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US Pauses Some Weapons to Israel as Battles Rage Around Rafah
An Israeli tank maneuvers, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near the Israel-Gaza Border, in southern Israel, May 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The Hamas terror group said it was battling Israeli troops on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip’s crowded southern city of Rafah on Wednesday after a US official said Washington had halted a shipment of powerful bombs that Israel could use in military operations.
The United States, which is seeking to stave off a large-scale Israeli offensive in Rafah, said it believes a revised Hamas ceasefire proposal may lead to a breakthrough in an impasse in negotiations, with talks resuming in Cairo on Wednesday.
Israel has threatened a major assault on Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas terrorists it says are holed up there, but Western countries and the United Nations have warned a full-scale attack on the city could worsen an already dire humanitarian situation in the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in the east of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from combat further north in the enclave. Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian terror group, said its fighters attacked Israeli soldiers and military vehicles with heavy artillery near the airport east of Rafah.
Around 10,000 Palestinians have left Rafah since Monday, said Juliette Touma, spokesperson for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number at tens of thousands.
A senior US official said President Joe Biden’s administration paused a shipment of weapons to Israel last week in an apparent response to the expected Rafah offensive. The White House and Pentagon declined to comment.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington had carefully reviewed the delivery of weapons that might be used in Rafah, and as a result paused a shipment consisting of 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs.
This would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its “ironclad” support to Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Washington is Israel‘s closest ally and main weapons supplier.
A senior Israeli official declined to confirm the report: “If we have to fight with our fingernails, then we’ll do what we have to do,” the source said. A military spokesperson said any disagreements were resolved in private.
Israeli tanks rolled across the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Tuesday.
The complex was closed for a second day on Wednesday, according to the Gaza health ministry, but Israel said it was reopening the other crossing in southern Gaza, Kerem Shalom, through which most aid to Gaza has been delivered recently.
The Israeli military said it had uncovered Hamas infrastructure in several locations in eastern Rafah and its troops were conducting targeted raids on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip.
It has told civilians, many of whom have been uprooted several times already, to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, some 20 km (12 miles) away.
Armed groups of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah said in separate statements that gunfights continued in the central Gaza Strip, while residents of northern Gaza reported heavy Israeli tank shelling against eastern areas of Gaza City.
CEASEFIRE TALKS
In Cairo, delegations to negotiations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt, and Qatar reacted positively to their resumption on Tuesday and meetings were expected to continue on Wednesday, two Egyptian sources said.
CIA Director Bill Burns was to travel from Cairo to Israel on Wednesday to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Mossad counterpart, an Israeli government source said.
Israel on Monday declared that a three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because terms had been watered down. White House spokesperson John Kirby said a new text presented by Hamas suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed.”
The proposal included a first phase with a six-week ceasefire, an influx of aid to Gaza, the return of 33 Israeli hostages, alive or dead, and the release by Israel of 30 detained Palestinian children and women for each released Israeli hostage, according to several sources.
Since a week-long ceasefire in November, the only pause so far, the two sides have been blocked by Hamas’ refusal to free more Israeli hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict and Israel‘s insistence on only a temporary halt.
The war began when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting 252 others as hostages. Of those kidnapped, 128 remain hostage in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli figures.
Israel responded with a military campaign in neighboring Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, aimed at freeing the hostages incapacitating the terror group to the point that it can no longer pose a major threat to the Israeli people.
The post US Pauses Some Weapons to Israel as Battles Rage Around Rafah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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