19/03/2025

WEDNESDAY | MAR 19, 2025

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Airstrikes kill 326 in Gaza

EU: Russia, China hitting West with digital arsenals BRUSSELS: The European Union yesterday said Russia and China were using “massive digital arsenals” to interfere in Western democracies, while their messaging on the war in Ukraine had become increasingly aligned. “Foreign information manipulation and interference is a major security threat to the EU,” foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said in a report. “We must not underestimate the power that this has over us.” In its latest annual report on the subject, Brussels said last year it tracked disinformation attacks against over 80 countries and more than 200 organisations. The war in Ukraine remains a major target for Russia but events such as the Olympics in Paris and farmers’ protests in Germany were also in the crosshairs. “The aim is to destabilise our societies, damage our democracies, drive wedges between us and our partners and undermine the EU’s global standing,” Kallas said. The report said Brussels has become better at joining up the dots to expose the campaigns by Moscow and Beijing to shape opinion in the EU. It said Russia uses a complex web of “of state and non-state actors” from social media influencers to state media and official spokespeople to create and amplify its messages. China, for its part, appears to be stepping up the use of “both private PR companies and influencers to create, amplify and launder content aligned with China’s political interests worldwide”. The report stopped short of accusing Russia and China of actively colluding to spread disinformation, saying the “cross pollination between the two seems to remain largely opportunistic”. – AFP territories into the State of Israel, in breach of international law, the UN human rights office said yesterday. A report to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council later this month comes amid growing fears of annexation and policy shifts under President Donald Trump and new settler outposts in areas of the West Bank seen as part of a future Palestinian state. “The transfer by Israel of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies amounts to a war crime,” UN High Commissioner Volker Turk said. – Reuters KREMLIN CONCERNED ABOUT CASUALTIES MOSCOW: The Kremlin said yesterday it was concerned by the large number of civilian casualties after Israel struck Gaza and hoped that peace would return. Its spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Undoubtedly, it’s another deterioration in the situation (in Gaza) and another spiral of escalation that is causing us concern. Especially concerning are the reports of high casualties among the civilian population. We are monitoring the situation very closely and, of course, we are waiting for it to return to a peaceful course.” – Reuters WEST BANK ANNEXATION RAMPED UP: UN GENEVA: Israel has expanded and consolidated settlements in the occupied West Bank as part of the steady integration of these

BR I E F S

CAIRO: Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza, killing 326 people, Palestinian health authorities said yesterday, collapsing a two-month ceasefire with Hamas as Israel vowed to use force to free its remaining hostages in the strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had instructed the military to take “strong action” against Hamas in Gaza in response to the group’s refusal to release hostages and rejection of ceasefire proposals. “Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,” his office said in a statement. Hamas accused Israel of overturning the hard-fought ceasefire deal agreed in January, leaving the fate of 59 hostages still held in Gaza uncertain. Strikes in Gaza were reported in o Israeli military says campaign will expand

Palestinian prisoners. With the backing of the United States, Israel had been pressing for the return of the remaining 59 hostages still held in Gaza in exchange for a longer-term truce. However Hamas had been insisting on moving to negotiations for a permanent end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, in accordance with the terms of the original ceasefire agreement. “We demand that the mediators hold Netanyahu and the Zionist occupation fully responsible for violating and overturning the agreement,” the group said. Each side has accused the other of failing to respect the terms of the January agreement, and there were hiccups during the first phase. But until now, a full return to the fighting had been avoided. Israel had blocked deliveries of aid from entering Gaza and had threatened on numerous occasions to resume fighting if Hamas did not agree to return the hostages it still holds. – Reuters

In Washington, a White House spokesperson said Israel had consulted the US administration before it carried out the strikes, which the military said targeted mid-level Hamas commanders and leadership officials as well as infrastructure belonging to the group. “Hamas could have released hostages to extend the ceasefire but instead chose refusal and war,” White House spokesperson Brian Hughes said. In Gaza, residents said Israeli tanks shelled areas in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, forcing many families who had returned to their areas after the ceasefire began to leave their homes and head north to Khan Younis. Negotiating teams from Israel and Hamas had been in Doha as mediators from Egypt and Qatar sought to bridge the gap between the two sides after the end of an initial phase in the ceasefire, which saw 33 Israeli hostages and five Thais returned by groups in Gaza in exchange for some 2,000

many locations. Health Ministry officials said many of the dead were children. In hospitals strained by 15 months of bombardment, piles of bodies in white plastic sheets smeared with blood could be seen stacked up as casualties were brought in. The Israeli military said it hit dozens of targets, and that the attacks would continue for as long as necessary and extend beyond airstrikes, raising the prospect that Israeli ground troops could resume fighting. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory urged for the ceasefire in Gaza to be immediately reinstated. “Waves of airstrikes occurred across the Gaza strip since the early hours of the morning ... This is unconscionable,” Muhannad Hadi said in a statement. Israeli media said Israel was opening shelters in commercial hub Tel Aviv to prepare for possible retaliation from Hamas or Yemen.

Displaced Palestinians

sifting through the rubble in a school-turned camp after a strike in Gaza City yesterday. – AFPPIC

Houthis won’t ‘dial down’ under pressure DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthis will not “dial down” their action against Israeli shipping in the Red Sea in response to US military pressure or appeals from the group’s allies such as Iran, the group’s foreign minister said. Both officials asked not to be named. Iran has not made any public comment about recent outreach to the Houthis over their renewed action. Tehran says the group takes decisions independently. any message Iran delivered to the Houthi envoy in Tehran. There were messages from other powers to dial down, he said, but added: “Now we see that Yemen is at war with the US and that means that we have a right to defend ourselves with all possible means, so escalation is likely.”

“(The US) is threatening Iran and hitting Yemen. Now all scenarios are possible. We will do what they will do to us. If they are hitting us from (aircraft carrier USS Harry S. ) Truman , we will retaliate by hitting Truman ,” the Houthi foreign minister said. While Iran champions the Houthis, the group says it is aligned with Tehran without being a puppet. Experts on Yemen, where the Houthis expanded control during years of civil war, say the group seems mainly motivated by domestic concerns and support base. The Houthis said on March 12 they had resumed attacks on Israeli ships using routes that pass through the Red Sea after the group said Israel had not met a Houthi deadline for ending an aid blockade on Gaza. – Reuters

President Donald Trump said on Monday he would hold Iran responsible for any attacks carried out by the Houthis. “There will be no talk of any dialling down of operations before ending the aid blockade in Gaza. Iran is not interfering in our decision but what is happening is that it mediates sometimes but it cannot dictate things,” Amer said, in his first comments on the issue to a foreign news agency. Speaking from Yemen’s capital Sanaa, which has been hit by strikes, he said he had not been informed of

Jamal Amer spoke to Reuters late on Monday after the US launched a wave of strikes in areas of Yemen controlled by the Houthis, who said last week they were resuming attacks on Red Sea shipping to support Palestinians in Gaza. Two senior Iranian officials said Iran had delivered a verbal message to the Houthi envoy in Tehran on Friday to cool tensions and that Iran’s foreign minister asked Oman, which has mediated with the Houthis, to convey a similar message to the group when he visited Muscat on Sunday.

Iran has shown increasing concern it could be drawn deeper into conflict with the United States. Iran and Israel exchanged direct strikes for the first time last year as the Gaza war escalated. Trump, who withdrew the US from a 2015 deal between Iran and six major powers that curbed its sensitive nuclear work in exchange for sanctions relief, has stepped up a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions on Iran since returning to office for a second term in January.