Israeli settlers rampage through a West Bank village, killing 1 Palestinian and wounding 25

A Palestinian wounded in a settler rampage at the Palestine Medical Complex in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Friday, April 12, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 13 April 2024
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Israeli settlers rampage through a West Bank village, killing 1 Palestinian and wounding 25

  • Hamas confirms Mohammad Omar Daraghmeh’s death and his membership of its armed Al-Qassem Brigades

JERUSALEM: Dozens of angry Israeli settlers stormed into a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday, shooting and setting houses and cars on fire. The rampage killed a Palestinian man and wounded 25 others, Palestinian health officials said.
The violence was the latest in an escalation in the West Bank that has accompanied the war in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli rights group said the settlers were searching for a missing 14-year-old boy from their settlement. After the rampage, Israeli troops said they were still searching for the teen.
The killing came after an Israeli raid overnight killed two Palestinians, including a Hamas militant, in confrontation with Israeli forces.




A Palestinian man checks a burnt vehicle after a reported attack by Israeli settlers in the village of Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya, south of nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 11, 2024. (AFP)

Palestinian health officials say over 460 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces since the war erupted in October.
The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din said that settlers stormed into the village of Al-Mughayyir late Friday, searching for the Israeli boy. The group said that settlers were shooting and setting houses on fire in the village.
Videos posted to X by the rights group showed dark clouds of smoke billowing from burning cars as gunshots rang out. A photo posted by the group showed what appeared to be a crowd of masked settlers.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that one man was brought dead to a hospital and 25 were treated for wounds. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said eight of the injured were hit by live fire from settlers.
The deceased man was later identified by his family as 26-year-old Jehad Abu Alia. His father, Afif Abu Alia, said he was shot dead but was unsure whether the fatal bullet was fire by an armed settler or an Israeli soldier.
“My son went with others to defend our land and honor, and this is what happened,” Afif Abu Alia said from a hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where his son’s corpse had been transported.
The attack was condemned by Mohamed Mustafa, the new Palestinian prime minister.
The Israeli army said it was searching for the 14-year-old boy, and that forces had opened fire when stones were hurled at soldiers by Palestinians. It said soldiers also cleared out Israeli settlers from the village.
“As of this moment, the violent riots have been dispersed and there are no Israeli civilians present within the town,” it said.
US officials, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly raised concerns about a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank since Israel’s war with the militant Hamas group in the Gaza Strip began. Rights groups have long accused the military of failing to halt settler violence or punish soldiers for wrongdoing.
Earlier on Friday, two Palestinians were killed in confrontations with Israeli forces in the northern West Bank, Palestinian medics and the military said. Hamas said one of those killed was a local commander.
The military said the target of the soldiers’ raid was Mohammed Daraghmeh, a local Hamas commander. It said Daraghmeh was killed in a shootout with Israeli soldiers who discovered weapons in his car. The army alleged that Daraghmeh had been planning attacks on Israeli targets but provided no evidence. It also said assailants hurled explosives at soldiers.
The Israel-Hamas war started on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, in a surprise attack and incursion into southern Israel. Around 250 people were seized as hostages by the militants and taken to Gaza.
Israel said Friday it had opened a new crossing for aid trucks into hard-hit northern Gaza as ramps up aid deliveries to the besieged enclave. However, the United Nations says the surge of aid is not being felt in Gaza because of persistent distribution difficulties.
Six months of fighting in Gaza have pushed the tiny Palestinian territory into a humanitarian crisis, leaving more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation.
Israeli bombardments and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 33,600 Palestinians and wounded over 76,200, the Health Ministry says. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tally, but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.
Israel says it has killed over 12,000 militants during the war, but it has not provided evidence to back up the claim.

 


Chemical weapons agency chief to meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, sources say

Fernando Arias, Director General. (X @OPCW)
Updated 13 sec ago
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Chemical weapons agency chief to meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, sources say

  • The OPCW has asked the authorities in Syria to secure all relevant locations and safeguard any relevant documentation

