Israel's military confirms 'decline in forces' in southern Gaza - BBC

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By Lipika Pelham and Rushdi Abualouf

BBC News

Israel's military said on Sunday that it was reducing its numbers of soldiers from southern Gaza, leaving just one brigade in the area.

The military stressed a "significant force" would remain in Gaza.

"This is another stage in the war effort", Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner told the BBC.

The pull-out is being interpreted as tactical, rather than a sign the war may be moving closer to its end.

Also on Sunday, Israel and Hamas said they had both sent delegations to Cairo to join fresh ceasefire negotiations.

It is six months to the day since Hamas attacked southern Israeli border communities on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage.

Israel says that of 130 hostages still in Gaza, at least 34 are dead.

More than 33,000 Gazans have been killed in Israel's offensive in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says, the majority of them civilians. Gaza is on the brink of famine, with Oxfam reporting that 300,000 people trapped in the north have lived since January on an average of 245 calories a day.

'War not over'

Lt Col Lerner said troops would rotate out because the military had completed its mission in Khan Younis.

Khan Younis has been under Israeli bombardment for months, and the city and surrounding area are largely destroyed.

Lt Col Lerner said: "The war is not over. War can only be over when they [hostages] come home and when Hamas is gone."

"It is a decline in the forces but there are more operations that need to be conducted. Rafah is clearly a stronghold. We need to dismantle Hamas' capabilities wherever they are."

US National Security spokesman John Kirby said it appeared to be a "rest and refit" and "not necessarily... indicative of some coming new operation for these troops".

But later Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the troops were leaving to "prepare for their follow-up missions".

He said their achievements in Khan Younis were "extremely impressive", adding that Hamas had ceased to function as a military organisation throughout Gaza.

Israel has long warned of a planned ground offensive in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

Some of the displaced expressed hope that they would soon be able to return to what remains of their homes.

Muhammad al-Mughrabi, 32, from Gaza City, currently living with his family in Rafah, told BBC News he was "filled with hope as my neighbour in a tent from Khan Younis was able to return home".

"Despite knowing that my house was completely destroyed, I dream daily of returning to my hometown. I will set up a tent over the rubble of my house and live there with dignity, rather than being compelled to reside in the courtyard of a hospital," he said.

International pressure for a ceasefire is mounting, and the US - Israel's closest and most powerful ally - warned earlier this week that its ongoing support for the Gaza war is dependent on "specific, concrete steps" to boost aid and prevent civilian deaths.

• Bowen: Obstacles to peace seem larger than ever
• Thousands of Israelis rally to demand hostage deal
• Six months on, how close is Israel to eliminating Hamas?

Marking six months of the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was "one step away from victory" but insisted there would be no ceasefire without the release of Israeli hostages.

"The achievements of the war are considerable: we have eliminated 19 of Hamas's 24 battalions, including senior commanders," he said.

EPA

Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied against Mr Netanyahu on Saturday, demanding a deal to free the hostages held in Gaza.

Anti-government protesters were joined by hostages' families.

The rallies in Tel Aviv and other cities came hours after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recovered the body of hostage Elad Katzir.

Organisers said the protest in Tel Aviv had drawn 100,000 people, while other counts put attendance at around 45,000.

More demonstrations took place on Sunday evening, with thousands protesting in Jerusalem.

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Russia says Ukraine attack hits Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant - Al Jazeera English

Russia, which occupies the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in southern Ukraine, has accused Kyiv of attacking a dome above one of the plant’s shutdown reactors.

Ukraine has rejected the claim, and it was not immediately clear what weapon was used in the attack on the nuclear plant, which was seized by Russian forces shortly after their full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian state-owned nuclear agency Rosatom said it was a drone.

Radiation levels were normal and there was no serious damage, according to the plant’s officials. But Rosatom later said that three people had been wounded, in the attack which struck near the site’s canteen.

Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for Ukraine’s defence intelligence, said Ukraine was not involved in any attack on the plant, which is the largest nuclear facility in Europe.

“Ukraine has not been involved in any armed provocations on the territory of the ZNPP (Zaporizhizhia Nuclear Power Plant), which is illegally occupied by Russia,” Yusov told the Ukrainska Pravda media outlet, urging Russian troops to withdraw.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has experts at the site, said it had been informed by the Russian-run plant that a drone had detonated at the site and the information was “consistent” with IAEA observations.

The agency’s Director General Rafael Grossi urged both sides to avoid actions that might “jeopardise nuclear safety”.

IAEA experts have been informed by ZNPP that a drone detonated on site today. Such detonation is consistent with IAEA observations. “I urge to refrain from actions that contradict the 5 IAEA principles and jeopardise nuclear safety,” Director General @rafaelmgrossi said.

— IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) April 7, 2024

The nuclear plant has six Soviet-designed VVER-1000 V-320 water-cooled and water-moderated reactors containing uranium-235. There is also spent nuclear fuel at the facility.

Reactors number one, two, five and six are in cold shutdown, while reactor number three is shut down for repair and number four is in so-called “hot shutdown”, according to the plant’s administration.

The plant remains close to the front lines, and both Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused the other of attacking the facility, raising the risk of a possible nuclear disaster.

Front-line fighting

Earlier on Sunday, a woman was killed when shrapnel from a downed Ukrainian drone hit a car travelling in Russia’s Belgorod region, according to the local Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, Gladkov said that four more people, including two children, had been wounded after air defences brought down four Ukrainian drones on the approach to Belgorod city.

The Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, has come under regular attack from Kyiv’s forces since 2022, with 25 people killed in a single missile strike on Belgorod city in December.

Russia’s army on Sunday said that it had destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones over its border in Belgorod and in the Bryansk region.

The army added that 12 of the 15 drones were destroyed over the Belgorod region.

Ukraine has for months launched drone attacks on several border areas as it tries to push back Russia’s advancing forces.

“Ukrainian drones destroy the occupiers. They protect the lives of our soldiers on the front lines. And they help Ukraine decrease Russiaʼs war potential,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on the social media platform X on Saturday.

“In the sky and at sea, our drones have demonstrated that Ukrainian strength can defeat Russian evil,” he added.

Ukrainian drones destroy the occupiers. They protect the lives of our soldiers on the front lines. And they help Ukraine decrease Russiaʼs war potential.

In the sky and at sea, our drones have demonstrated that Ukrainian strength can defeat Russian evil.

I thank everyone who… pic.twitter.com/AFPAiLlyyW

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 6, 2024

Zelenskyy highlighted that Russian attacks continue in front-line regions like Kharkiv and Zaporizhia.

On Sunday, Kyiv said that a Russian strike on the town of Huliaipole in the southern Zaporizhia region killed three people.

“Two men and a woman died under the rubble of their own private house, which was hit by a Russian shell,” the head of the region, Ivan Fedorov, said on social media.

Officials added that a woman was also killed in the city of Kupiansk, in the northeastern Kharkiv region that has seen increased attacks in recent months.

Meanwhile in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, Kyiv said Russia launched another attack on Sunday, injuring five civilians, a day after a deadly attack there.

On Saturday, two Russian strikes on Kharkiv killed eight civilians and injured at least 10 people, according to regional officials.

“We must put an end to this terror,” Zelenskyy said.

On Sunday, during a video meeting of the Kyiv-organised fundraising platform United24, Zelenskyy said that it was crucial for the US Congress to approve military aid to Ukraine, as the war continues to rage.

“It is necessary to specifically tell Congress that if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” he said.

“If Ukraine loses the war, other states will be attacked.”

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Israel's war on Gaza live: Six months of death, destruction and disease - Middle East Eye

Good evening, Middle East Eye readers.

