Iran sets up new defence body in wake of Israel and US attacks
Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the country's highest security body, made the decision to establish the Supreme National Defence Council, which will be headed by President Masoud Pezeshkian, the report said.
The council will handle defensive plans and improve the capabilities of Iran's armed forces.
Members will include the speaker of Parliament, the head of the judiciary and the chiefs of military branches and related ministries, the report said.
Damage from a deadly June 13 Israeli airstrike is seen in a building at a residential compound in Tehran, Iran (AP)
The defence, intelligence and foreign ministries are expected to be council members, although the report did not provide those details.
Iran's decision follows a 12-day air war by Israel and the US that led to the deaths of nearly 1,100 people including military chiefs and commanders.
A ceasefire has been in force since shortly after the airstrikes targeted Iran's major nuclear facilities.
Iran had a similar council during the 1980s war between Iran and Iraq that left nearly one million casualties on both sides.
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Irish Examiner
3 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
At least 25 killed by Israeli gunfire while seeking aid, say health officials
Israeli gunfire killed at least 25 people seeking aid on Wednesday, health officials and witnesses said, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will 'allow' Palestinians to leave during an upcoming military offensive in Gaza. Mr Netanyahu wants to realise US President Donald Trump's vision of relocating much of Gaza's population of more than two million people through what the prime minister refers to as 'voluntary migration' – and what critics have warned could be ethnic cleansing. 'Give them the opportunity to leave! First, from combat zones, and also from the Strip if they want,' Mr Netanyahu said in an interview aired on Tuesday with i24, an Israeli TV station, to discuss the planned offensive in some of the territory's most populated areas including Gaza City. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP) 'We are not pushing them out but allowing them to leave.' Witnesses and staff at Nasser and Awda hospitals, which received the bodies, said people were killed on their way to aid distribution sites and while awaiting convoys entering the Gaza Strip. Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Efforts to revive ceasefire talks have resumed after apparently breaking down last month. Hamas and Egyptian officials were set to meet on Wednesday to discuss efforts to stop the war, according to Hamas official Taher al-Nounou. Israel has no plans to send its negotiating team to talks in Cairo, the prime minister's office said. Israel has said it will widen its military offensive against Hamas to the areas of Gaza that it does not yet control, where most of the territory's residents have sought refuge. Those plans have sparked international condemnation and criticism within Israel, and could be intended to raise pressure on Hamas to reach a ceasefire. Israeli soldiers use binoculars to look at damaged buildings in the Gaza Strip, from southern Israel (Ariel Schalit/AP) The militants still hold 50 hostages taken in the October 7 2023 attack that sparked the war. Israel believes around 20 of them are alive. Mr Netanyahu was asked by i24 News if the window had closed on a partial ceasefire deal and he responded that he wanted all of the hostages back, alive and dead. Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty told reporters that Cairo is still trying to advance an earlier proposal for an initial 60-day ceasefire, the release of some hostages and an influx of humanitarian aid before further talks on a lasting truce. Hamas has long called for a comprehensive deal but says it will only release the remaining hostages in return for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The militant group has refused to lay down its arms as Israel has demanded. Israel and South Sudan are in talks about relocating Palestinians to the war-torn East African nation, The Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday. The office of Israel's deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel said on Wednesday that she was arriving in South Sudan for a series of meetings in the first visit by a senior government official to the country, but she did not plan to broach the subject of moving Palestinians. Damaged humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza scattered on the ground next to the border with the Gaza Strip near the Kissufim crossing in southern Israel (Ariel Schalit/AP) In a statement on Wednesday, South Sudan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called reports that it was engaging in discussions with Israel about resettling Palestinians baseless. The AP previously reported that US and Israel have reached out to officials of three East African governments to discuss using their territories as potential destinations for moving Palestinians uprooted from Gaza. Among those killed while seeking aid on Wednesday were 14 Palestinians in the Teina area approximately 3km away from a food distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), according to staff at Nasser hospital. Hashim Shamalah, who was trying to reach the sites, said Israeli troops fired towards them as people tried to get through. Many were shot and fell while fleeing, he said. Five other Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire while trying to reach another GHF distribution site in the Netzarim corridor area, according to Awda hospital and witnesses. The US and Israel support the GHF, an American contractor, as an alternative to the United Nations, which they say allows Hamas to siphon off aid. The UN, which has delivered aid throughout Gaza for decades when conditions allow, denies the allegations. 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UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Tuesday reported the warning from the World Food Programme and said the Gaza Health Ministry told UN staff in Gaza that five people died over the previous 24 hours from malnutrition and starvation. Gaza's Health Ministry says 106 children have died of malnutrition-related causes during the war and 129 adults have died since late June when the ministry started to count deaths among this age group. The UN and its humanitarian partners are doing everything possible to bring aid into Gaza, Mr Dujarric said, but still face significant delays and impediments from Israeli authorities who prevent the delivery of food and other essentials at the scale needed. A Palestinian boy after collecting water from a distribution point in Gaza City (Jehad Alshrafi/AP) Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the 2023 attack. Most of the hostages have been released in ceasefires or other deals. Israel's air and ground offensive has since displaced most of Gaza's population, destroyed vast areas and pushed the territory towards famine. The offensive has killed more than 61,700 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians but says around half were women and children. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The UN and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on war casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.
