Iran regrets Ukraine’s downgrading of ties over drones

Ukraine said on Friday that it would downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran over Tehran’s decision to supply Russian forces with drones. (File/AFP)
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Updated 24 September 2022
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Iran regrets Ukraine’s downgrading of ties over drones

  • Ukraine said on Friday that it would downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran over Tehran’s decision to supply Russian forces with drones

Iran regrets Ukraine’s decision to downgrade ties over the reported supply of Iranian drones to Russia, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Saturday.
Nasser Kanaani said Ukraine should “refrain from being influenced by third parties who seek to destroy relations between the two countries,” a ministry statement said.
Ukraine said on Friday that it would downgrade diplomatic ties with Iran over Tehran’s decision to supply Russian forces with drones, a move President Volodymyr Zelensky called “a collaboration with evil.”
Kanaani said Ukraine’s decision was “based on unconfirmed reports and resulted from a media hype by foreign parties.”
Military authorities in southern Ukraine said on Saturday they had shot down at least seven Iranian drones, including six Shahed-136 “kamikaze” craft over the sea near the ports of Odesa and Pivdennyi on Friday.
These included — for the first time in Ukraine — a MoHajjer-6, a larger Iranian drone, the southern military command said.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in an English language tweet on Saturday that Iran was supporting Russia “by giving modern drones to (a) backward country for the murders of Ukrainians.”


Once a leading force, battered Tunisian party awaits elusive comeback

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Once a leading force, battered Tunisian party awaits elusive comeback

  • Ennahdha, the Islamist-inspired movement still considered by some Tunisians as the country’s main opposition party, could still bounce back after a devastating government crackdown

TUNIS: The party that once dominated Tunisian politics has faded away since President Kais Saied staged a dramatic power grab, with its offices shuttered and leaders behind bars or in exile.
But observers say that Ennahdha, the Islamist-inspired movement still considered by some Tunisians as the country’s main opposition party, could still bounce back after a devastating government crackdown.
On July 25, 2021, Saied stunned the country when he suspended parliament and dissolved the government, a move critics denounced as a “coup” a decade after the Arab Spring revolt ushered in a democratic transition in the North African country.
Many of Saied’s critics have been prosecuted and jailed, including Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi, 84, a former parliament speaker who was sentenced earlier this month to 14 years in prison for plotting against the state.
Ghannouchi, who was arrested in 2023, has racked up several prison terms, including a 22-year sentence handed in February on the same charge.
The crackdown over the past four years has seen around 150 Ennahdha figures imprisoned, prosecuted or living in exile, according to a party official.
“Some believe the movement is dead, but that is not the case,” said political scientist Slaheddine Jourchi.
Ennahdha has been “weakened to the point of clinical death” but remained the most prominent party in Tunisia’s “fragmented and fragile” opposition, Jourchi added.

‘Crimes against the country’
Riadh Chaibi, a party official and adviser to Ghannouchi, said that even after “shrinking” its political platform, Ennahdah was still a relevant opposition outlet.
“Despite repression, prosecutions and imprisonment” since 2021, “Ennahdha remains the country’s largest political movement,” Chaibi said.
He said the current government has been “weaponizing state institutions to eliminate political opponents,” but “once we’re free again, like we were in 2011, Ennahdha will regain its strength.”
Since 2011, when Ghannouchi returned from exile to lead the party, Ennahdha for years had a key role in Tunisian politics, holding the premiership and other senior roles.
But by 2019, the year Saied was elected president, the party’s popularity had already begun waning, winning only a third of the 1.5 million votes it had in 2011.
Experts ascribed this trend to the party’s failure to improve living standards and address pressing socio-economic issues.
Ennahdha has also been accused of jihadist links, which it has repeatedly denied.
Saied, who religiously avoids mentioning either Ennahdha or Ghannouchi by name, has often referred to the party’s years in power as “the black decade” and accused it of committing “crimes against the country.”
Crowds of Tunisians, increasingly disillusioned as a political deadlock trumped Ennahdha’s promise of change, poured into the streets in celebration when Saied forced the party out of the halls of power in 2021.
Analyst Jourchi said Ennahdha’s rise to power was a “poorly prepared adventure,” and the party had “made many mistakes along the way.”
Left-wing politician Mongi Rahoui said it was “only natural that Ennahdha leaders and their governing partners be prosecuted for crimes they used their political position to commit.”
Today, the party’s activities have been reduced mostly to issuing statements online, often reacting to prison sentences handed down to critics of Saied.

