Israeli military says it found traces of hostages in an underground tunnel in Gaza

The Israeli military said Wednesday it has found evidence that hostages were present in an underground tunnel in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, which has become the focus of Israel’s ground offensive.

The military showed the tunnel to journalists who were escorted into a neighborhood near the ruins of destroyed homes and streets. A corrugated tin hut covered the tunnel’s entrance in a residential yard.

A makeshift ladder led to the narrow underground pathway, about 2.5 meters (8 feet) below. The tunnel was hot and humid, with walls lined with concrete and electrical wires. Farther inside was a bathroom, where the military said it found evidence that hostages had been there, including their DNA.

“Hostages were held here in this tunnel system,” said Daniel Hagari, the army’s chief spokesman.

Hagari offered no details on what exactly was found in the tunnel, nor did he say when the hostages were there or identify them. He did not say if they were known to be dead or alive.

In a later statement to the media, he said the captives were held in “difficult conditions,” without elaborating.

Several hostages freed in a cease-fire deal in late November described being held inside tunnels, which Hamas has laid throughout the Gaza Strip and which Israel says have long been used to smuggle weapons and fighters throughout the blockaded territory.

The tunnel was found in a part of the city that appears to have endured heavy fighting. The nearby residence was badly damaged.

In another building, the walls were blasted out of several apartments. Large mounds of dirt surrounded the area, apparently from Israeli bulldozers searching for buried explosives. A tank was parked outside an empty school, where an Israeli flag was hung from the exterior walls. The sound of what appeared to be a drone buzzed overhead, and gunfire could be heard in the distance.

The military says Hamas is operating from inside the tunnels, and military officials have made the destruction of the tunnel system a top goal.

Dan Goldfus, commander of the military’s 98th Division, described the tunnels as posing “a 720-degree threat.”

“It’s not 360, but it’s 720, underground and over ground,” Goldfus said.

Israel also believes that Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar is hiding in a tunnel somewhere in Khan Younis.

The beleaguered city, Gaza’s second-largest, has become the focus of Israel’s war on Hamas in recent weeks. On Wednesday’s tour for journalists, no residents appeared to be in the area. Israel has ordered residents to evacuate portions of the city as it proceeds with the offensive.

In its fierce Oct. 7 attack, Hamas and other militants killed 1,200 people and took hostage roughly 250, according to Israeli authorities.

The attack sparked the war. More than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza. More than 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and vast swaths of the territory have been leveled.

About 110 hostages have been released. Some 110 remain with their captors, along with the bodies of about 20 people killed in captivity, according to Israel. Several other bodies of captives were retrieved by Israeli forces, and three hostages were killed mistakenly by the military.

The plight of the hostages has gripped Israelis, who see them as an enduring symbol of the state’s failure to protect its citizens on Oct. 7.

Israel has made freeing the hostages part of its war aims, along with crushing Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Number of heavily wounded Ukrainian soldiers up by 30% — ABC

The number of heavily wounded Ukrainian soldiers grew by 30% over the past few weeks, the ABC television reported citing a Ukrainian doctor.

Sergey Ryzhenko, a chief doctor of a hospital in the city of Dnepr (formerly Dnepropetrovsk), said between 40 and 100 heavily wounded soldiers are admitted to the facility daily, with between 50 and 100 surgical operations performed every day. He added that the majority of surgeries are amputations.

The channel quoted doctors as saying that, according to their information, around 30,000 Ukrainian servicemen are either killed or heavily wounded every month.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at a conference call with the top brass of the Russian armed forces on Tuesday that "upon the instructions of western sponsors, the Kiev regime continues to send its soldiers to slaughter and looks for every possibility to replenish the Ukrainian army." "Naturally, it will not change the situation on the line of contact, but will only drag the military conflict," the minister added.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Russian missiles hit hotel in Ukraine's Kharkiv, 11 injured -regional governor

Two Russian missiles struck a hotel late on Wednesday in the centre of Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv, injuring 11 people, one person seriously, the regional governor said.

Pictures posted online showed many of the windows blown out and balconies destroyed with large piles of rubble in the street below. Emergency teams made their way through gaping holes in the facade to sift through rubble inside.

Kharkiv Governor Oleh Synehubov, writing on Telegram, said the strike at about 10.30 p.m. local time involved S-300 missiles in the city's Kyiv district.

