Pakistan ex-PM Imran Khan, top aide get 10-year jail in state secrets case
A Pakistan court has sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi to 10 years jail in a case related to the leaking of state secrets. The special court in capital Islamabad on Tuesday announced the sentence in the so-called cypher case, which pertains to a diplomatic cable that Khan claims proves his allegation that his removal from power in 2022 was a conspiracy. More to come… Adblock test (Why?)
No rest for Gaza’s dead with rushed burials, bodies desecrated
Even the dead are not spared by the war raging in the Gaza Strip, with bodies dug up by Israeli soldiers and hurried burials taking place in hospitals and even a school. In Gaza City’s Tuffah district, shrouded corpses of Palestinians removed from their graves lay atop muddied earth. The desecration is part of a pattern which the Ministry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs of Palestine in the Hamas-run strip said has seen more than 2,000 graves damaged or destroyed by Israeli forces across the territory. The Israeli military said it “in no way targets cemeteries as such, and has no policy of harming or desecrating cemeteries”. But it also said “cemeteries or specific gravesites, like other civilian sites or structures, can come to be damaged” during the war. Responding to allegations that soldiers have snatched bodies from graves, the military told the AFP news agency that it acts “in the specific locations where information indicates that the bodies of hostages may be located”. “Bodies determined not [to] be those of hostages are returned with dignity and respect,” it said in a statement. The current conflict broke out following Hamas’s October 7 attacks in southern Israel in which about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, were killed. Hamas also took some 250 people captive. Israel says 132 of them remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 28 people. Israel’s relentless military offensive has killed at least 26,637 people in Gaza, most of them women and children. People walk at a makeshift cemetery, parts of which the Israeli army reportedly bulldozed to exhume bodies, in the eastern Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City. [AFP] ‘Their souls trembled’ At a school packed with displaced people in Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, Saida Jaber recalled seeing footage on social media of the destroyed cemetery at the Jabalia refugee camp. “I felt that my heart would stop,” said Saida, adding that her father, grandparents and other relatives were buried at the site in northern Gaza. “I felt that their souls trembled … I can’t imagine how anyone dares to dig up graves and violate the sanctity of the dead,” Saida said. With no stop to the fighting, many Palestinians in Gaza have been unable to reach cemeteries and have instead turned to makeshift graveyards. At a school-turned-shelter in the central Maghazi refugee camp, a woman touched the sandy earth where her daughter had been buried in the yard. “My daughter died in my arms … we waited day and night and couldn’t send her to the emergency room,” said the woman, who did not give her name. She said missiles hit the school compound and ignited gas canisters, causing deadly explosions. A man tending to the site said more than 50 people are buried there, each grave containing three or four bodies, with their names written either on bricks or the adjacent wall. Young men sit by the shallow tomb of a person killed by Israeli air raids at a makeshift cemetery in a residential neighbourhood near Gaza City’s al-Shabiyah district. [AFP] ‘Die of grief’ The number of deaths is so high that victims of Israeli attacks have been buried in mass graves across Gaza. Rows of bodies have been buried in the grounds of al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, where people have separated graves with stones and plant branches. “If we went to the cemetery, they [Israeli forces] might bomb us and we’d die,” said Arfan Dadar, 46, living in a tent with his family in the hospital compound. Dadar said Israeli soldiers shot dead his 22-year-old son while he was returning to the hospital in Gaza City. “I marked his grave, [but] now the hospital park is crammed with mass graves. I barely recognise my son’s grave,” he said. Palestinians in Gaza have said they hope they can move their dead once the war ends. Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, said he had “no choice” but to bury his son in an overcrowded cemetery in southern Rafah after the young journalist was killed in an Israeli attack. “We will transfer him to the martyrs cemetery in Gaza after the end of the war. We want his grave to be near to us so that we can visit him and pray for him,” Dahdouh said. Jaber said she longed to return to Jabalia to check on the graves of her relatives. “I will die of grief if they were also swept away.” Adblock test (Why?)
