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Israel faces mounting condemnation over killing of Palestinians in Gaza City aid distribution melee
Tel Aviv — China and Turkey joined Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan on Friday in condemning Israeli forces for firing on Palestinians waiting for the delivery of aid in Gaza the previous day, with its foreign ministry calling the event “yet another crime against humanity.” France called for an independent investigation into the incident.
“We will ask for explanations, and there will have to be an independent probe to determine what happened,” French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne told the country’s Inter broadcaster on Friday.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing was shocked and strongly condemned the killing of civilians, adding a call for “the relevant parties, especially Israel, to cease fire and end the fighting immediately, earnestly protect civilians’ safety, ensure that humanitarian aid can enter, and avoid an even more serious humanitarian disaster.”
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Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic crush for the food aid, and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said more than 100 people were killed and at least 700 wounded, bringing the overall death toll in the Gaza Strip to more than 30,000 since Israel launched its war on Hamas nearly five months ago in response to the group’s brutal terror attack on Oct. 7. That attack left about 1,200 people dead and saw Hamas take almost 250 others hostage.
Israel has responded with a blistering offensive in the Gaza Strip that has created a humanitarian catastrophe and devastation in northern areas including Gaza City, which have largely been cut off from the rest of the territory with little aid entering.
International pressure was already mounting on Israel to reduce the number of civilian casualties as it carries on with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated mission to “destroy Hamas” in Gaza. The pressure increased dramatically in the wake of Thursday’s deadly encounter just outside Gaza City.
Pre-dawn video broadcast by the Al Jazeera network captured the moment gunfire erupted as thousands of desperate Palestinians gathered in the hope of receiving food as a rare humanitarian convoy pulled into the area.
Tracer ammunition rounds can be seen streaking across the sky in the video from the direction of an Israeli military position.
CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reported that as the sun rose, the harrowing aftermath of the melee was laid bare. Medics say dozens were killed and hundreds injured. Medics say dozens were killed and hundreds injured, and doctors at Gaza City’s barely functioning hospitals told CBS News the majority of the deaths were from gunshot wounds.
IDF handout
The Israel Defense Forces released a heavily edited clip of grainy drone video that shows thousands of people clamber around the aid trucks, which it said showed how many people had been killed in a stampede. But the IDF acknowledged that forces opened fire on a smaller group of people whom it said posed an “imminent threat” to the soldiers.
Asked by CBS News how that threat was defined, and whether any of the Palestinians had shot at the Israeli soldiers, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said anybody approaching the forces after being warned not to was deemed to “pose a threat.”
Witnesses don’t deny a desperate rush for food in the starved city, but many have said the Israeli troops opened fire quickly and without provocation.
“We ran towards the food aid,” eyewitness Anwar Helewa said. “The soldiers then started firing at us, and so we left the food and ran.”
Palestinian leaders have called the incident in Gaza a “heinous massacre.”
President Biden has called it a “tragic and alarming” incident, and he spoke with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar again, with which the U.S. has been trying to help negotiate a new cease-fire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas. Any agreement would also likely include a significant increase in the flow of aid into Gaza, where the U.N. says some 500,000 people are facing acute starvation.
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Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Moscow — The head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy early Tuesday in an explosion in Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
An explosive device hidden in an electronic scooter went off outside a residential building as the two men left the structure, Agence France-Presse cites investigators as saying.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
The committee carries out responsible major investigations in Russia.
Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court on Dec. 16 for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine during Russia’s military operation in Ukraine that started in Feb. 2022.
AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, said it had recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield since February 2022, particularly K-1 combat grenades.
During the almost 3-year operation, Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.
Kirillov had been in his post since 2017, AFP notes.
A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one housing the embassies of the U.S. and other nations. A witness told Agence France-Presse of bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told the Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I’ve experienced in my 21 years living in Vanuatu and in the Pacific Islands. I’ve seen a lot of large earthquakes, never one like this,” he said.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 35 miles, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the U.S, French and other embassies had been crushed under higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor housed the U.S. embassy, but that couldn’t be immediately confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
STR / AFP via Getty Images
The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “considerable damage” to the mission, the U.S. embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a message on social media. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, suffered “significant damage,” a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office said, adding that, “New Zealand is deeply concerned about the significant earthquake in Vanuatu, and the damage it has caused.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu, said, “There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, and most mobile networks were cut off, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, (the) kind(s) of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
STR / AFP via Getty Images
Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and that other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to three feet forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
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Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Earthquake rocks Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, deaths feared, U.S. embassy damaged
12/16: CBS Evening News – CBS News
Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Earthquake rocks Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, deaths feared, U.S. embassy damaged