Israel says it has killed 8,000 Hamas fighters in northern Gaza alone – as Blinken warns against escalation

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2 years ago

January 7, 2024

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Israel claims to have killed 8,000 Hamas fighters in northern Gaza alone, as the US warns failing to prevent the conflict from spreading in the Middle East would lead to an “endless cycle of violence”.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), said Israeli troops had now finished dismantling Hamas’s “military framework” in the north of the Gaza Strip.

He said the military has also seized tens of thousands of weapons in that area and millions of documents, and added: “We are now focused on dismantling Hamas in the centre of and south of the Strip.”

But Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, accepted “far too many” Palestinians have been killed – “especially children” – during the conflict so far.

He was speaking on the second day of an urgent tour of the region, intended to address growing tensions and avoid the risk of the conflict spreading.

Speaking to reporters on the Greek island of Crete, after meeting both Turkish and Greek leaders, Mr Blinken said he was looking for countries to do all they could so “we don’t see escalation”.

He said it was in the interest of virtually all nations to contain the fighting and that failure to do so would lead to “an endless cycle of violence… and lives of insecurity and conflict for people in the region”.

“We want to make sure that countries who feel that way are also using their ties, using their influence, using their relationships with some of the actors that might be involved to keep a lid on things, to make sure that we’re not seeing the spread of conflict,” he said.

He also said the US is working with its allies to see what can be done to protect civilians in Gaza as Israel’s military campaign continues, adding that Israel “does not want escalation”, but that they must defend themselves.

Mr Blinken started his tour of the Middle East in Turkey on Friday and spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and foreign minister Hakan Fidan.

The top US official said after the meeting that Turkey was prepared to use its relationships with “critical players” to de-escalate conflicts arising from the situation in Gaza.

Mr Blinken will also visit Jordan before going to other Arab states, Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Israel continues to bombard Gaza in response to Hamas’s 7 October attack, during which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 240 hostages were taken back to Gaza.

Israel believes 129 hostages remain, while Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says the Israeli response to 7 October has killed more than 22,700 Palestinians.

Much of Gaza has been laid to waste, with UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffith warning on Friday it has become a place of “death and despair”.

Pro-Palestinian protests have continued around the world, with demonstrators staging a sit-in at Westminster Bridge in London on Saturday, with several arrests made.

Tensions rising on border with Lebanon

Israel has been trading fire with Lebanon-based Hezbollah in one of the heaviest days of cross-border fighting in recent weeks.

On Saturday morning, Hezbollah claimed it fired 62 rockets at a key Israeli observation post as a “preliminary response” to the assassination of Hamas’s deputy leader.

Sirens sounded across northern Israel, with its military saying “approximately 40 launches from Lebanon toward the area of Meron in northern Israel were identified”, though there are no reports of casualties or damage.

Later on Saturday, Lebanon’s Jama’a Islamiya said it had also fired two volleys of rockets at Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel, in the third operation claimed by the hardline Sunni Muslim group since the conflict began.

After meeting the Lebanese foreign minister in Beirut, the EU’s senior diplomat Josep Borrell said he is seeing a “worrying intensification” of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border.

“Diplomatic channels have to stay open, war is not the only option – it’s the worst option,” he said, adding it is important that Lebanon not be dragged into the Gaza conflict.

Hezbollah had said the death of Saleh al Aroui – a founder of Hamas’s military wing who was killed in an Israeli drone strike in a Beirut suburb on Tuesday – would not go unanswered.

Analysts believe Israel’s drone strike could be a message to Hamas’s ally, Hezbollah, that even its prime stronghold of Dahiyeh is not beyond Israel’s reach.

Iran warns ‘enemy’ to ‘stay away’

Meanwhile, as concerns grow over key shipping routes where Iran’s allies have been attacking vessels, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed on Saturday to reach “the enemy” its interests were threatened.

Guards commander Hossein Salami did not name a specific enemy in his speech, but 22 nations – including the UK – have agreed to join a US-led coalition to protect commercial routes in the Red Sea.

“We need to defend our national interests to wherever they extend,” Mr Salami said in a televised speech.

“It will be harmful for the enemy. They should stay away from this area.”

Since the conflict made Red Sea routes more dangerous, many shipping companies have switched to the longer and more costly route around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

British maritime security firm Ambrey said on Saturday it had received a report of a maritime security event in the Red Sea’s Bab al Mandab area.

Without elaborating, it advised crews to minimise deck movements and that only essential crew should be on the bridge.

Later on Saturday, United Kingdom Marine Trade Operations reported six small craft approaching a merchant vessel to within one nautical mile in the area of the Red Sea near Yemen.

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

10 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

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What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

10 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

10 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.