Israeli missiles slammed into a car in Gaza City yesterday, killing two members of a Palestinian rocket squad in the second deadly air strike since the Islamic militant group Hamas assumed power last week.
The militants had just fired a rocket toward Israel and returned to their car when they were hit, the Israeli military said. The pair was from the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party. A third member of the rocket squad was seriously wounded.
On Friday, a missile strike killed five Hamas-linked militants and a seven-year-old boy in an attack on a militants' training camp southern Gaza. Fourteen people were wounded in the strike, and six remained hospitalized yesterday.
Abbas, meanwhile, said Hamas has begun to realize after just a week in power that it cannot govern without the world's recognition, but is still grappling with the international community's demands that it moderate its positions.
Hamas has sent conflicting messages in recent days. Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas has said that the Islamic militant group will not comply with demands that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing peace agreements.
However, Haniyeh has also said Abbas is free to negotiate with Israel, and others in the group have raised the possibility of accepting a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
On Friday, the EU and the US announced they are halting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority. Haniyeh denounced the decisions as "blackmail," and said Hamas would not change its positions.
Also see story:
Olmert's plan will lead to another war, warns Abbas
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS