Middle East & North Africa

03 June 2024; MEMO: Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, renewed his offer on Monday to provide a “safety net” in the Knesset for Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to pass a Gaza ceasefire and hostage swap deal with Hamas, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The Israeli government should agree to Netanyahu’s proposal, and send a delegation to Cairo today to finalise the details and bring home the men, the young women, the elderly, the soldiers and the female soldiers imprisoned in the tunnels,” Lapid wrote on X .

03 June 2024; MEMO: A far-right Israeli coalition partner accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday of trying to “whitewash” a deal to wind down the Gaza war that is being advanced by US President Joe Biden, and repeated a threat to quit the government, Reuters reported.

03 June 2024; MEMO: Lebanon’s Hezbollah said on Monday it had launched a squadron of drones towards the headquarters of the Israeli military’s Galilee formation in an intensification of cross-border violence between the two adversaries, Reuters reports.

While Hezbollah has previously launched drones at Israel during hostilities that began in October, it marked the first time the group had announced firing a squadron of them.

04 June 2024; MEMO: A former chief of the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service (Mossad) confirmed yesterday that Tel Aviv cannot defeat Hamas and Islamic Jihad militarily.

Since 7 October, Israel has waged a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 118,000 Palestinians killed or injured, over 70 per cent children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine.

BAGHDAD, Jun 4 (NNN-NINA) – Dozens of protesters, last night, stormed two American restaurants in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, causing damages, a security source said.

Angry protesters broke into a KFC restaurant on Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, before being dispersed by security forces, who fired bullets into the air, the source from the Iraqi Interior Ministry, said.

TUNIS, June 4 (NNN-XINHUA) — Tunisia dismantled a human trafficking network of eight Tunisians, including five women and a migrant smuggler, in a joint operation, the Tunisian National Guard said.

This network is involved in human trafficking and financing illegal border crossings by sub-Saharan Africans, the Tunisian National Guard said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

DAMASCUS, Jun 3 (NNN-SANA) – Israeli airstrikes after midnight Monday, killed 12 pro-Iranian militias in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The militias, consisting of Syrian and non-Syrian nationals, have a significant presence in the area surrounding the city of Aleppo, it said.

The attack hit several sites in the countryside of Aleppo, mainly in the town of Hayyan, north-west of Aleppo. Several explosions were heard across the city.

26 May 2024; MEMO: Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced Sunday that it captured Israeli soldiers during an operation in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reports.

But Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee denied the claim on X, saying that there was “no incident of soldier capturing.”

26 May 2024; MEMO: Palestinian resistance group Hamas said Sunday that it had fired a salvo of rockets into Israel’s coastal city of Tel Aviv, Anadolu Agency reports.

The group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said the attack “was in response to the Israeli massacres against civilians.”

Israeli Army Radio said that sirens had sounded in the greater Tel Aviv area in central Israel.

Sunday’s rocket fire was the first in four months on the Israeli city since Jan. 29.