Category: NEWS

NEW DELHI — At least eight people, including one woman and seven men, died and 19 others were injured in a road accident between a private bus and a water tanker on an expressway in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Friday, confirmed a senior cop over the phone.

The mishap occurred in the Kannauj district on an expressway connecting Uttar Pradesh’s capital city Lucknow and Delhi.

The passenger bus was running from Lucknow towards the national capital, when it rammed into the water tanker from behind and toppled, resulting in human casualties. Some of the passengers were trapped under the bus, said the cop.

According to him, the injured were admitted to a local hospital. The cause of the accident couldn’t be known yet.

XINHUA

THE HAGUE — Strong gusts of wind caused widespread disruption across the Netherlands on Friday, with over 100 flights canceled at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, and impacting railways, road traffic, and waterways.

The Dutch national weather institute KNMI issued a code yellow weather alert for nearly the entire country, covering 10 of the 12 provinces. Only the southern provinces of North Brabant and Limburg remain under code green.

Wind gusts of 75 to 90 kilometers per hour were reported, with coastal areas experiencing gusts of 90 to 100 kilometers per hour. On the northern Wadden Islands, wind speeds could reach as high as 100 to 120 kilometers per hour.

Travelers passing through Schiphol were warned to prepare for cancellations and delays. Over 100 flights had already been canceled as of Friday morning.

The storm also disrupted train services, with trees and branches blown onto tracks in several locations.

Road traffic faced significant challenges as well. The Markerwaard dike near the province of Flevoland was closed due to strong winds, and the A15 motorway toward Nijmegen was shut down after a truck jackknifed.

High water levels and strong winds forced the closure of the Ramspol storm surge barrier near Kampen in Overijssel province, halting shipping traffic temporarily. The closure was a precaution to prevent flooding in nearby areas, including the city of Zwolle.

XINHUA

LONDON — Some services across the UK’s National Rail network were disrupted on Friday morning due to “a nationwide fault with the communication system used between train drivers and signalers.”

Routes to London’s Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport were among those affected, along with services operated by Northern, South Western Railway, and Transport for Wales.

Travelers across the country faced short-notice cancellations and alterations due to the knock-on effect on the timetables.

According to a statement by the National Rail, the issue mainly affected trains registering to enter their route for the start of service and deregistering to end their service.

XINHUA

BEIRUT — Thousands of people fled the central Syrian city of Homs overnight and into Friday morning, a war monitoring group and residents said, as militant forces sought to push their lightning offensive against government forces further south.

They have already captured the key cities of Aleppo in the north and Hama in the center, dealing successive blows to President Bashar Assad, nearly 14 years after protests against him erupted across Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said thousands of people had begun fleeing on Thursday night toward western coastal regions, a stronghold of the government.

A resident of the coastal area said thousands of people had begun arriving there from Homs, fearing the militants’ rapid advance.

On Friday morning, Israeli air strikes hit two border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh said.

The Syrian state news agency (SANA) said the Arida border crossing with Lebanon was out of service due to the attack.

The Israeli military said it had attacked weapons transfer hubs and infrastructure overnight on the Syrian side of the Lebanese border, saying these routes had been used by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah to smuggle weapons.

Russian bombing overnight also destroyed the Rustan bridge along the key M5 highway, the main route to Homs, to prevent militants using it, a Syrian army officer told Reuters.

“There were at least eight strikes on the bridge,” he added. Government forces were bringing reinforcements to positions around the city, he said.

Militants led by the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham have pledged to press on southward to Homs, a crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and Assad’s heartland along the coast.

A militant operations room urged Homs residents in an online post to rise up, saying: “Your time has come.”

AN-REUTERS

BEIRUT — Israeli strikes early on Friday hit two border crossings linking Lebanon with Syria, Lebanon’s transport minister Ali Hamieh said.

