Foreign News
UN chief says ‘clear violations of international humanitarian law’ in Gaza
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres has renewed his demand for a ceasefire in Gaza and said that international law was being violated in the war between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas.
Israel has bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip relentlessly since October 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killling at least 1,400 people according to Israeli authorities.
After the attack, Israel cut off supplies of water, food, fuel and electricity to the enclave’s 2.3 million residents, an act the UN has called a form of collective punishment. It also launched an assault on the territory, killing at least 5,791 people, according to authorities in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas.
More than one million people have been displaced, as Israel ordered residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south, but Israeli air raids have continued throughout the territory.
Speaking before the 15-member UN Security Council on Tuesday, Guterres pleaded for civilians to be protected and warned that the fighting risked a wider conflagration in the region.
“It is important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” Guterres said.
“But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people,” he said.
Guterres also criticised Israel without naming it, saying “protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the south, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.”
The secretary-general’s comments drew ire from Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, who called the speech “shocking”. “His statement that ‘the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum’ expressed an understanding for terrorism and murder,” Erdan posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s truly sad that the head of an organisation that arose after the Holocaust holds such horrible views.”
In his speech, Guterres called the attack by Hamas “horrifying and unprecedented” and demanded the release of the roughly 200 people captured and held captive by Hamas.
Earlier, United Nations agencies called “on our knees” for emergency aid to be allowed unimpeded into Gaza, saying more than 20 times current deliveries were needed.
A small trickle of humanitarian aid has entered Gaza since Saturday from the Egyptian side, but Guterres called such limited assistance “a drop of aid in an ocean of need”.
(Aljazeera)
Italian police have arrested nine people accused of raising around €7m (£6m) for Hamas over more than two years.
The money was ostensibly collected as humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians, a police statement said, but was instead sent to the militant group via a “complex fundraising system”.
Alongside the arrests, police say they have seized more than €8m (£7m) in assets as part of the investigation.
Police say the suspects are “specifically accused of carrying out financing operations believed to have contributed to terrorist activities”.
The arrests were made as part of a joint initiative between Italy’s counter-terror police and financial police.
The investigation began after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack in southern Israel.
Police say they analysed “a series of reports of suspicious financial transactions” involving some of the suspects in the lead up to the attack.
Investigators uncovered a “complex” system of fundraising, which was headquartered in Genoa with branches in Milan, the statement adds.
“The suspects collected donations intended for the civilian population of Gaza, however, it emerged that over 71% of these funds were diverted to Hamas’s coffers to finance its military wing and support the families of suicide bombers or those detained for terrorism,” the police statement says.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the most well-known of the arrested suspects was Mohammad Hannoun, the president of the Palestinian Association in Italy.
Mr Hannoun has previously described allegations he is a financier of Hamas as a “lie”.
Piantedosi thanked police for their work in a post on X, but also noted that “the presumption of innocence… must always be recognised at this stage”.
[BBC]
Thailand and Cambodia said they have signed a ceasefire agreement to end weeks of fierce fighting along their border that has killed more than 100 people and displaced more than half a million civilians in both countries.
“Both sides agree to an immediate ceasefire after the time of signature of this Joint Statement,” the Thai and Cambodian defence ministers said in a statement on Saturday.
“Both sides agree to maintain current troop deployments without further movement,” the ministers said.
The ceasefire took effect at noon local time (05:00 GMT) on Saturday [27] and extends to “all types of weapons” and “attacks on civilians, civilian objects and infrastructures, and military objectives of either side, in all cases and all areas”.
Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig, reporting from the Cambodian border city of Poipet, said the “guns seem to have fallen silent” as both sides adhered to the truce.
“But I must tell you, right up until the point of that ceasefire being implemented, there was some intense firing going on… really, really intense – right up until that moment. And it kind of gives you the idea of how fragile this actually is,” Baig said.
“That doesn’t instil a great deal of confidence in people here who want to return home and will be watching if this ceasefire will hold,” he said.
[Aljazeera]
United States President Donald Trump has issued a new warning to Nicolas Maduro, saying “it would be smart” for the Venezuelan leader to step down, as Washington escalates a pressure campaign that has drawn sharp rebukes from Russia and China.
Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Trump suggested he was prepared to further ratchet up the tensions after four months of mounting pressure on Caracas.
When asked if the goal was to force Maduro from power, Trump told reporters: “Well, I think it probably would… That’s up to him what he wants to do. I think it’d be smart for him to do that. But again, we’re gonna find out.”
“If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’s ever able to play tough,” the US leader added.
Trump levied his latest threat as the US Coast Guard continued for a second day to chase a third oil tanker that it described as part of a “dark fleet” that Venezuela uses to evade US sanctions.
“It’s moving along, and we’ll end up getting it,” Trump said.
The US president also promised to keep the two ships two ships and the nearly 4 million barrels of Venezuelan oil the coastguard has seized so far.
“Maybe we’ll sell it. Maybe we’ll keep it. Maybe we will use it in the strategic reserves,” he said. “We’re keeping it. We’re keeping the ships also.”
[Aljazeera]
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