DAMASCUS: The head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a global non-proliferation agency, will meet Syrian officials in Damascus on Saturday, three sources familiar with the visit told Reuters.
Director General Fernando Arias was expected to meet interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, two of the sources said, in a sign of Syrian willingness to cooperate with the agency after years of strained relations under now-toppled leader Bashar Assad.
The sudden fall of the Assad government in December brought hope that the country could be rid of chemical weapons.
Following a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of people in 2013, Syria joined the OPCW under a US-Russian deal and 1,300 metric tons of chemical weapons and precursors were destroyed by the international community.
As part of membership, Damascus was supposed to be subjected to inspections. But for more than a decade the OPCW was prevented from uncovering the true scale of the chemical weapons program. Syria’s declared stockpile has never accurately reflected the situation on the ground, inspectors concluded.
When asked about contacts with the OPCW over chemical weapons still in Syria, the country’s new defense minister Murhaf Abu Qasra told Reuters in January that he “does not believe” that any remnants of Syria’s chemical weapons program remained intact.
“Even if there was anything left, it’s been bombed by the Israeli military,” Abu Qasra said, referring to a wave of Israeli strikes across Syria in the wake of Assad’s fall.
Details of the mission to Syria are still being worked out but its key aims will be finding and securing chemical stocks to prevent proliferation risk, identifying those responsible for their use and overseeing the destruction of remaining munitions.
The OPCW has asked the authorities in Syria to secure all relevant locations and safeguard any relevant documentation.
Three investigations — a joint UN-OPCW mechanism, the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification team, and a UN war crimes investigation — concluded that Syrian government forces used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs in attacks during the civil war that killed or injured thousands.
A French court issued an arrest warrant for Assad which was upheld on appeal over the use of banned chemical weapons against civilians. Syria and its military backer Russia always denied using chemical weapons.
The OPCW, a treaty-based agency in The Hague with 193 member countries, is tasked with implementing the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan have neither signed nor acceded to the convention and Israel has signed but not ratified it.

 


US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC

Updated 08 February 2025
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US State Department lays out plans for $7 billion-plus arms sale to Israel as Netanyahu visits DC

  • In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel

WASHINGTON: The State Department has formally told Congress that it plans to sell more than $7 billion in weapons to Israel, including thousands of bombs and missiles, just two days after President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The massive arms sale comes as a fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas holds, even as Trump continues to tout his widely criticized proposal to move all Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop it as an international travel destination.
The sale is another step in Trump’s effort to bolster Israel’s weapons stocks. In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of the bombs over concerns about civilian casualties, particularly during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Trump told reporters that he released them to Israel, “because they bought them.”
According to the State Department, two separate sales were sent to Congress on Friday. One is for $6.75 billion in an array of munitions, guidance kits and other related equipment. It includes 166 small diameter bombs, 2,800 500-pound bombs, and thousands of guidance kits, fuzes and other bomb components and support equipment. Those deliveries would begin this year.
The other arms package is for 3,000 Hellfire missiles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $660 million. Deliveries of the missiles are expected to begin in 2028.
 

 


Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies

People walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings, in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, January 30, 2025. (REUTERS)
Updated 07 February 2025
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Hamas says Israeli block on diggers affecting extraction of hostages’ bodies

  • Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead

GAZA CITY: Hamas on Friday said Israel’s blocking of heavy machinery entering Gaza to clear rubble caused by war was affecting efforts to extract the bodies of hostages.
“Preventing the entry of heavy equipment and machinery needed to remove 55 million tonnes of rubble ... will undoubtedly affect the resistance’s ability to extract from under the rubble the dead prisoners (hostages),” said Salama Marouf, spokesman for Hamas’s media office in Gaza.
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza, including key items such as fuel, tents, and heavy machinery for clearing rubble.

FASTFACT

Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel of slowing down aid deliveries expected under the terms of the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza.

The Israeli government and COGAT, the Israeli Defense Ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, have rejected the accusation.
Of the 251 hostages Hamas seized in its unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, 76 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military has confirmed are dead.
Hamas’ armed wing released the names of three captives it said would be freed on Saturday in a fifth hostage-prisoner swap as part of an ongoing agreement with Israel.
“Within the framework of the Al-Aqsa Flood deal for the prisoner exchange, the (Ezzedine) Al-Qassam Brigades have decided to release” the three hostages, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the armed wing, said on Telegram.

 


Khamenei warns against negotiating with US

Updated 07 February 2025
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Khamenei warns against negotiating with US

  • Trump, who returned to the White House on Jan. 20, reinstated on Tuesday his “maximum pressure” policy toward Iran over allegations the country is seeking to develop nuclear weapons

