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BAGHDAD: Iraq on Saturday condemned retaliatory US strikes against pro-Iran armed groups on its territory as a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty,” warning of “disastrous consequences” for the country and beyond.
Friday’s strikes in western Iraq near the Syrian border are a “violation of Iraqi sovereignty” and will bring “disastrous consequences for the security and stability of Iraq and the region,” General Yehia Rasool, a spokesman for Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani, said in a statement.
JERUSALEM: Britain’s foreign minister, David Lammy, on Friday called a deadly Israeli settler attack on a Palestinian village “abhorrent” and condemned it “in the strongest of terms.”
“The scenes overnight of the burning and the torching of buildings, of the Molotov cocktails thrown at cars... and chasing of people from their homes is abhorrent, and I condemn it in the strongest of terms,” he told reporters during a visit to Jerusalem.
GENEVA: UN agencies on Friday called for two seven-day breaks in the fighting in Gaza to vaccinate more than 640,000 children against polio, which has been detected in the wastewater.
The UN’s health and children’s agencies said they had drawn up detailed plans to reach children across the besieged Palestinian territory, starting later this month.
But that would require pauses in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said.
They said they were planning two rounds of a vaccination campaign across the Gaza Strip, starting in late August, against type 2 poliovirus (cVDPV2).
Last month, it was announced that type 2 poliovirus had been detected in environmental surveillance samples collected in Gaza on June 23.
“WHO and UNICEF request all parties to the conflict to implement humanitarian pauses in the Gaza Strip for seven days to allow for two rounds of vaccination campaigns to take place,” they said.
A WHO spokeswoman said they were asking for seven days during each round.
“These pauses in fighting would allow children and families to safely reach health facilities and community outreach workers to get to children who cannot access health facilities for polio vaccination,” the statement said.
“Without the humanitarian pauses, the delivery of the campaign will not be possible.”
“The Gaza Strip has been polio-free for the last 25 years,” said the WHO and UNICEF.
“Its re-emergence, which the humanitarian community has warned about for the last 10 months, represents yet another threat to the children in the Gaza Strip and neighboring countries.
“A ceasefire is the only way to ensure public health security in the Gaza Strip and the region.”
During each round of the campaign, the health ministry in Gaza, alongside UN agencies, would provide “two drops of novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) to more than 640,000 children under 10 years of age.”
More than 1.6 million doses of nOPV2 were expected to transit through Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport “by the end of August,” the statement added.
Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious. It can cause deformities and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war that resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
On Thursday the toll from Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza passed 40,000, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant casualties.
RIYADH: Members of the international community gathered in Switzerland for Sudan ceasefire talks on Friday, where a joint statement was issued calling for the safe passage of aid groups into Sudan.
In the statement, Saudi Arabia, the US, Switzerland, the UAE, Egypt, the African Union and the UN said: “The delegations in Geneva welcome the decision by the Sudanese Armed Forces to open the Adre border crossing — a critical step for saving lives and preventing the spread of famine and we look forward to seeing the first convoys cross in the coming days. We call on the Rapid Support Forces to take immediate steps to ensure that the aid groups entering through the Adre border are provided safety, unfettered humanitarian access, and operational independence from armed and political actors.”
The statement added: “Immediate steps must be taken to move humanitarian assistance into Darfur and across Sudan with safe and unhindered passage to the people in need, regardless of which party controls territory. The expansion of humanitarian assistance is a top priority for the members of the international community gathered in Switzerland.”
The US-sponsored talks on securing a ceasefire for the devastating conflict in Sudan kicked off on Wednesday this week. The talks, which could last up to 10 days, are being held behind closed doors in an undisclosed location.
LONDON: Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told his French and British counterparts Friday that his country expects support “in attacking” Iran if it strikes Israel.
“If Iran attacks, we expect the coalition to join Israel not only in defense but also in attacking significant targets in Iran,” Katz told his French and UK counterparts during their visit to Israel.
British and French foreign ministers visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to call for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and a de-escalation in any wider conflict in the Middle East.
The visit by Britain’s David Lammy and France’s Stephane Sejourne comes as a new round of Gaza ceasefire talks was underway in Doha, an effort to end 10 months of fighting in the Palestinian enclave and bring 115 Israeli and foreign hostages home.
The talks came as Iran appeared on the point of retaliating against Israel following the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
“This is a dangerous moment for the Middle East,” Lammy said in a statement. “The risk of the situation spiralling out of control is rising. Any Iranian attack would have devastating consequences for the region.”
Britain and France are calling for a diplomatic solution to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and restore peace along the Israeli-Lebanese border, the British foreign ministry said.
“It’s never too late for peace. We must at all costs avoid a regional war, which would have terrible consequences,” French foreign minister Sejourne said in a statement.
The visit by the duo marks the first UK-France joint visit to Israel in more than 10 years.
ADEN: A suicide bomber killed 16 Yemeni soldiers and wounded 18 other troops in a military post in the southern province of Abyan on Friday morning, authorities said.
The attacker “drove a booby-trapped car into a site for the security forces,” in the Mudiyah district, Mohamed Al-Naqib, a spokesperson for the Southern Transitional Council, said.
No group immediately claimed responsibility, but militants linked to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have stepped up attacks on military facilities in Yemen.
Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has used a nine-year conflict between the Iran-aligned Houthi group and a Saudi-backed coalition to bolster its influence in a country that shares a border with Saudi Arabia and sits near major shipping lanes.
The Southern Transitional Council — which is allied with the Saudi coalition and controls large parts of the south which it wants to secede — has stepped up offensives against Al-Qaeda elements in Abyan over the past year.
AQAP has survived years of attempted crackdowns by the US military, the coalition and the Houthis, taking advantage of Yemen’s mayhem, tribal sympathies and the large stretches of empty territory.
