Tag Archives: Ramadan

Washington-Israel relations breaking down: US refuses to veto UN resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza over Ramadan

Biden-Netanyahu

Important Takeaways:

  • Netanyahu CANCELS Israeli diplomatic trip to Washington after the US refuses to veto United Nations resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire over Ramadan
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced that he is canceling the planned visit of a delegation to Washington after the United States refused to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
  • Minutes before the resolution was carried by 14 votes to zero, Netanyahu told Israeli news media that the visit would not happen if Washington failed to veto it.
  • ‘In light of the change in the American position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided the delegation would not leave,’ his office said after the vote, calling the decision a ‘clear retreat’ from its previous stance.
  • highlights how the relationship between the U.S. is breaking down amid the bloodshed in Gaza

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Ramadan begins with calls for Jihad

Hamas-skull-mask-Associated-Press-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • Hamas, Islamic Jihad Call for ‘Terror’ During Islamic Holy Month of Ramadan
  • Leaders of the major Palestinian terror groups have called for Arab states and the Muslim world to engage in “terror” during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan — even as the Biden administration aims for a Ramadan truce in Gaza.
  • Jerusalem Post:
    • Palestinian Islamic Jihad is calling for Ramadan to be a “month of terror” and seeks to escalate attacks in the West Bank and Gaza. In a recent speech, Abu Hamza, the spokesman for PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades, said he wants Arab countries in the region and pro-Iranian groups to continue to “unify” various arenas and fronts against Israel.
    • This is the latest indication that terrorist groups plan to seek an escalation in hostilities over the next month. Hamza’s remarks were published by Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news channel, which is pro-Iranian and frequently highlights Hamas and Hezbollah attacks.
    • The terrorist group’s comments are also linked to those made by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who has called for an escalation of hostilities during Ramadan.

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Israeli War Cabinet tells Hamas they have until Ramadan to release the Hostages

Gaza-war-damage

Important Takeaways:

  • Israel sets date for Rafah offensive in ultimatum for Hamas: War cabinet member warns onslaught will begin in three weeks unless all hostages are released
  • Israel has threatened to invade Gaza’s Rafah by the start of Ramadan if Hamas does not return the remaining hostages in a dark ultimatum condemned by international observers.
  • The United States and other governments, as well as the United Nations, have issued increasingly urgent appeals to Israel to call off its planned offensive on Rafah, where three-quarters of the displaced Palestinian population has fled.
  • Some 1.2 million people are now taking shelter in sprawling tent encampments without access to adequate food, water or medicine in the city that used to be home to just 250,000.
  • But the Israeli government says the city on the Egypt border is the last remaining stronghold in Gaza of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
  • ‘The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area,’ Benny Gantz, a retired military chief of staff, told a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday.
  • ‘Hamas has a choice. They can surrender, release the hostages and the civilians of Gaza can celebrate the feast of Ramadan,’ added Gantz, a member of the three-person war cabinet.
  • Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is expected to begin around March 10.

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Air raids sound in Israel as Gaza militants launch rockets as Passover begins and Ramadan continues

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Gaza militants blast rockets into Israel as Passover holiday begins
  • Tensions are spiking in Israel as the Jewish Passover and Muslim Ramadan play out
  • The Israeli military says all seven rockets exploded in midair. Tensions remain high in the country as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan continues, while the Jewish Passover began Wednesday. Israeli forces have tracked rocket barrages from Gaza throughout the week, though few have escaped the country’s air defenses.
  • The Israeli air force struck a Hamas weapons facility on Wednesday after a particularly violent night at the mosque saw some 350 people arrested. Israeli police said they had moved in after “several law-breaking youths and masked agitators” barricaded themselves into the mosque and began chanting violent slogans.
  • Last year, the same combination of tensions amid Ramadan and the Passover resulted in an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

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Canada needs stricter health measures to counter rapid spread of COVID-19 variants – officials

By Steve Scherer and Julie Gordon

OTTAWA (Reuters) – COVID-19 variant cases are increasing rapidly in several parts of Canada and longer-range forecasts show that stronger public health restrictions will be required to counter the spread of the disease, health officials said on Friday.