"Nine of those injured have been taken to medical facilities," Synehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app. "One of them, a 35-year-old man, is in serious condition." Visiting Turkish journalists were among the injured, he wrote.

"One missile hit next to the hotel, right by a fence. The other one hit a nearby annex," Kharkiv Police Chief Volodymyr Tymoshko told public broadcaster Suspilne.

"Servicemen never stayed in this hotel and just about everyone in Kharkiv knows this. It was used by journalists."

Psychiatrist Mykhailo Bebeshko, a hotel guest, told Suspilne that he had heard no air raid alert before the missile struck.

"I was in the bathroom and that was what saved me. I fell, hit my head and then lay on the floor," he said.

"With a second explosion, all the doors were blown out and it was fortunate that I had been on the floor. And I shouted out to my colleagues: Everyone ok? Everyone still alive?"

Oleksandr Filchakov, head of the Kharkiv prosecutor's office, said in a video posted on Telegram, that 23 guests and eight staff were in the hotel when the missiles struck.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said several homes in the district had been damaged as well as a manufacturing plant and a car showroom.

The Russian Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tass/Reuters

For those of you who watched the BBC Africa documentary, Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua (three episodes), an expose on the Synagogue Church of All Nations’ late founder Temitope Joshua and still insist on defending him, I have four words: you are not serious. Yes, the whole lot of you. Your faces are looking funny in the light. Some defenders—understandably—grapple with the contradictions of a man who artfully constructed his public image as a good yet profoundly misunderstood man. The rest of you, still bonded into Joshua’s cult of personality, are being obtuse.

You query, why now that he is dead? Some of these stories have been in the public domain for a while. Was your reaction any different then? Since there is no statute of limitations on when victims can talk about their experiences, and it likely took Joshua’s death for them to finally shake themselves out of their nightmarish reverie to seek closure, there is nothing suspect about the timing.

Some also asked why people would willingly subject themselves to such gross abuse. If they had ever studied the nature of cults, they would have understood how and why people become victims. And so what if the ‘disciples’ speaking up now are bitter because of the succession battles that followed Joshua’s demise, as some speculated? The crucial point is whether the accounts are credible.

To some extent, the documentary’s revelations are not shocking to those of us who have known about Joshua’s SCOAN as far back as the 1990s when radio broadcaster Kola Olawuyi did an expose on him. What Olawuyi revealed at that time gave away the Synagogue as a mix of cultic and occultic practices.

Watching Disciples, I could not help but wonder if the scandal-ridden nature of his ministry was also not part of the problem. Could it be that the man’s infractions were so sensational(ised) that reports stopped mattering? Sometimes, the best way to get away with a crime is to overcommit it so that the sheer scale would petrify those who would otherwise lead the outrage against you. Or could it be that the people who should have spoken up recognised themselves in him and did not want their own hypocrisy called out? Because, when you dissect it, his sins were not unique; it is the extent that is outrageous.

They said his miracles were staged, but that would also be true for about 99 per cent of all miracles, especially televised ones. Miracles are supposed to be irruptive of reality. Once you train a camera on a set scene, whatever actions you record are no longer ‘miraculous’ but calculated dramatic actions. That is why performed miracles are studied as theatre. They said Joshua was abusive, but physical and sexual abuses are endemic to religion. Making people ‘disciples’ involves grooming, indoctrination, and disciplining them in ways that too quickly devolve into abuse. They said Joshua’s methods were fetish, but was he any more paganistic than the popular Nigerian church that buried 15 Bibles in the church foundation? He did what many ministers did, but he also superseded them.

Yes, I am also aware that the Synagogue leadership has denied the ‘characters’ that appeared in that video (an ironic use of metaphor for a church accused of staging miracles), but the reflexive defence is to be expected. The Catholic Church also defended the paedophilic priests among its rank before finally confronting the truth. It took years, and a mounting pile of evidence before the church started making some changes. If they had maintained their defiant stand, they would have eventually crumbled under the weight of their hypocrisies.

That is the historical lesson that eludes Joshua’s defenders who are approaching this with blind defensiveness. Coming to terms with the fact that your religious system bred a cult of personality that destroyed the people who sought life in the church is no “attack on Joshua’s legacies” as some of you have been parroting like hand-wound dolls. It is accountability. There is no religious organisation in the world run directly by God; they are all administered by fallible humans. If you cannot accept that they sometimes need correcting, you have fallen into the sin of idolatry.

