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Tag: War and unrest

  • Top Muslim-voter organization endorses Harris as Middle East conflict escalates

    Top Muslim-voter organization endorses Harris as Middle East conflict escalates

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    LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has secured the endorsement of one of the nation’s largest Muslim American voter mobilization groups, marking a significant boost to her campaign since many Muslim and Arab American organizations have opted to support third-party candidates or not endorse.

    Emgage Action, the political arm of an 18-year-old Muslim American advocacy group, endorsed Harris’ presidential campaign on Wednesday, saying in a statement provided first to The Associated Press that the group “recognizes the responsibility to defeat” Donald Trump in November.

    The group, based in Washington, D.C., operates in eight states, with a significant presence in the key battlegrounds of Michigan and Pennsylvania. The organization will now focus its ongoing voter-outreach efforts on supporting Harris, in addition to down-ballot candidates.

    “This endorsement is not agreement with Vice President Harris on all issues, but rather, an honest guidance to our voters regarding the difficult choice they confront at the ballot box,” said Wa’el Alzayat, CEO of Emgage Action, in a statement. “While we do not agree with all of Harris’ policies, particularly on the war on Gaza, we are approaching this election with both pragmatism and conviction.”

    The endorsement follows months of tension between Arab American and Muslim groups and Democratic leaders over the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Many of these groups, including leaders of the “Uncommitted” movement focused on protesting the war, have chosen not to endorse any candidate in the presidential race.

    The conflict in the Middle East has escalated since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed approximately 1,200 people. Israel’s offensive in response has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

    Israel in recent days also has expanded its air campaign against Hezbollah, with strikes on Lebanon killing at least 560 people, including many women and children, making it the deadliest bombardment since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

    In an interview ahead of Emgage Action’s formal announcement, Alzayat described the decision to back Harris as “excruciatingly difficult,” noting months of internal discussions and extensive meetings and outreach with Harris’ policy team and campaign.

    Ultimately, the group found alignment with many of Harris’ domestic policies and is “hopeful” about her approach to the Middle East conflict if elected, Alzayat said.

    “We owe it to our community, despite this pain, despite the emotions, that we are one organization that is looking at things in a sober, clear-eyed manner and just giving our voting guidance,” Alzayat said.

    In Wednesday’s statement, Emgage Action endorsed Harris to prevent “a return to Islamophobic and other harmful policies under a Trump administration.”

    Many in the Muslim community cite Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which is how many Trump opponents refer to his ban on immigrants from several majority-Muslim countries, as a key reason for opposing his return to the White House.

    Trump’s campaign dismissed the significance of the endorsement.

    What to know about the 2024 Election

    “Once again, national organizations’ endorsements aren’t matching up to what the people suffering from four years of Kamala Harris believe,” Victoria LaCivita, Trump’s communications director for Michigan, said Wednesday. She added that Trump had won the endorsement of Democrat Amer Ghalib, the Muslim mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan.

    “Voters across the country know that President Trump is the right candidate for ALL Americans, and he will ensure peace and safety in our country and around the world,” LaCivita said.

    Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Harris’ campaign manager, noted in a statement that the endorsement comes “at a time when there is great pain and loss in the Muslim and Arab American communities.”

    Harris will continue working “to bring the war in Gaza to an end such that Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, security, and self-determination,” she said.

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  • Pakistan brings arrested nurse before cameras to answer questions about her alleged bombing attempt

    Pakistan brings arrested nurse before cameras to answer questions about her alleged bombing attempt

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    QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani authorities brought a nurse they said was arrested over the weekend before state-run media on Wednesday to answer questions about her alleged suicide bombing attempt. The government-organized interview in Balochistan province was broadcast on national and local television channels.

    The southwestern Balochistan province has for years been the scene of a long-running insurgency, with several separatist groups staging attacks that target mainly security forces in their quest for independence. The province also has an array of militant groups that are active there.

    Pakistan’s government has also long battled militants and insurgents of various groups across the entire country — fighting that has killed hundreds, both civilians and members of the security forces.

    Authorities are likely eager to show that they are gaining the upper hand in the fight.

    In Wednesday’s interview in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, the nurse identified herself as Adeela Baloch and said she had worked at a government hospital in the district of Turbat before she was “misguided by terrorists” and recruited to carry out a suicide attack.

    She said she was arrested before she could carry out the attack.

    It was not clear if she spoke under duress. She did not name the group that had allegedly enlisted her or describe the target of the planned attack.

    The Associated Press could not independently confirm her identity or verify her claims. Officials contacted by the AP declined to provide details and only said she would not be prosecuted because she did not carry out the attack.

    Last month, the outlawed separatist Balochistan Liberation Army, said a woman was among a group of its fighters who had killed more than 50 people in the restive province.

    Earlier on Wednesday, a roadside bomb targeting police in Quetta wounded 12 people, according to local officials.

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  • Lebanese doctor races to save the eyes of those hurt by exploding tech devices

    Lebanese doctor races to save the eyes of those hurt by exploding tech devices

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    BEIRUT — For almost a week, ophthalmologist Elias Jaradeh has worked around the clock, trying to keep up with the flood of patients whose eyes were injured when pagers and walkie-talkies exploded en masse across Lebanon.

    He has lost track of how many eye operations he has performed in multiple hospitals, surviving on two hours of sleep before starting on the next operation. He has managed to save some patients’ sight, but many will never see again.

    “There is no doubt that what happened was extremely tragic, when you see this overwhelming number of people with eye injures arriving at the same time to the hospital, most of them young men, but also children and young women,” he told The Associated Press at a Beirut hospital this past week, struggling to hold back tears.

    Lebanese hospitals and medics were inundated after thousands of hand-held devices belonging to the Hezbollah militant group detonated simultaneously on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, killing at least 39 people. Around 3,000 more were wounded, some with life-altering disabilities. Israel is widely believed to have been behind the attack, although it has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

    Although the explosions appear to have targeted Hezbollah fighters, many of the victims were civilians. And many of those hurt in the attack suffered injuries to their hands, face and eyes because the devices received messages just before they detonated, so they were looking at the devices as they exploded.

    Authorities have not said how many people lost their eyes.

    Veteran and hardened Lebanese eye doctors who have dealt with the aftermath of multiple wars, civil unrest and explosions, said they have never seen anything like it.

    Jaradeh, who is also a lawmaker representing south Lebanon as a reformist, said most of the patients sent to his hospital, which specializes in ophthalmology, were young people who had significant damage to one or both eyes. He said he found plastic and metal shrapnel inside some of their eyes.

    Four years ago, a powerful blast tore through Beirut’s port, killing more than 200 people and wounding more than 6,000. That explosion, caused by the detonation of hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrates that had been stored unsafely at a port warehouse, blew out windows and doors for miles around and sent cascades of glass shards pouring onto the streets, leading to horrific injuries.

    Jaradeh also treated people hurt in the port explosion, but his experience with those wounded by the exploding pagers and walkie-talkies has been so much more intense because of the sheer volume of people with eye injuries.

    “Containing the shock after the Beirut port blast was, I believe, 48 hours while we haven’t reached the period of containing the shock now,” Jaradeh said.

    Jaradeh said he found it hard to dissociate his job as a doctor from his emotions in the operating theater.

    “No matter what they taught you (in medical school) about distancing yourself, I think in a situation like this, it is very hard when you see the sheer numbers of wounded. This is linked to a war on Lebanon and war on humanity,” Jaradeh said.

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  • 21 wounded in Russian strikes that hit apartment buildings in Ukrainian city of Kharkiv

    21 wounded in Russian strikes that hit apartment buildings in Ukrainian city of Kharkiv

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    KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched new strikes in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv that hit high-rise apartment buildings, leaving at least 21 wounded in a second consecutive nighttime attack, authorities said.

    The bombs fell Saturday night on the district of Shevchenkivsky, north of the center of Kharkiv, which is the second-largest Ukrainian city, local Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said. Residential buildings sustained varying degrees of damage, including 16- and nine-story buildings, he added. Kharkiv’s city council said that 18 buildings were damaged.

    The wounded included an 8-year-old child, according to Syniehubov and Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Terekhov said that 60 residents were evacuated from one of the buildings, a high-rise that was hit directly.

    Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since Moscow launched its all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022. On late Friday, 15 people, including children ages 10 and 12, were wounded when Russian airstrikes hit three Kharkiv neighborhoods, Terekhov said.

    Ukrainian officials said that KAB-type aerial glide bombs — a retrofitted Soviet weapon that has for months laid waste to eastern Ukraine — were used in both attacks.

    President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the strike and urged Kyiv’s Western allies to send more weapons to help it “protect lives and ensure safety.”

    “Ukraine needs full long-range capabilities, and we are working to convince our partners of this,” Zelenskyy said on X, as he prepared to kick off a busy week in the United States shoring up support for Kyiv in the war.

    And Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said Sunday that Kyiv was in talks with partners in Europe to secure Swedish-made Gripen and European Eurofighter Typhoon jets. Umerov said that commitments were already in place for deliveries of U.S.-made F-16s and French Mirages.

    Russia also launched 80 Shahed drones and two missiles at Ukraine overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian air force said. Ukrainian defenses shot down 71 drones, and another six were lost on location because of electronic warfare countermeasures, the statement said.

    Farther south, a 12-year-old girl and a woman died after a Russian drone struck a passenger car in the city of Nikopol, local Gov. Serhii Lysak reported. Two others, including a 4-year-old child, suffered wounds.

