UN Confirmed Israel Targeted Journalists
An Israeli tank fired two shells at a group of international journalists clearly marked as such, which was a violation of international law, a UN investigation reportedly said. The deadly incident happened in Lebanon in mid-October.
The conclusions revealed by Reuters on Wednesday were made in a seven-page report dated February 27, which the news agency obtained. They coincided with what it had found on its own while looking into the death of its employee Issam Abdallah and the injuries of six other journalists, including those working for Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Al Jazeera.
The report was produced by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the peacekeeper mission deployed on the border between Israel and Lebanon in 2006 as part of a deal that ended the Israeli occupation of the southern part of its neighbor. Tracking and investigating presumed violations of the truce is part of its job.
The attack happened on October 13, in the early days of Israel’s siege of Gaza in retaliation for a large-scale incursion by the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Tensions ramped up at the Lebanese border as well, with sporadic attacks launched by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah militants.
Read more More kids killed in Gaza than in four years of global conflicts – UN
Abdallah, a Reuters photographer, was part of a group of journalists covering the situation from a hill in Lebanon. An IDF Merkava tank fired two shots at them, the UNIFIL report confirmed. It called the attack a violation of the truce it is mandated to uphold and of international law.
”It is assessed that there was no exchange of fire across the Blue Line at the time of the incident,” the report noted, referring to the de facto border. “The reason for the strikes on the journalists is not known.”
An IDF spokesperson told Reuters that Israeli forces do not target civilians on purpose, including journalists, when asked about the UN investigation. He added that the incident is being examined by the General Staff’s Fact Finding and Assessment Mechanism – a body responsible for reviewing exceptional events.
Reuters released its findings in early December, based on eyewitness accounts, forensic analysis of evidence found at the scene and interviews with officials.
READ MORE: Reuters journalist killed by Israeli fire – media
The UNIFIL report was sent to the UN on February 28 and shared with the Israeli and Lebanese governments, Reuters said citing a source. The mission’s investigations are normally not made public.
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Israel Pledges ‘Humanitarian Islands’ In Gaza
Many of the displaced civilians crowded into the Gaza Strip’s southern tip will be directed into safe zones in the center of the Palestinian enclave before a major ground offensive begins to eliminate the territory’s last Hamas stronghold, the Israeli military has claimed.
“We need to make sure that 1.4 million people – or at least a significant amount of the 1.4 million people – will move,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Wednesday in a press briefing. “Where? To humanitarian islands that we will create with the international community.”
Those places of refuge will provide temporary shelter, food and water to displaced civilians, Hagari said. Civilians had previously fled to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, after Israeli bombardments leveled their neighborhoods in other parts of the enclave. US President Joe Biden’s administration, West Jerusalem’s most powerful ally, has insisted that Israeli forces provide a “credible”plan for protecting civilians before launching their controversial Rafah offensive.
The Israel-Hamas war has already left more than 31,000 people dead in Gaza, according to local health authorities. Upward of 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced by Israeli bombardments, and the UN has estimated that 570,000 people in the besieged Palestinian territory are starving.
READ MORE: Netanyahu vows to ‘finish the job’ in Gaza
Hagari didn’t specify when evacuations will begin or how much time will be given before ground forces start pounding Rafah. He said the timing will be coordinated with neighboring Egypt, which has demanded that Gaza refugees not be driven into its territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that the Rafah campaign will go forward, despite international fears that it will cause a humanitarian catastrophe, because Israel’s survival cannot be ensured without “total victory” against Hamas. The PM said last month that Israel had already destroyed 18 of the 24 Hamas battalions in Gaza, and four of the surviving units were concentrated in Rafah.
READ MORE: More kids killed in Gaza than in four years of global conflicts – UN
“To win this war, we must destroy the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu said in a video address on Tuesday. “If not, Hamas will regroup, rearm and reconquer Gaza – and then we’re back to square one. And that’s an intolerable threat we cannot accept.”
The war erupted when Hamas fighters launched surprise raids against southern Israeli villages on October 7, killing over 1,100 people and taking hundreds of hostages back to Gaza. About two-thirds of the Palestinians killed in the conflict were women and children, according to Gaza health officials. A UN refugee agency claimed on Tuesday that more children had been killed in Gaza since October than the global total for child deaths in all conflicts from 2019 through 2022.
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US Held Secret Talks With Iran
US President Joe Biden’s administration reportedly held behind-the-scenes negotiations with Iran to solicit Tehran’s help in pressuring Yemen’s Houthi rebels to halt their attacks on commercial cargo ships in the Red Sea.
The talks were held in January in Oman, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified US and Iranian officials. Omani officials acted as intermediaries, shuttling between the American and Iranian negotiators so they could communicate without making direct contact with each other.
