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RIYADH: Saudi Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Waleed bin Abdulkarim Al-Khuraiji met his Indonesian counterpart Pahala Nugraha Mansury in Jakarta on Wednesday, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The two sides reviewed ways to strengthen bilateral ties and discussed issues of mutual interest.
Beirut: Israel said it pounded Lebanon’s Hezbollah, just hours after the group’s leader vowed retribution for deadly explosions that targeted its communication devices, killing 37 people and wounding thousands.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah blamed Israel for the explosion of thousands of its operatives’ pagers and radios in attacks that spanned two days this week. Israel has yet to comment on the attacks.
Speaking for the first time since the deadly device sabotage, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday that Israel would face retribution.
Describing the attacks as a “massacre” and a possible “act of war,” Nasrallah said Israel would face “just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
As he delivered his address, Israeli fighter jets roared over Beirut, their sonic booms shaking buildings and sending residents scrambling for cover.
Hours later, Israel’s military said its jets hit “approximately 100 launchers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites, consisting of approximately 1,000 barrels” set to be fired immediately.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel struck the south at least 52 times. It was one of the heaviest Israeli bombardments of south Lebanon since the border exchanges erupted last October.
Hezbollah meanwhile said it launched at least 17 attacks on military sites in northern Israel.
The device blasts and Thursday’s barrage of air strikes came after Israel announced it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon where it has been trading fire with Hezbollah.
For nearly a year, Israel’s firepower has been focused on Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily exchanges with Hezbollah militants.
International mediators have repeatedly tried to avert a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah and staunch the regional fallout of the war in Gaza, started by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Hezbollah maintains its fight is in support of Hamas, and Nasrallah vowed the attacks on Israel will continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts.
The cross-border exchanges of fire have killed hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens in Israel, including soldiers. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have been forced to flee their homes.
Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah will pay an increasing price” as Israel tries to “ensure the safe return” of its citizens to areas near the border.
“We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he said.
Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war.”
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the attacks set for Friday, he said Lebanon had filed a complaint against “Israel’s cyber-terrorist aggression that amounts to a war crime.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Israel faces “a crushing response from the resistance front” after the blasts, which wounded Tehran’s ambassador in Beirut.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been scrambling to salvage efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, called for restraint by all sides.
“We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a ceasefire in Gaza, he said as he joined European foreign ministers in Paris to discuss the widening crisis.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden still believes a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah is “achievable.”
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, in Madrid, called for a new peace conference aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas’s October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable.
In the latest Gaza violence, the territory’s civil defense agency said an air strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp killed eight people. Another six people, including children, were killed in a separate strike on an apartment in Gaza city, it added.
In Lebanon, the influx of so many casualties following the blasts overwhelmed medics and triggered panic.
“What happened in the last two days is so frightening. It’s terrifying,” Lina Ismail told AFP by phone from the eastern city of Baalbek.
“I took away my daughter’s power bank and we even sleep with our mobile phones in a separate room,” she added in a trembling voice.
The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said.
The country’s mission to the United Nations concurred, saying in a letter that the probe showed “the targeted devices were professionally booby-trapped... before arriving in Lebanon, and were detonated by sending emails to the devices.”
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were recently imported and appeared to have been “sabotaged at source.”
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the pagers that exploded were produced by the Hungary-based BAC Consulting on behalf of Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. It cited intelligence officers as saying BAC was part of an Israeli front.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary.”
Kyiv: EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said Friday that she had arrived in Kyiv to offer support ahead of winter, as Russia keeps up its bombing campaign of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
“My 8th visit to Kyiv comes as the heating season starts soon, and Russia keeps targeting energy infrastructure,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, along with a picture of her at a rail station.
“We will help Ukraine in its brave efforts. I come here to discuss Europe’s support. From winter preparedness to defense, to accession and progress on the G7 loans.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dragged on for more than 30 months, with Ukraine now controlling parts of Russia’s Kursk region while Moscow presses an advance into eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine has lobbied its allies to allow it to use donated weapons to strike “legitimate” military targets deep in Russian territory.
The United States and Britain have been discussing allowing it to do just that — but EU states remain divided over the issue.
On Thursday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on EU countries to allow Kyiv to use Western weapons to strike military targets inside Russia.
Washington currently authorizes Ukraine to only hit Russian targets in occupied parts of Ukraine and some in Russian border regions directly related to Moscow’s combat operations.
SINGAPORE: Oil prices, which eased on Friday, were on track to end higher for a second straight week following a large cut in US interest rates and declining global stockpiles.
