Britain said that the dictator of Belarus faced “serious consequences” after he scrambled a fighter jet to force a Ryanair flight carrying a fugitive critic to land in the capital yesterday.
The plane, carrying 171 passengers from Greece to Lithuania, was nearing the end of its journey when its crew was warned by Belarusian air traffic control that there had been a report of a bomb on board. The pilot of the MiG-29 ordered to intercept the airliner signalled that it should land in Minsk. When it did, the opposition journalist Roman Protasevich, 26, was arrested by state security service officers.
He could face the death sentence after being accused of organising protests against President Lukashenko. Lukashenko, 66, who has ruled the former Soviet state
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has held into a third day as mediators spoke to all sides about extending the period of calm after the worst outbreak of fighting in years which saw at least 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, killed by Israeli bombing.
Egyptian mediators have been shuttling between Israel and the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas, to try to sustain the ceasefire and have also met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank.
Egypt’s foreign minister was also set to meet top Jordanian officials on Sunday to discuss de-escalation and ways to revive the Middle East peace process.
On Sunday, in a badly damaged district of Gaza City, volunteers swept up clouds of dust at the feet of collapsed buildings, while others shovelled debris onto the back of a donkey-drawn cart.
Elsewhere, dozens of Jewish settlers, flanked by heavily armed Israeli special forces, entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, further raising tensions hours after Palestinian worshippers were beaten and assaulted by the Israeli police, according to the Islamic authority overseeing the site.
Citing witnesses, Palestinian news agency WAFA said Israeli police had earlier on Sunday assaulted Palestinian worshippers who were performing dawn prayers at the mosque and “excessively beat” them in order to make way for Israeli Jewish settlers to storm the compound – Islam’s third-holiest site.
Translation: Protected by the occupation forces, settlers storm the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Occupation forces remove young men from Al-Aqsa Mosque moments ago.
Lynn Hastings, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said on Sunday the UN would launch an appeal to repair the damage in the densely populated besieged enclave, where there is a threat of COVID-19 spreading.
“The escalation has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, generated by nearly 14 years of blockade and internal political divisions, alongside recurrent hostilities,” Hastings said in a statement issued from Gaza.
“We must also ensure support to continue addressing needs that already existed, including those arising from the ongoing pandemic.”
Ceasefire to lasting calm
An Israeli police crackdown on worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threat of forced expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem had ignited protests across the occupied Palestinian territories, which were cracked down by Israeli police as well.
Hamas, the group that controls the Gaza Strip, issued Israel a deadline to halt the crackdowns. The deadline passed unheeded, resulting in Hamas firing rockets towards Israel, and Israel launching an intensive bombing campaign on Gaza.
Israel has blockaded Gaza since 2007, saying this prevents Hamas from bringing in arms.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking before an imminent trip to the region, reaffirmed Washington’s support for a two-state solution so Israelis and Palestinians can live “with equal measures of security, of peace and dignity”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah, meanwhile, stressed the importance of translating the Gaza ceasefire into an extended truce, and said there was no alternative to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
King Abdullah called for “stepping up Arab and international efforts to translate the ceasefire into an extended truce to push for a political solution that fulfils the legitimate rights of Palestinians”, the royal court wrote on Twitter.
Gaza has entered its third day of the ceasefire, but we can confirm it is not a truce yet. 1- The only individual and commercial crossings of Gaza are still closed 2- and there is a full ban on fishing 3- 3 electricity hours/ day. 4-no seem progress in negotiation 🤦🏻♀️
Authorities on Saturday started distributing tents and mattresses in the Gaza Strip, as OCHA said at least 6,000 people had been made homeless by the bombardment.
Trucks bringing much-needed medicine, food and fuel entered Gaza on Friday through the Kerem Shalom crossing after Israel reopened it.
Palestinian officials have estimated reconstruction costs in the territory at tens of millions of dollars.
Sitting drinking coffee under an olive tree near his destroyed house in Gaza, Abou Yahya was furious.
