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Thousands of Palestinians rushed into a new aid distribution centre run by a US-backed group in southern Gaza on Tuesday, AFP journalists reported, leading to chaotic scenes as Israel implemented a new distribution system.The incident in Rafah came days after the partial easing of a total aid blockade on the territory that Israel imposed on March 2, leading to severe shortages of food and medicine.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later acknowledged a “loss of control momentarily” at the centre, but a senior military official said the distribution was nonetheless “a success”.According to the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), normal operations resumed following the incident.Ayman Abu Zaid, a displaced Gazan, told AFP he was standing in line at the centre when “suddenly a large number of people started pushing and entering randomly”. “It was because of the lack of aid and the delay in distribution, so they tried to get in to take whatever they could,” he said.At one point, “the Israeli forces started shooting, and the sound was very frightening, and people began to scatter, but some still kept trying to take the aid despite the danger”, he added.The Israeli military later said its “troops fired warning shots in the area outside the compound”, and that it had re-established “control over the situation”.GHF said in a statement that there was a point at which the “volume of people at the SDS (distribution centre) was such that the GHF team fell back to allow a small number of Gazans to take aid safely and dissipate”.”Normal operations have resumed,” it added.AFP footage showed crowds of people streaming out of the area on Tuesday carrying supplies, including in boxes marked “GHF”.- ‘462,000 meals’ -GHF blamed “blockades imposed by Hamas” for creating delays of several hours at one of its centres.In a statement of its own, Hamas’s government media office said Israel’s new efforts to distribute aid in Gaza had “failed miserably”.”This failure occurred after thousands of hungry people, who have been besieged by the occupation and deprived of food and medicine for about 90 days, rushed toward these areas in a tragic and painful scene,” the statement said. In its statement on Tuesday, the GHF said around “8,000 food boxes have been distributed so far… totalling 462,000 meals”. It previously said it had commenced operations the day before.A senior Israeli military official told AFP that “today’s distribution of aid by American providers was a success”, saying Hamas had sought to frighten civilians into staying away, but Gazans turned out to collect thousands of aid packages nonetheless. Israel has facilitated GHF’s efforts to distribute aid in Gaza, saying it aims to keep supplies out of Hamas’s hands.”We worked out a plan with our American friends to have controlled distribution sites where an American company would distribute the food to Palestinian families,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday. “There was some loss of control momentarily. Happily, we brought it back under control.”- ‘Heartbreaking’ scenes -GHF has faced accusations of helping Israel fulfil its military objectives while excluding Palestinians, bypassing the UN system, and failing to adhere to humanitarian principles.A spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres called Tuesday’s scenes “heartbreaking”, adding that “we and our partners have a detailed, principled, operationally sound plan supported by Member States to get aid to a desperate population”.Registered in Geneva in February, GHF has no known offices or representatives in the unofficial capital of the humanitarian world.Its former executive director, Jake Wood, announced his resignation on Sunday, saying it was impossible to do his job in line with humanitarian principles.Some humanitarian workers have argued that the designation of secure distribution sites contravenes the principle of humanity because it would force already displaced people to move again in order to stay alive.Critics have also questioned who determined the location of the distribution points — especially in light of Israel’s plans for the “conquest” of Gaza.In an article published on May 24, The New York Times, citing unnamed Israeli officials, reported that a new US-backed aid plan for Gaza had been “conceived and largely developed by Israelis as a way to undermine Hamas”.The United Nations has ruled out involvement in GHF’s plan, with a spokesman saying that it “does not accord with our basic principles, including those of impartiality, neutrality, independence”.COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said “95 trucks belonging to the UN and the international community carrying humanitarian aid” were allowed into Gaza on Tuesday.Separately, it alleged that hundreds of trucks were piling up just inside the Gaza Strip waiting to be picked up by the UN.”Don’t fall for misinformation,” it said on X. “The UN still refuses to do its job.”

