Palestinian president in Madrid to thank Spain for support

Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez, left, and Belgian PM Alexander De Croo meet with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in March of 2024. (Reuters)

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Updated 2 min 20 sec ago

AFP

September 18, 2024 09:49

Palestinian president in Madrid to thank Spain for support

Abbas’ visit comes after Spain, along with Ireland and Norway, on May 28 formally recognized a Palestinian state
First Palestinian ambassador to Spain presented his credentials on Monday to Spanish King Felipe VI

Updated 2 min 20 sec ago

AFP

September 18, 2024 09:49

MADRID: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to meet Thursday in Madrid with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, in his first visit to the country since it formally recognized a Palestinian state in May.
Abbas is stopping in Madrid at Spain’s invitation before heading to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, according to an official in his office.
Sanchez will meet with Abbas on Thursday, the Spanish premier’s office said Wednesday, but the details of the program for the rest of the Palestinian president’s visit is not yet known.
Abbas is also due to be received by Spain’s King Felipe VI according to the official in his office, but the royal palace, contacted by AFP, has not confirmed this meeting.
His visit comes after Spain, along with Ireland and Norway, on May 28 formally recognized a Palestinian state comprising the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Israel condemned their decision, saying it bolsters Hamas, the militant Islamist group that led the October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip.
Spain’s leftist government then announced that a first bilateral summit between Spain and Palestine would be held before the end of the year, and the first Palestinian ambassador to Spain presented his credentials on Monday to Spanish King Felipe VI.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said the recognition of a Palestinian state is “not against anyone, least of all Israel,” but the move led to a further deterioration in ties between the two countries.
He has been one of the most outspoken critics in Europe of Israel’s Gaza offensive since the start of the conflict.
The October 7 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has so far killed at least 41,226 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Sanchez vowed this month to continue to “pressure” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the global stage over the war in Gaza, especially at the International Criminal Court, which in May requested an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his defense minister.
Spain, along with other nations, has joined South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice in which Pretoria has accused Israel of “genocide” in the Gaza Strip.
“We are going to strengthen our ties with the Palestinian state,” Sanchez said, adding that Madrid hoped “to sign several collaboration agreements” with the Palestinian state at the bilateral summit later this year.
Last week, Madrid hosted a gathering of representatives from European and Arab nations to discuss how to advance a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The international community must take a decisive step toward a just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” Sanchez said at the time.

Lebanon FM says pager blasts an omen of wider war

Updated 18 September 2024

AFP

September 18, 2024 17:49

Lebanon FM says pager blasts an omen of wider war

Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned of the incident’s gravity

Updated 18 September 2024

AFP

September 18, 2024 17:49

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s top diplomat on Wednesday said the deadly explosion of hundreds of Hezbollah members’ pagers could be an omen of a wider conflict in the Middle East.
According to Lebanon’s National News Agency, Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned of the incident’s gravity, “because it comes after Israeli threats to expand the focus of the war with Lebanon, which would plunge the region into a larger cycle of violence, and signal a wider war.”

Topics: War on Gaza pager explosions Abdallah Bou Habib Hezbollah

Arab League chief condemns ‘Israeli attacks’ on Lebanon, warns against escalation

Updated 18 September 2024

Gobran Mohamed

September 18, 2024 17:33

Arab League chief condemns ‘Israeli attacks’ on Lebanon, warns against escalation

Paging devices belonging to Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria exploded on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding up to 2,800 others
Gamal Roshdy, the spokesman for Aboul Gheit, relayed the bloc chief’s warning about the repercussions of this ‘dangerous escalation against Lebanon and its people’

Updated 18 September 2024

Gobran Mohamed

September 18, 2024 17:33

CAIRO: Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit on Wednesday condemned the “treacherous Israeli attacks” in Lebanon, which claimed several lives, including that of a child, and resulted in thousands of injuries.

Paging devices belonging to Hezbollah members in Lebanon and Syria exploded on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding up to 2,800 others.

Gamal Roshdy, the spokesman for Aboul Gheit, relayed the bloc chief’s warning about the repercussions of this “dangerous escalation against Lebanon and its people.”

He said that the attacks were compounded by irresponsible statements from Israeli leaders, who appeared intent on broadening the scope of the war on the southern Lebanon front, which could dangerously destabilize the entire region.

Aboul Gheit expressed his “unwavering solidarity with Lebanon, its people, and its government in the face of this blatant assault on the country’s sovereignty and security.”

He stressed the urgent need for the UN Security Council to fulfill its responsibilities by addressing and countering Israel’s “continued and reckless” threats to security and peace in the region.

Separately, Badr Abdelatty, Egypt’s foreign minister, called Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, and his Lebanese counterpart, Abdallah Bou Habib, in the aftermath of the pager blasts.

Abdelatty conveyed the directives of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to affirm Egypt’s support for the security and stability of Lebanon and non-violation of its sovereignty by any external party.