“If I had 50 sons, I would tell them to go and fight Israel,” he said. An Israeli air attack hit his home last week, reducing it to rubble, and he has pledged to sleep on top of the debris.
“My family has asked me to leave it, not to sleep here, but I won’t budge,” he said. “Here is my home”.
Thirteen people have been killed and two children seriously injured after a cable car fell on a mountain near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy on Sunday.
The accident happened on a service transporting passengers from the resort town of Stresa up the nearby Mottarone mountain in the region of Piedmont.
Images from the scene show the wreckage lying in a steep wooded area.
Officials said two survivors, aged five and nine, were taken by helicopter to a Turin hospital.
Alpine rescue officials confirmed in a Sunday evening tweet that the final tally of those involved was 13 dead and two injured, after the death toll steadily rose in the hours after the accident as the wreckage was searched.
How did the crash happen?
The crash reportedly happened at about 12:30 local time (10:30 GMT) on Sunday.
The cause of the incident remains unclear, but local reports suggest the cable carrying the vehicle may have failed about 300m (984ft) from the top of the mountain.
Police and fire officials were among those who responded, with rescuers facing a crash site on steep and difficult terrain.
Walter Milan, an alpine rescue spokesman, told television network RaiNews24 that the cable car was left "crumpled" having fallen from a high height.
@emergenzavvf
Handout Via Reuters
Stresa's Mayor Marcella Severino told news channel Sky TG24 it appeared that a cable had broken close to the route's final pylon, causing the car to fall and then overturn several times.
He said victims had been found both inside and outside the wreckage, and suggested foreign nationals could be among the dead.
Dr Fabrizio Gennari, from the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital treating the injured children, said both remained in a critical condition with the youngest undergoing surgery.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi described the crash as a "tragic accident" and said he was receiving updates from local and national officials.
"I express the condolences of the whole Government to the families of the victims, with a special thought for the seriously injured children and their families," he said in a statement.
Infrastructure Minister Enrico Giovannini has announced an inquiry into the incident.
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European leaders have called for an immediate international response after Belarus forced a Ryanair flight bound for Lithuania to land in Minsk on Sunday and arrested one of its passengers, a top opposition activist.
State media said online activist Roman Protasevich, resident in Lithuania, was detained in the Belarusian capital after Ryanair flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was unexpectedly diverted to Minsk shortly before leaving Belarusian airspace.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the forced landing was “utterly unacceptable” and called on Belarus to let all passengers travel safely to Vilnius. “Any violation of international air transport rules must bear consequences,” she wrote on Twitter.
Nato said in a statement: “This is a serious and dangerous incident, which requires international investigation. The Belarusian authorities must ensure the safe return of the crew and all passengers to Vilnius.”
Dominic Raab, British foreign secretary, said the UK was “alarmed” at reports of the forced landing and Protasevich’s arrest, adding: “We are co-ordinating with our allies. This outlandish action by Lukashenko will have serious implications.”
Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nauseda called for the activist’s swift release and said he would raise the matter at an EU summit on Monday. “I call on Nato and EU allies to immediately react to the threat posed to international civil aviation by the Belarus regime,” he said in a statement.
The Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said he had spoken to Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, describing the incident as an affront to the whole EU that must be addressed in the strongest possible terms.
Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter that he would call for “immediate sanctions” against Belarus. “Hijacking of a civilian plane is an unprecedented act of state terrorism. It cannot go unpunished,” Morawiecki wrote.
Protasevich, 26, is the former editor of Nexta, the Warsaw-based media group that played a prominent role in both covering and directing huge protests that erupted against Lukashenko last year after he claimed victory in a deeply flawed election.
“From now — no one flying over Belarus — can be secure,” Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Belarus’s exiled opposition leader, wrote on Twitter.
Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko personally gave an “irrevocable command to turn the plane around and land it” before it left Belarusian airspace, according to a post on a semi-official presidential channel on messaging app Telegram.
