UNRWA Says Death Toll of Agency's Staff in Gaza Nears 200

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said the number of its staff killed in the Gaza Strip has risen to 199 since the beginning of the current conflict.

"199 UNRWA colleagues have been killed in Gaza since the war began," the organization said in a statement.

UNRWA added that some 1,100 staff continue to serve in hospitals and health clinics in the Palestinian enclave.

The UN’s humanitarian aid agency says hundreds of Palestinians remain trapped in eastern Khan Younis “amid intense hostilities” and rescue teams are “unable to reach them due to the denial of access by the Israeli military”.

Amid starvation and fears of spreading disease, the average daily volume of humanitarian aid cargo entering the Gaza Strip has decreased by 56 percent since April, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports.

People have been trapped in Khan Younis for almost a week without food, water or a way to get out as new Israeli air strikes killed 18 in the city, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reports.

Israel terrorit launched retaliatory strikes and ordered a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip before launching a ground incursion into the territory. Gaza's health ministry reports that the death toll from the Israeli offensive has passed 39,000, with more than 90,000 others injured.

A study in the British medical journal The Lancets projects the number of dead will reach 186,000 as Gazans endure famine and the destruction of hospitals and other infrastructure. Recently the World Health Organization warned of epidemics of hepatitis and polio after reports first emerged of the spread of disease in the enclave late last year.

Albanese rejects ‘selective moral outrage’ following Hitler comparison

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has hit back at criticism from US and Israeli officials after she endorsed a picture drawing a parallel between Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The Memory of the #Holocaust remains intact and sacred thank[s] to people of conscience worldwide. Institutional rants and outburst of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of #Justice, which is finally in motion,” she wrote on X.

Earlier, we reported US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said Albanese is “not fit” for a UN position, while the Israeli Foreign Ministry said she was “beyond redemption”.

The Memory of the #Holocaust remains intact and sacred thank to people of conscience worldwide.

Institutional rants and outburst of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of #Justice, which is finally in motion.#ICC #ICJ#NeverAgain#StopGenocideInGazaNow… https://t.co/irkKiKYUeV

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 26, 2024

Kamala Harris shifts tone on Gaza, but advocates say US voters want more

President Kamala Harris says she will “not be silent” in the face of Palestinian suffering, as Israel’s war in Gaza rages on.

But Palestinian rights advocates want to know exactly what that means for United States foreign policy.

The vice president — and the Democrats’ likely nominee for the presidency — emphasised the plight of Palestinians in Gaza after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday. Nevertheless, she pledged ongoing support for Israel.

Activists say expressing sympathy for Palestinians without pursuing a meaningful shift away from the US’s policy of unconditional military and diplomatic support will not help Harris win back voters alienated by President Joe Biden’s approach to the war.

“Without an actual commitment to stop killing the children of Gaza, I don’t care about her empathy for them,” said Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. She stressed that the US bears “responsibility” for the atrocities committed against Palestinians.

“To be empathetic to someone that you’re shooting in the head is not exactly laudable. We don’t need empathy from these people. We need them to stop providing the weapons and the money that is actively killing the people that they’re supposedly empathising with.”

Moreover, while Harris’s comments have been characterised as a shift away from Biden’s rhetoric, critics point out the vice president did not articulate any new policy positions.

Moreover, while Harris’s comments have been characterised as a shift away from Biden’s rhetoric, critics point out the vice president did not articulate any new policy positions.

What did Harris say?

After holding talks with Netanyahu on Thursday, Harris delivered a televised statement on the conflict where she reasserted her “unwavering commitment” to Israel and promised to always ensure that the country can “defend itself”.

The vice president then pivoted to describing the horrific conditions in Gaza without naming Israel as the party responsible for the humanitarian crisis there.

At least 39,175 people have been killed and 90,403 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza. The death toll in Israel from the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 is estimated at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza.

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UK Plans to Build New Missiles to Target Russia Linked to Pentagon’s Mad Conventional Strike Scheme

© Photo : National Research Council et al.