The strikes hit just across the border on the Syrian side of both the Arida crossing in northern Lebanon and the Jousieh crossing which links to eastern Lebanon, Hamieh said.

Both crossings are important access points to Syria’s Homs province, where anti-government rebels are seeking to advance against government forces after sweeping through northern Syria.

AN-REUTERS

BEIRUT — Air strikes targeted a bridge on the highway linking the Syrian cities of Homs and Hama, a war monitor said Friday, as government forces scramble to secure Homs after Islamist-led militants captured Hama and commercial hub Aleppo.

“Fighter jets executed several airstrikes, targeting Al-Rastan bridge on (the) Homs-Hama highway… as well as attacking positions around the bridge, attempting to cut off the road between Hama and Homs and secure Homs,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The militants led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched their offensive a little more than a week ago, just as a ceasefire in neighboring Lebanon took hold between Israel and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s ally Hezbollah.

To slow the militants advance, the Observatory said Assad’s forces erected soil barriers on the highway north of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city which lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama.

Tens of thousands of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Homs on Thursday, for fear that the militants would keep up their advance, the Observatory said earlier.

The militants captured Hama on Thursday following street battles with government forces, announcing “the complete liberation of the city” in a message on their Telegram channel.

Militant fighters kissed the ground and let off volleys of celebratory gunfire as they entered Syria’s fourth-largest city.

Many residents turned out to welcome the militants.

An AFP photographer saw some residents set fire to a giant poster of Assad on the facade of city hall.

The army admitted losing control of the city, strategically located between Aleppo and Assad’s seat of power in Damascus.

Defense Minister Ali Abbas insisted that the army’s withdrawal was a “temporary tactical measure.”

“Our forces are still in the vicinity,” he said in a statement carried by the official SANA news agency.

Aron Lund, a fellow of the Century International think tank, called the loss of Hama “a massive, massive blow to the Syrian government” because the army should have had an advantage there to reverse militants gains “and they couldn’t do it.”

He said HTS would now try to push on toward Homs, where many residents were already leaving on Thursday.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman reported a mass exodus from the city of members of Assad’s Alawite minority community.

He said tens of thousands were heading toward areas along Syria’s Mediterranean coast, where the Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, form the majority.

“We are afraid and worried that what happened in Hama will be repeated in Homs,” said a civil servant, who gave his name only as Abbas.

“We fear they (the militants) will take revenge on us,” the 33-year-old said.

Until last week, the war in Syria had been mostly dormant for years, but analysts have said it was bound to resume as it was never truly resolved.

In a video posted online, HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani said his fighters had entered Hama to “cleanse the wound that has endured in Syria for 40 years,” referring to a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, which led to thousands of deaths.

In a later message on Telegram congratulating “the people of Hama on their victory,” he used his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, instead of his nom de guerre for the first time.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, said 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed in the country since the violence erupted last week.

It marks the most intense fighting since 2020 in the civil war sparked by the repression of pro-democracy protests in 2011.

Key to the militants’ successes since the start of the offensive last week was the takeover of Aleppo, which in more than a decade of war had never entirely fallen out of government hands.

While the advancing militants met little resistance earlier in their offensive, the fighting around Hama has been especially fierce.

Assad ordered a 50-percent raise in career soldiers’ pay, state news agency SANA reported Wednesday, as he seeks to bolster his forces for a counteroffensive.

Militants drove back the Syrian armed forces despite the fact that the government sent in “large military convoys,” the Observatory said.

The militants launched their offensive in northern Syria on November 27, the same day a ceasefire took effect in the war between Israel and Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.

Both Hezbollah and Russia have been crucial backers of Assad’s government, but have been mired in their own conflicts in recent years.

HTS is rooted in Syria’s Al-Qaeda branch.
The group has sought to moderate its image in recent years, but experts say it faces a challenge convincing Western governments it has fully renounced hard-line jihadism.

The United States maintains hundreds of troops in eastern Syria as part of a coalition formed against Daesh group jihadists.

