January 8, 2024

Eleven people including five children were killed in Russian S-300 missile strikes on Saturday in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to the local military administration. “Eleven dead, including five children – these are the preliminary results of the strikes on Pokrovsk district. Russians hit the area with S-300 missiles, killing 11 people and wounding 8 others. The main hit was on Pokrovsk and Rivne of the Myrnohrad community,” Vadym Filashkin, the head of the Donetsk region military administration said in a post on Telegram. “The enemy cynically hits civilians, trying to bring as much grief to our land as possible,” he said. Photos posted by the official showed rescue workers searching through the rubble of single story houses and at least one blown out car. Donetsk is on the frontline of the fighting in the east, and is partially-occupied by Russian forces. State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SES) said search and rescue efforts at the scene of the strikes, which completely destroyed three private houses, is ongoing. “As a result of rescue operations, 1 man was rescued from the rubble,” SES said. “Rescuers also extinguished a fire in a residential building on the area of 100 square meters. A total of 38 personnel and 10 pieces of equipment were engaged in the work,” the SES statement said. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky offered condolences to the families who lost their loved ones in the strike in his nightly address. “Russia must feel – and always feel – that none of these strikes will be without consequences for the terrorist state. We have to ensure this – with our strength, our own defense and political capabilities,” Zelensky said. Source:https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/06/europe/russian-strikes-donetsk-eastern-ukraine-intl/index.html

A bomb blast targeting a police vehicle left at least five police personnel martyred and 24 others injured in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Mamund tehsil of Bajaur district on Monday, Geo News reported. Police said the personnel were deployed for the security of polio vaccination teams when the blast took place. They feared that more casualties could take place. They said bodies and injured were shifted to Khar hospital. An emergency had been declared in the hospital and blood donation was sought for treatment of the wounded personnel, police added. The police spokesperson said all the casualties were police personnel. Caretaker Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Syed Arshad Hussain Shah condemned the blast and expressed grief over the loss of lives. He also condoled with the victims’ families. Shah directed the district administration to immediately provide health facilities to the injured. “Such cowardly attacks will not dampen the police’s spirit. KP Police have given numerous sacrifices for the protection of people’s lives and properties,” he said adding that the martyrs’ heirs would not be left alone and they would be assisted through every possible means. Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Sherry Rehman also condemned the attack on the police officials deployed for the security of the anti-polio team in Bajaur. Taking to X, she said the PPP stands in solidarity with the families of the five personnel martyred in the explosion. “Terrorists have attacked not only the police but also the health of our children. An attack on the security of the anti-polio team should not be tolerated under any circumstances, it is directly related to the health of our children,” she said. Sherry said the miscreants did not want the complete eradication of polio from the country. The terrorists involved in the incident should be arrested immediately and punished severely, she demanded. On December 1 of last year, a policeman was killed when militants attacked a polio vaccination team, AFP had reported. The incident occurred in Malik Din Khel, part of the former tribal border region. “Two gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on policemen guarding a two-member polio vaccination team,” district police chief Saleem Khan Kulachi had told AFP. Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan are the only two countries where polio remains endemic and vaccination teams are frequently targeted by militants. All preparations have been made for the seven-day nationwide anti-polio campaign starting Monday (today). Karachi Commissioner Muhammad Salim Rajput has directed polio workers to achieve a 100 per cent target in vaccinating children under five years of age with polio drops for at least the next five years. He stressed that unless every child receives these drops, the threat of the polio virus spread will persist. Efforts have also been made to persuade parents who refuse vaccination for their children. Comprehensive plans are being made, and lists of children and their parents, along with reports on barriers to vaccination, have been prepared. Those refusing vaccination have been identified, and field workers are actively involved to ensure no child is deprived of polio drops, said the commissioner. Meetings have been held with community mobilisers from over 450 areas in District East and District Central. They were reminded that achieving a 100 per cent target for vaccinating children against polio over the next five years across the country is crucial. The officials emphasised the necessity of parental cooperation to ensure no child misses out on polio drops. Source:https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1145830-five-cops-on-polio-duty-martyred-in-bajaur-explosion

Seventy-three Palestinians killed and 99 wounded in attacks by Israel in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry says. The whereabouts of 600 patients and health workers from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital is “unknown”, WHO says. Speaking from Qatar, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he will raise with Israel the “need to do everything possible” to increase the flow of aid. At least 22,835 people have been killed – including 9,600 children – in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. About 1,139 people were killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. More details on Hezbollah commander killing The senior Hezbollah reportedly killed in an Israeli attack has been identified as Wissam al-Tawil, deputy head of a unit within the elite Radwan force. The security sources told news agencies he and another Hezbollah fighter were killed when their car was hit by an air strike on the Lebanese village of Majdal Selm. The killing comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel later on Monday in an attempt to calm burgeoning tensions and the threat of a wider Middle East war. Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel in two televised addresses last week not to launch a full-scale war on Lebanon. “Whoever thinks of war with us … will regret it.” Click here to share on social media Hezbollah will not discuss cross-border violence until Israel ends Gaza war: Official Sheikh Ali Damoush, deputy chairman of the executive council of Hezbollah, has said that the Lebanese armed group will not engage in discussion of any matter related to the cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and Israel until the Israelis stop their “aggression against Gaza”. According to Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA), he spoke at a ceremony commemorating a killed Hezbollah fighter, Abdul Jalil Ali Hamza, in the town of Al-Khader in the Bekaa Valley. Damoush also said that “the Israeli predicament is deepening day after day as the war lasts, because the longer the aggression continues, the more and more exhausted the enemy becomes, whether on the Gaza front or on the Lebanon front”. “There is no choice but to stop the aggression,” he said. Click Israeli strike kills top Hezbollah commander in Lebanon: Reports Israel killed a top Hezbollah commander in an air strike on southern Lebanon, news reports say. “This is a very painful strike,” one security source told Reuters news agency. The unidentified commander played “a leading role in managing Hezbollah’s operations in the south,” a security official told AFP news agency. He was “killed in an Israeli raid targeting his car in the south”. Hezbollah has lost more than 130 fighters in Israeli shelling on southern Lebanon since cross-border bombardment began on October 7. The killing further raised fears of the conflict in Gaza spilling over to Lebanon and elsewhere. The aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Aita al-Shaab, a Lebanese border village with Israel [File: Hussein Malla/AP] Click Blinken tells UAE of US commitment to ‘independent Palestinian state’ US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he held a meeting with Emirati President Mohamed Bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi. The two discussed efforts to prevent Israel’s war on Gaza widening and addressed humanitarian needs in Gaza. “I underscored our continued commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” Blinken added. Click here to share on social media Situation at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital ‘catastrophic’ Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan from Doctors Without Borders spoke to Al Jazeera from Amman, Jordan, about the dire situation her colleagues face in Gaza. “Unfortunately, most of the NGOs evacuated al-Aqsa Hospital after flyers dropped warning them the ‘area was no longer safe’ and they needed to evacuate.” Al-Aqsa Hospital is the largest and only functioning hospital in central Gaza and treats about 100 wounded each day, she said. “The situation has been catastrophic over the last few weeks. Our colleagues who were there from multiple different organisations have been reporting horrific scenes. They weren’t expecting to have to evacuate. It was a sudden increase in risk,” said Haj-Hassan. “A colleague I know in the hospitals said each day there’s an imaginary line in this dystopian grid that determines who’s at risk of being imminently killed. He described them as war crimes disguised as a benevolent prior warning.” Source:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/1/8/israel-war-on-gaza-world-must-look-says-wael-dahdouh-as-son-killed