While watching Disciples, what was topmost on my mind was what justice would look like now that the alleged main culprit was dead. Unfortunately, a charismatic denomination like the SCOAN church is its own leadership; there is no recourse to a higher bureaucratic authority to act on behalf of the survivors. From the disciples’ narration, Joshua had a God complex. How do you censure a man who was not accountable to anyone? It does not help that he is now dead. It is also uncertain that the Nigerian government will take any action on this. While he was alive, they let him escape the consequences for his church building that collapsed and killed 116 people. The blood had not dried at the site before President Goodluck Jonathan flew to Lagos to condole with him, a man who was not even hurt by his own actions. Will they also let him escape reckoning even in death? The survivors should collectively sue his estate for billions of naira in damages.

Overall, kudos to BBC Africa for Disciples. While we have had several cases of religious cult leaders whose house of lies unravelled after their respective deaths (think Jesu Oyingbo, Olumba Olumba etc.), this is about the first time a media house would embark on a transnational expose. This must have been a challenge for them to pull off. I know because I tried to write an academic essay on the Joshua phenomenon after his demise. For a man who was barely literate, his evolution from an uncouth illiterate preacher to a respected one—and that was probably the only credible miracle he ever performed—was intriguing.

By the time he died, he had become one of the most intriguing figures in contemporary Christianity and a highly influential African. During visits to some African countries, each time I was introduced as a Nigerian, someone would ask me about “TB Joshua.” There was no denying his influence. He was also quite innovative, constantly evolving methods that other pastors—within the competitive Nigerian religious space—had to copy. I wanted to understand how that happened.

Even though we met some people who were at his church at the inception and had some very interesting things to say, they did not want to go on record probably because of the likely blowback. I had to set the work aside. Disciples answered some of those questions for me, but it still left me with questions of how he became that monster. How exactly did an unlettered man from a provincial Nigerian town become so powerful that even presidents submitted before him? Without some clarity on his methods and how he acquired his tactics, people (including the survivors) still believe he had spiritual power. Unfortunately, what they took as diabolism and supernatural power on the part of Joshua were symbolic manipulation, classic psychological conditioning, and time-tested techniques of torture, manipulation, and coercion.

While he preyed on his disciples in private, he managed to maintain a genial public front. He was a man who understood what society considered authentic and engineered it accordingly. For the white people that thronged his church and turned Nigeria into a religious tourism hotspot, his rawness signified an unvarnished religious truth that the well-educated and smooth-speaking Nigerian pastors in tailored suits could not muster. As also a black man—which, in the white imagination has a natural animistic predisposition and closer supernatural contacts—his crudity symbolised a departure from their over-polished modern life. Joshua saw their neediness, and he used it to subjectify them.

For Nigerians, he also understood our colomental tendency to associate the white skin with superiority, rationality, and elevated consciousness and took advantage of that cultural attitude. From his vantage point between the races and their respective cultural psychologies, he mediated and manipulated all sides’ assumptions of him with the theatrics that allowed him escape justice.

Punch

In the early 1950s, the pioneering motivation researcher Ernest Dichter told General Mills to stop using powdered eggs in their Betty Crocker cake mixes and have homemakers use fresh eggs instead.

Why? Taste mattered, but so did the underlying psychology. Cracking a few eggs and spooning in a little vegetable oil made the cake maker feel more engaged. More skilled. More invested in the process. 

And therefore the outcome.

The result is what a 2011 study published by Harvard Business School called the Ikea Effect: The idea that "labor alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one's labor." That people assign "significantly more value to objects they imagined, created, or assembled." That people view what they create or build as "similar in value to the creations of experts, and expect other people to share their opinions."

In simple terms, that if I am part of the process, I'll think the end result is better -- regardless of the objective quality of that end result.

That Malm dresser I assembled? Objectively, it's just slabs of press wood and veneer held together by dowels and bolt locks.

But I put it together: So even though the drawers are a little wobbly and I have to lift one slightly to make it close all the way, my dresser kicks ass.

Plenty of businesses hope to harness the Ikea Effect, and for good reason. Avoid the time and cost of providing a turnkey solution by having me finish the job -- yet somehow leave me feeling like I received even greater value for my money? 

That's a pretty cool trick. 

But, as with employing many other cognitive biases to your own ends, this one feels a little manipulative.