    In the eastern Donetsk region, a Russian airstrike on Sunday morning struck homes in the city of Sloviansk, trapping a woman under rubble and wounding two of her neighbors, regional prosecutors reported.

    In the same province, two miners died and one other person was injured late Saturday after Russian forces shelled a mine west of the city of Pokrovsk, local Gov. Vadym Filashkin and Ukraine’s Energy Ministry reported.

    Pokrovsk and Sloviansk have both been key targets for Russian forces as they continue their grinding push westwards aimed at capturing the entirety of Ukraine’s industrial east.

    In southern Ukraine, a Russian drone strike on Sunday morning wounded two civilians in the city of Kherson, regional authorities said. Hours later, police reported that Russian attacks wounded at least four more people elsewhere in the province.

    Other Russian drone attacks Sunday damaged energy infrastructure in Ukraine’s central Poltava region and the northern city of Shostka, officials reported.

    Shostka lies in the Sumy region, across the border from Russia’s Kursk province — the target of a startling Ukrainian military incursion launched last month. Weeks into the incursion, Zelenskyy said that the aim is to create a buffer zone to prevent further Russian cross-border strikes that have for months wreaked havoc in Sumy.

    Around 10,000 residents have left the nearby town of Hlukhiv because of intensified Russian shelling, around a third of its prewar population, the local military administration said Sunday.

    That includes almost 70% of the town’s children, following the regional government’s calls to evacuate parts of the Sumy region nearest the Russian border. Hlukhiv lies less than 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Russian territory, and about 40 kilometers (25 miles) southeast of Shostka.

    Also on Sunday, a firefighter was killed and two others were injured by a Ukrainian drone in the Russia-occupied Luhansk province in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said.

    In Russia proper, in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, Ukrainian shelling wounded at least 12 people including a village official and members of a volunteer self-defense force, according to regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov.

    Several Russian regions, including Belgorod in the south, set up so-called territorial defense units to counter-sabotage activity after Russian troops moved into Ukraine in February 2022.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visits Pennsylvania ammunition factory to thank workers

    Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visits Pennsylvania ammunition factory to thank workers

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    SCRANTON, Pa. — Under extraordinarily tight security, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday visited the Pennsylvania ammunition factory that is producing one of the most critically needed munitions for his country’s fight to fend off Russian ground forces.

    Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat who was among those who met with Zelenskyy at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, said the president had a simple message: “Thank you. And we need more.”

    The Scranton plant is one of the few facilities in the country to manufacture 155 mm artillery shells and has increased production over the past year. Ukraine has already received more than 3 million of them from the U.S.

    Zelenskyy’s visit kicked off a busy week in the United States as he works tirelessly to shore up support for Ukraine in the war. He will speak at the U.N. General Assembly annual gathering in New York on Tuesday and Wednesday and then travel to Washington for talks on Thursday with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

    The area around the ammunition plant had been sealed off since Sunday morning, with municipal garbage trucks positioned across several roadblocks and a very heavy presence of city, regional and state police, including troopers on horseback.

    As Zelenskyy’s large motorcade made its way to the ammunition plant in the afternoon, a small contingent of supporters waving Ukrainian flags assembled nearby to show their appreciation for his visit.

    “It’s unfortunate that we need a plant like this, but it’s here, and it’s here to protect the world,” said Vera Kowal Krewson, a first-generation Ukrainian American who was among those who greeted Zelenskyy’s motorcade. “And I strongly feel that way.”

    She said many of her friends’ parents have worked in the ammunition plant, and she called Zelenskyy’s visit “a wonderful thing.”

    Laryssa Salak, 60, whose parents also immigrated from Ukraine, also said she was pleased Zelenskyy came to thank the workers. She said it upsets her that funding for Ukraine’s defense has divided Americans and that even some of her friends oppose the support, saying the money should go to help Americans instead.

    “But they don’t understand that that money does not directly go to Ukraine, Salak said. ”It goes to American factories that manufacture, like here, like the ammunition. So that money goes to American workers as well. And a lot of people don’t understand that.”

    The 155 mm shells made in the Scranton plant are used in howitzer systems, which are towed large guns with long barrels that can fire at various angles. Howitzers can strike targets up to 15 miles to 20 miles (24 kilometers to 32 kilometers) away and are highly valued by ground forces to take out enemy targets from a protected distance.

    With the war now well into its third year, Zelenskyy has been pushing the U.S. for permission to use longer range missile systems to fire deeper inside of Russia.

    So far he has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions. The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation on the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its NATO allies if they allow Ukraine to use the long-range weapons.

    At one point in the war, Ukraine was firing between 6,000 and 8,000 of the 155 mm shells per day. That rate started to deplete U.S. stockpiles and drew concern that the level on hand was not enough to sustain U.S. military needs if another major conventional war broke out, such as in a potential conflict over Taiwan.

    In response the U.S. has invested in restarting production lines and is now manufacturing more than 40,000 155 mm rounds a month, with plans to hit 100,000 rounds a month.

    Two of the Pentagon leaders who have pushed that increased production through — Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology and Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer — were expected to join Zelenskyy at the plant, as was Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

    The 155 mm rounds are just one of the scores of ammunition, missile, air defense and advanced weapons systems the U.S. has provided Ukraine — everything from small arms bullets to advanced F-16 fighter jets. The U.S. has been the largest donor to Ukraine, providing more than $56 billion of the more than $106 billion NATO and partner countries have collected to aid in its defense.

    Even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, commitment to its defense is seen by many of the European nations as a must to keep Putin from further military aggression that could threaten bordering NATO-member countries and result in a much larger conflict.

    —-

    Copp reported from Washington.

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  • World leaders gathering in New York for UN General Assembly. The outlook is gloomy

    World leaders gathering in New York for UN General Assembly. The outlook is gloomy

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    UNITED NATIONS — Facing a swirl of conflicts and crises across a fragmented world, leaders attending this week’s annual U.N. gathering are being challenged: Work together — not only on front-burner issues but on modernizing the international institutions born after World War II so they can tackle the threats and problems of the future.

    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued the challenge a year ago after sounding a global alarm about the survival of humanity and the planet: Come to a “Summit of the Future” and make a new commitment to multilateralism – the foundation of the United Nations and many other global bodies – and start fixing the aging global architecture to meet the rapidly changing world.

    The U.N. chief told reporters last week that the summit “was born out of a cold, hard fact: international challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them.” He pointed to “out-of-control geopolitical divisions” and “runaway” conflicts, climate change, inequalities, debt and new technologies like artificial intelligence which have no guardrails.

    The two-day summit starts Sunday, two days before the high-level meeting of world leaders begins at the sprawling U.N. compound in New York City.

    Whether it takes even a first step toward the future remains to be seen. There was no final agreement Saturday on its main outcome document – a lengthy pact that requires support from all 193 U.N. member nations to be adopted. Diplomats said Russia and a few others still had objections to the final text.

    “Leaders must ask themselves whether this will be yet another meeting where they simply talk about greater cooperation and consensus, or whether they will show the imagination and conviction to actually forge it,” said Agnès Callamard, the secretary-general of Amnesty International. “If they miss this opportunity, I shudder to think of the consequences. Our collective future is at stake.”

    The summit is the prelude to this year’s high-level meeting, held every September. More than 130 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs are slated to speak along with dozens of ministers, and the issues at the summit are expected to dominate their speeches and private meetings, especially the wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan and the growing possibility of a wider Mideast war.

    “There is going to be a rather obvious gap between the Summit of the Future, with its focus on expanding international cooperation, and the reality that the U.N. is failing in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group. “Those three wars will be top topics of attention for most of the week.”

    One notable moment at Tuesday’s opening assembly meeting: U.S. President Joe Biden’s likely final major appearance on the world stage, a platform he has tread upon and reveled in for decades.

    At the upcoming meetings, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters this week: “The most vulnerable around the world are counting on us to make progress, to make change, to bring about a sense of hope for them.”

    To meet the many global challenges, she said, the U.S. focus at the U.N. meetings will be on ending “the scourge of war.” Roughly 2 billion people live in conflict-affected areas, she said.

    Last September, the war in Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, took center stage at the U.N. global gathering. But as the first anniversary of Hamas’ deadly attack in southern Israel approaches on Oct. 7, the spotlight is certain to be on the war in Gaza and escalating violence across the Israeli-Lebanon border, which is now threatening to spread to the wider Middle East.

    Iran supports both Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants. Its new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, will address world leaders on Tuesday afternoon. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to speak Thursday morning and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday afternoon.

    Zelenskyy will get the spotlight twice. He will speak Tuesday at a high-level meeting of the U.N. Security Council — called by the United States, France, Japan, Malta, South Korea and Britain — and will address the General Assembly on Wednesday morning.

    Slovenia, which holds the council’s rotating presidency this month, chose the topic “Leadership for Peace” for its high-level meeting Wednesday, challenging its 15 member nations to address why the U.N. body charged with maintaining international peace and security is failing — and how it can do better.

    “The event follows our observation that we live in a world of grim statistics, with the highest number of ongoing conflicts, with record high casualties among civilians, among humanitarians, among medical workers, among journalist,” Slovenian U.N. Ambassador Samuel Zbogar told reporters. He cited a record-high 100 million people driven from their homes by conflict.

    “The world is becoming less stable, less peaceful, and with erosion of the respect for the rules, it is sliding into the state of disorder,” Zbogar said. “We have not seen this high need to rebuild trust to secure the future ever before.”

