Cincunri Sakia

Minggu, 03 Maret 2024

Trump moves closer to Republican nomination with string of victories - BBC

By Bernd Debusmann Jr

in Richmond, Virginia

Donald Trump won a string of Republican presidential contests on Saturday, edging closer to becoming the party's candidate in November's election as he attacked his likely opponent Joe Biden.

The former president won the Missouri, Michigan and Idaho caucuses comprehensively, continuing his clean sweep of states so far.

Mr Trump, 77, told supporters at a rally in Virginia that he was "on a rocket to the Republican nomination".

He is on track to secure it next week.

His last remaining rival in the race, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, is still seeking her first victory and is without a clear path to the nomination given Mr Trump's commanding lead.

He is projected to win all of the delegates available in Missouri and all in Idaho, according to the BBC's US partner CBS news, as well as all of those remaining in Michigan. A third of delegates in that state were awarded earlier this week after a primary that Mr Trump won.

Delegates represent their state or district at the respective party's national convention, and decide who its presidential nominee will be. So far Mr Trump has secured 247 Republican delegates, according to CBS, far more than Ms Haley's 24.

In the Virginia capital of Richmond on Saturday, thousands queued for several hours to hear Mr Trump speak. He vowed to "win big" on Tuesday, when 15 states will choose their presidential candidate on a day that could put him within striking distance of the nomination.

"We got numbers today that were unbelievable," he told the crowd.

But his speech in Virginia - and at an earlier event in Greensboro, North Carolina - largely focused on migration at the US-Mexico border, a message which polls show resonates well with his base. In more than a dozen interviews with the BBC on Saturday, his supporters said the issue was among their primary concerns.

Sharon Roberts, whose son Sean died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018, said she feared an "out of control" border would lead to other families experiencing similar losses. "I'm 100% for Trump, because he'll get these borders closed," she said.

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Mr Trump took direct aim at Mr Biden and blamed him once again for the border crisis, after the pair held duelling visits there last week. But he ramped up his attacks by airing a conspiracy that the current president was deliberately encouraging migrants to cross from Mexico.

"Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations," Mr Trump said. Of the migrants and the Biden administration, he told supporters: "They're trying to sign them up to get them to vote in the next election."

His comments prompted a swift response from the Biden campaign. "Once again Trump is projecting in an attempt to distract the American people from the fact he killed the fairest and toughest border security bill in decades because he believed it would help his campaign," spokesman Ammar Moussa said, referring to a failed bipartisan immigration bill that Mr Trump vocally opposed.

A New York Times and Siena poll released on Saturday found 48% of American voters would support Mr Trump in a hypothetical match-up with Mr Biden, compared to 43% for the current president. It also found strong levels of dissatisfaction for Mr Biden in both parties.

At the Richmond rally, Mr Trump pointed to the poll and urged his supporters to "send a signal" on Super Tuesday.

The poll, however, showed 45% of voters would back Ms Haley in a contest with Mr Biden, with 35% supporting the current president. "I defeat Joe Biden by double digits in a general election match-up, while Trump is barely outside the margin of error," Ms Haley said shortly after it was published.

In his speech, Mr Trump criticised Ms Haley and called on her to step aside to allow Republicans to focus on the general election in November.

She has vowed to stay in the race until at least Super Tuesday. But several former Haley supporters at the Trump event said enthusiasm for her had waned in the face of repeated losses.

The former president, meanwhile, urged his supporters to deliver a decisive blow to Ms Haley on Tuesday. "We want you to get out there and vote in big margins," he said. "We want to send that little freight train going along, because the biggest day in the history of our country is November 5."

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2024-03-03 04:49:09Z
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Israel ‘accepts six-week ceasefire deal’ as Hamas response awaited, US officials say - The Guardian

Israel has provisionally accepted a six-week phased hostage and ceasefire deal which would begin with the release of wounded, elderly and female hostages, but it was still unclear on Saturday whether Hamas would accept it, US officials have claimed.

Talks took place in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Saturday and were expected to move to Cairo on Sunday as the scale of looming starvation pushed the US to start air-dropping food into the enclave.

