Category: 2. World

ISLAMABAD:

Communications Minister Abdul Aleem Khan has reaffirmed Pakistan’s strong commitment to enhance trade through rail, road, and air routes.

Addressing the Ministerial Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, he expressed Pakistan’s keen interest in establishing trade corridors through China, Afghanistan and Iran, highlighting the country’s strategic role in regional connectivity and trade activities, said a press release issued here on Wednesday.

He emphasized that under the CPEC, Pakistan has achieved major milestones in road infrastructure. “Our focus now is to expand trade beyond the borders of Afghanistan and Iran with fully functional international-standard cargo ports in Gwadar and Karachi.”

The minister also underscored the significance of Khunjerab in the North and the coastal gateways of Gwadar and Karachi in Pakistan’s trade expansion strategy. Highlighting regional development initiatives, Abdul Aleem Khan noted that the proposed Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan Railway Project would be a transformative step for the entire region.

The director of Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital has been killed in an Israeli air strike on his home in Gaza City along with several family members, the Hamas-run health ministry has said.

The ministry said Dr Marwan Sultan had a long career in medicine, and condemned “this heinous crime against our medical cadres”.

The Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas in the Gaza City area and that claims “uninvolved civilians” were harmed as a result of the strike were being reviewed.

Meanwhile, at least five people were killed and others injured, including children, in a strike on the al-Mawasi “safe zone”, one of several other attacks reported by news agencies.

The health ministry said Dr Sultan’s career was one of compassion “during which he was a symbol of dedication, steadfastness and sincerity, during the most difficult circumstances and most trying moments experienced by our people under continuous aggression”.

Dr Sultan was the director at the Indonesian Hospital, declared out of service by the health ministry after what the UN later described as “repeated Israeli attacks and sustained structural damage”. The Israeli military had said it was fighting “terrorist infrastructure sites” in the area.

There are now no functioning hospitals in the north Gaza governate, according to the UN.

The health ministry accused the Israeli military of targeting medical and humanitarian teams.

In its statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals” and “operates to mitigate harm to them as much as possible”.

The IDF said Hamas “systematically violates international law while using civilian infrastructure for terrorist activity and the civilian population as human shields”.

But Dr Sultan’s doctor’s daughter, Lubna al-Sultan, said “an F-16 missile targeted his room exactly, right where he was, directly on him”.

“All the rooms in the house were intact except for his room, which was hit by the missile. My father was martyred in it,” she told the Associated Press.

She said he was “not affiliated with a movement or anything, he just fears for the patients [he] treats, throughout the war”.

Across Gaza, at least 139 people were killed by Israeli military operations in the 24 hours before midday on Wednesday, the health ministry said.

In the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, at least five people were killed and others, including children, wounded in an Israeli strike that hit a tent housing displaced people, news agencies reported.

Family members of those killed said it hit at 00:40 local time (22:40 BST) while they were sleeping.

Tamam Abu Rizq told AFP the strike “shook the place like an earthquake”, and she “went outside and found the tent on fire”.

The al-Mawasi area was declared a “safe zone” by the Israeli military, as the UN says 80% of Gaza is either an Israeli military zone or under an evacuation order.

“They came here thinking it was a safe area and they were killed… What did they do?” Maha Abu Rizq said.

At the scene, surrounded by destruction and a jumble of personal items, one man held up a pack of nappies and asked: “Is this a weapon?”

Footage recorded by AFP shows men alighting from a car in front of nearby Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and rushing inside carrying blood-covered children in their arms. Inside the hospital, young children cry as doctors treat their wounds.

Women weep over the bodies of their relatives in funerals at the hospital in other AFP footage.

“Anyone of any religion must take action and say: Enough! Stop this war!” Ekram al-Akhras, who lost several cousins in one of the strikes, said.

In Gaza City, another four people from the same family were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house, news agencies reported.

The four people killed were Ahmed Ayyad Zeno, his wife Ayat Zeno, and their daughters, Zahra Zeno and Obaida Zeno, according to Palestinian news outlet WAFA.

The BBC has contacted the IDF for comment about the two incidents.

Rachel Cummings, who is working in Gaza with Save the Children, told reporters that during “wishing circles” at the charity’s child-friendly spaces, children have recently been “wishing to die” in order to be with their mother or father who has been killed, or to have food and water.

As a heatwave spread across the UK and Europe this week, temperatures also topped 30C in Gaza.

Displaced people living in tents said they were struggling to stay cool without electricity and fans, and with little access to water.

Reda Abu Hadayed told the Associated Press the heat is “indescribable” and her children cannot sleep.

“They cry all day until sunset, when the temperature drops a little, then they go to sleep,” she said. “When morning comes, they start crying again due to the heat.”