    A key reason for the Security Council’s dysfunction is the deep division among its five veto-wielding permanent members. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, is a supporter of Ukraine alongside Britain and France. Russia invaded Ukraine and has a military and economic partnership with China, though Beijing reasserted its longstanding support for every country’s sovereignty without criticizing Russia in a recent briefing paper for the U.N. meetings.

    French President Emmanuel Macron and Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, will be at the United Nations this week along with Biden. But Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping are sending their foreign ministers instead. Neither Putin nor Xi attended last year, either.

    Guterres, who will preside over the whole affair this week, warned that the world is seeing “a multiplication of conflicts and the sense of impunity” — a landscape where, he said, “any country or any military entity, militias, whatever, feel that they can do whatever they want because nothing will happen to them.”

    “And the fact that nobody takes even seriously the capacity of the powers to solve problems on the ground,” he said, “makes the level of impunity (on) an enormous level.”

    ___

    Edith M. Lederer, chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press, has covered foreign affairs for more than 50 years.

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  • Thousands of exploding devices in Lebanon trigger a nation that has been on edge for years

    Thousands of exploding devices in Lebanon trigger a nation that has been on edge for years

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    BEIRUT — Chris Knayzeh was in a town overlooking Lebanon’s capital when he heard the rumbling aftershock of the 2020 Beirut port blast. Hundreds of tons of haphazardly stored ammonium nitrates had exploded, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands.

    Already struggling with the country’s economic collapse, the sight of the gigantic mushroom cloud unleashed by the blast was the last straw. Like many other Lebanese, he quit his job and booked a one-way ticket out of Lebanon.

    Knayzeh, now a lecturer at a university in France, was visiting Lebanon when news broke Tuesday of a deadly attack in which thousands of handheld pagers were blowing up in homes, shops, markets and streets across the country. Israel, local news reports said, was targeting the devices of the militant Hezbollah group. Stuck in Beirut traffic, Knayzeh started panicking that drivers around him could potentially be carrying devices that would explode.

    Within minutes, hospitals were flooded with bloodied patients, bringing back painful reminders of the port blast four years ago that left enduring mental and psychological scars for those who lived through it.

    A day later, a similar attack struck walkie-talkies. In total, the explosions killed at least 37 people and injured more than 3,000. Israel is widely believed to be behind the blasts, although it has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.

    “The country’s state is unreal,” Knayzeh told The Associated Press.

    The port blast was one of the biggest nonnuclear explosions ever recorded, and it came on top of a historic economic meltdown, financial collapse and a feeling of helplessness after nationwide protests against corruption that failed to achieve their goals. It compounded years of crises that have upended the lives of people in this small country.

    Four years after the port catastrophe, an investigation has run aground. The ravaged Mediterranean port remains untouched, its towering silos standing broken and shredded as a symbol of a country in ruins. Political divisions and paralysis have left the country without a president or functioning government for more than two years. Poverty is on the rise.

    On top of that and in parallel with the war in Gaza, Lebanon has been on the brink of all-out war with Israel for the past year, with Israel and Hezbollah trading fire across the border and Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier over Beirut almost daily, terrifying people in their homes and offices.

    “I can’t believe this is happening again. How many more disasters can we endure?” asked Jocelyn Hallak, a mother of three, two of whom now work abroad and the third headed out after graduation next year. “All this pain, when will it end?”

    A full-blown war with Israel could be devastating for Lebanon. The country’s crisis-battered health care system had been preparing for the possibility of conflict with Israel even before hospitals became inundated with the wounded from the latest explosions. Most of the injuries received were in the face, eyes and limbs — many of them in critical condition and requiring extended hospital stays.

    Still, Knayzeh, 27, can’t stay away. He returns regularly to see his girlfriend and family. He flinches whenever he hears construction work and other sudden loud sounds. When in France, surrounded by normalcy, he agonizes over family at home while following the ongoing clashes from afar.

    “It’s the attachment to our country I guess, or at the very least attachment to our loved ones who couldn’t leave with us,” he said.

    This summer, tens of thousands of Lebanese expatriates came to visit family and friends despite the tensions. Their remittances and money they spend while there help keep the country afloat and in some cases are the main source of income for families. Many, however, cut their vacations short in chaotic airport scenes, fearing major escalation after the assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas commanders in Beirut and Tehran last month, blamed on Israel.

    Even in a country that has vaulted from one crisis to another for decades, the level of confusion, insecurity and anger is reaching new heights. Many thought the port blast was the most surreal and frightening thing they would ever experience — until thousands of pagers exploded in people’s hands and pockets across the country this week.

    ’’I saw horrific things that day,” said Mohammad al-Mousawi, who was running an errand in Beirut’s southern suburb, where Hezbollah has a strong presence, when the pagers began blowing up.

    “Suddenly, we started seeing scooters whizzing by carrying defaced men, some without fingers, some with their guts spilling out. Then the ambulances started coming.”

    It reminded him of the 2020 port blast, he said. “The number of injuries and ambulances was unbelievable. “

    “One more horror shaping our collective existence,” wrote Maha Yahya, the Beirut-based director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.

    “The shock, the disarray, the trauma is reminiscent of Beirut after the port explosion. Only this time it was not limited to a city but spread across the country,” she said in a social media post.

    In the aftermath of the exploding pagers, fear and paranoia has taken hold. Parents kept their children away from schools and universities, fearing more exploding devices. Organizations including the Lebanese civil defense advised personnel to switch off their devices and remove all batteries until further notice. One woman said she disconnected her baby monitor and other household appliances.

    Lebanon’s civil aviation authorities have banned the transporting of pagers and walkie-talkies on all airplanes departing from Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport “until further notice.” Some residents were sleeping with their phones in another room.

    In the southern city of Tyre, ahead of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, city resident Hassan Hajo acknowledged feeling “a bit depressed” after the pager blasts, a major security breach for a secretive organization like Hezbollah. He was hoping to get a boost from Nasrallah’s speech. “We have been through worse before and we got through it,” he said.

    In his speech, Nasrallah vowed to retaliate against Israel for the attacks on devices, while Israel and Hezbollah traded heavy fire across the border. Israel stepped up warnings of a potential larger military operation targeting the group.

    Another resident, Marwan Mahfouz, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening Lebanon with war for the past year and he should just do it.

    “If we are going to die, we’ll die. We are already dying. We are already dead,” he said.

    ___

    Karam reported from London. Associated Press writer Hassan Ammar contributed to this report.

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  • Leading Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury dies at 76

    Leading Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury dies at 76

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    BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury who dedicated much of his writings to the Palestinian cause and taught at universities around the world, making him one of Lebanon’s most prominent intellectuals, has died. He was 76.

    Khoury, a leading voice of Arab literature, had been ill for months and admitted and discharged from hospital several times over the past year until his death early Sunday, Al-Quds Al-Arabi daily that he worked for said.

    The Lebanese writer, born and raised in Beirut, was outspoken in defense of freedom of speech and harsh criticism of dictatorships in the Middle East.

    In addition to his novels, Khoury wrote articles in different Arab media outlets over the past five decades making him well known throughout the Arab world.

    Two days after the Israel-Hamas war broke out on Oct. 7, Khoury wrote an article in Al-Quds A-Arab daily titled “It’s Palestine.” Khoury wrote then that “the biggest open-air prison, the besieged Ghetto of Gaza, has launched a war against Israel, occupied settlements and forced settlers to flee.”

    Born in Beirut on July 12, 1948, Khoury had been known for his political stances from his support of Palestinians to his harsh criticism of Israel and what he called its “brutal” settling policy in Palestinian territories. He studied at the Lebanese University and later at the University of Paris, where he received a PhD in social history.

    “The Catastrophe began in 1948 and it is still going on,” he once wrote referring to Israel’s settlement policies in occupied Palestinian territories. The “nakba,” or “catastrophe” is a term used by many Arabs to describe the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians when Israel was created in 1948.

    Khoury was an outspoken supporter of Arab uprisings that broke out in the region starting in 2011 and toppled several governments.

    “The question is not why the Arab revolts broke out,” Khoury wrote after uprisings that toppled long-serving leaders such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. “The question is not how people tore down the wall of fear but how fear built Arab kingdoms of silence for five decades.”

    Khoury, who belonged to a Greek Orthodox Christian family, took part in Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war and was wounded in one of the battles.

    From 1992 until 2009, Khoury was the editor of the cultural section of Lebanon’s leading An-Nahar newspaper. Until his death, he was the editor-in-chief of the Palestine Studies magazine, a bulletin issued by the Beirut-based Institute for Palestine Studies.

    His first novel was published in 1975, but his second, Little Mountain, which he released in 1977 and was about Lebanon’s devastating civil war was very successful.

    Bab al-Shams, or Gate of the Sun, released in 2000, was about Palestinian refugees in Lebanon since 1948. A movie about the novel was made in Egypt.

    His novels were translated to several languages including Hebrew.

    Khoury also taught at different universities including New York University, Columbia, Princeton and Houston, as well as the University of London.

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  • Israel-Hamas war latest: Israeli airstrikes kill 16 in Gaza, including 4 children, Palestinians say

    Israel-Hamas war latest: Israeli airstrikes kill 16 in Gaza, including 4 children, Palestinians say

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    Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes have killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip, including five women and four children.

    A strike early Monday flattened a home in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 10 people, including four women and two children.

    The Awda Hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the toll and said another 13 people were wounded. Hospital records show that the dead included a mother, her child and her five siblings.

