Author: afp

  • Shah Rukh Khan to be honoured at Locarno Film Festival

    Shah Rukh Khan to be honoured at Locarno Film Festival

    Switzerland’s Locarno Film Festival opens on Wednesday with Shah Rukh Khan, Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuaron and Irene Jacob set to be honoured with special awards.

    Founded in 1946, Locarno is one of the world’s longest-running annual film festivals and focuses on auteur cinema.

    Held on the shores of Lake Maggiore, in the Italian-speaking Ticino region of southern Switzerland, films are screened in Locarno’s central square — a feature of Swiss national life depicted on the country’s 20-franc banknotes.

    The open-air Piazza Grande holds up to 8,000 moviegoers, and films are shown on one of the largest screens in the world.

    Bollywood superstar Khan, 58, will on Saturday be given the Pardo alla Carriera award for people whose artistic contributions have redefined cinema.

    “The wealth and breadth of his contribution to Indian cinema is unprecedented,” said the festival’s artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro.

    “Khan is a king who has never lost touch with the audience that crowned him. This brave and daring artist has always been willing to challenge himself.”

    The 77th festival, which runs until August 17, features 225 films, including 104 world premieres and 15 debut movies.

    Locarno’s top prize is the Golden Leopard. Previous winning directors include Roberto Rossellini, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Milos Forman, Mike Leigh and Jim Jarmusch.

    Seventeen films — all world or international premieres — are vying for the award, including movies from Lithuania, France, Austria, Italy and South Korea.

    The Golden Leopard comes with a prize fund of 75,000 Swiss francs ($87,400), shared between the director and the producer.

    Switzerland’s largest film event will feature a retrospective dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Columbia Pictures.

    – ‘Tortured, fascinating characters’ –

    New Zealand’s Campion will be recognised with the Leopard of Honour, given to outstanding personalities of world cinema.

    She was the first woman to be nominated twice for the best director Oscar: first for “The Piano” (1993) and then for “The Power of the Dog” (2021), which secured her the Academy Award.

    “Her work, peopled with tortured, fascinating characters and marked by an astonishing skill in grappling with the more disturbing side of the human condition, represents one of the undisputed pinnacles of contemporary filmmaking,” Nazzaro said.

    Previous recipients include Ennio Morricone, Jean-Luc Godard, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Verhoeven, Terry Gilliam and Werner Herzog.

    Mexican filmmaker Cuaron, who won the best director Oscars for “Gravity” (2013) and “Roma” (2018), will receive the lifetime achievement award.

    “Cuaron has reinvented himself as an artist with each new film,” said Nazzaro.

    French-Swiss actress Jacob, who starred in “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991) and “Three Colours: Red” (1994), will receive the Leopard Club Award, given for film work touching the collective imagination.

    Stacey Sher — the US film producer behind “Pulp Fiction”, “Get Shorty”, “Gattaca”, “Erin Brockovich”, “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight” — will receive the Raimondo Rezzonico Award for major achievements in international movie production.

    Nearly 150,000 people attended last year’s festival.

  • 91 killed as Dhaka turns into battleground

    91 killed as Dhaka turns into battleground

    Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi protesters demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resign, clashed with government supporters on Sunday, with dozens killed in one of the deadliest days since demonstrations began.

    Rallies that began last month against civil service job quotas have escalated into some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year rule and shifted into wider calls for the 76-year-old to step down.

    At least 91 people were killed on Sunday alone, including 14 police officers, with the rival sides battling with sticks and knives and security forces firing rifles, taking the total killed since protests began in July to at least 261.

    Police said protesters att­a­cked their officers, inclu­ding storming a station in the town of Enayetpur.

    “The terrorists attacked the police station and killed 11 policemen,” said Bijoy Basak, a deputy inspector general.

    AFP journalists repo­rted hearing sustained crackles of gunfire after dark on Sunday, with protesters defying a nationwide curfew.

    Mobile internet was tightly restricted.

    ‘Final protest’

    In several cases, soldiers and police did not intervene to stem the protests, unlike the past month of rallies that repeatedly ended in deadly crackdowns.

    Demonstrators in the capital Dhaka, surrounded by a tightly packed and cheering crowd, waved a Bangladeshi flag on top of an armoured car as soldiers watched.

