Anwar holds bilateral talks with leaders from Pakistan, Iran - New Straits Times

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1. Anwar holds bilateral talks with leaders from Pakistan, Iran  New Straits Times
2. Gaza in spotlight as Arab, Muslim blocs meet in Saudi Arabia  CNA
3. Iran and Saudi Arabia, regional rivals, call for Gaza ceasefire  The Straits Times
4. Arab and Muslim leaders slam Israel, demand swift end to ‘barbaric’ war  South China Morning Post
5. Mansour bin Zayed participates in Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit in Riyadh  ThePrint
6. View Full coverage on Google News

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2023-11-12 01:38:40Z
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Heavy fighting spurs 'state of panic' at Gaza hospitals - CNA

GAZA: Palestinians seeking refuge at Gaza's largest hospital and staff said they were trapped in increasingly horrific conditions Saturday (Nov 11), with two premature infants dying due to lack of electricity as heavy fighting raged nearby.

The Israeli military has denied there is a siege at Al-Shifa hospital, and has repeatedly accused Hamas of using medical facilities as command centres and hideouts - a charge the Palestinian militant group denies.

The gun battles and intense bombardment around the compound came as Israel pressed deep into Gaza City in its offensive aimed at destroying the militants on the territory they rule.

"Shooting is never stopping, airstrikes are unabated as well as artillery shells," said a witness who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There are dozens of bodies around the complex that nobody can reach."

Though tens of thousands of people have fled the fighting, many have taken shelter in northern Gaza's hospitals which have been repeatedly hit by explosive strikes and gunfire.

"The hospital is besieged, with no option to bring in the corpses and injured people sprawled outside. There is no movement in or out of the hospital," said Physicians for Human Rights Israel, citing doctors at Al-Shifa.

The Israeli doctors' group added that due to the lack of electricity, the neonatal intensive care unit has stopped working and two premature infants have died - leaving the lives of 37 other infants at risk.

"The situation in Al-Shifa is truly catastrophic," said Ann Taylor, head of the Palestinian Territories mission for the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

The Israeli military has denied there is a siege at Al-Shifa hospital, and has repeatedly accused Hamas of using medical facilities as command centres and hideouts - a charge the group denies.

The Israeli army also said it would "provide the assistance needed" to help "babies in the paediatric department to get to a safer hospital" on Sunday, at the request of Al-Shifa staff.

Hamas fighters poured through the militarised border with Israel on Oct 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 240 people hostage, according to the most recent Israeli figures.

Israel's campaign has killed more than 11,000 people, mostly civilians and thousands of them children, according to the latest figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The toll, normally updated daily, could not be calculated on Saturday "because of the targeting of hospitals", the ministry said.

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2023-11-11 18:54:00Z
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Gaza's Al Shifa hospital suspends operations after running out of fuel, baby dies: Health Ministry - The Straits Times

On Friday, Gaza officials had said missiles landed in a courtyard of Al Shifa, killing one person and wounding others.

Israel’s military said later that a misfired projectile launched by Palestinian militants in Gaza had hit Al Shifa.

Islamic-Arab summit

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Saturday that Israel bears responsibility for what he called “crimes committed against Palestinian people”. He also called for an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip.

Speaking during an extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit in Riyadh, he also called for the immediate end of military operations and the release of hostages.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians are facing an “unmatched genocidal war”.

He called on the United States to pressure its ally, Israel, to stop its offensive.

Mr Abbas added that Palestinians needed international protection in the face of Israeli attacks.

Dozens of leaders, including Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, are attending the summit.

As he headed to Riyadh on Saturday, Iran’s Mr Raisi said the time had come for action over the conflict rather than talk.

“Gaza is not an arena for words. It should be for action,” he said at Teheran airport before departing. “Today, the unity of the Islamic countries is very important,” he added.

But divisions remain among the Arab nations.

Foreign ministers from the region held an emergency meeting on Thursday to prepare for the summit.

Some countries, led by Algeria, called to cut all diplomatic ties with Israel, two delegates told Reuters.

But a bloc of Arab countries, which have established diplomatic relations with Israel, pushed back, the delegates said. These countries stressed the need to keep channels open with the Israeli government.

Mounting pressure

Nevertheless, Israel is facing mounting international pressure, including from its main ally the US, to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in its war to flush out Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

More than 11,000 people have been killed in five weeks of fighting, according to Gaza’s health officials.

