❗️ The IDF says it eliminated the commander of the anti-tank missile array of Hamas and the former head of military intelligence of the movement.

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🇺🇸 US military bases have repeatedly come under fire in the Middle East, despite Washington's unprecedented military buildup in the region over the Gaza war

"The regional security architecture has changed in a way that the United States is having a considerably harder time achieving its goals," Mehran Kamrava, professor of government at Georgetown University Qatar, told Sputnik. "We have seen a greater degree of strategic autonomy being exercised by America's traditional allies, such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia."

While Jordanian Major General Mahmoud Erdesat argued, while speaking to Sputnik, that the US presence discourages Israel's adversaries from escalating skirmishes on the ground, Kamrava noted that Washington's influence has significantly waned with even Israel refusing to follow US recommendations.

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🇮🇱🇵🇸 Latest updates on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️The IDF says it eliminated the commander of the anti-tank missile array of Hamas and the former head of military intelligence of the movement.

▪️The IDF said that it had launched 4,300 airstrikes against Hamas since October 7, hitting about 3,000 of its infrastructure facilities and hundreds of command centers.

▪️The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said on Monday that its guesthouse in Rafah has been directly hit by Israeli bombardment.

▪️EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that he plans to travel to Israel, Palestine and other Middle Eastern countries this week to discuss humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip.

▪️People have been killed during attempts to leave the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip which currently has around 600 patients, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said, citing an MSF surgeon inside the health facility.

▪️The Israeli military shelled a convoy with journalists in southern Lebanon, as a result of which several cars have been burned, but no reporters have been harmed, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

▪️Libya's eastern-based House of Representatives has unanimously approved criminalization of normalizing relations with Israel, spokesman Abdullah Bliheg told Sputnik.

▪️More than 200,000 people have been relocated from northern Gaza to the southern part of the Palestinian exclave since early November, the Israeli Defense Ministry's coordination agency for Gaza said.

▪️The US is calling on Israel to accelerate its operation in the Gaza Strip behind closed doors as it may negatively affect President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in case of prolongation, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service said.

▪️The first group of Russian citizens evacuated from the Gaza Strip arrived in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

▪️The humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip will be halted in next 48 hours due to the lack of fuel supply to the enclave, Director of the UNRWA Thomas White said.

▪️IDF says that Hamas 'ceased to exist as an organized military structure' in the north of the Gaza Strip.

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🇫🇷 "In France, like several of the other NATO countries, and the US, the stockpiles are depleted," Earl Rasmussen, retired lieutenant colonel with over 20 years in the US Army and International Consultant, told Sputnik commenting on France’s decision not to transfer free-of-charge weapons to Ukraine. "They're dangerously low. They really cannot defend themselves."

Earlier, French Minister of Armed Forces Sebastien Lecornu, announced that from now on, Kiev will have to buy French weapons using money from a special fund, allocated by Paris. Lecornu's announcement means that free weapons bonanza is over for Kiev.

The other side of the coin is that France and Europe in general have been exhausted by the Ukraine conflict with a new war in Gaza now being high on agenda, Rasmussen noted.

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🇮🇱🇵🇸 The Israeli military published photos from the Hamas parliament building in Gaza.

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🇺🇸🇨🇳 US President Joe Biden is expected to meet Chairman Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) amid simmering tensions between the two global players.

"Beijing and Washington acknowledge that things are not going hunky-dory, but they do not want things to get any worse," Agathe Demarais, senior geoeconomics policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told Sputnik.

Per Demarais, one should not expect any breakthroughs: the US is unlikely to backpedal on controls on the exports of advanced technology to China. Likewise, the People's Republic of China is likely to proceed with a dual-circulation model, boosting its self-sufficiency and developing ties with Russia.

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🇺🇸 State Department in chaos as internal memo blasts Biden over ‘misinformation’ on Gaza war

The memo, signed by some 100 State Department and USAID officials, accuses the Biden administration of “spreading disinformation” about the crisis, and suggests that US is “complicit in genocide” and has displayed “a documented unwillingness to de-escalate” as Israel continues its assault on the besieged Hamas-held territory.

Overall, the memo suggests that Washington, “even prior to October 7,” has displayed “a reckless lack of strategic foresight” in handling the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The document is the latest expression of discontent within the State Department over Washington's handling of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis.

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🇺🇸 Washington Post’s New Spin on Ukrainian colonel’s role in Nord Stream attack ‘silly beyond belief’, ex-CIA officer says

“Since the Washington Post normally is the preferred mouthpiece of the CIA, you have to take this as an example of CIA propaganda to identify this individual, who has zero experience in underwater demolition operations, as sort of the mastermind of an underwater demolition operation, as just silly beyond belief,” retired CIA officer Larry Johnson told Sputnik.

Instead, “all of this has to be viewed in the context of the growing conflict between General Zaluzhny and President Zelensky,” Johnson stressed.

💬 “He basically has been seen as a competitor to Zelensky. The fact that he was featured in The Economist to me indicates that this is British intelligence signaling that they think this Zaluzhny is their boy. And the CIA is pushing back, saying ‘no, no, no, it’s got to be Zelensky'.”

👉 For more of Larry Johnson’s analysis, check out our article

🇫🇷🇬🇧 French border force squanders part of UK funds on vacuum cleaners - report

France has spent part of the UK funds intended to stop migrants from crossing the English Channel on items ranging from vacuum cleaners to mobile-phone chargers, reported Politico.