Sources told UK media this week that Britain has partnered up with Germany to develop and deploy a new intermediate-range missile designed to target Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Veteran Russian military observer Alexei Leonkov says the plan is inextricably linked to the Pentagon’s highly dangerous Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) initiative.

UK Defense Secretary John Healey spoke to his German counterpart in Berlin on Wednesday about a plan to jointly develop a new strategic missile with a 3,200 km range, The Times reported on Thursday, citing sources said to be familiar with the idea.

Once developed and fielded, the new missiles would be deployed in Germany, according to the publication, replacing the American ground-based long-range fires that Washington recently announced would be stationed in the Central European country beginning in 2026.

Both the American missiles and the proposed new British-German missile would have been prohibited under the 1988 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which banned the development, production and deployment of ground-based missiles in the 500-5,500 km range. Washington violated the treaty for years, according to Moscow, and unilaterally scrapped the agreement in 2019 and immediately began testing of new long-range weapons after falsely accusing Russia of possessing a ground-based missile system with a range beyond 500 km.

One of the Times’ sources said the US weapons expected to deploy in Europe in two years’ time are meant to “bridge” a gap in European NATO allies’ own capabilities. The source did not clarify what motivated the US to ask its allies to create an entirely new missile instead buying or agreeing to permanently field existing American ones.

The Storm Shadow is currently the furthest-reaching conventional missile in Britain’s arsenal. It has a range of about 240 km, and has been deployed extensively by Ukraine in the NATO-Russia proxy war. The Taurus KEPD 350 is Germany’s longest-range missile system, and has a range of up to 500 km. Berlin has refused to send the air-launched weapon to Ukraine, expressing concerns that doing so would make Germany a “party to the war” because German troops would be on the ground training Ukrainians to use the missiles.

A British Defense Ministry spokesperson told The Times that the deepening UK-German defense relationship is currently “in early stages” and that work on “any new programs” has “not yet commenced.”

Europe Joins US’s Dangerous Conventional Prompt Strike Scheme

“The deployment of these missiles, both American and British, is connected to two things,” Alexei Leonkov, editor of Russia’s Arsenal of the Fatherland military affairs and technology magazine, told Sputnik, commenting on The Times piece.

“The first is the global concept, the strategy under which NATO has been restructuring toward since 2002, which is the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) concept, whose essence centers around the need to destroy the nuclear potentials of an adversary like Russia or China,” Leonkov said.

Thought up by the Bush administration, CPS envisions the mass deployment of thousands of conventional long-range missiles fired simultaneously in a massive surprise attack to destroy as much of an enemy’s strategic arsenal as possible, decapitate its leadership, and destroy remaining fired nuclear missiles using missile defenses.

The primary danger of the idea stems from the concern that it will make the prospect of a ‘limited’ nuclear war seem more palatable for Pentagon planners, and hence increasing the temptation to launch aggression.

The second reason for the British-German plan to develop a new missile centers around the fact that the Americans “are running late, or perhaps have lost the technologies used to create intercontinental missiles with a range beyond that of the Minuteman-3,” Leonkov argues.

“Why do the Americans want to switch up some of their missiles for European ones? I think that most likely, the missiles they have developed may not have proven entirely successful. Hence they’ve decided to attract a European consortium led by the UK.”

On top of that, as Washington’s strategic competition with China in the Asia-Pacific heats up, the number of missiles available for deployment in Europe may be limited, Leonkov believes.

The defense observer can’t rule out that the new British-German missile project may be focused on the creation of a maneuverable hypersonic vehicle, with Britain’s BAE Systems already working on a number of projects in this direction, and cooperating with US defense companies on their hypersonic projects.

In fact, these new European weapons may be the mystery “developmental hypersonic weapons” that the White House mentioned in its press statement earlier this month when it announced the deployment of new long-range strike systems to Germany from 2026 onward, Leonkov said.

Leonkov is confident that these new missiles’ mission will be to overwhelm Russian air and missile defense capabilities, and that if they are developed and fielded, Europe will become the first priority for a Russian strategic attack.