The war comes in response to an attack by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct 7. Israel says around 1,200 people were killed, a revision of an earlier death toll.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on a visit to India on Friday that “far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks”.

Those were his strongest comments to date on the plight of civilians caught in the crossfire.

Similar sentiments were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday.

France, he said, “clearly condemns” the “terrorist” actions of Hamas.

But while recognising Israel’s right to protect itself, Mr Macron said “we do urge them to stop this bombing” in Gaza.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said world leaders should be condemning Hamas, not Israel.

“These crimes that Hamas (is) committing today in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York and anywhere in the world,” Mr Netanyahu said. REUTERS

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2023-11-11 10:40:00Z
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Israel faces pressure over Gaza deaths as fighting rages near hospitals - The Straits Times

Before leaving Teheran to attend the summit in Riyadh, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said: “Gaza is not an arena for words. It should be for action.”

“Today, the unity of the Islamic countries is very important,” he added.

Iran backs both Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group in Gaza, as well as Hezbollah, a militant group based in Lebanon.

Overcrowded hospitals hit by explosions, gunfire

Fighting intensified overnight into Saturday near Gaza City’s overcrowded hospitals, which Palestinian officials said were hit by explosions and gunfire.

“Israel is now launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,” said Mr Mohammad Abu Selmeyah, director of Al Shifa hospital.

He said later that at least 25 people were killed in Israeli strikes on Al-Buraq school in Gaza City, where people whose homes had been destroyed were sheltering.

Gaza officials said missiles landed in the courtyard of Al Shifa, the enclave’s biggest hospital, in the early hours of Friday.

The projectiles damaged the Indonesian Hospital and reportedly set fire to the Nasser Rantissi paediatric cancer hospital.

Israel’s military said later that a misfired projectile launched by Palestinian militants in Gaza had hit Al Shifa.

The hospitals, filled with displaced people as well as patients and medical staff, are in northern Gaza, where Israel says the Hamas militants are concentrated.

Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said the Hamas headquarters was in Al Shifa hospital’s basement.

This means the hospital could lose its protected status and become a legitimate target.

Israel says Hamas hides weapons in tunnels under hospitals, charges Hamas denies.

World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said health workers the group was in contact with at Al Shifa had been forced to leave the hospital in search of safety.

“Many of the thousands sheltering at the hospital are forced to evacuate due to security risks, while many still remain there,” Dr Tedros wrote on social media.

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2023-11-11 00:09:41Z
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Biden-Xi summit to take place on Wednesday; Israel-Hamas war, economic ties on agenda - The Straits Times

WASHINGTON – United States President Joe Biden will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping face to face for the first time in a year on Wednesday, according to senior US officials, for high-stakes diplomacy aimed at curbing tensions between the world’s two superpowers.

The closely watched interaction, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in the San Francisco Bay Area, could last hours and involve teams of officials from Beijing and Washington.

It is expected to cover global issues from the Israel-Hamas war to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, North Korea’s ties with Russia, Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific, human rights, fentanyl, artificial intelligence, and “fair” trade and economic relations, the officials said.

“Nothing will be held back; everything is on the table,” a senior Biden administration official, who declined to be named, told reporters. “We’re clear-eyed about this. We know efforts to shape or reform China over several decades have failed. But we expect China to be around and to be a major player on the world stage for the rest of our lifetimes.”

On Friday, the White House confirmed the day of the meeting in a statement, while the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Mr Xi would visit the US from next Tuesday to Friday, attend the Apec summit and meet Mr Biden.

US officials, who have been pushing for the meeting for the better part of a year, believe Beijing has been actively working to undermine US policy around the world.

Mr Biden and Mr Xi will speak across oceans of ideological difference for the first time since November 2022.

The US President’s team engineered a diplomatic blitz to repair hostile relations after Mr Biden ordered the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that transited US skies in February.

A main result is expected to be greater diplomacy – promises to talk more on key issues, including climate, global health, economic stability, counter-narcotic efforts, and potentially the resumption of some military-to-military channels after a high-level freeze.

Both sides may make modest gestures of goodwill to ease talks, according to two other people briefed on the discussions. But deep progress will be hard to come by.

Both countries increasingly regard themselves as locked in a direct competition to secure a military edge, corner the 21st-century economy and win the affections of second-tier countries, US and Chinese officials say.