    Another strike on a home in Gaza City killed six people, including a woman and two children, according to the Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government.

    Israel says it only targets militants and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

    The Gaza Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war nearly a year ago. It does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count but says a little over half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

    ___

    Here’s the latest:

    JERUSALEM — Israel’s defense minister has told his U.S. counterpart that time is running out for an agreement with Hezbollah to halt the fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border.

    Yoav Gallant told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that “the possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas.”

    “The trajectory is clear,” Gallant added, according to a statement released from his office on Monday.

    Hezbollah began firing rockets and drones into northern Israel after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, which was ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Both armed groups are allied with Iran, and Hezbollah says it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians.

    Israel has responded to the attacks with airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders. It has threatened a wider operation, raising fears of another all-out war.

    Hezbollah has said it will halt its attacks if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, but months of talks brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have repeatedly stalled.

    Hamas has demanded a lasting cease-fire and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza as part of any agreement to release the scores of hostages it still holds from the Oct. 7 attack.

    Gallant told Austin that “in any possible scenario, Israel’s defense establishment will continue to operate with the aim of dismantling Hamas and ensuring the return of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza — by any means.”

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  • EU top diplomat urges Lebanon and Israel to ease tensions along their border

    EU top diplomat urges Lebanon and Israel to ease tensions along their border

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    BEIRUT — The European Union’s top diplomat on Thursday urged Lebanon and Israel to work on deescalating tensions along the border, saying that since his last trip to the region in January “the drums of war have not stopped pounding.”

    The comments of Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, came as members of the militant Hezbollah group and Israel’s military carried out cross border attacks along the tense frontier on Thursday.

    Western and Arab officials have visited Beirut over the past year to try to reduce tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border, but Hezbollah officials have said they will only stop carrying out attacks along the border when Israel stops its offensive in the Gaza Strip.

    “Since I lasted visited Lebanon in January the drums of war have not stopped pounding,” Borrell told reporters in Beirut during a joint press conference with Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib. “Since then the fears I was outlining have been growing, more escalation, fears of a spillover of the war in Gaza and fears of more widespread human suffering.”

    In late August, Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah pulled back after an exchange of heavy fire that briefly raised fears of an all-out war.

    Borrell said that according to the United Nations more than 4,000 residential buildings have been completely destroyed in Lebanon and more than 110,000 Lebanese have been forced to leave their homes along the border. He said the same thing is happening on the Israeli side of the border.

    The European official said that his message is that the European Union “stands on the side of the Lebanese people to help to overcome the threats and challenges as much as we can.”

    More than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since Oct. 8, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups but also more than 100 civilians. In northern Israel, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed by strikes from Lebanon.

    “We need to deescalate military tensions and I use this opportunity to urge all sides to pursue this path,” said Borrell, who on Tuesday visited U.N. peacekeepers deployed in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel.

    He added that the “full and asymmetrical implementation” of the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the summer 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war should pave the way for a comprehensive settlement including land border demarcation and allowing the return of people and reconstruction in the affected border areas.

    “The European Union is doing a lot but we don’t have a magic wand,” he said.

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  • Takeaways from AP’s report on Russian and U.S. influence in Central African Republic

    Takeaways from AP’s report on Russian and U.S. influence in Central African Republic

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    BANGUI, Central African Republic — In the wake of Russian mercenary leaderYevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion, a deal was struck between a private U.S. security firm and Central African Republic, a nation where his shadowy Wagner Group has long been a fixture. The move sparked backlash and tensions – a window into a larger battle playing out across the continent as Moscow and Washington vie for influence.

    The Russian mercenaries — using success in staving off rebels in the impoverished nation of Central African Republic as a model for expansion — have long been plagued by their human-rights record and other accusations of wrongdoing.

    Since Prigozhin’s suspicious death in a plane crash, the Russians have been working to recalibrate their Africa operations. The U.S., which has been largely disengaged from the region for years, is attempting to maintain a presence and stymie Russian gains as it pushes African countries to distance themselves from the mercenaries.

    Here are some takeaways from AP’s report on the issue.

    In recent years, Russia emerged as the security partner of choice for a growing number of governments in the region, displacing traditional allies such as France and the U.S.

    Moscow aggressively expanded its military cooperation by using mercenaries like Wagner, who have operated in at least half a dozen countries since around 2017. They’re tasked with protecting African leaders and in some cases helping fight rebels and extremists.

    They’re also beset by their human-rights record. In Central African Republic, mercenaries train the army on torture tactics, including how to cut hands and burn people alive, according to watchdog The Sentry.

    Central African Republic was one of the first places the mercenaries entered. The country has been in conflict since 2013, when predominantly Muslim rebels seized power and forced the president from office. A 2019 peace deal hasn’t fully stopped the fighting. Locals and the government credited Wagner with fighting back rebels who tried to overtake Bangui, the capital, in 2021. The Russians soon expanded to Burkina Faso and Niger.

    Russia is refurbishing a military base some 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Bangui. Alexander Bikantov, Russia’s ambassador to Central African Republic, said the base will improve the country’s security.

    Fidele Gouandjika, adviser to President Faustin-Archange Touadera, said the base aims to have 10,000 fighters by 2030 to engage with more African nations.

    The U.S. had been pushing Central African Republic to find an alternative to Wagner for years. A December 2022 private meeting sought ways to improve security without the mercenaries but yielded little tangible progress, according to a U.S. official who is familiar with the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity due to the privacy of ongoing discussions.

    Still, the State Department said in a statement early this year that it wasn’t involved in the decision to establish Bancroft Global Development’s presence in Central African Republic.

    “If the U.S. can’t regain a foothold, it could give Russia greater economic and political leverage,” said Samuel Ramani of the Royal United Services Institute, a defense and security think tank. “If Russia loses Central African Republic, its flagship model on the continent, there could be a domino effect in other countries.”

    Washington-based Bancroft is a nonprofit working in nine countries — five in Africa. Its longest-standing presence is in Somalia, where it’s operated for more than 15 years, in part training troops to fight the militant group al-Shabab.

    Much of Bancroft’s overall funding has come from U.S. and United Nations grants.

    Amal Ali, former U.S. intelligence analyst, is among some experts who criticize Bancroft’s work, calling out a lack of progress in Somalia. Despite a yearslong presence, Ali said, Bancroft hasn’t contributed to any real eradication of terrorism.

    Stock dismissed such comments as uninformed and said the Somali and U.S. governments “agree Bancroft has done a great deal.”

    Bancroft’s involvement in Central African Republic has been shrouded in secrecy since signs emerged last fall.

    During a visit by AP, rumors swirled about Bancroft’s activities, fueling speculation the U.S was bringing its own Wagner to oust Russia.

    But according to Bancroft founder Michael Stock, the group entered at Bangui’s behest.

    In his first interview since Bancroft began operating there, Stock told The Associated Press that President Touadera felt his Russian partners were “underperforming and distracted.”

    Touadera thought diversifying partners would prompt Russia to get in line and give the Americans what they wanted, Stock said.

    The two signed a deal in September, he said.

    Fewer than 30 Bancroft personnel work there, Stock said, helping with intelligence systems, interagency cooperation and law enforcement.

    In months following the Bancroft deal in Central African Republic, aggression toward Americans and U.S. entities continued. Several American citizens were detained and had their passports confiscated, a diplomat who dealt with their cases said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to speak to reporters.

    Presidential adviser Gouandjika said the government has no problem with Americans and those denied entry lacked proper paperwork.

    Also, rare anti-American protests erupted outside the U.S. embassy in Bangui, and local youths formed the Committee to Investigate U.S. Activities to monitor Bancroft’s movements.

    As the U.S. and Russia jockey for power, African governments say they want to make their own choices.

    Central African Republic officials approached Bancroft, which shows that these governments haven’t become Russian puppets, said Jack Margolin, an expert on private military companies.

    But, he added, Russia’s reaction to Bancroft could hurt Moscow’s standing with other nations.

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  • A Palestinian team in Chile offers soccer with a heavy dose of protest

    A Palestinian team in Chile offers soccer with a heavy dose of protest

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    SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Arms raised high. Banners denouncing the war in Gaza. Crowds united in song and wrapped in keffiyehs, the black-and-white checkered scarves that have become a badge of Palestinian identity.

    It could have been any other pro-Palestinian rally erupting over the Israel-Hamas war if it weren’t for the fact that these thousands of protesters were actually soccer fans at a league match in Santiago, the capital of Chile.

    Club Palestino supporters watch a local league match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

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    A Club Palestino fan wears a keffiyeh during a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

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    Club Palestino soccer team fans watch their team’s game with Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

    Although the players darting across the field had names like José and Antonio and grew up in a Spanish-speaking South American nation, their fervor for the Palestinian cause and red, white, black and green-colored jerseys underscored how Chile’s storied soccer club serves as an entry point for the world’s largest Palestinian community outside the Middle East to connect with an ancestral home thousands of miles away.

    “It’s more than just a club, it takes you into the history of the Palestinians,” said Bryan Carrasco, captain of Chile’s legendary Club Deportivo Palestino.

    As the bloodiest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rages in the Gaza Strip, the club’s electric game atmosphere, viewing parties and pre-match political stunts have increasingly tapped into a sense of collective Palestinian grief in this new era of war and displacement.

    “We’re united in the face of the war,” said Diego Khamis, director of the country’s Palestinian community. “It’s daily suffering.”