AN-AFP

SEOUL — South Korea’s defense ministry said on Friday that it suspended the duty of three military commanders involved in the martial law declaration, made by President Yoon Suk-yeol earlier this week.

Chiefs of the capital defense command, the army special warfare command, and the counterintelligence command were suspended and transferred to other units.

It came amid the lingering worry about another martial law declaration in the opposition bloc.

Yoon declared an emergency martial law Tuesday night before repealing it early Wednesday as the parliament voted against it. The revocation was approved at a cabinet meeting.

XINHUA

ISLAMABAD — Eight terrorists were killed in two military operations in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan Army, said on Thursday night in a statement that personnel of security forces engaged with the terrorists in two separate locations in the province.

In the first engagement, the ISPR said that the security forces conducted an intelligence-based operation in the South Waziristan district on the reported presence of terrorists, resulting in the killing of two terrorists, including a ring leader.

Two terrorists were also arrested during the operation in South Waziristan, the ISPR added.

In another operation, six terrorists were killed in the Lakki Marwat district of the province.

The ISPR said that the killed terrorists remained actively involved in terrorist activities against security forces as well as extortion and target killing of civilians in the area.

Clearance of the surrounding areas is being conducted to eliminate any other terrorists found in the area, it added.

XINHUA

QUITO — At least nine have been killed in two armed attacks in west Ecuador, local media reported Thursday.

Early Thursday morning, police confirmed the discovery of six male bodies aged 17-25, all piled together.

Local media reports indicated that some of the bodies were bound and showed gunshot wounds. Police have transported the bodies to a forensic center in the port city of Manta, Manabi.

On Wednesday night, three members of the same family were murdered in the city of Bahia de Caraquez, Sucre canton, Manabi.

Manabi, a key region for drug trafficking on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, has seen rising violence in 2024, with numerous crimes linked to organized crime, police said.

In response, the government deployed police and military forces to target criminal groups in conflict zones. President Daniel Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” in January against 22 criminal gangs labeled as “terrorist.”

XINHUA

SAO PAULO — Two trucks and a car on Thursday crashed on a main highway in Sao Paulo, Brazil, killing four people and leaving several others injured, the local fire department reported.

The accident occurred on the Bandeirantes highway when two trucks collided and hit another vehicle stopped at the side of the road.

According to the Sao Paulo Fire Department report, one of the trucks entered a restricted area of the highway, causing multiple crashes.

The accident occurred early Thursday morning and caused a major traffic jam. A section of the highway was closed to attend to the victims and move the accident vehicles.

XINHUA

BEIRUT — Tens of thousands of members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite minority community were fleeing Syria’s third city Homs Thursday, for fear that Islamist-led rebels would keep up their advance, a war monitor said.

Homs lies just 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Hama, which the rebels captured on Thursday.

Analysts said they expected the fighters led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) to push on toward the city, a key link between Damascus and the Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean coast.

Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported “the mass exodus of Alawites from Homs neighborhoods, with tens of thousands heading toward the Syrian coast, fearing the rebel advance.”

Khaled, who lives on the city’s outskirts told AFP that “the road leading to (coastal) Tartus province was glowing… due to the lights of hundreds of cars on their way out.”

In April 2014, at least 100 people, mostly civilians, were killed in twin attacks in Homs that targeted a majority Alawite neighborhood.

The attacks were claimed by the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda which now HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani previously led.

Jolani announced his group had cut ties with the jihadists in 2016, and Al-Nusra was dissolved the following year, to be replaced by the key component of HTS.

Haidar, 37, who lives in an Alawite-majority neighborhood, told AFP by telephone that “fear is the umbrella that covers Homs now.”

“I’ve never seen this scene in my life. We are extremely afraid, we don’t know what is happening from one hour to the next,” he said.

He has managed to send his parents to Tartus, but has not found a car to take him and his wife “due to the high demand.”

