International

Israel vows to demolish Hamas as troops prepare to move on shattered Gaza

Published

3 years ago

October 15, 2023

Advocate News Nigeria

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Egypt’s Sisi says Israel’s response to Hamas attacks ‘beyond the right to self-defence’
More than 1,000 people estimated to be missing under rubble in the Gaza Strip
Israel says 600,000 Palestinians have left north Gaza
Iran’s foreign minister warns: “If the Zionist aggressions do not stop, the hands of all parties in the region are on the trigger.”

GAZA/JERUSALEM, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “demolish Hamas” as his troops prepared to move into the Gaza Strip in pursuit of Hamas militants whose deadly rampage through Israeli border towns shocked the world.

Israel has urged exhausted Gazans to evacuate south, which hundreds of thousands have already done in the besieged enclave that is home to more than 2 million people. Hamas, which runs Gaza, has told people to ignore Israel’s message.

Inside Gaza’s narrow and crowded streets, conditions were deteriorating as deaths from Israeli air strikes rose. Bodies were stored in ice cream freezer trucks because moving them to hospitals was too risky and cemeteries were full.

With fears of the conflict spilling further, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued his tour of Middle East states, seeking to prevent escalation and secure the release of 155 hostages Israel says were taken by Hamas back into Gaza.

Arab leaders stressed the need to protect Gaza civilians.

“The reaction went beyond the right to self-defence, turning into collective punishment,” said Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Israel’s retaliatory strikes.

Clashes on Israel’s border with Lebanon, the deadliest since 2006, have underscored the dangers of regional spillover.

On Sunday, Hamas’ armed wing Al Qassam Brigades said it fired 20 rockets from Lebanon at two Israeli settlements while Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia said it fired missiles at Israeli barracks in Hanita and had inflicted casualties.

Israel said it was striking Lebanon in retaliation, and the U.N. peacekeeping force said its headquarters in south Lebanon had been hit by a rocket.

Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah, warned Israel of escalation if it kept attacking Palestinians.

“If the Zionist aggressions do not stop, the hands of all parties in the region are on the trigger,” said Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, adding that Tehran could not simply stay an observer.

Blinken met Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh then Sisi in Cairo. Amid international efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Blinken said the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt would reopen.

“There’s a determination in every country I went to, to make sure that this conflict doesn’t spread,” said Blinken, who was due back in Israel on Monday.

“They are using their own influence, their own relationships, to try to make sure that this doesn’t happen.”

ISRAELI RESOLVE

Netanyahu convened Israel’s expanded emergency cabinet, including former opposition lawmakers, in a show of unity. “Hamas thought we would be demolished. It is we who will demolish Hamas,” he said.

Israel is carrying out the most intense bombardment Gaza has ever seen in response to the killing of 1,300 people when Hamas fighters rampaged through Israeli towns on Oct. 7.

They shot men, women, children and soldiers and seized hostages in the worst attack on civilians in Israel’s history.

Graphic video of the attacks, and reports from medical and emergency services in the overrun towns and kibbutzes, deepened Israelis’ sense of shock.

France said 19 of its citizens had died in the Hamas attacks, with 13 others still unaccounted for and possibly taken hostage. Canada raised its fatality toll to five.

Authorities in Gaza said at least 2,670 people had so far been killed by Israel’s retaliatory strikes, a quarter of them children, and nearly 10,000 wounded. Another 1,000 people were missing and believed to be under rubble.

Gaza hospitals are running short of supplies and struggling to cope with the numbers of wounded.

Among them was 4-year-old Fulla Al-Laham, 14 members of whose family, including her parents and siblings, died in an Israeli air strike. “May God keep me alive to take care of her,” said her grandmother Um Muhammed Al-Laham, who held the girl’s hand as she lay in a hospital on a drip with a bandaged arm.

ON THE MOVE

Israel’s military, which has massed tanks on Gaza’s border in preparation for a ground offensive, says it is targeting Hamas and its infrastructure. Israeli aircraft on Sunday struck about 250 military targets, killing the Hamas southern district commander, the military said.

Israeli military chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi told soldiers near the Gaza border they would be entering Gaza to root out Hamas, targeting “every place, every commander, every operator.”

“You are about to do something big and important, that needs to change the situation for a long time in a clear way,” Halevi said.

An Israeli blockade has prevented fuel, food and water from entering Gaza, although Netanyahu had agreed with U.S. President Joe Biden to resume the water supply to parts of southern Gaza, a minister said on Sunday.

The Israeli military said some 600,000 Gazans had left the northern half of the territory, which includes Gaza City’s more than 1 million residents.

Some Palestinians who went south said they were heading back north because they were attacked wherever they went.

Hussam Abu Safiya, an intensive care doctor on a children’s ward at the Kamal Edwan hospital in northern Gaza, said the order to evacuate was impossible.

“In this ward as you can see, there are children who are attached to ventilators, and now we have been asked to evacuate the hospital, where should we evacuate these children?”

The World Health Organization said Israel’s orders to evacuate 22 Gaza hospitals were a “death sentence for the sick and injured”.

UN relief operations in Gaza “are on the verge of collapse,” said Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the UN agency for the Palestinians, UNRWA.

“The number of people seeking shelter in our schools and other UNRWA facilities in the south is absolutely overwhelming, and we do not have any more the capacity to deal with them,” he said. (Reuters)

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International

Six people missing as plane vanishes from Bermuda to Boston

Published

2 days ago

October 4, 2026

Advocate News Nigeria

Six people are missing after a private jet vanished, sparking a major search off the coast of Nantucket in the US. Picture: X

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There are grave fears for the passengers of a private plane that suddenly vanished mid-flight, sparking a major search off the coast of the US.