    Asif Mahmud, one of the main leaders in the civil disobedience campaign, called on supporters to march on Dhaka on Monday. “Prepare bamboo sticks and liberate Bangladesh,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday. “The time has come for the final protest,” he said.

    Brought to justice

    Vast crowds of protesters packed into Dhaka’s central Shahbagh Square on Sunday, with street battles in multiple sites.

    “There were clashes between students and the ruling party men,” police inspector Al Helal said, adding two young men were killed in Dhaka’s Munshiganj district.

    “One of the dead was hacked in his head and another had gunshot injuries.”

    Another policeman, who asked not to be identified, said “the whole city has turned into a battleground”.

    Two people were killed in the city of Kishioreganj, where protesters torched a ruling party office, police said.

    Some former military officers have joined the student movement and ex-army chief Gen Ikbal Karim Bhuiyan turned his Facebook profile picture red in a show of support.

    “We call on the incumbent government to withdraw the armed forces from the street immediately,” Bhuiyan told reporters on Sunday alongside other ex-officers, condemning “egregious killings, torture, disappearances and mass arrests”.

    “Those who are responsible for pushing people of this country to a state of such an extreme misery will have to be brought to justice,” he said.

    No longer about job quotas

    Current army chief Waker-uz-Zaman told officers at the military headquarters in Dhaka on Saturday the “Bangladesh Army is the symbol of trust of the people”.

    “It always stood by the people and will do so for the sake of people and in any need of the state,” he said, according to a statement, which did not say explicitly whether the army backed the protests.

    The demonstrations attracted people from all strata of Bangladeshi society. Rap songs calling for people’s support have spread widely on social media.

    “It is no longer about job quotas,” said Sakhawat, a young female protester who gave only one name, and called Hasina a “killer”.

    A group of 47 manufacturers in the economically vital garment sector said they stood in “solidarity” with the protesters.

    Obaidul Quader, general secretary of the ruling Awami League, has called on party activists to gather “in every district” nationwide to show their support for the government.

    The unrest began in July over the reintroduction of the quota scheme, which reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups. It has since been scaled back by the country’s top court.

  • ‘I want to inspire’: Algeria’s woman boxer fighting prejudices

    ‘I want to inspire’: Algeria’s woman boxer fighting prejudices

    Born in a poor village some 300 kilometres from Algiers, boxer Imane Khelif had to overcome obstacles in a conservative country where women are considered unfit for the sport.

    With braided hair and a powerful 1.79 metre (5 foot 9 inch) physique, the 25-year-old is the object of a Paris Olympic Games gender controversy.

    With smiles and a soft voice, Imane told her story on television channel Canal Algerie one month before the start of the games.

    “Our village was around 10 kilometres from the centre (of Tiaret, 280 kilometres southwest of Algiers). I moved from the village to the city. From the city to the capital. From the capital to abroad,” she said.

    From a family of limited means, she spoke of the difficulty of her life in “a village of conservative people” in Tiaret’s semi-desert surroundings.

    “I came from a conservative family. Boxing is not a widely-practised sport by women, especially in Algeria. It was difficult.”

    Already a strong athlete, she played football with the boys in her village of Biban Mesbah — but beating boys in matches brought on fights where she fought back with punches.

    These fights lead her to boxing.

    In an interview with UNICEF, she said she used to sell scrap metal and her mother sold homemade couscous to pay for bus tickets to Tiaret.

    Imane’s father at first did not approve of her decision to pursue boxing, but he eventually became one of her biggest fans.

    The 49-year-old unemployed welder told AFP that his daughter is “an example of the Algerian woman, a heroine of Algeria”.

    He hailed “her strong will to work and to train”, in an interview with AFP on Friday.

    In 2022, Imane told the Algerian news agency APS that she had considered giving up boxing “because my family did not accept the idea, and because of how society looked at me, considering that I was doing something wrong.”

    But “all these barriers made me even stronger and were an extra motivation to achieve my dreams.”

    She also expressed her determination in an interview on the UNICEF website, where she said her “dream is to win a gold medal”.

    “If I win, mothers and fathers will be able to see how far their children can go,” she said. “I want to inspire girls and children in Algeria.”

    Imane’s international career took off with her participation in the lightweight category in the 2020 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo — postponed to 2021 — where she won fifth place after losing in the quarter finals to Ireland’s Kellie Harlington.

    “Everything changed for the better, especially as my country’s flag flew and its hymn played in many countries throughout the world”, she explained.