Canada is expecting enough coronavirus vaccine doses to double its supply by the end of next week as it ramps up its vaccination program. But more transmissible variants now account for a high proportion of new cases, health officials said.

“Increasing case counts, shifting severity trends and a rising proportion of cases involving variants of concern is a reminder that we are in a very tight race between vaccines versus variants,” Canada’s chief medical officer, Theresa Tam, told reporters.

While Canada has handed out first shots to many of the most vulnerable and very elderly, recent data shows that young adults between 20 and 39 years of age are driving new cases now, health officials said.

Many parts of the country have begun to relax some health restrictions put in place to beat back a second wave, but Tam said Canadians should buckle down now to avoid a sharp rise in cases and a third wave.

“We are closer now than ever, but it is still too soon to relax measures and too soon to gather in areas where COVID-19 is still circulating in Canada,” Tam said.

“So as Passover, Easter and Ramadan approach, make plans to celebrate safely, including having virtual celebrations to protect each other as we make this the last big push to keep the path clear for vaccines,” she said.

As of Thursday, Canada had reported 22,790 deaths and 951,562 total coronavirus cases. On Friday, the officials told reporters that new modeling showed the domestic death toll could rise to between 22,875 and 23,315 by April 4, with total cases rising to between 973,080 and 1,005,020.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer and Julie Gordon; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Kushner urges world to keep ‘open mind’ about upcoming Middle East plan: source

White House adviser Jared Kushner at the "2019 Prison Reform Summit" in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 1, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – White House senior adviser Jared Kushner urged a group of ambassadors on Wednesday to keep an “open mind” about President Donald Trump’s upcoming Middle East peace proposal and said that it will require compromises from both sides, a source familiar with the remarks said.

Kushner said the peace plan is to be unveiled after Israel forms a governing coalition in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election victory and after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in early June, the source said.

“We will all have to look for reasonable compromises that will make peace achievable,” Kushner said, according to the source, who asked to remain unidentified.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Suicide bomber kills 14 after Afghan clerics outlaw suicide bombings

Afghan security forces keep watch at the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

By Qadir Sediqi

KABUL (Reuters) – A motorcycle suicide bomber killed 14 people near a gathering of Muslim clerics in the Afghan capital on Monday after they had issued a fatwa against suicide bombings, officials said, in the latest in a series of attacks to hit Kabul.

The bomb exploded at the entrance to a giant tent, near residential buildings in the west of Kabul, after most the clerics had left, a witness said. Women living nearby were crying as they gathered with their families.

The bomb killed seven clerics, four security officers and three people whose identities were unknown, a senior government official said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which underlines deteriorating security ahead of parliamentary and district council elections set for Oct. 20.

The Taliban, fighting to restore strict Islamic rule after their 2001 ouster at the hands of U.S.-led troops, denied involvement.

More than 2,000 religious scholars from across the country began meeting on Sunday at the Loya Jirga (Grand Council) tent, denouncing years of conflict. They issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, outlawing suicide bombings and demanding that Taliban militants restore peace to allow foreign troops to leave.

A series of bombings in Kabul has killed dozens of people in recent months and shown no sign of easing during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

On Wednesday, gunmen armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers stormed the heavily fortified headquarters of the interior ministry, battling security forces for more than two hours.

In April, two explosions in Kabul killed at least 26 people, including nine journalists who had arrived to report on an initial blast and were targeted by a suicide bomber.

A week earlier, 60 people were killed and more than 100 wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a voter registration center in the city.

Militant group Islamic State has claimed responsibility for many attacks in Kabul but security officials say several are much more likely to be the work of the Haqqani network, a group affiliated with the Taliban.

Provincial cities have also been hit as the Taliban have stepped up operations across the country since they announced the beginning of their annual spring offensive in April.