Fortunately, there's a better use of the Ikea Effect.

Oddly enough, one that involves your employees.

I Care When It's "Mine"

When I was a machine operator, a consultant watched us for a few hours, took a bunch of notes, and gave us step-by-step instructions to more quickly change machine setups from one job to the next.

Some of his ideas weren't bad. Some sounded great in theory but were terrible in practice. Others didn't work because they created more rather than fewer bottlenecks. 

But mostly? We didn't want someone to telling us what to do -- and we didn't really care about the outcome. (OK, we did care: Because he wasn't one of us, we kind of hoped his ideas would suck.) 

And, just as important, we didn't want a "just add water" job changeover mix. We wanted to crack some eggs. We wanted to add some oil. 

We wanted to put the process together ourselves.

So our boss got us together and told us he had been tasked with cutting job changeover times by 30 percent. Clearly the consultant didn't have all the answers. He didn't have all the answers. 

Two weeks later, we had cut changeover times by 40 percent. Sure, we incorporated some of the consultant's ideas, as well as our boss's. And then we added the fruits of our labor: our ideas. Our experiments. Our trials and our errors. We valued our ideas and efforts more because they were ours. 

We felt more engaged. More skilled.

And a lot more invested in the outcome.

Want your employees to do more and yet somehow feel good about it -- and, just as important, feel good about themselves?

Embrace the power of the Ikea Effect by letting them contribute in a meaningful way. By letting them imagine, create, or assemble new strategies or processes.

By turning an instant cake mix into a more general recipe that then allows for creativity, innovation, and modification.

Because we all care the most when something is "ours." We care the most when we feel we have the responsibility and authority to not just do what we're told, but to do what is right.

Good leaders establish standards and guidelines 

and then give their employees the autonomy and independence to work the way they work best within those guidelines.

Great leaders allow their employees to turn "have to" into "want to," because that transforms a job into something much more meaningful: an outward expression of each person's unique skills, talents, and experiences.

If that's not harnessing the power of the Ikea Effect in a positive way, nothing is.

Inc

Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Zenith, Providus, and Jaiz banks on Tuesday were invited by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

This is amid a sweeping investigation into an embezzlement scheme linked to current and former Ministers of Humanitarian Affairs, Betta Edu and Sadiya Umar-Farouq.

According to sources, the bank chiefs handed over documents of accounts operated by the humanitarian affairs ministry to the EFCC to strengthen the ongoing investigation.

The bank chiefs invited are are Ebenezer Onyeagwu (Zenith Bank), Haruna Musa (Jaiz Bank), and Walter Akpani (Providus Bank).

Sources, who spoke with our correspondent on condition of anonymity, said the bank chiefs were at EFCC headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.

According to the sources, the banking executives were quizzed over the improper diversion of public funds into private accounts.

Our correspondent gathered that the bank chiefs were released after meeting with EFCC interrogators.

The EFCC is dissecting a web of suspicious transactions involving hefty sums of public money funnelled into private accounts, allegedly approved by Edu and Farouq leveraging their ministerial positions.

Farouq, who led the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs under the previous administration of Muhammadu Buhari, is additionally accused of mismanagement of N37 billion earmarked for the conditional cash transfer program during Buhari’s tenure.

The source revealed that a potential deliberate lapse in flagging suspicious activity by the banks – a crucial responsibility mandated by anti-financial crime laws and Central Bank directives – played a critical role in the brazen misappropriation of public funds.

EFCC Spokesperson, Dele Oyewale was not reachable to confirm the development as at press time.

The Guardian

Federal government on Tuesday destroyed 2.5 tonnes of seized elephant tusks valued at over N9.9 billion ($11.2 million) in a push to protect its dwindling elephant population from rampant wildlife traffickers.

Over the past three decades, Nigeria's elephant population

has declined drastically from an estimated 1,500 to less than 400 due to poaching for ivory, habitat loss and human-elephant conflict, according to conservationists.

Minister of State for Environment Iziaq Salako said the government crushed the tusks and will use the powder to build a symbolic national park monument as a reminder of the importance of elephants in the ecosystem.

The pulverization of the tusk in the capital Abuja follows a similar event in October where officials destroyed four tonnes of seized pangolin scales valued at $1.4 million.