    In 2023, she made it to the semi-finals of the women’s amateur boxing world championships in New Delhi, India.

    However, she was disqualified following unspecified gender eligibility testing by the International Boxing Association, which is not recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

    After her match against Italian opponent Angela Carini this week in the Paris Games — whom she beat in less than a minute — Imane was targeted by online harassment and racism, where far-right publications insinuated that she was “a man fighting women”.

    Her father has dismissed aspersions about her gender, saying she is “a strong and courageous girl.”

    And the IOC has supported her participation, amid the furore over Khelif and another woman boxer also disqualified from last year’s world championships.

    “All of the competitors respect the eligibility rules for the competitions,” said Mark Adams, IOC spokesman, adding that it had “established that these are women.”

    Imane’s coach, Mohamed Chaoua, said the “controversies give her the strength to move forward”.

  • Bangladesh students call for nationwide civil disobedience; seek Hasina’s resignation

    Bangladesh students call for nationwide civil disobedience; seek Hasina’s resignation

    Student leaders rallied Bangladeshis on Saturday for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government weathered a worsening backlash over a deadly police crackdown on protesters.

    Rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem last month that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

    Troop deployments briefly restored order, but crowds hit the streets in huge numbers after Friday prayers in the Muslim-majority nation, heeding a call by student leaders to press the government for more concessions.

    Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organising the initial protests, urged their compatriots to launch an all-out non-cooperation movement from Sunday.

    “This includes non-payment of taxes and utility bills, strikes by government workers and a halt to overseas remittance payments through banks,” the group’s Asif Mahmud told AFP.

    Mahmud’s fellow student leaders also said another round of nationwide rallies would be staged on Saturday.

    “Please don’t stay at home. Join your nearest protest march,” Mahmud wrote on Facebook.

    Students are demanding a public apology from Hasina for last month’s violence and the dismissal of several of her ministers.

    Read more: 195 killed, 4000 arrested amid police crackdown in Bangladesh

    They have also insisted that the government reopens schools and universities around the country, all of which were shuttered at the height of the unrest.

    Crowds on the street have gone further, chanting demands for Hasina to leave office.

    Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

    Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

    Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of a quota scheme — since scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court — that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.

    With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

    The protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks on demonstrators by police and pro-government student groups.

    Hasina’s government eventually imposed a nationwide curfew, deployed troops and shut down the nation’s mobile internet network for 11 days to restore order.

    Foreign governments condemned the clampdown, with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week calling for an international probe into the “excessive and lethal force against protesters”.

    Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters last weekend that security forces had operated with restraint but were “forced to open fire” to defend government buildings.

    At least 32 children were among those killed last month, the UN said Friday.

  • Turkey blocks access to Instagram

    Turkey blocks access to Instagram

    Many users living in Turkey complained on the X platform that they could not refresh their Instagram feed, an issue verified by AFP journalists.

    On Friday, the BTK communications authority announced on its website that the Meta-owned platform had been blocked.

    It did not give a reason, but a BTK official told Turkish media that it was because of “criminal content” on Instagram that the latter had been asked to withdraw.

    The president’s communications director, Fahrettin Altun, had on Wednesday accused Instagram of censure, saying it was “preventing people from publishing messages of condolence for the martyr Haniyeh”.

    Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and a close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was killed in Tehran on Wednesday in an attack blamed on Israel.

    Erdogan decreed a national day of mourning in memory of Haniyeh, who played a key role in talks aimed at ending nearly ten months of war in Gaza.

    “This is a very clear and obvious attempt at censure,” Altun said on X.

    An anonymous BTK source denied the move was due to Instagram blocking posts about Haniyeh, telling website Medyascope that it was over “insults to Ataturk”, the founding father of modern Turkey, and “crimes” including “drug games (and) paedophilia”.

    He said the platform would be blocked permanently if it didn’t resolve the problem.

    According to Turkish media, 50 million of the country’s 85 million people have an Instagram account.

    Digital law expert Yaman Akdeniz said the decision had likely been taken by the president’s office or a government ministry.

    He said BTK needed to get the decision approved by a judge, and it was unlikely that a judge would approve it.

    “The censure imposed on Instagram is arbitrary and can be neither explained nor justified,” he said on X.

    The decision to freeze the platform at 03:00 am on Friday sparked derision on other social media networks such as X.