El-Sisi offered to provide any possible support to “our brothers in Lebanon during these critical circumstances.”

During the calls, Abdelatty reiterated his warning against the threat of escalation and the danger of a full-fledged regional war.

He said that the developments in southern Lebanon were a clear indication that “the region is on a dangerous juncture due to irresponsible and ill-considered unilateral actions, which will lead to consequences that will cast a shadow over the stability of the entire region.”

Abdelatty emphasized the importance of preventing escalation, “which can be achieved through an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, halting the Israeli aggression in the West Bank, and expeditiously reaching a deal that guarantees the release of hostages and detainees, as well as full and unconditional access of humanitarian and medical aid into the strip.”

Topics: Lebanon Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit

Lebanon doctors tell of horror after pager blasts

Updated 18 September 2024

AFP

September 18, 2024 17:38

Lebanon doctors tell of horror after pager blasts

“The injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes,” said doctor Joelle Khadra
A doctor at another hospital in Beirut said he worked all night and that the injuries were “out of this world — never seen anything like it“

Updated 18 September 2024

AFP

September 18, 2024 17:38

BEIRUT: Doctors in Lebanon spoke Wednesday of horrific eye injuries and finger amputations, a day after Hezbollah paging devices exploded across the country, killing 12 people and wounding up to 2,800.
“The injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes — some people lost their sight,” said doctor Joelle Khadra, who was working in emergency at Beirut’s Hotel-Dieu hospital.
Hundreds of wireless paging devices belonging to members of the Iran-backed group exploded simultaneously on Tuesday, hours after Israel said it was broadening the aims of the Gaza war to include its fight against Hamas’s Lebanese ally.
Khadra told AFP that Hotel-Dieu, located in the Lebanese capital’s Christian-majority Ashrafieh district, treated about 80 injured.
Around 20 “were admitted to intensive care immediately and were put on ventilators to ensure they wouldn’t suffocate due to the swelling in their faces,” she said.
“The rest are going one after the other to the operating room. Today, we have 55 surgeries,” she added, wearing her white doctor’s coat over her blue scrubs.
Hezbollah, which has traded near daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, has vowed to retaliate for the pager blasts, which it blamed on Israel.
Israel has not yet comment on the explosions, which went off in Hezbollah strongholds across Lebanon, from Beirut’s southern suburbs to Lebanon’s south and in the east near the Syrian border.
A doctor at another hospital in Beirut said he worked all night and that the injuries were “out of this world — never seen anything like it.”
“It’s beyond what can be described,” he said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized by the hospital to speak to the media.
“We have a lot of injuries with amputated fingers” because people were holding the pagers in one or both hands, he said, while some people who had been sitting on the floor also had wounded feet.
But the “most devastating” wounds were when the pagers blew up in people’s faces, he said, citing up to 40 patients with eye injuries, most of them severe.
Around three-quarters of those patients “lost one eye completely, and the other eye is either somewhat salvageable or barely salvageable,” he said, while “15 to 20 percent... lost both eyes in a way that’s irreparable.”
“A lot of colleagues have been saying this is worse compared to the August 4... (eye) injuries that we saw,” he said.
On August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port killed more than 220 people and injured some 6,500, with several hundred at least suffering ocular injuries and some people even blinded in one eye by flying shards of glass and other debris.
The doctor also reported “a lot of burns and foreign bodies — metallic pieces of pagers being retrieved from patients’ eyes, brains, faces, sinuses, from their insides, from their bones.”
He said there was “a lot of tissue loss, fingers lost — things that we can’t repair, we can’t replace.”
Health Minister Firass Abiad said Wednesday that two children were among 12 people killed, while almost 300 people were “in critical condition,” some suffering facial injuries and brain haemorrhaging.
Of some 1,800 people who were admitted to hospital, “460 needed operations on their eyes, face or limbs, particularly the hands,” he said, noting “multiple finger or hand amputations.”
Lebanon, enduring a grinding five-year economic crisis, received a delivery of medical aid from Iraq on Wednesday morning, while doctors and nurses from Iran’s Red Crescent also arrived to assist, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported, and Jordan said it sent aid and medical supplies.
The office of the United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon said on X that “praise must go to the medical corps and emergency professionals,” adding the importance of their work after the pager blasts “cannot be overstated.”

Topics: War on Gaza Hezbollah pager explosions Lebanon Israel

Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions

An ambulance believed to be carrying wounded people, after multiple explosions were heard in Beirut on Wednesday.

