International
Israeli forces bombard Gaza City as tanks re-enter central areas
Israeli forces bombard Gaza City as tanks re-enter central areas
Palestinians in Gaza City say they have experienced one of the most intense Israeli bombardments since Israel launched its war on Hamas after the group’s unprecedented 7 October attack.
Columns of Israeli tanks are reported to be closing in on the centre of the city from several different directions.
The Gaza Civil Emergency Service says it believes a number of people have been killed but has so far been unable to reach them because of fighting in several districts in the east and west of Gaza City.
The Al-Ahli Baptist hospital is reported to have been evacuated, with its patients being taken to one of the only medical facilities still functioning in the area – the already overcrowded Indonesian hospital.
Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official has told the BBC that indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel on a ceasefire and hostage release deal are expected to resume in Qatar within 48 hours.
A preliminary meeting would take place in Egypt on Monday between US, Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs, the official said.
Ahead of the assault in Gaza City, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued evacuation orders for several neighbourhoods in the centre, including Tuffah, Daraj and the Old City.
But one of the areas that has come under the most intense assault, Tel al-Hawa, was not included in the evacuation order that was posted online with a map by the IDF Arabic spokesperson on Sunday.
On Monday afternoon, the IDF issued a new order that covered Tel al-Hawa as well as the Sabra and al-Rimal areas, to the north and west.
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One resident of Gaza City, Abdel Ghani asked: “The enemy is behind us and the sea is in front of us, where shall we go?”
Others have also told the BBC that they do not know where to go. They say that only one route remains – to go north towards the port area of Gaza City.
Some fled districts after receiving an evacuation order, only to find that the area they moved to was coming under Israeli bombardment.
In al-Rimal, a freelance cameraman working for the BBC says that he did not receive any evacuation orders, but later learnt that his neighbour did.
He left the area with his family and headed north. They are now in the port area but lack basic necessities. He says he is struggling to find water for his children.
In a statement, the IDF confirmed that it launched what it called a new operation in Tel al-Halwa overnight, following what it said was intelligence of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad infrastructure and fighters in the area.
The military also said that it was operating at the headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, in the area.
The IDF said that at the start of the operation, it gave warnings to civilians – and it said that it would open up a humanitarian corridor for people to leave the area.
The latest Israeli offensive in Gaza comes as hopes have been rising that a ceasefire deal might finally be agreed.
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A senior Palestinian official familiar with the talks has told the BBC that indirect negotiations between the Hamas and Israeli negotiating teams, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, will start in Doha within the next 48 hours.
The official also said a preparatory meeting was due to take place in Cairo on Monday between CIA director William Burns, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, and the head of Egyptian Intelligence, Abbas Kamel.
The three intelligence chiefs are then all due to travel to Doha on Tuesday.
The official outlined to the BBC several key sticking points from the Hamas perspective:
- Hamas wants Israeli forces to withdraw from both the Rafah crossing with Egypt and the Philadelphi corridor, a strip of land running along the Egyptian border
- Israel has vetoed Hamas’s demand for release from Israeli prisons of 100 senior figures from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah political factions
Hamas’s negotiating team has already dropped its requirement for Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as a precondition for any potential deal.
The official said the negotiating process would be very long and complex, but that there was some degree of hope that it might work this time.
On Sunday, a statement by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may have somewhat dampened expectations by insisting that any deal must not stop Israel from resuming fighting in Gaza until its war objectives are met.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly defined those aims as being the eradication of Hamas, both militarily and politically.
Israeli forces bombard Gaza City as tanks re-enter central areas
BBC
International
Kemi Badenoch political career may be in danger – Top diplomat
Kemi Badenoch political career may be in danger – Top diplomat
Comments by the Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom (UK), Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch, have sparked controversy in Nigeria with many outraged over the Leader of the Conservative Party statements which many interpreted as unpatriotic while some rose in her defence.
