Israel was to allow cement into the Gaza Strip late yesterday for the first time in a year as crossings with the Palestinian territory were reopened in accordance with a ceasefire, an Israeli spokesman said.
Four crossings between Israel and Gaza reopened on schedule yesterday, Israel and the Hamas rulers of Gaza said. Since a truce began on June 19, Israel has closed the passages a total of six days in retaliation for the firing of rockets.
“After evaluating the situation where we had a couple of days where rockets were fired, no rockets were fired yesterday and this has enabled us to reopen the crossings,” Israeli army spokesman Peter Lerner said.
The crossings had last been closed on Tuesday, after Israel said two rockets hit Israel on Monday. Hamas denies that those rockets were fired.
The Hamas interior ministry said yesterday that Israel would allow in fuel, wheat and animal feed, in addition to five trucks of dry cement. About 26 sick Palestinians were also to enter Israel to receive treatment, the ministry said.
Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza a year ago, allowing in only humanitarian aide, after the Islamic Hamas overran Gaza. The closure has caused shortages in everything from electricity to shoes and gasoline. With no cement allowed in, all construction had ceased. Palestinians in the building industry were greatly anticipating the arrival of cement, with five trucks expected to enter Gaza yesterday.
The 1.4 million Palestinians living in Gaza have largely been unable to leave the crowded territory except for a short period in January, when hundreds of thousands crossed into Egypt after Hamas blew open a border wall.
Israel withdrew settlers and military installations from Gaza in 2005 but still controls most of Gaza’s access to the outside world.
An Egyptian-controlled crossing in the southern Gaza Strip was also to be opened yesterday to allow sick Palestinians to seek treatment abroad and Arab travelers to enter the territory, Hamas official Ayman Taha said.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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