(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Pakistan heatwave kills 65 people in Karachi – welfare organization

Men and children cool off from the heatwave, as they are sprayed with water jetting out from a leaking water pipeline in Karachi, Pakistan May 22, 2018. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

By Saad Sayeed

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A heatwave has killed 65 people in Pakistan’s southern city of Karachi over the past three days, a social welfare organization said on Tuesday, amid fears the death toll could climb as the high temperatures persist.

The heatwave has coincided with power outages and the holy month of Ramadan, when most Muslims do not eat or drink during daylight hours. Temperatures hit 44 degrees Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) on Monday, local media reported.

Faisal Edhi, who runs the Edhi Foundation that operates morgues and an ambulance service in Pakistan’s biggest city, said the deaths occurred mostly in the poor areas of Karachi.

Residents sleep on a building pavement, to escape heat and frequent power outage in their residence area Karachi, Pakistan. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

Residents sleep on a building pavement, to escape heat and frequent power outage in their residence area Karachi, Pakistan. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

“Sixty-five people have died over the last three days,” Edhi told Reuters. “We have the bodies in our cold storage facilities and their neighborhood doctors have said they died of heat-stroke.”

A government spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

But Sindh province’s Health Secretary Fazlullah Pechuho told the English-language Dawn newspaper that no one has died from heat-stroke.

“Only doctors and hospitals can decide whether the cause of death was heat-stroke or not. I categorically reject that people have died due to heat-stroke in Karachi,” Pechuho was quoted as saying.

Nonetheless, reports of heat stroke deaths in Karachi will stir unease amid fears of a repeat of a heatwave in of 2015, when morgues and hospitals were overwhelmed and at least 1,300 mostly elderly and sick people died from the searing heat.

In 2015, the Edhi morgue ran out of freezer space after about 650 bodies were brought in the space of a few days. Ambulances left decaying corpses outside in sweltering heat.

The provincial government has assured residents that there would be no repeat of 2015 and was working on ensuring those in need of care receive rapid treatment.

Edhi said most of the dead brought to the morgue were working class factory workers who came from the low-income Landhi and Korangi areas of Karachi.

“They work around heaters and boilers in textile factories and there is eight to nine hours of (scheduled power outages) in these areas,” he said.

Temperatures are expected to stay above 40C until Thursday, local media reported.

(Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Alison Williams)

Protest camps quiet as Gazans fast and fill sandbags

A Palestinian man reads the Koran inside a tent during the holy month of Ramadan, at a protest camp near the Israel-Gaza border in the central Gaza Strip May 17, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Young men filled sandbags to prepare for future protests at encampments along Gaza’s Israeli border on Thursday, though tents were mostly empty as Palestinians joined Muslims around the world observing the daylight fast at the start of Ramadan.

After the bloodiest day for Palestinians in years on Monday, when 60 were killed by Israeli gunfire during mass demonstrations that Israel said included attempts to breach its frontier fence, calm and a heatwave descended on the area.

Organisers of the protests that began on March 30 set Friday as a day to honour the dead and urged Gazans to flock again to the tent cities. But Ramadan traditions – prayer, family visits and feasts – seemed to keep crowds away during the hot hours.

At one encampment, about 70 young men filled sandbags in anticipation of people returning to the protest sites.

“We are making a sand barrier so people can feel a bit safer,” one of the men said, declining to give his name.

Ramadan is usually a time of celebration, but after dozens of funerals during the week the mood was bleak in Gaza.

Israel’s intelligence minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday neighboring Egypt had put pressure on Hamas, the armed Islamist faction that controls the Gaza Strip, to scale back the protests.

Hamas denied it had come under Egyptian pressure to curb the protests, which provoked international condemnation of Israel’s deadly tactics in putting down the unrest. The organizing committee for the demonstrations said Muslims’ abstinence from food and drink during the hot mornings and afternoons of Ramadan would be taken into account in further protests.

The “March of Return” demonstrations advocate the return of Palestinians to lands lost to Israel during its founding in 1948, and are also intended to draw attention to harsh conditions in Gaza, where the economy has collapsed under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas took power in 2007.

Israel, with U.S. backing, says Hamas is behind the protests, deliberately provoking violence for propaganda aims. Hamas says the demonstrations are a popular outpouring of anger, and Israel carried out a “massacre” in response.