N Korea fires ‘several’ cruise missiles in third test in less than a week
Pyongyang is ramping up arms testing as it seeks to develop more sophisticated weaponry. North Korea has carried out a third test of its cruise missiles in less than a week, firing the weapons into the waters off its west coast. South Korea’s military “detected several unknown cruise missiles launched into the West Sea of North Korea around 07:00 [22:00 GMT]”, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The South Korean and US intelligence agencies were analysing the data, it added. North Korea is not banned from testing cruise missiles under longstanding United Nations sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme and has already carried out two tests over the past week. On Monday, state media said leader Kim Jong Un had “guided” the launch of submarine-launched strategic cruise missiles, known as the Pulhwasal-3-31, over the weekend, a few days after South Korea detected several cruise missiles being launched from the country’s west coast. Pyongyang has forged ahead with weapons testing amid rising tensions on the peninsula as Kim modernises the country’s military and develops more sophisticated weaponry. Since the start of the year, it has also launched what it said was a solid-fuelled hypersonic ballistic missile as well as a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone. Japan, South Korea and the United States, meanwhile, have been expanding their combined military exercises – which Kim portrays as invasion rehearsals – and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around nuclear-capable US assets. In recent weeks, Kim has declared South Korea his country’s “principal enemy”, and shut down agencies dedicated to reunification and outreach. Adblock test (Why?)
Voices of the occupied West Bank: ‘I’ll keep speaking with love’
Occupied West Bank – In a continuation of Al Jazeera’s conversations with people in the occupied West Bank about how they view the endless tragic news from the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip and the realities of trying to make a life as a Palestinian under occupation, here are four Palestinians’ stories: A young Christian man bewildered at how the message of peace and forgiveness that was born with Christ in Palestine could be forgotten so cruelly. A human rights defender whose life’s work has been to protect the people of Palestine from the usurpation of their rights. A father who wakes every day with dread because he is terrified that one of his children in Gaza has been killed overnight. And a mother whose son made the ultimate sacrifice of his young life because he took the only path he thought he could to fight against injustice. Note: Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Adblock test (Why?)
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 705
As the war enters its 705th day, these are the main developments. Here is the situation on Tuesday, January 30, 2024. Fighting Russia claimed to have taken control of Tabaivka, a tiny village on the front line in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. Ukraine denied the claim and said fighting continued. Alexei Kulemzin, the Russian-installed mayor of the occupied Ukrainian city of Donetsk, blamed Ukraine for a rocket attack that killed at least three people and injured three more. Politics and diplomacy Hungary signalled its readiness to compromise on a proposed 50 billion euro ($54bn) European Union aid package for Ukraine. Balazs Orban, a top aide to Prime Minister Victor Orban, said Budapest had sent a proposal to Brussels on Saturday showing it was open to using the EU budget for the aid package and issuing common EU debt to finance it, provided other “caveats” were added. The EU is due to hold an emergency summit on the budget on Thursday. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said they prepared the ground for a meeting of their leaders during talks in western Ukraine, and also agreed to work together on the divisive issue of Hungarian minority rights in Ukraine. United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that all advances in Ukraine would be “in jeopardy” if Congress failed to approve new aid for Kyiv. Republicans are blocking a $61bn assistance package and want it linked to tougher immigration policies. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg met top officials in the US, including Blinken, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Stoltenberg is in Washington, DC to rally support for a Ukraine deal and is due to meet members of Congress involved in the aid debate on Tuesday. United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Cameron called on Moscow to reveal the whereabouts of Vladimir Kara-Murza, after his wife said he had been moved from a Siberian penal colony to an unknown location. Kara-Murza, who has Russian and UK citizenship, was jailed for 25 years last April for treason and spreading “false information” about Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto (left) held talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba (right) and presidential aide Andriy Yermak in western Ukraine [Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary/Handout via Reuters] Members of the Russian rock group Bi-2, who have condemned the war in Ukraine, face deportation to Russia after they were arrested in Thailand for working without a permit. Russian authorities labelled the band’s lead singer, Igor Bortnick, a “foreign agent” after he criticised President Vladimir Putin online. A Russian court jailed a 72-year-old woman to five and half years in prison after she shared two posts online about Russian military casualties in Ukraine. Rights groups said Yevgeniya Maiboroda from the southern Rostov region was charged with spreading “false information” about the armed forces. Weapons Sales of US military equipment to foreign governments rose 16 percent in 2023 to a record $238bn, according to the US State Department, as countries sought to replenish arsenals sent to Ukraine and prepare for major conflicts. Sales during the year included National Advanced Surface to Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) to Ukraine, as well as weapons for Poland and Germany. Adblock test (Why?)