Thousands of elephants are killed each year for their tusks despite a 1989 ban on the trade of ivory by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Despite being a signatory to CITES, Nigeria is considered a hub for gangs sending illegal African wildlife parts including tusks and pangolin scales to Asia, according to law enforcement and wildlife experts.

But the large West African nation has stepped up counter-smuggling efforts in recent years, partnering with British, U.S. and German officials as well as international organizations to make its biggest seizure of illegal wildlife parts in August 2021.

Last month, officials began an investigation after a video posted on social media showed a soldier shooting two elephants that strayed into farmlands, sparking outrage among citizens.

In 2022, Nigeria customs officials seized 1,613 tonnes of pangolin scales and arrested 14 people.

Reuters

Bandits, on Sunday, attacked travellers on the Abuja–Kaduna highway and abducted over 30 people, witnesses and community leaders reported. 

The abduction took place at Dogon-Fili near Katari, along the Kaduna-Abuja highway in Kachia Local Government Area of Kaduna State. 

This is the first time in more than ten months when the security along the Abuja–Kaduna road artery was breached. 

Findings by this newspaper revealed that the last reported incident on the road was on March 1, 2023 when 23 people were abducted. 

A former lawmaker, Shehu Sani confirmed the attack on his X page, disclosing that two of his friends narrowly escaped being kidnapped by the bandits. 

He also said that the bandits blocked the road and operated for some time even though there were more security operatives on the road than there used to be in the past. 

Sani said two of his friends from both opposition and ruling parties who were returning to Abuja from Kaduna narrowly escaped during the bandits’ attack. 

Sani said: “Just when we felt safer, last night (Sunday) kidnappers returned to the Kaduna-Abuja Road. They blocked the road and abducted scores of persons around 9pm near Katari village. Two of my honourable friends from both the ruling and opposition parties had to run through the bush like Usain Bolt. But despite this incident, there is a stronger security presence along the route than it used to be in the past.” 

A resident of Katari, Suleiman Dan Baba, said the incident happened around 9:33pm when the bandits, wielding AK-47 rifles, emerged from the bush and blocked the two lanes, adding that they operated for close to 45 minutes. 

He also narrated that the bandits opened fire and deflated the tyres of some vehicles, which he said forced drivers, including commercial vehicles to stop. 

“The bandits forced travellers to alight from their vehicles at gunpoint, before moving them into the bush,” the source said. 

Another resident of Jere, Samaila Shehu, said the incident happened at a distance of about one kilometre away from Jere, and over 30 travellers were abducted at the scene. 

Shuaibu Adamu Jere, a community leader, also confirmed the incidents, stating that his relative escaped the attack near Dogon Fili, close to Katari town on Sunday. He said that a driver was injured, and two vehicles, a Sharon and another small car, were found empty by the roadside after the incident. 

“Yes, the incident happened around 9:30pm, and the operation lasted about 45 minutes around Dogon Fili near Katari on Sunday. The driver of one of the vehicles was shot and left at the scene. One of my relatives escaped the attack,” he said. 

He could not however specify the number of people abducted as the attack took place at night, but said the injured driver was rushed to an undisclosed hospital for treatment. 

Another resident of Katari, a lawyer, who prefers not to be named, also confirmed that the highway was blocked on Sunday night as he was preparing to return to Kaduna. 

According to him, the soldiers stationed around 500 meters from Katari repelled the bandits.

“I was told the bandits blocked the road that night before the soldiers at Katari repelled them. But I don’t know if people were abducted,” he said. 

When contacted yesterday, the Kaduna State Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan said he could not confirm the development, but promised to revert to our reporter after a meeting he was attending. He did not revert at press time last night. 

The state Police Command’s Public Relations Officer, Mansir Hassan, when contacted, said he would investigate and find out what happened. 

Daily Trust

No fewer than seven persons were reportedly killed on Sunday in a renewed attack by gunmen suspected to be Fulani herders in the Logo Local Government Area of Benue State.

The suspected armed herders were said to have attacked a commercial vehicle between Arufu and Chembe villages Sunday and shot at passengers.

The attackers were later reported to have invaded Mchia community in the night and killed seven persons.

Several others were reported to have been missing during the invasion.

A community leader, Anawah Joseph, who spoke to our correspondent on the telephone on Monday, explained that the attackers laid ambush on the road and shot at a commercial vehicle between Arufu and Chembe villages.