Recalling the European NATO missile threat which faced Moscow in the 1980s, Leonkov characterized the alliance’s present plans as an attempt to give rise to a Cold War 2.0, only this time far more dangerous.

“Russia today is not in a position where it has a vast security belt in the form of the Warsaw Pact countries that it did during the Cold War. Therefore, decisions will need to be changed radically. It’s clear that it will be necessary to strengthen the country’s anti-missile and anti-aircraft defense, but also take steps so that these missiles never appear on the European continent in the first place, while there is still an opportunity to do so,” the observer stressed.

Specifically, Russia will need to make clear in its nuclear doctrine that the deployment of such missiles in Europe will pose a direct threat, and give itself the right to launch a preemptive strike to eliminate this threat, Leonkov suggested.

Under its existing nuclear doctrine, Russia reserves itself the right to use nuclear weapons only in retaliation to an enemy attack using nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction, or in the event of conventional aggression so severe that it puts the existence of the Russian state in jeopardy. In June, President Putin hinted that Russia might revise its nuclear doctrine in response to existing threats.

What the US needs more than anything is “a quick solution that would close the issue for a while,” Leonkov said, referring to the constraints Washington will face in deploying vast numbers of long-range strike systems both to Europe and Asia. Russia’s main goal at this stage will be to “act proactively” to respond to this new threat, the analyst concluded.

Russian Jets Intercepts UK Aircraft Approaching Border Over Black Sea - Defense Ministry

©Sputnik/Vitaly Timkiv/Go to the mediabank

A Russian Su-27 fighter jet intercepted a UK RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft and two Typhoon jets flying towards Russia's airspace over the Black Sea, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Friday.

"On July 26, Russian airspace controls over the Black Sea area detected aerial targets approaching the state border of the Russian Federation. In order to prevent violations of the state border of the Russian Federation, a Su-27 fighter jet from the air defense forces on duty was scrambled into the air. The crew of the Russian fighter identified the aerial targets as an RC-135 strategic reconnaissance aircraft and two Typhoon fighters of the British air force," the ministry said.

As the Russian fighter approached, foreign military aircraft performed a U-turn from the state border of Russia, the ministry said.

This is the second such incident in a week.

“As the Russian fighter jet approached, the foreign military aircraft made a U-turn away from the state border of the Russian Federation,” the statement read, adding that the intercept “prevented” the British aircraft from “trespassing” into Russian territory.

The Russian military described a nearly identical confrontation of its Su-27 jets with British warplanes over the Black Sea in October of last year.

Similar intercepts between Russian military planes and those of NATO member countries have occurred in the airspace surrounding Russia even before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, though the Black Sea has emerged as a key theater in the Ukrainian war.

NATO suspended relations with Russia following its 2014 annexation of Crimea, while Moscow views the alliance’s eastward expansion as a threat to national security.

Russian drones knock out Ukrainian power facilities near Kyiv - Ukrainian military claimed

Paths of bullets are seen during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kherson, Ukraine July 26, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

Russia has begun including new, cheaply-made drones in its long-range attacks on Ukraine, to try to identify air defences, film any damage and act as decoys, a Ukrainian military spy official said.

The two new types of drone, which Russia has used in five drone attacks in the last two to three weeks including an overnight strike on Thursday, are produced from materials like foam plastic and plywood, the official told Reuters.

One type carries a camera and a Ukrainian mobile phone SIM card to send images back to the Russian military.

"They identify where our mobile groups are positioned, where the machine guns are that can destroy them. They're trying... to get a picture of where all our air defences are located," said Andriy Cherniak, a military spy agency spokesperson.

The previously unreported details from Cherniak are further evidence of Russia seeking to adapt its tactics and try new technology to gain an edge during its daily missile and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.

Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which fly to their target and detonate on impact, have become a staple of Russian aerial attacks since they began being used in the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

Ukraine, which has been appealing to the West to provide more air defences to repel increased Russian airstrikes on its power facilities since March, tries hard to conceal the locations of its air defence systems.

The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said.

The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added. Because it is virtually indistinguishable from a regular attack drone from the ground, it still needs to be shot down, revealing where Ukraine's air defence systems are located.

