Gazans suffer as Israeli brutal fire intensifies
In recent days, Gaza City residents have said that of more frequent air strikes targeting residential areas, including in Zeitun, while earlier this week Palestinian group Hamas denounced "aggressive" Israeli ground incursions. To Bassal, Israel was carrying out "ethnic cleansing" in Zeitun. Israeli officials have dismissed similar accusations before, and the military insists it abides by international law.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet approved plans to seize Gaza City, one of the most densely populated parts of the territory, which has been devastated by more than 22 months of war. On Friday, the Israeli military said its troops were operating in Zeitun. Ghassan Kashko, 40, who shelters with his family at a school building in the neighbourhood, said: "We don't know the taste of sleep." He said air strikes and tank shelling were causing "explosions... that don't stop".
The Israeli plan to expand the war has sparked an international outcry as well as domestic opposition. UN-backed experts have warned of widespread famine unfolding in the territory, where Israel has drastically curtailed the amount of humanitarian aid it allows in. According to the civil defence agency, at least 13 of the Palestinians killed on Saturday were shot by troops as they were waiting to collect food aid near distribution sites in the north and in the south.
The war was triggered by the October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, based on official figures. Israel's offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Meanwhile, a young Palestinian woman who was flown from Gaza to an Italian hospital in a severely emaciated state for treatment has died, the hospital said on Saturday. The 20-year-old, identified by Italian media reports as Marah Abu Zuhri, arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight overnight Wednesday-Thursday. The University Hospital of Pisa said she had a "very complex clinical picture" and serious wasting, which is when a person has significant weight and muscle loss.
On Friday, after undergoing tests and starting treatment, she died after a sudden respiratory crisis and cardiac arrest, the hospital said. The woman was flown to Italy with her mother on one of three Italian air force flights that arrived this week in Rome, Milan and Pisa, carrying a total of 31 patients and their companions.
All the patients suffered from serious congenital diseases, wounds or amputations, the Italian foreign ministry said at the time. So far, more than 180 children and young people from Gaza have been brought to Italy since the war began. The head of the Tuscany region, Eugenio Giani, offered his condolences to the woman's family. The hospital did not elaborate on what caused her condition, but Italian news agencies reported that she was suffering from severe malnutrition. Humanitarian groups, UN agencies and the Palestinian group Hamas have warned of the risk of widespread famine in war-battered Gaza. — AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
7 hours ago
- Observer
Trump drops Ukraine ceasefire demand
Washington - Donald Trump on Saturday dropped his push for a ceasefire in Ukraine in favor of pursuing a full peace accord -- a major shift announced hours after his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin yielded no clear breakthrough. Before the high-stakes meeting in Alaska, securing an immediate cessation of hostilities had been a core demand of Trump, who had threatened "severe consequences" against Russia, and European leaders, including Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, who will now visit Washington on Monday. The shift away from the ceasefire would seem to favor Putin, who has long argued for negotiations on a final peace deal -- a strategy that Ukraine and its European allies have criticized as a way to buy time and press Russia's battlefield advances. Trump spoke with Zelensky and European leaders on his flight back to Washington, saying afterward that "it was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement which would end the war." Ceasefire agreements "often do not hold up," Trump added on his Truth Social platform. This new development "complicates the situation," Zelensky said Saturday. If Moscow lacks "the will to carry out a simple order to stop the strikes, it may take a lot of effort to get Russia to have the will to implement far greater -- -- peaceful coexistence with its neighbors for decades," he said on social media. - 'Harsh reality' - In the call, Trump expressed support for a proposal by Putin to take full control of two largely Russian-held Ukrainian regions in exchange for freezing the frontline in two others, an official briefed on the talks told AFP. Putin "de facto demands that Ukraine leave Donbas," an area consisting of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in eastern Ukraine, the source said. In exchange, Russian forces would halt their offensive in the Black Sea port region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine, where the main cities are still under Ukrainian control. Several months into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia in September 2022 claimed to have annexed all four