After the border protection agreement between the two countries was signed in 2018, France was allocated 46.5 million euros. However, a certain portion of the funds was not spent as it was supposed to be, spending records obtained under freedom of information revealed.

Furthermore, in that period, French police stopped fewer than half the migrants attempting to cross to the UK.

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🇮🇷 🇺🇸 Iran at "the height of power," cannot be threatened by US, IRGC senior commander says

It cannot happen even in the midst of the Gaza conflict, Tehran is prepared for any possible course of events, Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Senior Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh said.

🗣 "The Americans do not threaten Iran … they sent correspondences to Iran three times in a single night and the wording of all these correspondences contained requests and begging," Hajizadeh stated.

Earlier, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said that Washington had contacted Tehran several times in October, seeking to prevent it from intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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🇬🇧 Almost 40% of Brits consider UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's decision to appoint David Cameron as the new foreign secretary a bad one, according to a YouGov poll.

When asked whether they thought the decision to appoint Cameron as the new foreign secretary was a good or a bad one, 24% of the respondents said it was a good decision, while 38% said it was a bad one. Another 38% said they did not know.

Furthermore, when asked how they believed Cameron would do in his new position, 31% of the respondents said they thought he would do "fairly well" or "very well," while 36% thought he would do "fairly badly" or "very badly," and 33% said they did not know.

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🇭🇺🇪🇺 Hungary blocked allocation of 500 million euros ($533 million) for arms delivery for Kiev under the European Peace Facility, the country's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stated.

According to Szijjarto, Hungary has not received guarantees from Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) on non-inclusion of Hungarian companies in the list of “international sponsors of war."

The minister stressed that there was a big pressure on Hungary regarding this issue during the meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday. has failed to provide guarantees.

💬 “Surely, I did not agree to this today, we still adhere to our position: until we receive guarantees from the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption that the situation with the inclusion of OTP Bank or any other Hungarian enterprise for far-fetched reasons in the list of international war sponsors will never be repeated,” Szijjarto told Hungarian journalists.

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🇪🇺🇻🇪 The Council of the EU shortened the duration of a renewed arms embargo and individual sanctions against Venezuela from one year to six months in light of a recent breakthrough in talks between the South American nation's government and opposition.

The EU praised the deal reached by Venezuelan negotiators in Barbados in October, which set conditions for holding a competitive election in Venezuela. The council stressed it would consider lifting or easing the sanctions once the agreement takes effect.

💬 "The Council is willing to take steps and consider the easing or reversal of restrictive measures depending on the evolution of the situation and the implementation of this political agreement," it stated.

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🎙 Join #AfroVerdict as we jump into the midst of WWI to pay the due tribute to the African lives lost in this devastating war.

🇺🇸 US running low on air defense systems amid heightened Mid East tensions

Six additional MIM-104 Patriot systems were being deployed to the Middle East following a spree of missile attacks on American bases in Syria and Iraq, a US media outlet reported. The new batteries are being sent to Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

However, the redeployments have strained Washington’s stocks so much that the Pentagon decided to pull the system out of the Dubai Air Show, which began on Monday. The Pentagon had planned to display all three elements of the system.

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🇷🇺🪖 Russia’s Giatsint-S self-propelled artillery guns in action in Kupyansk direction

The Giatsint-S is a self-propelled howitzer known for its firepower and long range. With a 152mm caliber, the 2S5 Giatsint-S can fire a variety of ammunition, including high-explosive, anti-tank, and cluster munitions.

After the air reconnaissance unit ferrets out clusters of troops and enemy equipment, their coordinates are transferred to the artillery crew of the Giatsint-S self-propelled artillery installation. The combat vehicle then moves into position and opens fire on the identified targets.

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🇺🇸🇮🇱 Seymour Hersh: ‘There is a power vacuum in Washington’

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu "continues to do as he wishes in Gaza", and does not listen to the "waffling" of the Biden administration, the US investigative journalist has written on Substack.

As IDF intensify the Gaza operation to eliminate Hamas despite global protests over the Palestinian civilian death toll, US officials have made a flurry of visits to Tel Aviv. When asked what effect they'd had, an informed US official told Hersh that "no one is running the show" in Washington.

"It’s chaos in the White House. They are saying the same things over and over. They are doing what they think will get the president re-elected. It’s scary, and it is disgraceful."

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🪖 The situation at the front is difficult, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhny told top American general Charles Brown

Zaluzhny also told Brown about the urgent needs of the Ukrainian army: grenades, air defense equipment and UAVs, as well as further training of servicemen and restoring the combat capability of units.

The Ukrainian counteroffensive, which began on 4 June, has reached a "stalemate", the Ukrainian commander-in-chief said.

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🇵🇸🇮🇱 Latest updates on Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

▪️Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu "continues to do as he wishes in Gaza", and does not listen to the "waffling" of the Biden administration, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said

▪️The sole power generator at Al Amal Hospital in the Gaza Strip has stopped working, which put lives of 90 patients under threat, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said

▪️Israel has supported Joe Biden's inclusion of humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip in the $106 billion support security package for Israel and Ukraine presented in October, but the assistance package should meet "specific" criteria, The Times of Israel newspaper reported

▪️Turkey has not yet seen Western countries' assistance in Ankara's mediation efforts to resolve the situation in the Gaza Strip, but hopes to see a clear picture during Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Berlin later this week

▪️The IDF has discovered underground infrastructure beneath Rantisi Hospital in Gaza that was allegedly used by Hamas to store weapons and hold hostages

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