Author: Steven Sahiounie

CAIRO: The UN World Food Programme’s Executive Director Cindy McCain issued an urgent plea on Sunday from the Rafah border crossing for safe, expanded humanitarian access to Gaza as humanitarian needs skyrocket and critical food supplies reach dangerously low levels. Entry points into Gaza have been virtually sealed except through the Rafah border crossing point. While there has been a steady increase in aid entering Gaza, it is nowhere near enough to meet the exponentially growing needs. Since the beginning of the current escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip, the number of internally displaced people has reached 1.4 million, according…

GAZA: Gaza came under the third total communications outage since the start of the war, with Palestinian telecom company Paltel confirming all services were down late Sunday and saying Israel had again disconnected them. Internet access advocacy group NetBlocks.org reported a “new collapse in connectivity” across the besieged enclave. “We have lost communication with the vast majority of the UNRWA team members,” UN Palestinian refugee agency spokesperson Juliette Touma told The Associated Press. The first Gaza outage lasted 36 hours and the second one for a few hours, complicating efforts to share events on the ground. Earlier Sunday, Israeli warplanes…

DUBAI: Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN has said Israel has been emboldened by the international order’s “double and triple standards,” which he considers to be the “root” of the crisis unfolding in the Middle East. Reiterating his call for a ceasefire in Gaza, Munir Akram urged the international community to rectify the imbalance at the heart of the UN and in the application of international law. “This is the nature of the world order in which we live,” he said on Arab News current-affairs show “Frankly Speaking,” adding: “There are double standards and there are triple standards, discrimination against some…

RIYADH: The secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said on Sunday the dangerous statements by an Israeli minister regarding the use of a nuclear bomb on Gaza “underscored the extremism of the Zionist occupation against the Palestinian people,” Saudi Press Agency reported. On Sunday, Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu was suspended from government meetings “until further notice” after suggesting in an interview dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said. Jassem Albudaiwi called for holding the Israeli government accountable for what he called a “reckless threat.” He continued: “The dangerous statements by a minister in the Israeli occupying government regarding the…

BAGHDAD: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a surprise visit to Baghdad on Sunday following a trip to the occupied West Bank earlier in the day. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani met Blinken, the premier’s office said, with the two expected to discuss the risks of escalation in Israel’s war with Hamas. Blinken’s visit — which came after a brief stop in Cyprus to discuss a possible maritime aid route to Gaza — was not announced in advance for security reasons. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a series of rocket and drone attacks have targeted military…

The Palestine Red Crescent says it lost communication with its teams in the Gaza Strip after Israel cut internet and telephone lines. The cutoff means that casualty figures from attacks and details of ground fighting could not immediately be fully known. Only some satellite phones continued to function. Source: AlJazeera

Blinken reaffirmed US support for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting in Gaza to ensure desperate civilians get help Israel battled into the fifth week Saturday of its war to crush Hamas, showing no signs of letting up even as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken faced a rising tide of anger in meetings with Arab foreign ministers. Blinken reaffirmed US support for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting in Gaza to ensure desperate civilians get help a day after Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the idea short shrift. Speaking at a news conference in Amman about sparing civilians and…

The fundraising campaign to aid Palestinians in Gaza Strip was launched on Thursday. RIYADH — The donations of Saudi Arabia’s fundraising campaign to aid Palestinians in Gaza Strip exceeded SR294 million within 2 days from its launch. The number of donors so far has reached 499,313. The fundraising campaign to aid Palestinians in Gaza Strip, which is being carried out through the Sahem platform affiliated with the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief), was launched on Thursday. The fundraising campaign is in implementation of the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince…

“I don’t want a false leg,” the 13-year-old Palestinian tells AFP in Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital Layan al-Baz cries in agony when the effect fades of the painkillers she receives after her legs were amputated — the result of a strike on Gaza as Israel fights Hamas. “I don’t want a false leg,” the 13-year-old Palestinian tells AFP in Khan Yunis’s Nasser hospital, in the southern Gaza Strip, where getting artificial limbs was nearly impossible anyway. The impoverished Palestinian territory, under a crippling Israeli-led blockade for years and besieged since war erupted on October 7, suffers severe shortages of food,…

The October 7 attacks by Hamas militants who stormed across from Gaza and struck kibbutzim and southern Israeli areas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and deeply scarred the nation One month after Israel was wracked by Hamas attacks, life has been upended for both the Palestinians and Israel after it launched a war of reprisal in the Gaza Strip. The October 7 attacks by Hamas militants who stormed across from Gaza and struck kibbutzim and southern Israeli areas killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and deeply scarred the nation. Images of charred and mutilated bodies invoked comparisons to the horror of…