A paramilitary drone strike hit a fuel depot and a military base in war-torn Sudan’s south Tuesday, a military source said, as the capital Khartoum battles a deadly cholera outbreak.The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), targeted the city of Kosti in White Nile State, after weeks of a long-range drone campaign that has hit vital infrastructure across the country.The RSF and regular army have been locked in a devastating war since April 2023.”The drone strike caused the depot to catch fire,” the military source told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.Eyewitnesses in Kosti, some 320 kilometres (200 miles) south of Khartoum, reported hearing explosions and seeing columns of thick smoke over the city.The RSF drone offensive began after the army wrested back control of the capital in March.Last week, army forces pushed the paramilitaries out of their last holdouts in the greater Khartoum area.This month, the RSF has launched strikes across Khartoum, including on three power stations, triggering a massive blackout that disrupted electricity and water services and unleashed a cholera outbreak.In a statement on Tuesday, the army-aligned health ministry reported more than 2,700 cholera infections and 172 deaths in just seven days across six states, with 90 percent of cases concentrated in Khartoum state.Cholera is endemic to Sudan, but outbreaks have become worse and more frequent since the war broke out, wrecking already fragile water, sanitation and health infrastructure.Last Tuesday, the ministry said 51 people had died of cholera out of more than 2,300 reported cases over the past three weeks, 90 percent of them in Khartoum state.Sudan’s doctors’ union sounded the alarm on Tuesday, saying actual figures were far higher than those reported by the ministry, with hundreds dead in the capital alone.In a statement, it warned there was a “severe shortage of intravenous solutions, a lack of clean water sources and a near-total absence of sterilisation equipment and disinfectants” in the city’s hospitals.- Lying on hospital floors -With electricity supply and subsequently the local water network out of service, the people of Khartoum have been forced to turn to unsafe water sources, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).”Water treatment stations no longer have electricity and cannot provide clean water from the Nile,” Slaymen Ammar, MSF’s medical coordinator in Khartoum, said in a statement.People in Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum, say they have had no electricity for nearly two weeks.”We now fetch water directly from the Nile, buying it from donkey carts that bring it in barrels,” resident Bashir Mohamed said.According to a doctor at Omdurman’s Al-Nao hospital, the capital’s main functioning health facility, residents have resorted to “drinking untreated Nile water, after the shutdown of water pumping stations”.He said this “is the main reason for the rapid spread” of cholera.Medics in the already overwhelmed hospital are struggling to keep pace with the outbreak, and the local emergency response room (ERR) has issued a call for more volunteers.”The number of patients exceeds the hospital’s capacity,” a member of the ERR told AFP, requesting anonymity for safety reasons.”There is not enough medical staff. Some patients are lying on the floors in hospital corridors,” he said.Cholera, an acute diarrhoeal illness caused by ingesting contaminated water or food, can kill within hours if untreated.It is easily preventable and treatable when clean water, sanitation and timely medical care are available.Sudan’s already fragile healthcare system has been pushed to “breaking point” by the war, according to the World Health Organization.Up to 90 percent of the country’s hospitals have at some point been forced to close because of the fighting, according to the doctors’ union, with health facilities regularly stormed, bombed and looted.The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 13 million and created the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis.

An alleged former Syrian prison guard has been arrested in Germany on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity under former president Bashar al-Assad, prosecutors said Tuesday.The man, identified only as Fahad A., is accused of “acts of killing, torture and deprivation of liberty” while he worked in a Damascus facility run by Syrian intelligence in 2011 and 2012, during the Arab Spring protests.German authorities have pursued several suspects for crimes committed in Syria’s civil war under the principle of universal jurisdiction, even after Assad’s ouster last December.Prosecutors declined to give Fahad’s age or the year he came to Germany but said he was arrested in the town of Pirmasens in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate.During his time at the Al-Khatib detention centre, also known as Branch 251, Fahad A. allegedly “took part in well over 100 interrogations where prisoners were subjected to severe physical abuse, for instance electrocution or beatings with cables”, they said.”Following his superiors’ orders, the suspect also harassed prisoners at night by, for example, hanging them from the ceiling, pouring cold water over them or forcing them to remain in uncomfortable positions,” prosecutors allege.At least 70 prisoners are thought to have died due to such abuse and the “catastrophic” prison conditions.The alleged offences occurred in the years of the bloody repression of anti-Assad protests during the Arab Spring.”The objective was to suppress the protest movement from early on and to intimidate the population,” prosecutors said.In 2022 former Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan was found guilty of overseeing the murders of 27 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the Al-Khatib centre in 2011 and 2012.That was the first international trial over state-sponsored torture in Syrian prisons and was hailed as “historic” by human rights activists.Europe’s biggest economy, then ruled by chancellor Angela Merkel, granted safe haven to hundreds of thousands of Syrians during the 2015-16 refugee influx.NGOs warned at the time of the danger that people accused of atrocities against civilians for Assad’s government were arriving incognito in Europe and obtaining asylum.An Islamist-led coalition toppled Assad in December after five decades of his family’s iron-fisted rule and nearly 14 years of brutal war that killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more.

