Latest news with #US-backed
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First Post
3 hours ago
- Politics
- First Post
'Accept or be annihilated': Israel says Hamas will be 'forced' to back US ceasefire proposal
While Israel has accepted the proposal, which calls for the release of 10 living and 18 dead hostages and a 60-day-long ceasefire of fighting in Gaza, Hamas said that it is still reviewing the deal read more Palestinians struggle to receive cooked food distributed at a community kitchen in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip. AP Israel has warned Hamas to accept the US-backed ceasefire proposal 'or be annihilated', hours after the Palestinian terror group said that the deal, submitted by President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, failed to meet its demands. The Hamas murderers will now be forced to choose: accept the terms of the 'Witkoff Deal' for the release of the hostages – or be annihilated," the country's defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD While Israel has accepted the proposal , which calls for the release of 10 living and 18 dead hostages and a 60-day-long ceasefire of fighting in Gaza, Hamas said that it is still reviewing the deal. The proposal comes months after the two warring parties have been unable to reach a truce, forcing Gaza to enter a new level of humanitarian crisis as Israel blocked aid to the Palestinian region for months, pushing thousands into hunger. Trump says Israel and Hamas 'close' to a deal Meanwhile, Trump has said that he believes a Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is 'very close'. 'They're very close to an agreement on Gaza. We'll let you know about it during the day or maybe tomorrow. And we have a chance of that,' the president said during a joint press conference with Elon Musk. Humanitarian crisis in Gaza The United Nations condemned Friday a group of 'armed individuals' for raiding warehouses in the Palestinian territory of Gaza and looting large amounts of medical supplies. The group 'stormed the warehouses at a field hospital in Deir al-Balah, looting large quantities of medical equipment, supplies, medicines, nutritional supplements that was intended for malnourished children,' said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The stolen aid had been brought into war-ravaged Gaza just a day earlier, he said. 'As conditions on the ground further deteriorate and public order and safety breaks down, looting incidents continue to be reported,' he said. With inputs from agencies
Irish Independent
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Starving Palestinians say they were fired on by Israeli tanks while waiting for food distribution
©UK Independent Today at 21:30 Starving Palestinians say Israeli helicopter gunships and tanks fired around crowds gathered at a new food distribution site in Gaza, as Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial 'aid' plan descended into chaos. Gaza's health ministry said at least one person was killed and 48 wounded in violence on Tuesday when desperate crowds overran the site in Rafah. It was set up by a US-backed foundation, military contractors and the Israeli military, whose soldiers reportedly opened fire.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Islamic States claims its first attacks on new Syrian gov't as bombs allegedly kill soldiers
While the Syrian government said it conducted two raids in Damascus earlier this week, to arrest ISIS operatives, it has not yet acknowledged any attack by the terror group. Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for two bomb attacks on the new Syrian government, which would be the first move against the new Syrian government since it took power in December, according to a war monitoring group and international media reports on Friday. The bombs allegedly killed and wounded multiple government soldiers and members of a government-allied militia, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. ISIS said it had planted a bomb on a "vehicle of the apostate regime" in the desert of the southern province of Sweida last Tuesday and claimed to have killed a member of the US-backed Free Syrian Army in a second bomb attack this week. While the Syrian government said it conducted two raids in Damascus earlier this week to arrest ISIS operatives, it has not yet acknowledged any attack by the terror group. While ISIS's hold on Syria was significantly reduced in 2019 after large-scale efforts by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, small cells have continued to carry out attacks. Kurdish authorities struck a deal with the Syrian government earlier this week to begin clearing camps of ISIS families in eastern Syria, TheJerusalem Post's Seth Frantzman reported. 'THE KURDISH authorities and the Syrian interim government have reached an agreement to empty the notorious al-Hol camp from Syrians and return them to their homes, a Kurdish official said on Monday,' according to a report from Kurdish media Rudaw on Monday. While Syria's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was once a member of a group affiliated with Al-Qaeda, he has since distanced himself from the group in order to seek alliances among Western nations. While Sharaa has warmed ties with the Trump administration, ISIS has planned several attacks against the US. An ISIS-affiliated attack claimed the lives of 14 people in New Orleans in January and only two weeks ago a national guardsman was arrested for allegedly planning an attack in the name of the group. An anonymous senior US defense official told Reuters that following the New Orleans attack, there had been growing concern about the Islamic State increasing its recruiting efforts and resurging in Syria - worries which were heightened when the Assad regime fell. A UN team that monitors Islamic State activities reported to the UN Security Council in July a 'risk of resurgence' of the group in the Middle East and increased concerns about the ability of its Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K), to mount attacks outside the country. European governments viewed ISIS-K as 'the greatest external terrorist threat to Europe,' it said. 'In addition to the executed attacks, the number of plots disrupted or being tracked through the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Levant, Asia, Europe, and potentially as far as North America is striking,' the team said. REUTERS contributed to this report.
