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Worldnews

Israels War On Gaza Has Killed 50,000 Palestinians Since October 2023

Number of people killed tops 50,000 as Israel intensifies attacks on blockaded Gaza, causing further suffering to Palestinians. The number of Palestinians killed since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023 has crossed 50,000, according to health officials. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said on Sunday that at least 50,021 Palestinians have been killed and 113,274 wounded since Israel began attacking the besieged territory following an attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed and some 250 were taken captive in the attack in southern Israel. The death toll is expected to rise as Israeli forces struck the surgical building inside Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis late on Sunday, causing a large fire to break out, the health ministry said. The Israeli army and intelligence agency Shin Bet in a statement confirmed the attack, claiming their forces targeted “a key” Hamas member at the hospital, one of the largest health facilities in Gaza. Earlier, medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 46 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks Sunday, mostly in the southern Gaza cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. Israel reignited its war on Gaza after its refusal to enter the second phase of a ceasefire deal it had signed with Hamas in January. Entering phase 2 would have required Israel to withdraw its forces from Gaza – a condition it agreed to in the deal mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States. Even during phase 1, which took effect on January 19 and saw the release of captives in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, Israel killed more than 150 Palestinians in Gaza. Reporting from Gaza City in northern Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the announced death toll is a “very grim, horrifying milestone”. “For the record, the 50,000 figure is only a conservative estimate. These are only the people who have been registered at health facilities across the Gaza Strip. There are so many others buried without being registered or who have gone missing, trapped under piles of rubble,” Mahmoud said. “Of the more than 50,000 killed, 17,000 are children. A whole generation has been wiped out. These children would have affected how their society would have progressed – politically, economically and intellectually,” he added. The confirmed death toll does not include more than 11,000 who are missing and are presumed dead, according to the Gaza media office, while a study  published last July in the Lancet journal said the accumulative effects of Israel’s war on Gaza could mean the true death toll could reach more than 186,000 people. Israel has repeatedly claimed that its attacks carefully target members of Hamas, but the number of civilians killed tells a different story, analysts say. “Israel has been making these types of baseless claims throughout the past 17 months, which are totally unsupported by the evidence on the ground,” Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera. “If anything, the evidence often points to deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, which accounts for the massive death toll for children.” Meanwhile, the Israeli military on Sunday called on residents in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to forcibly evacuate as its troops began operations in the area. It said Israeli troops had surrounded Rafah’s Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood. Israel has been accused of repeatedly targeting so-called “safe zones” where it forced people to take shelter. The Israeli military also announced that it was conducting operations in Beit Hanoon in northern Gaza. Last week, Israel resumed its attacks, shattering the ceasefire after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would pursue a military path to pressure Hamas into accepting a deal to release remaining captives, who were not exchanged in the January ceasefire agreement. Hamas reiterates it is ready to release all the captives if Israel agrees to enter phase 2 of the earlier truce deal. Since Tuesday, Israel has killed more than 600 people, including more than 200 children. Earlier, Hamas announced that its official Salah al-Bardawil was killed in an Israeli attack on his tent in Khan Younis in the early hours of Sunday. The Israeli military offensive comes as Gaza is reeling from a total blockade by Israel since early March that has caused a severe shortage of food, water, medicine and fuel in the territory. Rights group Amnesty International said cutting off electricity supply to a desalination plant in Gaza was “cruel and unlawful”. Rights groups, aid agencies and a number countries including France, Germany and the United Kingdom have called on Israel to allow humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza. Follow Al Jazeera English:...

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News_Naija

Ogun West Renews Push For 2027 Governorship Slot I'm Being Victimised, My Suspension Meant To Silence Me- Natasha