‘Weathering repression’
But Ennahdha has weathered repression before, harshly suppressed under Tunisia’s autocratic presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Party leaders were jailed or forced into exile, and Ghannouchi was sentenced to life in prison under Bourguiba but then freed — and later exiled — under Ben Ali.
Tunisian historian Abdellatif Hannachi said that the party “seems to be bending with the wind, waiting for changes that would allow it to return.”
It has been in “clear decline,” he added, but “that does not mean it’s disappearing.”
Ennahdha’s downfall was not an isolated case. Other opposition forces have also been crushed, and dozens of political, media and business figures are currently behind bars.
“This regime no longer distinguishes between Islamist and secular, progressive and conservative,” rights advocate Kamel Jendoubi, a former minister, recently said in a Facebook post.
Saied’s government “wants to silence everything that thinks, that criticizes, or resists,” Jendoubi argued.
The opposition, however, remains fractured, failing for example to come together in rallies planned for the anniversary this month of Saied’s power grab.


Hamas says French pledge to recognize State of Palestine ‘positive step’

Updated 25 July 2025
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Hamas says French pledge to recognize State of Palestine ‘positive step’

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Islamist militant group Hamas hailed France’s pledge on Thursday to recognize a State of Palestine as a “positive step” and urged all countries to do the same despite Israeli opposition.
“We consider this a positive step in the right direction toward doing justice to our oppressed Palestinian people and supporting their legitimate right to self-determination,” Hamas said in a statement, after French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that France would formally state its recognition in September.
“We call on all countries of the world — especially European nations and those that have not yet recognized the State of Palestine — to follow France’s lead,” Hamas added.

More than 30 former UK ambassadors and 20 former senior diplomats at the UN have also urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to recognize a Palestinian state.

In a statement, the diplomats called on Starmer to seize the “moment to recognise Palestinian statehood unconditionally," warning that “the risks of inaction have profound, historic and catastrophic implications.”

Starvation has affected the 2 million residents of the Gaza Strip amid Israeli attacks and aid restrictions.

“(Israel) cannot be secure from threats in the future if the question of Palestine is not taken forward to a political settlement,” they said.

The statement added: “In the face of the current horror and impunity, words are not enough … a partial suspension of arms sales, delays on trade talks and limited sanctions are far from the full extent of the pressure the UK can bring to bear on Israel.”

Recognising a Palestinian state would be a “foundational first step toward breaking the deadly status quo,” the letter said. The UK has consistently stated it would recognize Palestine in conjunction with allies “at the point of maximum impact.”


How two families crossed the rubble of Gaza, fleeing war and hunger

Updated 24 July 2025
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How two families crossed the rubble of Gaza, fleeing war and hunger

  • UN reports 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million people are displaced
  • Families face displacement, loss, and hunger amid Gaza conflict

