28/05/2025

WEDNESDAY | MAY 28, 2025

9

Israeli prime minister vows to bring hostages home

Russia captures Ukraine villages

SUMY: The governor of Ukraine’s Sumy region on the Russian border said on Monday Russian forces have captured four villages as part of an attempt to create a “buffer zone” on Ukrainian territory. Russia’s military and Russian military bloggers have in recent days reported captured villages in Sumy, which has come under frequent Russian air strikes for months. Sumy Region Governor Oleh Hryhorov on Facebook listed villages inside the border that he said were now held by Russian forces, namely Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka and Zhuravka. He said their residents have long been evacuated. “The enemy is continuing attempts to advance with the aim of setting up a so-called ‘buffer zone.‘” He said Ukrainian forces “are keeping the situation under control, inflicting precise fire damage on the enemy”. Hryhorov said fighting was continuing around other villages in the area, including Volodymyrivka and Bilovodiv, two settlements that Russia’s Defence Ministry had on Monday said were held by Moscow’s forces. Russian reports in recent days said Moscow’s forces had taken control of villages in the region. Ukraine’s State Emergency Services reported that one person was killed on Monday when Russian forces shelled an area of Sumy region west of the captured villages. Sumy region is opposite Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched a large cross-border incursion in August last year. Moscow says Ukrainian troops have been ousted from Kursk but Kyiv says its forces are still active there. Ukraine’s popular military blog DeepState said over the weekend Russian forces had for the first time “been able to take up positions” along a line of border villages. A Russian missile strike on the region’s main city, also called Sumy, killed 35 people on Palm Sunday last month. DeepState on Monday said Russian forces have launched attacks further east near Vovchansk in Kharkiv region, where it launched an incursion in May 2024. – Reuters Three injured in Soviet drone strikes KYIV: Russian drone attacks injured three people in Ukraine’s south and southeast overnight, Ukrainian officials said yesterday. Two people were injured in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Governor Serhiy Lysak said yesterday. “Air defence forces were working during the night in Dnipropetrovsk,“ he said on Telegram, adding that five drones had been shot down over the region. The attack sparked a fire in a private house and an outbuilding in one district and destroyed an agricultural enterprise, a private house and a car in another. Nikopol district also came under artillery and drone attack, said Lysak. A 59-year-old man was injured in a morning drone attack on the southern city of Kherson, the military administration said. In the northeastern city of Sumy, a drone strike sparked a fire in a building of an industrial enterprise. A later air strike damaged at least seven private and one two-storey buildings and cars in another area, it said. There were no casualties, it added. Russia did not immediately comment on the reports. – Reuters

Albares called on Sunday for an arms embargo on Israel. He also pressed for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel”, describing the territory as humanity’s “open wound”. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: “I no longer understand what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal.” The impact on Gazan civilians “can no longer be justified”, he added. However, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin would continue selling weapons to Israel. The Israeli military said on Monday over “the past 48 hours, the (Air Force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip”. It said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward Israel as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city’s eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. “Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted.” – AFP

Steve Witkoff, presented by mediators, but a spokesperson for Witkoff later denied that the Palestinian group had accepted. “What I have seen from Hamas is disappointing and completely unacceptable,” Witkoff told US news outlet Axios. In Gaza, an Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School, where displaced people were sheltering, killed “at least 33, with dozens injured, mostly children”, said civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal on Monday. The Israeli military said it had “struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic extremist command and control centre embedded” in the area, adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”. Another Israeli strike killed at least 19 people in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, said Bassal. European and Arabian leaders meeting in Spain over the weekend called for an end to the “inhumane” and “senseless” war while humanitarian groups said the trickle of aid was not nearly enough. Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel

o ‘We are not giving up’

GAZA: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday to bring back all hostages, “living and dead”, as Gaza rescuers said Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people in the war-battered Palestinian enclave. Netanyahu’s remarks come amid confusion about the fate of a proposed 70-day ceasefire that was to see the release of 10 Israeli hostages alongside more Palestinian prisoners. Israel has in recent weeks expanded its offensive in the Gaza Strip, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a months-long blockade that has caused severe food and medical shortages. “If we do not achieve it today, we will achieve it tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. We are not giving up,” said Netanyahu on freeing the captives. “We intend to bring them all back, the living and the dead,” he said, without mentioning a possible truce. Hamas said on Monday it had accepted a new ceasefire proposal by US envoy

A woman checking the

damaged Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School following the Israeli strike. – AFPPIC

US-backed group begins aid distribution in Gaza WASHINGTON: A controversial US-backed aid group for Gaza announced on Monday that it has begun distributing food in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, and decried Hamas “death threats” against organisations supporting its operations. warnings of looming famine. The United Nations (UN) and international aid agencies have said they would not cooperate with GHF, amid accusations that it is working with Israel while lacking any Palestinian involvement.

threats will not deter us”. “We are taking every measure to ensure secure operations and will continue working with trusted partners to deliver aid with integrity.” However, the group is facing internal turmoil. On Sunday, GHF’s executive director for the past two months, Jake Wood, said he felt compelled to leave after determining that the organisation could not fulfil its mission in a way that adhered to humanitarian principles. He said it had become “clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, which I will not abandon”. On Monday, GHF announced that it has named John Acree as interim executive director, hailing his “more than two decades of global field experience in disaster response, stabilisation programming and civil-military coordination”. – AFP

UN officials have raised concerns that the organisation could be used to “weaponise” aid by restricting who is eligible to receive it. GHF said Hamas was striving to block its operations. It condemned “in the strongest terms Hamas’s death threats targeting aid groups supporting humanitarian operations at GHF’s Safe Distribution Sites, and efforts to block the Gazan people from accessing aid at the sites”. “It is clear that Hamas is threatened by this new operating model and will do everything in its power to see it fail.“ While stressing its “non-negotiable” dedication to the safety and security of aid workers and civilians, GHF insisted that “these

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said in a statement that it “commenced operations in Gaza today, delivering truckloads of food to its Secure Distribution Sites, where distribution to the Gazan people began”. “More trucks with aid will be delivered tomorrow, with the flow of aid increasing every day.” The organisation, based in Geneva since February, has promised to distribute some 300 million meals in its first 90 days of operation. The announcement comes as Israel is facing global condemnation over the conditions in Gaza. A nearly three-month total blockade on Gaza has only begun to ease in recent days, amid