Author: Gulf News Week
Surge in air attacks and civilian casualties accompany avowed ‘peace through strength’ strategy as efficacy questioned.Washington, DC – During the first six months of his second term, Donald Trump pushed the limits of US presidential power while aiming to reorient US foreign policy to “America First”. His first months in office have also offered a window into the future of his administration’s approach to war-making, what analysts characterise as an at times contradictory tactic that oscillates between avowed anti-interventionism and quicksilver military attacks, justified as “peace through strength”. While questions remain over whether Trump has indeed pursued a coherent strategy when…
Health Ministry says four killed, 116 others wounded after explosion in Maarat Misrin in the northern Idlib countryside.At least four people have been killed and more than 100 others were wounded in an explosion in Idlib province, northwestern Syria, state news agency SANA reported. In a statement on Thursday, carried by SANA, Syria’s Ministry of Health said that the explosion occurred in the town of Maarat Misrin in the northern Idlib countryside. It was not immediately clear what caused the explosion. The ministry said that “four people were killed and 116 others were wounded,” according to a preliminary death toll.…
Bombings, starvation and repeated displacement have pushed Gaza’s society to the brink, analysts say.Through its unrelenting war on Gaza, Israel has killed over 59,000 Palestinians, injured 143,000 others, and pushed hundreds of thousands into forced starvation caused by its blockade on the enclave and its militarised distribution system. More than 100 Palestinians have starved to death as a result in recent weeks, 80 of them children. Whatever its ultimate intention, according to analysts, Israel has pushed the people of Gaza to the breaking point. “Israeli policy has left Gaza uninhabitable,” said Derek Summerfield, a United Kingdom-based psychiatrist who has written…
Saudi Arabia has been a major backer of the new Syrian government since the fall of Bashar al-Assad last December.Saudi Arabia has said it will invest approximately $3bn in real estate and infrastructure projects in Syria, the latest economic lifeline to help usher in a new chapter in the nation, devastated by a nearly 14-year civil war. The $2.9bn investment is part of a broader $6.4bn in deals, Investment Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Thursday at a conference in Damascus. Saudi Arabia has been a major backer of the new Syrian government, which seized power after rebels toppled longtime ruler…
Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank has escalated dramatically since the start of the war on Gaza.Two Palestinian teenage boys have been killed by Israeli forces in the town of al-Khader, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, according to the Wafa news agency, in the latest deadly violence in the territory continuing in tandem with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The bodies of 15-year-old Ahmad Ali Asaad Ashira al-Salah and 17-year-old Muhammad Khaled Alian Issa, who were killed at dawn, were withheld by the Israeli army, the report said, adding that two more children were also injured…
They bombed our classrooms, our wards, even our patients – but I refuse to stop treating the injured.Before this catastrophe began, I was living the happiest days of my life, surrounded by the warmth of my family, the affection of my friends, and dreams that felt within reach. I spent most of 2023 preparing for my graduation and getting ready to move from lecture halls to practical training fields, rotating between the laboratories of the Islamic University in Gaza and the eye hospitals spread across the Gaza Strip. On the evening of October 6, I was organising my books, tools…
‘We are starved by the Israeli occupation,’ says Taqwa al-Wawi in Gaza, where all she thinks about is how hungry she is.This is not a warning. Famine has already arrived in Gaza. It is not a metaphor, nor is it a prediction. It is daily. It is the child who wakes up asking for biscuits that no longer exist. The student who studies for exams while faint from hunger. It is the mother who cannot explain to her son why there is no bread. And it is the silence of the world that makes this horror possible. Children of the…
Iranian state media describe the confrontation as ‘tense’, while US military says the encounter was ‘professional’.Iran has said it warned a United States Navy destroyer to change course as it approached Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, but the US has claimed the confrontation was “professional” and had “no impact” on its naval mission. Iranian state media published video and images of Wednesday’s incident – the first direct encounter reported between Iranian and US forces since the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June – taken from a helicopter dispatched to confront the USS Fitzgerald guided missile…
Local media report that 24 firefighters and rescuers were trapped by the wildfire, and that victims were ‘burned alive’.At least 10 firefighters and rescue workers were killed and 14 others injured while battling a wildfire in Turkiye’s northwestern Eskisehir province, authorities said, as several fires rage in central and western areas of the country where temperatures are soaring. Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Ibrahim Yumakli said on Wednesday that five forestry workers and five rescuers trying to tackle the blaze were killed when 24 firefighters became trapped in the wildfire earlier in the day. Winds whipped up by the…
Aid groups warn of ‘mass starvation’ in Gaza amid a blockade, while Israeli attacks kill dozens of others across the enclave.At least 10 more Palestinians have starved to death in the besieged Gaza Strip, health officials say, as a wave of hunger crashes over the enclave. The latest starvation deaths bring the death toll from malnutrition since Israel’s war began in October 2023 to 111, most of them in recent weeks. At least 100 other Palestinians, including 34 aid seekers, were killed in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Wednesday. The World Health…