Blinken says Netanyahu promised Israel would send team to talks scheduled to resume this week
Israel has relentlessly pounded Gaza, killing over 40,000 Palestinians since October last year
Updated 20 August 2024
AFP
TEL AVIV: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured him of support for a US proposal to bridge gaps on reaching a Gaza ceasefire, and pressed Hamas to agree.
Following three hours of talks with the prime minister in Jerusalem, Blinken said that Netanyahu promised Israel would send a team to talks scheduled to resume this week, mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
“In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today, he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal. He supports it. It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same,” Blinken told reporters later in Tel Aviv.
“What I would say to Hamas and to its leadership is, if it genuinely cares about the Palestinian people that it purports to somehow represent, then it will say ‘yes’ to this agreement, and it will work on clear understandings about how to implement it,” Blinken said, a day after Hamas accused Netanyahu of obstructing the mediation efforts.
Hamas had called on mediators to implement a framework outlined in late May by US President Joe Biden. The movement said the bridging proposal “responds to Netanyahu’s conditions” and leaves him “fully responsible for thwarting the efforts of the mediators.”
But Blinken said: “The single quickest, best, most effective way to relieve the terrible suffering of the Palestinians that was instigated by Hamas’s attack on October 7 and the war that ensued is to complete this agreement.”
Blinken said he would travel Tuesday to both Egypt and Qatar and meet with the leaders of the two Arab nations, which have worked with the United States on a ceasefire plan.
He said he hoped to hear from the Arab partners the latest on Hamas’s position and he played down the militants’ criticism of the bridging proposal.
“We’ve seen public statements before where they don’t fully reflect where Hamas is,” Blinken said.
Gaza war death toll could be 40 percent higher, says study
Updated 2 sec ago
Researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024 They estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period, about 41 percent higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count
LONDON: An official Palestinian tally of direct deaths in the Israel-Hamas war likely undercounted the number of casualties by around 40 percent in the first nine months of the war as the Gaza Strip’s health care infrastructure unraveled, according to a study published on Thursday. The peer-reviewed statistical analysis published in The Lancet journal was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions. Using a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis, the researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024. They estimated 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period, about 41 percent higher than the official Palestinian Health Ministry count. The study said 59.1 percent were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not provide an estimate of Palestinian combatants among the dead. More than 46,000 people have been killed in the Gaza war, according to Palestinian health officials, from a pre-war population of around 2.1 million. A senior Israeli official, commenting on the study, said Israel’s armed forces went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. “No other army in the world has ever taken such wide-ranging measures,” the official said. “These include providing advance warning to civilians to evacuate, safe zones and taking any and all measures to prevent harm to civilians. The figures provided in this report do not reflect the situation on the ground.” The war began on Oct. 7 after Hamas gunmen stormed across the border with Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The Lancet study said the Palestinian health ministry’s capacity for maintaining electronic death records had previously proven reliable, but deteriorated under Israel’s military campaign, which has included raids on hospitals and other health care facilities and disruptions to digital communications. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its operations, which the militant group denies.
STUDY METHOD EMPLOYED IN OTHER CONFLICTS Anecdotal reports suggested that a significant number of dead remained buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings and were therefore not included in some tallies. To better account for such gaps, the Lancet study employed a method used to evaluate deaths in other conflict zones, including Kosovo and Sudan. Using data from at least two independent sources, researchers look for individuals who appear on multiple lists of those killed. Less overlap between lists suggests more deaths have gone unrecorded, information that can be used to estimate the full number of deaths. For the Gaza study, researchers compared the official Palestinian Health Ministry death count, which in the first months of war was based entirely on bodies that arrived in hospitals but later came to include other methods; an online survey distributed by the health ministry to Palestinians inside and outside the Gaza Strip, who were asked to provide data on Palestinian ID numbers, names, age at death, sex, location of death, and reporting source; and obituaries posted on social media. “Our research reveals a stark reality: the true scale of traumatic injury deaths in Gaza is higher than reported,” lead author Zeina Jamaluddine told Reuters. Dr. Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Reuters that the statistical methods deployed in the study provide a more complete estimate of the death toll in the war. The study focused solely on deaths caused by traumatic injuries though, he said. Deaths caused from indirect effects of conflict, such as disrupted health services and poor water and sanitation, often cause high excess deaths, said Spiegel, who co-authored a study last year that projected thousands of deaths due to the public health crisis spawned by the war. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimates that, on top of the official death toll, around another 11,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead. In total, PCBS said, citing Palestinian Health Ministry numbers, the population of Gaza has fallen 6 percent since the start of the war, as about 100,000 Palestinians have also left the enclave.
