Category: 2. World

NABLUS: Dozens of Israeli soldiers stormed the occupied West Bank city of Nablus on Wednesday, witnesses and Palestinian officials said, with the Red Crescent reporting at least seven people wounded in the raid.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military confirmed that its forces were conducting an operation in the northern West Bank city, without specifying its purpose.

The raid began at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT), residents said, with soldiers in armoured vehicles storming several neighbourhoods of Nablus’s old city, which has a population of around 30,000 people.

It came a day after Israeli forces carried out a relatively rare raid on Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority, targeting a currency exchange in the city centre and leaving dozens of Palestinians wounded, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghlas told AFP that Wednesday’s “assault… is merely a show of force with no justification”.

One witness, who declined to give his name, reported that soldiers had expelled an elderly couple from their home.

Israeli troops “are storming and searching houses and shops inside the old city, while some houses have been turned into military posts”, said Ghassan Hamdan, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief organisation in Nablus.

AFP footage showed Israeli forces and military vehicles deployed on the streets, with some troops taking position on a rooftop.

Daghlas said the army had informed Palestinian authorities that the raid would last until 4:00 pm.

Local sources said clashes broke out at the eastern entrance to the old city, where young people threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas and live ammunition.

The Red Crescent said its teams treated five people wounded by rubber bullets, one person hit by live bullet shrapnel and another following “physical assault”.

MINNEAPOLIS: A shooter opened fire with a rifle Wednesday through the windows of a Catholic church in Minneapolis and struck children celebrating Mass during the first week of school, killing two and wounding 17 people in an act of violence the police chief called “absolutely incomprehensible.”

Armed with a rifle, shotgun and pistol, 23-year-old Robin Westman approached the side of the church and shot dozens of rounds through the windows toward the children sitting in the pews during Mass at the Annunciation Catholic School just before 8:30 a.m., Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said at news conferences. He said the shooter then died by suicide.

The children who died were 8 and 10. Fourteen other kids and three octogenarian parishioners were wounded but expected to survive, the chief said.

Fifth-grader Weston Halsne told reporters he ducked for the pews, covering his head, shielded by a friend who was lying on top of him. His friend was hit, he said.

“I was super scared for him, but I think now he’s okay,” the 10-year-old said, adding that he was praying for the other hospitalized children and adults.

Halsne’s grandfather, Michael Simpson, said the violence during Mass on the third day of school left him wondering whether God was watching over.

“I don’t know where He is,” Simpson said.

Police investigate motive for the shooting

FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that the shooting is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism and a hate crime targeting Catholics.

O’Hara said police hadn’t yet found any relationship between the shooter and the church, nor determined a motive for the bloodshed. The chief said, however, that investigators were examining a social media post that appeared to show the shooter at the scene.

“The sheer cruelty and cowardice of firing into a church full of children is absolutely incomprehensible,” said O’Hara, who gave the wounded youngsters’ ages as 6 to 15. He said a wooden plank was placed to barricade some of the side doors, and that authorities found a smoke bomb at the scene.

On a YouTube channel titled Robin W, the alleged shooter released at least two videos before the channel was taken down by site administrators Wednesday.

In one, the alleged shooter shows a cache of weapons and ammunition, some with such phrases as “kill Donald Trump” and “Where is your God?” written on them.

A second video shows the alleged shooter pointing to two outside windows in what appears to be a drawing of the church, and then stabbing it with a long knife. It was unclear when that video was uploaded to the channel.

Westman’s uncle, former Kentucky state lawmaker Bob Heleringer, said he did not know the accused shooter well. He said he last saw Westman at a family wedding a few years ago and was confounded by the violence: “It’s an unspeakable tragedy.”

The police chief said Westman did not have an extensive known criminal history and is believed to have acted alone.

Federal officials referred to Westman as transgender, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey decried hatred being directed at “our transgender community.” Westman’s gender identity wasn’t clear. In 2020, a judge approved a petition, signed by Westman’s mother, asking for a name change from Robert to Robin, saying the petitioner “identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.”

Frey said the violence had forever changed the students’ families and the city along with them.

