Moody’s downgrades Israel’s credit rating due to Hamas conflict
Moody’s downgrades Israel’s credit rating due to Hamas conflict/node/2457366/middle-east
Moody’s downgrades Israel’s credit rating due to Hamas conflict
People walk past an off-duty Israeli soldier carrying an assault rifle, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel February 9, 2024. (Reuters)
Moody’s downgrades Israel’s credit rating due to Hamas conflict
Updated 10 February 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: The US ratings agency Moody’s downgraded Israel’s credit rating Friday due to the impact of its ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza, lowering it by one notch from A1 to A2.
In a statement, Moody’s said it had done so after assessing that “the ongoing military conflict with Hamas, its aftermath and wider consequences materially raise political risk for Israel as well as weaken its executive and legislative institutions and its fiscal strength, for the foreseeable future.”
The ratings agency also lowered its outlook for Israel’s debt to “negative” due to “the risk of an escalation” with the far more powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that operates along its northern border.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
In response, Israel launched air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed at least 27,947 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Following the attack, S&P Global Ratings lowered Israel’s credit outlook from stable to negative on risks that the Israel-Hamas conflict could broaden.
Fitch — which is the last of the big three US ratings agencies — placed Israel on negative watch over risks from the conflict.
“The weakened security environment implies higher social risk and indicates weaker executive and legislative institutions than Moody’s previously assessed,” the ratings agency said Friday in the statement explaining its decision.
“At the same time, Israel’s public finances are deteriorating and the previously projected downward trend in the public debt ratio has now reversed,” it continued.
“Moody’s expects that Israel’s debt burden will be materially higher than projected before the conflict,” it added.
UAE budget carrier flydubai cancels flights to Jordan, Iran, Iraq and Israel
Iran and Iraq announced the resumption of flights as normal following a brief suspension
Updated 58 min 41 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: UAE airline flydubai canceled flights to Jordan, Iran, Iraq and Israel and diverted others on Saturday, a company spokesperson said, shortly after Israel struck military targets in Iran.
Iran meanwhile announced it will resume flights as normal from 9 a.m. (0530 GMT), the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported on Saturday following a brief suspension after Israel struck military targets in the country.
Iraq also reopened its airspace and resumed flights, state news agency INA reported on Saturday, citing the ministry of transportation, following a brief suspension which it had attributed to regional tensions.
Israel launches strikes on military targets in Iran
Iran’s state TV said Tehran’s airports were “normal,” after it reported several explosions around the capital
Syrian state media said Israeli air strikes also targeted some military sites in central and southern Syria
Updated 26 October 2024
Arab News
RIYADH: Israel carried out strikes against Iran early Saturday, saying it was responding to missile attacks conducted by Tehran earlier in the month.
The military announced the action on the social media platform X: “Right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran”.
Air defense systems in Tehran could be seen shooting down projectiles over the east of the city, prompting authorities to shut down Iranian air space.
Hours later, Israel said that it had completed military actions against Iranian military targets and said its planes had returned home safely.
The attacks had been expected for weeks, after Iran struck mainland Israel on Oct. 1, and US officials said they had received advanced notice of the Israeli actions.
The Iranians confirmed that military sites in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran had been struck.
In its statement, the IDF said: “The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7th— on seven fronts— including direct attacks from Iranian soil. Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.
“Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized. We will do whatever necessary to defend the State of Israel and the people of Israel,” said the statement read by Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces.
In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the State of Israel—right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran.
The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking… pic.twitter.com/OcHUy7nQvN
In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging at least six blasts were heard around Tehran and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.
A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Iran’s state TV later said that operations at Tehran’s airports including Imam Khomeini International airport were “normal.”
“Operations at Imam Khomeini International Airport and Mehrabad Airport are normal and they continue to operate according to the schedule,” the state TV presenter said, citing the chiefs of Mehrabad and Imam Khomeini airports.
Israel’s strikes on Iran did not include attacking Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields, and focused on military targets, NBC News and ABC News reported, citing an Israeli official.
In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said the “targeted strikes on military targets” are “an exercise of self-defense and in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1.”
The United States was “informed beforehand and there is no US involvement,” a US defense official told AFP, under the condition of anonymity.
