03/06/2025

TUESDAY | JUNE 3, 2025

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Deadly Gaza chaos blamed on new aid group

UK to expand submarine fleet

LONDON: Britain will expand its nuclear powered attack submarine fleet as part of a defence review that is designed to prepare the country to fight a modern war and counter the threat from Russia. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, like other European leaders, is racing to rebuild the UK’s military capabilities after US President Donald Trump told the continent it needed to take more responsibility for its own security. The Strategic Defence Review will call for Britain’s armed forces to move to a state of “warfighting readiness” and reverse its post-Cold War military decline. “The moment has arrived to transform how we defend ourselves,” Starmer told workers at BAE Systems’ Govan shipbuilding site in Scotland, saying he would “end the hollowing out of our armed forces”. “When we are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, the most effective way to deter them is to be ready.” Despite cuts to the military budget in recent years, Britain still ranks alongside France as one of Europe’s leading military powers, with its army helping to protect Nato’s eastern flank and its navy maintaining a presence in the Indo-Pacific. But the army, with 70,860 full-time trained soldiers, is the smallest since the Napoleonic era and the government has said it must rebuild given the growing strategic threats. Elected last July, Starmer has already cut the aid budget to fund an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, from 2.3%, with an ambition to get to 3% over the longer term. Starmer has sought to cast the higher defence spending as a way to create jobs and wealth, as he juggles severely strained public finances, a slow-growing economy and declining popularity among an increasingly dissatisfied electorate. The authors of the defence review, led by the former Nato boss, George Robertson, and a former Russia adviser to the White House, Fiona Hill, said the higher spending had enabled them to set out a 10-year military programme. – Reuters MEXICO CITY: Only around 13% of eligible voters cast ballots in Mexico’s first poll for its judges, the election authority said on Sunday. In the unprecedented poll, voters were tasked with selecting around 880 federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, as well as hundreds of local judges and magistrates. Another election for the remainder will be held in 2027. Turnout hovered between 12.57% and 13.32% of the nearly 100 million voters, National Electoral Institute head Guadalupe Taddei said in a televised statement. President Claudia Sheinbaum, who previously defended the judicial reforms, lauded Sunday’s outcome as a “complete success”. “For the first time in history, almost 13 million Mexican women and men exercised their right to decide the new ministers, magistrates and judges,” Sheinbaum said. – AFP PUT POLAND’S INTEREST FIRST, NEW PRESIDENT TOLD WARSAW: Polish far-right leader Slawomir Mentzen yesterday congratulated nationalist Karol Nawrocki on winning the country’s presidential election, and said his supporters expected him to prioritise Poland’s interests above neighbouring Ukraine’s. “Congratulations to President elect Karol Nawrocki!” said Mentzen, urging him to remember the far-right Confederation party supporters who voted for him in Sunday’s runoff. He said they expected Nawrocki to “not put Ukraine’s interests on a par with ours”. Confederation co-leader Mentzen, a eurosceptic who is against abortion and migration, scored nearly 15% of votes in round one of the election and came in third. – AFP 13% TURNOUT IN MEXICO’S JUDGE VOTE

o Egypt, Qatar press on with ceasefire efforts

gathering around piles of boxes. The International Committee of the Red Cross said its field hospital in Rafah received 179 casualties, most with gunshot or shrapnel wounds. “All patients said they had been trying to reach an aid distribution site. This is the highest number of weapon-wounded in a single incident since the establishment of the field hospital over a year ago,” ICRC said. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN’s Palestinian relief agency, condemned Sunday’s deaths and said in a statement on X that “aid distribution has become a death trap”. Israel and Hamas traded blame for the faltering of a new Arab and US mediation bid to secure a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza by Hamas, in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli jails. Egypt and Qatar said in a joint statement that they are continuing efforts to overcome disagreements and reach a ceasefire. Hamas on Sunday welcomed those efforts and expressed its readiness to start a round of indirect negotiations immediately to reach an agreement, the group said on Sunday in a statement. – AFP/Reuters

Manera in the statement called the GHF’s system of aid delivery “dehumanising, dangerous and severely ineffective”. “It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organisations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.” MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa in the statement reported hospital corridors filled with patients, mostly men, with “visible gunshot wounds in their limbs”. MSF quoted one injured man, Mansour Sami Abdi, as describing people fighting over just five pallets of aid. “They told us to take food – then they fired from every direction,” he said. “This isn’t aid. It’s a lie.” The Israeli military said an initial inquiry found its troops “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site”. A GHF spokesperson said: “These fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas.” GHF released undated video to support its statement that showed dozens of people

RAFAH: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Sunday that people it treated at a Gaza aid site run by a new US-backed organisation reported being “shot from all sides” by Israeli forces. The NGO, known by its French name MSF, blamed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution system for chaos at the scene in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli fire killed 31 Palestinians at the site. Witnesses said the Israeli military had opened fire. The GHF and Israeli authorities denied any such incident took place but MSF and other medics reported treating crowds of locals with gunshot wounds at the Nasser hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis. “Patients told MSF they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers on the ground,” MSF said in a statement. MSF emergency coordinator Claire

BR I E F S

Russia, Ukraine still far apart on peace ISTANBUL: Russian and Ukrainian officials arrived at a palace in Istanbul yesterday for their second round of direct peace talks since 2022 with no sign they are any closer to an agreement, one day after Kyiv struck some of Moscow’s nuclear-capable bombers. Ukraine’s draft memorandum for a peace accord ahead of the talks. There was no word on whether Kyiv had received Russia’s draft. Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov is heading the Ukrainian delegation. Members of the Ukranian delegation arriving at Ciragan Palace in Istanbul yesterday. – REUTERSPIC

yesterday’s talks that Kyiv was ready to take real steps towards peace if Moscow showed flexibility and what they described as a readiness to “move forward, not just repeat the same previous ultimatums.” The mood in Russia before the talks was angry, with influential war bloggers calling on Moscow to deliver a fearsome retaliatory blow against Kyiv after Ukraine on Sunday launched one of its most ambitious attacks of the war, targeting Russian nuclear-capable long-range bombers in Siberia and elsewhere. Ukraine’s air force said Russia had launched 472 drones at Ukraine. Trump envoy Keith Kellogg has indicated that the US will be involved in the talks and that representatives from Britain, France and Germany will be present too, though it was not clear at what level the United States would be represented. – Reuters

Their last round of talks in Istanbul on May 16 yielded the biggest prisoner swap of the war with each side freeing 1,000 prisoners, but no sign of peace – or even a ceasefire as both sides merely stated their opening negotiating positions. Kyiv regards Russia’s approach to date as an attempt to force it to capitulate – something it says it will never do – and Moscow, which advanced on the battlefield in May at its fastest rate in six months, says Ukraine should submit to peace on Russian terms or face losing more territory. Amid low expectations of a breakthrough, a Ukrainian source told Reuters ahead of

The two sides are expected to discuss their respective ideas for what a full ceasefire and a longer term path to peace should look like amid stark disagreements and pressure from US President Donald Trump, who has warned the US could abandon its role as a mediator if there’s no progress. The Russian and Ukrainian delegations arrived at Istanbul’s sumptuous Ciragan Palace by the Bosphorus, along with senior Turkish officials, though there was some unexplained delay in the start of talks. Vladimir Medinsky, the head of Moscow’s delegation, said that Russia had received