WORLD - The African Mirror

Jun

26

2024

WikiLeaks’ Assange set to be freed after US espionage charge plea deal

WORLD

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty to violating U.S. espionage law, in a deal that will set him free after a 14-year British legal odyssey and allow his return home to Australia. Assange, 52, has agreed to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified U.S. national defence documents, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands. The deal marks the end of a legal saga that has seen Assange spend more than five years in a British high-security jail and seven holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London…

Jun

26

2024

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Israeli airstrikes kill at least 24 in Gaza City, health officials say

WORLD

ISRAELI forces killed at least 24 Palestinians in three separate airstrikes on Gaza City early on Tuesday and the dead included a sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of militant Islamist group Hamas, Gaza health officials and medics said. Israeli tanks also pressed deeper overnight into western areas of Rafah in the enclave's south, blowing up homes, residents said. Two of the Israeli airstrikes hit two schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people, medics said. Another strike on a house in the Shati (Beach) camp, one of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, killed 10 others. The…

Jun

26

2024

By STEPHANIE VAN DEN BERG

International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Russia’s Shoigu and Gerasimov

WORLD

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Sergei Shoigu, the former Russian defence minister, and leading Russian general Valery Gerasimov for alleged crimes committed during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. It brought to eight the number of arrest warrants issued against senior Russian suspects since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. They include Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces charges over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. The court's move was welcomed by Kyiv but dismissed as legally meaningless by Moscow. The Hague-based court said Shoigu and Gerasimov were suspected of having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for directing attacks…

Jun

25

2024

By GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Death toll rises to 20 after gunmen attack Russia’s Dagestan

WORLD

THE death toll from a series of brazen attacks on churches and synagogues in Russia's mainly Muslim region of Dagestan rose to 20 after gunmen went on the rampage in coordinated attacks in two of the republic's most important cities. Gunmen with automatic weapons burst into an Orthodox church and a synagogue in the ancient city of Derbent on Sunday evening, setting fire to an icon at the church and killing a 66-year-old Orthodox priest, Nikolai Kotelnikov. In the city of Makhachkala, about 125 km (75 miles) north on the Caspian Sea shore, attackers shot at a traffic police post…

Jun

25

2024

By The African Mirror

Convicted UK nurse Lucy Letby says she never harmed any babies

WORLD

FORMER nurse Lucy Letby, convicted last year of murdering seven babies and trying to kill six others, told an English court that she had never harmed or intended to harm a child in her care. Letby, 34, was found guilty last August of the multiple murders while she was working as a nurse in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital in Chester, northern England, between June 2015 and June 2016. The former nurse is on trial at Manchester Crown Court charged with one count of attempted murder of a further baby girl, known as Child K, in February 2016. The…

Jun

25

2024

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Israel kills senior Gaza health official, tanks push deeper into Rafah

WORLD

AN Israeli air strike at a medical clinic in Gaza City killed the director of Gaza's Ambulance and Emergency Department, the enclave's health ministry said, while Israel's military said the strike had killed a senior Hamas armed commander. The health ministry said the killing of Hani al-Jaafarawi brought the number of medical staff killed by Israeli fire since Oct 7 to 500. At least 300 others have so far been detained. In a statement, the Israeli military said the strike targeted Mohammad Salah, who it said was responsible for developing Hamas weaponry. "Salah was part of a project to develop…

Jun

24

2024

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Israeli airstrike kills eight at Gaza aid centre, witnesses say

WORLD

EIGHT Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a training college near Gaza City being used to distribute aid, Palestinian witnesses said, as Israeli tanks pushed further into the southern city of Rafah. The strike hit part of a vocational college run by the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA that is now providing aid to displaced families, the witnesses said. "Some people were coming to receive coupons and others had been displaced from their houses and they were sheltering here. Some were filling up water, others were receiving coupons, and suddenly we heard something falling. We ran away, those…

Jun

24

2024

By The African Mirror

Thousands of women march in France against far right

WORLD

THOUSANDS of women took to the streets in cities around France to protest against Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally, as polls indicated the party could win the upcoming parliamentary elections. About 200 women's rights groups and unions organised the marches in dozens of cities, including Paris, saying women's rights come under attack when countries are governed by far-right parties. In Paris, more than 10,000 women demonstrated peacefully, organisers said. In March, France enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, a world first, but some RN lawmakers had opposed the legislation, raising concerns among some of the public about the…

Jun

24

2024

By The African Mirror

One person found dead after Swiss floods

WORLD

EMERGENCYservices found a dead body and kept up a search for two other people missing after flooding and landslides in southern Switzerland, police said. Some 200 people, drones, helicopters and rescue dogs were drafted into the rescue and clean-up effort after heavy rains on Friday caused flooding in the Misox valley in the canton of Grisons, police said. Three people had been reported missing. The body of one person was found in a river, local police commander William Kloter told reporters. Some 124 mm (4.88 inches) of rain fell in the valley on Friday, with 63 mm (2.48 inches) falling in…

Jun

23

2024

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Israeli strikes kill at least 42 in Gaza, enclave’s government media office says

WORLD

AT least 42 people were killed in Israeli attacks on districts of Gaza City in the north of the Palestinian enclave, the director of the Hamas-run government media office said. One Israeli strike on houses in Al-Shati, one of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, killed 24 people, Ismail Al-Thawabta told Reuters. Another 18 Palestinians were killed in a strike on houses in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood. The Israeli military released a brief statement saying: "A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck two Hamas military infrastructure sites in the area of Gaza City." It said more details would be…