Biden says US will withhold weapons from Israel if it invades Rafah
US president admits Israel used American weapons to kill civilians
Updated 09 May 2024
Reuters
President Joe Biden on Wednesday publicly warned Israel for the first time that the US would stop supplying it weapons if Israeli forces make a major invasion of Rafah, a refugee-packed city in southern Gaza.
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah ..., I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities – that deal with that problem,” Biden said in an interview with CNN.
Biden’s comments represent his strongest public language to date in his effort to deter an Israeli assault on Rafah while underscoring a growing rift between the US and its strongest ally in the Middle East.
Biden acknowledged US weapons have been used by Israel to kill civilians in Gaza, where Israel has mounted a seven-month-old offensive aimed at annihilating Hamas. Israel’s campaign has so far killed 34,789 Palestinians, mostly civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” he said when asked about 2,000-pound bombs sent to Israel.
Israel this week attacked Rafah, where more than one million Palestinians have sought refuge, but Biden said he did not consider Israel’s strikes a full-scale invasion because they have not struck “population centers.”
A senior US 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-pound (907-kg) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.
The interview was released hours after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III acknowledged publicly Biden’s decision last week to hold up the delivery of thousands of heavy bombs was taken out of concern for Rafah, where Washington opposes a major Israeli invasion without civilian safeguards.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza was triggered by Hamas ‘ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That killed about 1,200 people with about 250 others abducted, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Biden said the US would continue to provide defensive weapons to Israel, including for its Iron Dome air defense system.
“We’re going to continue to make sure Israel is secure in terms of Iron Dome and their ability to respond to attacks that came out of the Middle East recently,” he said. “But it’s, it’s just wrong. We’re not going to – we’re not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.”
Israel military issues evacuation orders for three areas of south Beirut
Evacuation orders issued ahead of planned Israeli strikes on multiple buildings
Updated 6 sec ago
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military on Sunday ordered residents to leave three parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, ahead of planned strikes on multiple buildings. “You are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah, which the IDF (Israeli military) will work against in the near future,” spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X, alongside maps identifying three sites due to be targeted.
Israel pummels south Beirut as Hezbollah targets Haifa area
Israel’s military reported “heavy rocket barrage” on Haifa, saying synagogue was hit
Lebanese authorities say over 3,452 people have been killed since October last year
Updated 17 November 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: Israel launched a wave of air strikes on Hezbollah bastions in Beirut and south Lebanon on Saturday, as the Iran-backed militants said they fired on several Israeli military bases around the coastal city of Haifa.
Israel’s military reported a “heavy rocket barrage” on Haifa and said a synagogue was hit, injuring two civilians.
Since September 23, Israel has escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops after almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in support of Hamas in Gaza.
In the Palestinian territory, where Hamas’s attack on Israel triggered the war, the civil defense agency reported 24 people killed in strikes on Saturday.
Security services in Israel said two flares landed near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in the town of Caesarea, south of Haifa, but he was not home.
The incident comes about a month after a drone targeted the same residence, which Hezbollah claimed.
Israel’s military chief, in comments issued Saturday, said Hezbollah has already “paid a big price” but Israel will keep fighting until tens of thousands of its residents displaced from the north can return safely.
“We will continue to fight, to implement plans, to go further, conduct deep strikes, and hit Hezbollah very hard,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said on a visit earlier in the week to the Kfar Kila area of south Lebanon.
AFPTV footage showed fresh strikes Saturday on the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, after Israel’s military called on residents to evacuate.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported a series of strikes.
The Israeli military said aircraft had targeted “a weapons storage facility” and a Hezbollah “command center.”
The NNA also reported strikes on the southern city of Tyre, including in a neighborhood near UNESCO-listed ancient ruins. Israel’s military late Saturday said it had hit Hezbollah facilities in the Tyre area.
In Lebanon’s east, the health ministry said an Israeli strike in the Bekaa Valley killed six people including three children.
Hezbollah said it fired a guided missile which set an Israeli tank ablaze in the southwest Lebanon village of Shamaa, about five kilometers (three miles) from the border.
Late Saturday, after Israel reported the rocket barrage on Haifa, Hezbollah said it had targeted five military bases, including the Stella Maris naval base which it said it fired on earlier in the day.
In eastern Lebanon, funerals were held for 14 civil defense staff killed in an Israeli strike on Thursday.
“They weren’t involved with any (armed) party... they were just waiting to answer calls for help,” said Ali Al-Zein, a relative of one of the dead.
