The historic Lutetia hotel in Paris, which was occupied by the Nazis during World War II and after liberation served as a welcome centre for concentration camp survivors, was on Thursday taken over by luxury hotel group Mandarin Oriental.Situated in the centre of the Left Bank area of the French capital, the Art Deco institution …
Iconic Paris hotel Lutetia taken over by Mandarin Oriental Read More »
The Israeli military said Thursday it was investigating an incident in which its troops opened fire on ambulances, claiming to have targeted “terrorists,” while the UN reported that 15 medics and humanitarian workers were killed.”The incident from March 23, 2025, in which IDF (military) forces opened fire targeting terrorists advancing in ambulances, has been transferred to the General Staff’s fact-finding and assessment mechanism for investigation,” military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said in a statement.The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday it had recovered the bodies of 15 rescuers after Israeli forces targeted the ambulances in the southern Gaza Strip last month.One Red Crescent emergency responder was still missing, according to the group.Bodies of eight medics from the Red Crescent, six members of Gaza’s civil defence agency and one employee of a UN agency were retrieved, the Red Crescent said in a statement.The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said Tuesday that a team of first responders was killed by Israeli forces on March 23, and that other emergency and aid teams were hit one after another over several hours while searching for their missing colleagues.”The (Israeli military) places utmost importance on maintaining communication with international organisations operating in Gaza and engages with them regularly,” Shoshani said in a statement on Thursday.In a briefing with journalists, Shoshani said the incident was being investigated.”We want to have all the facts in a way that’s accurate and we can also hold accountable people if we need to, or put the facts straight as they are, and learn from this incident or whatever it may be,” he said.”There is an external… figure that is investigating this event, understanding everything that happened”, he added.- Mass grave -UN aid official Jonathan Whittall said Wednesday that a mass grave in Rafah where the bodies of the 15 medics were found illustrated the “war without limits” that Israel is leading in Gaza.An Israeli military official said the army “contacted the organisations multiple times to coordinate the evacuation of the bodies, in accordance with the operational constraints”.”Understanding that the process might take time, the bodies were covered with sand and cloth sheets so that they wouldn’t get damaged,” the official said.The military has not formally responded to claims that the bodies were dumped in a mass grave.But in an earlier statement the military had said that an initial assessment of the incident determined that its troops had “eliminated a Hamas military operative, Mohammad Amin Ibrahim Shubaki, along with eight other terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad”.Speaking after a mission to Gaza uncovered the mass grave, Whittall, the head of OCHA in the Palestinian territories, said “it was shocking” to see medical workers “still in their uniforms, still wearing gloves, killed while trying to save lives”.UN chief Antonio Guterres voiced alarm over the killings.”The secretary-general is shocked by the attacks of the Israeli army on a medical and emergency convoy on March 23 resulting in the killings of 15 medical personnel and humanitarian workers in Gaza,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a briefing Wednesday.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes in the north of the territory killed at least 15 people Thursday, as the military warned residents to leave the area.Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the strikes targeted several homes in Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighbourhood.”There are still a number of people trapped under the rubble,” he said.AFPTV footage from Al-Ahli hospital in the north of Gaza City showed mourners gathered around bodies laid on the floor wrapped in white shrouds.Raed Jundia recounted surviving an Israeli strike on his home in Shujaiya.”We were about 70 to 80 people inside the apartment when there was suddenly an explosion,” he told AFP.Ezz al-Arqan, another Gaza City resident, said: “Every day, we wake up to the sound of bombs, shells, and bullets. How long will this continue? Every day, we wake up to 20, 30 or 40 martyrs.”The Israeli military told residents to evacuate Shujaiya and some other districts in the Gaza’s north.”The IDF (military) is operating with great force in your areas to destroy the terrorist infrastructure,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X.”You must evacuate these areas immediately and move to the known shelters in western Gaza City.”The Israeli military has in recent days issued a number of evacuation orders to residents in northern neighbourhoods of the Gaza Strip.On Monday, it told those living in all areas of the southern city of Rafah and parts of nearby Khan Yunis to leave.”Currently in Rafah I can tell you that the majority of civilians have been evacuated,” said military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani.”Our goal eventually is to have an area where we can fight Hamas, where we can fight terrorists without them hiding behind civilians,” he told journalists.