Australia
Australia Expels Iranian Envoy Over Anti- Semitism Attacks
Australia has expelled the Iranian Envoy to the country for Iran allegedly sponsoring Anti-Semitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney.
Both attacks last year targeted a Jewish Synagogue and a popular restaurant, and several persons were either killed or wounded. In both incidents.
Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, who broke the news today in Sydney, also said that the country had shut its embassy in Teheran, Iran, and deployed all its staff there to an unnamed third country.
Albanese blamed Iran’ s Revolutionary Guards Corps for using a complex web of proxies to mount the two attacks which he described as a dangerous assault on a friendly nation.
The expulsion is the outcome of a far- fetched investigation by the internal security service of Australia, which goes by the acronym of ACO.
Iran
Iran Set To React To Australia ‘s Action
Teheran is set to take retaliatory diplomatic action after Australia expelled its envoy from the country.
Citing unfriendly Iranian action last year, Australia, this morning, announced that it had declared Iran’ s ambassador a persona non grata and expelled him.
The shock measure was announced today by the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, who blamed the secret service of Iran for two deadly attacks on a synagogue and a popular restaurant frequented by Israeli Jews.
Following the move by Australia, diplomatic sources said Iran was ready to announce retaliatory measures .
The sources did not indicate what Teheran was likely to do, though Australia had already shut its embassy in Teheran and deployed its staff to a third country it had yet to publicly name.
Australia accuses Iran for sponsoring anti-Semitic attacks in the country which has also witnessed growing attacks linked to Islamophobia.
Lebanon
US Envoys Arrive In Beirut For Talks On Hezbollah Disarmament
Representatives of the American government have arrived in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, to begin talks with the country’ s government on how to disarm Hezbollah.
The group, Hezbollah, meaning Party of God, has both a political branch and a militant arm, which had been at logger head with Israel over its occupation of parts of the country around the Litani River, and has fought multiple wars with it.
The arrival of the envoys, the 10th such visit in a month, is expected to trigger talks on how to begin the disarmament of Hezbollah under the aegis of the peace deal between both the group and Israel last year.
Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran, and part of what is generally referred to as the axis of resistance, went to war with Israel two years ago after the Jewish state launched a high high heel military campaign on Gaza in an attempt to crush Hamas, the Palestinian militant group responsible for the October 7,;2023 assault on Israel in which around 1,200 persons, mainly soldiers and policemen, were killed and about 250 others taken hostage.
However, both Israel and Hezbollah reached a truce in November on terms that they had accused each other of breaching.
While Israel accuses Hezbollah of resisting to disarm, the militant group, in turn, accuses Israel of repeatedly breaching the terms of the peace pact, especially by its repeated bombings of targets in the country, and also by seizing more Lebanese territories, including some it took in the last few days.
Experts say that while the groundwork had been laid for the Lebanese military to disarm.Hezbollah, the process might be dangerous, especially after some leaders of the group have openly opposed the move in the light of persisting Israeli aggression.
Australia
Two Cops Killed , Another Wounded In Botched Arrest Attempt
Two policemen died and another was wounded in a botched arrest effort in Australia.
The incident happened late on Monday in the village of Porepunkah in the state of Victoria.
The gun man, said by police to be heavily armed, is on the run and the government and other officials have issued a public advisory on the situation which is a replica of last year’s incident in which several cops were killed and wounded in a botched arrest effort that went away.
A manhunt is understood to be on for the fleeing gunman.
Palestine
Funerals Held For Slain Journalists, Others in Gaza
Funerals are being held today in Gaza for the five journalists and others killed in Israeli military strikes on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Sunday night.
The incident has drawn the angst of the media world and political leaders, including those of France, Britain and the United Nations, UN.
The deaths brought to 246, the number of journalists and media workers killed in the roughly two year war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip
Aside from media workers, medical officers, emergency Services staff and other civilians have repeatedly been killed on a significant scale by Israel.
The United Nations (UN) estimates that more than 60 per cent of the nearly 186,000 persons killed and or wounded in Gaza during the war were women and children.
However, a price sector investigation led by The Guardian newspaper, said that as high as 83 per cent of them were civilians.
Israel
Netanyahu Expresses Regrets Over Killing of Journalists, Vows Probe
…As Anti- War Protests Rage
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed regrets at the Israeli military strikes that killed five journalists , as well as medical and emergency workers in Gaza on Sunday night .
The strikes hit the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis part of the Gaza Strip, causing carnage that has drawn widespread condemnation of Israel.
In his first public statement on the strikes and their deadly effects, Netanyahu said Israel would probe the incident , though similar assurances in similar circumstances in the past had failed to earn public confidence by their outcomes.
He also said that Israel valued the work of journalists, medical staff and other civilians.
Israel bars international journalists from not only Gaza but also the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, aside from denying entry to more than 100 volunteer doctors who had sought to reach Gaza to offer humanitarian services in the light of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the strip.
Meanwhile , protests are holding in Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel in protest at the ongoing war on Gaza and the refusal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a peace deal with Hamas.
The protests were called by families of hostages who want Israel to end its war on Gaza and to effect the return of the 50 hostages still in the custody of Hamas in Gaza.
About 20 of the 50 hostages are believed to be alive and both military and other experts have warned that the ongoing Israeli military campaign to seize and destroy Gaza City could endanger their lives and those of troops.