Ukrainian regions even though its troops still do not fully control any of them. "The Ukrainian president refused to leave Donbas," the source said. Trump notably also said the United States was prepared to provide Ukraine security guarantees, an assurance German Chancellor Friedrich Merz hailed as "significant progress." But there was a scathing assessment of the summit outcome from the European Union's top diplomat Kaja Kallas, who accused Putin of seeking to "drag out negotiations" with no commitment to end the bloodshed. "The harsh reality is that Russia has no intention of ending this war any time soon," Kallas said. - Zelensky back in the White House - The main diplomatic focus now switches to Zelensky's talks at the White House on Monday. An EU source told AFP that a number of European leaders had also been invited to attend. The Ukrainian president's last Oval Office visit in February ended in an extraordinary shouting match, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance publicly berating Zelensky for not showing enough gratitude for US aid. Zelensky said Saturday after a "substantive" conversation with Trump about the Alaska summit that he looked forward to his Washington visit and discussing "all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war." In an interview with broadcaster Fox News after his sit-down with Putin, Trump had suggested that the onus was now on Zelensky to secure a peace deal as they work towards an eventual trilateral summit with Putin. "It's really up to President Zelensky to get it done," Trump said. - European pressure - The leaders of France, Britain and Germany are due to host a video call on Sunday for their so-called "coalition of the willing" to discuss the way forward. In an earlier statement, they welcomed the plan for a Trump-Putin-Zelensky summit but added that they would maintain pressure on Russia in the absence of a ceasefire. Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine raged on, with Kyiv announcing Saturday that Russia had launched 85 attack drones and a ballistic missile during the night. Back in Moscow, Putin said his summit talks with Trump had been "timely" and "very useful." In his post-summit statement in Alaska, Putin had warned Ukraine and European countries not to engage in any "behind-the-scenes intrigues" that could disrupt what he called "this emerging progress."
Observer
10 hours ago
- Observer
International students turn to Asian universities as a refuge
SEOUL, South Korea — For Jess Concepcion, a microbiology student from the Philippines, obtaining a doctorate from a university in the United States had been a dream. It was where most of his academic mentors had studied and done research, and he wanted to follow in their footsteps. But when the United States, under President Donald Trump, started pausing visa interviews during peak season this spring, threatening to deport international students for political speech and slashing funding for academic research, he quickly changed plans. Applications for doctoral programs take years and have to be tailored to specific schools, so he is aiming for programs in Switzerland and Singapore instead. 'That uncertainty made me stop in my tracks and choose another country,' Concepcion, 24, said. 'Immigration policy is quite restrictive, and I'm on a different side of the world. So living in that kind of instability that far away isn't healthy for me.' It's a quandary facing many young people around the world. According to the United Nations, 6.9 million people studied outside their home country in 2022. The United States has long attracted the most foreign students, 1.1 million in the 2023-24 academic year. It's too soon to know whether more foreign students will choose not to attend U.S. schools. But warning signs abound. Major international education search platforms, including IDP and Keystone Education Group, have detected a marked decline in student interest in American programs. Among academic administrators polled by the Institute of International Education this spring, more than usual reported drops in international applications for the coming year. These are not the first signs that American higher education is losing its dominant position. For years, countries in Asia have been strengthening their universities and marketing them to students around the world. With more appealing alternatives, the Trump administration's hostile stance may hasten the decline in U.S. higher education preeminence. 'We're shifting from a world in which there were only a few primary target destination countries to a much more multipolar world,' said Clay Harmon, the executive director of the Association of International Enrollment Management, which represents recruitment agencies. 