Israel strikes Gaza after rocket fired from enclave
MT Desk
The Israeli air force said it had carried out overnight air strikes against sites of the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip after a rocket was fired from the Palestinian enclave toward Israeli territory.
The Israeli army reported on Saturday evening a rocket had been fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel, the first in a month.
The attack came as one of Gaza’s larger armed factions, Islamic Jihad, threatened to retaliate after Israeli troops killed two of its leaders in the West Bank town of Jenin on Thursday.
“In response to the rocket fired toward Israeli territory, IDF fighter jets targeted overnight (Sunday) a weapons manufacturing site belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
The target was a site “where the majority of the organization’s rockets in the Gaza Strip are being manufactured,” it said.
Israel Defense Forces also hit “a Hamas terrorist tunnel in the Southern Gaza Strip,” it said.
The army said a few hours later it had targeted a Hamas military post in response to fire from the Gaza Strip against Israeli warplanes.
The armed wing of Hamas said it used anti-aircraft missiles during Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
Security sources in Gaza reported two strikes in the south of the enclave, one against a military training site in Khan Younis and the other in an uninhabited area close to Rafah.
The strikes caused no injuries, according to Palestinian medical sources.
“The Zionist enemy is extending its aggression against our people by brutally bombarding the Gaza Strip, following its crime yesterday of executing the martyr Ammar Mufleh in Huwara,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said.
A surge in bloodshed in the occupied West Bank has sparked international criticism of the Israeli army for its use of lethal force against Palestinian civilians.
Criticism has focused on the killing of Ammar Hadi Mufleh, 22, in disputed circumstances in the West Bank town of Huwara, just south of Nablus, on Friday.
At least 145 Palestinians and 26 Israelis have been killed in violence in Israel and the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, this year, the heaviest toll since 2015.
In August, at least 49 Palestinians, including combatants but also civilians, were killed in three days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, which has been under Israeli blockade since 2007.
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‘No diplomatic solution’ to Ukraine war: Nobel winner
MT Desk
There is currently no diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine, a co-founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Russian rights organisation Memorial said Sunday.
“I am absolutely convinced that there is not a diplomatic solution with Putin’s regime, so long as it is still there,” said Irina Scherbakova.
“The solution that there will now be is a military one,” said Scherbakova, who was presented with an award for her human rights work at a ceremony in Hamburg, Germany.
There would ultimately be some form of diplomatic resolution to the conflict, she said.
“But these decisions, this diplomacy will only happen when Ukraine believes it has won this war and can set its terms,” she said.
Hasty calls for peace were “childish”, she said, adding that things would not return to the way they were before the outbreak of the conflict.
“This war has turned so many things upside down, it will never be like that again,” she said.
In Hamburg, Scherbakova was presented with the Marion Doenhoff Prize for her years of work on human rights in her home country by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Scherbakova’s efforts showed the way of a “better future for Russia”, Scholz said, even if the prospect “still seems unlikely”.
The war would not end with “a victory for Greater Russian expansionism”, said Scholz, who has faced repeated criticism for not doing more to support the Ukrainian war effort.
Russia would, however, “still be there” after the end of the conflict, Scholz stressed.
Scherbakova’s organisation, Memorial, will be presented with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday December 10.
Memorial was awarded the prize along with fellow campaigners the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine and the Belarussian activist, Ales Bialiatski.
One of the foremost Russian civil liberties organisations, Memorial has worked for decades to shed light on terrors from the era of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, while also compiling information on ongoing political oppression in Russia.
The group, founded in 1989, was forcibly shut down by Russian courts at the end of 2021 and Scherbakova left Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine. She is now based in Germany.