GAZA/CAIRO: The Bakrons and Al-Bareems, two families from opposite ends of Gaza, have criss-crossed the rubble-strewn territory many times during 21 months of war, in search of food and shelter from Israeli attacks.
They’ve sought refuge in the homes of friends and relatives, in school classrooms and in tents, moving frequently as the Israeli military has ordered civilians from one zone to another.
The Bareems, from southern Gaza, have a disabled child who they have pushed in his wheelchair. The Bakrons, from the north, stopped wandering in May after two children of their children were killed in an airstrike.
“Our story is one of displacement, loss of loved ones, hunger, humiliation and loss of hope,” said Nizar Bakron, 38, who lost his daughter Olina, 10, and son Rebhi, eight.
The families’ experiences illustrate the plight of the 1.9 million Gaza residents — 90 percent of the population — that the United Nations says have been displaced during the conflict.
Israel’s war in Gaza has left much of the enclave in ruins and its people desperate from hunger. It was triggered by an attack by Islamist group Hamas — which governs the Strip — on Israeli border communities on October 7, 2023 that killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostage. Before the war, Nizar and his wife Amal, four years his junior, had a happy life in Shejaia, a teeming district in the east of Gaza City. Their eldest Adam is 12; the youngest, Youssef, a baby.
Photographs, seen by Reuters, show family parties at home and days at the beach.
“When the October 7 attack happened, I knew it wouldn’t be something good for us,” Nizar said. They left home the next day for Amal’s mother’s house further south in Zahra, he said.
Five days later Israel began ordering civilians in northern Gaza to move south and, on October 27, it launched a ground invasion.
Throughout the war Israel has issued evacuation orders in areas where it plans to conduct operations — though it has also struck elsewhere during those periods.
Israel says the orders protect civilians but it strikes wherever it locates Hamas fighters, who hide among the population. Hamas denies using civilians as shields.
Palestinians accuse Israel of using the evacuation orders to uproot the population, which it denies.
The family left for Nuseirat, an old refugee camp in central Gaza, where they crammed into an apartment owned by Amal’s relatives for five months.
Israel’s bombardment was heaviest in the first months of the war. The Gaza Health Ministry, controlled by Hamas, said the death toll reached 32,845 by the end of March 2024. It has now passed 59,000 people, the ministry says.
Food and fuel were becoming very expensive, with little aid arriving. In April, Israel issued an evacuation order and the Bakrons went further south to Rafah on the border with Egypt where there was more to eat.
They loaded the car and a trailer with mattresses, clothes, kitchen equipment and a solar panel and drove 15 miles along roads lined with ruins.
In Rafah, they squeezed into a classroom of a UN school which they shared with Nizar’s two brothers and their families — about 20 people. Their savings were quickly disappearing.
Weeks later, a new Israeli evacuation order moved them to Khan Younis, a few kilometers away, and another crowded classroom.
In January, a ceasefire allowed them to move back north to Nuseirat, where the family had land. They cleared a room in a damaged building to live in.
“We thought things would get better,” Nizar said.
But, after less than two months, the ceasefire collapsed on March 18. Two days later, Bakron’s sister, her husband and two daughters were killed in an airstrike in Khan Younis, he said.
As Israeli operations escalated, the family fled to Gaza City. They pitched a tent — the first time they had to live in one — against a building on Wehda Street, a central district. On May 25, as most of the family slept, Nizar was sitting outside, talking on the phone, when an airstrike hit and the building collapsed.
He pulled away the debris but Olina and Rebhi were dead. His wife Amal and eldest Adam were injured, and the baby Youssef’s leg was broken.
Nizar does not know how they can move again. The family is in mourning and their car was damaged in the strike, he said.
The UN estimates nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s territory is covered by Israeli evacuation orders or within Israeli militarized zones, leaving the population squeezed into two swathes of land where food is increasingly scarce. Israel says restrictions on aid are needed to prevent it being diverted to Hamas.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday Gaza is
suffering from man-made starvation
.
Amal, who still has bruising on her face and wears a brace upon her arm after the attack, grieves for her two children: “My life changed, from having everything to having nothing, after being displaced.”