As the time approaches 00:30 in Gaza, our live coverage of Israel's assault on the besieged enclave will shortly be closing for the evening.

As the conflict passed the six-month mark, here were the day's key developments:

The Palestinian Health Ministry announced on Sunday that Israel had killed at least 33,175 people in Gaza since the start of the war. Local health officials said the death toll included 34 recorded deaths in the last 24 hours. 

Since the start of the fighting, Israel has killed more than 14,000 children and 9,220 women. 

A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday to meet with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, a statement from Hamas said. Hamas reiterated demands the group issued in a 14 March proposal prior to a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip that was passed on 25 March.

Al-Jazeera reported that Mossad head David Barnea would be involved in the Cairo negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there would be no ceasefire in Gaza without the release of all hostages. He added that Israel was “one step” away from victory in Gaza. 

Israel said on Sunday that it had withdrawn all its troops from southern Gaza, except for one brigade. An Israeli brigade typically consists of a few thousand troops. The army did not clarify whether the withdrawal would delay a possible incursion into Rafah, where more than a million have sought refuge.

White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said the Israeli army's troop reduction in Gaza appeared to be a "rest and refit" and not necessarily indicative of any new operations.

Over major developments on Sunday included:

• Israel said it launched air strikes on eastern Lebanon and hit Hezbollah infrastructure after the militia took down an Israeli drone. The strikes came after Hezbollah downed an Israeli-made Hermes-900 drone. 
• Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was ready to respond to any threat posed by Iran after an attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus killed 11 people. 
• US forces destroyed a mobile surface-to-air missile system in a Houthi-controlled territory of Yemen on 6 April, the US Central Command (Centcom) said on Sunday.
• The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had completed another stage in preparing for possible war on its northern front with Lebanon and Syria.
• Long-term Palestinian prisoner Walid Daqqa has died aged 62 in Israel's Assaf Harofeh Hospital. Daqqa, who had been detained since 1986, had been diagnosed with a rare type of bone marrow cancer last year. Israeli authorities denied his early release despite his terminal diagnosis.
• British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated Britain’s support for Israel as pressure mounted on the UK to end arms sales to Israel after Israeli forces killed three British aid workers.

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Israel withdraws troops from southern Gaza for ‘tactical reasons’ - The Guardian

Israel has pulled all of its ground troops out of southern Gaza for “tactical reasons”, the country’s army has said, raising questions about the future direction of the war as Hamas and Israeli delegations travel to Egypt for a new round of ceasefire talks.

Two brigades will stay in the northern half of the Gaza Strip and the new corridor that now bifurcates the Palestinian territory at Wadi Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday, in order to “preserve the IDF’s freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence based-operations”.

It is believed the drawdown is primarily to relieve reservists after nearly four months of intense fighting in the decimated southern city of Khan Younis, rather than any significant shift in strategy.

An army official who spoke to the Israel daily Haaretz said: “There’s no need for us to remain in Khan Younis. The 98th Division dismantled Hamas’s Khan Younis brigades and killed thousands of its members. We did everything we could there.”

Displaced Palestinians from the city may now be able to return to their homes, they said.

Military analysts said on Sunday that an Israeli ground offensive on Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, where about 1.5 million people were sheltering, was not off the table.

But the timing of the announcement coincides with the beginning of a round of mediated talks in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, aimed at securing a second truce and hostage release deal, and is being received as a positive sign that the latest negotiations - after much faltering - may finally bear fruit.

Israel confirmed on Sunday it would send a delegation to take part in the new talks, after the Palestinian militant group Hamas had announced the day before it would send negotiators.

Israeli media reported that the country’s delegation included the chiefs of the Mossad and Shin Bet, and is operating with an “expanded mandate”. The CIA director, Bill Burns, is also expected to attend the talks, which will begin on Sunday evening, alongside the Qatari foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Although 100 Israelis were freed in a week-long ceasefire at the end of November in exchange for 240 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails, negotiations since then aimed at a second, longer truce and the release of the remaining hostages in the six-month war have repeatedly failed.

