Latest News
IEA calls Palestinian resistance ‘legitimate right to achieve freedom’
The Islamic Emirate’s Foreign Ministry called the Palestinian resistance “the legitimate right of the Palestinians to achieve freedom”.
This was in reference to Saturday’s developments between Palestine and Israel.
Palestine’s Hamas group took Israel by surprise on Saturday with the biggest attack for decades, a sudden assault by gunmen who crossed into Israeli villages, killed dozens of people and brought hostages back into the Gaza Strip.
Hamas also fired off an estimated 2,500 rockets at Israel, which was met with massive air strikes deep inside the coastal enclave by Israel.
“Our enemy will pay a price the type of which it has never known,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “We are in a war and we will win it”.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the assault that had begun in Gaza would spread to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
“This was the morning of defeat and humiliation upon our enemy, its soldiers and its settlers,” he said. “What happened reveals the greatness of our preparation. What happened today reveals the weakness of the enemy.”
The IEA meanwhile said on X, formerly Twitter, that the Islamic Emirate supports the Palestinian people’s legitimate, historical, and legal right to have an independent state in the land of the Palestinians.
The IEA’s foreign ministry asked Islamic countries, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and the international community, especially influential countries in the region, to stop the violence of the Israeli occupying forces against the innocent people of Palestine.
Hundreds of people were reportedly killed in Saturday’s incursion.
Reuters reports that in southern Israel near Gaza, bodies of Israeli civilians lay strewn across a highway in Sderot, surrounded by broken glass. A woman and a man were sprawled out dead across the front seats of a car. A military vehicle drove past the bodies of another woman and a man in a pool of blood behind another car.
Israel’s N12 News reported that at least 100 Israelis were killed. Israeli security forces said there were 21 active scenes of gun battles with infiltrators, and its navy had killed dozens more Palestinians attempting to infiltrate by sea.
In Gaza, black smoke and orange flames billowed into the evening sky from a high rise tower hit by an Israeli retaliatory strike. Crowds of mourners carried the bodies of freshly killed militants through the streets, wrapped in green Hamas flags.
Gaza health officials said at least 198 Palestinians had been killed and more than 1,600 had been wounded, carried into crumbling and overcrowded hospitals with severe shortages of medical supplies and equipment.
Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri told Al Jazeera that the group was holding a big number of Israeli captives, including senior officials. He said Hamas had enough captives to make Israel free all Palestinians in its jails.
The Israeli military confirmed Israelis were being held captive in Gaza and soldiers and officers had been killed. A military spokesman said Israel could mobilize up to hundreds of thousands of reservists and was also prepared for war on its northern front against Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
Hamas, which advocates Israel’s destruction, said the attack was driven by what it said were Israel’s escalated attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, Jerusalem and against Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
“This is the day of the greatest battle to end the last occupation on earth,” Hamas military commander Mohammad Deif said, announcing the start of the operation in a broadcast on Hamas media and calling on Palestinians everywhere to fight.
Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, has since fought four wars against Israel. But the scenes of violence inside Israel itself were unlike anything seen since the suicide bombings of the Palestinian Intafada uprising two decades ago.
That the attack came as a surprise to Israel’s security forces makes it one of the worst intelligence failures in the country’s history, a shock in a nation proud of its intensive infiltration and monitoring of militant groups.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, officials in the local administration of Herat said that due to severe cold along the illegal migration route to Iran, three Afghan migrants have lost their lives in the Kohsan district of the province, and a shepherd has also died there for the same reason.
Mohammad Yousuf Saeedi, spokesperson for the Herat governor’s office, said that some statistics and images shared on social media regarding the incident are not reliable.
According to him, further investigations are underway to determine whether any individuals have died on the other side of the border.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
Tawsia: India’s enthusiasm for investing in Afghanistan discussed
Japan allocates nearly $20 million in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan
Afghan border forces prevent illegal entry of hundreds into Iran
US pauses green card lottery program after Brown University shooting
India issues over 200 medical visas to Afghans in last four months
Afghanistan U19 cricket team defeats India A U19
Afghanistan economy under pressure as Pakistan shocks reshape trade flows
Gaza death toll tops 70,000, health ministry says
India set to establish pharmaceutical factories in Afghanistan: MoIC
Afghanistan offers tax breaks, free land to attract Indian investors
Tawsia: India’s enthusiasm for investing in Afghanistan discussed
Tahawol: Global concerns over migration escalation discussed
Saar: Calls for Afghanistan’s balanced, economy-oriented foreign policy discussed
Tahawol: Discussion on regional countries’ meetings on Afghanistan
Saar: Regional efforts to address Afghanistan-Pakistan issues discussed
-
Latest News5 days agoGermany speeds up admission of Afghans from Pakistan
-
Sport5 days agoIPL 2026 Auction set for Abu Dhabi with $28.6 million purse at stake
-
Latest News5 days agoAfghanistan to establish independent oil and gas authority
-
Latest News5 days agoUS intelligence chief warns of ‘direct threat’ from suspected terrorists inside the country
-
Latest News4 days agoIEA supreme leader stresses enforcement of Sharia law and sincere public service
-
International Sports5 days agoILT20: Desert Vipers qualify for playoffs with five-wicket win over Dubai Capitals
-
World5 days agoFather and son behind Bondi Jewish festival shooting that killed 15, Australian police say
-
International Sports5 days agoATN secures broadcast rights for four major AFC sporting events