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now,” Frey said at a news conference. “These kids were literally praying.”

Bill Bienemann, who lives a couple of blocks away and has long attended Mass at Annunciation Church, said he heard as many as 50 shots over as long as four minutes.

“I was shocked. I said, ‘There’s no way that could be gunfire,’” he said. Bienemann’s daughter was an alumna of the kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school.

Police chief says officers rescued children who hid

The police chief said officers immediately responded to reports of the shooting, entered the church, rendered first aid and rescued some of the children hiding throughout the building.

Frey and Annunciation’s principal said teachers and children, too, responded heroically.

“Children were ducked down. Adults were protecting children. Older children were protecting younger children,” said the principal, Matt DeBoer.

Danielle Gunter, the mother of an eighth-grade boy who was shot, in a statement said her son told her a Minneapolis police officer “really helped him” by giving aid and a hug before her son got into an ambulance.

Amid a heavy uniformed law enforcement presence later Wednesday morning, children in dark green uniforms trickled out of the school with adults, giving lingering hugs and wiping away tears.

Vincent Francoual said his 11-year-old daughter, Chloe, survived the shooting by running downstairs to hide in a room with a table pressed against the door. But he still isn’t sure exactly how she escaped because she is struggling to communicate clearly about the traumatizing scene.

“She told us today that she thought she was going to die,” he said.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz lamented that children just starting the school year “were met with evil and horror and death.” He and President Donald Trump ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff on state and federal buildings, respectively, and the White House said the two men spoke. The governor was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in last year’s election against Trump’s running mate, now Vice President JD Vance, a Republican.

From the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV sent a telegram of condolences. The Chicago-born Leo, history’s first American pope, said he was praying for relatives of the dead.

News of the shooting rippled through a national Democratic officials’ meeting nearby in Minneapolis. US Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who represents the area around the school, visited the scene.

Atlanta Archbishop Gregory Hartmeyer, who chairs the board of the National Catholic Education Association, said in a statement that reasonable firearms legislation must be passed.

“The murder of children worshipping at Mass is unspeakable,” Hartmeyer said. “We must take action to protect all children and families from violence.”

A string of fatal shootings in Minneapolis

Monday had been the first day of the school year at Annunciation, a 102-year-old school in a leafy residential and commercial neighborhood about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of downtown Minneapolis.

Karin Cebulla, who said she had worked as a learning specialist at Annuciation and sent her two now-college-aged daughters there, described the school as an accepting, caring community.

“Everyone felt safe here, and I just pray that it continues to be a place where people feel safe,” she said.

The gunfire was the latest in a series of fatal shootings in Minnesota’s most populous city in less than 24 hours. One person was killed and six others were hurt in a shooting Tuesday afternoon. Hours later, two people died in two other shootings in the city.

O’Hara, the police chief, said the Annunciation shooting does not appear to be related to other recent violence.

Alongside many major US cities, violent crime in Minneapolis has decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of homicides between 2020 and 2024 fell by about 7 percent, based on data from AH Datalytics and its Real-Time Crime Index, which tracks crimes across the country using law enforcement data.

Over the first six months of 2025, the index shows a 21 percent decrease in homicides over the same period of 2024, while aggravated assaults — which include non-fatal shootings — were down 8 percent.

 

ROME: The head of the UN’s World Food Programme warned Thursday that famine-hit Gaza is “at breaking point”, appealing for the urgent revival of its network of 200 food distribution points.

“Enough is enough,” the WFP’s executive director Cindy McCain said after visiting the besieged Palestinian territory, where Israel is pressing operations in its offensive against Hamas.

“Gaza is at a breaking point. Desperation is soaring – and I saw it firsthand,” McCain said in a statement.

Her comments come less than a week after the United Nations declared a famine in Gaza, blaming the “systematic obstruction” of humanitarian deliveries by Israel.

McCain went to Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah, where she visited a nutrition clinic keeping children alive and met with displaced mothers who struggle daily to find scraps of food.

‘Time for EU to act’ on Gaza: humanitarian chief

“I met starving children receiving treatment for severe malnutrition – and I saw photos of when they were healthy. Today they are unrecognizable,” McCain said.

