Israel pounds Gaza with non-stop strikes after overnight bombing causes ‘total chaos’
Turkey’s Erdogan says he will ‘declare Israel a war criminal’
Victoria Craig
Reporting from Istanbul
To a passionate crowd in Istanbul, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called Israel’s strikes in Gaza a “massacre,” and said the nation’s western allies were “the main culprit” behind what he called war crimes by Israel.
“Israel, we will declare you as a war criminal to the world. We are preparing for this and we will introduce Israel to the world as a war criminal.”
Erdogan has also continued his stance that he does not consider Hamas a “terrorist organisation”. It is proscribed as such in the US, UK and elsewhere.
Summary
- Israel is continuously pounding Gaza with airstrikes following a night of intensified bombing
- The BBC’s Rushdi Abualouf says the north of the Strip was hit overnight “on a scale we’ve never seen before” and that there was “total chaos” in the territory
- We do not yet have any specific casualty figures from the overnight bombardment. Communication networks went down last night and getting information out of Gaza is difficult
- Israel’s military said its ground forces entered Gaza overnight as part of an expanded ground operation and were “still in the field”
Iranian teenager dies after alleged hijab encounter with officers, reports say
Armita Geravand, 16, fell into coma on 1 October and was pronounced brain-dead last week
A 16-year-old Iranian girl has died after an alleged encounter with officers over violating the country’s hijab law, state media and activists have said.
Iran has denied that Armita Geravand was hurt after a confrontation on 1 October with officers enforcing the mandatory Islamic dress code in the Tehran metro. She had been pronounced brain dead last week after falling into a coma on 1 October.
Human rights groups were the first to make Armita’s hospitalisation public, posting photos on social media that showed her unconscious and on life support, with a respiratory tube and her head bandaged. Reuters could not verify the pictures.
Germany: Arrest warrant issued for far-right politician
Daniel Halemba, who recently won a seat in Bavaria’s state parliament, is being sought for an undisclosed reason. However, the 22-year-old was part of a student fraternity being investigated for displaying Nazi symbols.
An arrest warrant has been issued for the newly-elected far-right politician to Bavaria’s state parliament, the Würzburg public prosecutor’s office said on Saturday
Daniel Halemba, a 22-year-old lawmaker with the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) is being investigated for reasons that prosecutors refused to make public.
“For tactical reasons, we don’t want to say anything about the exact accusation or the reason for the arrest,” said a spokesperson for the public prosecutor’s office told DPA news agency.
Thousands of demonstrators join banned pro-Palestinian march in Paris
Thousands of demonstrators protested in Paris on Saturday in a banned march in “support of the Palestinian people” AFP correspondents saw.
A large contingent of police blocked marchers in a central part of the capital.
Among the protesters were elected officials wearing tricolor scarves, including a green MP and a far-left lawmaker.
“(The need for) a ceasefire is urgent, to stop killing women, children and men,” said the deputy mayor of the central town of Corbeil-Essonnes, Elsa Toure.
The devastating conflict erupted after Hamas militants carried out a shock cross-border attack on Israel on October 7 that left 1,400 people dead, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials.
About 1 million nuisance calls made to Japan embassy in China over Fukushima
Around 1 million nuisance calls have been made to the Japanese Embassy in Beijing since the release of treated radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the sea began in late August, Japanese government sources said Friday.
Tokyo has repeatedly asked the Chinese government to deal with the calls, saying they impede operations at the embassy, but the situation has yet to improve, according to the sources.
On the back of growing anti-Japan sentiment in China amid Beijing’s fierce opposition to the discharge, the daily number of harassing calls received by the embassy peaked at more than 40,000 on Aug. 25, a day after the release started, and has stayed at around 15,000 per day recently, they said.
Claims Russia executes own soldiers and offensive intensifies: Here’s what to know about the latest in Ukraine
This week, Ukrainian forces continued to hold out against a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine as the White House claimed Russia is executing its own troops for disobeying orders.
In southern Ukraine, authorities issued evacuation orders for civilians where Russia has stepped up aerial attacks.
Strikes in a western Ukrainian city blew out windows at a nuclear power plant, once again raising safety concerns.
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