    Image

    Club Palestino soccer team fans celebrate their second goal against Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

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    A Club Palestino player wears socks with an outline of territory Palestinians claim as theirs during a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

    In a sport where authorities penalize athletes for flaunting political positions, particularly on such explosive issues as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Club Palestino is an unabashed exception that wears its pro-Palestinian politics on its sleeve — and on its torso, stadium seats and anywhere else it can find.

    The club’s brazen gestures have caused offense before. Chile’s Football Federation fined the club in 2014 after the number “1” on the back of their shirts was shaped as a map of Palestine before Israel’s creation in 1948.

    But players’ fierce pride in their Palestinian identity has otherwise caused little controversy in this country of 19 million, home to 500,000 ethnic Palestinians.

    “It’s our roots and it feels like home,” said Jaime Barakat, a Palestino fan and shawarma vendor.

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    Club Palestino soccer team fans watch their team play Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

    Leftist President Gabriel Boric, who called Israel a “genocidal, murderous state” on the campaign trail in 2021, has harshly criticized Israel’s campaign in Gaza. His government recalled the Israeli ambassador and joined South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice — allegations that Israel denies.

    Israel has pushed back, castigating Chile for what it sees as an insufficient response to Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people and led to the abduction of 250 others.

    The country’s small Jewish population of 16,000 is unsettled. “Boric, who frequently speaks of peace, has imported the Middle East conflict to Chile,” the Jewish Community of Chile said in a statement.

    Chile’s Palestinians say the Mideast conflict was imported decades before Boric, spurring waves of displacement that forged the surprising history of Arab immigration to this Pacific coast nation from the late 1800s as the Ottoman Empire crumbled and the Zionist movement took root.

    In 1920, the League of Nations approved the British Mandate of Palestine, unleashing tensions over Britain’s Balfour Declaration that promised historic Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people. More Palestinians crossed the Atlantic and braved treks across the Andes by mule to reach far-flung Chile. That same year, Club Palestino was created by a group of Palestinian soccer enthusiasts who gathered one winter day in Chile’s southern city of Osorno.

    “My father told me they came here because there were more possibilities,” said 90-year-old Juan Sabaj Dhimes in Patronato, a historically Palestinian neighborhood in the capital, with its coffee shops and hookah bars splashed in the colors of the Palestinian national flag and plastered with Palestino club crests.

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    A Club Palestino fan waves a Palestinian flag during a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

    Chile’s Palestinian community exploded after the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation — in which more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were pushed from their homes in what Arabs call the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” and dispersed all over the world.

    Chile was then an upwardly mobile nation among poorer neighbors seeking to attract migrants to populate the country. Palestinian descendants say the arid land, coastal desert and fresh figs and olives conjured an earlier generation’s nostalgia for historic Palestine.

    “The climate is one of the things that most captivated the Palestinians who arrived,” said Mauricio Abu-Ghosh, former president of Chile’s Palestinian Federation.

    The scrappy soccer club went professional in 1947, becoming the pride of the community. Rocketing to Chile’s top division and clinching five official titles, its appeal soon stretched to the Middle East, where the descendants of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan still congregate in camps and cafes to catch Palestino matches broadcast by satellite network Al Jazeera.

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    Club Palestino’s Nicolas Linares plays in a local league soccer match against Santiago Wanderers at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

    The team’s political message also won supporters across Chile — a soccer-crazed country with a spirit of social activism and an ex-protest leader as president — and beyond.

    Despite of being a small soccer club, with an average of only about 2,000 spectators per game, Deportivo Palestino — winner of five official titles and a regular fixture in continental tournaments — is the third most followed Chilean club on Instagram, with more than 741,000 followers, only behind eternal rivals Universidad de Chile (791,000) and Colo-Colo (2.3 million).

    “They tell us about the violence suffered by their people,” said 20-year-old Chilean fan Luis Torres at Palestino’s home stadium in Santiago. “It makes me angry, sad, so we’re here to bring a bit of joy.”

    Joy has been harder to come by in the Palestinian diaspora since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered Israel’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 40,000 Palestinians and spawned a humanitarian catastrophe.

    Image

    Club Palestino soccer team fans celebrate their second goal against Santiago Wanderers at a local league match at La Cisterna stadium in Santiago, Chile, Friday, July 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Basualdo)

    Palestinians streaming out of church in Patronato on a recent Sunday said they had prayed for the safety of their families in Gaza. “We all have cousins, siblings, grandparents who still live there,” said Khamis.

    The war has wrenched Palestino, forcing the club’s training school in Gaza to shut down and disrupting programs it supports across the occupied West Bank.

    But within Chile it has breathed new life into players and fans. Before kickoff, the team now rushes the pitch clad in keffiyehs, brandishing anti-war banners and taking a knee.

    In May the team abandoned one little pre-match ritual of emerging on the field holding hands with child mascots. Instead, players extended their arms to the side, grasping at empty space.

    It was a subtle gesture — a tribute to the “invisible children” killed in Gaza, the team later explained — that could have been lost entirely on ordinary soccer fans.

    This crowd, however, went wild. ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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  • Chased away by Israeli settlers, these Palestinians returned to a village in ruins

    Chased away by Israeli settlers, these Palestinians returned to a village in ruins

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    KHIRBET ZANUTA, West Bank — An entire Palestinian community fled their tiny West Bank village last fall after repeated threats from Israeli settlers with a history of violence. Then, in a rare endorsement of Palestinian land rights, Israel’s highest court ruled this summer the displaced residents of Khirbet Zanuta were entitled to return under the protection of Israeli forces.

    But their homecoming has been bittersweet. In the intervening months, nearly all the houses in the village, a health clinic and a school were destroyed — along with the community’s sense of security in the remote desert land where they have farmed and herded sheep for decades.

    Roughly 40% of former residents have so far chosen not to return. The 150 or so that have come back are sleeping outside the ruins of their old homes. They say they are determined to rebuild – and to stay – even as settlers once again try to intimidate them into leaving and a court order prevents them from any new construction.

    “There is joy, but there are some drawbacks,” said Fayez Suliman Tel, the head of the village council and one of the first to come back to see the ransacked village – roofs seemingly blown off buildings, walls defaced by graffiti.

    “The situation is extremely miserable,” Tel said, “but despite that, we are steadfast and staying in our land, and God willing, this displacement will not be repeated.”

    The Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank said in a statement to The Associated Press it had not received any claims of Israeli vandalism of the village, and that it was taking measures to “ensure security and public order” during the villagers’ return.

    “The Palestinians erected a number of structural components illegally at the place, and in that regard enforcement proceedings were undertaken in accordance with law,” the statement said.

    The villagers of Khirbet Zanuta had long faced harassment and violence from settlers. But after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that launched the war in Gaza, they said they received explicit death threats from Israelis living in an unauthorized outpost up the hill called Meitarim Farm. The outpost is run by Yinon Levi, who has been sanctioned by the U.S., UK, EU and Canada for menacing his Palestinian neighbors.

    The villagers say they reported the threats and attacks to Israeli police, but said they got little help. Fearing for their lives, at the end of October, they packed up whatever they could carry and left.

    Though settler violence had been rising even before the war under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it has been turbocharged ever since Oct. 7. More than 1,500 Palestinians have been displaced by settler violence since then, according to the United Nations, and very few have returned home.

    Khirbet Zanuta stands as a rare example. It is unclear if any other displaced community has been granted a court’s permission to return since the start of the war.

    Even though residents have legal protection Israel’s highest court, they still have to contend with Levi and other young men from the Meitarim Farm outpost trying to intimidate them.

    Shepherd Fayez Fares Al Samareh, 57, said he returned to Khirbet Zanuta two weeks ago to find that his house had been bulldozed by settlers. The men of his family have joined him in bringing their flocks back home, he said, but conditions in the village are grave.

    “The children have not returned and the women as well. Where will they stay? Under the sun?” he said.

    Settler surveillance continues: Al Samareh said that every Friday and Saturday, settlers arrive to the village, photographing residents.

    Videos taken by human rights activists and obtained by The Associated Press show settlers roaming around Khirbet Zanuta last month, taking pictures of residents as Israeli police look on.

    By displacing small villages, rights groups say West Bank settlers like Levi are able to accumulate vast swaths of land, reshaping the map of the occupied territory that Palestinians hope to include in their homeland as part of any two-state solution.

    The plight of Khirbet Zanuta is also an example of the limited effectiveness of international sanctions as a means of reducing settler violence in the West Bank. The U.S. recently targeted Hashomer Yosh, a government-funded group that sends volunteers to work on West Bank farms, both legal and illegal, with sanctions. Hashomer Yosh sent volunteers to Levi’s outpost, a Nov. 13 Facebook post said.

    “After all 250 Palestinian residents of Khirbet Zanuta were forced to leave, Hashomer Yosh volunteers fenced off the village to prevent the residents from returning,” a U.S. State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said last week.

    Neither Hashomer Yosh nor Levi responded to a request for comment on intrusions into the village since residents returned. But Levi claimed in a June interview with AP that the land was his, and admitted to taking part in clearing it of Palestinians, though he denied doing so violently.

    “Little by little, you feel when you drive on the roads that everyone is closing in on you,” he said at the time. “They’re building everywhere, wherever they want. So you want to do something about it.”

    The legal rights guaranteed to Khirbet Zanuta’s residents only go so far. Under the terms of the court ruling that allowed them to return, they are forbidden from building new structures across the roughly 1 square kilometer village. The land, the court ruled, is part of an archaeological zone, so any new structures are at risk of demolition.