The Irish Sun
7 hours ago
- General
- The Irish Sun
Gaza is now ‘the hungriest place on Earth' with entire region at risk of famine, warns United Nations
GAZA has become 'the hungriest place on Earth', the United Nations warned yesterday. It said the territory's entire population was now at risk of famine. Displaced Women and children were among those gathered in Jens Laerke, of the UN's humanitarian agency, said it was the only area on the planet where 100 per cent of the population was at risk of famine. He added: 'Gaza is the hungriest place on Earth .' Israel resumed military operations in March, ending a six-week truce. Deliveries into Gaza are still limited, despite Israel easing a blockade in the face of criticism. Gaza's population of more than 2 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive because Israel's military offensive wiped out most capacity to produce food inside the territory. Most read in The Sun 1 Gaza is the 'hungriest place on Earth, with the whole region at risk of famine Credit: Getty Shocking moment thousands of Gazans overrun US-backed aid site as 'shots fired'
Euronews
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Euronews
So-called IS claims first attack on Syrian forces since al-Assad fall
The so-called Islamic State (IS) group has claimed responsibility for two attacks in southern Syria, including one on government forces that a war monitor described as the first on the Syrian army since the fall of long-time president Bashar al-Assad. The so-called IS group said in a statement that in one attack, a bomb targeting a "vehicle of the apostate regime" detonated, leaving seven soldiers dead or wounded. It said the attack occurred "last Thursday," in the al-Safa area in the southern province of Sweida. In a separate statement, the group said another bomb attack occurred this week, targeting members of the US-backed Free Syrian Army. It claimed that one fighter was killed and three others wounded in that attack. Syria's interim government hasn't commented on either of these claims and a spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack on government forces killed one civilian and wounded three soldiers, describing it as the first such attack to be claimed by the IS group against Syrian forces since the 54-year rule by the al-Assad family ended in December. The extremist group, which once controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, is opposed to the new authority in Damascus led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who was once the head of al-Qaeda's Syria branch, which fought battles against it. Over the past several months, the IS group has claimed responsibility for attacks against the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast. The IS group was defeated in Syria in March 2019 when SDF fighters captured the last sliver of land that the extremists controlled. Since then, its sleeper cells have carried out deadly attacks, mainly in eastern and northeast Syria. In January, state media reported that intelligence officials in Syria's post-al-Assad government thwarted a plan by the group to set off a bomb at a Shiite Muslim shrine south of Damascus. Al-Sharra met with US President Donald Trump in Saudi Arabia earlier this month, when the American leader said that Washington would work on lifting crippling economic sanctions imposed on Damascus since the days of al-Assad. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement after the meeting that Trump urged al-Sharaa to diplomatically recognise Israel, "tell all foreign terrorists to leave Syria" and help the US stop any resurgence of the IS group. Parallel to this, earlier this week the European Union lifted most sanctions on Syria but slapped new ones on people and groups it says participated in attacks on civilians during a wave of violence in the coastal region in March. The EU's foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas had announced plans to lift the sanctions last week, but warned the move was "conditional" and that sanctions could be resumed if the new government doesn't keep the peace. Russia accused Serbia of exporting arms to Ukraine, calling it a "stab in the back" from one of Moscow's longest-standing European allies. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) issued a statement on Thursday claiming that "Serbian defence enterprises, contrary to the 'neutrality' declared by official Belgrade, continue to supply ammunition to Kyiv.' The statement alleged that the export of the Serbian arms to Ukraine was going through NATO intermediaries, "primarily the Czech Republic, Poland and Bulgaria." "Recently, exotic options involving African states have also been used for this purpose," SVR said. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić denied the accusations on Friday, saying that although the contract with the Czech Republic does exist, it does not allow exporting the materiel to another country. "For example, they correctly say that there is a contract with the Czech Republic. But no permission was given, and none of the (ammunition) was delivered" to Ukraine, Vučić told Serbian state broadcaster RTS. He added that he had already discussed the issue of arms exports to Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin recently and that it was agreed that Moscow and Belgrade would create a "working group" to establish how Serbian-made weapons reached Ukraine. This is not the first time Vučić has had to respond to similar claims. The Financial Times reported in June 2024 that Serbian ammunition worth €750 million has made its way indirectly to Ukraine. In March, Belgrade denied it exported arms to Kyiv after Moscow demanded to know if it had delivered thousands of rockets for Ukraine's defence against Russia's all-out invasion. Serbian arms' presence in Ukraine, mostly Soviet-era calibre ammunition adopted as standard and manufactured in the former Yugoslavia, has been publicly discussed since 2023, but it is unclear why the Russian foreign security service decided to react now. The SVR has claimed that the arms sales are being carried out through a "simple scheme using fake end-user certificates and intermediary countries" serving as "a cover for anti-Russian actions". The accusations out of Moscow went even further to say that "the contribution of Serbian defence industry workers to the war unleashed by the West, the outcome of which Europe would like to see as a 'strategic defeat' of Russia, amounts to hundreds of thousands of shells ... as well as a million rounds of ammunition for small arms". 'It seems that the desire of Serbian defence industry workers and their patrons to profit from the blood of fraternal Slavic peoples has made them completely forget who their real friends are and who their enemies are," the statement said. Vučić stated that the attacks on Serbia from the East and the West are "frequent" because Belgrade "leads autonomous and independent policies". Serbia is one of the countries in the Western Balkans that is considered a major candidate for EU membership. At the same time, Vučić has maintained close ties with Russia, including after Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was among a handful of European leaders to attend Putin's Victory Day parade in Moscow on 9 May, a decision Vučić defended by saying he was there to celebrate Serbia's participation in liberating the continent from fascism in World War II. Serbia also refused to join Western sanctions on Russia and hasn't supported most EU statements condemning Moscow's full-scale invasion, although it voted in favour of its condemnation at the UN.