“When we find a car, we’ll leave as fast as possible for Tartus.”

The province, which hosts a naval base operated by Assad ally Russia, has remained safe though 13 years of war.

AN-AFP

JENIN — Gunfights erupted in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank on Thursday between militants and Palestinian security forces following the theft of vehicles belonging to the Palestinian Authority, according to AFP journalists in the city.

The intense exchanges of fire began around 9:30 PM (1930 GMT) and followed the deployment of members of the security forces around the Jenin refugee camp, which is adjacent to the city and a stronghold for armed groups in the territory, according to the journalist.

Witnesses reported that the Palestinian security forces set up roadblocks on routes leaving the camp.

Tensions were running high in Jenin earlier in the day after a group of armed men seized two vehicles belonging to the PA and paraded through the streets waving Islamic Jihad flags.

In a statement, General Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the security forces, said “a group of outlaws opened fire on the headquarters of the security services” and stole two vehicles.

He said the security forces would “recover the vehicles and hold accountable anyone who committed this act.”

Tensions between the PA and armed groups appear to have been exacerbated by recent arrests by the security forces.

At a press conference inside Jenin camp, Mahmud Abu Talal, spokesman for a collective of local armed groups, said the PA had “abandoned its people in the most difficult circumstances.”

He rejected the label of outlaws and accused the PA of “carrying out a continuous operation to undermine those who protect their people.”

Jenin has long been a bastion of Palestinian armed groups and was the focus of a major Israeli raid launched at the end of August.

Violence in the West Bank, already increasing, surged after the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

Israel has occupied the territory since 1967.

AN-AFP

SAN FRANCISCO — A 7.0 magnitude earthquake shook a large area of Northern California on Thursday, knocking items off grocery store shelves, sending children scrambling under desks and prompting a brief tsunami warning for 5.3 million people along the US West Coast.

The quake struck at 10:44 a.m. west of Ferndale, a small city in coastal Humboldt County, about 130 miles (209 km) from the Oregon border, the US Geological Survey said.

It was felt as far south as San Francisco, some 270 miles (435 km) away, where residents felt a rolling motion for several seconds.

It was followed by multiple smaller aftershocks.

There were no immediate reports of major damage or injury.

The tsunami warning was in effect for roughly an hour. It was issued shortly after the temblor struck and covered nearly 500 miles (805 km) of coastline, from the edge of California’s Monterey Bay north into Oregon.

“It was a strong quake, our building shook, we’re fine but I have a mess to clean up right now,” said Julie Kreitzer, owner of Golden Gait Mercantile, a store packed with food, wares and souvenirs that is a main attraction in Ferndale.

“We lost a lot of stuff. It’s probably worse than two years ago. I have to go, I have to try and salvage something for the holidays because it’s going to be a tough year,” Kreitzer said before hanging up.

The region — known for its redwood forests, scenic mountains and the three-county Emerald Triangle’s legendary marijuana crop — was struck by a 6.4 magnitude quake in 2022 that left thousands of people without power and water. The northwest corner of California is the most seismically active part of the state since it’s where three tectonic plates meet, seismologist Lucy Jones said on the social media platform BlueSky.

Shortly after the quake, phones in Northern California buzzed with the tsunami warning from the National Weather Service that said: “A series of powerful waves and strong currents may impact coasts near you. You are in danger.
Get away from coastal waters. Move to high ground or inland now. Keep away from the coast until local officials say it is safe to return.”

Numerous cities urged people to evacuate to higher ground as a precaution, including Eureka.

AN-AP, Dec 5, 2024

GAZA — An Israeli drone strike on a hospital compound in northern Gaza on Thursday killed a 16-year-old boy in a wheelchair and wounded at least 12 other people, including medical staff, the Gaza Health Ministry and the hospital director said.

Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya said an Israeli drone deliberately targeted patients and staff at the entrance to the reception and emergency area of Kamal Adwan Hospital, killing Mahmoud Abu Al-Aish, a patient being taken in a wheelchair to the radiology department.

