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Nahar Net
a day ago
- Politics
- Nahar Net
UN calls for 'independent' investigation after Gaza aid deaths
by Naharnet Newsdesk 02 June 2025, 15:00 U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for an independent investigation into the deaths of at least 31 Palestinians near a U.S.-backed aid distribution site in Gaza, after rescuers blamed the deaths on Israeli gunfire. "I am appalled by the reports of Palestinians killed and injured while seeking aid in Gaza yesterday. It is unacceptable that Palestinians are risking their lives for food," Guterres said in a statement. "I call for an immediate and independent investigation into these events and for perpetrators to be held accountable." On Monday, another Israeli strike on a residential building in the Gaza Strip killed 14 people, mostly women and children, according to health officials. The Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals confirmed the toll from the strike in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, saying five women and seven children were among those killed. Israel's military campaign has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of the population. Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in return for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli pullout. Israel has vowed to continue the war until all the hostages are returned, and Hamas is defeated or disarmed and sent into exile. It has said it will maintain control of Gaza indefinitely and facilitate what it refers to as the voluntary emigration of much of its population. Palestinians and most of the international community have rejected the resettlement plans, viewing them as forcible expulsion.
Japan Today
2 days ago
- Health
- Japan Today
Over 30 killed near aid site in Gaza
A Palestinian, wounded in an Israeli strike, receives treatment in the Intensive Care Unit at Nasser Hospital, according to ministry of health, following an Israeli strike, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 1, 2025. REUTERS/Hatem Khaled By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Hatem Khaled More than 30 Palestinians were killed and dozens more injured on Sunday in southern Gaza near a humanitarian aid distribution site run by a U.S. company, according to local health officials. Witnesses said the Israeli military had opened fire as Palestinians gathered to collect food in Rafah. The military denied it had fired towards civilians. It also later released what it said was drone footage that showed gunmen firing on people trying to collect looted humanitarian aid in Khan Younis, a nearby city in the south of the enclave. The footage was undated and only one person armed with a rifle was clearly visible. The military did not identify the alleged gunmen and Reuters could not immediately verify the footage. The U.S. company running aid distribution sites in Rafah and Netzarim said that it had distributed aid without incident. Reuters could not independently verify what took place. The head of the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, wrote on X that international medics in Gaza had reported there were "mass casualties including scores of injured & killed among starving civilians due to gunshots". A series of incidents have underscored the insecurity around aid delivery to Gaza, following the easing of an almost three-month Israeli blockade last month. "There are martyrs and injuries. Many injuries. It is a tragic situation in this place. I advise them that nobody goes to aid delivery points. Enough,' paramedic Abu Tareq said at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said paramedics had recovered the bodies of 23 Palestinians and evacuated another 23 injured people from the aid collection site area in Rafah. Local health authorities said at least 31 bodies had so far arrived at Nasser Hospital. The U.S.-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the aid distribution site in Rafah, denied anyone was killed or injured near its site and said that all of its distribution had taken place without incident. It accused Palestinian militant group Hamas of fabricating "fake reports". GFH released undated footage that it said showed that aid was distributed at one site without incident. Reuters could not independently verify the footage, which appeared to show dozens of people gathering around piles of boxes. INITIAL INQUIRY Israel's military said in a statement that findings from an initial inquiry indicated soldiers had not fired on civilians while they were near or within the aid distribution site. GHF is a U.S.-based entity backed by the U.S. and Israeli governments that began providing aid in Gaza last month, bypassing traditional aid groups. The group has been widely criticized by the international community, with U.N. officials saying its aid plans would only foment forced relocation of Palestinians in Gaza and more violence. Residents and medics said Israeli soldiers fired from the ground at a crane nearby that overlooks the area, and a tank had opened fire at thousands of people who were en route to get aid from the site in Rafah. Reuters footage showed ambulance vehicles carrying injured people to Nasser Hospital. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office accused Israel of using aid as a weapon, "employed to exploit starving civilians and forcibly gather them at exposed killing zones, which are managed and monitored by the Israeli military". Israel denies that people in Gaza are starving because of its actions, saying it is facilitating aid deliveries and pointing to its endorsement of the new GHF distribution centers and its consent for other aid trucks to enter Gaza. U.S. President Donald Trump said last month that a lot of people in Gaza were "starving". Israel accuses Hamas of stealing supplies intended for civilians and using them to entrench its hold on Gaza. Hamas denies looting supplies and has executed a number of suspected looters. Reda Abu Jazar said her brother was killed as he waited to collect food near the Rafah aid distribution centre. "Let them stop these massacres, stop this genocide. They are killing us," she said, as Palestinian men gathered for funeral prayers. UNRWA's Lazzarini said in his statement on X that "aid distribution has become a death trap" and adding that aid distribution should be "only through the United Nations including UNRWA". The Red Crescent also reported that 14 Palestinians were injured on Sunday near a separate site in central Gaza, also operated by GHF. CEASEFIRE TALKS FALTER Israel and Hamas meanwhile traded blame for the faltering of a new Arab and U.S. mediation bid to secure a temporary ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza by Hamas, in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails. Hamas said on Saturday it was seeking amendments to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal, but Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff rejected the group's response as "totally unacceptable". Egypt and Qatar said on Sunday they are continuing efforts to converge views and overcome disagreements to reach a ceasefire. Dozens of Palestinians marched on Sunday at the funeral of a Gaza doctor, Hamdi Al-Najjar, who was critically injured in late May in an airstrike that killed all but one of his 10 children. Najjar died late on Saturday. The Israeli military has confirmed it conducted an air strike on Khan Younis that day, but said it was targeting suspects in a structure that was close to Israeli soldiers. The military is looking into claims that "uninvolved civilians" were killed, it said, adding that the military had evacuated civilians from the area before the operation began. Israel began its offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli tallies, and saw 251 taken as hostages into Gaza. Israel's campaign has devastated much of Gaza, killing more than 54,000 Palestinians and destroying most buildings. Much of the population now lives in shelters in makeshift camps. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
NDTV
26-05-2025
- Science
- NDTV
Lesser Flamingos Lose 1 Of Only 4 Breeding Sites To Sewage In South Africa
Kimberley: Until the last half-decade, the majestic lesser flamingo had four African breeding sites: two salt pans in Botswana and Namibia, a soda lake in Tanzania, and an artificial dam outside South Africa's historic diamond-mining town of Kimberley. Now it only has three. Years of raw sewage spilling into Kamfers Dam, the only South African water body where lesser flamingos congregated in large enough numbers to breed, have rendered the water so toxic that the distinctive pink birds have abandoned it, according to conservationists and a court judgment against the local council seen by Reuters. Lesser flamingos are currently considered near-threatened, rather than endangered, by the International Union for Conservation of Nature: there are 2-3 million left, four-fifths of them spread across Africa, the rest in a smaller area of South Asia. But they are in steep decline, and the poisoning of one of their last few breeding sites has worsened their plight dramatically. Tania Anderson, a conservation biologist specialising in flamingos, told Reuters the IUCN was about to increase its threat-level to "vulnerable", meaning "at high risk of extinction in the wild", owing largely to their shrinking habitats of salty estuaries or soda lakes shallow enough for them to wade through. "It's really very upsetting," Anderson said of the sewage spills in Kamfers Dam. "Flamingos play a pivotal role in maintaining the water ecosystems of our wetlands." A 2021 study in Biological Conservation found sewage threatens aquatic ecosystems across a vast area of the planet. Although 200 nations came together at the U.N. COP16 biodiversity summit in Colombia last year to tackle threats to wildlife, no agreement was reached. 'They just Disappeared' Footage taken by the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa in May 2020 shows Kamfers Dam turned flamboyant pink with flamingos. When Reuters visited this month, there were none. A closer look at the water revealed a green sludge that bubbled and stank of human waste. "It was a sea of pink," Brenda Booth recalled, as she gazed over the bird-free lake located on the farm she owns, dotted with acacia trees and antelope. "They all just disappeared," said Booth, who last month secured the court order compelling the African National Congress-run municipality in charge of Kimberley, a city of 300,000, to fix the problem. Over the years, the treatment plant "became progressively dysfunctional to the point where ... approximately 36 megalitres a day of untreated sewage was being discharged into the dam," said Adrian Horwitz, the lawyer bringing the case in the High Court of South Africa, Northern Cape division. Municipality manager Thapelo Matlala told Reuters thieves had vandalised the plant and stolen equipment, grinding it to a halt. "We are working on a new strategy for ... repairing the damage," he said outside his office, adding that this needed 106 million rand ($5.92 million), money the council didn't have. Failure to deliver services was one of the main reasons the ANC lost its 30-year-strong majority in last year's elections. Lesser flamingos mostly eat spirulina, a blue-green algae - filtering it through their beaks. This limits them to alkaline water bodies, largely in East Africa's Rift Valley. They're fussy about where they breed, with just three sites in India alongside the remaining three in Africa. Flamingos began breeding at Kamfers Dam in 2006, said Ester van der Westhuizen-Coetzer, wetlands specialist for local diamond miner Ekapa Group, as she waded through grassland at the edge of another lake where she had spotted a flock. In 2020, there were 71,000 on the dam, with up to 5,000 new chicks each season. "They've missed three or four breeding seasons," she said, and many also died of botulism, a disease that flourishes in waste. Sewage has become a problem across South Africa, where few treatment plants are in working order, and if nothing is done, "the whole system will degrade and blow up," she said. "That will have a huge impact, and not only on flamingos."
