Israeli forces yesterday killed a local commander of the Islamist movement Hamas in the flashpoint city of Jenin, as they pressed a major operation in the occupied West Bank for a third day, the Israeli military said.
The military said border police forces had killed Wassem Hazem, who it said was the head of Hamas in Jenin and was involved in shooting and bombing attacks in the Palestinian territory.
Two other Hamas gunmen who tried to escape from the car they were traveling in were killed by a drone, it said, adding that weapons, explosives and large sums of cash were found in the car.
Photo: AFP / Israeli Army
Hamas confirmed the death of all three men, who it said were members of its al-Qassam Brigades armed wing.
The incident occurred as Israeli forces kept up a large-scale operation involving hundreds of troops and police that was launched in the early hours of Wednesday morning in Jenin and Tulkarm, another volatile city in the northern West Bank, as well as the Jordan Valley.
Israeli armored personnel carriers backed by helicopters and drones yesterday pushed into Jenin and Tulkarm while armored bulldozers plowed up roads to destroy roadside bombs planted by the militant groups.
In related news, UN officials are preparing to launch a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza tomorrow that would rely on a series of limited pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants holding out in the besieged enclave.
The WHO said it would need to vaccinate at least 90 percent of the children in Gaza for the campaign to succeed, but it faces huge challenges in the Palestinian enclave, which has been largely destroyed by nearly 11 months of war.
The campaign has been organized after the WHO on Friday last week said that a baby had been paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years, and UN agencies appealed for an urgent vaccination effort.
About 1.2 million vaccine doses have already been delivered to Gaza ahead of the campaign, which aims to vaccinate more than 640,000 children, a WHO official said yesterday. An additional 400,000 doses are en route to the territory, said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territories.
The planned pauses are unconnected with negotiations that have been under way for months to try to agree a halt in the fighting in Gaza and a return of Israeli and foreign hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that coordinates administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the pauses would be coordinated as part of a series of humanitarian pauses implemented periodically since the start of the Israeli campaign in Gaza in October last year.
Hamas has also agreed to the pauses, which the UN says are needed for the campaign to begin at all. A second round of vaccinations will be needed once the first round is complete.
The WHO has said the Israeli military and Hamas have agreed to three separate, zoned three-day pauses in fighting to allow the first round of vaccinations to be undertaken by UN agencies in coordination with the Palestinian health ministry.
More than 2,180 staff have been trained to provide vaccinations and information about the campaign to people in Gaza.
The pauses, due to run for three days between 6am and 3pm, are to begin in central Gaza, before moving to south and then northern Gaza. However, due to the logistical and security challenges facing the campaign, an extra day might be needed for each round, WHO officials have said.
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,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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