    Distraught but not deterred, the villagers are repairing badly damaged homes, the health clinic and the EU-funded school — by whom, they do not know for sure.

    “We will renovate these buildings so that they are qualified to receive students before winter sets in,” Khaled Doudin, the governor of the Hebron region that includes Khirbet Zanuta, said as he stood in the bulldozed school.

    “And after that we will continue to rehabilitate it,” he said, “so that we do not give the occupation the opportunity to demolish it again.”

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  • Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim they shot down another US MQ-9 drone

    Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim they shot down another US MQ-9 drone

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    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed early Sunday they shot down another American-made MQ-9 drone flying over the country, marking potentially the latest downing of the multimillion-dollar surveillance aircraft. The U.S. responded with airstrikes over Houthi-controlled territory, the rebels said.

    The U.S. military told The Associated Press it was aware of the claim but has “received no reports” of American military drones being downed over Yemen.

    The rebels offered no pictures or video to support the claim as they have in the past, though such material can appear in propaganda footage days later.

    However, the Houthis have repeatedly downed General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper drones in the years since they seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014. Those attacks have exponentially increased since the start of the Israel-Hamas war and the Houthis launched their campaign targeting shipping in the Red Sea corridor.

    Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree made the claim in a prerecorded video message. He said the Houthis shot down the drone over Yemen’s Marib province, a long-contested area home to key oil and gas fields that’s been held by allies of a Saudi-led coalition battling the rebels since 2015.

    Saree offered no details on how the rebels down the aircraft. However, Iran has armed the rebels with a surface-to-air missile known as the 358 for years. Iran denies arming the rebels, though Tehran-manufactured weaponry has been found on the battlefield and in seaborne shipments heading to Yemen despite a United Nations arms embargo.

    The Houthis “continue to perform their jihadist duties in victory for the oppressed Palestinian people and in defense of dear Yemen,” Saree said.

    Reapers, which cost around $30 million apiece, can fly at altitudes up to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) and have an endurance of up to 24 hours before needing to land. The aircraft have been flown by both the U.S. military and the CIA over Yemen for years.

    After the claim, the Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel reported multiple U.S.-led airstrikes near the city of Ibb. The U.S. military did not immediately acknowledge the strikes, but the Americans have been striking Houthi targets intensely since January.

    The Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels as well.

    The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

    Those attacks include the barrage that struck the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion in the Red Sea. Salvagers last week abandoned an initial effort to tow away the burning oil tanker, leaving the Sounion stranded and its 1 million barrels of oil at risk of spilling.

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  • China-linked ‘Spamouflage’ network mimics Americans to sway US political debate

    China-linked ‘Spamouflage’ network mimics Americans to sway US political debate

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    WASHINGTON — When he first emerged on social media, the user known as Harlan claimed to be a New Yorker and an Army veteran who supported Donald Trump for president. Harlan said he was 29, and his profile picture showed a smiling, handsome young man.

    A few months later, Harlan underwent a transformation. Now, he claimed to be 31 and from Florida.

    New research into Chinese disinformation networks targeting American voters shows Harlan’s claims were as fictitious as his profile picture, which analysts think was created using artificial intelligence.

    As voters prepare to cast their ballots this fall, China has been making its own plans, cultivating networks of fake social media users designed to mimic Americans. Whoever or wherever he really is, Harlan is a small part of a larger effort by U.S. adversaries to use social media to influence and upend America’s political debate.

    The account was traced back to Spamouflage, a Chinese disinformation group, by analysts at Graphika, a New York-based firm that tracks online networks. Known to online researchers for several years, Spamouflage earned its moniker through its habit of spreading large amounts of seemingly unrelated content alongside disinformation.

    “One of the world’s largest covert online influence operations — an operation run by Chinese state actors — has become more aggressive in its efforts to infiltrate and to sway U.S. political conversations ahead of the election,” Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer, told The Associated Press.

    Intelligence and national security officials have said that Russia, China and Iran have all mounted online influence operations targeting U.S. voters ahead of the November election. Russia remains the top threat, intelligence officials say, even as Iran has become more aggressive in recent months, covertly supporting U.S. protests against the war in Gaza and attempting to hack into the email systems of the two presidential candidates.

    China, however, has taken a more cautious, nuanced approach. Beijing sees little advantage in supporting one presidential candidate over the other, intelligence analysts say. Instead, China’s disinformation efforts focus on campaign issues particularly important to Beijing — such as American policy toward Taiwan — while seeking to undermine confidence in elections, voting and the U.S. in general.

    Officials have said it’s a longer-term effort that will continue well past Election Day as China and other authoritarian nations try to use the internet to erode support for democracy.

    Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu rejected Graphika’s findings as full of “prejudice and malicious speculation” and said “China has no intention and will not interfere” in the election.

    Compared with armed conflict or economic sanctions, online influence operations can be a low-cost, low-risk means of flexing geopolitical power. Given the increasing reliance on digital communications, the use of online disinformation and fake information networks is only likely to increase, said Max Lesser, senior analyst for emerging threats at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a national security think tank in Washington.

    “We’re going to see a widening of the playing field when it comes to influence operations, where it’s not just Russia, China and Iran but you also see smaller actors getting involved,” Lesser said.

    That list could include not only nations but also criminal organizations, domestic extremist groups and terrorist organizations, Lesser said.

    When analysts first noticed Spamouflage five years ago, the network tended to post generically pro-China, anti-American content. In recent years, the tone sharpened as Spamouflage expanded and began focusing on divisive political topics like gun control, crime, race relations and support for Israel during its war in Gaza. The network also began creating large numbers of fake accounts designed to mimic American users.

    Spamouflage accounts don’t post much original content, instead using platforms like X or TikTok to recycle and repost content from far-right and far-left users. Some of the accounts seemed designed to appeal to Republicans, while others cater to Democrats.

    While Harlan’s accounts succeeded in getting traction — one video mocking President Joe Biden was seen 1.5 million times — many of the accounts created by the Spamouflage campaign did not. It’s a reminder that online influence operations are often a numbers game: the more accounts, the more content, the better the chance that one specific post goes viral.

    Many of the accounts newly linked to Spamouflage took pains to pose as Americans, sometimes in obvious ways. “I am an American,” one of the accounts proclaimed. Some of the accounts gave themselves away by using stilted English or strange word choices. Some were clumsier than others: “Broken English, brilliant brain, I love Trump,” read the biographical section of one account.

    Harlan’s profile picture, which Graphika researchers believe was created using AI, was identical to one used in an earlier account linked to Spamouflage. Messages sent to the person operating Harlan’s accounts were not returned.

    Several of the accounts linked to Spamouflage remain active on TikTok and X.

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  • Could mass protests in Israel over the hostages persuade Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire deal?

    Could mass protests in Israel over the hostages persuade Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire deal?

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    TEL AVIV, Israel — Israelis were plunged into grief and anger this weekend after the military said six hostages were killed by their captors in Gaza just as troops were closing in on their location. The rage sparked massive protests and a general strike — the most intense domestic pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the start of the war nearly 11 months ago.

    Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the mounting number of dead hostages and are calling for a cease-fire agreement to free the remaining roughly 100 captives — even if that means ending the conflict. Sunday’s demonstrations were the largest show of support for a hostage deal since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel and kidnapped 250 people.

    But Netanyahu has faced fierce pressure to reach a cease-fire agreement before, from key governing partners to top security officials and even Israel’s most important international ally, the U.S. Yet a deal to wind down the war in Gaza remains elusive.

    Here’s a look at how the public outcry in Israel could affect Netanyahu’s next moves in the war:

    Throughout the war, critics have claimed Netanyahu has put his political survival above all else, including the fate of the hostages. His rule relies on support from two ultranationalist parties that were once at the fringes of Israeli politics but now hold key positions in government.

    Headed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, they oppose any deal that ends the war or sets free Palestinian prisoners convicted of killing Israelis. They have vowed to topple the government should Netanyahu agree to a cease-fire — a step that would trigger elections that could remove Netanyahu from office.

    “What he cares about is his political survival,” said Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. “His political survival with Ben-Gvir and Smotrich doesn’t allow him to end the war and bring back the hostages.”

    Netanyahu blames Hamas for the lack of a deal.

    Looming over the prime minister is also his ongoing trial on corruption charges. If Netanyahu is voted out of power, he will lose his platform to rail against the judicial system, which he accuses of being biased. He also wouldn’t be able to move ahead with his government’s planned changes to the legal system that critics say could affect the trial and help him avoid a conviction.

    Netanyahu says he has the country’s best interests in mind and insists that the military operation in Gaza is the best way to bring about the hostages’ freedom. He also wants any deal to keep Israeli troops in two strips of land in Gaza, and reaffirmed his insistence that he will never agree to a withdrawal from one of those areas on Monday.

    Hamas has rejected those demands as dealbreakers — and the condition has prompted clashes with Netanyahu’s own defense minister, who says a deal that frees the hostages should be a priority.

    As the toll of the war in Gaza has mounted — with tens of thousands killed and whole swaths of the territory decimated — Israel has become increasingly isolated internationally. On Monday, when asked if Netanyahu was doing enough to negotiate a deal, U.S. President Joe Biden responded, “No.”

    Biden, who has never seen eye to eye with the Israeli leader even though their nations are close allies, has grown increasingly critical of his counterpart’s leadership. But the timing on Monday’s remark was particularly pointed, coming as it did after the demonstrations and outpouring of grief for the hostages.

    Many Israelis accuse Netanyahu of obstructing a deal to stay in power and say that by not ending the war, he is putting the lives of the hostages in danger.