The official did not say how far in advance the United States had been informed or what had been shared by Israel.
Meanwhile, Syrian state media said Israeli air strikes also targeted some military sites in central and southern Syria.
Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel also has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.
The strike happened just as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the US after a tour of the Middle East where he and other US officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran.
Israel had vowed to hit Iran hard following a massive Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1. Iran said its barrage was in response to deadly Israeli attacks against its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and it has promised to respond to any retaliatory strikes.
Israel and Iran have been bitter foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing its leaders’ calls for Israel’s destruction, their support for anti-Israel militant groups and the country’s nuclear program.
Israel and Iran have been locked in a yearslong shadow war. A suspected Israeli assassination campaign has killed top Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranian nuclear installations have been hacked or sabotaged, all in mysterious attacks blamed on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping in the Middle East in recent years, which later grew into the attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on shipping through the Red Sea corridor.
But since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the battle has increasingly moved into the open. Israel has recently turned its attention to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began. Throughout the year, a number of top Iranian military figures have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon.
Iran fired a wave of missiles and drones at Israel last April after two Iranian generals were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Syria on an Iranian diplomatic post. The missiles and drones caused minimum damage, and Israel — under pressure from Western countries to show restraint — responded with a limited strike.
But after Iran’s early October missile strike, Israel promised a tougher response. - With Agencies
Israel launches strikes on military targets in Iran
Iran’s state TV said Tehran’s airports including Imam Khomeini International airport were “normal,” after it reported several explosions around the capital
Syrian state media said Israeli air strikes also targeted some military sites in central and southern Syria
Updated 26 October 2024
Arab News
RIYADH: Israel carried out strikes against Iran early Saturday, saying it was responding to missile attacks conducted by Tehran earlier in the month.
The military announced the action on the social media platform X: "Right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran”.
Air defense systems in Tehran could be seen shooting down projectiles over the east of the city, prompting authorities to shut down Iranian air space.
Hours later, Israel said that it had completed military actions against Iranian military targets and said its planes had returned home safely.
The attacks had been expected for weeks, after Iran struck mainland Israel on Oct. 1, and US officials said they had received advanced notice of the Israeli actions.
The Iranians confirmed that military sites in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran had been struck.
In its statement, the IDF said: "The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7th—on seven fronts—including direct attacks from Iranian soil. Like every other sovereign country in the world, the State of Israel has the right and the duty to respond.
"Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized. We will do whatever necessary to defend the State of Israel and the people of Israel," said the statement read by Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces.
In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the State of Israel—right now the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran.
The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking… pic.twitter.com/OcHUy7nQvN
In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the sound of explosions could be heard, with state-run media there initially acknowledging at least six blasts were heard around Tehran and saying some of the sounds came from air defense systems around the city.
A Tehran resident told The Associated Press that at least seven explosions could be heard, which rattled the surrounding area. The resident spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Iran’s state TV later said that operations at Tehran’s airports including Imam Khomeini International airport were “normal.”
“Operations at Imam Khomeini International Airport and Mehrabad Airport are normal and they continue to operate according to the schedule,” the state TV presenter said, citing the chiefs of Mehrabad and Imam Khomeini airports.
Israel's strikes on Iran did not include attacking Iranian nuclear facilities or oil fields, and focused on military targets, NBC News and ABC News reported, citing an Israeli official.
In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said the “targeted strikes on military targets” are “an exercise of self-defense and in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack against Israel on October 1.”
The United States was “informed beforehand and there is no US involvement,” a US defense official told AFP, under the condition of anonymity.
The official did not say how far in advance the United States had been informed or what had been shared by Israel.
Meanwhile, Syrian state media said Israeli air strikes also targeted some military sites in central and southern Syria.
Iran has launched two ballistic missile attacks on Israel in recent months amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip that began with the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel also has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon.
The strike happened just as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was arriving back in the US after a tour of the Middle East where he and other US officials had warned Israel to tender a response that would not further escalate the conflict in the region and exclude nuclear sites in Iran.
Israel had vowed to hit Iran hard following a massive Iranian missile barrage on Oct. 1. Iran said its barrage was in response to deadly Israeli attacks against its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and it has promised to respond to any retaliatory strikes.