In Myanmar’s Kayah, medics treat war wounded in hidden hospitals
Kayah State, Myanmar – When the military seized power in February 2021, Dr Ye was living a life many young people in Myanmar only dream of – working as a doctor in London. Hailing from a military-supporting family, he had given little thought to politics before then. “Before the coup, I was brainwashed by them,” the 32-year-old told Al Jazeera during an interview in southern Shan State in December. “The coup enlightened me.” But it also left him reeling with survivors’ guilt. He watched from afar as hundreds of people his age and younger were gunned down in the streets during peaceful pro-democracy protests. Soon, those protests morphed into an armed uprising, with the military deploying mass reprisals against the civilian population. “For a while, I was donating money, but I wasn’t happy with that. Every morning when I woke up, I was depressed seeing news about the killings, the bombings, the burned down villages,” he said. At his lowest point, Dr Ye even attempted suicide. “I decided I had to come back and participate in the revolution physically,” he said. In April 2022, he travelled to Kayah State, which shares a mountainous border with Thailand. A coalition of anti-coup armed groups has carved out significant territory there and in neighbouring southern Shan. Dr Ye’s decision to move to this “liberated area” caused a rift in his family because his father is an official in the regime’s prison department in the nation’s capital of Naypyidaw. “We totally split up, we don’t talk at all any more,” he said, adding that his father had even threatened him with arrest. “I don’t think he’ll ever change his mind.” A PDF fighter in Demoso shows off the tattoo he had inked to mark the date he was injured by a military RPG [Andrew Nachemson/Al Jazeera] His background as a paediatrician made Dr Ye valuable in treating the many children displaced by the conflict, but like all healthcare professionals in Kayah, he is also a temporary war medic. “I have to stabilise the vital signs, check the blood pressure and heart rate,” he said, of patients brought in after being injured in the conflict. Raining down bombs When a resistance fighter was rushed into her clinic in east Demoso with a serious injury to his right leg from an air attack, Dr May got to work despite the buzz of warplanes overhead. “We could hear the sound of a fighter jet flying over us, but we couldn’t run anywhere because we had to resuscitate the soldier. So, we just had to stay there and accept whatever might come,” said the 33-year-old, who worked as a general practitioner at a private hospital in Mawlamyine before the coup. “I could work in a private hospital again or go abroad, but if I did that I’d feel like I wasn’t doing my duty for my country, for my people,” she said. In the first half of 2023, east Demoso was one of the worst conflict zones in the country, and Dr May took to sleeping in a bomb shelter. “Every day when I woke up, I heard the sound of artillery, and sometimes at 2 or 3am, we’d hear a fighter jet flying over our heads,” she said. “We literally lived beneath the soil in the bunker. We had to sleep there, we had to eat there because we didn’t feel safe on the surface any more.” Kayah has been hit by multiple air attacks by the military, which is fighting forces opposed to its February 2021 coup [Andrew Nachemson/Al Jazeera] When Al Jazeera visited east Demoso on January 4, it was eerily quiet. Fighting had since shifted to Loikaw, the state capital, but few civilians had returned home, leaving the area largely devoid of people. Dr May said the military targets healthcare facilities because it knows resistance fighters receive treatment there, even though common civilians also rely on them for life-saving care. “Because we’ve been taking care of our comrades, including war injuries, and that’s not good for these …,” she pauses thinking of the right word. “These dogs.” Since the coup, people in Myanmar have taken to referring to regime soldiers as sit-kway, or “military dogs”. The Geneva Convention says that health facilities and mobile health units “may in no circumstances be attacked”. A resistance fighter injured by a landmine gets treatment at a clandestine hospital in Kayah [Andrew Nachemson/Al Jazeera] After months of near-misses, Dr May’s hospital was hit by an air raid in May 2023. “It felt like I’m suddenly on a battlefield, I’m inside my own coffin, everything flashed before my eyes,” she said. Luckily, nobody was killed, but the inpatient buildings were destroyed. Dr May’s hospital has since moved to a more stable area in the state and Dr Ye said his facility has also relocated three or four times. Dr Oak, who did autopsies of the victims of the Christmas Eve massacre, said he has had to move twice as well. Once, a missile landed next to his hospital in Nanmekhon in Demoso township. The second time, an air raid hit his facility in northern Loikaw township. Dr Oak was taking a break, using the internet in town, but four of his medics were killed. For this reason, most hospitals in Kayah are not only hidden but also come equipped with bomb shelters. On the front lines When Al Jazeera visited one of these clandestine hospitals in late December, a member of the Demoso People’s Defence Force (PDF) was groaning in his bed. “It hurts so much I can’t sleep,” he said. The PDF is a pro-democracy armed group with units spread out across the country. The fighter’s legs had been badly injured by an air attack in Loikaw; doctors had already amputated one of his feet. Half of the 12 patients in the hospital had been injured by landmines in Moebye, a town in southern Shan that is mostly controlled by the resistance. The military seemingly rigged it with
Qatar’s prime minister in US for Gaza truce negotiations
NewsFeed Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, is in Washington, DC, to meet with top US officials. In an interview with the Atlantic Council, he discussed where negotiations stand for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war and the push for the release of captives. Published On 29 Jan 202429 Jan 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
How will UNRWA function as more donor countries cut funding?
