Israel Katz warns leaders of movement after airstrikes hit several areas of Yemen overnight, including power stations near capital Sana’aIsrael’s restriction of Gaza’s water supply to levels below minimum needs amounts to an act of genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity, a human rights report has alleged.Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigated Israeli attacks on the water supply infrastructure in Gaza over the course of its 14-month war there.The visiting UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told Agence France-Presse that there is a need for a significant aid boost across Syria after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. “Across the country, the needs are huge. Seven in 10 people are needing support right now,” Fletcher said, adding, “I want to scale up massively international support, but that now depends on donors. The Syria fund has been historically, shamefully underfunded and now there is this opportunity.”Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said his country and Lebanon would work together on Syria after the overthrow of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad earlier this month. “A new era has now begun in Syria. We agree that we must act together as two important neighbours of Syria,” Erdoğan told a news conference, alongside Lebanese caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati.The Israeli military has ordered another evacuation in central Gaza, even as Israel and Hamas appear to inch closer to a ceasefire agreement. “This is an advance warning ahead of an offensive,” Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee posted on X. The order included four residential block areas in the urban refugee camp of Bureij, where Adraee claimed that Palestinian militants fired rockets toward Israel.UN special envoy Geir Pedersen has called for “free and fair elections” in Syria and urged humanitarian assistance, AFP reports. Addressing reporters at the end of a visit to Damascus, Pedersen said “there is a lot of hope that we can now see the beginning of a new Syria”, which he expressed hope would also include a “political solution” in the Kurdish-held northeast.The US, joined by Arab mediators, is seeking to conclude a long-negotiated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. A Palestinian official told Reuters earlier today that mediators had narrowed gaps on most of the agreement’s clauses. He said Israel, however, had introduced conditions which Hamas rejected but would not elaborate.At least 45,097 Palestinian people have been killed and 107,244 injured in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Of those, 38 Palestinians were killed and 203 injured in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry said. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/dec/19/middle-east-crisis-israel-houthis-yemen-airstrikes-latest-updates
Author : Tom Ambrose
Publish date : 2024-12-19 08:43:57
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