News

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/2/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-still-denying-aid-to-north-gaza-says-un

A fresh rain and snowfall spell brought life in Gilgit-Baltistan to a standstill, leaving thousands of people stranded on the Karakoram Highway (KKH) after it was blocked at various points due to landslides triggered by the deluge. According to rescue officials, intermittent rain continued across GB and adjoining areas on Tues­day, with KKH blocked at two loc­a­tions in Basari and Lotter in Koh­istan due to landslides. The Gilgit-Nagar section of the Karakoram Highway was also blocked along with blockades in Gandlo Nullah and Tatapani (Chilas). The Baltis­tan Road was also blocked at two points in Roundu, Skardu, due to mudslides. The Chilas section, however, was opened to traffic by the time this report went to press. Some parts of the region, including areas in the Gilgit city, also faced communication outages due to untimely snowfall received in the upper areas of Astore, Skardu, Hunza, Nagar, Ghanche, Khar­mang, Shigar, and Ghizer. Like­wise, the flight link of the GB region remained suspended due to bad weather conditions. Accor­ding to the Civil Aviation Autho­rity, the first regular international flight from Skardu to Dubai scheduled to start on Monday was cancelled due to weather. AFP adds: At least 143 people died in Pakistan from lightning strikes and other storm-related incidents in April, with the country receiving more than twice as much rain as usual for the month, AFP said citing unnamed officials. Pakistan saw a rainfall “increase of 164 per cent above the normal levels in April, which is very unusual”, said Zaheer Ahmad Babar, spokesperson for the Pakistan Meteorological Department. The largest death toll for April was in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where 83 people died, including 38 children, and where more than 3,500 homes have been damaged. Environmental expert Maryam Shabbir Abbasi told AFP that overall weather patterns had shifted by “about a month and a half, and we should shift our calendars for the agriculture sector accordingly to avoid damages caused by unprecedented rainfall”. Officials earlier this month said several people, including farmers harvesting wheat, were killed by lightning in Punjab, and that a total of 21 people were killed in different rain-related incidents. Another 21 deaths were reported in Balochistan in April, including seven people who were struck by lightning, with rain disrupting life in some districts and causing school closures. In parts of Azad Kashmir, 14 people were killed, and at least four were killed in road accidents linked to floods in Sindh. Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1830735/gilgit-baltistan-cut-off-as-rains-trigger-landslides

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/1/live-us-university-protests-spread-amid-growing-calls-to-end-gaza-war

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/5/1/israels-war-on-gaza-live-un-chiefs-warn-israel-against-assault-on-rafah