Israel says some of the UN agency’s staff members were involved in Hamas’s October 7 attacks. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees – UNRWA – offers a lifeline for nearly 6 million people. Established in 1949, its mission is to provide relief to Palestinians forced from their homes when the state of Israel was created and for their still displaced descendants. Now, the agency’s future – and that of those who depend on it to survive – is under threat. Several Western nations have suspended their funding to UNRWA in the wake of Israeli accusations that some of its staff members were involved in the attacks by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7. The agency has dismissed some employees and opened an investigation What impact will the aid suspension have on the Palestinian people – both in Gaza and beyond? Presenter: Nastasya Tay Guests: Samir Zaqout – Palestinian rights and social activist who lives in Gaza and has been displaced by Israel’s war Ardi Imseis – professor of international law at Queen’s University and former legal counsel to UNRWA Raymond Johansen – secretary-general of Norwegian People’s Aid and former Norwegian state secretary for foreign affairs Adblock test (Why?)
Israeli ministers join convention calling for Gaza resettlement
NewsFeed Israeli government ministers spoke at a far-right conference which called for Israel to rebuild settlements in Gaza, a policy that would be against international law. Published On 29 Jan 202429 Jan 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
US, Britain announce sanctions on network that targeted critics of Iran
The United States and the United Kingdom have imposed sanctions on a network of people who targeted Iranian opposition activists for assassination under Iran’s orders, the US Treasury Department has said. The US Treasury said the network was directed by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and put sanctions on 11 people connected to it, including Iranian narcotics trafficker Naji Ibrahim Sharifi-Zindashti. “The Iranian regime’s continued efforts to target dissidents and activists demonstrate the regime’s deep insecurity and attempt to expand Iran’s domestic repression internationally,” said Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. There was no immediate comment from Iran. The Treasury said that the network, led by Sharifi-Zindashti, had carried out assassinations and kidnappings across several jurisdictions to silence perceived critics of Tehran. The Treasury action freezes any US assets of those targeted and generally bans Americans from dealing with them. The Treasury said that in 2021 the network had recruited a Canadian national and British Columbia-based Hells Angels Outlaw Motorcycle Group member, Damion Patrick John Ryan, to assassinate individuals in the US who fled Iran. Ryan also allegedly recruited Canadian national and Hells Angels affiliate Adam Richard Pearson to carry out the murders, the Treasury said. Both are currently imprisoned abroad on unrelated charges. The sanctions come amid soaring tensions in the Middle East. The US and UK accused Iran-backed groups earlier on Monday of a drone attack in Jordan near the border with Syria that killed three US military personnel. Britain imposed sanctions on Iranian officials it said were involved in threats to kill journalists on British soil and others it said were part of international criminal gangs linked to Tehran. The UK Foreign Office said it would “sanction seven individuals and one organisation, including senior Iranian officials and members of organised criminal gangs who collaborate with the regime.” “The Iranian regime and the criminal gangs who operate on its behalf pose an unacceptable threat to the UK’s security,” British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement. “The UK and US have sent a clear message – we will not tolerate this threat,” he added. Adblock test (Why?)