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Minggu, 05 Mei 2019

Moscow plane fire: At least 13 killed on Aeroflot jet - BBC News

At least 13 people were killed after a Russian plane caught fire mid-air before making an emergency landing at a Moscow airport.

Videos on social media showed passengers using emergency exit slides to escape and run away from the burning Aeroflot aircraft.

Russian news agency Tass said two children were among the dead.

One witness though said it was a "miracle" anyone escaped, which was reportedly carrying 78 passengers.

It remains unclear what caused the large blaze and emergency landing.

The aircraft is reportedly a Sukhoi Superjet-100, and was scheduled to depart at 17:50 local time (14:50 GMT) for the city of Murmansk.

The crew issued a distress signal shortly after departure from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, Interfax reports.

Reports also suggest it did not succeed in its first emergency landing attempt.

Data from tracking website Flightradar24 appears to confirm reports the emergency landing happened about 30 minutes after take-off.

Kristian Kostov, a former Bulgarian Eurovision contestant, has posted on social media about witnessing the incident.

He said people at the airport were left "shaking" after seeing the aircraft engulfed by fire and said other flights are now unable to take-off.

An investigation has been opened into the incident, reports say.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48171392

2019-05-05 18:56:15Z
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Russian Aeroflot plane makes emergency landing in Moscow - BBC News

A Russian passenger plane has made an emergency landing at a Moscow airport after a fire broke out on board.

Videos on social media show passengers using emergency exit slides to escape and run away from the burning Aeroflot aircraft.

The Tass news agency said at least one person died but an official toll is yet to be released.

At least five others are said to have been injured, with the plane reportedly carrying 78 people.

It remains unclear what caused the large blaze and emergency landing.

The aircraft is reportedly a Sukhoi Superjet-100, and was scheduled to depart at 17:50 local time (14:50 GMT) for the city of Murmansk.

The Interfax news agency reports the crew issued a distress signal shortly after departure from Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport.

Reports also suggest it did not succeed in its first emergency landing attempt.

Data from tracking website Flightradar24 appears to confirm reports the emergency landing happened about 30 minutes after take-off.

Kristian Kostov, a former Bulgarian Eurovision contestant, has posted on social media about witnessing the incident.

He said people at the airport were left "shaking" after seeing the aircraft engulfed by fire and said other flights are now unable to take-off.

An investigation has been opened into the incident, reports say.

Did you witness the plane landing? Only if it is safe to do so please get in touch by emailing haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

You can also contact us in the following ways:

WhatsApp: +44 7555 173285
Tweet: @BBC_HaveYourSay
Send pictures/video to yourpics@bbc.co.uk
Upload your pictures/video here
Text an SMS or MMS to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (international)

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48171392

2019-05-05 16:47:28Z
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More than 600 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza in less than 24 hours, death toll rises - Fox News

The death toll continues to rise Sunday on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border in one of the most intense flare-ups of violence in the region in years, shattering a month-long lull in attacks.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired more than 600 rockets into southern Israel in less than 24 hours, killing at least four Israelis and leaving several more in critical condition.

Israel has retaliated with dozens of airstrikes against militant sites in Gaza. More than a dozen Palestinians, including a pregnant woman and her 14-month old niece, have also been killed.

According to Haaretz, four Israeli men and 16 Palestinians were killed so far since tensions increased along the border on Friday. Four Israelis were also wounded as rockets fell on the Israeli south on Saturday.

ISRAEL STRIKES GAZA TARGETS IN RESPONSE TO PALESTINIAN HEAVY ROCKET FIRE

On Sunday, the Israeli military said a misfired Palestinian rocket — not an Israeli airstrike — caused the death of a pregnant Palestinian woman and her infant niece in the Gaza Strip, disputing the Gaza Health Ministry's statement that Israel is to blame.

According to the Israeli military, Israeli forces struck dozens of targets in Gaza, including militant sites that were concealed in residential areas. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said Israel’s strikes hit a variety of “high-quality” militant sites, including commanders’ homes in which militant activity was observed.

Israeli medical officials said an early morning rocket from Gaza Sunday killed an Israeli father of four, 58-year-old Moshe Agadi, outside a home in the coastal city of Ashkelon.

Agadi reportedly died of his injuries after he was struck by shrapnel, marking the first Israeli casualty from rocket fire since the 2014 war with Hamas militants.

According to The Barzilai Medical Center in Israel, a 49-year-old man was killed when a rocket hit an Ashkelon factory, while another man in Israel was killed when his vehicle was hit by a projectile near a small border community called Yad Mordechai.