Abu Safiya spoke in a video he posted on social media, standing inside the hospital as doctors operated on a wounded man behind him, calling it, “The injured treating the injured.”

Abu Safiya was wounded in his thigh and back by an Israeli drone strike on the hospital last month.

Israel says it goes to great lengths to avoid harming civilians as it battles Hamas.

Kamal Adwan Hospital has been struck multiple times over the past two months since Israel launched a fierce military operation in northern Gaza against Hamas militants. In October, Israeli forces raided the hospital, saying that militants were sheltering inside and arrested a number of people, including some staff. Hospital officials denied the claim.

The United Nations humanitarian office estimates up to 75,000 people remain in the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp.

The area has been almost completely sealed off from humanitarian aid for two months and experts have warned that a famine may have set in.

A medical relief team from the UN World Health Organization was able to reach Kamal Adwan Hospital on Monday, delivering 10,000 liters of fuel (2,640 gallons), blood supplies, essential medical items and food.

AN-AP, Dec 5, 2024

GAZA — At least 15 Palestinians were killed Thursday afternoon in an Israeli airstrike on the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian sources said.

Israeli warplanes targeted a residential house in the town of Beit Lahia, according to local sources and eyewitnesses. Mahmoud Basal, spokesman for Civil Defense in Gaza, told Xinhua that the raid killed 15 people, including children and women.

The Israeli army has not commented on this incident.

Also on Thursday, the General Directorate of Civil Defense in Gaza warned of a possible suspension of services and humanitarian interventions it provides to displaced citizens residing in what was designated by the Israeli army as a “humanitarian area” in southern Gaza.

Muhammad Al-Mughair, director of supply for Civil Defense in Gaza, said in a press statement that the Civil Defense is suffering from a crisis due to fuel shortage in the “humanitarian area,” warning that the continued prevention of fuel supply threatens the lives of thousands of displaced people.

Israel has been launching a large-scale offensive against Hamas in Gaza to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and around 250 others taken hostage.

The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip has risen to 44,580, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Thursday.

XINHUA

BEIRUT — Hezbollah has paid out more than $50 million in cash gifts to families affected by war with Israel, its leader Naim Qassem said on Thursday, as the Iran-backed group seeks to shore up its support base after a devastating conflict with Israel.

The payments of between $300 and $400 per person will total more than $77 million when paid out to all 233,500 families who registered, Qassem said in a recorded speech, thanking Iran for its financing of the effort alongside Hezbollah.

Hezbollah will also provide a lump sum of $8,000 to those whose primary homes were destroyed in the war, and $6,000 for a year of rent for those living in Beirut or its suburbs and $4,000 for those living outside the capital until they can move back home, he said. The payments would be financed mainly by Iran, he said.

Israeli strikes have flattened swathes of Shi’ite majority areas Hezbollah’s support base call home in Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern and eastern Lebanon.

A ceasefire to the 14-month conflict took effect late last month, though Israel has been accused by U.N., French and Lebanese officials of violating it dozens of times.

Israel says it is enforcing the terms of the deal and also accuses Hezbollah of breaching it.

With the guns mostly silent, Qassem said Hezbollah was turning its focus to reconstruction.

The World Bank says nearly 100,000 homes in Lebanon were partially or fully damaged during the conflict, amounting to $3.2 billion in damages and losses.

The conflict began on Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas, and then steeply escalated in September this year.

Qassem called on “Arab brothers” and the international community to participate in reconstruction and said Hezbollah would work hand in hand with the Lebanese government.

REUTERS

LONDON — Muhammad has become the most popular name for boys in England and Wales, overtaking Noah.

The figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) do not group together the different spellings of Muhammad, meaning that all the various iterations of the name together have made it the most popular for many years.

Mohammed and Mohammad both appear in the top 100 names for boys born in England and Wales in 2023.

