Month: June 2024

Israel’s military said that it “was aware of the reports but we cannot confirm” them.

The strike hit the Haniyeh family home in the Al-Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, Hamas and Gaza’s civil defence agency said.

“There are 10 martyrs […] as a result of the strike, including Zahr Haniyeh, sister of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh,” Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defence, said.

He said a number of bodies were likely to be still under the rubble but “we do not have the necessary equipment” to extract them.

Haniyeh says about 60 members of his family have been killed since Oct 7

Civil defence crews transferred the retrieved bodies to Al-Ahli hospital in nearby Gaza City, Basal added, also reporting “several wounded” in the attack.

In a statement, Hamas named the Haniyeh family home as having been bombed in a list of “massacres” it said were committed by Israel in the Palestinian territory.

It said this showed Israel “continues to defy all international laws, human norms and values by deliberately targeting innocent civilians and committing the most horrific massacres against them”. In a separate statement later on Tuesday, Haniyeh said the deaths of his relatives would not deter the group in any way.

“If the criminal enemy thinks that targeting my family will make us change our position and affect our resistance, then he is deluding himself because every martyr in Gaza and Palestine is from my family,” Haniyeh said.

“The blood of our martyrs demands that we do not compromise, that we do not change, that we do not weaken, but that we continue on our path with determination.” Haniyeh lost three sons and four grandchildren in an Israeli strike in April in central Gaza, with the military accusing them of “terrorist activities”.

Haniyeh at the time said that about 60 members of his family had been killed since fighting broke out on October 7.

“Deaths, mayhem”, read the front-page headline on The Standard newspaper, while The Daily Nation described the situation as “Pandemonium”, saying: “The foundations of the country have been shaken to the core.”

The mainly youth-led rallies began mostly peacefully last week, with thousands of demonstrators marching in the capital Nairobi and across the country against the tax increases.

But tensions flared sharply on Tuesday afternoon, as police officers fired live rounds on crowds that later ransacked the parliament complex, with rights groups saying the violence had left five dead and more than 30 injured.

Hours later, Defence Minister Aden Bare Duale announced that the government had deployed the army to support the police in tackling “the security emergency” in the country.

In a late-night press briefing, Ruto warned that his government would take a tough line against “violence and anarchy”, likening some of the demonstrators to “criminals”.

“It is not in order or even conceivable that criminals pretending to be peaceful protesters can reign terror against the people, their elected representatives and the institutions established under our constitution and expect to go scot-free,” he said.

The government has been taken by surprise by the intensity of opposition to its tax proposals — mostly led by young, Gen-Z Kenyans — which culminated in the shocking scenes at parliament that played out live on TV.

Images shared on local TV stations after crowds broke through the barricades showed the building ransacked, with burnt furniture and smashed windows. As police fired at the angry crowds, leaving several bodies strewn on the ground, protest organisers urged people to walk home together and “stay safe”.

A heavy police presence was deployed around parliament on Wednesday morning, according to an AFP reporter, the smell of tear gas was still in the air.

A policeman standing in front of the broken barricades of the complex told AFP he had watched the distressing scenes unfold on TV. “It was madness, we hope it will be calm today,” he said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the rallies in various Kenyan cities had been largely peaceful.

However, tensions escalated in Nairobi in the afternoon, with some protesters hurling stones at police, who deployed tear gas and water cannon before firing live bullets.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission said at least one protester had been shot by police, with AFP journalists seeing three people bleeding heavily and lying motionless on the ground near parliament.

A joint statement by rights groups including Amnesty International’s Kenya chapter said police had shot dead five people.

As dusk fell, internet services crashed, with global web monitor NetBlocks reporting that Kenya had suffered a “major disruption” before access returned overnight.

The unrest has alarmed the international community, with the White House appealing for calm and more than 10 Western nations — including Canada, Germany and Britain — saying they were “especially shocked by the scenes witnessed outside the Kenyan Parliament”.

The head of the African Union commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, expressed “deep concern” over the loss of life, urging “all stakeholders to exercise calm and refrain from further violence”.

Veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, who heads the Azimio coalition, accused the government of unleashing “brute force on our country’s children”.

“Kenya cannot afford to kill its children just because the children are asking for food, jobs and a listening ear,” he said.

