World
Dozens from same family killed in Gaza as Israel continues bombardment
Dozens of people from the same family have been killed in the Jabalia refugee camp, the Palestinian foreign minister has said, as Israel continued to bombard the besieged Gaza Strip in the hours after an agreement was reached for a truce that was expected to go into effect on Thursday.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said on a visit to London on Wednesday that 52 members of one family were killed in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
“Only this morning, from the Qadoura family in Jabalia, 52 people have been wiped out completely, killed,” he said.
“I have the list of the names, 52 of them. They were wiped out completely from grandfather to grandchildren.”
In southern Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said that heavy strikes continued on Wednesday in the lead-up to the humanitarian pause.
“These areas are considered to be ‘safe places’ to flee to from the north,” he said after an Israeli strike left a residential building in Khan Younis “completely destroyed”.
“But they are experiencing the same level of Israeli bombardments.”
Separately in Khan Younis, the bodies of more than 100 Palestinians originally held at the al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, which has been repeatedly raided by Israeli forces, were buried in a mass grave.
The agreement between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that governs Gaza, comes after nearly seven weeks of war in the besieged territory that has killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.
Key details of the agreement remain unclear, but it is expected to include the release of 50 civilian hostages held in Gaza, the release of 150 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons and a four-day halt to hostilities in Gaza. The pause is expected to coincide with an influx of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres described the agreement as “an important step in the right direction,” but added that “much more needs to be done to end the suffering”.
The deal, expected to come into effect on Thursday morning, has been welcomed by rights groups and political leaders as a sign of potential progress towards the end of the fighting, which began on October 7 when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli authorities have said that most of the victims were civilians and that Palestinian armed groups also took about 240 others captive during the attack.
Israel promised to dismantle Hamas and unleashed a devastating assault on Gaza that has wiped out entire neighbourhoods and killed more than 14,500 people, according to Palestinian authorities, including more than 5,600 children.
Alongside the bombardment, Israel has severely restricted supplies of food, electricity, fuel, and water for the Strip’s more than 2.3 million residents, with international aid groups warning of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Medical officials have warned that disease could spread amid dire conditions and contaminated water.
Refugee camps, UN schools, and hospitals sheltering the displaced have all been targeted, and a trickle of humanitarian assistance coming through the border crossing with Egypt has not been enough to address the scale of suffering.
Aid groups say a key ambition is to get help to northern Gaza, which has been largely inaccessible and where nearly all hospitals stopped working during a blistering air and ground offensive by Israeli forces.
“The entire humanitarian sector is ready to scale up once everything is set,” said Tommaso Della Longa, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Israeli authorities have stressed that the temporary pause to the fighting will not mean an end to the war.
“We are at war, and we will continue the war until we achieve all our goals: to destroy Hamas, return all our hostages and ensure that no entity in Gaza can threaten Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded message.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the implementation of the agreement was a “complex process that may take time”.
Officials from Arab countries welcomed the truce and said they hoped it could lead to further agreements in the future.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud also welcomed the truce, but insisted that increased humanitarian assistance resulting from the deal “must remain in place and must be built upon”.
Qatari official Mohammed al-Khulaifi, who helped broker the deal, said that he hopes the agreement will lead to a “bigger agreement and a permanent cease of fire”.
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Climate activists glue themselves to Munich airport runway, pausing traffic
A group of climate protesters have been arrested in Germany after breaking into an airport and gluing themselves to the runway.
Six activists broke through security fencing at Munich airport in the German state of Bavaria on Saturday, according to the news outlet dpa.
Approximately sixty flights were canceled after the half-dozen protesters glued themselves to the tarmac, forcing officials to temporarily close the airport.
CLIMATE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED FOR BLOCKING AIRSTRIP IN MASSACHUSETTS
An additional fourteen flights into Munich were forced to divert to other nearby airports to avoid the disruption.
Climate protest coalition Last Generation took credit for the stunt, claiming it was intended to draw attention to the German government’s inaction on the airline industry’s environmental impact.
CLIMATE GROUP TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR US OPEN CHAOS, OFFERS WARNING: ‘NO TENNIS ON A DEAD PLANET’
All six protesters were arrested and charged by law enforcement.
“Trespassing in the aviation security area is no trivial offense. Over hundreds of thousands of passengers were prevented from a relaxed and punctual start to their Pentecost holiday,” German Airports Association General Manager Ralph Beisel told dpa.
“Such criminal actions threaten air traffic and harm climate protection because they only cause lack of understanding and anger,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote about the protests on social media platform X.
The Munich incident was just one of many similar protests around the world against air transportation. Last Generation has performed at least two similar airport disruptions in Germany since last year.
World
Russian court seizes two European banks’ assets amid Western sanctions
Freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in lenders’ assets was part of dispute over gas project halted by sanctions.
A Russian court has ordered the seizure of the assets, accounts, property and shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the country as part of a lawsuit involving the German banks, court documents showed.
The banks are among the guarantor lenders under a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with the German company Linde. The project was terminated due to Western sanctions.
European banks have largely exited Russia after Moscow launched its offensive on Ukraine in 2022.
A court in St Petersburg ruled in favour of seizing 239 million euros ($260m) from Deutsche Bank, documents dated May 16 showed.
Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said it had already provisioned about 260 million euros ($283m) for the case.
“We will need to see how this claim is implemented by the Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” the bank added in a statement.
The court also seized the assets of Commerzbank, another German financial institution, worth 93.7 million euros ($101.85m) as well as securities and the bank’s building in central Moscow.
The bank is yet to comment on the case.
In a parallel lawsuit on Friday, the Russian court also ordered UniCredit’s assets, accounts and property, as well as shares in two subsidiaries, to be seized. The ruling covered 462.7 million euros ($503m) in assets.
UniCredit said it “has been made aware” of the decision and was “reviewing” the situation in detail. The bank was one of the most exposed European banks when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, with a large local subsidiary operating in Russia.
It began preliminary discussions on a sale last year, but the talks have not advanced. Chief executive Andrea Orcel said UniCredit wants to leave Russia, but added that gifting an operation worth three billion euros ($3.3bn) was not a good way to respect the spirit of Western sanctions on Moscow over the conflict.
Russia has faced heavy Western sanctions, including on its banking sector, since the start of the war in Ukraine. Dozens of US and European companies have also stopped doing business in the country.
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