US authorities say the Gulfstream G100 lost contact with air traffic control about 2am local time on Saturday (4pm Saturday AET) while flying from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda to Boston Logan International Airport.

The US Coast Guard said the Federal Aviation Administration alerted it after contact was lost with the aircraft – which plummeted from 23,500 feet to 11,000 feet in just three minutes, according to FlightAware data.

“We are praying for a safe outcome,” a spokesperson for Latitude Air Ambulance, which operates the missing plane, told City News.

A search is now under way off Nantucket in the air and on water as crews work to locate the missing jet, the Coast Guard said. Data from FlightRadar24 showed a number of aircraft searching south of the island.

Six people are missing after a private jet vanished, sparking a major search off the coast of Nantucket in the US.

The plane was en route from Bermuda to Boston when it vanished.

“Air & surface crews have launched in search of the aircraft. Updates will be provided here as info becomes available,” the Coast Guard Northeast District said on X.

The plane was carrying out a medical evacuation in Bermuda – a British overseas territory in the north Atlantic Ocean, according to Clarence Togeretz, Director of Flight Operations at Latitude Air Ambulance.

“We always get rather concerned when our crew doesn’t report to us in a timely manner,” he told NBC News.

“But I will say that again, optimistically and positively, that doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.”

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International

27 feared dead after two mass shootings in South Africa

Published

1 week ago

September 27, 2026

Advocate News Nigeria

People gather at the store in Lwandle, near Cape Town, where 10 people were killed. Photograph: Esa Alexander/Reuters

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Twenty-seven people have been killed in two mass shootings hours apart in South Africa, the latest gun violence to hit the country.

Seventeen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday evening, with 15 more injured.

In a separate shooting in the early hours of Sunday morning, 10 people were killed outside an entertainment venue in a township near Cape Town and a further 11 were injured.

South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and has struggled to contain gang-related gun violence in recent years. Police have not indicated a motive for either of the latest attacks.

In Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar before continuing the attack inside and torching two vehicles before fleeing.

Police said thirteen men and four women were killed.

Deputy provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana said the attack may have been a retaliation for an incident last month, in which one person was killed and another wounded, according to AFP news agency.

Speaking at the scene, he said police had clear pictures and in some cases names for the suspects.

In Cape Town, five victims died at the scene and a further five people died in hospital.

No arrests had been made in either case on Sunday morning.

The two mass shootings came days after 11 people were killed in the city of Duban when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township.

Reuters An armed guard walking down a road with people looking on from behind police tape — Armed security forces were deployed to the scene of a mass shooting in Cape Town on Sunday morning

Illegal weapons are prevalent in South Africa and gun violence has been a persistent problem for decades, with about 60 murders recorded every day in the country of 62 million.

But a recent spate of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with violence often linked to turf wars between gangs engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.

In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa called organised crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development”.

Earlier this year the military was deployed alongside police in areas with the highest murder rates in an effort to reduce armed violence.

On Saturday a tenth woman’s body was found in Ekurhuleni, to the east of Johannesburg, with local police saying they were unable to rule out a serial killer operating in the area with similarities between the deaths. (BBC)

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International

US has deported 25,000 to third countries under secretive deals – Report

Published

2 weeks ago

September 21, 2026

Advocate News Nigeria

U.S. President Donald Trump

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The United States has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday.

Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Washington has been signing deals with developing countries to take migrants who cannot legally be sent home.

The investigation by Forbidden Stories found the administration has earmarked $410 million to be paid directly to the receiving countries, or to UN agencies to facilitate the returns.

At least 25,447 people had already been deported to third countries by August 31, 2026, according to data compiled by Forbidden Stories with a consortium of international journalists.

The vast majority — around 20,000 — were sent to Mexico, but the rest were dispersed to 27 other countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, and agreements have been finalised with seven more.

The deals vary, including over which nationalities can be deported and whether people with criminal records can be accepted.

An AFP investigation earlier this year found Washington is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into accepting deportees.

Lawyers told AFP that deportees were being thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.

Forbidden Stories said 49 of Africa’s 54 countries had been approached about accepting third-country deportees.

A little-known State Department division called the Office of Remigration, created in May 2025, has handled most of the negotiations and payments, according to Forbidden Stories.

The office is headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, a 41-year-old diplomat who previously worked as a security officer.

The report details his visits to Cameroon, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December on accepting deportees. A week later, it also signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million.

The following month, the State Department said it would provide a further $30 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Cameroon to “facilitate the voluntary return of refugees and combat illegal immigration.”

The first plane carrying deportees arrived in Cameroon on January 14.

– Payments –

Other agreements have involved direct payments to governments.

Palau, a small Pacific island nation with a population of under 18,000, signed an agreement in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in return for $7.5 million.

However, only three people have so far been sent under the agreement.

In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 out of a possible 160 under an agreement worth more than $5 million. It has accepted deportees with criminal records, the investigation found.

Of the $410 million planned for the agreements, internal State Department records showed that $81 million was earmarked for signatory governments.

The rest was intended for aid organisations, including more than $178 million for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.

The agencies have faced criticism over their involvement, although UNHCR told Forbidden Stories that it was not party to the bilateral agreements and that US funding was being used in line with its mandate to strengthen asylum systems.

An IOM spokesperson told Forbidden Stories that the agency’s decisions to accept funding rested “on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”