World

Shell-shocked Gazans on Monday sifted through the rubble of three days of deadly fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad militants as a truce held and life slowly returned to normal.

An Egypt-brokered ceasefire reached late Sunday ended the intense fighting that killed 46 people including 16 children and wounded 360 in the enclave, according to Gaza’s health ministry, updating an earlier toll of 44.

Israel had since Friday launched a heavy aerial and artillery bombardment of Islamic Jihad positions in the Gaza Strip, leading the militants to fire more than a thousand rockets in retaliation, according to the Israeli army.

On Monday evening, nearly a day since the truce began, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave a televised address saying the bombardment had “landed a devastating blow to the enemy”, and that the “entire senior military command of Islamic Jihad in Gaza was successfully targeted.”

As relative calm returned to Gaza, and electricity was restored, Palestinians tried to salvage their belongings from the rubble of shattered homes and to clear the debris.

“We received the news of the ceasefire with joy and happiness and we went back to our work,” said Gaza shopkeeper Hazem Douima. “We did not want more bloodshed.”

– Mourners –

Bereaved families buried their dead, including at one funeral joined by hundreds of mourners in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip where a family laid to rest four minors killed in the conflict.

“Gaza is tending to its wounds,” said one resident, Mohammed Alai.

Israel insists that some of the civilian deaths including children were killed by Islamic Jihad rockets that fell short or misfired.

Gaza’s sole power plant, after a two-day shutdown, “started working to generate electricity”, said spokesman Mohammed Thabet, hours after fuel trucks passed the reopened border crossing for goods.

The outage had sparked fears about the impact on hospitals overwhelmed with casualties during Gaza’s worst fighting since an 11-day war with militant movement Hamas last year.

North of Gaza in the Israeli city of Ashkelon where air raid sirens had wailed and people fled to bunkers, beachgoers returned to the Mediterranean shore. 

Sitting in a cafe, Eitan Casandini said locals were feeling “very good”.

“After we destroy them we can sleep peacefully,” he told AFP. “I don’t think (Islamic) Jihad will do anything again in the next three or four years.”

Three people in Israel were wounded by shrapnel and 31 lightly hurt while running for safety, emergency services said.

– ‘Right to respond’ –

US President Joe Biden welcomed the truce and thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for Cairo’s role in brokering it. 

Both Israel and Islamic Jihad have said they are committed to the ceasefire, but that they would respond to aggression.

Israel has said it was necessary to launch an operation against Islamic Jihad. 

The group had been planning an attack by sniper fire or with anti-tank missiles, said a senior Israeli diplomatic official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Even in the future, if it becomes necessary, we will launch a pre-emptive strike, in order to protect the citizens of Israel,” Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz warned Monday, speaking alongside Lapid.

Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed group designated as a terrorist organisation by several Western nations, has also accepted the truce but said it too “reserves the right to respond”.

The militants have said 12 of their leaders and members had been killed, including Taysir al-Jabari and Khaled Mansour, while its supporter Iran said it will always “defend the active resistance”.

Mohammad al-Hindi, a senior member of the group, said the ceasefire deal “contains Egypt’s commitment to work towards the release of two prisoners”.

They were named as Bassem al-Saadi, a senior figure in the group’s political wing who was arrested in the occupied West Bank early last week, and Khalil Awawdeh, a militant also in Israeli detention.

Islamic Jihad is aligned with Gaza’s rulers Hamas but often acts independently.

Hamas has fought four wars with Israel since seizing control of the enclave in 2007, including the conflict in May last year.

The United Nations Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the situation in Gaza.

The Kremlin accused Ukrainian forces Monday of firing on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in occupied Ukraine and warned the alleged attacks could have “catastrophic consequences”.

Kyiv said Moscow was responsible and called for the area to be demilitarised, adding that two employees had been wounded in recent attacks.

Fighting continued meanwhile along battle lines stretching across eastern Ukraine, and Russia continued its crackdown on dissent at home.

Each side has blamed the other for the escalation in fighting around the nuclear facility in Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, which was captured by Russian forces soon after their late February invasion.

Recent fighting at the plant has prompted the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to warn of “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster”.

Ukraine said the plant should be cleared of Russian military and called for the establishment of an international security and energy team to oversee the site.

“What needs to be done is to remove occupying forces from the station and to create a de-militarised zone on the territory of the station,” said Petro Kotin, president of Ukraine’s nuclear energy company, Energoatom.

“There should be a peacekeeping mission including experts from the IAEA and other security organisations,” he added.

“Their presence and initially giving control to them and then to the Ukrainian side would have solved this problem”.

– ‘Nuclear terrorism’ –

Kotin said Russia had deployed some 500 Russian troops and 50 pieces of hardware including tanks at Zaporizhzhia, echoing earlier claims from Kyiv that Moscow was using the site for military cover.

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmygal meanwhile accused Russia of “nuclear terrorism,” urging the world to “unite now to prevent a catastrophe”.