TEHRAN: Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said on Friday that there should not be negotiations with the US, days after US President Donald Trump called for a new nuclear deal.
“You should not negotiate with such a government. It is unwise, it is not intelligent, it is not honorable to negotiate,” Khamenei said during a meeting with army commanders. The US had previously “ruined, violated, and tore up” a 2015 nuclear deal, he said, adding that “the same person who is in power now tore up the treaty.”
On Wednesday, Trump suggested striking a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran, adding in his social media post that Tehran “cannot have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump, who returned to the White House on Jan. 20, reinstated on Tuesday his “maximum pressure” policy toward Iran over allegations the country is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes and denies any intention to develop atomic weapons.
Following the policy’s reinstatement, Washington on Thursday announced financial sanctions on entities and individuals accused of shipping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Iranian crude oil to China.
Tehran on Friday condemned the sanctions as “illegal,” saying they were “categorically unjustified and contrary to international rules.”
“We must understand this correctly: they should not pretend that if we sit down at the negotiating table with that government (the US administration), problems will be solved,” Khamenei said.
“No problem will be solved by negotiating with America,” he said, citing previous “experience.”
Khamenei also warned of reciprocal measures if the US threatened or acted against Iran.
“If they threaten us, we will threaten them. If they carry out this threat, we will carry out our threat. If they attack the security of our nation, we will attack their security without hesitation,” he said.
During President Trump’s first term, which ended in 2021, Washington withdrew from the landmark nuclear deal that had imposed curbs on Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Tehran adhered to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action deal until a year after Washington pulled out but then began rolling back its commitments. Efforts to revive the agreement have since faltered.
Khamenei said Iran was “very generous” during the negotiations culminating in the deal, but it “did not achieve the intended results.”
Iranian political expert Afifeh Abedi said Khamenei’s remarks highlight “a serious concern” that negotiations “will result in the US breaching its commitments.”
“Iran understands that Trump’s willingness to negotiate is a disingenuous, reactionary move driven by other objectives rather than a genuine commitment to reaching an agreement,” she said.
Iran has repeatedly expressed a willingness to revive the nuclear deal, and President Masoud Pezeshkian has called for an end to the country’s isolation.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recently said that the new US administration should work to regain Tehran’s trust if it wants a new round of nuclear talks.
Western sanctions, especially since the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, have taken a toll on millions of Iranians struggling to make ends meet amid high inflation and a plunging currency.
Khamenei acknowledged this on Friday, saying, “almost most segments of the population have some problems,” but adding they could be solved internally.
The current “respected government can reduce the people’s livelihood problems,” he said.
Without directly mentioning Gaza, Khamenei said on Friday the US administration was trying “to change the map of the world.”
“Of course, it is only on paper, it has no basis in reality,” he said.

 


Scholz vows support for ‘free and safe’ Syria

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. (AP)
Updated 07 February 2025
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Scholz vows support for ‘free and safe’ Syria

  • German Chancellor stresses ‘importance of the fight against terrorism’

BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Syria’s President Ahmed Al-Sharaa on Friday that Berlin was ready to support the transition to a “free and safe” future after the ouster of Bashar Assad.

Scholz expressed Berlin’s “willingness to support the reconstruction of Syria so that Syria can become a free and safe home for all” in an hour-long conversation with Al-Sharaa, the chancellor’s spokesman, Steffen Hebestreit, said in a statement.
In his first call with the new Syrian leader, Scholz “congratulated the Syrian people on their success in ending the Assad regime’s reign of terror.”
Al-Sharaa was appointed as Syria’s president at the end of January after militants toppled Assad, ending more than five decades of the family’s iron-fisted rule.
Scholz told the new Syrian leader he needed to lead an “inclusive political process ... that allows all Syrians, regardless of their ethnic or religious group,to participate.”
The chancellor also stressed “the ongoing importance of the fight against terrorism for security in Syria,” according to the statement.
Scholz said that Germany would work with European and international partners in this regard.
Al-Sharaa has been invited to visit Germany, his office said on Friday following the phone call.
The invitation came two days after Al-Sharaa’s office announced he had been invited to visit France.
Scholz and Al-Sharaa agreed on Syria’s need for an inclusive political process that allows the participation of all Syrians and provides rights and protection, the German spokesperson said.
“The Federal Chancellor underlined the ongoing importance of the fight against terrorism for security in Syria, the region and worldwide,” the spokesperson added.
Al-Sharaa has made a push to rebuild Syria’s diplomatic ties since his Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, spearheaded the overthrow of Assad.
However, the country faces a difficult transition amid unresolved territorial and governance challenges. Armed forces in the south, including from the Druze minority, have responded cautiously to the new authority in Damascus.
Also on Friday, Human Rights Watch warned that US aid suspensions could worsen “life-threatening conditions” in camps holding relatives of suspected extremists in northeast Syria, urging Washington to maintain support.
Kurdish-run camps and prisons in the region still hold around 56,000 people with alleged or perceived links to Daesh, years after the extremists’ territorial defeat.
They include suspects locked up in prisons, as well as the wives and children of Daesh fighters held in the Al-Hol and Roj internment camps.
“The US government’s suspension of foreign aid to non-governmental organizations operating in these camps is exacerbating life-threatening conditions, risking further destabilization of a precarious security situation,” HRW said in a statement.
The rights group said the aid freeze could “limit the provision of essential services for camp residents,” citing international humanitarian workers.