Israeli medical officials also said a Thai laborer was critically injured in a rocket strike later on Sunday.

ISRAEL SAYS 2 SOLDIERS WOUNDED BY GUNFIRE FROM GAZA

By late afternoon, the Israeli military said militants had fired more than 600 rockets into Israel, and that Israeli forces had launched about 260 airstrikes against militant targets in Gaza.

Palestinian officials identified one of the militants who was killed as Hamas commander Hamed al-Khoudary, who Israel said was integral in transferring Iranian money to the militant group.

In Israel, sirens warning of incoming attacks were heard along the border region overnight and throughout the day. Schools were canceled and roads were closed as many Israelis reportedly hid in bomb shelters.

According to Haaretz, the Israeli army said it expects the flare-up to continue in the coming days. A Hamas political source told the news outlet that the group decided to take serious steps against Israel because the Israeli government has been slow in implementing understandings reached between the two parties.

Smoke rises from an explosion after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Sunday, May 5, 2019. The Israeli military said Sunday it had responded to more than 600 rockets fired from Gaza with more than 250 airstrikes against the besieged Palestinian enclave. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa) (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

In Gaza, large explosions thundered across the blockaded enclave throughout the night and plumes of smoke rose into the air.

One of the airstrikes hit a commercial and residential building that housed the office of Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency.

The Israeli military said its Iron Dome defense system intercepted more than 150 of the projectiles from Gaza, but several still managed to get through.

The sudden violence has ended a month-long lull as Egyptian mediators had been trying to negotiate a long-term cease-fire.

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Israel and Hamas are bitter enemies that have fought three wars since 2007 when the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza. There have been also been several smaller flare-ups, most recently, in late March.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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https://www.foxnews.com/world/more-than-600-rockets-fired-in-israel-gaza-conflict-death-toll-rises

2019-05-05 18:02:43Z
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Clashes Between Israel and Gaza Intensify as Death Toll Rises - The New York Times

JERUSALEM — Fighting between Israel and Gaza escalated rapidly on Sunday in the worst combat since the last full-blown war in 2014. Three Israeli civilians were killed in Palestinian rocket and missile attacks and Israeli forces began to take aim at individual Gaza militants, killing at least seven.

The three Israelis killed were the first civilians to die in clashes with Gaza since the two sides fought a brief war in the summer of 2014. Gaza health officials said 15 people had been killed since Friday, though Israel denied responsibility for two of those deaths.

One Palestinian rocket struck an Israeli cement factory in the southern city of Ashkelon, killing a Bedouin worker there. A woman was killed near Or Haner, a tiny kibbutz two miles from the Gaza border, when the truck she was driving in was hit by an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza. A third Israeli was killed in the early morning when he left his safe room for a cigarette break, his brother said.

Israel responded first by destroying what it said were the homes of several Palestinian militant commanders and then by following through on a longstanding threat — one heard more frequently in recent days from hawkish politicians — to start killing individual fighters in targeted attacks.

An airstrike that destroyed a car in Gaza City killed a man who the Israeli military said had been responsible for large transfers of cash from Iran to Hamas, the militant Islamic group that rules the territory, and to a rival faction in Gaza, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Israel said the man, Ahmad Hamed Al-Khudary, 34, owned a money exchange company that it designated a terrorist organization last June.

Israelis stand outside their building after it was hit by a rocket fired from Gaza in the costal city of Ashkelon on Sunday.CreditTsafrir Abayov/Associated Press

Asked why Israel had resumed its long-dormant tactic of assassination, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said, “It’s important for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to understand the severity of the situation.”

Two other fighters with Palestinian Islamic Jihad were killed in an airstrike on the Al Buraij refugee camp early Sunday, the group said.

The attacks from Gaza mostly hit targets in southern Israel with no military value, including a building housing a kindergarten in the town of Sderot and the oncology department at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. An army post in the community of Kissufim was hit by a mortar that struck its synagogue, lightly wounding two soldiers.

More than 100 Israelis were treated at Barzilai for injuries in the day’s attacks, hospital officials said.

With rockets and mortars setting off sirens across southern Israel every few minutes — a two-day total of 600 launches, the army said — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered what he called “massive strikes,” and the military used tanks, artillery, jets, attack helicopters and drones.

An armored brigade and the Golani infantry brigade were deployed to the Gaza frontier to be available for a possible ground incursion, and another infantry brigade was put on standby.