The US said an extended ceasefire was the most direct route to getting large-scale aid deliveries into Gaza, and suggested that agreement was close. “The path to a ceasefire right now, literally at this hour, is straightforward,” a senior US official said. “And there’s a deal on the table. There’s a framework deal. The Israelis have more or less accepted it. And there will be a six-week ceasefire in Gaza starting today, if Hamas agrees to release the default defined category of vulnerable hostages: the sick the wounded, elderly and women. “We’re working around the clock to see if we can get this in place here over the coming week,” the official said. He said Israel had “basically” accepted the deal, but did not specify whether it still had reservations or what those were.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz said the country’s negotiators expect a Hamas response to its proposed hostage-exchange deal on Sunday or Monday. The key issue is the identity of hostages who will be released, and the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for each of them, Haaretz added, citing a senior diplomat.

At least 576,000 people in Gaza are “one step away from famine” according to the UN, and one in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are suffering from acute malnutrition and wasting. Doctors have registered a 10th child as having died from starvation in a Gaza hospital, the UN health agency said, and the real number of deaths “is likely to be higher”.

The decision to parachute in aid has been fiercely criticised by aid agencies, human rights groups and many diplomats, who say it is expensive and ineffective.

The EU’s diplomatic service warned that supplies would have “minimal” impact on the crisis in Gaza, in a statement issued on Saturday: “Air drops should be the solution of last resort as their impact is minimal and not devoid of risks to civilians.” A plane only carries the equivalent of one or two truckloads of food. Distribution cannot be controlled, with packages likely to be monopolised by those strong enough to chase and fight for them, and easily diverted.

Critics point out that President Biden has opted not to use Washington’s leverage as Israel’s principal arms supplier, and most important international ally, to force it to open up more land access for aid. Emile Hokayem, director for regional security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, called the US air drops “virtue signalling and an admission of impotence on the part of the US”.

People rushing toward food aid dropped by the US over Gaza on Saturday.

US officials said that three C-130 planes dropped 66 pallets of food, containing a total of 38,000 meals in mid-afternoon local time on Saturday, the first of a series of air drops coordinated with Jordan. They will do almost nothing to address the scale of need. In north Gaza, where hunger is so widespread that people have been eating animal food for weeks, there are 300,000 people. The US aid parachute even if shared equally here would just provide a single meal to one in every 10 residents.

US officials said the current aid bottleneck was not about getting trucks through the crossings into Gaza but distributing the assistance in conditions of lawlessness and widespread looting by criminal gangs and desperate civilians. The solution, the officials said, is to flood Gaza with aid by opening up more crossings as well as sea routes to the coastal strip.

The US vice-president Kamala Harris will meet the Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz at the White House on Monday. The talks are expected to span topics including reducing civilian casualties, securing a temporary ceasefire, the release of hostages and increasing aid to the territory, a White House official said.

So far Washington has been unable to persuade Israel to open more than two crossings in the very south of Gaza, and Israeli red tape has kept aid flows to a trickle. But US officials said they were hopeful about progress. They said a ceasefire deal would be key.

“The ball is in the court of Hamas,” a senior US official said, adding that other countries, including Egypt, had “work to do” in persuading Hamas to accept the deal. “That was the focus of the president’s calls this week. But I would just say that it’s a complicated deal. It is more complex than the first deal in November that was a five-day deal extended day by day. This is a six-week deal and has the potential to extend from there.”

Hamas has indicated its negotiating position could be influenced by the deaths of 115 Gazans who were killed after Israeli troops opened fire near a crowd of people scrambling to get food from an aid convoy. The EU said the Israeli army had killed “many civilians” and called for an impartial international investigation. “The firing by Israeli soldiers against civilians trying to access foodstuff is unjustifiable,” the statement said.

Israel says its forces opened fire in self-defence and did not target the crowd. It says the majority of the dead were killed in the crowd crush or run over by trucks.

UN officials visiting al-Shifa hospital the day after the attack said they saw many survivors with gunshot wounds, matching interviews with doctors treating the injured and eye-witness accounts of the incident.

“This hospital is treating more than 200 people who were injured yesterday,” Georgios Petropoulos, the Gaza head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a video posted on social media. “We have seen gunshot wounds, we have seen amputees and we have children as young as 12 who were injured.

“These events cannot be allowed to go on. We need to have safe secure passage throughout Gaza to reach the people who need humanitarian aid. We need every single crossing into Gaza opening.”

