WORLD - The African Mirror

Oct

14

2023

By HENRIETTE CHACAR, MICHELLE NICHOLS and HUMEYRA PAMUK

Countries urge Israel to hold off on Gaza assault with civilians in firing line

WORLD

COUTRIES urged Israel to hold off on plans for an all-out assault on northern Gaza, where more than a million civilians largely defied its order to evacuate before it goes after Hamas militants who slaughtered Israelis a week ago. Hamas, which controls the densely populated Palestinian territory, vowed to fight until the last drop of blood and told residents to stay put after Israel said they should move to the south within 24 hours. While some heeded the call to leave, by Friday afternoon there was little sign of a mass exodus. "Death is better than leaving," said Mohammad, 20, standing in…

Oct

14

2023

By PASCAL ROSSIGNOL, LAYLI FOROUDI and MICHEL ROSE

Teacher killed in Islamist attack on French school, Macron says

WORLD

A 20-year-old knifeman fatally stabbed a teacher in an attack at a school in the northern France city of Arras that President Emmanuel Macron condemned as "barbaric Islamic terrorism". Two other people were seriously wounded and fighting for their lives, Macron said after visiting the school. "The teacher who was killed stepped in and undoubtedly saved a lot of lives himself," Macron said after paying his respects to the dead teacher, whose body still lay under a cover and surrounded by a pool of blood. Saying the school would reopen on Saturday, he added: "Our choice is made not to give in…

Oct

14

2023

By JONATHAN LANDAY

US must be ready for simultaneous wars with China, Russia, report says

WORLD

THE United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces, strengthening alliances and enhancing its nuclear weapons modernization program, a congressionally appointed bipartisan panel said. The report from the Strategic Posture Commission comes amid tensions with China over Taiwan and other issues and worsening frictions with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. A senior official involved in the report declined to say if the panel's intelligence briefings showed any Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons cooperation. "We worry ... there may be ultimate coordination between them in some way, which gets us to this two-war…

Oct

13

2023

By NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI

Gazans bombarded by Israel have no hope and no escape

WORLD

MOST of the 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have no electricity and no water. And, with hundreds of Israeli strikes raining down on their tiny enclave, they have nowhere to run. The Palestinian territory, one of the most crowded places on Earth, has been under siege since Saturday in a near-constant bombardment that Gazan health officials say has killed more than 1,000 people. The blitz is retaliation for a devastating attack on Israel by Gaza's ruling group Hamas which the Israeli military says killed more than 1,200 people. Gaza's sole power station, which had been working intermittently for…

Oct

13

2023

By HENRIETTE CHACAR, NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and HUMEYRA PAMUK

Israel links Gaza aid to hostages’ release as humanitarian disaster looms

WORLD

ISRAEL said there would be no pause in its siege of the Gaza Strip for aid or evacuations until all its hostages were freed, as Washington urged it to protect civilians and the Red Cross warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, arriving in Tel Aviv on a trip to show solidarity, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that America would always be by Israel's side and give security assistance, but he urged Israel to show restraint "even when it's difficult". Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip, in…

Oct

13

2023

By The African Mirror

Australians to reject Indigenous Voice in referendum, final YouGov poll shows

WORLD

AUSTRALIANS are set to overwhelmingly say 'No' to a proposal to constitutionally recognise the country's Indigenous people in a referendum, one of the final opinion polls ahead of the vote showed. Australians have to vote 'Yes' or 'No' to a question asking whether they agree to alter the 122-year-old constitution to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, and create a body, called the Voice to Parliament, that can provide advice to the government. More than 4 million people have already cast their ballot after early voting began on October 2. With less than two days to go before voting…

Oct

12

2023

By MAAYAN LUBELL and EMILY ROSE

How an Israeli kibbutz ‘paradise’ turned into hell in Hamas attack

WORLD

A baby's crushed crib lying outside a burnt-out home. Corpses strewn on streets. Body bags lined up on an outdoor basketball court. The stench of death everywhere. Just a few days ago this was the sleepy, scenic kibbutz of Kfar Aza, an Israeli farming community of about 750 people, many of them families with young children. Now it's become a charnel house after Hamas gunmen burst out of the Gaza Strip on Saturday and laid waste to the village. "Mothers, fathers, babies, young families killed in their beds, in the projection room, in the dining room, in their garden," Israeli…

Oct

12

2023

By SAMIA NAKHOUL and LAILA BASSAM

Who is Mohammed Deif, the Hamas commander behind the attack on Israel?

WORLD

ISRAEL calls last week's devastating attack by Hamas its 9/11 moment. The secretive mastermind behind the assault, Palestinian militant Mohammed Deif, calls it Al Aqsa Flood. The phrase Israel's most wanted man used in an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of rockets out of the Gaza strip on Saturday signalled the attack was payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque. It was in May 2021, after a raid on Islam's third holiest site that enraged the Arab and Muslim world, when Deif began planning the operation that has killed 1,200 people in Israel and wounded more…

Oct

12

2023

By KRISHNA N. DAS

Exclusive: India allows cough syrup firm linked to Uzbek deaths to re-open factory

WORLD

INDIA'S Uttar Pradesh state has permitted the resumption of most production at a factory owned by Marion Biotech, whose cough syrups Uzbekistan linked to the deaths of 65 children last year, according to an order seen by Reuters. Marion is among three Indian companies whose cough syrups the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies have linked to the deaths of 141 children in Uzbekistan, Gambia and Cameroon since the middle of last year, in one of the world's worst such waves of poisoning. "There's no known case of a lack of quality in other medicines manufactured by the firm," the drug controller of…

Oct

11

2023

By DAN WILLIAMS, NIDAL AL-MUGHRABI and MAAYAN LUBELL

Israel pulverises Gaza after Hamas attack as it collects its dead

WORLD

ISRAELI air strikes hammered Gaza, razing entire districts and filling morgues with dead Palestinians as Israel took revenge for the Hamas assaults that have triggered some of the worst blood-letting in 75 years of conflict. Across the barrier wall enclosing the coastal enclave, Israeli soldiers collected the last of Israel's dead four days after Hamas gunmen rampaged through towns, killing hundreds of people in the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel's history. Hamas militants holding Israeli soldiers and civilians hostage had threatened to execute a captive for each home in Gaza hit, but as night fell on Tuesday there was…