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This is VOA News. I'm Alexis Strope.
Palestinian health authorities said Israeli strikes on Saturday killed at least 48 people in the Gaza Strip as clashes took place in the central and southern areas of the enclave ahead of the planned start of a polio vaccination campaign. Reuters correspondent Angela Johnston reports. In a statement, the Israeli military said it continued to operate in the central and southern Gaza Strip. The U.N. is due to start vaccinating some 640,000 children on Sunday. It will rely on daily 8-hour pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in specific areas of the war-torn territory. Gaza's Deputy Health Minister Yousef Abu Al-Reesh said teams would try to get to as many areas as possible, but added the daily pauses may not be enough to guarantee enough children are reached. "We call for a real cease-fire so that this campaign can really succeed," he said. The vaccination push comes after confirmation that a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first case in the territory in 25 years. Angela Johnston from Reuters. The United States military and Iraq launched a joint raid targeting suspected Islamic State group militants in the country's western desert that killed at least 15 people and saw 7 American troops hurt. AP correspondent Lawrence Brooks has more. The U.S. military's Central Command alleged the militants were armed with "numerous weapons, grenades, and explosive 'suicide' belts" during the attack. An Iraqi military statement said among the dead were key ISIS leaders without identifying them. It added all hideouts, weapons and logistical support were destroyed, explosive belts were safely detonated and important documents and devices were seized. The U.S. forces have been fighting the Islamic State for years after dislodging the militants from their self-declared caliphate across Iraq and Syria. The casualties from this raid were higher than in previous ones, but officials added that there was no indication any of them were civilians. I'm Lawrence Brooks. This is VOA News. Donald Trump's lawyers are seeking the dismissal of the 2020 election subversion case filed against the former president. AP correspondent Jackie Quinn has more. Lawyers for former President Donald Trump are laying out a series of likely challenges to the case which charges Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Their key argument is that a new and more limited indictment issued by prosecutors this week still contains allegations they say are covered by the recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. Prosecutors already stripped away allegations related to Trump's dealings with the Justice Department but left in counts surrounding Trump's badgering his vice president to refuse to certify the electoral votes. I'm Jackie Quinn. China and the Philippines [has] have accused each other of causing a collision between their two vessels in the latest flareup of tensions over disputed waters and maritime features in the South China Sea. The Chinese Coast Guard spokesperson said a Philippine ship maneuvered and "deliberately collided" with a Chinese Coast Guard ship in an unprofessional and dangerous manner. Philippine officials in Manila said it was their Coast Guard ship that was rammed three times by the Chinese Coast Guard without any provocation causing damage to the Philippine vessel. Doctors in the Democratic Republic [of] of the Congo continue to fight a surge in mpox cases as they await the arrival of vaccines in the next few days. Francesca Lena reports from Reuters. The date of the attack was verified by a Reuters source and confirmed by both the Burkina Faso military and the al-Qaeda-linked group that claimed responsibility. A group of victims' relatives says hundreds of people were killed when jihadists opened fire on civilians, digging defensive trenches on the orders of the military. Several videos apparently released by the militants on social media and verified by Reuters showed more than 100 bodies piled in a trench, most of them in civilian clothing. An al-Qaeda affiliate says it attacked soldiers and militia members excavating trenches and killed nearly 300, describing the victims as fighters, not civilians. Burkina Faso's ruling junta has not said how many people were killed, but said civilians were among the victims. A U.N. spokesman says the United Nations will continue to engage all stakeholders in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, even though they issued a ban on women's voices and bare faces in public and separate ties with the U.N. mission. U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric in New York defended the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and its head Roza Otunbayeva, who said the new laws provided a, quote, "distressing vision for Afghanistan's future." (The) Ministry of Virtue said Friday that it will no longer cooperate with the U.N. mission in Afghanistan because of its criticism of the laws. You'll find expanded coverage of world news and events at our website voanews.com 24 hours a day. I'm Alexis Strope, VOA News. |