The British-Nigerian politician, who previously served in the UK Cabinet under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak from 2022 to 2024, had made remarks that many Nigerians interpreted as offensive.
She replaced the party’s leader and immediate past UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, after winning 57 per cent of party members’ votes to defeat former immigration minister Robert Jenrick.
The election, which saw her emerge as the first Black leader of a UK-wide political party, followed Mr Sunak’s resignation from the position after the party failed in the July general election, which produced Keir Starmer of the Labour Party as the new Prime Minister.
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Her position places her as a potential Prime Minister of the UK.
Speaking with British media recently, Badenoch, who had earlier described her upbringing in Nigeria as being overshadowed by fear and insecurity in a country plagued by corruption, detached herself from Northern Nigeria, which she referred to as a haven for Islamism and Boko Haram.
“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba],” she said.
“I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, the Boko Haram where Islamism is.
“Being Yoruba is my true identity, and I refuse to be lumped with northern people of Nigeria, who ‘were our ethnic enemies, all in the name of being called a Nigerian.”
Kemi Badenoch political career may be in danger – Top diplomat
International
Putin apologises over Azerbaijan plane crash reportedly shot down
Putin apologises over Azerbaijan plane crash reportedly shot down
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apologised to the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan over the downing of a commercial airliner in Russian airspace, in which 38 people were killed – but stopped short of saying Russia was responsible.
In his first comments on the Christmas Day crash, Putin said the “tragic incident” had occurred when Russian air defence systems were repelling Ukrainian drones.
Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky said Russia must “stop spreading disinformation” about the strike.
The plane is believed to have come under fire from Russian air defence as it tried to land in the Russian region of Chechnya – forcing it to divert across the Caspian Sea.
The Azerbaijan Airlines jet then crash-landed near Aktau in Kazakhstan, killing 38 of the 67 on board.
Most of the passengers on the flight were from Azerbaijan, with others from Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
It is believed most of those who survived were seated in the plane’s rear.
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Flight J2-8243 had been en route from the Azerbaijan capital of Baku to the Chechen capital of Grozny on 25 December when it came under fire and was forced to divert.
The Kremlin released a statement on Saturday noting Putin had spoken to Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev by phone.
“(President) Vladimir Putin apologised that the tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” it said.
In the rare publicised apology, Putin also acknowledged the plane had repeatedly tried to land at Grozny airport in Chechnya.
At the time, the cities of Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were “being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks”, he said.
The Kremlin read-out made no direct admission that the plane had been struck by Russian missiles.
In a statement released a shortly after the Kremlin’s, Ukrainian President Zelensky said the damage to the aircraft’s fuselage was “very reminiscent of an air defence missile strike”, adding that Russia “must provide clear explanations”.
“The key priority now is a thorough investigation that will answer all questions about what really happened.”
Prior to Saturday, the Kremlin had refused to say whether it was involved in the crash with authorities saying they were awaiting investigation results.
But Russian aviation authorities had earlier in the week said the situation in the region was “very complicated” due to Ukrainian drone strikes.
Aviation experts and others in Azerbaijan believe the plane’s GPS systems were affected by electronic jamming and it was then damaged by shrapnel from Russian air defence missile blasts.
Survivors had previously reported hearing loud bangs before the plane crashed, suggesting it had been targeted.
Azerbaijan had not officially accused Russia this week, but the country’s transport minister said the plane was subject to “external interference” and was damaged inside and out as it tried to land.
US defence officials on Friday had also said they believed Russia was responsible for the downing.
Moscow noted that Russian investigators had launched a criminal investigation. Azerbaijan had already announced it would launch an investigation.
The Kremlin said that Azeri, Kazakh and Russian agencies were “working closely at the site of the disaster in Aktau region”.
Even before Putin’s message on Saturday was released, several airlines from Azerbaijan had already begun suspending flights to most Russian cities.
The suspension will remain in place until the investigation into the crash is complete, one airline said.
