakistan for pushing rebels across the LoC to launch attacks on Indian forces.
[Aljazeera]
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