There were 4,661 children registered as Muhammad, increasing from 4,177 in 2022.

The name was popular in regions with higher Muslim populations, such as London, the West Midlands, Yorkshire, and the North West.

Mohammed was the 28th most popular, with 1,601 newborns registered, while Mohammad was 68th, with 835.

Other Muslim boys’ names in the top 100 include Yusuf, Ibrahim, and Musa.

The third most popular boys’ name was Oliver, followed by George and Leo.

For girls, Olivia has remained the most popular name for eight years. Amelia and Isla have been second and third for two years in a row.

The top 100 girls’ names included Layla, Maryam, and Fatima, which are all favorites with Muslim families.

The ONS said popular culture remained a key influence for parents choosing names for their babies.

Increasing numbers were names after music stars Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey, and actors Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy.

Even the names of celebrity babies such as the offspring from the Kardashian-Jenner family, Reign and Saint, gained popularity.

AN, Dec 5, 2024

BEIRUT — Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said Thursday that his Lebanese militant group, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, would be by Damascus’s side as Islamist-led militants press a sweeping offensive.

In a televised address, Qassem denounced “terrorist groups” who “want to bring down the government in Syria,” adding: “They will not be able to achieve their goals despite what they have done in past days, and we as Hezbollah will be by Syria’s side in thwarting the goals of this aggression as much as we can.”

AN

GAZA — At least 12 Palestinians were killed and several others injured in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, according to Palestinian sources.

Israeli aircraft targeted a house behind Kamal Adwan Hospital in the Beit Lahia city in northern Gaza, local sources and eyewitnesses said.

The raid killed seven people and wounded several others, Palestinian Civil Defense spokesperson in Gaza Mahmoud Basal told Xinhua.

According to Basal, Israel launched another airstrike later in the day at a gathering of Palestinians in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, east of Gaza City, killing three and wounding five others with varying degrees of injuries.

Meanwhile, paramedics told Xinhua that medical workers recovered two bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli drone attack on a gathering in Khirbet al-Adas, north of Rafah city, in southern Gaza.

The Israeli army has not commented on the attacks yet.

Israel has been conducting a large-scale offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.

The Palestinian death toll from ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza has risen to 44,580, Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement on Thursday.

XINHUA

DAMASCUS — The Syrian army announced Thursday that it has redeployed its forces outside the western-central Syrian city of Hama after fierce battles with rebel groups, confirming that rebels have entered the city following intense attacks from multiple fronts.

“Over the past few days, our armed forces have fought fierce battles to repel and thwart the violent and successive attacks launched by terrorist organizations on the city of Hama from various directions and in large numbers, using all types of military equipment and assisted by infiltration groups,” said a statement issued by the Syrian General Command of the Army and Armed Forces.

“In the past hours, with intensified confrontations between our soldiers and the terrorist groups and the rise of martyrs in our ranks, those groups managed to penetrate several fronts in the city and enter it, despite suffering heavy losses,” it said.

It added that the Syrian army will “continue to carry out its national duty to reclaim the areas entered by the terrorist organizations.”

The Syrian army’s withdrawal marks a significant development in the ongoing conflict in Syria, as Hama, the fourth-largest city in Syria, has largely remained under government control throughout the 13-year civil war in the country.

Earlier reports from local media and activists indicated that rebel militants from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had entered the northeastern neighborhoods of Hama after launching one of the most intense attacks in the area to date.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that the HTS and allied factions advanced from multiple fronts — north, northeast, and west — to reach Hama and attack government forces.

The recent escalation in Hama and other regions underscores the intensifying conflict between Syrian government forces and rebel groups, including HTS, which controls parts of northwestern Syria.

The United Nations and humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called for the protection of civilians and unimpeded access to aid delivery, expressing concern over the impact of the ongoing conflict on the Syrian population.