“We fear for our lives“
Majed Al-Bareem, 32, was a teacher before the war in Bani Suheila, a town east of Khan Younis. He and his wife Samia, 27, have a two-year-old son, Samir. They lived in a pretty two-story house with an external staircase that had plants in pots running up the steps.
During Israel’s initial offensive, which was focused on northern Gaza, the family stayed put. But early in 2024, Israeli forces pushed into Khan Younis and the Bareems fled their home.
They learned afterwards it had been destroyed.
“I had a beautiful house which we built with our sweat and effort,” Majed said. He showed Reuters photos of the ruins.
They went to Rafah with Majed’s mother, Alyah, 62 and his three sisters. The youngest, Rafah, 19, has Down Syndrome.
Days before they left Khan Younis, his eldest sister’s husband was shot dead. Her son, Joud, nine, is in a wheelchair.
At first, the family stayed in a tent provided by UN aid agencies in a district called Nasr in northern Rafah.
Three months later, Israel ordered civilians to evacuate and the family left for Mawasi, a rural area nearby where displacement camps were growing, he said. Although Israel’s military had designated Mawasi a safe zone, it struck it throughout the summer, killing scores of people, according to local health authorities. Israel said it was targeting militants hiding in the area.
Since the two-month ceasefire ended in March the family has moved repeatedly — so often that Majed said he lost count — between Bani Suheila, Khan Younis and Mawasi.
“We fear for our lives so, as soon as they order us to leave, we do so,” he said.
Crossing Gaza’s ruined streets with a wheelchair has added to the difficulty. During one journey in May, he and Joud were separated from the family. It took them four hours to travel the five miles to Mawasi along roads littered with debris.
“It was exhausting and scary because we could hear gunfire and bombing,” he said.
The family is currently in a tent in Mawasi. Their savings are nearly gone and they can only rarely afford extra rations to supplement the little they get from charitable kitchens.
“We are tired of displacement. We are tired of lack of food,” said Majed’s mother, Alyah.
Last week, Majed went to Bani Suheila hoping to buy some flour. A shell landed nearby, wounding him in the torso with a shrapnel fragment, he said. It was removed in hospital but left him weak. With Israel and Hamas conducting ceasefire negotiations, the United States has voiced optimism about a deal. Majed says the renewed talks have given him some hope, but he fears they will fall apart, like previous attempts.
“I don’t think anyone can bear what we are bearing,” he said. “It has been two years of the war, hunger, killing, destruction and displacement.” 


French President Macron says France will recognize Palestine as a state

Updated 25 July 2025
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French President Macron says France will recognize Palestine as a state

  • France would be the most significant European power to recognize a Palestinian state
  • “The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and rescue the civilian population,” Macron wrote

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will recognize Palestine as a state, in a bold diplomatic move amid snowballing global anger over people starving in Gaza. Israel denounced the decision.
Macron said in a post on X that he will formalize the decision at the UN General Assembly in September. “The urgent thing today is that the war in Gaza stops and the civilian population is saved,” he wrote.
The mostly symbolic move puts added diplomatic pressure on Israel as the war and humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip rage. France is now the biggest Western power to recognize Palestine, and the move could pave the way for other countries to do the same. More than 140 countries recognize a Palestinian state, including more than a dozen in Europe.
The Palestinians seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and Gaza, territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel’s government and most of its political class have long been opposed to Palestinian statehood and now say that it would reward militants after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
‘’We strongly condemn President Macron’s decision,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. ‘’Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became. A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it.”
The Palestinian Authority welcomed it. A letter announcing the move was presented Thursday to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Jerusalem.
‘’We express our thanks and appreciation” to Macron, Hussein Al Sheikh, the PLO’s vice president under Abbas, posted. ‘’This position reflects France’s commitment to international law and its support for the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination.”
There was no immediate reaction from the administration of US President Donald Trump.
With Europe’s largest Jewish population and the largest Muslim population in western Europe, France has often seen fighting in the Middle East spill over into protests or other tensions at home.
The French president offered support for Israel after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and frequently speaks out against antisemitism, but he has grown increasingly frustrated about Israel’s war in Gaza.
″Given its historic commitment to a just and sustainable peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the state of Palestine,” Macron posted. ″Peace is possible.”
Thursday’s announcement came soon after the US cut short Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar, saying Hamas wasn’t showing good faith.
It also came days before France and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting a conference at the UN next week about a two-state solution. Last month, Macron expressed his “determination to recognize the state of Palestine,” and he has pushed for a broader movement toward a two-state solution in parallel with recognition of Israel and its right to defend itself.
Momentum has been building against Israel in recent days. Earlier this week, France and more than two dozen mostly European countries condemned Israel’s restrictions on aid shipments into the territory and the killings of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach food.
Macron will join the leaders of Britain and Germany for emergency talks Friday on Gaza, how to get food to the hungry and how to stop fighting.
“We are clear that statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people. A ceasefire will put us on a path to the recognition of a Palestinian state and a two-state solution which guarantees peace and security for Palestinians and Israelis,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in announcing the call. “The suffering and starvation unfolding in Gaza is unspeakable and indefensible.”
Israel annexed east Jerusalem shortly after the 1967 war and considers it part of its capital. In the West Bank, it has built scores of settlements, some resembling sprawling suburbs, that are now home to over 500,000 Jewish settlers with Israeli citizenship. The territory’s 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited autonomy in population centers.
The last serious peace talks broke down in 2009, when Netanyahu returned to power. Most of the international community considers the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel to be the only realistic solution to the century-old conflict.


