17/07/2025

THURSDAY | JULY 17, 2025

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Aid site crush kills at least 20

Russia steps up attacks, defies Trump warning KYIV: Russia fired hundreds of drones, artillery and a ballistic missile at Ukraine between late Tuesday and early yesterday, Ukraine said, defying calls by Donald Trump to reach a peace deal. The attacks left one woman dead and wounded more than two dozen people across regions, while a missile attack cut power and water in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s home city of Kryvyi Rig, according to authorities. The bombardment came two days after US President Trump threatened to impose severe sanctions against the country unless it reached a peace settlement within 50 days to end its three-year war on Ukraine. Ukrainian and Russian officials last met for direct peace talks more than a month ago, and no further meetings have been scheduled despite the Kremlin saying it is open for more talks. Russia fired at least 400 drones at Ukraine between late Tuesday and early yesterday, as well as an Iskander ballistic missile launched from the annexed Crimean peninsula, the Ukrainian air force said. Overnight drone attacks on the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia left eight wounded, while three were wounded in an attack on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, local authorities said. Russian attacks on the city of Kryvyi Rig wounded at least 15 people, destroyed an industrial building and disrupted power and water supplies, according to local officials. A 17-year-old boy was among those injured, the city’s mayor Oleksandr Vilkul said on Telegram. “He was wounded in the abdominal cavity. He was immediately taken to the hospital, in serious condition. Now doctors are fighting for his life,” he wrote. “This has never happened before. A ballistic missile and 28 Shaheds simultaneously,”he added, referring to Iranian-designed drones. Russia has stepped up its summer campaign against Ukraine in recent weeks as Washington mediated ceasefire talks stall. Its army has pushed ahead on the battlefield, while pounding Ukraine with combined drone, artillery and missile strikes. Trump said on Monday he had struck a deal with Nato chief to supply more American air defence systems and weapons to Ukraine, citing his frustration with Russia’s refusal to accept a ceasefire. AFP to crash Marine Le Pen’s hopes of winning the French presidency. A French court banned the 56 year-old politician from standing for office for five years in March for a scheme under which the European Parliament paid assistants who were actually working for her party. The far-right leader also received a partially suspended four-year jail term and a €100,000 fine over the case. – AFP

o Foundation blames armed agitators

CAIRO: At least 20 Palestinians were killed yesterday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), in what the US-backed group said was a crowd surge instigated by armed agitators. The GHF, which is supported by Israel, said 19 people were trampled and one fatally stabbed during the crush at one of its centres in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. “We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest,” GHF said in a statement. There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Palestinian heath officials told Reuters 21 people had died of suffocation at the site. One medic said lots of people had been crammed into a small space and had been crushed. On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza – the majority of them close to GHF sites. Most of those deaths were caused by gun fire that locals have blamed on the Israeli military. The military has acknowledged that civilians were harmed near aid distribution centres, saying that Israeli forces had been issued new instructions following what it called “lessons learned”. BOGOTA: The UN expert on Palestinian affairs Francesca Albanese (pic) said on Tuesday that Washington’s sanctions following her criticism of the White House’s stance on Gaza are a “violation” of her immunity. The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories made the comments while visiting Bogota, nearly a week after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions, calling her work“biased and malicious”. “It’s a very serious measure. It’s unprecedented. And I take it very seriously,” Albanese told an audience in the Colombian capital. Albanese was in Bogota to attend an international summit initiated by leftist President Gustavo Petro to find solutions to the Gaza conflict. The Italian legal scholar and human rights expert has faced harsh criticism for her long-standing accusations that Israel is committing“genocide”in Gaza. yesterday dismissed an appeal brought by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s heirs against a European Parliament demand for repayment of about €300,000 (RM1.5 million) the late French far-right leader unduly claimed in expenses. Last year, the EU parliament accused Le Pen of having improperly invoiced as parliamentary expenses money he had spent on personal

Next of kin mourning

those killed at an aid centre in Khan Younis yesterday. – REUTERSPIC

which started on July 6 and are being brokered by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar with the backing of the United States. Palestinian sources close to the negotiations said a breakthrough had not yet been reached on any of the main issues under discussion. Hamas said Israel wanted to keep at least 40% of the Gaza Strip under its control as part of any deal, which the group rejected. Hamas has also demanded the dismantlement of the GHF and the reinstatement of a UN led aid delivery mechanism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas is removed. – Reuters companies also raised objections. Washington last month slapped sanctions on four ICC judges, in part over the court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, barring them from the United States. UN special rapporteurs like Albanese are independent experts who are appointed by the UN human rights council but do not speak on behalf of the United Nations. The war in Gaza was triggered on Oct 7, 2023 after gunmen killed 1,219 people in Israel and took hostages, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. More than 58,479 Palestinians have been killed in the retaliatory Israeli military offensive, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas government, considered reliable by the UN. Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence has surged in the territory since October 2023. – AFP The money involved was claimed by Le Pen under “budget item 400” which is intended to cover lawmakers’ office rental and equipment costs. Parliament later demanded Le Pen repay €303,201. The firebrand politician, an extreme right-winger who haunted the French political establishment for decades, died aged 96 in January. The case is separate from the EU embezzlement scandal that threatens

and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organisation by the GHF,” he said. The war in Gaza has devastated large swathes of the coastal enclave, displaced almost all of the territory’s population and led to widespread hunger and privation. Earlier yesterday, the Israeli military said it had completed a new road in southern Gaza separating several towns east of Khan Younis from the rest of the territory in an effort to disrupt Hamas operations. Palestinians see the road under Israeli army control as a way to exert pressure on Hamas in ceasefire talks,

supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let gunmen loot aid shipments. Hamas denies the accusation. The UN has called the GHF’s model “inherently unsafe” and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards – an allegation GHF has denied. Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, accused the GHF of gross mismanagement, saying its lack of crowd control and failure to uphold humanitarian principles had led to chaos and death among desperate civilians.

The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get Sanctions a violation of immunity, says UN expert “People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry

against judges of the International Criminal Court, with UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman calling the move “a dangerous precedent.” On Friday, the

“It’s clear violation of the UN Convention on Privileges and Immunities that protect UN officials,

including independent experts, from words and actions taken in the exercise of their functions,” Albanese said. Rubio on July 9 announced that Washington was sanctioning Albanese “for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt (ICC) action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives”.

European Union also spoke out against the sanctions facing Albanese, adding that it “strongly supports the United Nations human rights system.” Albanese, who assumed her mandate in 2022, released a damning report this month denouncing companies – many of

them American – that she said “profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide” in the occupied Palestinian territories. The report provoked a furious Israeli response, while some of the

The sanctions are “a warning to anyone who dares to defend international law and human rights, justice and freedom,” Albanese said. On Thursday, the UN urged the United States to reverse the sanctions against Albanese, along with sanctions

EU court rules against Le Pen’s heirs in expenses scandal LUXEMBOURG: An EU court

National Rally party, and her siblings. “The General Court dismisses the action brought by Mr Le Pen and his heirs,” the court, the lower chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union, said in a statement. “The procedure which led the parliament to adopt the recovery decision and to issue the debit note is not contrary to the principles of legal certainty and the protection of legitimate expectations.”

matters, when he served as a European lawmaker. A report by the European Anti Fraud Office found that between 2009 and 2018 he unduly invoiced items including umbrellas, kitchen scales, desk clocks, smart watches, virtual reality glasses and 129 wine bottles. Le Pen appealed and after his death earlier this year the proceedings were taken up by his daughter Marine, who leads France’s