Before the new talks began, Hamas reiterated its demands issued in a 14 March proposal, which include a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, a return of the displaced to their homes, and a “serious” exchange deal of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, a statement said.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under growing international pressure over his forces’ conduct in Gaza and the desperate humanitarian situation, said on Sunday that Israel would not give into Hamas’s “extreme” demands or agree to any ceasefire until the remaining hostages were released.

Concerns about a wider regional conflict drawing in Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah continued as Gen Rahim Safavi, a senior Iranian military adviser, told Israel that none of its embassies were safe after last week’s strike by Israel on an Iranian diplomatic site in Damascus that killed two elite Iranian generals. Netanyahu said Israel was prepared for any response. “Whoever harms us or plans to harm us, we will harm them,” he said.

Hamas, the militant group that seized control of Gaza in 2007, triggered the bloodiest war in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict with an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October, in which they killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted another 250, according to official Israeli tallies. On Sunday, people gathered at the site of the Nova desert music festival in southern Israel to pay tribute to the young revellers who were killed or kidnapped there.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 33,000 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, and driven almost all of the 2.3 million population from their homes.

Famine is “projected and imminent” in the northern half of Gaza, a UN-backed report said last month, and according to Oxfam the number of people facing “catastrophic levels” of hunger has nearly doubled since December.

Israel denies blocking aid, saying shortages are a result of logistics failures by humanitarian organisations or Hamas diverting supplies. But aid agencies say that delivery has been severely hampered by a combination of logistical obstacles, damaged roads, a breakdown of public order and lengthy bureaucratic controls imposed by Israel.

Some aid groups say sending truck convoys north has been too dangerous because of the military’s failure to ensure safe passage. An Israeli drone attack on a team of international aid workers last week, in which seven people were killed, led to some of the fiercest western criticism of how Israel is prosecuting the war to date.

Netanyahu told Joe Biden last Thursday that Israel would reopen a key land crossing into Gaza, allow more aid through another crossing, and open an Israeli port to aid deliveries, after a warning after the aid worker killings that future US support for Israel would depend on it taking concrete action to protect civilians and humanitarians.

The Israeli cabinet’s decision followed warnings from foreign ministry officials that if aid was not increased, Israel would risk sanctions and arms embargos.

• Guardian Newsroom: Crisis in the Middle East
  On Tuesday 30 April, 7-8.15pm GMT, join Devika Bhat, Peter Beaumont, Emma Graham-Harrison and Ghaith Abdul-Ahad as they discuss the fast-developing crisis in the Middle East. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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Pro-Russia candidate Peter Pellegrini elected Slovakia president - Financial Times

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1. Pro-Russia candidate Peter Pellegrini elected Slovakia president  Financial Times
2. Peter Pellegrini: Russia-friendly populist elected Slovak president  BBC
3. Ukraine-sceptic government ally Peter Pellegrini wins Slovakian presidential election  The Guardian
4. Slovak presidency goes to PM Fico's proxy  POLITICO Europe
5. Slovakia elects new president amid divisions over Ukraine war  Al Jazeera English

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A week of mourning in Rwanda to commemorate 30 years of 1994 genocide - Al Jazeera English

Rwandans are marking 30 years since a genocide orchestrated by armed Hutu tore apart their country, as neighbours turned on each other in one of the bloodiest massacres of the 20th century.

President Paul Kagame led the commemoration on Sunday by placing wreaths on the mass graves in the capital, Kigali, flanked by foreign dignitaries, including the leaders of South Africa and Ethiopia as well as former US President Bill Clinton, who had called the genocide the biggest failure of his administration.

The killing spree, which began on April 7, 1994, lasted 100 days before the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebel militia took Kigali in July of the year, and saw some 800,000 people dead, largely Tutsis but also moderate Hutus.

