Thursday, December 28, 2023
09:01 GMT — Russia has said the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East is a result of the longstanding failures of US foreign policy and called for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In his comments to TASS news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for de-escalation of the Middle East conflict, denouncing as "unacceptable" both acts of terror and "collective punishment".
"It is vital to break the vicious cycle of violence and do away with the injustice from which several generations of Palestinians have suffered," he was quoted as saying .
"Only by doing this can stability be achieved in the zone of confrontation in the Middle East as a whole."
The intrigues of Western countries whose dominance is ebbing away are largely responsible for pitching the world into turmoil, Lavrov said in an interview published on Thursday.
08:22 GMT — Dozens arrested in pro-Palestine protests at two major US airports
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked morning traffic around Los Angeles International Airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport - two of the nation's busiest - in coast-to-coast demonstrations that ended with dozens of arrests.
Thirty-six people were taken into custody at LAX, where demonstrators became unruly, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
"Protesters threw a police officer to the ground, used construction debris, road signs, tree branches and blocks of concrete to obstruct" a road leading into the airport "while attacking uninvolved passersby in their vehicles," police said in a statement.
Most of those detained were booked on rioting charges and at least one was arrested for battery on a police officer, according to the statement.
Across the country, the Port Authority Police Department of New York said 26 people were arrested for disorderly conduct and i mpeding vehicular traffic during a protest along the Van Wyck Expressway inside JFK Airport in Queens.
08:20 GMT — 'Gaza is a public health disaster in the making'
The UN’s relief chief has warned of a health disaster in Gaza as hospitals are barely able to provide services due to the ongoing war.
"Hospitals are barely functioning. Infectious diseases are rife and spreading fast in overcrowded shelters. Hundreds of people with war injuries are unable to receive care. Gaza is a public health d isaster in the making," Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said on X.
The World Health Organization [WHO] and its partners delivered fuel and other essential supplies to two hospitals in northern and southern Gaza this week, the UN agency said in a statement.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on the international community to "take urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril facing the population of Gaza and jeopardizing the ability of humanitarian workers to help people with terrible injuries, acute hunger, and at severe risk of disease," according to the statement.
The latest WHO assessments show that Gaza currently has 13 partially functioning hospitals and two minimally functioning ones, while 21 are not functioning at all, it added.
08:19 GMT — Israel's Shin Bet said to have received intelligence prior to Hamas attack
A source who worked for Israel's Shin Bet security agency in Gaza passed along specific information that the Palestinian resistance group Hamas was planning to carry out a major attack in early October, Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported.
According to the report, the information reached Shin Bet during the summer, clearly stating that "Hamas was planning a major move in the week following Yom Kippur."
However, the information was not passed on to senior officials in Israel because it was believed that additional supporting information would come if such a thing was imminent, it said.
It further pointed out that "the warning received in the summer was disclosed again as part of Shin Bet's investigations into the source of the intelligence failure.”
Officials from the agency said that "through the investigation, no additional information supporting that intelligence was found."
Shin Bet responded to the channel's report, saying, "at this time, we are focusing on the fighting."
For our live updates from Wednesday, December 27, click here.