    “Instagram is blocked in Turkey. Life is over,” wrote user “CringeOfMaster” alongside a picture of a grieving man.

    “BTK’s job isn’t to cut off the internet but to get it working faster,” said IT professor Cem Say, noting that Turkey ranked “111th in the world for internet speed”.

    This is not the first time that Turkish authorities have temporarily blocked access to social media sites, notably following attacks.

    Wikipedia was blocked between April 2017 and January 2020 over two articles that alleged a link between the presidency and extremism.

    Although Erdogan’s government is regularly accused of muzzling freedom of expression, the move to stop Wikipedia caused shock because of the huge amount of online information that became inaccessible.

    In April, Facebook owner Meta suspended its Threads social network in Turkey following a decision by authorities there to prevent it from sharing information with Instagram.

  • Hezbollah says fired ‘dozens’ of rockets at north Israel

    Hezbollah says fired ‘dozens’ of rockets at north Israel

    Hezbollah said it launched rockets at northern Israel Thursday “in response” to a deadly Israeli strike in south Lebanon — the group’s first attack after Israel killed a top commander earlier this week.

    Thegroup said in a statement that it “launched dozens of Katyusha rockets… in response to the Israeli enemy’s attack on… (the southern village of Shama) that killed a number of civilians.”

    The Israeli military said that shortly after the rocket fire, the air force “struck the Hezbollah launcher from which the projectiles were launched.”

    Earlier Thursday, the Lebanese health ministry said four Syrians were killed in an Israeli strike on the south, where Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily fire since the Gaza war began in October.

    “The health ministry announces… four Syrian nationals were martyred” in an “Israeli strike” on the southern village of Shama, it said in a statement.

    The ministry said the toll might rise once DNA tests had been carried out.

    The strike also wounded five Lebanese nationals, it added.

    Emergency services told AFP that the dead were farmer workers and part of the same family.

    Plumes of smoke billowed from the site of the strike, which heavily damaged two nearby buildings and burnt a vehicle to a crisp, a photographer contributing to AFP reported.

    The attack was Hezbollah’s first since an Israeli air strike killed its top commander Fuad Shukr on Tuesday evening, with leader Hassan Nasrallah saying operations would resume on Friday morning.

    Nasrallah warned his group was bound to respond to the killing of Shukr.

    His death was followed hours later Wednesday, by the killing of Hezbollah ally Hamas’s chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran, which Iran and Hamas have blamed on Israel. Israel has declined to comment on his killing.

    The genocide in Gaza since October has killed at least 542 people on the Lebanese side, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

    At least 22 soldiers and 25 civilians have been killed on the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, according to army figures.

  • Britney biopic in works as Universal buys memoir rights

    Britney biopic in works as Universal buys memoir rights

    A Britney Spears biopic is in development after Universal Pictures bought movie rights to the pop star’s best-selling memoir, the Hollywood studio announced Thursday.

    “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon Chu is attached to develop and direct the film, based on Spears’s recent autobiographical book “The Woman In Me,” the company said in a statement to AFP.

    Universal won a “highly competitive auction” for the film adaptation rights, with “La La Land” producer Marc Platt due to oversee the project, it said.

    “Excited to share with my fans that I’ve been working on a secret project with #MarcPlatt. He’s always made my favorite movies,” Spears herself posted on social media Thursday.

    “Stay tuned,” she told fans.

    “The Woman In Me” laid bare the troubled singer’s journey from child star to global pop phenomenon, as well as her subsequent high-profile public breakdown and legal battles with her father.

    Full of criticism of her controlling family and an industry that mercilessly devours its talent, the book sold over 2.5 million copies in the United States alone following its publication last October.

    Spears’s phenomenal early music success with late 1990s hits like “…Baby One More Time” coincided with an aggressive paparazzi culture that delighted in capturing her partying alongside hell-raisers like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

    In the book, Spears revealed that Justin Timberlake urged her to have an abortion after she became pregnant during their relationship.

    And she shared details of her brief but intense affair with Irish actor and Oscar nominee Colin Farrell, which she called “a two-week brawl.”

    Following Spears’s public breakdown, she was placed under the conservatorship of her father Jamie Spears, who controlled her money and her personal life, even as she continued to perform high-profile concerts.

    The conservatorship was dissolved by a Los Angeles court in 2021, after a groundswell of public support to “Free Britney.”

    Her father has always insisted that he had the best interests of his daughter at heart and was seeking to protect her from exploitation.