The assassination of Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on the night of April 6, when his plane was shot down over Kigali, triggered the rampage by armed Hutu men and the “Interahamwe” militia.

Their victims were shot, beaten or hacked to death in killings fuelled by vicious anti-Tutsi propaganda broadcast on TV and radio. At least 250,000 women were raped, according to the United Nations figures.

The tiny nation has since found its footing under the rule of Kagame, who led the RPF, but the scars of the violence remain, leaving a trail of destruction across Africa’s Great Lakes region.

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Kigali, said 30 years after the mass killings, the pain is still evident among many Rwandans.

“But they also feel that it is every Rwandan’s responsibility to commemorate the genocide, to remember what happened and to ensure that it will never happen again,” she said.

The international community’s failure to intervene has been a cause of lingering shame, with French President Emmanuel Macron expected to release a message on Sunday saying that France and its Western and African allies “could have stopped” the bloodshed but lacked the will to do so.

Coming to a standstill

Members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front inspect the remains of several hundred Tutsi civilians, which were dug up and reburied in 1995 as part of a memorial to approximately 12,000 Tutsi massacred by Hutu militia in the western town of Kaduha [File: Corinne Dufka/Reuters]

Sunday’s events mark the start of a week of national mourning, with Rwanda effectively coming to a standstill and national flags flown at half-mast.

In keeping with tradition, Kagame also lighted a remembrance flame at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where more than 250,000 victims are believed to be buried. He is also expected to deliver a speech later in the day. He was accompanied by the first lady, Jeannette Kagame.

Music will not be allowed in public places or on the radio, while sports events and movies are banned from TV broadcasts unless connected to what has been dubbed “Kwibuka (Remembrance) 30”.

The UN and the African Union will also hold remembrance ceremonies.

Karel Kovanda, a former Czech diplomat who was the first UN ambassador to publicly call the events of 1994 a genocide, nearly a month after the killings began, said the massacres should never be forgotten.

“The page cannot be turned,” he told the AFP news agency in an interview in Kigali, urging efforts to ensure that “the genocide [doesn’t] slip into oblivion”.

Each year, new mass graves are still being uncovered around the country.

According to Rwanda, hundreds of genocide suspects remain at large, including in neighbouring nations such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

Remains of the genocide victims being retrieved from a site in Huye District, southern Rwanda [File: AP]

Only 28 of them have been extradited to Rwanda from around the world.

France, one of the top destinations for Rwandans fleeing justice at home, has tried and convicted half a dozen people over their involvement in the killings.

In 2002, Rwanda set up community tribunals where victims heard “confessions” from those who had persecuted them, although rights watchdogs said the system also resulted in miscarriages of justice.

Today, Rwandan ID cards do not mention whether a person is Hutu or Tutsi.

In advance of the 30th anniversary, there were renewed calls from rights watchdogs for remaining genocide suspects to be held to account.

“I urge states everywhere to redouble their efforts to bring all surviving suspected perpetrators to justice – including through universal jurisdiction – and to combat hate speech and incitement to commit genocide,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said on Friday.

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Israel-Hamas war latest: 'Terrible' conflict in Gaza must end, says Sunak - The Telegraph

Israel says it has withdrawn all ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip except for one brigade.

The military, which has been reducing numbers in Gaza since the start of the year to relieve reservists and under growing pressure from its ally Washington to improve the humanitarian situation, did not give details on its reasons or the number of soldiers involved.

In recent months, Israel’s offensive has focused on the south of the Palestinian enclave and it remains unclear whether the withdrawal would delay a long-threatened incursion into the city of Rafah, which Israeli leaders have said is needed to eliminate Hamas.

Rafah has become the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians sheltering in the territory near the border with Egypt. The UN has warned an assault on the city would lead to a “slaughter”.

The withdrawal comes on the six-month anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attacks, and as Egypt prepares to host a new round of talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire and hostage release deal.

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