Lebanese authorities say more than 3,452 people have been killed since October last year, with most casualties recorded since September.
Israel announced the death of a soldier in southern Lebanon, bringing to 48 the number killed in fighting with Hezbollah.
In Hamas-run Gaza, the Israeli military said it continued operations in the northern areas of Jabalia and Beit Lahia, the targets of an intense offensive since early October.
Israel said its renewed operations aimed to stop Hamas from regrouping.
A UN-backed assessment on November 9 warned famine was imminent in northern Gaza, amid the increased hostilities and a near-halt in food aid.
Israel has pushed back against a 172-page Human Rights Watch report this week that said its displacement of Gazans amounts to a “crime against humanity,” as well as findings from a UN Special Committee that pointed to warfare practices that “are consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”
A foreign ministry spokesman dismissed the HRW report as “completely false,” while the United States — Israel’s main military supplier — said accusations of genocide “are certainly unfounded.”
The Gaza health ministry on Saturday said the overall death toll in more than 13 months of war has reached 43,799.
The majority of the dead are civilians, according to ministry figures which the United Nations considers reliable.
In Rafah, southern Gaza, Jamil Al-Masry told AFP a house was hit, causing “a massive explosion.”
“We went to the house, only to find it in ruins, with fire raging and smoke and dust everywhere.”
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Demonstrators in Tel Aviv on Saturday reiterated demands that the government reach a deal to free dozens of hostages still held in Gaza.
The protest came a week after mediator Qatar suspended its role until Hamas and Israel show “seriousness” in truce and hostage-release talks.
In a rare claim of responsibility for a strike on Syria, Israel said it targeted the Islamic Jihad group on Thursday.
A statement from the group on Saturday confirmed that “prominent leader” Abdel Aziz Minawi and external relations chief Rasmi Yusuf Abu Issa were killed in the air raid on Qudsaya, in the Damascus area.
Islamic Jihad still holds several Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 attack.
Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are all backed by Israel’s arch-enemy Iran, which said Friday it supported a swift end to the nearly two-month war in Lebanon.
With diplomacy aimed at ending the Gaza war stalled, a top government official in Beirut said on Friday that US ambassador Lisa Johnson had presented a 13-point proposal to halt the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
It includes a 60-day truce, during which Lebanon will deploy troops to the border. The official added that Israel has yet to respond to the plan.
Fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo
Updated 17 November 2024
AFP
LONDON: The UK on Sunday announced a £113 million ($143 million) aid boost to support more than one million people affected by the war in Sudan, doubling its current package.
The new funding will be targeted at the 600,000 people in Sudan and 700,000 people in neighboring countries who have fled the conflict.
“The brutal conflict in Sudan has caused unimaginable suffering. The people of Sudan need more aid, which is why the UK is helping to provide much-needed food, shelter and education for the most vulnerable,” Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a government press release.
“The UK will never forget Sudan,” he vowed.
Fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Last month, United Nations experts accused the warring sides of using “starvation tactics” against 25 million civilians, and three major aid organizations warned of a “historic” hunger crisis as families resort to eating leaves and insects.
Lammy is due to visit the UN Security Council on Monday, where his ministry said he will call on the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) to keep the vital Adre border crossing open indefinitely to allow aid deliveries.
“We cannot deliver aid without access. Starvation must not be used as a weapon of war,” he said.
The new funding package will support UN and NGO partners in providing food, money, shelter, medical assistance, water and sanitation, said the Foreign Office.
Deaths in the conflict are likely to be “substantially underreported,” according to a study published this week, which found more casualties in Khartoum State alone than current empirical estimates for the whole country.
Some victims said among those who exploited them were humanitarian workers and local security forces
Nidhi Kapur, who works on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse, said exploitation represents a deep failure by the aid community
Many of the women interviewed were unaware of the free hotline and feedback boxes put up by UN agencies to report abuse anonymously
Updated 17 November 2024
SAM MEDNICK | AP
ADRE, Chad: Crossing into Chad, the 27-year-old thought she’d left the horrors of Sudan’s war behind: the bodies she ran over while fleeing, the screams of girls being raped, the disappearance of her husband when gunmen attacked. But now she says she has faced more suffering — being forced as a refugee to have sex to get by.
She cradled her 7-week-old son, who she asserted was the child of an aid worker who promised her money in exchange for sex.