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday that the military was “dissecting” Gaza and seizing territory to pressure Hamas into freeing hostages.He said the army was “taking control of the ‘Morag Axis'”, a strip of land expected to run between the southern governorates of Khan Yunis and Rafah.Shoshani, the Israeli military spokesman, said Thursday: “The Morag Route is for us an operational route that can give us an ability to act precisely against terror.”We know the connection between Khan Yunis and Rafah is an important one for Hamas and we’re operating to break that connection,” he added.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed large-scale strikes on March 18.That took the overall toll to at least 50,523 since the war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Hungary’s long-standing and deep ties with Israel were on full display Thursday, when nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban received Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu in Budapest.The relationship with Israel has strengthened since the start of the war in Gaza, which was sparked by the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023.Orban, who has touted Hungary as “the safest country in Europe” for Jews, became the first leader to extend an invitation to Netanyahu, defying an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued against the Israeli leader.And he went a step further on Thursday, announcing that Hungary would quit the ICC, denouncing it as a “political court”.”This partnership is unparallelled. May it grow even further, may it grow even stronger,” the Israeli leader told reporters, exchanging firm handshakes with his “friend Viktor”.The Central European country is “one of Israel’s closest allies and supporters in the EU,” said researcher Bulcsu Hunyadi of the Political Capital think tank.”This alliance has gained particular significance,” with Hungary voicing unwavering support for Israel’s “war of self-defence,” Hunyadi told AFP.- ‘Deep friendship’ -In recent months, Hungary has also hosted several matches of Israel’s national football team and clubs, as anti-Israeli sentiment and tensions sparked by Israeli actions in the Gaza war have surged in Europe. On Thursday, Netanyahu hailed the countries’ cooperation on sports as “a sign of a deep friendship, a deep alliance that has evolved”.Orban’s government has even pointed to anti-Semitic acts in Western countries to justify its tough anti-migration stance, and has boasted that in Hungary, pro-Palestinian demonstrations are banned. Netanyahu last made a trip to Hungary in 2017, the first visit in 30 years by an Israeli premier.The two right-wingers — who share a common ally in US President Donald Trump and embrace his hardline policies — also have a close personal friendship, with Hungarian media once describing them as “spiritual brothers”.As fellow “populist” leaders, Netanyahu and Orban share their pursuit of advancing an “illiberal” brand of democracy aimed at criticising the values of Western liberal democracies while clamping down on the opposition, said analyst Hunyadi. Netanyahu said Thursday that both countries were united in their “battle for the future of our Judeo-Christian civilization” amid attacks from “radical Islam”.- Accusations of anti-Semitism -By stressing their shared “common patriotic foundation”, accusations levelled against Orban that he has been fanning anti-Jewish sentiment at home were pushed to the background.When Orban’s government ran poster campaigns vilifying Hungary-born financier George Soros, who is Jewish, and his son Alex in 2017, the World Jewish Congress (WJC) denounced its anti-Semitic overtones.Orban also came under fire for praising wartime leader and Hitler ally Miklos Horthy — an autocrat who ruled Hungary from 1920 to 1944 and who passed anti-Jewish laws and oversaw the deportations of several hundred thousand Hungarian Jews to Nazi death camps — as an “exceptional statesman”.Dismissing criticism, Orban has vowed “zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism in Hungary, which has a Jewish community of an estimated 100,000.The leader has emphasised the government’s investments into renovating and maintaining synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.Netanyahu said Hungary was treating the Jewish community “in an exemplary fashion”.While the visit offers an opportunity to strengthen ties, it is also aimed at framing Orban’s international posture ahead of 2026 elections.Increasingly under threat from Peter Magyar, who has become the main challenger to Orban’s 15-year rule, the nationalist premier seeks to regain “control of the media narrative” during Netanyahu’s visit, said Zoltan Ranschburg of the Republikon Institute.”In this incessant battle of communication, Orban is doing everything he can to divert attention” from the problems Hungarians face in daily life, such as soaring inflation and the deterioration of the health system, he added.bur-mg-anb-kym/yad