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The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike that killed Ahmad Hamed Al-Khudary in Gaza City on Sunday. Israel said he was responsible for large cash transfers from Iran to Hamas and another militant faction in Gaza.CreditMahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Israel also pushed back aggressively on Sunday against Palestinian accusations that it had killed a pregnant Gaza woman and her young daughter in the first day of fighting on Saturday. An Army spokesmen insisted that the two were killed by a misfired Palestinian rocket, not by Israeli munitions, though Gaza officials continued to accuse Israel of responsibility for what they called a war crime.

The latest round of violence began much like several others since last summer.

Israel and Gaza have been locked what appeared to be a cycle of clashes quickly followed by de-escalations, with Egyptian-brokered talks repeatedly achieving a temporary cooling off along the border.

In November, there appeared to be a breakthrough. Israel promised to ameliorate conditions in Gaza by allowing in cash supplied by Qatar, fuel and humanitarian aid despite its blockade, expanding the zone in the Mediterranean in which it would allow Gaza fishermen to operate, and easing the movement of people in and out of the impoverished seaside territory. Hamas agreed in return to restrain protests along its frontier with Israel that have often devolved into violence.

But a truce has never taken hold, and indeed the cease-fires have only lasted a number of weeks.

Some resumptions of violence have been unforeseeable. In October, a freak of nature — a lightning strike — was said to have caused a rocket to be launched at Israel. In November, an Israeli undercover team was discovered inside Gaza, setting off a firefight as it made its escape and then two days of rocket attacks and airstrikes. And a rocket attack in mid-March was said to be a result of “human error” rather than Hamas policy.

But Israel has also accused Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, its more radical ally, of resorting to violence for political advantage. In late March, two weeks before Israel’s parliamentary elections, a rocket hit a house in northeast Tel Aviv and caused Mr. Netanyahu to cut short a trip to Washington.

Now, with Israeli Memorial Day and Independence Day celebrations coming this week, and a stream of international singers arriving to compete in the Eurovision song contest in Tel Aviv later this month, the Gaza militant groups may have gambled that Mr. Netanyahu would pay an even higher price for quiet in the short term.

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The home of an Israeli, Moshe Agadi, who was killed when his house in the city of Ashkelon, southern Israel, was hit by a missile fired by militants from the Gaza Strip.CreditAbir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock

“Both of them believe that only pressure and force will force Israel to ease the restrictions of the blockade,” said Tareq Baconi, an analyst with International Crisis Group. “And Israel has done nothing but reinforce that lesson.”

Indeed, the two Gaza factions have accused Israel of forgetting its promises as soon as violence gives way to calm.

“Hamas agreed to restrain the protests in return for concessions,” Mr. Baconi said. “Those haven’t materialized.”

Omar Shaban, an economist who runs PalThink for Strategic Studies, a Gaza think tank, said that some of the recriminations between Israel and Gaza officials over measures meant to ease the deprivations in Gaza had been missing the point.

“There’s no shortage of food in Gaza, but people don’t have purchasing power because there are no jobs,” he said. “There are some demands by the political factions that cannot be implemented: If you open the crossings while people don’t have cash for the private sector to operate, it’s pointless. Gaza needs a package of assistance.”

On the Israeli side, even some critics of Mr. Netanyahu said that the cycle of violence with Gaza was only strengthening his hand politically.

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The funeral for a 14-month-old Palestinian child who was killed on Saturday with her mother in the violence. Israel has denied Palestinian accusations that they were killed in an airstrike and says they were killed by a misfired Palestinian rocket.CreditKhalil Hamra/Associated Press

“His view — which, incidentally, is logical — is that the division between Gaza and the West Bank, which stems from the chronic conflict between Hamas and Fatah, weakens the national Palestinian movement and is worth the headache inherent in dealing with two semi-functional political entities,” Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian politics, wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronot.

The two Palestinian territories, Gaza and the West Bank, are governed by the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

In Ashkelon, a concrete factory that makes large pipes for underground sewers and other equipment for the army was struck by a rocket around 1 p.m. on Sunday. A worker there who refused to give his name said he was standing between two of the workers who were hit by the rocket when the siren went off. He ran for shelter, but the others either didn’t try or didn’t make it.

“There weren’t many seconds,” he said.

With rockets still arcing toward Israel, and Iron Dome antimissile systems knocking out a good number of them but not all, the family of Moshe Agadi, 58, who was killed in Ashkelon at around 2 a.m., asked the public to avoid his 4 p.m. funeral. They feared that those attending could be subjected to another strike from Gaza.

But hundreds of Israelis packed the funeral hall anyway, and then streamed outside for Mr. Agadi’s burial, as home front soldiers wearing orange berets passed out instructions on what to do if the cemetery came under attack.