Former guard says Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractors opened fire at civilians at aid sites

Updated 24 July 2025
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Former guard says Gaza Humanitarian Foundation contractors opened fire at civilians at aid sites

  • Ex-soldier reveals he saw colleagues using pepper spray, throwing stun grenades at people collecting aid
  • Gunfire, explosions heard in footage from GHF aid center amid reports death toll has passed 1,000

LONDON: Security personnel hired by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation fired at unarmed Palestinian civilians trying to get aid, a former US soldier who worked for the group has said.

The soldier told Israeli TV station Channel 12 there was “no fixing” the GHF system, and that it “needs to be put to an end.”

About 1,000 people are thought to have died trying to obtain aid at four GHF distribution points in Gaza since it took over operations from several UN-backed and affiliated groups in May.

The UN has said that famine threatens hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the enclave, with numerous reports of people unable to get enough food from the GHF.

The unnamed former soldier told Channel 12 via video that he saw security personnel shooting at people in an attempt to move them from a distribution center, “shooting in their direction, shooting at them, shooting at their feet … to get them to leave.”

He also said he had seen a contractor spray “an entire can of pepper spray” into the face of a man on his hands and knees picking up needles, which he said was “lethal.”

In another incident, he saw another contractor throw a stun grenade at a woman waiting for aid.

“This thing hit her and she just drops, just lifeless, collapsed to the ground. It looked like she had been killed,” he added.

The Associated Press previously interviewed two GHF contractors who confirmed stun grenades and pepper spray were regularly used against crowds at aid sites.

In video footage provided by the contractors to the AP of civilians trying to collect aid at a GHF center, the sound of bullets and stun grenades can be heard.
They said that many contractors were often heavily armed while on site, but were frequently unvetted and unqualified for the job. 

The former soldier, who served 25 years with the US military, said the four GHF sites were hard for civilians to reach.

“The sites were not set up in locations, nor were they set up in a way that was conducive to distributing or delivering humanitarian aid to a needy population,” he said. “Most of them don’t have shoes, no water, going through active warzone areas.”

The GHF, backed by the US and Israel, uses private US companies to exclude UN employees from its operations. Israel claims UN-led aid convoys were frequently hijacked by Hamas and other groups in Gaza.

GHF aid centers are based in areas controlled directly by the Israeli military, with international journalists unable to access the sites.

The UN agency for Gaza, UNRWA, has criticized the GHF’s methods, with its chief, Philippe Lazzarini, saying: “The so-called ‘GHF’ distribution scheme is a sadistic death trap. Snipers open fire randomly on crowds as if they are given a license to kill.”

In a statement the GHF told Sky News: “This is a disgruntled former contractor who was terminated for misconduct a month ago. GHF launched an immediate investigation as soon as these allegations were brought to our attention. Based on time-stamped video footage and witness statements, we have concluded that the claims made are categorically false.

“At no point were civilians under fire at a GHF distribution site. The gunfire heard in the video was confirmed to have originated from the IDF, which was outside the immediate vicinity of the GHF site.

“The gunfire was not directed at individuals, and no one was shot or injured. We take the safety and security of our operational sites extremely seriously. When behaviour falls short of our standards, we take action. The contractor seen shouting in the video is no longer part of our operations.

“We remain focused on our core mission — delivering food to the people of Gaza in a safe, direct, and uninterrupted manner, as we have done since launching operations on 27 May. Since then, we have distributed nearly 85 million meals to residents of the Gaza Strip.”