“We must urgently be able to revive our vast and trusted network of 200 food distribution points across the Strip, community kitchens and bakeries. It is urgent that the right conditions are in place so we can reach the most vulnerable and save lives”, she said.

McCain met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to press for a “surge of food assistance to reach the most vulnerable”.

She also met Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Mustafa in Ramallah, the WFP said.

“What we need is a ceasefire. My heart goes to the mothers in Gaza, as well as to the mothers of the Israeli hostages, whose children are currently starving,” McCain said.

Israel, which is preparing to conquer Gaza City, is under mounting pressure both at home and abroad to end its almost two-year campaign.

The UN declared a famine in the Gaza governorate last week, but Israel has dismissed the report as “fabricated”.

Israel has killed at least 62,895 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The UN considers those figures reliable.

TEHRAN: Iran said on Wednesday that the return of UN nuclear inspectors did not represent a full resumption of cooperation, which was suspended in the aftermath of June attacks by Israel and the United States.

A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has returned to Iran, its director general Rafael Grossi said, the first to enter the country since Tehran formally suspended cooperation with the agency last month.

“No final text has yet been approved on the new cooperation framework with the IAEA and views are being exchanged,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

The agency’s inspectors left Iran after Israel launched its unprecedented attack on June 13, striking nuclear and military facilities as well as residential areas and killing more than 1,000 people.

Washington later joined in with strikes on nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz.

Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks that killed dozens in Israel. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel has been in place since June 24.

Iran subsequently suspended its cooperation with the IAEA, citing the agency’s failure to condemn the Israeli and US attacks.

Under the law suspending cooperation, inspectors may access Iranian nuclear sites only with the approval of the country’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council.

Tehran has said repeatedly that future cooperation with the agency will take “a new form”.

The spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said the IAEA inspectors would oversee the replacement of fuel at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in south-western Iran.

In an interview with Fox News, Grossi said the agency and Iran were still discussing what kind of “practical modalities can be implemented in order to facilitate the restart of our work there”.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025

TEHRAN: Iran said on Wednesday that the return of UN nuclear inspectors did not represent a full resumption of cooperation, which was suspended in the aftermath of June attacks by Israel and the United States.

A team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency has returned to Iran, its director general Rafael Grossi said, the first to enter the country since Tehran formally suspended cooperation with the agency last month.

“No final text has yet been approved on the new cooperation framework with the IAEA and views are being exchanged,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

The agency’s inspectors left Iran after Israel launched its unprecedented attack on June 13, striking nuclear and military facilities as well as residential areas and killing more than 1,000 people.

Washington later joined in with strikes on nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz.

Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks that killed dozens in Israel. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel has been in place since June 24.

Iran subsequently suspended its cooperation with the IAEA, citing the agency’s failure to condemn the Israeli and US attacks.

Under the law suspending cooperation, inspectors may access Iranian nuclear sites only with the approval of the country’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council.

Tehran has said repeatedly that future cooperation with the agency will take “a new form”.

The spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said the IAEA inspectors would oversee the replacement of fuel at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in south-western Iran.

In an interview with Fox News, Grossi said the agency and Iran were still discussing what kind of “practical modalities can be implemented in order to facilitate the restart of our work there”.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025

• Evacuation of Gaza’s largest city ‘inevitable’, says Israeli army spokesman
• Save the Children chief says starving children are too weak to even cry

GAZA CITY: The Israeli military pressed operations around Gaza City on Wednesday, as President Donald Trump prepared to host a White House meeting on post-war plans for the shattered Palestinian territory.

Israel is under mounting pressure both at home and abroad to end its almost two-year campaign in Gaza, where the military is preparing to conquer the territory’s largest city and the United Nations has declared a famine.

Mediators have circulated a draft ceasefire and prisoner deal that has been accepted by the Palestinian group Hamas, but Israel has yet to give an official response. Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari on Tuesday said that mediators were still “waiting for an answer” from Israel.

On the ground, the Israeli military said its troops were “operating on the outskirts of Gaza City to locate and dismantle terror infrastructure sites above and below ground”.