“The children were crying. We ran out of food,” she said of her four other children. “He abused my situation.” She and other women who spoke to The Associated Press requested anonymity because they feared retribution.
Some Sudanese women and girls assert that men, including those meant to protect them such as humanitarian workers and local security forces, have sexually exploited them in Chad’s displacement sites, offering money, easier access to assistance and jobs. Such sexual exploitation in Chad is a crime.
Hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women, have streamed into Chad to escape Sudan’s civil war, which has killed over 20,000 people. Aid groups struggle to support them in growing displacement sites.
Three women spoke with the AP in the town of Adre near the Sudanese border. A Sudanese psychologist shared the accounts of seven other women and girls who either refused to speak directly with a reporter or were no longer in touch with her. The AP could not confirm their accounts.
Daral-Salam Omar, the psychologist, said all the seven told her they went along with the offers of benefits in exchange for sex out of necessity. Some sought her help because they became pregnant and couldn’t seek an abortion at a clinic for fear of being shunned by their community, she said.
“They were psychologically destroyed. Imagine a woman getting pregnant without a husband amid this situation,” Omar said.
Women who fled war in Sudan rest in a refugee camp in Adre, Chad, on Oct. 5, 2024. (AP)
Sexual exploitation during large humanitarian crises is not uncommon, especially in displacement sites. Aid groups have long struggled to combat the issue. They cite a lack of reporting by women, not enough funds to respond and a focus on first providing basic necessities.
The UN refugee agency said it doesn’t publish data on cases, citing the confidentiality and safety of victims.
People seeking protection should never have to make choices driven by survival, experts said. Nidhi Kapur, who works on preventing sexual exploitation and abuse in emergency contexts, said exploitation represents a deep failure by the aid community.
Yewande Odia, the United Nations Population’s Fund representative in Chad, said sexual exploitation is a serious violation. UN agencies said displacement camps have “safe spaces” where women can gather, along with awareness sessions, a free hotline and feedback boxes to report abuse anonymously.
Yet many of the Sudanese women said they weren’t aware of the hotline, and some said using the boxes would draw unwanted attention.
The Sudanese woman with the newborn said she was afraid to report the aid worker for fear he’d turn her in to police.
She said she approached the aid worker, a Sudanese man, after searching for jobs to buy basic necessities like soap. She asked him for money. He said he’d give her cash but only in exchange for sex.
They slept together for months, she said, and he paid the equivalent of about $12 each time. After she had the baby, he gave her a one-time payment of approximately $65 but denied it was his, she said.
The man was a Sudanese laborer for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, she said.
Two other Sudanese women said Chadian men working at MSF sites— one wearing MSF clothing — solicited them after they applied for work with the organization. The men took their phone numbers and repeatedly called, saying they’d give them jobs for sex. Both women said they refused.
Christopher Lockyear, MSF’s secretary general, said the organization was not aware of the allegations and wanted to investigate. “Asking for money or sex in exchange for access to care or a job is a clear violation of our behavioral commitments,” he said.
MSF would not say how many such cases had been reported among Sudanese refugees in Chad. Last year, out of 714 complaints made about MSF staff behavior where it works globally, 264 were confirmed to be cases of abuse or inappropriate behavior including sexual exploitation, abuse of power and bullying, Lockyear said.
Lockyear said MSF is creating a pool of investigators at the global level to enhance its ability to pursue allegations.
One woman told the AP that a man with another aid group also exploited her, but she was unable to identify the organization. Omar, the psychologist, said several of the women told her they were exploited by aid workers, local and international. She gave no evidence to back up the claims.
Another woman, one of the two who alleged they were approached after seeking work with MSF, said she also refused a local policeman who approached her and promised an extra food ration card if she went to his house.
Ali Mahamat Sebey, the head official for Adre, said police are not allowed inside the camps and asserted that allegations against them of exploitation were false. With the growing influx of people, however, it’s hard to protect everyone, he said.
The women said they just want to feel safe, adding that access to jobs would lessen their vulnerability.
After most of her family was killed or abducted in Sudan’s Darfur region last year, one 19-year-old sought refuge in Chad. She didn’t have enough money to support the nieces and nephews in her care. She got a job at a restaurant in the camp but when she asked her Sudanese boss for a raise, he agreed on the condition of sex.
The money he paid was more than six times her salary. But when she got pregnant with his child, the man fled, she asserted. She rubbed her growing belly.
“If we had enough, we wouldn’t have to go out and lose our dignity,” she said.