He said the new drones probably cost as little as $10,000 each despite their long range, making them far cheaper to produce than air defence missiles.

Russia says its long-range aerial attacks are used to degrade Ukraine militarily. Ukraine says Russia's attacks have hit civilian buildings and caused serious damage to civilian energy facilities and loss of civilian life.

Russian troops occupy around 18% of Ukrainian territory and have been making incremental gains in the east in recent months, putting Kyiv on the back foot along a 1,000-km (600-mile) front line.

Russian drones knock out Ukrainian power facilities near Kyiv

Russia attacked Ukrainian energy facilities in two regions between the capital Kyiv and the Russian border with drones overnight, leaving tens of thousands of people without power, Ukraine's national power grid operator said on Friday.

A view shows an explosion of shot down Russian drone, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kherson, Ukraine July 26, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer Purchase Licensing Rights

The governor of one of the regions, Chernihiv, told the national television at least 15 people were wounded and some infrastructure and a dormitory were damaged during an attack on the town of Nizhyn, without giving more details.

More than 68,000 consumers in certain districts of Zhytomyr and Kyiv regions lost power, Ukrenergo said. In the morning, about 30,000 consumers were still without power after what were the latest of near daily Russian attacks on the power system since the spring.

The emergency service said an overnight attack on Kherson had damaged six residential buildings and caused significant fires in open areas.

Russia has attacked energy facilities across Ukraine with missiles and drones over the past few months, causing blackouts in many regions and forcing Kyiv to start large-scale electricity imports from the European Union.

France’s train network hit by arson attacks hours before Olympic ceremony

Saboteurs struck France's TGV high-speed train network in a series of pre-dawn attacks that caused chaos on the country's busiest rail lines ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.

The coordinated sabotage took place as France rolled out an unprecedented peacetime security operation involving tens of thousands of police and soldiers to lockdown the capital for the Games, sucking in security resources from across the country.

The state-owned railway operator said vandals had damaged signal boxes along the lines connecting Paris with cities such as Lille in the north, Bordeaux in the west and Strasbourg in the east. Another attack on the Paris-Marseille line was foiled. Hundreds of thousands of people were left stranded at rail stations.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But two security sources said initial suspicions fell on hardline leftist militants or environmental activists.

"Everything leads us to believe that these were criminal acts," Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete told reporters at the Gare du Nord.

The coordinated strikes on the rail network will feed into a sense of apprehension ahead of the Olympics opening ceremony in the heart of Paris later on Friday.

Paris 2024 Olympics - Previews - Gare du Nord, Paris, France - July 26, 2024. Staff and passengers are pictured at Gare du Nord station after threats against France's high-speed TGV network, ahead... Purchase Licensing Rights

More than 300,000 spectators are expected to line the banks of the River Seine when the athletes parade through the heart of Paris on a flotilla of barges and riverboats, part of an extravagant opening ceremony that will be watched by a global audience of billions.

The SNCF urged all travellers to postpone their journeys. Repairs were underway but traffic would be severely disrupted until at least the end of the weekend. Trains were being sent back to their points of departure.

The attacks hit signaling installations on the Atlantic, Northern and Eastern high-speed lines with fires set off by explosive devices, the SNCF said.

SNCF chief Jean-Pierre Farandou said some 800,000 customers had been impacted ahead of a busy weekend for French holidaymakers. Thousands of rail staff had been deployed to repair the damage.

DESTABILISING FRANCE

"This attack is not a coincidence, it's an effort to destabilise France," Valerie Pecresse, president of the Paris region, told reporters.

France is deploying 45,000 police, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents to secure the opening ceremony. Snipers will be on rooftops and drones keeping watch from the air.

But while the capital is locked down for the opening ceremony, security elsewhere in the country is lighter.

Paris 2024 said it was working closely with the SNCF to assess the situation. The attacks will make it tougher for people travelling to Paris from other areas of France.

Some teams like the U.S. basketball team are based in Paris and would have travelled on Saturday by train to the northern city of Lille.