Israeli army’s Arabic-language spokesman, Avichay Adraee, wrote on X that the evacuation of Gaza’s largest city was “inevitable”.

The vast majority of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during the war, and aid groups working in the territory consider the plan “unrealistic and dangerous”.

The UN estimates that nearly a million people currently live in Gaza City and its surroundings in the north of the territory.

Residents of Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood spoke of heavy Israeli bombardment overnight. “Warplanes struck several times, and drones fired throughout the night,” said Tala al-Khatib, 29.

“Several homes in Zeitoun were blown up. We are still in our house — some neighbours have fled, while others remain. But wherever you flee, death follows you,” she said.

AFP footage on Wednesday showed thick smoke rising into the sky following air strikes on the Abu Iskandar and Sheikh Radwan neighbourhoods in the north of Gaza City.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz last week announced that the forces would destroy the city if Hamas did not agree on terms acceptable to Israel. The announcement was made after the ministry approved the military’s plan to seize the city.

‘Comprehensive plan’

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said the US president was hosting top officials at the White House on Wednesday to thrash out a detailed plan for post-war Gaza.

“We’ve got a large meeting in the White House, chaired by the president, and it’s a very comprehensive plan we’re putting together on the next day,” Witkoff said on Fox News, without disclosing more details.

Trump stunned the world earlier this year when he suggested the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip, clear out its inhabitants and redevelop it as seaside real estate, which sparked an outcry in Europe and the Arab world.

As Israel’s security cabinet convened on Tuesday evening, tens of thousands of protesters massed in Tel Aviv to demand an end to the war.

Death toll nears 63,000

Since October 2023, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 62,895 Palestinians, including hundreds of journalists, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.

At least 51 more Palestinians, including 12 waiting for aid, were killed on Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera. Gaza’s health ministry the total number of deaths due to famine and malnutrition has reached 313, 119 of whom were children, over past two months.

The head of Save the Children described in horrific detail on Wednesday the slow agony of starving children in Gaza, saying they are so weak they do not even cry.

Addressing a Security Council meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the president of the international charity, Inger Ashing, said famine in Gaza was not just a dry technical term. “When there is not enough food, children become acutely malnourished, and then they die slowly and painfully. This, in simple terms, is what famine is,” said Ashing.

She insisted aid groups have been warning loudly that famine was coming as Israel prevented food and other essentials from entering Gaza over the course of two years of war. “Yet our clinics are almost silent. Now, children do not have the strength to speak or even cry out in agony. They lie there, emaciated, quite literally wasting away,” said Ashing.

“Everyone in this room has a legal and moral responsibility to act to stop this atrocity,” she said.

The UN officially declared famine in Gaza on Friday, blaming what it called systematic obstruction of aid by Israel during more than 22 months of war.

A UN-backed hunger monitor, Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative, said famine was affecting 500,000 people in the Gaza governorate, which covers about a fifth of the Palestinian territory. The IPC projected that the famine would expand by the end of September to cover around two-thirds of Gaza.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday strongly condemned the deadly Israeli air strikes on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza, which claimed the lives of at least 21 individuals, including five journalists and a rescue worker.

“This unconscionable and heinous attack on a medical facility, as well as the continued targeting of civilians and journalists, represents a grave violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, as well as freedom of the press,” the Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement.

“We reiterate our call on the international community to hold Israel accountable for such heinous crimes and to take concrete steps towards ending Israel’s impunity,” the spokesperson said.

Israel struck Nasser Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 20 people, including five journalists who worked for Reuters, Associated Press, Al Jazeera and others.

Terms Nasser Hospital attack ‘unconscionable’, grave violation of human rights

Global media and humanitarian organisations condemned the attack. The Committee to Protect Journalists reported that at least 189 Palestinian journalists have been killed during the 22-month conflict.

Meanwhile, the United Nations insisted on Tuesday that Israel must not only investigate alleged unlawful killings in Gaza but also ensure those probes yield results.

“There needs to be justice,” United Nations rights office (OHCHR) spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva, adding that the large number of media workers killed in the Gaza war “raises many, many questions about the targeting of journalists”.