International
BREAKING: Plane skids off runway in South Korea, killing at least 120
BREAKING: Plane skids off runway in South Korea, killing at least 120
AP – A passenger plane burst into flames Sunday after it skid off a runway at a South Korean airport and slammed into a concrete fence when its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, killing at least 120 people, officials said, in one of the country’s worst aviation disasters.
The National Fire Agency said rescuers raced to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane carrying 181 people at the airport in the town of Muan, about 290 kilometers (180 miles) south of Seoul. The Transport Ministry identified the plane as a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet and said the crash happened at 9:03 a.m. local time.
At least 120 people — 57 women, 54 men and nine others whose genders weren’t immediately identifiable — died in the fire, the South Korea fire agency said. The death toll is expected to rise further as the rest of the people aboard the plane remain missing about six hours after the incident.
Emergency workers pulled out two people, both crew members, to safety, and local health officials said they remain conscious. The fire agency deployed 32 fire trucks and several helicopters to contain the fire, it said.
Footage of the crash aired by YTN television showed the Jeju Air plane skidding across the airstrip, apparently with its landing gear still closed, and colliding head-on with a concrete wall on the outskirts of the facility. Other local TV stations aired footage showing thick pillows of black smoke billowing from the plane engulfed with flames.
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Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, told a televised briefing that rescue workers are continuing to search for bodies scattered by the crash impact. The plane was completely destroyed, with only the tail assembly remaining recognizable among the wreckage, he said.
Workers were looking into various possibilities about what caused the crash, including whether the aircraft was struck by birds that caused mechanical problems, Lee said. Senior Transport Ministry official Joo Jong-wan separately told reporters that government investigators arrived at the site to investigate the cause of the crash and fire.
Emergency officials in Muan said the plane’s landing gear appeared to have malfunctioned. The Transport Ministry said the plane was returning from Bangkok and its passengers include two Thai nationals.
Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, expressed deep condolences to the families of those affected by the accident through a post on social platform X. Paetongtarn said she had ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide assistance immediately.
Kerati Kijmanawat, the director of the Airports of Thailand, confirmed in a statement that Jeju Air flight 7C 2216 departed from Suvarnabhumi Airport with no reports of abnormal conditions in the airspace or on the runway.
Jeju Air in a statement expressed its “deep apology” over the crash and said it will do its “utmost to manage the aftermath of the accident.”
In a televised news conference, Kim E-bae, Jeju Air’s president, deeply bowed with other senior company officials as he apologized to bereaved families and said he feels “full responsibility” for the incident. Kim said the company hadn’t identified any mechanical problems in the aircraft following regular checkups and that he would wait for the results of government investigations into the cause of the incident.
Boeing said in a statement on X that it was in contact with Jeju Air and is ready to support the company in dealing with the crash.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones, and our thoughts remain with the passengers and crew,” Boeing said.
It’s one of the deadliest disasters in South Korea’s aviation history. The last time South Korea suffered a large-scale air disaster was in 1997, when a Korean Airline plane crashed in Guam, killing 228 people on board. In 2013, an Asiana Airlines plane crash-landed in San Francisco, killing three and injuring approximately 200.
Sunday’s accident was also one of the worst landing mishaps since a July 2007 crash that killed all 187 people on board and 12 others on the ground when an Airbus A320 slid off a slick airstrip in Sao Paulo and collided with a nearby building, according to data compiled by the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit group aimed at improving air safety. In 2010, 158 people died when an Air India Express aircraft overshot a runway in Mangalore, India, and plummeted into a gorge before erupting into flames, according to the safety foundation.
The incident came as South Korea is embroiled into a huge political crisis triggered by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s stunning imposition of martial law and ensuing impeachment. Last Friday, South Korean lawmakers impeached acting President Han Duck-soo and suspended his duties, leading Deputy Prime Minister Choi Sang-mok to take over.
BREAKING: Plane skids off runway in South Korea, killing at least 120
AP
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