The Houthi attacks have continued unabated, suggesting that the secret negotiations failed to achieve the desired results. The FT didn’t specify whether Iran rejected the US request or tried unsuccessfully to persuade the rebels to cease their rocket and drone strikes. Iranian leaders have claimed that although Tehran supports the militant group politically, the Houthis act independently.
The rebels have launched dozens of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and surrounding waters, disrupting shipping traffic through one of the world’s most important maritime corridors. The Houthis and other Iranian-backed militants have targeted US, UK and Israeli interests across the Middle East – in solidarity with the Palestinian people – since the Israel-Hamas war began in October.
READ MORE: First fatalities confirmed in Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping
The Houthi attacks have continued despite airstrikes against the group by a US-led military coalition. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree has vowed to “confront the American-British escalation with escalation and will not hesitate to carry out comprehensive and effective military operations in retaliation to any British-American foolishness against beloved Yemen.”
Iran has allegedly sought to avoid escalation of tensions with Washington, discouraging its affiliated militias from further attacks on American military bases in Iraq and Syria after three US troops were killed in a drone strike near the Jordanian-Syrian border in late January. An Iranian official reportedly told the FT that when a key general visited Baghdad last month, he advised Iraqi militias to “manage their behavior in a way that will not allow America to engage Iran.”
US negotiators – led by White House Middle East advisor Brett McGurk and envoy Abram Paley – also express concerns about Iran’s expanding nuclear program, according to the report. Iran was represented by its deputy foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani, who is Tehran’s lead nuclear negotiator.
READ MORE: US targeted Iranian warship with cyberattack – NBC
The Biden administration sees indirect communication channels as “a method for raising the full range of threats emanating from Iran,” the FT said. The White House negotiators conveyed to the Iranians “what they need to do in order to prevent a wider conflict, as they claim they want.”
A second round of talks, reportedly scheduled for last month, was delayed because McGurk was focused on trying to help broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. The conflict in the Gaza Strip also derailed efforts by the US to negotiate de-escalation measures with Iran, including limitations on the Islamic republic’s uranium enrichment, the FT said.
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‘She Thought She Was Going To Die’ – French Stars And Wealthy Terrorized in Wave of Violent Home-jackings
Celebrities are being targeted across France in an unprecedented wave of “home-jackings,” which are burglaries accompanied by violence and kidnapping. The cases often involve “youths” recruited by experienced ringleaders, such as Kamel Z., who keep their distance from their criminal underlings to insulate themselves from any prosecution.
The country has a history of these violent home invasions, but recent months have seen an explosion of such cases, including well-known French figures, such as Vitaa, Bruno Guillon, Jean-François Piège, Anne-Sophie Lapix, and Nikos Aliagas.
2023 marks a new milestone
In a special television report by BFMTV, the French news outlet reviewed the most recent cases. On July 21, 2023, a gang broke into the Paris home of PSG’s Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and his partner, with the perpetrators tying up and stripping both victims. Then, on Sept. 27, the same type of home invasion, with the victims also being stripped, occurred against Bruno Guillon in the Paris region. Guillon, a host on French TV, was threatened with a handgun while his wife was tied up, gagged, and threatened with a hammer. Their 14-year-old son was also tied up inside his room and clamped in place.
On Dec. 18, the home of Alexandre Letelier, who serves as the backup goalkeeper for PSG, was invaded. Both he and his partner were threatened with death in front of their two children, aged two and six. Just two days later, on Dec. 20, the singer Vitaa was kidnapped, along with her husband and three children, after being targeted inside their home in Rueil-Malmaison.
Just a few weeks later, on Feb. 6, 2024, a team broke into Aya Nakumra’s home in Seine-Saint-Denis in Paris. They beat him to the point of hospitalization and robbed his residence.
Other celebrities, such as Nikos Alliagas, a Greek-French entertainer and journalist, as well as journalist Anne-Sophie Lapix, have also been targeted by burglary teams, but those attempts were foiled.
As BMFTV reports, many of these celebrities are targeted due to their presence on social media, where they show off their luxury watches, handbags, and other items.
“They are known for having money and property,” said Laurent Nuñez, the Paris police chief. “You just have to follow certain Facebook or Instagram profiles. We find a lot of information, both about the property held by future victims, and then obviously on their addresses and lifestyle.”
Once the information has been collected, the criminals can take action. In most cases, they “pose as a fake deliveryman, from La Poste or Amazon (…) with a parcel in hand,” explains Djassim Belkourchia, a delegate of the Alliance Police Nationale union.
“Committing a home-jacking in the presence of the occupants often allows them to ask for information on the whereabouts of the goods that are sought, jewelry, luxury watches or computer equipment,” estimates Laurent Nuñez.