Israel and Iran have been bitter foes since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest threat, citing its leaders’ calls for Israel’s destruction, their support for anti-Israel militant groups and the country’s nuclear program.
Israel and Iran have been locked in a yearslong shadow war. A suspected Israeli assassination campaign has killed top Iranian nuclear scientists. Iranian nuclear installations have been hacked or sabotaged, all in mysterious attacks blamed on Israel. Meanwhile, Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks on shipping in the Middle East in recent years, which later grew into the attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on shipping through the Red Sea corridor.
But since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, the battle has increasingly moved into the open. Israel has recently turned its attention to Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began. Throughout the year, a number of top Iranian military figures have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria and Lebanon.
Iran fired a wave of missiles and drones at Israel last April after two Iranian generals were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike in Syria on an Iranian diplomatic post. The missiles and drones caused minimum damage, and Israel — under pressure from Western countries to show restraint — responded with a limited strike.
But after Iran’s early October missile strike, Israel promised a tougher response.
UN official calls for more attention to Sudan’s ‘forgotten’ war amid fresh atrocities
“We have done everything to respond to the war in Gaza and the war in Lebanon. … Sudan also needs this level of attention,” UNICEF deputy chief said
He said more than 14 million people forced to flee their homes, making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis
Updated 26 October 2024
AP
CAIRO: A senior United Nations official on Friday called for more international attention to “the forgotten crisis” in Sudan, where more than a year and a half of war pushed the African country to the brink of famine.
The appeal by Ted Chaiban, deputy head of the UN children’s agency UNICEF, came as the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces rampaged through villages and towns in east-central Gezira province, looting and vandalizing public and private properties, according to a doctors’ union and a youth group. Dozens of people were reported killed.
Chaiban said the war, which erupted in April 2023 between the military and the RSF, created “one of the most acute crises in living memory” with more than 14 million people forced to flee their homes, making Sudan the world’s largest displacement crisis.
“We’ve never in a generation seen these types of numbers,” he told The Associated Press in an interview, referring to the displaced people, as well as the 8.5 million people who are facing emergency levels of food insecurity, and 775,000 others who are facing famine-like conditions.
“The whole country has been dislocated,” he said. “And yet, despite that, the country and the crisis is forgotten.”
The war came four years after a pro-democracy uprising forced the military’s ouster of the country’s longtime dictator Omar Al-Bashir that was followed by a short-lived transition to democracy. It has killed more than 24,000 people so far, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a group monitoring the conflict since it started.
Chaiban spoke to the AP after he and Raouf Mazou, assistant high commissioner for operations at the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, visited eastern Sudan earlier this week. They met with local authorities and visited displaced people in a sprawling camp hosting over 4,000 people in the eastern province of Kassala.
They called for unimpeded access to people in need across the country, and advocated for more global attention to what Chaiban described as “one of the critical generational crises we’re facing.”
Global attention has been shifted to the Middle East since the militant group Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel in October last year, triggering a war that has killed about 42,000 people in Gaza. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza does not differentiate between militants and civilians but say more than half of the dead were women and children. Hamas’ attack killed about 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. Now, international efforts are focusing on the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon amid mounting concerns about a regional war between Israel and Iran.
“We have done everything to respond to the war in Gaza and the war in Lebanon. … Sudan also needs this level of attention,” he said.
The Sudanese military has been pursuing a major offensive since September to retake RSF-controlled areas in and around the capital, Khartoum. The military also earlier this month captured Jebel Moya, a strategic mountainous area in Gezira province, in a major setback for the RSF, which also lost other areas in Gezira and nearby Sinnar province.
Also in October, a top RSF commander, Abu Aqlah Keikel, the de facto ruler of Gezira province, defected and surrendered himself to the military.
Local media reported that Keikel’s surrender was a coordinated operation. The military said in a statement that Keikel had “decided to fight alongside our army, abandoning the lines of the rebels after discovering the falsehood of the claims of the terrorist Dagalo militia.”
The RSF, which is led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, downplayed Keikel’s defection. The commander had supported the military at the beginning of the war but switched sides in August last year, according to the Sudan War Monitor, a group tracking the conflict.
