Israel’s strikes on Iran draw condemnation, calls for de-escalation
The latest:
- Iran says attack killed 4 soldiers, caused ‘limited damage’ to radar sites.
- Israel says more than 200 projectiles fired from Lebanon; no injuries reported.
- Hezbollah declares some Israeli towns legitimate targets over IDF presence.
- IDF detains dozens of staff at Gaza hospital, Health Ministry and WHO say.
Israel unleashed pre-dawn airstrikes against military sites in Iran on Saturday.
The attack risks pushing the arch-enemies closer to all-out war at a time of spiralling violence across the Middle East, where militant groups backed by Iran — including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — are already at war with Israel.
The early Saturday strikes on Iran were in retaliation for a ballistic missile assault on Oct. 1, Israeli officials said. Iran says the Oct. 1 volley was in itself a retaliation for Israeli killings of Hezbollah leaders and aggression in Lebanon, including the use of pagers and walkie-talkies as explosives, and the war in Gaza.
Iran had previously launched missiles at Israel in April after top Iranian officials were killed by an apparent Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic post in Syria. Israel responded to that with rockets targeting a military base in Iran.
Saturday’s attack, threatened for weeks by Israel, comes as the Middle East sits on the precipice of a regional war more than a year after an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel. In the time since, Israel has launched a devastating ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and an invasion of neighbouring Lebanon, targeting militants long armed and aided by Tehran.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry says more than 2,600 people have been killed and 12,200 wounded in the past year of fighting, which has driven 1.2 million people from their homes, including more than 400,000 children, according to the United Nations children’s agency. Israeli strikes have killed much of Hezbollah’s top leadership since fighting ramped up in September.
Israel’s siege in Gaza has killed more than 42,000 people, the majority of them women and children, according to local health authorities. The Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack killed some 1,200 — mostly civilians — and saw about 250 others taken into Hamas-controlled Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
4 Iranian soldiers killed, military says
Iran says four people serving in the country’s military air defence were killed in Saturday’s Israeli attack, adding that the strikes targeted military bases in three provinces and caused “limited damage” to radar sites, which it says are being repaired.
Israeli aircraft “struck missile manufacturing facilities used to produce the missiles that Iran fired at the state of Israel over the last year,” the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said. “These missiles posed a direct and immediate threat to the citizens of the state of Israel.”
The IDF added that it also “struck surface-to-air missile arrays and additional Iranian aerial capabilities, that were intended to restrict Israel’s aerial freedom of operation in Iran.” It offered no damage assessment.
Iran’s military issued a carefully worded statement on Saturday night stating that, while it held the right to retaliate, a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon trumps any reciprocity against Israel.
It added that Israel used “stand-off” missiles over Iraqi airspace to launch its attacks and that the warheads were much lighter in order to travel the distance to the targets they struck in three provinces in Iran.
Israel pushing region ‘to the brink,’ Turkey says
Turkey accused Israel of having “brought our region to the brink of a greater war” following its strikes on Iran.
“Putting an end to the terror created by Israel in the region has become a historic duty in terms of establishing international security and peace,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement.
It called on the international community to take “immediate action to enforce the law and stop the Netanyahu government,” referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Turkey has been a harsh critic of Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon while voicing support for Hamas.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he condemns all acts of escalating violence in the Middle East and says they must stop immediately.
Expressing deep alarm following the Israeli airstrikes on Iran, the UN chief urgently appealed again to all parties to cease military action, including in Gaza and Lebanon, and “exert maximum pressure to prevent an all-out regional war and return to the path of diplomacy,” UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Saturday.
U.S. informed of strike beforehand
U.S. President Joe Biden said Saturday that he got a heads-up from Israel before the strikes on Iran.
“Looks like they didn’t hit anything but military targets,” he told reporters in Philadelphia, where he was en route to a campaign event in Pittsburgh.
“I hope this is the end,” he added
The United States said on Sunday it will send to Israel an advanced anti-missile system — and U.S. troops to operate it — in a bid to bolster the country’s air defences following missile attacks by Iran.
Hundreds of projectiles fired from Lebanon, Israel says
Israel’s military says more than 200 projectiles have been fired at Israel from inside Lebanon on Saturday.