'It's all adding up to this narrative that 'maybe that's not the right destination for me after all,'' Harmon said. ''And there are a whole bunch of other countries that are eager to take my money instead.'' Asia Steps Up For decades, in the English-speaking world, Oxford and Cambridge in Britain, the Ivy League in the United States, and other name-brand universities in Australia and Canada tended to top application checklists. Gradually, schools in China, Japan, Taiwan and Singapore started showing up in annual rankings of the top universities — and with lower prices. Governments dispatched representatives to college fairs and set goals for the number of students they wanted to bring in every year. So when Trump, soon after starting his second term, began pushing international students away, Asian nations started welcoming students who couldn't continue their studies at American schools. Take South Korea, where Concepcion went for his master's degree after winning a scholarship from the South Korean government that covered living expenses and tuition. He added a year of mandatory language study and enrolled at Korea University in Seoul, where his program starts in earnest this fall. In the spring, Korea University was among several institutions to offer relief measures as the U.S. government began canceling some student visas and terminating funding programs. Another South Korean school, Yonsei University, will open rolling admissions for undergraduate transfers year round starting in 2026 and is planning a customized visiting program for students whose coursework is interrupted in the United States. Trump has added urgency to such plans, but this effort has been underway in Asia for decades. South Korea has for years sent students to other countries, while attracting few from overseas. In the early 2000s, leaders started to think of that imbalance as a kind of trade deficit and set out to boost their international recruitment. They took guidance from a similar effort in Japan, which had about 337,000 foreign students last year and is aiming for 400,000 by 2033. South Korea's latest target was set in 2023: 300,000 international students by 2027. For 2026, Seoul was named the top city for international students in the closely followed Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings. Early on, the South Korean government's work was intended to buoy flagging schools in smaller towns, where low birthrates and emigration to larger cities have shrunk classes of high school graduates. Foreign students are also not subject to tuition caps that apply to domestic students, creating a new revenue stream to keep universities afloat. Meekyung Shin, the director of educational globalization for South Korea's Ministry of Education, said that at first those foreign students were generally expected to return home after their studies. More recently, officials have started to see foreign students as an answer to the nation's labor shortage as well. Seoul established a support center to help foreign students get jobs, and visa policies have been loosened to help them work after graduation. 'Now we are very interested in how we help them decide to stay here,' Shin said. There are about 70,000 students in South Korea from China and 50,000 from Vietnam. Myanmar and Nepal send thousands each year. For South Korean companies, the students offer an opportunity: potential hires who could help expand the business into their home countries or manage overseas factories. Hyundai, for example, makes many of its cars in Vietnam and is trying to sell them in Singapore. Kyle Guadana is a Singaporean student studying at Yonsei University, where he leads the Foreign Student Union. He said Hyundai, among other companies, had reached out directly. 'They are looking for foreigners who will be able to work with them,' Guadana, 24, said. 'They are specifically targeting Southeast Asian students, because they are trying to expand their bases here.' The recruiting drive has had some complications, however. To hit its targets, the government has accepted a wider range of language proficiency tests and lowered the minimum bank balance required to obtain a visa. It has also increased the number of hours students can work in a week. Some students have used university enrollment primarily as a way to earn money in South Korea, which is not otherwise easy to do. That's particularly true outside Seoul, according to Jun Hyun Hong, a professor at Chung-Ang University who was involved in earlier efforts to bring international students to South Korea's higher education system. Local governments are happy to have more people willing to work in factories and on farms, something that colleges facilitate. 'If we focus mainly on achieving the numerical goal,' Hong said, 'and ignore the quality of international students and the educational capacity of the university, there are concerns about whether maintaining these numbers will be sustainable in the long term.' Shin, the education official, said the government was working to ensure the quality of the programs. Right now, international students make up about 10% of the total student population, and she thinks that's a good ratio to maintain. But the larger challenge may be making sure that those who come primarily to study are able to work in South Korea when they graduate — and that they want to stay. Keity Rose Mendes, 21, grew up in Mozambique and received the same scholarship granted to Concepcion, studying industrial engineering at Seoul National University. She chose South Korea for its safety and because she wanted to learn about its manufacturing techniques. But after three years of classes, she felt that collaboration wasn't valued and that foreign students weren't well integrated. 