“We came to honor him, and to show that we’re not afraid of them,” said Tzipi Ben-David, 56, as distant blasts could be heard in the direction of Gaza. “Look how many came, even with this situation.”

At Mr. Agadi’s residence, a golden-painted suburban dream house, large shrapnel divots in the exterior wall, a felled tree and grapefruits strewn on the ground all testified to the weapon that had killed him.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/world/middleeast/gaza-rockets-israel-palestinians.html

2019-05-05 16:00:58Z
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600 rockets fired from Gaza, Israel responds with airstrikes - CNN

Speaking at the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday morning, Netanyahu said: "Hamas bears the responsibility not only for its own attacks and actions but also for the actions of Islamic Jihad, and it is paying a very heavy price for this."

Israel has so far responded with airstrikes on 260 targets across Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Three Israelis were killed, according to the ZAKA rescue and recovery organization and the Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon. Four Palestinian militants were killed in the airstrikes, according to Gaza health officials, as well as two other Palestinian men.

The IDF denied killing a one-year old baby and the baby's pregnant mother in Gaza, and said the deaths were caused by a Hamas rocket that misfired.

A 58-year-old man was killed when a rocket hit his house in Ashkelon, according to a statement from Barzilai hospital. He is the first Israeli to be killed by rocket fire since the end of the 2014 war.

Israel targeted and killed 34-year-old Hamid Ahmed Abdul Khudri, who was responsible for transferring money from Iran to militant groups inside of Gaza, according to a statement from the IDF.

The UN said it is working with Egypt to try to restore a ceasefire and says both sides are putting at risk efforts to relieve the suffering of people in Gaza.

The escalation began Saturday morning with about 50 rockets fired towards Israel within the course of an hour and continued late into the evening.

The IDF said its Iron Dome aerial defense system had intercepted dozens of the incoming rockets.

In response to the rockets, the IDF said it carried out airstrikes on about 200 militant targets in Gaza, including a tunnel, rocket launcher sites and other military compounds used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ.) The military also struck a mosque in al-Shati in northern Gaza, which the IDF said was used a command and control center by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Palestinians walk by a clothing shop damaged by Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.

Turkey has condemned a strike on a building housing the office of its state-run Anadolu news agency, a building which Israel says is also used by Hamas's military intelligence.

A spokesman for Turkey's President said: "We urge all governments that claim to defend press freedom, including @USEmbassyTurkey to join us in condemning the Israeli government."

Israel announced that it is closing the two border crossings between Israel and Gaza, as well as closing the Gaza fishing zone.

The fishing zone was restricted to 6 nautical miles earlier this week following a rocket fired from Gaza that landed off the coast of Israel.

There was no specific date for when the crossings and the fishing zone would reopen.

Saturday's rocket barrage came less than a day after two militants from Hamas' armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, were killed in an Israeli strike on Hamas posts in Gaza.

A serious escalation

Israel launched airstrikes Friday after two Israeli soldiers were wounded by sniper fire along the Gaza border.

Two other Palestinians died in Gaza Friday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, with both men succumbing to their wounds after being shot by Israeli troops during protests along the Gaza fence, according to health officials.

This is the first serious escalation between Israel and Gaza militants since the Israeli election almost a month ago.

In the run-up to that election, Egypt succeeded in mediating an agreement between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, following an exchange of rockets and airstrikes in March.

The agreement, though never publicly acknowledged by Israel, included measures aimed at loosening the restrictions imposed on Gaza's 2 million inhabitants.

Recent pronouncements by Hamas officials have suggested growing frustration that Israel has not moved fast enough to fulfill its pledges, including allowing the transfer of millions of dollars of extra funding from Qatar.

The upturn in violence comes as Israel is preparing to mark Independence Day next week and host the Eurovision Song Contest the following week.

Analysts say Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would much prefer those events to occur in a state of calm rather than one of open conflict.

On Saturday evening, the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, announcing renewed efforts with Egypt to restore calm, called on all parties to immediately de-escalate or risk a conflict with "grave consequences for all."

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-gaza-rockets-intl/index.html

2019-05-05 14:40:00Z
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600 rockets fired from Gaza, Israel responds with airstrikes - CNN

Israel has so far responded with airstrikes on 260 targets across Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The IDF denied killing a one-year old baby and the baby's pregnant mother in Gaza, and said the deaths were caused by a Hamas rocket that misfired.

Two gunmen from the armed wing of Islamic Jihad were killed overnight in Gaza, according to a statement from the militant group. Two other Palestinian men died in earlier airstrikes on Saturday.