Red Cross outraged over killing of eight medics in Gaza
In Sunday's statement, the IFRC said the eight bodies of PRCS workers were retrieved "after seven days of silence and having access denied to the area of Rafah where they were last seen".The organisation identified those killed as ambulance officers Mostafa Khufaga, Saleh Muamer and Ezzedine Shaath, and first responder volunteers Mohammad Bahloul, Mohammed al-Heila, Ashraf Abu Labda, Raed al-Sharif and Rifatt Radwan.It added that ambulance officer Assad Al-Nassasra was "still missing"."I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians," IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said. "They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked."Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected."The IDF has publicly not commented on the Red Cross and Red Crescent statement.The AFP news agency reported that on Saturday the Israeli military admitted it had fired on ambulances in southern Gaza last Sunday after identifying them as "suspicious vehicles".Israeli troops had "opened fire toward Hamas vehicles and eliminated several Hamas terrorists", the military said in a statement to AFP."A few minutes afterward, additional vehicles advanced suspiciously toward the troops... The troops responded by firing toward the suspicious vehicles, eliminating a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists."The military added that "after an initial inquiry, it was determined that some of the suspicious vehicles... were ambulances and fire trucks". It also said there had been "repeated use" by "terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip of ambulances for terrorist purposes".Senior Hamas official Basem Naim condemned the attack. "The targeted killing of rescue workers - who are protected under international humanitarian law - constitutes a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime," he said.Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on 18 March after the first phase of a ceasefire that began in January came to an end, and negotiations on a second phase of the deal stalled.More than 900 people have since been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry has said.The war was triggered when Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as captives.Israel responded with a massive military offensive, which has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says.
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Metro
23 minutes ago
- Metro
Why Egypt won't take Gazans, Ukraine's future and American irony
Do you agree with our readers? Have your say on these MetroTalk topics and more in the comments. Malcolm (MetroTalk, Thu) asks why Egypt isn't taking in refugees from Gaza. The reason is Israel has historically refused and is currently refusing the rights of Palestinians to return to land that Israel controls or occupies, so Egypt doesn't want to assist in permanently displacing a population. Israel is also a neighbour of Palestine but has not processed or taken any refugees, despite having two crossings compared with Egypt's one. I'm sure a well-funded state such as Israel has the capacity to sift out terrorists. It seems to know who they are when it uses 'targeted attacks' on Gaza. Malcolm says Israel is 'as responsible for the deaths in this war as the Allies were in killing the millions of innocent civilians in Germany and Japan in World War II'. International law is clear on the matter of civiliacns being killed in war and had those laws – and a willingness to enforce them – existed at the time, the Allies would have been in breach. Crimes in the past do not excuse crimes in the present. Paul Smith, Bristol Malcolm wonders why Egypt won't fling open the Rafah gate and whisk 2.3million Gazans into Sinai, as though refugee policy were a drive-thru. Egypt manages one crossing while Israel controls airspace, sea and every other exit. When Israel bombs the Rafah gate and then occupies it, Egypt can hardly run an open-door policy. Egypt remembers 1948, when Palestinians fled and were never allowed home. Opening Sinai now would help turn temporary 'shelter' into permanent expulsion. When your neighbour's house is on fire because someone else set it alight and blocks the exits, you don't blame the neighbour for not jumping through your kitchen window. Israel imposed the siege, launched the air strikes and controls the crossings – that's where accountability lies. Az Moss, London It's not only deeply troubling but simply exasperating to see zealots congratulating themselves for being arrested for showing support to Palestine Action, a proscribed terrorist organisation (MetroTalk, Wed). How does supporting the perpetrators or terror and blind hatred do anything for the people of Gaza? And their calls of Israeli 'genocide' are similarly misguided and an affront to the millions around the world currently suffering genocide – such as those in Sudan and Yemen. Sara, London How do we bring peace to Ukraine and Russia? We need Ukraine restored to its 2014 borders in return for giving up attempts to join Nato and the EU. We also need Nato to pull back from eastern Europe and the establishment of demilitarised zones on Russia's side of Nato's border as well as on both sides of the Ukrainian-Russian border. The only obstacle to this is Nato and the EU, especially the latter as it wants to absorb Ukraine to exploit its markets. Since the Soviet Union's collapse, the Warsaw Pact buffer zone has been gobbled up by Nato and the EU. Alan Meadowcroft, Oldham It is farcical