Rights watchdogs have also accused the authorities of abducting protesters. The police have not responded to any requests for comment from AFP.

Long-running grievances over the rising cost of living spiralled last week as lawmakers began debating proposed tax hikes in the 2024 finance bill.

The cash-strapped government says the increases are needed to service the country’s massive debt of some 10 trillion shillings ($78 billion), equal to roughly 70 per cent of Kenya’s GDP.

After rolling back some of the more controversial proposals — which would have affected bread purchases, car ownership, and financial and mobile services — the government now intends to increase fuel prices and export duties.

Kenya’s treasury has warned of a gaping budget shortfall of 200 billion shillings, following Ruto’s decision to roll back some of the tax hikes. While Kenya is among East Africa’s most dynamic economies, a third of its 52 million population live in poverty.

United States President Joe Biden and rival Donald Trump are set to engage in their first 2024 debate in what promises to be a high-stakes event, the BBC reported.

The debate, which will be hosted by CNN, will mark the third face-off between the Democrat and Republican candidates, after their previous two encounters in the 2020 elections.

Biden, 81, is intensively preparing for the debate with the assistance of Ron Klain, his former chief of staff.

Bob Bauer, who previously served as White House counsel under former president Barack Obama, will portray Trump, 78, in the mock debates with Biden, CBS News reported.

The Biden campaign on Sunday also said it plans to host hundreds of watch parties and events in battleground US states across to mark the upcoming debate.

Along with 1,600 events, the campaign said it will run a new batch of TV and digital advertisements in a bid to connect with voters.

According to Biden’s campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu, one of the strategies will be to attack the Republican rival on his legal troubles and character.

Meanwhile, the Republican has forgone traditional debate preparations and has instead been holding a series of meetings in recent weeks with US senators and advisors.

Trump has been reviewing with them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida the policy points he would like to make during Thursday’s showdown.

“He is thinking about how to translate these really, really important topics into a message that works,” said Republican Senator JD Vance in an interview with Fox News earlier this week.

According to The Hill newspaper, Trump is also discussing how to approach topics like the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, which Biden has called attack on American democracy.

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed fears Russia’s historically restive North Caucasus region is facing a wave of violence after a series of coordinated weekend attacks on churches, synagogues and police killed at least 20 in the southern Dagestan region.

The attacks on Sunday came just three months after Islamic State (IS) group fighters killed more than 140 in a Moscow concert hall, the deadliest attack on Russia for almost 20 years, raising fresh questions about Russia’s security apparatus.

Moscow said on Monday it had concluded an “anti-terrorist operation” and killed five of the assailants behind the attacks in the regional capital Makhachkala and Derbent, a historic city on the coast of the Caspian Sea.

The attackers had targeted two Orthodox churches, two synagogues and a police checkpoint.

The Russian Orthodox Church said its archpriest Nikolai Kotelnikov was “brutally killed” in his church in the historic city of Derbent.

The incidents had echoes of the kind of insurgent violence that struck the North Caucasus during the 1990s and 2000s, but the Kremlin on Monday dismissed fears of a renewed wave of attacks.

Russia has been a target in recent years for IS, which opposes Moscow’s military support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and claims to have set-up a “franchise” in Russia’s North Caucasus.

 Assailants ‘liquidated’ 

 At least 20 people were killed and another 26 injured in the attacks, Dagestan’s regional health ministry said Monday.

Fifteen of those killed were law enforcement officers, according to Russia’s federal Investigative Committee.

“Of those 26, some are more serious so the first figure of 20 (killed) could still change,” a spokesperson for Dagestan’s regional health ministry told AFP.

Dagestan’s interior ministry said “a part of the bandits were destroyed on the spot and the rest will suffer the deserved punishment.”

Moscow’s Investigative Committee said five of the attackers were killed.

It was unclear if some assailants had fled and investigators said they were still working to “identify other persons involved.”

The head of the republic, Sergei Melikov, said a local official had been fired after his sons were suspected to have taken part in the attack.

He said authorities were looking into whether Magomed Omarov, who headed the rural Sergokalinsky district, knew about the attack.

Omarov was arrested a day earlier, Russian media reported.

