Israel's attacks on Damascus hinder chemical weapons search, Syrian official says
A planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has already had to be postponed, adviser Ibrahim Olabi said.
The OPCW will hold an urgent meeting on Tuesday next week to discuss the situation and impact of the Israeli attacks, Olabi, who is the legal adviser to Syria's Foreign Ministry tasked with the chemical weapons file, said.
The OPCW did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Israel launched powerful airstrikes on Damascus on Wednesday, blowing up part of the defence ministry and hitting near the presidential palace, taking action it said was to protect the Druze minority in southern Syria.
The Syrian defence ministry provided the institutional infrastructure needed to organise and secure visits from OPCW inspectors, Olabi said.
Since March there have been several visits by inspectors to previously unseen production and storage locations for chemical weapons to prepare for the task of destroying remnants of Assad's illegal stockpile. Syria's interim-government has vowed to rid itself of chemical weapons.
The OPCW, a treaty-based agency in The Hague with 193 member countries, is tasked with implementing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.
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‘Mass starvation' across Gaza as Trump puts pressure on Israel
More than 100 aid organisations warned on Wednesday that 'mass starvation' was spreading across the Gaza Strip as President Trump intervened to put more pressure on Israel to change its tactics. In a statement, the 111 signatories — including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Oxfam — warned that 'our colleagues and those we serve are wasting away'. 'As the Israeli government's siege starves the people of Gaza, aid workers are now joining the same food lines, risking being shot just to feed their families,' the statement read. It came as the United Nations said that more than a thousand Palestinians have been killed as they queued for aid in Gaza in the past two months. The UN's human rights office said Israeli troops or other gunmen had shot 1,054 people since late May, of whom 766 were killed near sites run by the Israeli and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The rest were killed while trying to reach UN aid convoys. Israeli officials said they had not identified a famine in Gaza and blamed United Nations bodies for not collecting and distributing food and supplies. Some 950 trucks' worth of supplies were waiting to be collected by the UN from the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings, according to Cogat, an Israeli military agency. According to the UN, Israel's restrictions and permit rejections are the reason for the mounting stockpiles at the border points, as aid organisations are regularly barred from transferring aid to warehouses and distribution sites, or risk coming under fire from the Israeli army if they do not obtain permissions. As reports mount of children starving to death amid a dearth of supplies, Karoline Leavitt, Trump's press secretary, said the president had spoken to Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and had been distressed by the latest 'mass-casualty event' at an aid station on Sunday, when Hamas said 79 civilians were killed after Israeli troops opened fire. Trump had raised with Netanyahu recent airstrikes by Israel on troops loyal to the Syrian interim government and a strike on a Catholic church in Gaza, events Leavitt said had caught him 'off guard'. Father Gabriel Romanelli, the priest of the Gaza church, has described for the first time since the incident on Thursday how an Israeli tank shell exploded on the side of the roof, wounding him in the leg and killing three parishioners. Leavitt, referring to the shootings at the aid point, said: 'The president never likes to see that.' Israel said its troops fired 'warning shots' on Sunday, though both it and the GHF have repeatedly claimed that UN and Hamas figures are inflated. '[Trump] wants the killing to end and he wants to negotiate a ceasefire in this region,' Leavitt added. In a statement on Wednesday, Hamas called for protests and sit-in demonstrations to take place at Israeli and US embassies across the world this weekend 'until the siege is broken and famine ends in Gaza Strip'. Netanyahu and Hamas are under renewed pressure to reach a ceasefire deal. Both sides have agreed to one in principle but have not reached terms. Israel wants the right to resume the fight to 'eliminate Hamas' after a prisoner-for-hostage exchange, while Hamas is demanding the ceasefire be guaranteed as permanent. Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Europe this week to continue pushing for a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory, a US official said on Tuesday. Axios reported that Witkoff is expected to depart for Rome on Wednesday and arrive on Thursday for a meeting with the Israeli minister of strategic affairs Ron Dermer and a senior Qatari envoy. Trump hated 'the pictures of starvation of women and children who desperately need that aid', Leavitt added. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said that 100 people, including 80 children, had so far died of malnutrition. Those figures could not be immediately verified but aid organisations have confirmed the deaths of children as malnutrition becomes widespread among the strip's two million inhabitants, most living in the rubble of its former towns. The UN's World Food Programme has estimated that nearly 100,000 women and children were already suffering from malnutrition. Despite the calls for a ceasefire — or perhaps in preparation for it — Netanyahu has shown no sign of letting up in the attacks on Gaza. 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Sky News
2 hours ago
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Gaza faces mass starvation with supplies 'totally depleted', aid agencies warn
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BreakingNews.ie
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