Southeast Asian leaders expressed “deep concern” over US tariffs Tuesday, as they held a summit with China and Gulf states hailed as “a response to the call of the times” in a geopolitically uncertain world. The trade-dependent economies are looking to insulate themselves after US President Donald Trump blew up global trade norms by announcing a …

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Palestinian traders in Jerusalem’s Old City returned to their shops on Tuesday to clean up a day after a march by Israeli nationalists that saw scuffles, insults and acts of vandalism.Some had to use crowbars, hammers and wirecutters to regain access to their own shops after many were vandalised during the Jerusalem Day march the day before.Jerusalem Day commemorates Israeli forces taking east Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.On Tuesday, metal shutters protecting the shopfronts bore the marks of the parade’s passing, with padlocks blocked and stickers slapped upon them.”No humanitarian aid for Gaza,” read one sticker from Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power).The far-right party headed by firebrand politician and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir had a major presence in Monday’s march.Ben Gvir visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, during the Jerusalem Day events.Israel considers all of Jerusalem, including the annexed Palestinian-majority east, its indivisible capital.The international community does not recognise this, and Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.On Tuesday, when employees of an east Jerusalem electricity supplier arrived at their office they discovered the front windows broken and the door blocked.- ‘Childish acts’ -A company official, Ismail Eshqart, came from headquarters to change the lock and assess the damage.He told AFP they had expected “a little more tension” than usual this year in the alley in the Muslim Quarter where Palestinians and a few Israeli residents, mostly religious Jews, mingle daily.He said there had been “deliberate acts of vandalism”, but he did not name the suspected perpetrators.”It’s the same story every year,” said clothes seller Abu Osama, referring to Jerusalem Day marchers.”They come and attack shops, make them close, and they break things, they throw firecrackers,” he told AFP as a municipal employee arrived with an electric saw to cut the padlock on the door of his sabotaged shop.”They do what they want and nobody says to them ‘what are you doing? That’s not allowed’!” Abu Osama added, angry at lost time over “childish acts” that made him open several hours late.Fruit sellers at stalls in front of the Damascus Gate into the Old City shared his dismay, but shrugged as they unloaded boxes of cherries and peaches.”The situation is worse and worse,” said grandmother Umm Mohammed who was born in the Old City and had come to do her shopping.- ‘It’s crazy!’ -“We want to live in peace — we are kind people,” she said, adding that she did not leave the house on Monday.Umm Mohammed said that last year, one man she knows “came out of his house and they hit him — and he is a big guy!”Armed with solvent and sponges, a group of around 10 Israeli and foreign volunteers arrived on Tuesday morning to help clean up in the march’s aftermath.”I came to do what I could, even if it’s not much,” said one volunteer who asked not to be identified.They scuttled between the shops, trying to avoid police patrols, but several were briefly stopped for allegedly disturbing the peace.Contacted by AFP, police did not respond to a request for comment.”It’s really upside down. It’s crazy,” said 24-year-old Joshua Korn of the Israeli-Palestinian activist group Standing Together.”It’s crazy because these people who are here to protect us… they shout at us that we’re provoking… just because we’re here to remove racist graffiti and stickers that have been put up by settlers in an act of provocation!” Korn said of the police.

Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah was admitted to a hospital in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday due to fatigue, though his office insisted the world’s longest-serving monarch was in “good health”. The sultan is in Kuala Lumpur with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders, who on Tuesday met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and dignitaries from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).A Malaysian government source told AFP the sultan “was hospitalised in between the ASEAN-GCC and ASEAN-GCC-China summit” for fatigue.A statement from the Brunei prime minister’s office — a position held by the sultan — said he was in “good health”.”He has been feeling tired and on the advice of the host’s health experts, has decided to rest for a few days at the National Heart Institute,” it said.Asked earlier at a news conference whether the sultan had been hospitalised, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said: “Well he’s feeling a bit tired, so he’s resting at the (National Heart Institute).”The hospital is the designated one for VIPs during the ASEAN summit, AFP’s source said.The National Heart Institute said it could not comment.- Busy schedule -The 78-year-old sultan touched down in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday, according to footage from Malaysia’s national news agency.He was the last leader to arrive at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) on Monday morning for the 46th ASEAN summit, but appeared in good spirits, smiling and stopping for a prolonged chat before heading into the venue with Anwar.The busy schedule saw the leaders address US tariffs, the Myanmar conflict, and East Timor’s application to join the bloc among other topics.After a quick costume change into matching traditional batik shirts, the leaders returned to the KLCC for a lavish gala dinner, joined by Premier Li and dignitaries from the GCC — a regional bloc made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.Tuesday saw ASEAN meet first with the GCC in the morning, before the two blocs were joined by China at 3pm local time (0700 GMT).Footage taken by AFP around midday showed the sultan walking briskly but looking weary, surrounded by his entourage.Sultan Hassanal ascended the throne in 1967.He is one of the richest people on the planet, and comes from a family that has ruled Brunei, a small Muslim nation perched on the north of the tropical island of Borneo, for more than 600 years.His decades ruling Brunei have seen the country gain full independence from Britain and living standards soar to among the highest globally.But his reign has also been marked by controversies including the introduction of tough Islamic laws legislating penalties such as severing of limbs and death by stoning.