XINHUA

LOS ANGELES — Two students were wounded and the suspected gunman was dead after shooting at a school in Northern California on Wednesday, authorities said.

Deputies were “on scene of an active incident involving a shooting at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo,” the Butte County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Students were being taken to a nearby church and parents were asked to respond to the church to be reunified with their children, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The office received multiple 911 calls at around 1 p.m. local time (2100 GMT) regarding an adult male firing shots at students, KRCR-TV, a local TV station, reported, citing the Sheriff’s Office.

Multiple agencies immediately responded to the incident and located the shooter, who died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, said the report.

Two students sustained gunshot wounds, one of whom was airlifted to a nearby hospital, it added.

The school, operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, is a K-8 school with over 30 students, according to its website.

Palermo, home to over 5,000 residents, is about 104 km north of Sacramento, the capital of the U.S. state of California.

XINHUA

SHENZHEN — Thirteen workers went missing following a sudden ground collapse at a railway construction site in Shenzhen City, south China’s Guangdong Province, local authorities said Thursday.

The collapse occurred at around 11 p.m. Wednesday at a construction site of a section of the Shenzhen-Jiangmen Railway in the city’s Bao’an District, according to the district’s emergency management bureau.

An all-out rescue has been launched.

Nearby residents have been evacuated and temporary traffic control has been carried out around the site. An investigation into the accident is underway.

XINHUA

THE HAGUE — Amnesty International on Thursday accused Israel of “committing genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war last year, saying a new report was a “wake-up call” for the international community.

The London-based rights organization said its findings were based on “dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials,” satellite images documenting devastation, fieldwork and ground reports from Gazans.

“Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” Amnesty chief Agnes Callamard said in a statement.
“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” she added.

The Palestinian group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack inside southern Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering a deadly Israeli military offensive as Israeli officials vowed to crush the militants.

Israel has repeatedly and forcefully denied allegations of genocide, accusing Hamas of using the Palestinian people as human shields.

“There is absolutely no doubt that Israel has military objectives. But the existence of military objectives does not negate the possibility of a genocidal intent,” Callamard told AFP at a press conference in The Hague.

The 300-page report points to incidents where there “was no Hamas presence or any other military objectives.”

It cites 15 air strikes in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and April 20, which killed 334 civilians including 141 children, for which the group found “no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.”

In addition to tens of thousands of deaths and physical and psychological trauma, the report also points to the conditions on the ground, where it said Palestinians are subjected to “malnutrition, hunger and diseases” and exposed to a “slow, calculated death.”

“States that transfer arms to Israel violate their obligations to prevent genocide under the convention and are at risk of becoming complicit,” Callamard added during the press conference.

Since the start of the war, at least 44,532 people have been killed in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

Amnesty International has also announced that it will publish a report on the crimes committed by Hamas during the October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.

Hamas also seized 251 hostages during the attack, some of whom were already dead. Of those, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli army says are dead.

AN-AFP

KHARTOUM — Sudan’s Darfur region governor on Wednesday announced that 20 civilians were killed in an attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on an area in North Darfur State in western Sudan.

“The RSF has committed a massacre in the Abu Zeriga area, south of El Fasher city, killing 20 civilians and injuring 20 others,” Governor Minni Arko Minnawi said in a post on his Facebook page.

Minnawi said that the attack took place on Tuesday.

He called on the international community and humanitarian organizations to send international investigation teams to document the crimes and work to bring the perpetrators to justice.

He further urged aid organizations to intensify efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the affected population amid the deepening humanitarian crisis in the region.

In the meantime, the non-governmental Sudanese Doctors Network said the attack left 21 civilians killed and 13 others wounded.

The RSF has not issued any comment on the attack on the Abu Zeriga area.

Since May 10, fierce clashes have raged in El Fasher between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF, which have been embroiled in a brutal conflict since mid-April 2023.

The ongoing war in Sudan has claimed the lives of over 27,120 people and displaced more than 14 million others, either within the country or abroad, according to estimates from international organizations.