RTÉ News
4 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Robinson accuses Israel of 'nonsense', 'malicious lying'
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Irish Independent
4 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly in talks with South Sudan to take Gazans as Israeli bombs kill 123 in past day
Mr Netanyahu has previously said he wants to realise US president Donald Trump's vision of relocating much of Gaza's population through what the Israeli leader refers to as "voluntary migration". At least six people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press that Israel was in discussion with the authorities of the war-torn North African country. It was not clear how far the talks had progressed, but the plan, if successful, would amount to transferring people from one war-ravaged region to another. This came as Israel's military pounded Gaza City on Wednesday prior to a planned takeover, with another 123 people killed in the last day according to the Gaza health ministry. The 24-hour death toll was the worst in a week and added to the massive fatalities from the nearly two-year war that has shattered the enclave housing more than 2 million Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated an idea - also enthusiastically floated by US President Donald Trump - that Palestinians should simply leave. "They're not being pushed out, they'll be allowed to exit," he told Israeli television channel i24NEWS. "All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us." Arabs and many world leaders are aghast at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another "Nakba" (catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during a 1948 war. Israel's planned re-seizure of Gaza City - which it took in the early days of the war before withdrawing - is probably weeks away, officials say. That means a ceasefire is still possible though talks have been floundering and conflict still rages. Israeli planes and tanks bombed eastern areas of Gaza City heavily, residents said, with many homes destroyed in the Zeitoun and Shejaia neighbourhoods overnight. Al-Ahli hospital said 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a home in Zeitoun. Tanks also destroyed several houses in the east of Khan Younis in south Gaza too, while in the centre Israeli gunfire killed nine aid-seekers in two separate incidents, Palestinian medics said. Israel's military did not comment. Eight more people, including three children, have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory's health ministry said. That took the total to 235, including 106 children, since the war began. Palestinians and human rights groups have rejected the proposal of Israel to remove Gazans from their homeland, which is in violation of international law. Israel has reportedly floated similar resettlement proposals with other African nations, including Somalia, Egypt, and even Indonesia in Southeast Asia. "I think that the right thing to do, even according to the laws of war as I know them, is to allow the population to leave, and then you go in with all your might against the enemy who remains there," Mr Netanyahu said, without naming South Sudan. For South Sudan, such a deal could help it build closer ties to Israel, now the almost unchallenged military power in the Middle East. It is also a potential inroad to Trump, who broached the idea of resettling Gaza's population in February but appears to have backed away in recent months. Israel's foreign ministry declined to comment and South Sudan's foreign minister did not respond to questions about the talks to AP. A US State Department spokesperson said it doesn't comment on private diplomatic conversations. Israel's 22-month-long air and ground offensive has since displaced most of Gaza's 2.3m population, destroyed vast areas and pushed the territory toward famine. It has killed more than 61,600 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry. Joe Szlavik, the founder of a US lobbying firm working with South Sudan, said he was briefed by South Sudanese officials on the talks. He told the news agency that an Israeli delegation plans to visit the country to look into the possibility of setting up camps for Palestinians there. Edmund Yakani, who heads a South Sudanese civil society group, said he had also spoken to South Sudanese officials about the talks. Efforts to relocate the Palestinians to North Africa have been reportedly ongoing for months, according to Egyptian officials. NBC News reported in March that the Trump administration was working on a plan to permanently relocate up to one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya. A spokesperson for the Trump administration later denied the reports as "untrue". The bid to relocate Palestinians escalated after Mr Trump on February 4 said the US should "take over" the war-battered enclave and rebuild it as "the Riviera of the Middle East" after resettling the Palestinians elsewhere. Mr Trump has since appeared to have backed away from his statement. Israeli officials, along with a controversial US-backed aid group, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), were working to build large-scale camps called 'Humanitarian Transit Areas' inside – and possibly outside – Gaza to house the Palestinian population, according to reports. The $2bn plan, created sometime after February, was submitted to the Trump administration, Reuters reported, citing two sources. The plan, which was widely discussed at the White House, describes the camps as "large-scale" and "voluntary" places where the Gazan population could 'temporarily reside, deradicalise, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so". The GHF started distributing aid on 26 May, following a nearly three-month Israeli blockade that pushed Gaza's population of more than 2 million people to the brink of famine. In a statement, the organisation said it had delivered more than 52 million meals over five weeks. 'Instead of bickering and throwing insults from the sidelines, we would welcome other humanitarian groups to join us and feed the people in Gaza,' the statement said. 'We are ready to collaborate and help them get their aid to people in need.' The UN has called GHF's operation "inherently unsafe" and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. The UN human rights office says it has recorded at least 1,373 killings at GHF aid points and near humanitarian convoys run by other relief groups. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric on Tuesday warned that starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at the highest levels since the war began. At least 121 adults and 101 children have died of malnutrition-related causes during the war. "Against this backdrop, humanitarian supplies entering Gaza remain far below the minimum required to meet people's immense needs," Mr Dujarric said.