US President Donald Trump’s tariffs were “highly unreasonable” and the government planned to start “serious negotiations” with Washington, Taipei said Thursday.Taiwan had sought to avoid Trump’s threatened levies by pledging increased investment in the United States, more purchases of US energy and greater defence spending.But Trump’s sweeping new tariffs announced overnight included a hefty 32 …
Syria accused Israel on Thursday of mounting a deadly destabilisation campaign after a wave of strikes on military targets, including an airport, and a ground incursion killed 13 people.Israel said it responded to fire from gunmen during an operation in southern Syria and warned interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa that he would face severe consequences if its security was threatened.Israel has carried out an extensive bombing campaign against Syrian military assets since Islamist-led rebels toppled longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad in November. It has also carried out ground incursions into southern Syria in a bid to keep the forces of the new government back from the border.Authorities in the southern province of Daraa said nine civilians were killed and several wounded in Israeli shelling near the city of Nawa.The provincial government said the bombardment came amid Israel’s deepest ground incursion into southern Syria so far.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead were local gunmen who were killed “while attempting to confront Israeli forces, following calls by the mosques in the area for jihad against the Israeli incursion”.According to the Israeli military, its forces were conducting operations in the Tasil area, near Nawa, “seizing weapons and destroying terrorist infrastructure” when “several gunmen fired at our forces”.They “responded by firing at them and eliminated several armed terrorists from the ground and from the air”, a spokesperson said. There were no Israeli casualties.”The IDF (military) will not allow the existence of a military threat in Syria and will act against it,” the spokesperson added.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded in February that southern Syria be completely demilitarised and said his government would not accept the presence of the forces of the new Islamist-led government near Israeli territory.In December, Netanyahu ordered troops to enter the UN-patrolled buffer zone that separated Israeli and Syrian forces along the 1974 armistice line on the Golan Heights.- ‘Unjustified escalation’ -On Wednesday, Israel hit targets across Syria including in the Damascus area.The Syrian foreign ministry said the strikes resulted in the “near-total destruction” of a military airport in the central province of Hama and wounded dozens of civilians and soldiers.”This unjustified escalation is a deliberate attempt to destabilise Syria and exacerbate the suffering of its people,” it said in a statement on Telegram.Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz hit back with a warning to Sharaa in which he pointedly referred to the president by the nom de guerre he used as an Islamist rebel commander.”I warn Syrian leader Jolani: If you allow hostile forces to enter Syria and threaten Israeli security interests, you will pay a heavy price,” he said.”The air force’s activity yesterday near the airports in T4, Hama and the Damascus area sends a clear message and serves as a warning for the future,” he added. The Israeli military said its forces “struck military capabilities that remained at the Syrian bases of Hama and T4, along with additional remaining military infrastructure sites in the area of Damascus”.A Syrian source told AFP that the T4 airbase was coveted by the new government’s main foreign backer, Turkey, for future use by its military.Speaking during a visit to Paris on Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar accused Turkey of playing a “negative role in Syria”. “We don’t think Syria should be a Turkish protectorate,” he said.Israel has said it wants to prevent advanced weapons from falling into the hands of the new authorities, whom it considers jihadists.Sharaa fought for Al-Qaeda in Iraq after the US-led invasion of 2003 and later set up a Syrian branch of the jihadist network before breaking off all ties.The Syrian ministry said the Israeli strikes came as the country was trying to rebuild after 14 years of war, calling it a strategy to “normalise violence within the country”.Neighbouring Jordan said Israel’s repeated attacks on Syrian territory constituted a clear breach of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two countries and a “flagrant violation of international law”.Qatar, a key ally of the new government, condemned the strikes as a “blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.During a visit to Jerusalem last month, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Israeli strikes on Syria were “unnecessary” and risked further escalation.burs/kir/ser
At a garment factory in Ho Chi Minh City that exports T-shirts and underwear to the United States, staff were alarmed by “shocking” trade tariffs imposed on Vietnam that could severely impact their business.A manufacturing powerhouse that counted the United States as its biggest market last year, the Southeast Asian nation was hammered with a …
‘Shocking’: US tariffs worse than feared for Vietnamese exporters Read More »