Updated 8 min 7 sec ago

AFP

September 18, 2024 14:16

Three dead, 100 wounded in new wave of Lebanon device explosions

A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold
State media reported similar blasts in south and east Lebanon

Updated 8 min 7 sec ago

AFP

September 18, 2024 14:16

BEIRUT: A second wave of device explosions killed three people and wounded more than 100 in Hezbollah strongholds of Lebanon on Wednesday, officials said, stoking fears of an all-out war in the region.
A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.
AFPTV footage showed people running for cover when an explosion went off during a funeral for Hezbollah militants in south Beirut on Wednesday afternoon.
Three people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the latest attacks, the Lebanese authorities said, with the health ministry also describing the devices targeted as walkie-talkies.
It came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.
There was no comment from Israel, which only hours before Tuesday’s attacks had announced it was broadening the aims its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip to include its fight against the Palestinian group’s ally Hezbollah.
Hezbollah said Israel was “fully responsible for this criminal aggression” and reiterated it would avenge the attack, while vowing to continue its fight against Israel in support of Hamas in the Gaza war.
Cross-border exchanges with Israeli forces were “ongoing and separate from the difficult reckoning that the criminal enemy must await for its massacre,” Hezbollah said.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib warned the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war.”
The influx of so many casualties all at once overwhelmed hospitals in Hezbollah strongholds.
At a Beirut hospital, doctor Joelle Khadra said “the injuries were mainly to the eyes and hands, with finger amputations, shrapnel in the eyes — some people lost their sight.”
A doctor at another Beirut hospital, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said he had worked through the night and that the injuries were “out of this world — never seen anything like it.”
Experts said Israeli operatives had likely planted explosives on the paging devices before they were delivered to Hezbollah.
“This was more than lithium batteries being forced into override,” said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute.
“A small plastic explosive was almost certainly concealed alongside the battery, for remote detonation via a call or page,” the analyst said, adding Israel’s spy agency “Mossad infiltrated the supply chain.”
Among the dead was the 10-year-old daughter of a Hezbollah member, killed in east Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley when her father’s pager exploded, the family and a source close to the group said.
Tehran’s ambassador in Beirut, Mojataba Amani, who was injured, said on social media platform X that it was “a source of pride for me that my blood was mixed with that of the wounded Lebanese” in what he called a “horrific terrorist crime.”
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the attack, decrying Western support for Israeli “crimes, killings and indiscriminate assassinations.”
The attack dealt a heavy blow to the militant group, which already had concerns about the security of its communications after losing several key commanders to targeted air strikes in recent months.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, told AFP the pagers were “recently imported” and appeared to have been “sabotaged at source.”
After The New York Times reported the pagers had been ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo, the company said they had been produced by its Hungarian partner BAC Consulting KFT.
A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary.”
As fears again surged of a regional conflagration nearly a year into the Gaza war, Lufthansa and Air France announced the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran and Beirut until Thursday.
Since October, the unabating exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah have killed hundreds of mostly fighters in Lebanon, and dozens including soldiers on the Israeli side.
They have also forced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee their homes.
United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said Tuesday’s attack had come at an “extremely volatile time,” calling the blasts “shocking” and their impact on civilians “unacceptable.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments “not to weaponize civilian objects.”
US officials have expressed increasing frustration with Israel, which has rejected American assessments that a deal is nearly complete and insisted on an Israeli military presence on the Egypt-Gaza border.
The October 7 attack that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures which includes 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, the majority of them civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has acknowledged these figures as reliable.
In Gaza on Wednesday, the civil defense agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter killed five people, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.

Topics: War on Gaza Lebanon Hezbollah

Erdogan says Turkiye will deepen ties with East while still facing West

Updated 18 September 2024

Reuters

September 18, 2024 16:44

Erdogan says Turkiye will deepen ties with East while still facing West

Erdogan said debates over an “axis shift” were unfounded, but that Türkiye had to adapt to new “centers of power” forming in the fields of economy, production, and technology
“That is the approach that lies behind our country’s will to expand the basis of dialogue with all of them, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to BRICS and ASEAN“

Updated 18 September 2024

Reuters

September 18, 2024 16:44

ANKARA: President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Türkiye would not stop deepening ties with the East, including the BRICS group of nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), even as it continued to face West.
Türkiye, a NATO member, has in recent months voiced interest in joining the BRICS and SCO groups, both of which include China and Russia. This has stirred US and European fears that Türkiye may be pivoting away from its traditionally Western geopolitical orientation, despite repeated denials from Ankara.
Speaking at an event in Ankara, Erdogan said debates over an “axis shift” were unfounded, but that Türkiye had to adapt to new “centers of power” forming in the fields of economy, production, and technology, while keeping itself open to opportunities with every structure and actor.
“That is the approach that lies behind our country’s will to expand the basis of dialogue with all of them, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to BRICS and ASEAN,” Erdogan said.
“Of course, our face is turned to the West, but this certainly does not mean that we will turn our backs on the East, that we will ignore the East, or not improve our ties with the East,” he added.
BRICS comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. China and Russia, in particular, want to expand the group further as they seek to counter Western economic dominance.
The SCO is a security, political and economic club launched by Moscow, Beijing and Central Asian states in 2001 as a counterweight to Western alliances.

Topics: Turkiye President Tayyip Erdogan BRICS ASEAN East west

Palestinian president in Madrid to thank Spain for support

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Palestinian president in Madrid to thank Spain for support

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