    “Hamas was the one that pulled the trigger, but Netanyahu is the one who sentenced (the hostages) to death,” said an editorial Sunday in the liberal daily Haaretz.

    Israel has seen weekly protests in solidarity with the hostages since the start of the war. But over time, as Israelis have tried to return to a semblance of normalcy or have been preoccupied by fears of a regional war with Iran or the militant group Hezbollah, the protests have dwindled in size. That has eased pressure on Netanyahu and talks toward a deal have repeatedly fizzled.

    But on Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people poured into central Tel Aviv, banging drums and chanting “Deal, now!” About 100 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza, roughly a third of them said to be dead. Israel and Hamas have been mulling a three-phased proposal that would set them free and end the war.

    It was the largest demonstration Israel has seen at least since before the war, when Israelis took the streets weekly to protest a plan by Netanyahu to overhaul the judiciary. While the protests coupled with a general strike prompted Netanyahu and his government to walk back or soften some decisions, the overhaul was only put on hold when the war broke out.

    The current public outcry has its limits. Sunday’s protest failed to break longstanding political boundaries and appeared to be largely made up of the same liberal, secular Israelis who protested the overhaul and against Netanyahu’s leadership while on trial for alleged corruption. Many of Netanyahu’s supporters say relenting on any position in talks now after the deaths of the six hostages would signal to Hamas that it can reap rewards from such violence.

    Similarly, Monday’s strike reflected those same political divisions. Liberal municipalities in central Israel, including Tel Aviv, joined the strike, leading to public daycares and kindergartens closing as well as other services. But other cities, mostly with conservative and religious populations that tend to support Netanyahu, including Jerusalem, did not join the strike. And a labor court cut the strike short by several hours, hobbling its efficacy.

    Without large sustained protests across a broader swath of society, it’s hard to see how Netanyahu will feel enough pressure to change his approach, said Hazan, the political scientist. And so long as his government is stable, he may stick to his demands in the negotiations to appease his coalition and ignore the protests entirely.

    Still, relatives of the hostages found killed in Gaza expressed hope that the protests marked a turning point in the war that might force progress on a deal.

    In a eulogy for Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American who became one of the most high-profile captives, his father spoke of the emotional resonance the deaths might have.

    “For 330 days, mama and I sought the proverbial stone that we could turn over to save you,” Jon Polin said. “Maybe, just maybe, your death is the stone, the fuel, that will bring home the remaining” hostages.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed from Washington.

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  • UK says it’s suspending some arms exports to Israel over the risk of breaking international law

    UK says it’s suspending some arms exports to Israel over the risk of breaking international law

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    LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government said Monday that it’s suspending exports of some weapons to Israel because they could be used to break international law — a move with limited military impact intended to increase pressure by Israel’s frustrated allies for an end to the war in Gaza.

    Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the U.K. government had concluded there is a “clear risk” some items could be used to “commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.”

    He told lawmakers the decision related to about 30 of 350 existing export licenses for equipment “that we assess is for use in the current conflict in Gaza,” including parts for military planes, helicopters and drones, along with items used for ground targeting.

    The decision wasn’t “a determination of innocence or guilt” about whether Israel had broken international law, and wasn’t an arms embargo, he said.

    Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on X: “Deeply disheartened to learn of the sanctions placed by the U.K. Government on export licenses to Israel’s defense establishment.

    The United Kingdom is among a number of Israel’s longstanding allies whose governments are under growing pressure to halt weapons exports because of the toll of the nearly 11-month-old conflict in Gaza. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians in its toll.

    The war broke out on Oct. 7 after Hamas militants and others stormed into Israel and killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 people hostage. Roughly 100 hostages remain in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

    British firms sell a relatively small amount of weapons and components to Israel compared to major suppliers such as the U.S. and Germany. Earlier this year, the government said military exports to Israel amounted to 42 million pounds ($53 million) in 2022.

    But the U.K. is one of Israel’s closest allies, so the decision carries some symbolic significance. The military affairs correspondent for Israel’s Channel 13 TV said that the move could become more serious if other allies follow suit.

    Sam Perlo-Freeman, research coordinator for the group Campaign Against Arms Trade, said that the announcement was “a belated, but welcome move.” But he said that it was “outrageous and unjustifiable” that parts for F-35 fighter jets weren’t among the exports being suspended.

    The government move comes after two groups, Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq and the U.K.-based Global Legal Action Network, filed a legal challenge aimed at forcing the U.K. to stop granting any licenses for arms exports to Israel. The case has yet to go to a full court hearing.

    Dearbhla Minogue, senior lawyer for the Global Legal Action Network, said the government’s “momentous decision vindicates everything Palestinians have been saying for months.”

    The U.K.’s center-left Labour government under Starmer, elected in July, has faced pressure from some of its own members and lawmakers to apply more pressure on Israel to stop the violence. In the election, the party lost several seats it had been expected to win to pro-Palestinian independents after Starmer initially refused to call for a cease-fire following Israel’s retaliation after Oct. 7.

    In a departure from the stance of its Conservative predecessor, Starmer’s government said in July that the U.K. will not intervene in the International Criminal Court’s request for an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    Starmer also restored funding for U.N. Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, which had been suspended by Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government in January.

    Lammy, who has visited Israel twice in the past two months as part of Western efforts to push for a cease-fire, said that he was a Zionist and “friend of Israel,” but called the violence in Gaza “horrifying.”

    “Israel’s actions in Gaza continue to lead to immense loss of civilian life, widespread destruction to civilian infrastructure, and immense suffering,” he said.

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  • Russia says it downed over 150 drones in one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks of the war

    Russia says it downed over 150 drones in one of the biggest Ukrainian drone attacks of the war

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    Russian air defenses intercepted and destroyed 158 Ukrainian drones overnight, including two over Moscow and nine over the surrounding region, the Defense Ministry said Sunday.

    Forty-six of the drones were over the Kursk region, where Ukraine has sent its forces in recent weeks in the largest incursion on Russian soil since World War II. A further 34 were shot over the Bryansk region, 28 over the Voronezh region, and 14 over the Belgorod region — all of which border Ukraine.

    Drones were also shot down deeper into Russia, including one each in the Tver region, northwest of Moscow, and the Ivanovo region, northeast of the Russian capital. Russia’s Defense Ministry said drones were intercepted over 15 regions, while one other governor said a drone was shot down over his region, too.

    Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that falling debris from one of the two drones shot down over the city caused a fire at an oil refinery.

    Ukrainian drone strikes have brought the fight far from the front line into the heart of Russia. Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has stepped up aerial assaults on Russian soil, targeting refineries and oil terminals to slow down the Kremlin’s assault.

    Also in Russia, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said nine people were wounded in Ukrainian aerial missile attacks in the Russian border region of Belgorod on Sunday. These included eight in the regional capital, also called Belgorod.

    Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday it had taken control of the towns of Pivnichne and Vyimka, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claim.

    Russian forces have been driving deeper into the partly occupied eastern region, the total capture of which is one of the Kremlin’s primary ambitions. Russia’s army is closing in on Pokrovsk, a critical logistics hub for the Ukrainian defense in the area.

    At least three people were killed and nine wounded on Sunday in Russian shelling in the town of Kurakhove, some 20 miles (33 kilometers) south of Pokrovsk, Donetsk regional Gov. Vadym Filashkin said.

    In Ukraine overnight, eight drones were shot down out of 11 launched by Russia, according to the Ukrainian air force.

    One person was killed and four wounded in shelling overnight in the Sumy region, local officials said, while Kharkiv Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said five people were wounded in his region. On Sunday, 41 more were wounded when Russia shelled the regional capital, also called Kharkiv, Syniehubov said.

    Syniehubov said a shopping center, a sports facility and residential buildings were among those damaged in Sunday’s attack.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Ukraine’s Russia offensive is risky. To help, it wants less US caution on weapons

    Ukraine’s Russia offensive is risky. To help, it wants less US caution on weapons

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    WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s daring ground offensive has taken the fight to Russia, but not nearly as much as its leaders would like because, they say, the United States won’t let them.

    The U.S. restricts the use of long-range ballistic missiles it provides to Ukraine, which wants to aim them at military targets inside Russia. Ukraine’s offensive, along with a barrage of drones and missiles that Moscow launched this week, has intensified pressure on the Biden administration to ease its cautious approach to the use of Western weapons in escalating Ukrainian attacks.

    The Biden administration says its careful deliberations, including which advanced weapons it supplies to Ukraine and when, are necessary to avoid provoking retaliation from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Some analysts agree Putin would take a Ukrainian strike by an American long-range ballistic missile as an attack by the U.S. itself.

    But other American and European supporters of Ukraine say the White House should see that Putin’s threats of attacking the West, including with nuclear weapons, are bluster. Their fear is the U.S. support that has allowed Ukraine to withstand Russia’s 2022 invasion comes with delays and caveats that could ultimately contribute to its defeat.

    “This war is going to end exactly how Western policymakers decide it will end,” said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. general who led NATO in Europe from 2013 to 2016 and is among the retired U.S. military leaders and diplomats, Republican lawmakers, security analysts and others pushing for a loosening of restrictions on how Ukraine uses Western-provided weapons.

    “If we keep doing what we’re doing, Ukraine will eventually lose,” Breedlove said. “Because right now … we are purposely not giving Ukraine what they need to win.”