the US is trying to accuse other countries of going backwards in terms of human rights and free speech. More Trending This is from the government that set up Ice, whose officers hide their faces when they arrest people for deportation, despite many being US citizens. A government that has been voting to take more rights away from its people. And a government that threatens to sue people because they dare to report on the president's sordid history and refuses to let certain circles of the free press attend White House briefings because it can't handle answering questions that don't blindly praise everything it says or does. The UK is not perfect but it's laughable for a country determined to take so many rights and freedoms away from its people to be so desperate to divert attention from itself that it attacks how other countries handle this. Matthew, Birmingham MORE: The Metro daily cartoon by Guy Venables MORE: Cost of Mounjaro weight-loss drug to go up by 170% in the UK within weeks MORE: A-level results day 2025 map shows how well your area did
The National
37 minutes ago
- The National
Checks on arms firms appear to be just a cosmetic formality
THE Scottish Government has come under criticism in recent months for the continuing financial support it provides to companies involved in the arms trade, some of whom continue to supply Israel with military equipment, even as it publicly condemns the Israeli government for the genocide unfolding in Gaza. The Scottish Government insists that no public money is spent on the manufacture of munitions and that all companies which the Scottish Government supports via grants from Scottish Enterprise are subject to a human rights due diligence check. However, no company has ever failed one of these checks, calling into question whether the checks are anything more than a cosmetic formality without any real-world consequences. It now transpires that some companies with an important role in supplying military equipment to Israel have not been subject to a due diligence check in more than six years. A Freedom of Information request has revealed that two major arms companies in receipt of Scottish Enterprise grants – Italian arms giant Leonardo and American multinational Raytheon Systems – have not received a human right due diligence check since October 2019. Both firms have been in receipt of Scottish public money – Leonardo received £786,125 in 2023 while Raytheon Systems, which has a factory in Glenrothes, was given £500k in the first half of 2024. Leonardo produces laser targeting systems for Lockheed Martin, which sells the F-35 jets used by Israel, and Raytheon makes Paveway II guided missiles which are also used by Israel. Both these firms were given public money after the brutal reality of Israel's so-called 'right to defend itself' had become apparent and the genocidal nature of Israel's repeated killing of civilians was well established. Both companies have continued to supply Israel with weapons throughout Israel's assault on Gaza which began in October 2023 in the wake of the Hamas attack on southern Israel. Israel's war on Gaza has now gone way beyond anything which could be described as self-defence and the Israeli government's prime minister now speaks openly of its goal to occupy and ethnically cleanse the territory. The civilian infrastructure of Gaza has now been destroyed and the traumatised and starved population are being herded into small overcrowded and insanitary tent encampments in what it pleases Israel to call "humanitarian zones" from which they will not be permitted to leave except into permanent exile in as yet unknown third countries. Israel claims that the Palestinians will be encouraged to leave "voluntarily" but when you incentivise people to leave by starving them, destroying their homes and all medical educational and sewage disposal infrastructure, shooting people dead as a routine method of crowd control at the pathetically inadequate aid distribution points which are the sole source of food and water for people who have already been displaced multiple times, there is nothing voluntary about it. In response to the revelations uncovered by the Freedom of Information Request, human rights charity Amnesty International told The National that the 'more we learn' about the checks 'the more concerning it becomes' that Scottish Enterprise and Scottish ministers are defending the process. A spokesperson for the organisation said: "Amnesty is aware from our own research that payments were made to companies known to supply Israel without a new check being triggered by the unfolding genocide in Gaza. 'Alarmingly, that is the process Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government attempted to characterise as robust and well aligned to international standards. The recent in-house review of the human rights checks recommended some improvements, but unsurprisingly they don't go far enough. We will be meeting with Scottish Enterprise in the coming weeks to take these concerns forward." Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater condemned the lack of effective checks, saying it 'flies in the face of any kind of due diligence'. She added: "These are some of the biggest arms companies in the world. They have armed human rights abusers and dictatorships and some have directly enabled and profited from the genocide in Gaza. "They should not be receiving public money in the first place, and the Scottish Government absolutely should not be setting up tests to win favourable headlines while refusing to actually implement them. "How can we trust a word they say on ensuring they are applying human rights standards when they are refusing to even ask the right questions of those they are giving public money to?" Serious nuclear incident on Scottish base Following reports last week that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had attempted to cover up decades long leaks of water contaminated with radioactive waste and that the leaks had continued despite claims in 2020 by the MoD that it was taking steps to remedy the situation, we now learn that even more serious safety breaches occurred this year. A serious nuclear incident took place at the Faslane naval base earlier this year. Nuclear Site Event Reports (NSERs) are graded on a scale from Category A through D with A being the most serious category, defined as being one which carries an "actual or high potential for radioactive release to the environment". Figures released show there was a Category A event at Faslane in the period between January 1 and April 22 this year. The MoD has refused to release further details about the event, all the MoD is willing to release is radioactive waste into the Scottish environment. As a result of this refusal we do not know whether there was a radioactive release into the environment or only the high risk of one having happened. Putting the minds of the Scottish public at ease has never been a concern for the MoD. Another category A incident also took place in Faslane in 2023. In total there were five Category B, 29 Category C and 71 Category D incidents at Faslane between April 22, 2024 and the same date this year. The MoD has been responsible for repeated leaks of radioactive material into the Clyde. These leaks have been going on for decades and the MoD repeatedly attempts to cover up its culture of negligence. The leaks which have been made public are merely those which the MoD has been forced to admit to. We can only speculate about what the MoD is continuing to cover up.
Rhyl Journal
39 minutes ago
- Rhyl Journal
Israel announces West Bank settlement that ‘could imperil Palestinian state'
Palestinians and rights groups worry the move will scuttle plans for a future Palestinian state by effectively cutting the West Bank into two separate parts. The announcement comes as many countries, including Australia France, and Canada said they would recognise a Palestinian state in September. 'This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,' said finance minister Bezalel Smotrich during a ceremony on Thursday. 'Anyone in the world who tries today to recognise a Palestinian state — will receive an answer from us on the ground.' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet publicly commented on the plan, but he has touted it in the past. Development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to US pressure during previous administrations. On Thursday, Mr Smotrich praised President Donald Trump and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee as 'true friends of Israel as we have never had before'. The E1 plan is expected to receive final approval August 20, capping off 20 years of bureaucratic wrangling. The planning committee on August 6 rejected all of the petitions to stop the construction filed by rights groups and activists. While some bureaucratic steps remain, if the process moves quickly, infrastructure work could begin in the next few months and construction of homes could start in around a year. The approval is a 'colonial, expansionist, and racist move', Ahmed al Deek, the political adviser to the minister of Palestinian Foreign Affairs, told The Associated Press on Thursday. 'It falls within the framework of the extremist Israeli government's plans to undermine any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state on the ground, to fragment the West Bank, and to separate its southern part from the centre and the north,' Mr al Deek said. Rights groups also swiftly condemned the plan. Peace Now called it 'deadly for the future of Israel and for any chance of achieving a peaceful two-state solution' which is 'guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed'. The announcement comes as the Palestinian Authority and Arab countries condemned Mr Netanyahu's statement in an interview on Tuesday that he was 'very' attached to the vision of a 'Greater Israel'. He did not elaborate, but supporters of the idea believe that Israel should control not only the occupied West Bank but parts of Arab countries. Israel's plans to expand settlements are part of an increasingly difficult reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world's attention focuses on Gaza. There have been marked increases in settler attacks against Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement. There also have been several Palestinian attacks on Israelis during the course of the war. More than 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in these areas to be illegal and obstacles to peace. Israel's government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians with close ties to the settlement movement. Mr Smotrich, previously a firebrand settler leader, has been granted cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future independent state. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and claims it as part of its capital, which is not internationally recognised. It says the West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be determined through negotiations, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
