World
Israeli cabinet approves Gaza ceasefire accord, due to take effect Sunday
Israel’s cabinet approved a deal with Hamas for a ceasefire and release of hostages in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday, a day ahead of the agreement’s scheduled start.
In the early hours of Saturday after meeting for more than six hours, the government ratified the agreement that could pave the way for an end to the 15-month-old war in the Palestinian enclave, which Hamas controls, Reuters reported.
“The Government has approved the framework for the return of the hostages. The framework for the hostages’ release will come into effect on Sunday,” Netanyahu’s office said in a brief statement.
In Gaza itself, Israeli warplanes have kept up heavy attacks since the ceasefire deal was agreed. Medics in Gaza said an Israeli airstrike early on Saturday killed five people in a tent in the Mawasi area west of Khan Younis in the enclave’s south.
This brought to 119 the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombardment since the accord was announced on Wednesday.
After the Israeli cabinet approval, lead U.S. negotiator Brett McGurk said the plan was moving forward on track. The White House expects the ceasefire to start on Sunday morning, with three female hostages to be released to Israel on Sunday afternoon through the Red Cross.
“We have locked down every single detail in this agreement. We are quite confident… it is ready to be implemented on Sunday,” McGurk said on CNN from the White House.
Under the deal, the three-stage ceasefire starts with an initial six-week phase when hostages held by Hamas will be exchanged for prisoners detained by Israel.
Thirty-three of the 98 remaining Israeli hostages, including women, children, and men over 50, were due to be freed in this phase. Israel will release all Palestinian women and children under 19 in Israeli jails by the end of the first phase.
The names of 95 Palestinian prisoners to be turned over on Sunday were announced by the Israeli Justice Ministry on Friday.
After Sunday’s hostage release, McGurk said the accord called for four more female hostages to be released after seven days followed by the release of three further hostages every seven days thereafter.
HARDLINERS OPPOSE CEASEFIRE
With the accord bitterly opposed by some Israeli cabinet hardliners, media reports said 24 ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government voted in favour of the deal while eight opposed it.
The opponents said the ceasefire agreement represented a capitulation to Hamas. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir threatened to resign if it was approved and urged other ministers to vote against it. However, he said he would not bring down the government.
His fellow hardliner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also threatened to quit the government if it does not go back to war to defeat Hamas after the first six-week phase of the ceasefire.
After a last-minute delay on Thursday that Israel blamed on Hamas, the Israeli security cabinet voted on Friday in favour of the ceasefire accord, the first of two approvals required.
Israel began its assault on Gaza after Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 during which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
The war between Israeli forces and Hamas has razed much of heavily urbanised Gaza, killed more than 46,000 people and displaced most of the enclave’s pre-war population of 2.3 million several times over, according to local authorities.
If successful, the ceasefire could also ease hostilities in the Middle East, where the Gaza war spread to include Iran and its proxies – Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Iraq as well as the occupied West Bank.
Gaza civilians have faced a humanitarian crisis due to hunger, cold and sickness. The ceasefire agreement calls for a surge in assistance, and international organisations have aid trucks lined up on Gaza’s borders to bring in food, fuel, medicine and other vital supplies.
Palestinian relief agency UNRWA said on Friday that it has 4,000 truckloads of aid, half of which are food, ready to enter the coastal strip.
Palestinians waiting for food in the southern Gaza Strip on Friday said they hoped a truce will mean an end to hours of queuing to fill one plate.
“I hope it will happen so we’ll be able to cook in our homes and make whatever food we want, without having to go to soup kitchens and exhaust ourselves for three or four hours trying to get (food) – sometimes not even making it home,” displaced Palestinian Reeham Sheikh al-Eid said.
World
Lebanon says Israeli strikes in south of the country kill at least 11
Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement that the attacks would be “met with what they deserve”.
At least 11 people were killed in Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said, some of the deadliest in the weeks since the country agreed to a U.S.-mediated peace framework with neighbouring Israel, Reuters reported.
The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah infrastructure overnight in what it describes as a security zone in southern Lebanon in response to actions against its soldiers there.
Iran-backed Hezbollah said in a statement that the attacks would be “met with what they deserve”.
The framework leaves Israeli troops inside occupied southern Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed and the Lebanese army takes control, terms the group has rejected as surrender.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said seven people were killed when Israeli warplanes struck a house in the southern village of Ansar, while four others were killed in a strike on the village of Deir El Zahrani.
The seven people killed in Ansar included three children and two women, NNA said, adding that a total of 19 people were wounded in the attacks.
At least 4,300 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest round of hostilities since March 2.
NNA also reported other airstrikes across southern Lebanon, including on a strategic area north of the Litani River known as Ali al-Taher hill. One, targeting a valley next to Ansar, was the deepest strike into Lebanon in two months.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement on X, accused Hezbollah of violating the ceasefire and attacking Israeli soldiers leading to three injuries, read the report.
“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) responded by striking the Hezbollah terror headquarters which ordered the attack,” the statement said. “Only later did the IDF learn that Hezbollah deliberately put civilians in that military compound.”
The Israeli military said in a statement it killed Ali Samir Al-Haj Hassan, a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force unit and others when it struck “a central headquarters of the Radwan Force unit,” in Ansar.