    Lifting such restrictions “would strengthen Ukrainian self-defense, save lives and reduce destruction in Ukraine,” European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell wrote Monday on the social platform X after Russia launched more than 200 missiles and drones at Ukraine. The next day, Russia launched 91 more.

    The push and pull is playing out during Ukraine’s surprise offensive into Russia’s southern Kursk region, the first ground invasion of Russia since World War II.

    Throughout the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has balanced copious thanks for U.S. support with frustrated appeals for more arms and ammunition. Upping the pressure this month, he again said Ukraine must fight the war as it sees fit with all the weapons at its disposal and appealed for the U.S. to drop a ban on using American long-range ATACMS missiles to strike deeper into Russia.

    “A sick old man from the Red Square, who constantly threatens everyone with the red button, will not dictate any of his red lines to us,” Zelenskyy said recently of Putin.

    The Biden administration this year allowed Ukraine to fire shorter-range U.S.-provided munitions across the border in self-defense, but not ATACMS.

    Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, and presidential adviser Andriy Yermak were coming to Washington this week to discuss the specific long-range military targets that Ukraine would like to hit in Russia, according to a person familiar with the plans. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to share the officials’ plans.

    Security analysts say Ukraine is using U.S.-provided HIMARS rocket systems in its offensive. Ukraine also announced it has used a U.S.-supplied glide bomb against Russian forces and deployed its own prototype of a long-range drone-missile hybrid.

    Zelenskyy’s military appeared to have launched the ground offensive on Aug. 6 without consulting American leaders.

    As Ukraine has claimed nearly 500 square miles (1,300 square kilometers) of Russian territory, it has taken a message from another U.S. ally that receives military support, said Roman Kostenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and military commander.

    “Israel once stated that it is quite respectful of the advice of its partners, but as an independent state, it makes decisions independently,” Kostenko told the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet. “I believe we can mirror this.”

    The U.S. has deliberated at length before eventually approving a succession of advanced weapons that Ukraine has pleaded for: modern tanks, precision medium-range rocket systems, Patriot missile batteries, ATACMS for use inside occupied Ukrainian territory and F-16 aircraft.

    The Biden administration condemned Russia’s attacks this week on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and is helping bolster its ally’s air defenses, but has not changed its policy on long-range weapons, national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters this week.

    A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the government’s internal discussions, said the Biden administration believes there’s no strategic advantage to ATACMS strikes within Russia.

    There are too few ATACMS overall to allow Ukraine to hit a significant number of targets within Russia, the official said, adding that Ukraine is using the long-range missiles it has to challenge Russia’s hold on the strategically important Crimean Peninsula.

    Russia also has moved many of its aircraft away from what the Institute for the Study of War research group says are 16 Russian airbases within potential range of the ATACMS. That includes aircraft launching the hard-to-intercept glide bombs that Russia is using in Ukraine, the official said.

    Many outside the administration disagree. More than 200 other Russian military targets are within ATACMS range in what appear to be carelessly guarded areas along 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) of border, said George Barros, a security analyst focusing on Ukraine and Russia for the Institute for the Study of War, which provides closely watched battlefield analysis of the conflict.

    Those targets include large military bases, communications stations, logistics centers, repair facilities, fuel depots, ammunition warehouses and permanent headquarters, Barros said.

    While tech-savvy Ukraine is pioneering aggressive new ways of using armed drones and electronic warfare against Russia, hardened targets like bases need the bigger punch that ATACMS can provide, Barros said.

    A few selective strikes against some Russian targets would force Putin to shift manpower and resources to protect those targets, he said.

    “That is the kind of strain that drastically reduces an attacker’s ability to successfully logistically support their front-line forces,” Barros said.

    Ukraine, fighting a far bigger military, needs the battlefield momentum that it hopes surprise offensives, demoralizing attacks within Russia and advanced weapons can provide. While it’s pulled off a feat by deploying armed and uncrewed drone boats to bottle up Russia’s navy in the Black Sea, its biggest battlefield successes were in the first dramatic months of the war.

    A 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive ended without major gains, and then U.S. political deadlock stalled military support for months and allowed Russian forces to gain territory.

    In grim conversations this summer, Ukrainians and Americans spoke of the risk of a cease-fire on Russia’s terms. Without leverage from battlefield successes, Ukraine could be forced to cede large amounts of Ukrainian territory and face another invasion later.

    Billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military support is flowing again. Zelenskyy has expanded military conscription. And American military leaders are back to talking of what had been allies’ vision for the next phase of the war, said Bill Taylor, a veteran former diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.

    That is, Ukraine spends the rest of the year rebuilding its ground forces and adding capacity to hit Russia hard enough that it seeks a cease-fire next year on terms Ukraine can accept, he said.

    Long-range missile strikes on military targets anywhere inside Russia are part of that, Taylor said. “The Ukrainians should not have to give Russians a sanctuary.”

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  • Israel and Hezbollah trade their most intense fire in months and then pull back

    Israel and Hezbollah trade their most intense fire in months and then pull back

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    JERUSALEM — Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah traded heavy fire early Sunday but backed off from sparking a widely feared all-out war, as both sides signaled their most intense exchange in months was over.

    The cross-border attacks came as high-level talks resumed in Egypt aimed at a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza that also would ease regional tensions. The Hamas and Israeli delegations later left Cairo, and an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes diplomacy said the talks were expected to continue.

    Hezbollah claimed to hit an Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv as part of a barrage of hundreds of rockets and drones, and Israel claimed its dozens of strikes had been preemptive to avert a larger attack. Neither offered evidence.

    Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the attack, a response to Israel’s killing of a top militant commander in Beirut last month, had been delayed to give the Gaza cease-fire talks a chance, and so fellow Iran-backed groups could discuss with Iran whether to attack Israel all at once. Israeli and U.S. military deployment also played a role.

    “We will now reserve the right to respond at a later time” if the results of Sunday’s attack aren’t sufficient, Nasrallah said, adding that allied Houthi rebels in Yemen — and Iran itself — had yet to respond. But he told the Lebanese people: “At this current stage, the country can take a breath and relax.”

    Israel and Hezbollah said they aimed only at military targets. Israel said no military target was hit by Hezbollah but that one soldier with its navy was killed and two others were wounded either by an interceptor for incoming fire, or by shrapnel from one. Two Hezbollah fighters and a militant from an allied group were killed, the groups said.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military eliminated thousands of rockets that were aimed at northern Israel and shot down drones heading for the center of the country.

    “I repeat — this is not the end of the story,” he added.

    Flights diverted as air raid sirens wail

    Air raid sirens were reported throughout northern Israel, and Israel’s international airport closed and diverted flights for about an hour.

    Israel’s military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said about 100 Israeli planes struck 270 targets, 90% of them rocket launchers aimed at northern Israel. He said they were investigating the percentage of incoming rockets and drones intercepted but said the “vast majority” were thwarted.

    Hezbollah said its attack involved more than 320 Katyusha rockets aimed at multiple sites in Israel and a “large number” of drones.

    Some Israelis were shaken. In the northern city of Acre, retired teacher Saadia Even Tsur, 76, said he was at the synagogue and arrived home five minutes after his bedroom was damaged. “I went up and saw the size of the miracle that happened to me,” he said. A window was broken and debris was on the bed.

    Lebanon’s caretaker Economy Minister Amin Salam, after an emergency government meeting, said officials were “feeling a bit more optimistic” about a de-escalation after both sides confirmed that the operations had ended.

    President Joe Biden was “closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon,” according to Sean Savett, a spokesman for the National Security Council. The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, and ordered both U.S. carrier strike groups in the region to stay. The U.S. military has been building up its forces across the region in recent weeks.

    The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown, arrived in Israel late Sunday for meetings on what the Israeli military called “joint preparations in the region as part of the response to threats in the Middle East.”

    All-out war apparently averted for now

    Danny Citrinowicz, an expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said Hezbollah might be trying to “balance the equation without escalating into war.” Each side hopes their narrative will be sufficient for them to declare victory and avoid a wider confrontation, he said.

    Hezbollah began attacking Israel almost immediately after the start of the war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire almost daily, displacing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border.

    Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006, is believed to be far more powerful now. The United States and Israel estimate it has some 150,000 rockets and is capable of hitting anywhere inside Israel. The group has also developed drones capable of evading Israel’s defenses, as well as precision-guided munitions.

    Israel has vowed a crushing response to any major Hezbollah attack. It has an extensive multi-tiered missile defense system, and it is backed by a U.S.-led coalition that helped it shoot down hundreds of missiles and drones fired from Iran earlier this year.

    Hezbollah is a close ally of Iran, which has also threatened to retaliate against Israel for the killing of senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month. Israel has not said whether it was involved.

    Iranian state media played up the Hezbollah attack, calling it a success, but there was no immediate comment from Iranian officials.

    The U.S. and other mediators see a cease-fire in Gaza as key to averting a wider Mideast war. Hezbollah has said it will halt its strikes on Israel if there is a cease-fire.

    The talks in Cairo on Sunday aimed at bridging gaps in a proposal for a truce and the release of scores of hostages held by Hamas. The talks included CIA director William Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

    The Hamas delegation was briefed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators but did not directly take part in negotiations.

    In the occupied West Bank, Israel’s military said it killed two people who allegedly tried to run over soldiers in Ariel, slightly hurting one.

    Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, Samy Magdy in Cairo, Alexis Triboulard in Acre, Israel, and Aamer Madhani in Buellton, California, contributed.

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    By Josef Federman, Abby Sewell and Kareen Chehayeb | Associated Press

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