RSF fighters were furious and went on a rampage through multiple towns and villages east and north of Gezira, as well as the city of Tamboul, killing dozens of civilians and displacing thousands of others.
In one town, Sariha, RSF fighters killed at least 50 people and wounded 200 others, according to the Resistance Committees, a network of youth groups tracking the war. In the village of Saqiaah, at least 12 people were killed, it said.
The Doctors’ Union in Sudan on Thursday said the RSF attacks turned areas in eastern Gezira into “a brutal war zone.”
RSF fighters have committed “systemic sexual crimes, burned houses and properties, and attacked health care facilities along with systemic looting and forced displacement,” the union said in a statement on Thursday.
The war has been marked by atrocities such as mass rape and ethnicity motivated killings. The United Nations and international rights groups say these acts amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, particularly in the western region of Darfur, which has been facing a bitter onslaught by the RSF.
The conflict pushed the country to the brink of famine, which was already confirmed in July in the Zamzam camp for displaced people, which is located about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from North Darfur’s embattled capital of Al-Fasher, according to global experts from the Famine Review Committee. About 25.6 million people — more than half of Sudan’s population — are expected to face acute hunger this year, they warned.
JENIN: Israeli raids have left wrecked roads, bullet-riddled buildings, and debris-strewn streets in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, preventing ambulances from reaching those in desperate need of care.
“It is not only difficult but also unsafe to reach the hospital during clashes,” said Wissam Baker, the director of Jenin’s hospital.
Patients needing dialysis, chemotherapy, or maternity care are particularly vulnerable, he said, as delays in treatment could be life-threatening.
Yet their lives are also at risk when trying to get treatment.
“During any incursion, those people have difficulty reaching the hospital,” Baker said.
Israeli forces have mounted several raids over the past year, which they call “counter-terrorism operations,” targeting Jenin’s refugee camp, known as a stronghold for militant groups.
Since the Gaza war began on Oct. 7 last year, the frequency and intensity of these raids have escalated. At least 711 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to the UN.
Ambulances have come under army fire and are invariably searched, health workers and locals said, while roads leading to the hospital are frequently blocked.
Hazem Masarwa, a paramedic with decades of experience, pointed to bullet holes in his ambulance.
“Before Oct. 7, the obstacles were minor,” he said, referring to the day Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel, triggering war in Gaza.
But now, “with every raid they carry out, they close the entrances to hospitals ... it has become routine,” he said.
Masarwa has witnessed two patients die from a lack of access to health care in the past year.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported 804 violations of its medical missions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem over that period.
It said at least 14 people “died because they were kept from receiving the emergency medical services that they needed.”
On the night of Sept.1-2, during a 10-day Israeli raid in Jenin, Umaima Awadin feared for her life as she went into labor.
She spent four hours navigating army orders as contractions grew closer together.
“It really was a situation where you feel between life and death,” she said, still in shock.
“I kept on asking myself, ‘Who will take care of my children?’“
When she finally reached a hospital and gave birth to a boy, both experienced complications.
In her neighborhood, roads are torn up, and buildings bear the scars of bullet holes.
Nearby, a few young men loiter by destroyed houses, rifles strapped to their chests.
When patients reach the hospital, their shoes are caked in mud and rubble dust, said an emergency nurse.
The smell of sewage from damaged pipes torn up by army bulldozers lingers.
“Can we live like this?” asked Najet, whose husband, a dialysis patient, has been receiving only partial treatments for months.
“Israel continues to attack the West Bank at the same time as Gaza, not only with weapons but also by keeping people from getting their treatment,” she said.
“My husband could die if he doesn’t get dialysis.”
Baker said his team has been transferring patients to other hospitals, particularly Nablus, about an hour away.
Non-governmental organizations have stepped in, offering people first aid training, though few expect the situation to improve.
Umm Akram, who fled during an August raid, left to protect her daughter, who suffers from high blood pressure. She feared she would go “10 days without medicine.”
Upon her return, the house had been ransacked and “turned upside down,” and her garden destroyed by an explosion.
To Umm Akram, it was a price to pay for her daughter’s health.
