Efforts toward a truce to stop three years of bloody Israeli-Palestinian violence were resuming in the shadow of Hamas threats for revenge after a botched Israeli air strike in Gaza, with Israeli security forces on high alert.
Osama el-Baz, top aide to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, was due in the West Bank yesterday for talks with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, part of Egyptian efforts to forge a cease-fire.
With Egyptian help, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia has been trying for weeks to forge a truce agreement among Palestinian factions, but without success. Qureia hoped to present Palestinian agreement to the Israelis in his first meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, pressuring the Israelis to go along. However, failure of Palestinian truce efforts has led to postponement of the summit.
The threat of attacks was in the air as Israeli forces went on high alert for the New Year, setting up roadblocks and patrolling highways and popular gathering spots. Last week Israeli security warned about a mega-terror attack timed for the New Year, listing possible targets like schools, public buildings and holy sites.
The level of public edginess was evident Wednesday afternoon when a bus blew a tire in Tel Aviv, sending the city into a near-panic and triggering special radio station broadcasts in a terror attack mode.
In the West Bank late Wednesday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 16-year-old Palestinian who was in a group of youths throwing rocks at Israeli cars on a road west of Nablus, relatives said. The military said the youth was building a stone barrier across the road.
Also, the military expelled a Palestinian, 25-year-old Mustafa Abed from a refugee camp next to Nablus, to the Gaza Strip late Wednesday.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
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