Brent futures, which were trading 26 cents or 0.4 percent lower at $73.62 a barrel at 8:27 a.m. Saudi time on Friday, gained 4.3 percent this week.
US WTI crude futures, which were down 15 cents, or 0.2 percent at $71.80 a barrel, registered weekly gains of 4.8 percent.
The benchmarks have been recovering after they fell to near three year-lows on Sept. 10, and have registered gains in five of the seven sessions since then.
Prices pared some gains on Friday, after rising more than 1 percent on Thursday following the US central bank’s decision to cut interest rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday. Interest rate cuts typically boost economic activity and energy demand, but some also it as a sign of a weak US labor market.
“Prices had been under pressure in recent months amid concerns demand would weaken, as tight monetary policies stifled economic activity,” analysts at ANZ Research said in a note.
“Easing monetary policy helped reinforce expectations that the US economy will avoid a downturn,” ANZ said.
Also supporting prices were a decline in US crude inventories, which fell to a one-year low last week.
A counter-seasonal oil market deficit of around 400,000 barrels per day will support Brent crude prices in the $70 to $75 a barrel range during the next quarter, Citi analysts said on Thursday, but added prices could plunge in 2025.
Crude prices were also being supported by rising tensions in the Middle East. Walkie-talkies used by Lebanese armed group Hezbollah exploded on Wednesday following similar explosions of pagers the previous day.
Security sources said Israeli spy agency Mossad was responsible, but Israeli officials did not comment on the attacks.
Weak demand from China’s slowing economy was weighing on prices, with refinery output in China slowing for a fifth month in August. China’s industrial output growth also slowed to a five-month low last month, and retail sales and new home prices weakened further.
WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza is unlikely before President Joe Biden leaves office in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them. Those bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday before the report was published.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said two weeks ago that 90 percent of a ceasefire deal had been agreed upon.
The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.
Two obstacles have been especially difficult: Israel’s demand to keep forces in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The United States has said a Gaza ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears the conflict could widen.
Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire proposal on May 31 that he said at the time Israel agreed to. As the talks hit obstacles, officials have for weeks said a new proposal would soon be presented.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
ISLAMABAD: Babar Azam on Thursday became the first Pakistani batter to register 30 or more List-A centuries as he smashed a brilliant 104 runs to guide Allied Bank Stallions to a victory over Engro Dolphins in the Champions One-Day Cup at Iqbal Stadium in Faisalabad.
For the second consecutive game Dolphins failed to chase a total as they could only reach 97 runs in pursuit of the 272-run target set by Stallions.
Babar hit an unbeaten 104 off 100 balls with the help of seven fours and three sixes, including a boundary on penultimate ball of the innings to bring up his record century.
“Babar Azam smashed his 30th List-A century, becoming the first Pakistan batter to register 30 or more List-A centuries,” the Pakistan Cricket Board said in a statement.
The List-A cricket refers to 50-over domestic matches. The ton comes as a major sigh of relief for Babar, who’s had a poor form over the past few months.
Babar has failed to score a half-century in the last eight Test matches he has played and has also failed to deliver stellar performances in the last two ICC cricket world cups in India and the United States.
Yasir Khan (46, 58b, 5x4s), Shan Masood (34, 36b, 3x4s) and Tayyab Tahir (33, 49b, 4x4s) were the other notable contributors. In turn, Mehran Mumtaz (3-14) and Jahandad Khan (3-18) picked up three wickets each as Dolphins fell for a paltry 97 in just 25 overs.
After Stallions won the toss and elected to bat first, Shan and Yasir provided a solid opening partnership of 76 runs before falling in 13th and 17th overs, respectively. Babar and Tayyab stitched a 57-run third-wicket partnership before the latter fell in the 30th over.
Hussain Talat chipped in with 23 off 25 balls with the help of two fours while also adding 46 with Babar for the fifth wicket. The eighth-wicket partnership between Babar and Haris Rauf stretched for 41 runs in 23 balls with the latter only contributing three runs. All six Dolphins bowlers picked up one wicket each.
Jahandad’s three-wicket burst with the new ball left Dolphins at 40-3 before the other bowlers struck at regular intervals as they lost remaining seven wickets for just 57 runs. Abrar Ahmed dismissed the top scorers for Dolphins, Sahibzada Farhan (32, 36b, 6x4s) and Asif Ali (21, 28b, 3x4s). Haris Rauf bagged two wickets as well.
Stallions made it two out of three wins as they qualified for the playoff stage, along with UMT Markhors and Lake City Panthers, while the Dolphins faced their third consecutive defeat. Lions and Dolphins are fighting for the fourth place in the playoff stage and will face each other on September 22.