    No release date has been set for the Britney film.

    Universal has previously released musical biopics about hip-hop group N.W.A (“Straight Outta Compton”) and rapper Eminem (“8 Mile.”)

    Chu is also directing Universal’s big-budget, two-part movie adaptation of the musical “Wicked,” with the first film out in November.

  • Extreme heat claims 175,000 lives a year in Europe, says WHO

    Extreme heat claims 175,000 lives a year in Europe, says WHO

    COPENHAGEN: Extreme heat kills over 175,000 people a year in Europe, where temperatures are rising quicker than the rest of the globe, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) European branch said on Thursday.

    Of the some 489,000 heat-related deaths recorded each year by the WHO between 2000 and 2019, the European region accounts for 36 per cent or, on average, 176,040 deaths, the WHO said.

    The health body noted that temperatures in the region are “rising at around twice the global average rate.” The WHO’s European region comprises 53 countries, including several in Central Asia.

    “People are paying the ultimate price,” Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, said in a statement. According to the WHO, there has been a 30pc increase in heat-related mortality in the region over the past two decades.

    “Temperature extremes exacerbate chronic conditions, including cardiovascular, respiratory, and cerebrovascular diseases, mental health, and diabetes-related conditions,” Kluge said. The regional director added that extreme heat can particularly be a problem for elderly people and an “additional burden” for pregnant women.

    The WHO noted that “heat stress” — when the human body can no longer maintain its temperature — “is the leading cause of climate-related death” in the region. According to the WHO, the number of heat-related deaths is set to “soar” in the coming years as a result of global warming.

    “The three warmest years on record” for the region “have all occurred since 2020, and the ten warmest years have been since 2007,” Kluge said. On July 25, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that humanity was suffering from an “extreme heat epidemic,” and called for action to limit the impacts of heat waves intensified by climate change.

    Scorching China

    Chinese weather authorities said on Thursday, July was the country’s hottest month since records began six decades ago, as extreme temperatures persist across the globe. China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving climate change and making extreme weather more frequent and intense.

    Heatwaves this summer have scorched parts of northern China, while torrential rains have triggered floods and landslides in central and southern areas. Last month was “the hottest July since complete observations began in 1961, and the hottest single month in the history of observation”, the national weather office said on Thursday.

    The weather office said the average air temperature in China in July was 23.21°C, exceeding the previous record of 23.17°C in 2017. The mean temperature in every province was also “higher than the average for previous years,” with the southwestern provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan logging their highest averages.

    It forecast that the mercury would continue to climb in eastern regions this week, including Shanghai, where a red alert for extreme heat was in place.

    “Next week will be more of the same. It’s like being on an iron plate,” wrote one user of the Weibo social media platform in response to the megacity’s heat warning.

  • Calls for revenge at Iran funeral for Hamas chief Haniyeh

    Calls for revenge at Iran funeral for Hamas chief Haniyeh

    Iran held funeral processions on Thursday amidst calls for revenge after the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike in Tehran blamed on Israel.

    The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led prayers for Haniyeh ahead of his burial in Qatar, having earlier threatened a “harsh punishment” for his killing.

    The Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khameini leads the funeral prayers for Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on August 1. — IRNA

    In Tehran’s city centre, thousands of mourning crowds carrying posters of Haniyeh and Palestinian flags gathered for the ceremony at Tehran University before a procession, according to an AFP correspondent.

    Haniyeh’s death was announced the day before by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who said he and his bodyguard were killed in a strike on their accommodation in the Iranian capital at 2:00am on Wednesday.

    It came just hours after Israel targeted and killed top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in a retaliatory strike on the Lebanese capital Beirut, sending fears of a wider regional conflict soaring in the fallout from the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza.

    Israel has declined to comment on the Tehran strike.

    Iran’s state TV showed the coffins of Haniyeh and his bodyguards covered in Palestinian flags during the ceremony attended by senior Iranian officials. President Masoud Pezeshkian and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief, General Hossein Salami, were present.

    Haniyeh had been visiting Tehran for Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony on Tuesday.

    Senior Hamas figure Khalil al-Hayya, the movement’s foreign relations chief, vowed during the funeral ceremony that “Ismail Haniyeh’s slogan, ‘We will not recognise Israel,’ will remain an immortal slogan” and “we will pursue Israel until it is uprooted from the land of Palestine.”