Pakistan also condemned in the strongest possible terms the Israeli occupying forces’ incursion into the Syrian Arab Republic in contravention of international law and principles of the UN Charter.

Pakistan expressed its full support for the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Syria, and called on the international community to prevent Israel from undermining the peace and stability of the entire region.

On Wednesday, Syria also condemned an Israeli drone strike that killed six soldiers the previous day, calling it a “clear violation” of the country’s sovereignty.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since an alliance of opposition forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December. It has also opened talks with the interim authorities in Damascus.

In a statement, Syria’s foreign ministry called the strike “a gross violation of international law and the United Nations Charter”.

It added that the attack represented “a clear breach of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic”.

State television reported six army personnel “were killed in strikes by Israeli occupation drones” near Kisweh, outside Damascus in the Tuesday attack.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2025

TEHRAN: Iran has played down the return of UN nuclear inspectors, saying their presence in the country does not mean the resumption of full cooperation that stands suspended after its nuclear sites came under attack from the US and Israeli strikes in June earlier this year.

Tehran stressed that talks are still ongoing about how it will work with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the future.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency began work at the key nuclear site of Bushehr in southwestern Iran, the nuclear watchdog’s chief, Rafael Grossi, said, the first team to enter the country since Tehran formally suspended cooperation with the UN agency last month.

“No final text has yet been approved on the new cooperation framework with the IAEA, and views are being exchanged,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said, quoted by state television.

The agency’s inspectors left Iran after Israel launched its unprecedented attack on June 13, striking nuclear and military facilities as well as residential areas and killing more than 1,000 people.

Washington later joined in with strikes on nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz.

Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks that killed dozens in Israel. A ceasefire between Iran and Israel has been in place since June 24.

Iran subsequently suspended its cooperation with the IAEA, citing the agency’s failure to condemn the Israeli and US attacks.

But on Wednesday Grossi said the inspectors were “there now”, adding: “Today they are inspecting Bushehr.”

Under the law suspending cooperation, inspectors may access Iranian nuclear sites only with the approval of the country’s top security body, the Supreme National Security Council.

Tehran has said repeatedly that future cooperation with the agency will take “a new form”.

The spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said the IAEA inspectors would oversee the replacement of fuel at the Bushehr nuclear power plant.

He made no mention of whether inspectors would be allowed access to other sites, including Fordo and Natanz, which were hit during the war.

‘Litmus test’

Grossi, on a visit to Washington, said discussions about inspecting other sites were underway with no immediate agreement.

“We are continuing the conversation so that we can go to all places, including the facilities that have been impacted,” he said.

He said that Iran cannot restrict inspectors only to “non-attacked facilities.”

“There is no such thing as a la carte inspection work.”

The return of inspectors came after Iranian diplomats held talks with counterparts from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva on Tuesday.

Their second round of talks since the Israeli attacks included discussion of European threats to trigger the reimposition of UN sanctions against Iran before they are permanently lifted in mid-October.

The window for triggering the so-called “snapback mechanism” of a moribund 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers closes on October 18.

During their previous meeting with Iran in July, the three European powers suggested extending the snapback deadline if Tehran resumed negotiations with the US and cooperation with the IAEA, the Financial Times reported.

Iran later dismissed the Europeans’ right to extend the deadline, and said it was working with its allies China and Russia to prevent the reimposition of sanctions.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister Karim Gharibabadi on Wednesday said that if the snapback is triggered, “the path of interaction that we have now opened with the International Atomic Energy Agency will also be completely affected and will probably stop.”

On Tuesday, Russia circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at pushing back the deadline for triggering snapback sanctions by six months, according to the text seen by AFP.

The Russian proposal does not set preconditions for the deadline extension.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said that the updated proposal was designed to “give more breathing space for diplomacy”, adding that he hoped it “will be acceptable”.

“It will be kind of a litmus test for those who really want to uphold diplomatic efforts, and for those who don’t want any diplomatic solution, but just want to pursue their own nationalist, selfish agendas against Iran,” he told media.