Efforts to carefully choreograph Mr Xi’s visit may be upended in the restive Northern California city, which has a long history of left-wing protest and agitation.

Mr Biden and Mr Xi have known each other for more than a decade and shared hours of conversation over six interactions since Mr Biden’s 2021 inauguration.

But both men come to the table with mutual suspicion, grievances and garbled impressions of what the other is seeking, analysts say.

Among other sensitive topics, Mr Biden is expected to raise Chinese “influence operations” in foreign elections and the status of US citizens that Washington believes are wrongly detained in China.

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2023-11-10 13:04:33Z
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Israeli strikes hit near several hospitals as the military pushes deeper into Gaza City - CNA

On Thursday, crowds of Palestinian families stretching as far as the eye could see were walking south to escape Israeli airstrikes and the ground battle raging between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters.

The accelerating exodus to the south came as Israel agreed to start implementing a four-hour humanitarian pause each day and to open a second route for people to flee the north, the White House said.

Those fleeing to the south face the prospect of ongoing airstrikes there, and dire humanitarian conditions.

On Friday, UN expert for the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese called the four-hour pauses “cynical and cruel,” saying it was just enough "to let people breathe and remember what is the sound of life without bombing, before starting bombing them again".

Asked about the agreement in a Fox News interview that aired Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied that “the fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists, but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we’re doing that".

While Netanyahu suggested earlier in the week that Israel would be responsible for security in Gaza for an indefinite period, he told Fox that Israel is not looking to occupy nor govern Gaza.

FIGHTING AROUND SHIFA HOSPITAL

As Israeli ground forces battle near Shifa, conditions for tens of thousands of people sheltering there have become catastrophic, said Wafaa Abu Hajjaj, a Palestinian journalist at the hospital.

She, as well as several people who left the hospital to go south, said families are sleeping in hospital rooms, emergency rooms, surgical theaters and the maternity ward — or on the streets outside. Daily food distributions helped a tiny number for a time, but there has been no bread for the past four days, they said. Water is scarce and usually polluted, and few people can bathe.

Still more families are arriving, believing it is safer than fleeing to the south, where airstrikes also continue — though some have started to leave because of nearby missile strikes and the sound of clashes between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters, Abu Hajjaj said.

The hospital has been overwhelmed with daily waves of wounded from airstrikes, while medical supplies have been running low and electricity was shut off in many wards. The UN delivered two truckloads of supplies Wednesday night, the second delivery since the war began — enough to last a few hours, according to the hospital director.

Aid deliveries into Gaza from Egypt have reached an average of 100 trucks a day, US humanitarian envoy for the war David Satterfield said Thursday. Relief workers say that is still far below what is needed.

MORE CIVILIANS FLEEING

More than two-thirds of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes since the war began, with hundreds of thousands heeding Israeli orders to flee to the southern part of the enclave.

The UN said 50,000 people fled south on Gaza's main highway Wednesday. Similar-sized crowds streamed out on Thursday, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene as they arrived out of the northern zone. Shots rang out in the distance and smoke rose from blocks away as families made their way on foot with only what they could carry. Others rode on horse-drawn carts.

Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, and some 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.

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2023-11-10 11:04:00Z
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Rising star to disgraced politician: 6 things to know about Malaysian MP Syed Saddiq - The Straits Times

4. Turned down Oxford

As a law graduate of the International Islamic University Malaysia, Syed Saddiq turned down two full scholarships in 2017 and 2018 to study at his dream university, Oxford.

The main reason cited was he had to uphold his responsibilities as an elected MP to his constituents and country.

In 2021, he took part in a post-graduate senior fellowship programme at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy after accepting a scholarship from the National University of Singapore.

Describing the six-week experience as “priceless”, he said: “I’ve learnt things I wouldn’t have elsewhere”.

5. Star appeal on social media

As a young politician, Syed Saddiq is not encumbered by limitations experienced by politicians of yesteryears by leveraging on social media.

As one of the most-followed politicians in Malaysia – he has almost two million followers on Instagram and 1.2 million followers on TikTok – his every move and opinion is being watched and tracked.

Besides gracing covers of magazines, the latest being Prestige Malaysia, whose cover story is ironically titled The future is bright with Abe Lim and Syed Saddiq, his love life has also been a constant source of scrutiny for one of the most eligible bachelors in Malaysia.

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2023-11-10 09:20:00Z
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