In a statement, the military said there were no reports of injuries. It said fragments from about 30 rockets damaged several buildings and cars in the northern town of Nahariya. Israel’s fire and rescue service said its teams were tackling fires sparked by rocket attacks at seven sites across northern Israel.
Israel says it has stepped up attacks in Lebanon in the past weeks in order to push Hezbollah from the border, so that thousands of Israelis can return to their homes after Hezbollah began firing rockets in support of Hamas after Oct. 7.
Late on Saturday, Hezbollah warned residents of more than two dozen towns in northern Israel to immediately leave, saying they had become legitimate targets because it said Israeli troops were stationed there. The group also issued a similar warning to some communities in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
IDF detained hospital staff, Gaza Health Ministry says
Israeli troops withdrew from Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza after holding a number of people inside for hours, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
Those held included medical staff and patients, the ministry said, and women were held separately “with no water or food.” The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The troops later withdrew from the hospital, leaving behind massive damage, the ministry said. Footage circulated online showed the courtyard bulldozed and the wards vandalized.
Dr. Khaled Al Serr was released by Israeli forces on Sept. 29 after spending more than six months in Israeli prisons. The 32-year-old surgeon, who works at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza, said he was interrogated, humiliated and beaten only to be suddenly released last week without any charges.
The director general of the World Health Organization said 44 male staff members were detained at Kamal Adwan Hospital, where he said Gaza’s Health Ministry was reporting that Israel’s siege had ended.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said only female staff, the hospital director and one male doctor are left to care for almost 200 patients. He called the situation in northern Gaza “catastrophic.”
Throughout the year-long Israel-Hamas war, Israeli forces have stormed and bombarded a number of hospitals, including Gaza’s largest medical facility, Shifa Hospital. Israel accuses Hamas of using medical facilities across Gaza for military purposes, an accusation the militant group has denied.
Earlier this week, the director of the hospital told The Associated Press that the facility is facing a “catastrophic” shortage of basic supplies and that ambulances can no longer service the site.
Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:38:40 +0000
In the Arizona desert, there’s a race to help migrants who have just crossed the border
The Current1:14:23America Votes: Stories from the Arizona border, its politics and its people
In the Arizona desert last week, just north of the U.S. border with Mexico, a group of volunteers helped newly arrived migrants call the family and friends they had left behind in other parts of the world.
“[I’m] in America, in America,” an Egyptian man excitedly told loved ones over a video call.
The migrants had crossed the border illegally hours before, hoping to claim asylum when they encountered U.S. officials. But the volunteers found them first — huddled around a fire before sunrise, wrapped in coats and towels against the frigid night air.
“There’s so much hope and excitement in their eyes,” said Margaret Coffran, a volunteer with the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans (GVSS).
“They finally are standing on U.S. soil,” she told The Current’s Matt Galloway, who joined GVSS on this trip into the desert last week.
“This is a big day for them.”
WATCH | Going into the desert to help migrants at a dangerous border:
In the middle of the night, volunteers with Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans headed into the Arizona desert to help migrants making the harrowing journey across the U.S. border. The group provides humanitarian aid for migrants before they’re processed by border officials. CBC Radio’s The Current joined them.
The volunteers met at 4 a.m. and drove two hours into the desert in SUVs loaded with food, water and medical supplies. They’re not trying to circumvent the work of border patrol officials but work to “relieve the suffering” of migrants, offering sustenance, advice or even simple kindnesses — like paper and pens for kids to draw with.
They found this group of migrants at the beginning of a 15-kilometre gap in the border wall, a known drop-off point for criminals who traffic people to the border. Those crossings have become a political flashpoint in Arizona, a swing state that could play a decisive role in the looming U.S. election.
Arriving as the sun rose, the volunteers met 33 migrants from places as far-flung as Egypt, Turkey, Nepal and Cameroon. Many refused to share their full names with CBC, fearing for their asylum claims or repercussions for family back home.
By the fire, a young woman sat on a milk crate, her four-year-old daughter fast asleep in her lap. Through a translator, she gave her name as America and said they’d left their home in Guanajuato, central Mexico, a week ago. They left to escape violent gangs, she said, and were trying to reach her spouse, who was already in the U.S.