The Kremlin has captured swathes of Ukrainian territory since February, introducing Russian currency and announcing plans to formally annex the areas by holding votes, including in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The head of its Moscow-installed administration Yevgeny Balitsky said on social media Monday he had signed a decree “on the issue of organising a referendum on the reunification of the Zaporizhzhia region with the Russian Federation”.

The plans follow a similar move by Moscow in 2014 after it annexed the Crimean peninsula, a highly controversial vote that has not been recognised by most Western countries.

Although attention was focused on the fallout from fighting at Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces continued shelling across the sprawling eastern frontline. 

Among the attacks, Ukraine said one woman had died and four more were injured in Russian bombardments on Kharkiv region in the northeast. It has been under persistent Russian shelling for weeks.

Ukrainian forces in turn said they had bombed a strategic bridge over the Dnipro river overnight in the Russian-held city of Kherson in the south.

There were fresh pledges of Western aid.

The Pentagon announced military aid for Ukraine worth $1 billion including additional precision missiles for the Himars system that have helped Kyiv’s forces attack Russian troops far behind the front lines.

The World Bank said it was mobilising another $4.5 billion in US-provided financial support to help Kyiv pay for services and pensions, key to easing the invasion’s economic impacts.

– Fresh fine for journalist –

The authorities in Moscow pursued their crackdown on opposition to the war, handing down a new fine to journalist Marina Ovsyannikova.

Ovsyannikova shot to prominence in March for interrupting a live broadcast to denounce Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

On Monday, her lawyer did not rule out the possibility of her facing another criminal probe.

A Ukrainian court meanwhile jailed a Russian tank crewman for 10 years for firing on a multi-storied apartment block in the northern city of Chernigiv early on in the invasion, the security services (SBU) announced Monday. 

The Chernigiv court convicted sergeant Mikhail Kulikov of a war crime.

The SBU also said it arrested Russian agents who were planning to assassinate the defence minister and the military intelligence chief.

There was progress on one rare area of compromise between Russian and Ukraine Monday, after the first cargo ship that left a Ukrainian port and reach its final destination under a recent deal brokered by Ankara and UN docked in Turkey.

While Kyiv welcomed the news, officials also said there was a delay in the first delivery to leave Ukrainian ports because the buyer had refused delivery, citing a five-month delay in shipment.

Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on social media that a cargo ship carrying grain had departed for the first time from the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi.

Rescuers will deploy an underwater drone as part of efforts to save 10 workers trapped for five days in a flooded coal mine in northern Mexico, authorities said Monday.

The device provided by the navy has a high-resolution camera and light to identify possible obstacles without putting lives at risk, civil defense national coordinator Laura Velazquez said.

Work continued to pump water from the mine in Agujita in the northern state of Coahuila to make it safe enough for rescuers to go inside.

The military said that it was hoped rescuers would be able enter to one of the shafts in the middle of this week if the water level drops to 1.5 meters (around five feet).

The mine shafts descend about 60 meters and the water inside the one that rescuers plan to go into was 19.4 meters deep, down from more than 30 meters initially, officials said.

“We’re hurrying to remove the water so that the rescuers can enter,” said President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who visited the site on Sunday and urged intensified efforts to save the miners.

Around 300 liters were being pumped out each second, he told reporters back in Mexico City.

“Everyone has faith. No one is thinking about anything other than the rescue,” he said.

Authorities said the miners had been carrying out excavation work when they hit an adjoining area full of water.

Five workers managed to escape from the crudely constructed mine in the initial aftermath of Wednesday’s accident, but there has been no contract with the others.

With each passing hour relatives were becoming increasingly desperate and more reluctant to talk to the media.

Authorities reinforced a security cordon around the mine, about 1,130 kilometers (700 miles) north of Mexico City.

Several hundred soldiers and other personnel, including six military scuba divers, are taking part in the rescue effort, according to the government.

The Attorney General’s Office said on Sunday that it asked the labor ministry to provide information on safety inspections carried out at mines in the area to determine the cause of the accident.

Coahuila, Mexico’s main coal-producing region, has seen a series of fatal mining incidents over the years.

Last year, seven miners died when they were trapped in the region.

The worst accident was an explosion that claimed 65 lives at the Pasta de Conchos mine in 2006.

Only two bodies were retrieved after that tragedy and the families have repeatedly urged the Mexican authorities to recover the others.

The European Union submitted a “final text” at talks to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Tehran said Monday it was reviewing the proposals.

Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran and Russia, as well as the United States indirectly, resumed talks on Thursday in Vienna, months after they had stalled.

The European Union has submitted a “final text”, a European official said on Monday. “We worked for four days and today the text is on the table,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

“The negotiation is finished, it’s the final text… and it will not be renegotiated.”

“Now the ball is in the court of the capitals and we will see what happens,” the European official added. “No one is staying in Vienna.”

