Deadly Israeli strikes yesterday hit Lebanon and Gaza as the US secretary of state was set to visit Israel aiming to finalize a Gaza truce agreement that diplomats say could avert a wider regional conflagration.
The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said an Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon killed 10 people, including a Syrian woman and her two children.
The strike was among the deadliest in southern Lebanon since the onset of near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah following the start of the Gaza war in October last year.
Photo: Reuters
Israel’s military said it struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
In Hamas-run Gaza, civil defense rescuers said an Israeli airstrike killed 15 people from a single Palestinian family. The fatalities in al-Zawaida helped push the Gaza health ministry’s war death toll to 40,074.
“We are in the morgue seeing indescribable scenes of limbs and severed heads and children who are dismembered,” said Omar al-Dreemli, a relative.
On Friday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years.
An unvaccinated 10-month-old child in Gaza was on Friday diagnosed with highly infectious polio, the ministry said.
The announcement came hours after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for two seven-day breaks in the Gaza war to vaccinate more than 640,000 children against type 2 poliovirus, which was first detected in the territory’s wastewater in June.
“We are closer than we have ever been” to a ceasefire in the Gaza war, US President Joe Biden said on Friday, although previous optimism during months of on-off talks has so far proven futile.
Yesterday, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said that Biden’s comment was an “illusion.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was yesterday to leave for Israel and seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees,” the US Department of State said.
With a deal “now in sight, no one in the region should take actions to undermine this process,” Biden said.
On Friday, officials said that Hamas would not accept “new conditions” from Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday had detailed its conditions for a truce, including “a veto on certain prisoners” being released from its jails.
Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi, a Western ally, blamed Netanyahu for “impeding attempts to finalize” a deal and urged pressure on him.
Netanyahu has denied being the obstacle to a deal, blaming Hamas.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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