10/10/2024

THURSDAY | OCT 10, 2024

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Hezbollah fighters fend off invading troops

Brazilian nun gets refugee prize BRASILIA: A Brazilian nun who has helped refugees and migrants for 40 years yesterday won the Nansen prize awarded every year by the UN High Commission for Refugees for outstanding work to protect internally displaced and stateless people. Sister Rosita Milesi, 79, is a member of the Catholic order of the Scalabrini nuns, who are renowned for their service to refugees worldwide. Her parents were poor farmers from an Italian background in southern Brazil, and she became a nun at 19. As a lawyer, social worker and activist, Milesi championed the rights and dignity of refugees and migrants of different nationalities in Brazil for four decades. The UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award was established in 1954 in honour of Norwegian humanitarian, scientist, explorer and diplomat Fridtjof Nansen. UNHCR announced the award in Geneva. Milesi joins a long list of distinguished global laureates, including former US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the first person to receive the award when it was set up in 1954. She is the second Brazilian to receive the award. Former Sao Paulo Archbishop Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns won the prize in 1985. Milesi leads the Migration and Human Rights Institute in Brasilia, through which she has helped thousands of forced migrants and displaced people access essential services such as shelter, healthcare, education and legal assistance. She coordinates RedeMIR, a national network of 60 organisations that operates throughout Brazil to support refugees and migrants. Her work has had a significant impact on Brazil’s legal landscape, including the shaping of its 1997 refugee law and the 2017 migration law, which enshrined critical protections for displaced people and reduced the risk of statelessness, UNHCR said in a statement. – Reuters Sachs: Solution blocked by lobby WASHINGTON: The solution to the crisis in the Middle East is obvious but remains obstructed by the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States, said Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist. “This solution is rather obvious, but the political will has been blocked by the powerful Israel lobby,” Sachs said. He suggested that peace in the Middle East would be possible if the United States stopped vetoing Palestine’s membership in the United Nations and worked with other permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia, to implement a two-state solution. A two-state solution should establish a state of Palestine alongside Israel on the basis of the internationally recognised border that existed between the two countries on June 4, 1967, before the Six-Day War, Sachs said. The Palestinian state should have East Jerusalem as its recognised capital and have control over Islamic holy sites, Sachs said. The United Nations could deploy peacekeepers and other actions to ensure the security of both Israel and Palestine, he said. – Bernama

HAMILTON (Canada): UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres expressed concern on Tuesday for the escalating humanitarian and political crises in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon as he condemned violations of international law. “The nightmare in Gaza is entering an atrocious, abominable second year. This has been a year of crises. Humanitarian crisis. Political crisis. Diplomatic crisis. And a moral crisis,” Guterres said at a news conference in New York. The Gaza Strip “has become ground zero to a level of human suffering that is hard to fathom”, he said and noted that more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority of them women and children, with thousands more missing. “I strongly condemn all violations of international humanitarian law.” Highlighting the worsening situation for humanitarian workers BEIRUT: gunmen targeted Israeli soldiers near the Lebanese border village of Labbouneh with artillery shells and rockets yesterday, the group said, a day after Israel said it had killed two successors to its slain leader. The Israeli military said three of its soldiers were severely injured on Tuesday and yesterday during combat in southern Lebanon. Sirens sounded in northern Israel early yesterday after Israel renewed bombing Beirut overnight. The conflict in Lebanon has escalated dramatically in recent weeks as Israel has carried out a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and launched ground operations into southern Lebanon. Israel said that troops from as many as four divisions have operated inside Lebanon since the first announcement of the ground operation on Oct 1, but it has not confirmed that they have established a permanent presence. Hezbollah says it has clashed with Israeli troops on Lebanese soil, including with artillery fire and rockets, and managed to push the troops back and prevent them from holding territory. Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the last two weeks, and forced 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has no choice but to strike Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they fled under Hezbollah rocket fire. Burn victims from Israeli strikes are being treated at the burn unit in Beirut’s Geitaoui hospital, the only o Iran warns Gulf states on use of bases and airspace Hezbollah

Forensic personnel inspecting a residential building hit by an Israeli air strike in the Mazzeh suburb on the outskirts of Syria’s capital Damascus on Tuesday. The Syrian Defence Ministry said seven people were killed in the attack. – AFPPIC

“We are on the verge of an all-out war in Lebanon – with already devastating consequences,” he said, citing large-scale Israeli strikes that have killed more than 2,000 victims in Lebanon, and displaced over one million. Guterres said “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries must be respected”. “The conflict in the Middle East is getting worse by the hour and our warnings about the horrific impacts of escalation keep coming to pass. “Every airstrike, every missile launch, every rocket fired, pushes peace further out of reach and makes the suffering even worse for the millions of civilians caught in the middle.” The secretary-general concluded by calling for an immediate ceasefire and renewed efforts towards a two state solution. “All people in the region deserve to live in peace.” – Bernama Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to succeed Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated”. It was not clear who was the other figure. Safieddine has not been heard from since a huge Israeli airstrike late last week. Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said on Tuesday the group’s capabilities were intact despite the “painful blows” inflicted by Israel. Qassem said the group endorsed efforts by Lebanon’s speaker of parliament to secure a ceasefire. – Reuters

“It would be a catastrophe in what is already an unmitigated disaster.” Last week, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) advanced a Bill to revoke the immunity and privileges afforded to the refugee agency, in a move seen by Palestinians and the UN as part of an Israeli campaign to dismantle the agency and resolve the refugee issue. Guterres also condemned Israel’s intensified military operations in northern Gaza, where residential areas and hospitals have been targeted, forcing 400,000 residents to relocate again to overcrowded, unsanitary conditions in the south. “Ordering civilians to evacuate does not keep them safe if they have no safe place to go and no shelter, food, medicine or water. Guterres said nowhere in Gaza is safe. He also warned about an escalating conflict in Lebanon that threatens to engulf the region. Hezbollah, Suhail Hussein Husseini. Tehran told Gulf Arab states it would be “unacceptable” if they allowed use of their airspace or military bases against Iran and warned that any such move would draw a response, a senior Iranian official said. Netanyahu said on Tuesday Israeli airstrikes had killed two successors to Hezbollah’s slain leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, himself killed in an Israeli air attack on Sept 27. Netanyahu did not name them, but Israeli Defence Minister Yoav

and journalists, Guterres noted that “journalists have been killed at a level unseen in any conflict in modern times. And humanitarians – those who have dedicated their lives to helping others – are facing unprecedented, epic dangers.” Guterres stressed the indispensable role of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, while warning about the potential consequences of an Israeli draft legislation to restrict the agency’s operations. The UN chief announced that he has sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to express profound concern about draft legislation that could prevent the agency from continuing its essential work in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. The measure would suffocate efforts to ease human suffering and tensions in Gaza, and indeed, the entire Occupied Palestinian Territory. one of its kind in the country. Reuters journalists saw nurses change the gauze on patients, some of whom were wrapped neck down because of the severity of burns. Mahmoud Dhaiwi, a Lebanese soldier, said he was off duty and heading to the beach when his car was hit by an Israeli strike. His whole body has been burned. Since then he hasn’t been able to sleep and has suffered from crippling anxiety. Overnight, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs and said it had killed a figure responsible for budgeting and logistics for

Nightmare in Gaza entering atrocious second year: UN