'A lot of them, especially non-Asian international students, just want to finish their studies and leave,' said Mendes, who is the president of the school's International Student Association. 'I wish that the same effort that they're putting into bringing international students, they also tried to put into creating facilities to maintain them here.' Hedging Their Bets For millions of students deciding where to study, the United States is still the leading destination. Degrees from top American universities command societal respect — and lucrative job offers — in countries like South Korea. But even that shine has been dulled by new obstacles since Trump took office, said Pierre Huguet, the CEO of the global admissions consulting firm H&C Education. 'Many saw the U.S. as offering more freedom and an escape from rigid social pressures in Korea,' Huguet said. 'Now they fear visa revocations, invasive online presence reviews, and a chilled campus climate, which is the opposite of what they were hoping for.' Huguet said his clients were focusing on Britain and Australia. The number of South Korean students studying abroad overall has been dropping as the country's universities climb the rankings. And the United States isn't the only developed country to push back against international students. Canada and Australia limited international student visas last year, while Britain raised visa fees and was contemplating shortening postgraduate work visas. 'No country is being extremely welcoming at this stage,' said Yash Sharma, who runs an admissions consultancy called Longshore Education focused on the market in India. 'Everywhere in the English-speaking world, there is anti-immigration sentiment going around.' To add to political uncertainty, post-graduation job opportunities are changing. Tech companies, which have long been a strong draw to the United States, have pulled back on hiring entry-level workers as artificial intelligence reduces the number of people needed to do simpler tasks. That's what ultimately changed Divyank Rawat's mind. After working as a data analyst in India after college, he decided to pursue a master's degree in the United States because he felt it was the only place he could learn certain skills. Rawat, 25, was admitted to a handful of good programs. But after he spoke with other Indians who had recently graduated in the United States, the job market looked grim. Combined with the risk of not getting a student visa and new threats to the three-year, post-graduation period when students are allowed to work using their student visas, he decided to stay in India to work for the time being. 'Let's suppose I end up in the U.S. with $70,000 debt and no kind of job security,' Rawat said. 'It is really scary to imagine that.' He regrets not applying to European programs: 'The mistake was that I didn't have a backup plan.' This article originally appeared in
Observer
10 hours ago
- Observer
Arab countries reject Israeli settlement plan
Sayyid Badr bin Hamad al Busaidy, Foreign Minister, has condemned the statements made by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, in a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of 30 Arab and Islamic countries, as well as the Secretaries-General of the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The statement strongly denounced Netanyahu's remarks regarding the so-called Greater Israel. The joint statement emphasised that Netanyahu's statements represent a blatant violation of international law and stable international relations. They pose a direct threat to Arab national security, state sovereignty; and regional and international peace. Arab and Islamic countries reiterated their commitment to international legitimacy and the UN Charter, particularly the article prohibiting the use or threat of force. They pledged to adopt policies that promote peace and benefit all countries and peoples by prioritising security, stability and development over control and coercion. Furthermore, the statement condemned the approval by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of a settlement plan in the E1 area and his racist rejection of a Palestinian state. These actions were deemed a violation of international law and an attack on the Palestinian people's right to establish an independent state within the 1967 borders. Israel was reminded that it has no sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territory. The foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic countries also rejected the settlement plan and all illegal Israeli measures, citing Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemns Israeli settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territories. They supported the International Court of Justice's Advisory Opinion, which called for an immediate end to the Israeli occupation and reparations for damages caused. Additionally, the ministers warned against Israeli policies aimed at annexing Palestinian territories and expanding settlements in the West Bank. They highlighted the threats posed to Islamic and Christian holy sites, such as the Al Aqsa Mosque, as well as settler terrorism and the displacement of Palestinians. These actions were seen as fuelling violence and hindering prospects for a comprehensive peace. — ONA