A 29-year-old man from Rwanda said his three-week journey was a “horrible … very difficult experience.” He said he fled military conscription at home and wouldn’t share his name out of concern for his family’s safety.
He said he never imagined making this journey.
“You leave your loved ones,” he said. “You don’t know when you’re going to see them.”
Ranchers says thousands cross his land
The migrants crossed on to Jim Chilton’s 20,000-hectare ranch, which runs along the border for almost nine kilometres just south of Arivaca, Ariz.
“I have five motion-activated cameras … [and] I have gotten over 3,550 images of people in camouflage and carpet shoes and backpacks since [U.S] President [Joe] Biden was elected,” said Chilton, whose experiences at the border earned hima speaking spot at the Republican National Convention in July.
Chilton has a pile of those carpet shoes, found discarded on his land. They’re slip-on shoes with soles made of soft material that helps to conceal footprints. Chilton said officials have intercepted criminals crossing his land ferrying drugs and weapons — and some of those encounters have been violent.
“I dislike the idea that people are coming through my ranch to poison our people and take it all the way to Canada,” he said, referencing drug smuggling and the fentanyl crisis.
Migrants coming to claim asylum, meanwhile, “don’t bother me as much,” Chilton said.
Biden initially promised a more welcoming approach to immigration when he was elected. But after monthly border encounters grew — reaching 249,741 last December — Biden imposed fresh restrictions on asylum seekers in June. Those encounters dropped 77 per cent — to 58,038 people — by August, according to the Pew Research Center.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris visited Arizona last month, where she pledged to toughen the asylum laws enacted earlier this year, as well as crack down on drug smuggling.
The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, said he’ll secure the border by completing the wall he started building in his first term — and conducta mass deportation of undocumented migrants.
Chilton said he’s praying for a Trump victory.
“He’ll finish the wall, he’ll put the trenches in and he’ll put the personnel that are needed at the border,” he said.
“People coming in the country should come in legally, not illegally.”
Coffran, the GVSS volunteer, thinks the idea of completing the wall is “silly.”
“There’s no way to physically close off our whole border unless you want to spend another couple billion dollars doing it, blowing through mountains,” she said.
She said most of the migrants she meets in the desert are families, looking to start new lives and contribute.
“They have gifts to bring to our country and we have gifts to share with them,” she said. “America’s definition for existence is diversity. And now we’re shutting that part of us away.”
Both parties engaged in ‘political theatre’
Back in the desert, U.S. officials arrive and organize the migrants into groups. America and her daughter climb into the back of a truck and are driven away to start their asylum claim.
Mark Gerrish, a border agent, installs a sign with an emergency number that migrants can call if they need help. He’s familiar with the work of GVSS, and thinks, “If people are trying to help people, that’s generally a good thing.”
“[But] sometimes it’s complicated around here,” he added. “Not everyone realizes how complicated; they try to make it simpler than it really is.”
By 8 a.m., the volunteers are packing up tables, stoves and coffee, ready to return the next day.
Randy Mayer, who runs GVSS, says he finds it frustrating that he can’t help with whatever comes next for these migrants, some of whom may face deportation within days.
“Middle America thinks that immigration is a bad thing for the United States, and they think it’s all about criminals,” said Mayer, a pastor at a local church.
“But the reality is all these people are escaping really bad situations. They should be given the opportunity to at least prove that.”
Mayer has been doing humanitarian work on the border for almost 30 years. He believes there isn’t much difference in how the Republicans or Democrats approach the problem, even ifone candidate engages more in “ugly rhetoric.”
“Every single administration has put more militarization, more agents — and then the next administration just builds on top of that,” he said.
“It’s just political theatre, is what it is. It’s not a solution to anything and it just makes people’s lives miserable.”
Mayer pointed to how treacherous crossing the Arizona desert can be. More than 4,300 people have died since 2000, with the remains of 114 people presumed to be trying to reach the border discovered in the first eight months of 2024, according to the non-profit Humane Borders.
Mayer said GVSS has saved thousands of lives over the years, but in some ways these migrants saved him too.
“My life is completely changed … it’s softened my heart,” he said.
“It’s shown me that compassion and love are a much more meaningful pathway than to build walls and barriers and make the world all about me.”
Published at Wed, 31 Jul 2024 21:58:04 +0000