In the 1990s and 2000s, separatist and militant groups waged guerrilla-style campaigns against Russian authorities in the mountainous North Caucasus following the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Asked whether Moscow feared a possible return of such violence, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “No. Now there is a different Russia. Society is consolidated and such terrorist manifestations are not supported by society in Russia or in Dagestan.”

Moscow fought two wars for control of the neighbouring Chechnya region, with President Vladimir Putin touted his success in quashing the insurgency at the start of his presidency.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had launched criminal probes over “acts of terror”, while governor Melikov called the attacks an attempt to “destabilise” his region.

“We know who is behind these terrorist attacks and what objective they are pursuing,” he added, without providing specific details but making references to the conflict in Ukraine.

“We must understand that war comes to our homes too. We felt it but today we face it,” he said, adding that authorities were hunting for “sleeper cells” that had trained the attackers with assistance from abroad.

He said later on Monday the perpetrators were from Dagestan, Russian state news agencies reported.

After the deadly attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall in March, Putin initially said Kyiv had a hand in planning that assault.

 Pool of blood 

This was despite no evidence and an IS affiliate claiming responsibility on multiple occasions.

Patriarch Kirill, the fervently pro-Kremlin head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said the “enemy” was seeking to destroy “inter-religious peace” in Russia, without naming who he believed was responsible.

Melikov visited a church and synagogue in Derbent on Monday.

He posted videos showing a pool of blood in the church and the charred interior of the synagogue, completely burned out after assailants threw Molotov cocktails at the building.

Russian authorities frequently announce successful “anti-terrorist operations” targeting alleged IS fighters from the North Caucasus.

Militants from Dagestan are known to have travelled to join IS in Syria.

Over 100 people were working in the factory when workers heard a series of explosions from the second floor, where lithium-ion batteries were being inspected and packaged, firefighter Kim Jin-young told media.

In the massive blaze that ensued, twenty-two people were killed, including 20 foreign nationals — 18 Chinese, one from Laos, and one of unknown nationality, he said.

“Most of the bodies are badly burned so it will take some time to identify each one,” he added.

Firefighters are still searching for one more person who remains unaccounted for, he said, adding that they had managed to contain the largest blaze at the plant and get inside.

Firefighters were “doing cooling operations to prevent the fire from expanding to nearby factories,” Kim said.

Dozens of fire trucks were lined up outside the factory, an AFP reporter saw, with rescue workers carrying bodies, covered by blue blankets, out of the building on stretchers.

Images shared by Yonhap after the fire broke out showed huge plumes of billowing grey smoke rising into the sky above the factory, with orange flames inside the building.

The vast factory had an estimated 35,000 battery cells on the second floor in storage, with more batteries stored in other areas.

Lithium batteries burn hot and fast, and are difficult to control with conventional fire extinguishing methods.

“Due to fears of additional explosions, it was difficult to enter,” Kim said, describing the tricky rescue operation.

“As it is a lithium battery manufacturer, we (had) determined that spraying water will not extinguish the fire, so we (used) dry sand,” he added.

The lithium battery plant is owned by Aricell, a South Korean primary battery manufacturer. It is located in Hwaseong city, just south of the capital Seoul.

Shares of Aricell’s parent company, S-connect, plunged by over 20 percent on the Seoul exchange by close on Monday. S-connect owns 96 percent of Aricell.

Lithium batteries are used in everything from laptops to electric vehicles — but can be highly explosive, with airlines, for example, imposing strict regulations on checking devices containing them.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol issued emergency instructions to authorities, telling them to “mobilise all available personnel and equipment to focus on searching for and rescuing people,” his office said.

The president also warned authorities that they should “ensure the safety of firefighters considering the rapid spread of fire”.

Authorities in Hwaseong sent out a series of alerts to residents warning them to stay inside.

“There is a lot of smoke due to factory fires. Please pay attention to safety, such as refraining from going out,” one alert sent by text message said.

“Factory fire. Please detour to surrounding roads and nearby citizens please close windows,” another one read.

South Korea is a major producer of batteries, including those used in electric vehicles.

Its battery makers supply EV makers around the world, including Tesla.

The fire is one of South Korea’s worst factory disasters in years.

Previously, it’s worst chemical plant accident was in 1989 at the Lucky Chemical factory in Yeosu, Southern Jeolla Province, which resulted in 16 deaths and 17 injuries.

A fire at a warehouse in Icheon in 2020 killed 38 people.