In November, Belarus placed Protasevich on a terrorist watchlist and charged him with three protest-related crimes, the most serious of which carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
Ryanair said the flight crew were “notified by Belarus [air traffic control] of a potential security threat on board” and instructed to divert to Minsk.
“Nothing untoward was found and authorities cleared the aircraft to depart together with passengers and crew after approximately five hours on the ground in Minsk,” it said in a statement. The company has “notified the relevant national and European safety and security agencies”.
According to messages sent by Protasevich to his colleagues, he noticed he was being followed by a man he suspected was a Belarusian KGB agent while at the Athens departure lounge. The man stood behind him in the boarding queue and tried to take a photo of his documents, the activist wrote in text messages to his colleagues. Protasevich said the man then asked him a “stupid question” in Russian and left.
The plane turned round near the Lithuanian border and landed in Minsk, according to flight tracking data. Andrei Gurtsevich, a senior air force commander, said Belarus had decided to scramble a MiG-29 fighter jet to accompany the plane after learning of a bomb threat”, according to Belta, the state news agency. Airport officials later said the bomb threat was “false”.
Belarusian state television said officials did not know Protasevich was on the flight, claiming that he remained in the airport undetected until his girlfriend sent a photo of him to another dissident blogger.
But a fellow passenger told Lithuanian news site Delfi that Protasevich began panicking when he realised the plane was heading for Minsk, holding his head in his hands.
Once the plane landed, officials immediately detained Protasevich, who was visibly trembling, and seized his luggage, according to the unnamed passenger.
“We asked him what was happening. He said who he was and added: ‘They’ll execute me here,’” Delfi quoted the passenger as saying.
Nexta has provoked Lukashenko’s ire for its publication of leaks from official sources, as well as for its coverage of the brutal crackdown that Lukashenko’s regime unleashed in response to last year’s protests. Its channel on Telegram has more than 1.2m subscribers, a huge audience in a country of just 9.5m people.
Hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets in an unprecedented show of discontent after the former collective farm boss, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for 27 years, claimed victory over Tsikhanouskaya in the presidential election last year.
Most of the opposition’s main figures have since either been forced into exile, such as Tsikhanouskaya, who is based in Lithuania, or imprisoned.
Thirteen people have been killed and two children seriously injured after a cable car fell on a mountain near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy on Sunday.
The accident happened on a service transporting passengers from the resort town of Stresa up the nearby Mottarone mountain in the region of Piedmont.
Images from the scene show the wreckage lying in a steep wooded area.
Officials said two survivors, aged five and nine, were taken by helicopter to a Turin hospital.
Alpine rescue officials confirmed in a Sunday evening tweet that the final tally of those involved was 13 dead and two injured, after the death toll steadily rose in the hours after the accident as the wreckage was searched.
How did the crash happen?
The cause of the incident remains unclear, but local reports suggest the cable carrying the vehicle may have failed about 300m (984ft) from the top of the mountain.
Emergency services say they were alerted just after 12:00 local time (11:00 BST) on Sunday.
Police and fire officials were among those who responded, with rescuers facing a crash site on steep and difficult terrain.
Walter Milan, an alpine rescue spokesman, told television network RaiNews24 that the cable car wreckage was left "crumpled" having fallen from a high height.
@emergenzavvf
Handout Via Reuters
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi described the crash as a "tragic accident" and said he was receiving updates from the minister of infrastructure and transport, as well as local officials.
"I express the condolences of the whole Government to the families of the victims, with a special thought for the seriously injured children and their families," he said in a statement.
What do we know about the cable car?
The website for the Stresa-Alpine-Mottarone service said it usually takes 20 minutes to transport passengers 1,491m above sea level.
The cable car originally opened in 1970 and was closed for maintenance between 2014 and 2016.
Mottarone is situated between Lake Maggiore and Lake Orta, offering scenic views of the region for tourists.
Each cable car can usually hold about 40 passengers. The service had recently reopened following the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.
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After the ceasefire, Palestinians in Gaza, who had stayed inside as much as they could while there was a chance of getting killed outside, walked round their neighbourhoods to get a better idea of what Israel had done.
