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From Washington, this is VOA news. Coming up, the latest on tensions between Israel and Hamas militants. Key arrest in Nigeria blast. Hello everyone, I'm Steve Norman.
Israel agreed to a United Nations' request for temporary cease-fire in Gaza on Thursday. The truce will last five hours for what the Israeli army says are humanitarian reasons to give Palestinians a chance to re-stock supplies. But the army warns it will react if militants fire on Israel during the truce. Israeli warplanes and naval vessels are directly targeting Hamas leadership in Gaza in response to continued rocket fire from the Palestinian territory into Israel. We get more now from VOA's Gabe Joselow in Gaza. The military has been targeting Hamas political leaders, including senior official Mahmoud Zahar, whose home was reduced to a pile of rubble in an early morning strike. Nobody was inside at the time. Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner says the strikes are part of operations to disrupt the group's terrorist activities. "The line between political and terrorist activists is extremely vague as far as Hamas is concerned, and the people we struck is the leadership who are involved in terrorist activities, involved in coordinating and leading and instructing these types of activities." Lerner said 70 rockets were fired at Israel on Wednesday, 25 of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. Gabe Joselow, VOA news, Gaza. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was sworn in for a new seven-year term following his election. The opposition and its Western allies have dismissed it as a sham. He took the oath of office Wednesday during a ceremony at the presidential palace in Damascus. Last month, President Assad won a landslide election held only in government-controlled areas. His country's civil war is now in its fourth year. In Washington, President Obama says it has not yet been determined if nuclear talks with Iran will be extended beyond Sunday's deadline for a deal. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said this week that the process is worth continuing. The interim deal for Iran to curb its uranium enrichment in exchange for an easing of sanctions expires on July 20. Diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. have been working with Iran on a longer-term deal. Pakistani officials say as many as four U.S. drone strikes have killed at least 15 people in the country's northwest tribal region. The strikes took place Wednesday in North Waziristan. Afghan officials say the audit of all ballots cast in the presidential runoff will begin on Thursday. In a deal mediated by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, rival Afghan presidential candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani agreed to a full United Nations-supervised audit of the entire runoff poll and committed to abide by the final results. A Malaysian-flagged oil tanker was hijacked in the South China Sea, its cargo siphoned. VOA's Steve Herman has details. The Royal Malaysian Navy says 15 crew members aboard the drifting MT Oriental Glory are safe after the tanker was hijacked and 2,500 tons of marine gas oil were stolen from the vessel. The 85-meter-long ship was en route to Sandakan in Malaysian Borneo from Singapore when it was attacked just before midnight. The pirates damaged the ship's communications equipment and engine. This is the ninth such hijacking since late April. Steve Herman, VOA news, Bangkok. A powerful typhoon has moved away the Philippines as now heading toward northern Vietnam and China's Hainan island, with a possibility it could pick up speed as it crosses the South China Sea. The first typhoon of the season made landfall in the Philippines Wednesday with high winds 250 kilometers per hour, killing at least ten people and knocking up power to a number of areas. The U.S. is imposing new economic sanctions on Russian banks and energy companies for Moscow's support of the pro-Russian separatist rebellion in Ukraine. In Brussels on Wednesday, the EU also sought new penalties against Moscow. And Russia will reopen an intelligence base in Cuba that closed in 2001, according to Russian media reports on Wednesday. The Lourdes base was once a leading source of Cold War-era electronic surveillance on the United States The base is located south of Havana, where it opened in 1964 to spy on the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That's the latest world news from VOA. |