Biden and Hamas leaders said the aid convoy deaths could complicate negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage release deal. But Egyptian security sources said the incident had pushed both sides to intensify their efforts, in order to preserve progress made so far, Reuters reported.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said during a speech at the Antalya Diplomatic Forum on Saturday: “We hope that we will be able to achieve a ceasefire before Ramadan.”

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Israel-Gaza war: US carries out its first aid airdrop in strip - BBC

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By Henri Astier

BBC News

The US has carried out its first airdrop of humanitarian aid for Gaza, with more than 30,000 meals parachuted in by three military planes.

The operation, carried out jointly with Jordan's Air Force, was the first of many announced by President Joe Biden.

The head of a well-known aid organisation told the BBC he thought there was a famine in northern Gaza.

At least 112 people were killed as crowds rushed to an aid convoy outside Gaza city on Thursday.

Hamas has accused them for the killing. Israel denies this and says it is investigating.

The first US airdrop comes as a top US official said the framework of a deal for a six-week ceasefire in Gaza was in place.

The Biden administration official said on Saturday that Israel had "more or less accepted" the deal.

"It will be a six-week ceasefire in Gaza starting today if Hamas agrees to release the defined category of vulnerable hostages (...) the sick, the wounded, elderly and women," the unnamed official said.

Mediators are due to reconvene in Cairo on Sunday, and Egyptian officials said delegations from both Hamas and Israel were expected to arrive for the negotiations.

One official said certain technical issues around a possible deal still needed to be resolved, such as how many Palestinian prisoners would be released by Israel in exchange for hostages held by Hamas.

On Saturday C-130 transport planes dropped more than 38,000 meals along the Gaza coastline, US Central Command said in a statement.

"These airdrops are part of a sustained effort to get more aid into Gaza, including by expanding the flow of aid through land corridors and routes," it added.

Other countries including the UK, France, Egypt and Jordan have previously airdropped aid into Gaza, but this is the first by the US.

Jan Egeland, head of aid organisation the Norwegian Refugee Council, has just returned from a three-day visit to Gaza.

"I was prepared for nightmare, but it is worse, much worse," Mr Egeland told the BBC on Sunday.

"People want to take your hand... saying 'we are starving, we are dying here'.

"I think there is famine in the north," he said, adding that there had been no aid for 300,000 people living in ruins, with Israel not allowing any through.

US administration officials said that Thursday's "tragic incident" had highlighted "the importance of expanding and sustaining the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza in response to the dire humanitarian situation".

Palestinians wounded in a rush on an aid convoy rest on beds at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza

Aid agencies have said that airdrops are an inefficient way of delivering aid.

"Airdrops are expensive, haphazard and usually lead to the wrong people getting the aid," Mr Egeland said.

Displaced Gaza resident Medhat Taher told Reuters news agency that such a method was woefully inadequate.

"Will this be enough for a school? Is this enough for 10,000 people?" he said. "It's better to send aid via crossings and better than airdropping via parachutes."

In his statement on Friday, President Biden said the US would "insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need".

US Vice-President Kamala Harris will meet Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz in Washington on Monday to discuss a truce and other issues, Reuters quotes a White House official as saying.

In Thursday's incident, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured as they crowded around aid lorries on the south-western edge of Gaza City.

Israel said most died in a crush after it fired warning shots.

Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the BBC that he and a team sent to al-Shifa hospital had found a large number of people with bullet wounds.

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Hamas meanwhile said an Israeli bombardment had killed at least 11 people at a camp in Rafah in southern Gaza on Saturday. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the attack "outrageous". The Israeli army said it had carried out a "precision strike" against Islamic Jihad militants in the area.

The UN's World Food Programme has warned that a famine is imminent in northern Gaza, which has received very little aid in recent weeks, and where an estimated 300,000 people are living with little food or clean water.

The Israel military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign to destroy Hamas after its gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 back to Gaza as hostages.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 30,000 people, including 21,000 children and women, have been killed in Gaza since then with some 7,000 missing and at least 70,450 injured.