France powerless to stop the crimes
Although these crimes have picked up steam in recent months, they have long plagued France. In July 2021, Guillaume Pley, a television presenter, learned that his wife and son, along with their nanny, had been victims of a violent house-jacking while he was flying to the Cannes Film Festival.
In that case, three men barged into the house when the mother, Agathe, had opened the door expecting the nanny.
They pointed a gun at her son’s head, and told Agathe, “If you make any noise, you know what will happen.”
“It’s difficult for a mother, it’s a scene that she won’t forget,” he said about the incident.
The burglars were looking for a luxury watch they had seen the French host wearing on social media, but he had the watch on him during his flight.
“She thought she was going to die because they were very hard on her when they couldn’t find the safe. It made them a little crazy,” he said.
The burglars fled with a counterfeit version of the watch worth a few hundred euros.
Most of the criminals are minors
Following the home invasion of Guillon, two minors and two others who were barely adults were arrested.
“What characterizes the profile of these young perpetrators is that they are essentially all minors. They are perfectly known to the police and justice for acts of violence (…) sometimes even violence with drug trafficking weapons, and they have already been condemned by the judicial authorities,” said Philippe Franchet, the commissioner of the Versailles banditry repression police unit.
However, despite participating in these high-profile crimes, many of these youths have little experience with home-jackings. In most cases, they are recruited by professionals, such as the 27-year-old Kamel Z., who is well known to police and has seven convictions.
He is accused of recruiting young men across Paris, and in many cases, he pays them just a few thousand euros. These underlings do not know each other and often know very little about their targets.
“They already have some experience in the world of banditry and police techniques. They think they will protect themselves from investigations and criminal liability by using young people who are a little less experienced,” explains Philippe Franchet.
Kamel Z. has been indicted for home-jacking at Bruno Guillon’s house, but investigators are also exploring his role in other violent house-jackings.
The BFMTV report notes that these home-jackings are not just targeting celebrities, but also families with no public-facing role. The Merlin family, for instance, was targeted in Calais in April 2023. The mother, Aurelie, was confronted while sleeping on the sofa by a man wearing a white mask and a black hood.
“He started hitting me in the face. I was so paralyzed that I didn’t even feel the blows. I was not in pain, but I could feel the blood starting to flow down my cheek. He hit me again, he asked me for money and he ran away,” says the mother.
She described it as a traumatic event that has left her checking her windows every night out of fear someone could slip into the house.
One psychologist described these home-jackings as one of the most traumatic crimes anyone can experience.
“It’s someone who enters into their private space… The victim is marked in her mind, she knows that this is where the trauma took place and for her, to go back to rebuild herself, she needs to turn the page and therefore change homes very often,” said Marjorie Sueur, a psychologist.
In many cases, the victims are advised to change their homes and start over someplace else.
Home security sales soaring
The brutal crime often leaves many families with trauma, involving both physical and mental scars. Such cases are not just hitting the wealthy and famous either, but ordinary French citizens dealt with over 210,000 home burglaries last year, with a third of these cases occurring while the family was still home.
Now, the sale of home security systems is soaring, with France inching towards a state of insecurity often seen in countries like South Africa and Brazil.
One businessman involved in the sale of home security systems says that in the five years he has been in the business, he has never been so profitable.
“More and more, people are calling on me for preventive measures (…). We have seen 300 percent more turnover since the start of the year compared to the year before. If we are generalizing, that says a lot about the context in France. The risk of face-to-face confrontation (with burglars) has never been so great,” he said while appearing on the Europe 1 television channel.
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Ukraine’s Military Planning Takeover of Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev by Force – Source
MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The Ukrainian military, dissatisfied with the policy of the country’s leadership, is planning the takeover of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, in Kiev and attracting other Ukrainian armed forces’ military personnel to their side, a correspondence on a closed resource obtained by Russian specialists has shown.
Sputnik obtained the correspondence of the chat participants, which showed that the participants discussed a swift takeover of the Verkhovna Rada and attracting the military to their side.
“The most important action that we will need to pull off lightning fast is the takeover of the VR [Verkhovna Rada] at a certain point,” one of the chat participants wrote.
“When the staff is recruited, fighters are trained, the mass will be ready,” another chat participant said.
“There must be support from the military. Without it, nothing will work. The main driving force. [They] will say from the trenches that [they are] with us, and people will follow,” one more chat participant said.
“Especially when the people see that the military is at the helm and the rest of the military is following them – they automatically take the right side,” another chat participant added.
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Covid Criminals Must Face Military Tribunals Says Stew Peters
A popular and outspoken major American News Show host says that there needs to be Military Tribunals for the globalists who have been waging war on humanity. The covid criminals must face military tribunals, according […]
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