The Paris police chief said he was beefing up security even further at the capital's main stations.

The stations were packed with passengers. Many were preparing to go off on their summer holidays and some had already been waiting several hours.

At the Gare de L'Est, traveller Corinne Lecocq said her train to Strasbourg on the border with Germany had been cancelled. "We'll take the slow line," she said. "I'm on holiday so it's OK, even if it is irritating to be late."

Xavier Hiegel, 39, said he was just trying to get home for the weekend and could not believe that people would want to harm the Olympics.

"The Games bring jobs so this really is nonsense. I hope the people responsible will be found and punished," he said.

Ukraine behind Moscow car bombing – suspect to FSB

Yevgeny Serebryakov, suspected of carrying out a car bombing that wounded two people in northern Moscow on July 24, looks on after he was detained in the Turkish city of Bodrum and delivered to Russia, in Moscow, Russia. © Sputnik

A Russian citizen suspected of carrying out a car bombing in Moscow has told Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) that he collaborated with a presumed member of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) while being instructed on how to conduct the attack.

A Toyota Land Cruiser reportedly belonging to a Russian serviceman exploded near a residential building in the northern part of Moscow on Wednesday. The bomb went off when the owner of the vehicle and a person believed to be his wife entered it. Both were hospitalized, with the man reportedly losing his feet and the woman receiving shrapnel wounds.

Evgeny Serebryakov, 29, who is accused of blowing up the car, was detained the same day by police in the Turkish city of Bodrum and transferred to Moscow.

In a video of his interrogation shared by the FSB on Friday, the man says he began collaborating with “Ilya from the SBU” in February 2023. Serbryakov stated that he communicated with the man via messengers and met him in Istanbul once.

“After that, I received the components to assemble an improvised explosive device. Ilya proposed to eliminate the officer,” the suspect said.

Serebryakov claimed that ‘Ilya’ instructed him on how to assemble the bomb and plant it under the serviceman’s car in Moscow, adding that he was promised Ukrainian citizenship and a reward of $10,000 to $20,000 for the attack. Kiev has denied involvement in the terrorist attack.

Serebryakov lived in a rented apartment in central Moscow. According to his brother, he moved to the Russian capital 12 years ago. He worked in a bank and also served as an altar boy for a Catholic church in Moscow.

Moscow car bombing suspect arrested in Türkiye – Interior Minister

A Russian citizen suspected of being responsible for a car bombing in Moscow on Wednesday morning has been detained by police in the Turkish city of Bodrum, the country’s Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya has announced.

The arrest comes after a Toyota Land Cruiser, reportedly belonging to a Russian serviceman, exploded near a residential building in Northern Moscow earlier in the day. The bomb went off when the owner of the vehicle and a person believed to be his wife, got inside. Both were hospitalized, with the man reportedly losing his feet and the woman receiving shrapnel wounds.

Several hours later, the Turkish Interior Minister published a statement on X that Russia’s Interpol unit had informed it that the person behind the car bombing, identified as Yevgeny Serebryakov, a Russian citizen, had boarded a flight from Moscow to Bodrum.

Serebryakov was arrested by the Mugla Provincial Police units in the city, Yerlikaya said. The arrest was caught on video, which was shared by the minister.

RUSYA’DA BOMBALI SALDIRI DÜZENLEYEN TERÖRİST BODRUM’DA YAKALANDI❗️

Bugün saat 10.30’da Rusya Interpol Birimi yetkilileri tarafından İnterpol/Europol Daire Başkanlığımız telefonla aramış, “Rusya uyruklu Evgenii Serebriakov isimli şahsın Moskova’da bombalı araçla terör saldırısı… pic.twitter.com/2u277bK0UP

— Ali Yerlikaya (@AliYerlikaya) July 24, 2024

According to media reports, citing sources within the Turkish Interior Ministry, Serebryakov was able to enter the country as a tourist, given that he was not yet placed on any international wanted list.

While investigators in Russia continue to examine the details of the terrorist act, no official statements have been made yet regarding potential reasons for the brazen attack.