Sabtu, 02 Maret 2024

US begins Gaza aid airdrops after Joe Biden rebukes Israel - Financial Times

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US begins Gaza aid airdrops after Joe Biden rebukes Israel Financial Times
Israel-Gaza war: US carries out first aid airdrop in strip BBC
Joe Biden confuses Gaza with Ukraine in airdrop announcement The Guardian
Joe Biden twice confuses Gaza with Ukraine as he approves US military aid airdrops Sky News
Live updates: Biden says Israel, Hamas ‘not there yet’ on cease-fire negotiations The Washington Post

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Israel Gaza: Large number of bullet wounds among those injured in aid convoy rush - UN - BBC

By Christy Cooney in London & Paul Adams in Jerusalem

BBC News

Many of the people treated for injuries following a rush on an aid convoy in Gaza on Thursday suffered bullet wounds, the UN has said.

UN observers visited Gaza City's al-Shifa Hospital and saw some of the roughly 200 people still being treated.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, has accused Israel of firing at civilians, but Israel said there was a "stampede" after its troops fired warning shots.

Leaders from around the world have called for a full investigation.

The incident unfolded after hundreds of people descended on an aid convoy as it moved along a coastal road, accompanied by the Israeli military, in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The World Food Programme has warned that a famine is imminent in northern Gaza, which has received very little aid in recent weeks, and where an estimated 300,000 people are living with little food or clean water.

What video and eyewitness accounts tell us about Gazans killed at aid drop

In footage from the scene, volleys of gunfire can be heard and people are seen scrambling over lorries and ducking behind the vehicles.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry has said that at least 112 people were killed in the incident and another 760 were injured.

In a statement on social media, Rear Adm Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said, "Dozens of Gazans were injured as a result of pushing and trampling."

The IDF's Lt Col Peter Lerner also told the UK's Channel 4 News that a "mob stormed the convoy" and that Israeli troops "cautiously [tried] to disperse the mob with a few warning shots".

Mark Regev, special adviser to the Israeli prime minister, had earlier told CNN that Israel had not been involved directly in any way and that the gunfire had come from "Palestinian armed groups", though he did not provide evidence.

Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told the BBC he and a team sent to al-Shifa hospital found a large number of people with bullet wounds.

He said all but a handful of the 70 to 80 patients in the emergency room he visited had been injured during the convoy incident.

In addition to those with bullet wounds, he said doctors had treated many who had fallen down or been trampled - but he was unable to say with certainty which group was larger.

Drone footage showing people near aid convoy in Gaza

Mr Petropoulos said those with bullet injuries had suffered wounds in the upper and lower body. One patient told him he had been shot in the chest and who had walked to Shifa to get treatment.

"He said they (Israeli troops) usually shoot in the air. This time, they shot into the thickest part of the crowd," Mr Petropoulos said.

But, Mr Petropoulos emphasised UN personnel had not been present during the incident making it very difficult to know precisely what happened.

Dr Mohamed Salha, interim hospital manager at al-Awda hospital, previously told the BBC that they had received 176 of the injured, of whom 142 had bullet wounds.

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He added that the others had suffered broken limbs.

Responding to the incident, UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron called the deaths "horrific" and said there "must be an urgent investigation and accountability".

"This must not happen again," he said.

He added that the incident could not be separated from the "inadequate aid supplies" entering Gaza and called the current levels "simply unacceptable".

US President Joe Biden announced that the US would begin dropping aid into Gaza by air, saying: "Innocent people got caught in a terrible war, unable to feed their families. We need to do more, and the United States will do more."

Israel military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign to destroy Hamas - which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK and others - after its gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 back to Gaza as hostages.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 30,000 people, including 21,000 children and women, have been killed in Gaza since then with some 7,000 missing and at least 70,450 injured.

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Minggu, 03 Maret 2024

Trump moves closer to Republican nomination with string of victories - BBC

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Israel ‘accepts six-week ceasefire deal’ as Hamas response awaited, US officials say - The Guardian

Israel-Gaza war: US carries out its first aid airdrop in strip - BBC

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Sabtu, 02 Maret 2024

US begins Gaza aid airdrops after Joe Biden rebukes Israel - Financial Times

Israel Gaza: Large number of bullet wounds among those injured in aid convoy rush - UN - BBC

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Israel Gaza: Large number of gunshot wounds among those injured in aid convoy rush - UN - BBC

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Joe Biden twice confuses Gaza with Ukraine as he approves US military aid airdrops - Sky News

Minggu, 03 Maret 2024

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Sabtu, 02 Maret 2024

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