ISRAELI AIR STRIKE

Dawoud Shehab, a member of the organizing committee, said activities at the encampments would get under way only in the late afternoon when temperatures drop. Late-night prayers will also be held there, he said.

“The marches are continuing and there are calls on people to gather in mass on Friday in a day we have dedicated to glorifying the martyrs,” Shehab told Reuters.

The message was echoed in appeals blared by loudspeakers on vehicles that drove into Gaza neighborhoods to urge people to turn out. Organisers said the protest would stretch into June.

Violence along the border has been comparatively limited over the past two days, with no casualties reported by either side since Tuesday, when two Palestinians were killed while dozens of others were buried.

Early on Thursday, Israeli aircraft hit four Hamas targets in the northern Gaza Strip in response to heavy machine gun fire that struck houses in the Israeli town of Sderot, the Israeli military said.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars in the past decade since Gaza fell under control of the militant group that denies Israel’s right to exist. Israel and Egypt say their de facto blockade of the strip is necessary for security reasons.

The World Bank says it has driven Gaza to economic collapse, with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. Eighty percent of Gaza’s 2 million people are now dependent on aid.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Peter Graff)

Taliban emerge from hiding to battle Afghan forces in city near Iran

Residents look at an Army vehicle which was damaged during battle between Afghan security forces and Taliban in Farah province, Afghanistan May 16, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer

By Storay Karimi and Mohammad Stanekzai

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Taliban fighters emerged from hiding in the dead of night to launch attacks in the Afghan city of Farah, battling government forces who thought they had cleared out the insurgents following heavy clashes earlier in the week, residents and officials said.

The heavily armed fighters had gone to ground in residential areas following their surprise attack on Tuesday, when they nearly overran Farah, before Afghan troops backed by U.S. air power fought them off.

“From one side, there were Taliban and from the other side, war planes firing from the air. People were terrified,” said city shopkeeper Qudratullah.

The Taliban fighters emerged from their hiding places about an hour before midnight on Wednesday, some of them firing on security forces from rooftops, with gunbattles raging into the early hours of Thursday.

At least one suicide bomb attack was launched near the city’s police headquarters.

“The city has been turned into a military zone, people are worried and shops are closed,” said resident Baz Mohammad.

“After what happened last night, anything can happen any time.”

Schools were also declared closed for the whole of the month of Ramadan, which began on Thursday, because of the security situation, said Kabir Haqmal, media advisor to the ministry of education.

After months of relative calm over the winter, the latest fighting underlines the challenge facing the Kabul government and its U.S. allies who are struggling to contain the Taliban insurgency.

The United States has sent thousands of extra trainers to help Afghan forces and stepped up air strikes dramatically, with the aim of pressing the Taliban to the negotiating table, but there has been little to indicate the plan is working.

BLAMING IRAN

In Farah, U.S. forces have provided air support with A-10 attack aircraft and pilotless drones, while the Afghan air force has conducted numerous strikes with its own helicopters and A-29 ground attack aircraft.

Officials had earlier said the city was clear of Taliban but confirmed the fighting overnight.

“A number of Taliban clashed with Afghan forces in different parts of the city,” said Fazel Ahmad Sherzad, the city’s police chief.

“Right now there is no fighting but a search and clearance operation is underway,” he said.

He said a number of foreign fighters appeared to be operating with the Taliban but there was no way of independently verifying that. Officials in Farah often blame neighboring Iran for helping the Taliban in the area.

Fighting has increased across Afghanistan in recent weeks with government forces under heavy pressure in provinces including Badakhshan, Baghlan and Faryab in the north, Farah in the west and Zabul and Ghazni south of the capital Kabul.

In addition, Kabul itself has been targeted by a wave of suicide attacks that have killed and wounded hundreds of people since the beginning of the year.

Remote and sparsely populated Farah, on the border with Iran has seen heavy fighting for months with Taliban forces inflicting heavy casualties on the police and army and even on elite special forces units.

(Additional reporting by Qadir Sediqi in KABUL; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Robert Birsel)