    Iran’s conservative parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said Iran “will certainly carry out the supreme leader’s order (to avenge Haniyeh.)” “It is our duty to respond at the right time and in the right place,” he said in a speech with crowds chanting “Death to Israel, Death to America!”

    ‘Our duty’

    The caskets, with a black-and-white pattern resembling a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, were borne on a flower-bedecked truck through leafy streets where cooling water mists sprayed the flag-waving crowds.

    Khamenei, who has the final say in Iran’s political affairs, said after Haniyeh’s death that it was “our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

    The Islamic Republic has not yet officially published any information on the exact location of the strike.

    Pezeshkian said on Wednesday that “the Zionists (Israel) will soon see the consequences of their cowardly and terrorist act”.

    The international community, however, called for de-escalation and a focus on securing a ceasefire in Gaza — which Haniyeh had, according to a Hamas official previously, accused Israel of obstructing.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the strikes in Tehran and Beirut represented a “dangerous escalation”. All efforts, he said, should be “leading to a ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of hostages taken during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which began nearly 10 months of fighting.

    The prime minister of key ceasefire broker Qatar said Haniyeh’s killing had thrown the whole mediation process into doubt. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said in a post on the social media site X.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday called on “all parties” in the Middle East to “stop escalatory actions.” Earlier he said a ceasefire in Gaza was still the “imperative”, though White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the twin killings of Haniyeh and Shukr “don’t help” regional tensions.

    Tensions inflamed

    While Iran has blamed the attack on its arch-foe, Israel has declined to comment on Haniyeh’s death. It did, however, claim the killing of Shukr, whom it blamed for a weekend rocket strike that killed 12 youths in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

    The killings come with regional tensions already inflamed by fighting in Gaza, a conflict that has drawn in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen.

    One of those groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, “declared three days of mourning” for Haniyeh, with political leader Mahdi al-Mashat expressing “condolences to the Palestinian people and Hamas” over his killing, according to the group’s Saba news agency.

    The United Nations Security Council also convened an emergency meeting Wednesday at Iran’s request to discuss the strike.

    Hamas has for months been indirectly negotiating a truce and hostage-prisoner exchange deal with Israel, in talks facilitated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States, but with Haniyeh killed, the situation is back to square one.

    Analysts told AFP that Haniyeh was a moderating influence within the Islamist group, and that while he would be replaced, the dynamics within Hamas could change.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attack that ignited conflict in Gaza.

    That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

    Concern grew among Israelis over the fate of those still held in Gaza. Haniyeh’s killing “was a mistake as it threatens the possibility of having a hostage deal,” said Anat Noy, a resident of the coastal city of Haifa.

    Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 39,445 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.

  • China warns US, Japan to ‘stop creating imaginary enemies’

    China warns US, Japan to ‘stop creating imaginary enemies’

    Beijing on Monday warned the United States and Japan to “stop creating imaginary enemies” after the countries lashed out against China’s actions in the South China Sea in Tokyo talks.

    “We strongly urge the US and Japan to immediately stop interfering in China’s internal affairs and stop creating imaginary enemies,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

    Following talks in the Japanese capital on Sunday, the US and the hosts slammed Beijing’s “destabilizing actions” in the South China Sea while also condemning Russia’s growing military cooperation with China and North Korea.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Japanese counterparts “reiterated their strong objections to the PRC’s unlawful maritime claims, militarization of reclaimed features, and threatening and provocative activities in the South China Sea”, a joint statement said, using an acronym for China.

    China’s “destabilizing actions in this region include unsafe encounters at sea and in the air, efforts to disrupt other countries’ offshore resources exploitation, as well as the dangerous use of Coast Guard and maritime militia vessels”, the communique added.

    They accused China of “intensifying attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion in the East China Sea” and that Chinese “foreign policy seeks to reshape the international order for its own benefit at the expense of others”.

    China’s Lin on Monday said the joint statement “disregards facts, mixes up right and wrong maliciously attacks China’s foreign policy”.

    He added the communique “crudely meddles in China’s internal affairs, maliciously attacks and smears China on maritime issues, makes thoughtless remarks on China’s normal military development and defence policy, exaggerates and kicks up a fuss about the China threat, and maliciously hypes up regional tensions”.

    “China deplores and firmly opposes this,” Lin said.

    mjw-je/rsc

    © Agence France-Presse