“At the time of the strike, Hassan’s family was also present with him inside the military headquarters and, according to the claim, was harmed in the strike,” the statement added, emphasising that the family was not the target of the strike.
“The martyrs of the Israeli raid on the village of Ansar are not ‘military infrastructure’ and the women and children killed in it are not military targets,” Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said in a post on X.
Nabih Berri, the speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, who is a Hezbollah ally, called in a statement for national unity and for the sponsors of the peace talks and ceasefire agreements to assume responsibility for stopping the war before it was too late.
Israel’s military seized a swathe of southern Lebanon during its war with Hezbollah earlier this year, triggered after the group fired at Israel two days into the Iran war. Israel has said it will keep its forces there to protect the north of the country from further attacks.
During a visit to southern Lebanon on Thursday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would not withdraw from areas under its control until Hezbollah was disarmed. A U.S. State Department official said a permanent Israeli military presence there was not consistent with commitments set out in the deal, Reuters reported.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in a statement on X, said the attacks were a “clear message” aimed at the negotiations and U.S. efforts towards implementing the framework agreement.
Doron Spielman, international spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, told Reuters Saturday’s strikes would “tighten up” negotiations.
“I think it should make the negotiations more serious and more real, because it highlights the whole reason we got into these negotiations in the first place,” he added.
World
At least 38 dead after Indonesia’s magnitude-7.7 earthquake, officials say
At least 38 people died after an earthquake of magnitude 7.7 and dozens of aftershocks struck off eastern Indonesia on Saturday, officials said, as rescue workers rushed to reach areas closest to the epicentre.
Tsunami waves of less than 1 metre (3 feet) were recorded in several areas of the Southeast Asian nation after the early morning tremor. The tsunami warning was lifted about three hours after the quake, Reuters reported.
“As of 15:00 (0800 GMT), the recorded figures are 38 fatalities, two people seriously injured, 11 with minor injuries,” Suharyanto, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, or BNPB, told a televised press conference. He added that approximately 2,000 people had fled to safer ground.
Earlier, rescuers in the port town of Maumere found 20 dead, six injured and two trapped under the rubble, said Fathur Rahman, head of the city’s rescue agency. Maumere is the main town in Sikka Regency on Flores Island in the east of Indonesia’s vast archipelago.
Suharyanto said residents remain trapped in several buildings in earthquake-affected areas and there are reports of landslides blocking several roads.
TEAMS HAVE YET TO REACH REGION CLOSEST TO EPICENTRE
Teams have yet to reach Nagekeo, the region closest to the epicentre, and communications signals there had been affected, Fathur told Reuters. Attempts to reach Nagekeo by car were blocked by landslides, while another team was attempting to go by ferry, he said.
About 2,000 residents in Nagekeo evacuated, and damage was reported to a number of houses, warehouses and government facilities, the BNPB said. Authorities also reported traffic congestion and power outages affecting parts of the regency, it said.
The governor of East Nusa Tenggara Province, Emanuel Melkiades Laka Lena, told a press conference at least five people died from collapsing rubble as they slept.
Parts of a building collapsed into dust and rubble as people screamed and ran in the street, a video on Facebook, verified by Reuters as being at a port in Maumere, showed.
“The quake was massive, the shock was so strong, we were resting at home with family,” said Nona, a 51-year-old resident of Talibura, a village in East Nusa Tenggara. “There were 13 of us inside the house and we all ran to save ourselves.”
Strong shaking was felt across East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and parts of South Sulawesi, and residents in several areas reported shaking lasting about one minute, the BNPB said in a statement.
“Most of the people felt the shock and scattered out of their homes,” it said.
A hospital in the district of Ende in East Nusa Tenggara Province was moving patients outside, Kompas TV footage showed, and Kompas.com reported at least one landslide.
Indonesian geophysics agency BMKG recorded the first quake at 4.58 a.m. (2158 GMT) at a depth of 15 km (9 miles), followed by several aftershocks.
In 1992 the same area was hit by a magnitude-7.5 quake, causing extensive destruction at that time, the agency said.
Australia’s tsunami warning centre said the undersea earthquake would pose “no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, islands or territories”.
Indonesia straddles the “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet, creating a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.
World
Five killed in Michigan shooting; suspect found dead after manhunt
Police did not release the names, ages, or genders of the victims, saying next-of-kin notifications were underway.
A man suspected of shooting and killing five people in northern Michigan on Friday was found dead after a manhunt, Michigan State Police said in a statement on social media.
One victim remained hospitalized in critical condition, the police said.
Troopers were dispatched around 11:40 a.m. local time (6:40 p.m. Israel time) to a home in Missaukee County, Michigan, after a report of a shooting. Officers found three people dead and a fourth person wounded, the state police said.
The suspect, identified by police as 39-year-old Chad Hickman, fled the scene before troopers arrived, prompting a manhunt. During the search for the suspect, investigators discovered another deceased victim at a second residence.
Troopers later located Hickman’s vehicle near a wooded area close to Whitlock Lake, where they found Hickman and another person dead, police said.
“This situation is heartbreaking for the community and challenging for the investigators involved,” said Lieutenant Ashley Miller, cited in the police statement.
Police did not release the names, ages, or genders of the victims, saying next-of-kin notifications were underway.
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