Syria monitor says alleged Assad loyalist ‘executed’ in public
Fighters affiliated with the new authorities executed Mazen Kneneh with a shot to the head in the street
Updated 4 min 56 sec ago
AFP
BEIRUT: A Syria monitor said fighters linked to the Islamist-led transitional administration publicly executed a local official on Friday, accusing him of having been an informant under ousted strongman Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said fighters affiliated with the new authorities executed Mazen Kneneh with a shot to the head in the street in the Damascus suburb of Dummar, describing him as “one of the best-known loyalists of the former regime.”
Japan congratulates Lebanon on electing new President
The ministry also said that Japan will continue to support Lebanon
Updated 23 min 41 sec ago
Arab News Japan
TOKYO: The Government of Japan said it congratulates Lebanon on the election of the new President Joseph Aoun on January 9.
A statement by the Foreign Ministry said while Lebanon has been facing difficult situations such as a prolonged economic crisis and the exchange of attacks between Israel and Hezbollah, the election of a new President is an important step toward stability and development of the country.
“Japan once again strongly demands all parties concerned to fully implement the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon,” the statement added.
The ministry also said that Japan will continue to support Lebanon’s efforts on achieving social and economic stability in the country as well as stability in the Middle East region.
Lebanon PM to visit new Damascus ruler on Saturday
Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will on Saturday make his first official trip to neighboring Syria since the fall of president Bashar Assad, his office told AFP
Updated 10 January 2025
AFP
BERUIT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati will on Saturday make his first official trip to neighboring Syria since the fall of president Bashar Assad, his office told AFP.
Mikati’s office said Friday the trip came at the invitation of the country’s new de facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa during a phone call last week.
Syria imposed new restrictions on the entry of Lebanese citizens last week, two security sources have told AFP, following what the Lebanese army said was a border skirmish with unnamed armed Syrians.
Lebanese nationals had previously been allowed into Syria without a visa, using just their passport or ID card.
Lebanon’s eastern border is porous and known for smuggling.
Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah supported Assad with fighters during Syria’s civil war.
But the Iran-backed movement has been weakened after a war with Israel killed its long-time leader and Islamist-led rebels seized Damascus last month.
Lebanese lawmakers elected the country’s army chief Joseph Aoun as president on Thursday, ending a vacancy of more than two years that critics blamed on Hezbollah.
For three decades under the Assad clan, Syria was the dominant power in Lebanon after intervening in its 1975-1990 civil war.
Syria eventually withdrew its troops in 2005 under international pressure after the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafic Hariri.
UN says 3 million Sudan children facing acute malnutrition
Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month
Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the army and the paramilitary forces
Updated 10 January 2025
AFP
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: An estimated 3.2 million children under the age of five are expected to face acute malnutrition this year in war-torn Sudan, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
“Of this number, around 772,000 children are expected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition,” Eva Hinds, UNICEF Sudan’s Head of Advocacy and Communication, told AFP late on Thursday.
Famine has already gripped five areas across Sudan, according to a report last month by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a UN-backed assessment.
Sudan has endured 20 months of war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands and, according to the United Nations, uprooting 12 million in the world’s largest displacement crisis.
Confirming to AFP that 3.2 million children are currently expected to face acute malnutrition, Hinds said “the number of severely malnourished children increased from an estimated 730,000 in 2024 to over 770,000 in 2025.”
The IPC expects famine to expand to five more parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region by May — a vast area that has seen some of the conflict’s worst violence. A further 17 areas in western and central Sudan are also at risk of famine, it said.
“Without immediate, unhindered humanitarian access facilitating a significant scale-up of a multisectoral response, malnutrition is likely to increase in these areas,” Hinds warned.
Sudan’s army-aligned government strongly rejected the IPC findings, while aid agencies complain that access is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles and ongoing violence.
In October, experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council accused both sides of using “starvation tactics.”
On Tuesday the United States determined that the RSF had “committed genocide” and imposed sanctions on the paramilitary group’s leader.
Across the country, more than 24.6 million people — around half the population — face “high levels of acute food insecurity,” according to IPC, which said: “Only a ceasefire can reduce the risk of famine spreading further.”
