Wednesday 25 Sep 2024 {HMC} Hezbollah said Wednesday it fired a ballistic missile targeting the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency near Tel Aviv, while Israeli forces carried out what the military said were widespread airstrikes against Hezbollah in southern and eastern Lebanon.

Israel’s military said it intercepted the Hezbollah missile, which prompted air raid sirens in Tel Aviv. There were no reports of damage or casualties.

Lebanon’s state news agency reported heavy Israeli bombardments Wednesday hitting areas across southern Lebanon.

Israel’s targets included dozens of ammunition depots, the Israeli military said. It added that about 40 Hezbollah rocket launches were detected, with some being intercepted by Israeli air defenses.

The escalated conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border is set to be the focus of a U.N. Security Council meeting later Wednesday in New York.

Pope Francis said Wednesday he was saddened by the situation in Lebanon and that the international community will work to stop what he called “this terrible escalation.”

Diplomatic efforts to contain the fighting and prevent a wider regional conflict included a meeting Tuesday between French President Emmanuel Macron and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, during which Macron’s office said he “highlighted the responsibility of Iran to support a general de-escalation and use its influence with destabilizing actors.”

Iran is a backer of both Hezbollah and the Hamas militant group that Israel is fighting in the Gaza Strip.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that Israel’s killing of top Hezbollah commanders will not bring the group to its knees.

“The organizational strength and human resources of Hezbollah is very strong and will not be critically hit by the killing of a senior commander, even if that is clearly a loss,” Khamenei said.

Israel said one of its strikes in Beirut’s suburbs Tuesday killed Ibrahim Muhammad Kobeisi, identified by Israel as a senior Hezbollah military commander who oversaw the group’s missile systems.

The conflict has also prompted some governments to urge their nationals to leave Lebanon. The United States announced it was sending more military personnel to the region to augment its existing forces, while Britain said it expected 700 of its forces to arrive Wednesday in Cyprus in preparation for potential evacuations of its nationals from Lebanon.

Lebanese health officials said Israeli attacks since Monday have killed at least 564 people and injured more than 1,800 others.

The United Nations refugee agency said it was “outraged and deeply saddened” by other Israeli attacks that killed two of its staff members.

Thousands of Lebanese, on their own and at the urging of Israel, have fled southern Lebanon in search of safety from the Israeli attacks, clogging roads north to Beirut.

“We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday. “The people of Lebanon, the people of Israel and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire since the outbreak of the war in Gaza last October 7, when the militant group began firing rockets in solidarity with Palestinians and its fellow Iran-backed ally Hamas. The fighting has killed dozens of people in Israel, hundreds in Lebanon, and displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. They are still holding around 100 captives, a third of whom are believed to be dead. Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks have killed more than 41,400 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, with the Israeli military saying the death toll includes thousands of Hamas fighters.

Hamas has been designated a terror group by the U.S., the United Kingdom, the European Union and others. Hezbollah also is a U.S.-designated terror group.

SOURCE VOA

Wednesday 25 Sep 2024 {HMC} As cases of mpox rise across the African continent, public health experts and world leaders are sounding the alarm, saying more needs to be done to contain the viral outbreak.

Fifteen countries in Africa are assessed as having active outbreaks, with Morocco being the latest to report a case.

Samuel Boland, mpox incident manager for the World Health Organization regional office for Africa, said that while the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi account for almost 90 percent of confirmed cases, more instances are popping up in other countries.

“DRC, Burundi [are] especially affected but also Cameroon, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Republic of Congo, Liberia, Uganda, Kenya, Gabon, Rwanda, South Africa and Guinea,” he told VOA, speaking from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo.

The WHO says two distinct clades, or strains, have been identified. Clade I was formerly known as the Congo Basin clade, and Clade II was formerly West African clade.

Previously known as monkeypox, the viral disease can spread through close contact between people, according to the World Health Organization, and occasionally via objects and areas touched by a person with mpox.

Signs and symptoms include fever, rash, and swollen lymph nodes.

Boland said there have been 6,580 confirmed cases so far this year, but there’s a bigger number of suspected cases. Suspected cases are clinically compatible with mpox but may not have been tested due to various limitations in several countries. That number has climbed to nearly 32,000.

“Now amongst that large number of suspected cases, 844 people have died. But when focusing on the confirmed cases this year as in from the first of January, 32 people have, unfortunately, passed away,” Boland said.

In a virtual briefing last week, Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said mpox is not under control in Africa. He said that while vaccine donations are trickling in, the amount is insufficient to contain the outbreak.

“Today, we have almost around 4 million commitments of doses, but we say we need more,” Kaseya said.

U.S. President Joe Biden, in an address to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2024, highlighted the need to “move quickly” to confront the mpox outbreak in Africa.

“We’re prepared to commit $500 million to help African countries prevent and respond to mpox and to donate 1 million doses of mpox vaccine now,” he said.

No specific date was given as to when the vaccines will arrive in Africa, but Biden said the investments will be delivered bilaterally, through existing relationships with partner countries, as well as through multilateral institutions.

In addition to vaccines, Boland said this mpox outbreak requires interventions across the full spectrum of the public health sector. He said the world needs to scale up and make sure it can deliver in several areas.

“Things like surveillance, which will include case investigation and contact tracing — both going out into communities and looking for cases,” he said. “Also engaging and encouraging communities to report cases when people become unwell.”

He said this approach includes infection prevention and control, case management and vaccination.

SOURCE VOA

Wednesday 25 Sep 2024 {HMC} Egypt, Jordan and Iraq said Wednesday that stopping “Israeli aggression on Gaza” is needed to halt dangerous escalation in the region.

A joint statement following a meeting of the foreign ministers from the three countries also condemned Israel’s military action in Lebanon and said Israel is “pushing the region into an all-out war.”

The ministers also called on the U.N. Security Council and the international community to act to stop the war.

Israel has ramped up strikes targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, citing a need to enable residents of northern Israel to return to the homes they fled during a year of Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Hezbollah launched its campaign against Israel the day after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led to the capture of about 250 hostages.

Israeli ground attacks and airstrikes have killed at least 41,495 Palestinians and wounded more than 96,000, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its count.

Crews on Wednesday recovered the bodies of four people killed in Israeli strikes in and near a refugee camp in central Gaza.

Three bodies were recovered at the site of a strike that hit a vehicle near the camp. The fourth body was found in the rubble of a home in the camp where an airstrike killed a total of at least 11 people.

Hamas said in a statement Tuesday that it is expecting the United Nations to take “immediate action” to end the war in Gaza.

“We demand immediate action to stop the Israeli aggression and the war,” said the Hamas statement, which was directed at United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

But the Palestinian group also said it will not participate in new cease-fire talks. It said will not waver from its position “against entering new negotiations that would provide [Israel] with cover to continue its aggression.”

Both Hezbollah and Hamas are Iranian-funded groups designated by the U.S. and other countries as terrorist organizations that have vowed to destroy the Jewish state of Israel.

In remarks Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called Gaza “a nonstop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it.”

Guterres told the opening of the annual United Nations General Assembly, “We should all be alarmed by the escalation. Lebanon is at the brink. The people of Lebanon, the people of Israel and the people of the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.”

SOURCE VOA