Israel has continued to bomb Gaza and control the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid as mediators meet to negotiate a potential ceasefire proposal.

Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages.

Since then, Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 57,000 people, including more than 15,000 children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defense department said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The spokesperson, Sean Parnell, repeated Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been completely destroyed, although he did not offer further details on the origin of the assessments beyond saying it came from inside the defense department.

“We have degraded their program by one to two years,” Parnell said at a news conference held at the Pentagon. “At least, intel assessments inside the department assess that.”

Parnell’s description of the strikes marked a more measured estimate than Trump’s assertions about the level of destruction. A low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report based on early assessments said Iran’s program was set back several months.

The evolving picture of the severity of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program comes as US intelligence agencies have continued to push out new assessments, using materials that suggested the centrifuges at the key Fordow enrichment site were destroyed even if it was unclear whether the facility itself had caved in.

Trump advisers have used that material, which include the use of video taken from B-2 bombers to confirm simulation models of shock waves destroying centrifuges and other Israeli intel from outside Fordow, to defend Trump’s assertions, two people familiar with the matter said.

The extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium – which could quickly be turned into a crude nuclear weapon – is important because it could dictate how long the program has been set back.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months.

“They can have in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Rafael Grossi the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, adding “Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology … You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”

The Pentagon’s preliminary DIA assessment, which was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the strikes, the Guardian previously reported, found the damage could range from Iran being able to restart the facility with new centrifuges to having to abandon it for future use.

The DIA report assessed the program had been pushed back by several months, although that finding was made at the so-called “low-confidence” level, reflecting the early nature of the assessment and the uncertainty intelligence agencies have with initial conclusions.

Trump advisers have pushed back on the DIA report and said privately the destruction of the centrifuges alone meant they had taken out a key component of Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and meant it delayed the nuclear program by years.

Battles over the conclusions of intelligence agencies have been at the center of American foreign policy determinations for decades, from warnings about Iraq’s weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify the 2003 invasion that were later found to be false, to claims that a Chinese lab leak was responsible for Covid.

Still, much of the controversy about the US strikes has been generated by Trump’s claiming that they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, which no intelligence agency has directly repeated because it is not a characterization used in intelligence assessments.

Verifying the extent of the damage was made more difficult on Wednesday, after Iran put into effect a new law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Iran has accused the nuclear watchdog of siding with western countries and providing a justification for Israel’s airstrikes.

A state department spokesperson called the move “unacceptable” and said Iran must fully comply with its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, including by providing the IAEA with information on undeclared nuclear material and providing unrestricted access to any newly announced enrichment facility.

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

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Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

The ‘right’ successor

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

Xiqing Wang/ BBC

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli authorities issued displacement orders overnight for two neighbourhoods in Khan Younis, where up to 80,000 people had been living.

The Al Satar reservoir – a critical hub for distributing piped water from Israel – has become inaccessible as a result.

Grave warnings

“Any damage to the reservoir could lead to a collapse of the city’s main distribution of the water system, with grave humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters at a daily news briefing in New York.

Al Satar’s disruption comes as Gaza’s infrastructure buckles under relentless displacement, strained services and critical shortages of fuel and supplies.

Approximately 85 per cent of Gaza’s territory is currently either under displacement orders or located within military zones – severely hampering people’s access to essential aid and the ability of humanitarians to reach those in need, OCHA reported.

Displacement continues

Since the collapse of a temporary ceasefire in March, nearly 714,000 Palestinians have been displaced again, including 29,000 in the 24 hours between Sunday and Monday. Existing shelters are overwhelmed, and aid partners report deteriorating health conditions driven by insufficient water, sanitation and hygiene services.

Health teams report that rates of acute watery diarrhoea have reached 39 per cent among patients receiving health consultations. Khan Younis and Gaza governorates are hardest hit, with densely overcrowded shelters and little access to clean water exacerbating the spread of disease.

Adding to the crisis, no shelter materials have entered Gaza in over four months, despite the hundreds of thousands of newly displaced people. UN partners reported that in 97 per cent of surveyed sites, displaced families are sleeping in the open, exposed to heat, disease and trauma.

Fuel shortages

Meanwhile, fuel shortages are jeopardising the humanitarian response. A shipment of diesel intended for northern Gaza was denied on Wednesday by Israeli authorities, just a day after a successful but limited delivery to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

If the fuel crisis is not urgently addressed, Mr. Dujarric warned that relief efforts could grind to a halt.

“If the fuel crisis isn’t addressed soon, humanitarian responders could be left without the systems and the tools that are necessary to operate safely, manage logistics and distribute humanitarian assistance,” he said.

“This would obviously endanger aid workers and escalate an already dire humanitarian crisis.”