A group, Ogun West Initiative, on Monday, renewed calls for the Ogun West Senatorial District to produce the next governor of Ogun State by 2027. The group said that the region’s inability to produce a governor since the state’s creation 49 years ago has hindered its development compared to the Ogun East and Ogun Central senatorial districts. The convener, Bolaji Adeniji, disclosed this during a briefing in Abeokuta on Monday. Adeniji stated that the region’s underdevelopment was linked to the fact that those who had governed the state were not from the area and, therefore, had not done much to uplift the senatorial district. He said  “We believe that there is a nexus between power and development. When political power is domiciled within a geographical location, development necessarily gravitates towards that location. “It is a notorious fact, backed with empirical facts, that one of the reasons why Ogun East and Ogun Central are far more developed than Ogun West is because they have had access to political power. “This is without prejudice against former chief executives of the state and present governor with regards to the good faith they displayed at ensuring that all parts of the state receive equitable share of resources and attention.” Adeniji said the purported good faith notwithstanding, evidence on the ground did not support that allusion. “For example, the Ota-Agbara industrial cluster created in Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government decades ago and which was responsible for a substantial part of the state’s IGR, is now becoming a relic, due to bad infrastructure and lack of good faith by the administration. “Without repudiating the desire of the current administration, for instance, to open up other economic zones around the state, that zone could have sustained its viability and witnessed more clusters if the right attention was paid to it,” he said. The group said it was persuaded that these inequalities and injustices could only be addressed through political power. He said for the next electoral cycle in 2027 and after 49 years of the state’s creation, the next governor of the state should come from Ogun West Senatorial District. Adeniji said, “We are not demanding for power as of right, pity or mere concession as previously done, but there is a new paradigm and intentional shift in the agitation for governorship this time around; bothering on meritocracy and democratic fervour that is oozing from the district and saturating all over the state at the moment. “Ogun West has come of age and the fault lines that have denied us over the years are now being closed up. “The zone is putting its house in order, and as of today, there is a convergence and aggregation of opinion, backed by strategic action to ensure unanimity of purpose leading to Ogun West presenting a formidable front for 2027.” He urged other stakeholders in the state, particularly from Ogun East and Central senatorial districts, to join forces with the people of Ogun West to produce for the very first time the governor of the state in 2027.

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Worldnews

Trumps Reciprocal Tariffs: How Much Will Each Country Be Hit?

Trump held up a reciprocal tariffs chart during his ‘Liberation Day’ address. New tariffs announced: US president to tax all imports into the country President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a range of reciprocal tariffs targeting almost all countries that the United States trades with, taking a sledgehammer to Washington’s longstanding advocacy of free trade and globalisation. Trump’s latest tariffs, which build on a series of similar steps he has taken since returning to office on January 20, are going to hit the countries with which Washington has large trade deficits, or that impose heavy tariffs on US goods. In 2023, the US imports were worth $1.1 trillion more than its exports; no other country has as large a trade deficit as the US. Trump’s reciprocal tariffs also target countries like Syria, which has faced Israeli attacks since the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, and Myanmar, which is reeling from earthquake damage amid a civil war. They also target economies already struggling to balance their books, depending on loans from the International Monetary Fund, such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Here is how each country will specifically be targeted by Trump’s tariffs and the few sectors that are — for now — exempt from the penalties. Trump announced the reciprocal tariffs in an executive order alongside an address in the Rose Garden at the White House on Wednesday. Trump had been describing April 2 as “Liberation Day”. In the executive order, Trump said while the US trading policy has been built on the principle of reciprocity, taxes and barriers on US products by its trading partners had hurt the US. The tariffs, he said, were a response. These reciprocal tariffs will come into effect on April 9. During his address, Trump made the argument that the US is charging its trading partners with smaller tariffs compared with the tariffs and non-tariff barriers that the partners impose on the US. “For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said. Holding up a chart of the new reciprocal tariffs, Trump cited the example of China, which he claimed charged US products with an average 67 percent tariff. “We’re going to be charging [China with] a discounted reciprocal tariff of 34 percent,” he said. “They charge us, we charge them less. How can anybody be upset? They will be because we’ve never charged anybody anything.” But the effective tariff on China will actually be higher — and some countries will now be tariffed higher than the duties they levy on US imports. Chinese goods will face a 34 percent reciprocal tariff in addition to the 20 percent tariff that Trump imposed earlier, bringing the overall tariff on Chinese goods to 54 percent, close to his campaign promise of 60 percent. In 2024, China was the second-largest trading partner of the US. The White House released an annexe of 57 target countries, territories and blocs which will face the increased tariffs. These include: Yes. Apart from the 57 on the list announced on Wednesday, Trump has also imposed a flat 10 percent tariff on products coming from almost all the other trading partners of the US. He did this by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Some of the leading countries that will face this 10 percent tariff rate on all exports to the US include: These tariffs will come into effect on April 5. While Canada and Mexico were not on the list of countries slapped with the latest tariffs, both US neighbours already face heavy tariffs. On February 1, Trump signed executive orders imposing 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported from Mexico and Canada. Those tariffs were suspended for a month after negotiations between Trump and the leaders of the two countries. In early March, Trump resurrected those tariffs, but on March 6, exempted goods that fall under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) from these tariffs on March 6. Non-USMCA-compliant energy and potash face a 10 percent tariff. All other non-USMCA-compliant products from Mexico and Canada continue to face 25 percent tariffs. The White House on Wednesday reaffirmed that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada remain in place. The exempt products include copper, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, lumber articles, energy products and certain critical minerals that are unavailable in the US. On March 26, Trump signed an executive order imposing 25 percent tariffs on auto imports and certain automobile parts. No additional tariffs on these products were announced on Wednesday. Follow Al Jazeera English:...