23-05-2025
- Politics
UN expert says Guatemalan prosecutor's office using criminal law to pursue opponents
GUATEMALA CITY -- A United Nations expert warned Friday at the conclusion of her two-week visit that Guatemala's prosecutor's office is increasingly using criminal law against former prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys, journalists and others. Margaret Satterthwaite, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, traveled the country meeting with judges, lawyers, lawmakers and others, including Guatemala's chief prosecutor. 'The instrumental use of criminal law by the Prosecutor General's Office appears to amount to a systematic pattern of intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights, targeted at specific groups,' Satterthwaite wrote in her preliminary report. 'This persecution appears to be intensifying, as those who have sought to end impunity and corruption, defend human rights, or speak out against abuses of power increasingly face digital harassment, threats, and criminal charges.' The office is led by Consuelo Porras, who has been sanctioned by the United States and other countries and accused of being an obstacle to corruption investigations. Satterthwaite met with Porras and her staff. They told Satterthwaite that they acted within the law, denied using criminal law to pursue opponents and said they were the real victims of attacks by the executive branch and its allies, the U.N. expert said. 'Criminal charges have been directed at more than 60 justice operators and defense or human rights lawyers,' Satterthwaite said, noting that more than 50 'justice operators' have been forced into exile by the prosecutor's office. Porras' office said later that it did not agree with Satterthwaite's preliminary report, because it did not reflect 'the complex work that we do, nor the exhaustive information that was provided.' 'We energetically reject the idea of a 'criminalization of sectors,'" the office said. 'Our actions are based on serious, objective investigations that strictly adhere to the Guatemalan legal framework.'
UPI
23-05-2025
- Politics
- UPI
Nazi criminals allegedly paid $200M in bribes to Perón government
Then U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon speaks near a portrait of former Argentinean President Juan Domingo Peron and his wife Eva Duarte de Peron, during a visit to the Bicentenary Museum at the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2011. File photo by Leo La Valle/EPA-EFE ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay, May 23 (UPI) -- Recently declassified files suggest that Nazi criminals may have paid $200 million in gold bribes to Argentine authorities to secure refuge in the country after World War II. The files indicate German submarines transported the gold to Argentina's southern coast, where it was delivered to Eva Duarte, wife of then-President Juan Domingo Perón. The money was reportedly later handled by German bankers Richard von Frente, Ricardo Stauch and Rodolf Freude. The released material includes 1,850 documents compiled into seven files dating from 1950 to 1980. The records confirm that Third Reich fugitives arrived in Argentina beginning in 1945 with the protection of Perón, and that their arrival was not isolated but part of a larger effort. Nazi ideology had gained notable support in Argentina as early as the 1930s. On April 10, 1938, nearly 10,000 people attended a rally organized by the German embassy at Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires. Perón was reportedly an admirer of fascist aspects of Nazi Germany. "The German government encouraged that sympathy by promising major trade concessions after the war. Argentina was full of Nazi spies. Argentine officers and diplomats held important posts in Axis Europe," said Christopher Minster, a Latin American history and literature expert, in an interview with ThoughtCo. Among the most prominent Nazis who found refuge in Argentina were Josef Mengele, known as the "Angel of Death," Adolf Eichmann, one of the main architects of the Holocaust and leader of the so-called "Final Solution," and Josef Schwammberger, who commanded the Krakow concentration camp from 1942 to 1944. Mengele evaded capture for years, living under a false identity in Argentina and Paraguay. He drowned off a Brazilian beach in 1979 and was buried under the name Wolfgang Gerhard. Eichmann was captured by Mossad in a covert operation and brought to Israel, where he was tried and executed by hanging on June 1, 1962. He had entered Argentina under the alias Ricardo Klement. Schwammberger was arrested in 1987 and extradited to Germany, where he was sentenced to life in prison.