Police in the United States have clashed with students at a university in the city of Austin, Texas, and arrested dozens as they dismantled an encampment set up to protest Israel’s war on Gaza. The arrests at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) on Monday came as Columbia University in New York City also began suspending students after they defied an ultimatum to disperse. The protesters are calling their universities to cut ties with Israel, which some experts at the United Nations say is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli forces have killed at least 34,488 Palestinians since October 7, when fighters from Hamas launched unprecedented attacks inside southern Israel, killing 1,139 people and taking dozens captive. The protests have upended university campuses across the US, with the number of arrests approaching 1,000 as the final days of classes wrap up. At UT Austin, an attorney said at least 40 demonstrators had been arrested on Monday on charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct, some of them by officers in riot gear who encircled about 100 sitting protesters, dragging or carrying them out one by one amid screams. Another group of demonstrators trapped police and a van full of detainees between buildings, creating a mass of bodies pushing and shoving and prompting the officers to use pepper spray and flash-bang devices to clear the crowd. The confrontation was an escalation on the 53,000-student campus in the state’s capital, where more than 50 protestors were arrested last week. The university late on Monday issued a statement saying that many of Monday’s protesters were not affiliated with the school and that encampments are prohibited on campus. The school also alleged that some demonstrators were “physically and verbally combative” with university staff, prompting officials to call law enforcement. Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou-Castro, reporting from UT Austin, described the clashes as an “extraordinary turn of events”. “What began as a silent protest on Monday morning by faculty in opposition to the way UT Austin administration has been responding to these protests has now erupted into conflict,” she said. “The 43 arrested were part of the encampment that began this afternoon, with people setting up tents and forming a circle around it, refusing to disperse. We saw police descend on those protesters just moments after the tents went up. The police encircled them, began arresting them one by one, picking them up off the ground and dragging them away from the line.” As soon as police cleared the encampment, other students began rallying on the area, said Zhou-Castro. Some of them were holding umbrellas to protect against pepper spray. Police, too, were out in force, blocking the path to the area where the encampment had stood. One student, who identified himself as Hadi, condemned the university’s attempts to silence the protesters and said they were determined to continue, “What trumps our fear is our love for Palestine, and our love for liberation, and our refusal to accept subjugation and censorship from an oppressive institution,” he said. Suspensions at Columbia The Texas protest and others grew out of Columbia’s early demonstrations that have continued. On Monday, student activists on the school’s Manhattan campus defied a 2pm deadline to leave an encampment of around 120 tents. If they left by the deadline and signed a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025, officials said they could finish the semester in good standing. If not, they would be suspended, pending further investigation. Instead, student groups were defiant, pledging to continue their activism on behalf of the Palestinian civilians harmed by Israel’s war in Gaza. “WE WILL NOT STOP, WE WILL NOT REST!!” one group, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, wrote on social media. “We will continue until our demands are met. We will not be intimidated.” Hundreds of protesters remained on campus, marching around the quad and weaving around piles of temporary flooring and green carpeting meant for graduation ceremonies that are supposed to begin next week. While the university did not call police to remove the demonstrators, school spokesperson Ben Chang said suspensions had started. He said that while the university appreciated the free speech rights of students, the encampment was a “noisy distraction” that was interfering with teaching and preparation for for final exams. The university said it will offer an alternative venue for the protests after exams and graduation. Earlier, the university administration announced that its negotiations with student protesters have fallen through, and said “the current unauthorised encampment and disruption on Columbia University’s campus is creating an unwelcoming environment for members of our community”. Freedom of speech The Columbia and Texas demonstrations are just two of several high-profile university protests unfolding across the country, including at Yale, George Washington University and the University of California, Los Angeles, prompting questions about academic freedom and free speech. On April 18, New York police arrested an estimated 108 students protesting on Columbia’s campus, including Isra Hirsi, the daughter of US House Representative Ilhan Omar, at the request of school administrators. School administrators have been under pressure to crack down on alleged incidents of anti-Semitism on their campuses, though the student organisers behind the protests have denounced those allegations as false and misleading. Al Jazeera correspondent Kristen Saloomey, reporting from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, said that the encampment there had been largely peaceful, with no indication of violent rhetoric or actions. “The university is saying that the students are violating policies as to who can set up on campus, and what can be done on campus,” Saloomey said, “although what we’ve seen here today has been pretty quiet and pretty calm, and they aren’t blocking any of the buildings or any of the entrances”. Observing the George Washington University campus in Washington, DC, Al Jazeera correspondent Shihab Rattansi said that administrators appear to be behind much of the calls for police intervention in the protests. “It’s the university administrators – who are supposed to be wanting freedom of speech and thought and critical engagement with the issues of the day

At least one person died and six others were wounded in a gas cylinder blast in Karachi’s New Challi area on Tuesday. The incident occurred when a cylinder exploded in a shop located in the generator market after a which a fire broke out as well. The sheer force of the blast caused the goods inside the shop to scatter out on the street. Rescue teams have reached the incident site and have confirmed shifting six people, wounded in the blast, to the hospital. The incident comes as gas cylinders, whether used for commercial purposes or for domestic use, are quite prone to explosions for various reasons such as low quality cylinders, failure to adhere to necessary standard operating procedures (SOPs) while refilling etc. In December 2023, at least three people were killed and 17 others were wounded after a two-storey building collapsed due to a gas cylinder blast in Karachi’s Machar Colony. The blast took place in a gas cylinder shop during transfer of gas in the shop as a vehicle loaded with gas cylinders came to supply gas. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1183918-karachi-cylinder-blast-kills-one-wounds-six-others

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/4/30/israels-war-on-gaza-live-34-killed-in-gaza-amid-ceasefire-negotiations

The Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) shared on Monday that armed forces have gunned down four terrorists during an intelligence-based operation in Tank district. The military’s media wing said the security forces conducted the IBO last night in Tank on a tip-off about presence of terrorists. The ISPR said, “Own troops effectively engaged the terrorists’ location as a result of which four terrorists were sent to hell.” It said the security forces recovered weapons and ammunition as well from the terrorists who were involved in numerous terrorist activities in the district. The media wing said residents of the area appreciated the operation by the security forces, who remained determined to eliminate the menace of terrorism from the country. A day ago, the ISPR had reported that two terrorists involved in target killing and extortion were shot dead during an intense exchange of fire between militants and security forces in Dera Ismail Khan District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. As per the military’s media wing, the security forces had conducted an IBO in Dera Ismail Khan on reported presence of terrorists on April 28. “During conduct of the operation, intense fire exchange took place between own troops and terrorists, and resultantly two terrorists; terrorist Faheem Nawaz alias Gandapuri and terrorist Mohsin Nawaz were successfully neutralised and sent to hell,” the ISPR had stated. The brief statement issued by the military’s media wing had stated that weapons, ammunition and explosives were also recovered from the slain terrorists, who remained actively involved in numerous terrorist activities against the security forces and innocent civilians via target killings and extortion. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1183557-security-forces-shoot-four-terrorists-dead-in-tank-gunfight-ispr

Hundreds of students have been arrested across universities in the United States, with scuffles reported between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA, as rallies for a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from companies linked to Israel spread across US campuses. The pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California at Los Angeles has expanded in recent days, but counter-protesters have also become increasingly vocal and visible. On Sunday, the mood turned ugly when some demonstrators broke through a barrier that had been set up to separate the two factions, according to Mary Osako, UCLA’s vice chancellor for strategic communications. People from both sides then pushed and shoved each other, shouting slogans and insults and in some cases trading punches. Campus police armed with batons eventually separated the sparring groups. Osako said the university was “heartbroken” about the violence and had introduced additional security measures. “As an institution of higher education, we stand firmly for the idea that even when we disagree, we must still engage respectfully and recognize one another’s humanity,” she said in a statement. “We are dismayed that certain individuals instead chose to jeopardize the physical safety of the community.” While the Los Angeles police were not called in at UCLA and no arrests were made, officers in other parts of the country were deployed to campuses on Saturday, with some using chemical irritants and Tasers to disperse the students, as the protests spread. In Boston, police detained about 100 people while clearing a protest camp at Northeastern University, with social media posts showing security forces in riot gear and officers loading tents onto the back of a truck. In a statement on X, Northeastern said the area on campus where the protests were held was now “fully secured” and “all campus operations have returned to normal”. The university said its move came after “what began as a student demonstration two days ago was infiltrated by professional organisers with no affiliation to Northeastern”. It added that detained individuals who produced a valid student ID were released and will face disciplinary proceedings, not legal action. Northeastern said that “Kill the Jews” had been heard at the protests, and that such chants “crossed the line”, making it necessary to clear waht it said was an “unauthorized encampment” that had been “infiltrated” by professional organisers with no affiliation to the university. However, members of the pro-Palestinian protest movement at the university rejected those claims. In Bloomington in the Midwest, the Indiana University Police Department arrested 23 people as they cleared a campus protest camp, the Indiana Daily Student newspaper reported. On the opposite side of the country, the Arizona State University Police Department arrested 69 people for trespassing after the group set up an “unauthorised encampment” on campus. Arizona state officials said a protest group, “most of whom were not ASU students, faculty or staff”, set up a camp on Friday and ignored repeated orders to disperse. Meanwhile, at Washington University in St Louis, at least 80 people were arrested, including US presidential candidate Jill Stein and her campaign manager. Across the US, university leaders have tried, and largely failed, to quell the demonstrations, which have often seen the police intervening violently, with videos emerging from different states showing hundreds of students – and even faculty members – being forcefully arrested. The protesters have demanded amnesty for students and faculty members disciplined or fired for protesting. About a week ago at Columbia University in New York, more than 100 pro-Palestinian activists were arrested. What started at the Columbia campus has turned into a nationwide showdown between students and administrators over pro-Palestine protests and the restrictions on free speech. In the past 10 days, hundreds of students have been arrested, suspended, put on probation and, in rare cases, expelled from colleges, including Yale University, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota. A few universities have had to cancel graduation ceremonies, while others have seen their buildings occupied by the protesters. Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/28/hundreds-of-university-students-arrested-in-us-as-gaza-war-protests-spread

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/4/28/israels-war-on-gaza-live-news-hamas-officials-to-visit-cairo-for-talks