The official said he hoped to see the “quality” text accepted “within weeks”.

Iran said it was examining the 25-page document.

“As soon as we received these ideas, we conveyed our initial response and considerations,” state news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed foreign ministry official as saying.

“But naturally, these items require a comprehensive review, and we will convey our additional views and considerations.”

On Sunday, Iran demanded the UN nuclear watchdog “completely” resolve questions over nuclear material at undeclared sites.

Iranian sources have suggested a key sticking point has been a probe by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on traces of nuclear material found at undeclared Iranian sites.

“That has nothing to do with” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement of 2015, the European official said.

“I hope Iran and the IAEA will reach an agreement because that will facilitate a lot of things.”

– ‘Irrelevant and unconstructive’ –

The UN agency’s board of governors adopted a resolution in June, censuring Iran for failing to adequately explain the previous discovery of traces of enriched uranium at three previously undeclared sites.

“We believe that the agency should completely resolve the remaining safeguard issues from a technical route by distancing itself from irrelevant and unconstructive political issues, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday.

Kelsey Davenport, an expert at the Arms Control Association, warned against abandoning the IAEA probe in a bid to revive the JCPOA, which she called “the most effective way to verifiably block Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons”.

If the United States and the other signatories to the 2015 deal do not support the UN body, it will “undermine the agency’s mandate” and broader non-proliferation goals, she wrote on Twitter.

The EU-coordinated negotiations to revive the JCPOA began in April 2021 before coming to a standstill in March.

The 2015 accord gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its atomic programme to guarantee Tehran could not develop a nuclear weapon — something it has always denied wanting to do.

But the unilateral withdrawal of the United States from the deal under president Donald Trump in 2018 and the reimposition of biting economic sanctions prompted Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.

The Kremlin accused Ukrainian forces on Monday of firing on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in occupied Ukraine and warned that the alleged attacks could have “catastrophic consequences”.

Kyiv said Moscow was responsible and called for the area to be demilitarised, saying two employees had been wounded in recent attacks.

Fighting continued meanwhile along battle lines stretching across eastern Ukraine, and Russia continued its crackdown on dissent at home.

Each side has blamed the other for the escalation in fighting around the facility in Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine, which was captured by Russian forces early in their invasion, launched in late February.

Recent fighting at the plant has prompted the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to warn of “the very real risk of a nuclear disaster”.

Ukraine said that the plant should be cleared of Russian military and called for the establishment of an international security and energy team to oversee the sight.

“What needs to be done is to remove occupying forces from the station and to create a de-militarised zone on the territory of the station,” said Petro Kotin, president of Ukraine’s nuclear energy company, Energoatom.

“There should be a peacekeeping mission including experts from the IAEA and other security organisations,” he added.

“Their presence and initially giving control to them and then to the Ukrainian side would have solved this problem”.

– ‘Nuclear terrorism’ –

Kotin said that Russia had deployed some 500 Russian troops and 50 pieces of hardware including tanks at Zaporizhzhia, echoing earlier claims from Kyiv that Moscow was using the site for military cover.

Ukraine Prime Minister Denys Shmygal meanwhile accused Russia of “nuclear terrorism,” urging the world to “unite now to prevent a catastrophe.”

The Kremlin has captured swathes of Ukrainian territory since February, introducing Russian currency and by announcing plans to formally annex the areas by holding votes, including in the Zaporizhzhia region.

The head of its Moscow-installed administration Yevgeny Balitsky said on social media Monday he had signed a decree “on the issue of organising a referendum on the reunification of the Zaporizhzhia region with the Russian Federation”.

The plans follow a similar move by Moscow in 2014 after it annexed the Crimean peninsula, a highly controversial vote that has not been recognised by most Western countries.

Although attention was focused on the fallout from fighting at Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces continued shelling across the sprawling eastern frontline. 

Among the attacks, Ukraine said that one woman had died and four more were injured in Russian bombardments on Kharkiv region in the north east. It has been under persistent Russian shelling for weeks.

Ukrainian forces in turn said they had bombed a strategic bridge over the Dnipro river overnight in the Russian-held city of Kherson in the south.

– Fresh fine for journalist –

The authorities in Moscow pursued their crackdown on opposition to the war, handing down a new fine to journalist Marina Ovsyannikova.

Ovsyannikova shot to prominence in March for interrupting a live broadcast to denounce Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

On Monday, her lawyer did not rule out the possibility of her facing another criminal probe.

There was progress on one rare area of compromise between Russian and Ukraine Monday, after the first boat to leave Ukrainian ports under a recent deal Ankara and UN reached its destination in Turkey.

While Kyiv welcomed the news, officials also said there was a delay in the first delivery to leave Ukrainian ports because the buyer had refused delivery, citing a five-month delay in shipment.

Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on social media that a cargo ship carrying grain had departed for the first time from the Black Sea port of Pivdennyi.