XINHUA

ABUJA — At least six people were killed and eight others injured early Wednesday when suspected bandits detonated improvised explosive devices planted under a bridge in the northwestern state of Zamfara, the police said.

Mohammed Dalijan, the police chief in Zamfara, told Xinhua by telephone that two vehicles driving on the explosives were destroyed under the Mai Lamba bridge, along the Dansadu-Gusau road in the Maru local government area.

The explosive attack was the second of the kind in that location this week, Dalijan noted, after an earlier attack on Sunday killed a passerby, destroyed a vehicle, and damaged a bridge where the explosive was planted.

The victims of Wednesday’s incident were locals, including women traveling from Gusau, the state capital, to Dansadu, said the police chief.

He said the police had deployed a tactical squad to ascertain the type of explosives through laboratory tests.

XINHUA

PRAGUE — Police search continued after a report of gunshots heard on a university campus in the western Czech city of Pilsen on Wednesday, authorities said.

Czech police said at around 5 p.m. they received a report about shots fired on the premises of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, and “a large number of police forces and resources immediately went to the scene.”

“The reported shooting has not yet been confirmed and no one was injured at the scene. We had to close and create a safe perimeter around the university. Now we will search the whole area,” police said in the latest update on X.

“Police evacuated about 1,000 people from the university campus and are continuing to search the buildings,” Interior Minister Vit Rakusan confirmed on social media platform X.

Last December, a student opened fire at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, killing 14 people and wounding 25 others.

XINHUA

SHIRAZ — A training jet has crashed in southern Iran, killing two people onboard.

Head of security department at governor office of Iran’s Fars province said on Wednesday that the jet had crashed earlier in the day at 14:45 local time in Firouzabad region, located some 100 kilometers to the south of the provincial capital of Shiraz.

Vahid Sha’bani said that the pilot and copilot of the training jet had been martyred in the crash, adding that more details about the incident will be released later.

IRNA, Dec 4, 2024

BEIRUT — Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad announced on Wednesday that 4,047 people have been killed and 16,593 others injured in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since October of last year.

At a press conference in Beirut, Abiad said that 316 children were killed and 1,456 others injured, while 790 women were killed and 3,357 others injured in Israeli strikes across Lebanon.

Abiad also revealed that 67 hospitals were targeted by Israeli strikes, 40 of which were directly hit and seven others forcibly closed.

A ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel took effect on Nov. 27, following a deadly conflict between the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and Israel that began on Oct. 8, 2023. The confrontation has been regarded as the bloodiest since the last war between Lebanon and Israel in 2006.

Under the agreement, both sides agreed to a 60-day cessation of hostilities, with Israel gradually withdrawing its forces from southern Lebanon and Hezbollah retreating north of the Litani River.

Despite the truce, tensions remain high as both sides exchange accusations of ceasefire violations, raising concerns about the agreement’s durability.

A source from Lebanese military intelligence, who required anonymity, told Xinhua on Wednesday that the Lebanese army had redeployed to four military sites west of the southern border town of Shebaa, which it abandoned about three months ago.

The source added that with this redeployment, the Lebanese army is now positioned approximately 700 meters from the Israeli sites in the occupied Shebaa Farms.

XINHUA

SEOUL — South Korea’s defense minister made an apology to citizens and said he has submitted resignation to President Yoon Suk-yeol, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday.

XINHUA

KINSHASA — At least 79 people died from “a disease of still unknown origin” that is raging in southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Kwango province, health authorities said in a statement early Wednesday.

The statement said a specialized response team had been sent to the field to identify the nature of the disease, urging the public to avoid mass gatherings.

The disease often causes symptoms including fever, headache, breathing difficulty, and anemia.

Remy Saki, the province’s vice governor, was quoted by local media as saying that between 67 and 143 deaths had been recorded as of Tuesday.

XINHUA