People stopped to inspect huge piles of concrete rubble from the tower blocks that Israel had toppled. In some places the streets were blocked by rubble. Bulldozer operators were working overtime. Nothing they found was surprising. What has happened has been covered exhaustively on TV. But human beings like to see for themselves.
In Khan Younis, one of Gaza's towns, I went to the funeral of nine fighters who were killed in part of the tunnel network that Israel has targeted.
Israeli politicians and commanders have claimed that they have done serious damage to what they describe as an infrastructure of terror, run by Hamas and the smaller factions in Gaza. The damage to buildings is obvious. I have not been able to see underground military installations, but the talk here is that Hamas was shocked that Israel was able to kill its men when they believed they were safe underground.
Morale among supporters of the armed groups in Gaza is another matter. It seems intact, even enhanced by the 11-day war.
Khan Younis stopped for the funerals. Several thousand men prayed on a sports field and followed the stretchers carrying bodies wrapped in Palestinian flags, chanting their support on the way to the cemetery.
Reuters
Israel and Hamas both claimed victory.
Israeli leaders listed buildings destroyed, Hamas commanders and fighters targeted and killed, and the remarkable success of the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
Hamas defines victory first of all as survival. Its leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, emerged triumphantly from hiding the day after the ceasefire. But Hamas will also look at the political scorecard with some satisfaction.
Hamas slogans have been chanted after prayers 60 miles (96km) inland from Gaza, at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Hamas has driven home a message to Palestinians that it is prepared to fight and accept sacrifices for their rights in Jerusalem. Israel insists that all of Jerusalem is its eternal and indivisible capital. Palestinians have other ideas.
The Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is recognised internationally as the representative voice of his people through his leadership of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the occupied territories and was intended in the now moribund Oslo agreements of the 1990s to develop into the government of an independent state.
But Palestinians are deeply dissatisfied with the president's performance. He cancelled elections due for May that he looked likely to lose. Palestinians have not been able to vote for a president or a legislature since 2006.
In contrast, a simple message from Hamas that it would fight to the death for Jerusalem resonated with Palestinians who despair at the inability of President Abbas to slow down, let alone stop, the steady increase of Jewish settlement, illegal under international law, on occupied land they want for a state.
AFP via Getty Images
In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will now return to the battle for political survival he was fighting before the 11 days of conflict with Hamas.
Mr Netanyahu is on trial on charges so serious that he could end up in jail for corruption, like his predecessor Ehud Olmert. On 10 May, the day Hamas dramatically escalated the conflict by firing missiles at Jerusalem, the prime minister was close to losing his job.
He has been a caretaker since the fourth inconclusive election in two years. In a month of trying, Mr Netanyahu failed to form a coalition that commanded the necessary 61 votes in parliament for a majority.
His main opponent, Yair Lapid, was taking his turn and looked to be days, even hours, away from announcing he had the votes to form a government. Mr Lapid's plans fell apart during the fighting. He still has time to rebuild them, though a fifth election might be a more likely outcome.
Israel also has to deal with the collapse of co-existence between its Jewish majority and Palestinian Arab minority, which makes up around 20 per cent of the population. Mr Netanyahu's polarising rhetoric and embrace of extreme Jewish nationalists have made a bad situation worse.
Reuters
Like the previous rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the ceasefire is just a pause. The conflict is not just unresolved. It is not even frozen. The ceasefire will hold until it is tested by a crisis. That could be a rocket fired out of Gaza, or more Israeli police violence towards Palestinians in Jerusalem.
Or it could be the lawsuit brought by Jewish settler groups to evict Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, a leafy district on the occupied eastern side of Jerusalem. The prospect of evicted Palestinian families being replaced by more Jewish settlers was a major reason why tension in Jerusalem turned violent.
The judgement in the case was postponed in a belated attempt to calm matters. But the case was not dropped, and the judgement will eventually be issued. Israel's legal timetable could deliver the ceasefire's first big challenge.