He said, “Armed Fulani herders in collaboration with Jukun militias on Sunday shot at a commercial vehicle heading to Lorza where some passengers suffered injury.

“They also invaded Mchia where they slaughtered eight people.”

Chairman of the local government, Adagbe Jonathan, who spoke to our correspondent on Monday, said seven persons were killed while several others were still missing.

He said, “It’s true that armed herders in collaboration with Jukun militias attacked my people yesterday (Sunday) at about 9 pm.

“With the help of policemen, we were able to recover five corpses Sunday night while two corpses were recovered this morning (Monday). They also shot at a commercial vehicle where two people were injured.

“As I am talking to you now, the two people who sustained injuries have been taken to hospital at Anyim but many people are still missing.”

The council chairman, who said he was on his way to report the incident to the security adviser, Joseph Har, added that the attackers were armed herders hired by Jukun militias.

Efforts to reach the Police Public Relations Officer, Catherine Anene, were not successful as calls to her phone were not answered.

Punch

Blinken presses Israel on Gaza’s postwar future as Lebanon border clashes escalate

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is back in Tel Aviv and, after meeting with top leaders Tuesday, said Israel must do more to lessen the Gaza war’s toll on civilians and said Washington rejects any proposal for settling Palestinians outside the territory.

Hundreds of people have been killed in recent days as the Israeli offensive’s focus shifts to the southern city of Khan Younis and built-up refugee camps in the central Gaza. The entire 2.3 million population is also in a food crisis, with 576,000 people at catastrophic or starvation levels.

Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least four members of the militant group Hezbollah members, a day after a similar attack killed a commander with the militant Hezbollah group. Israel claimed it killed Ali Hussein Barji, who it said was in charge of Hezbollah’s drones in the south, but a Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with the group’s regulations, said he was only a fighter.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack from Gaza into southern Israel triggered the war and killed around 1,200 people, and militants took some 250 others hostage. Israel’s air, ground and sea assault in Gaza has killed more than 23,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. The count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Currently:

— Hezbollah launches drone strike on northern Israel base, Israeli military says there’s no damage.

— Blinken urges Israel to engage with region on postwar plans that include path to Palestinian state.

— Israeli strike kills an elite Hezbollah commander in the latest escalation linked to the war in Gaza.

— Former U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn will join South Africa’s delegation accusing Israel of genocide.

U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL TO VOTE ON HOUTHI ATTACKS IN RED SEA

The U.N. Security Council has scheduled a vote Wednesday on a U.S.-proposed resolution that would condemn attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on merchant and commercial vessels in the Red Sea area and demand an immediate halt.

The draft resolution, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, says at least two dozen Houthi attacks are impeding global commerce “and undermine navigational rights and freedoms as well as regional peace and security.”

The resolution would demand the immediate release of the first ship the Houthis attacked, the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese-operated cargo ship with links to an Israeli company that was seized on Nov. 19 along with its crew.

Without naming Iran, the Houthis’ main arms supplier, the draft to be voted on would condemn all arms dealings with the rebels, which violate Security Council sanctions.

It also “urges caution and restraint to avoid further escalation of the situation in the Red Sea and the broader region.” And it “encourages enhanced diplomatic efforts by all parties to that end, including continued support for dialogue and Yemen’s peace process under the U.N. auspices.”

AP

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Ukrainian air defenses depleted by Russian strikes

Kiev’s air defense arsenal has been depleted as the country tries to shoot down increasing barrages of Russian missiles and drones, a Ukrainian Air Force official has acknowledged.

“Intense Russian air attacks force us to use a corresponding amount of air defense means,” Air Force spokesman Yury Ignat said on Tuesday in a Ukrainian television interview. “That’s why we need more of them, as Russia keeps increasing its attack capabilities.”

Moscow’s forces have ramped up airstrikes in the past two weeks, launching hundreds of missiles and drones targeting weapons plants and other targets in Ukrainian cities. A Russian barrage on Monday morning targeted military-industrial facilities in the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Khmelnitsky and Zaporozhye regions, and Kiev admitted that its air defenses failed to intercept most of the missiles.  

Ignat said Ukraine is currently reliant on supplies of guided missiles for its Western and Soviet-era air defense systems. Speaking by video on Sunday at a Swedish defense conference, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky warned that Kiev lacks adequate air defenses “on the battlefield and in our cities.”

The air defense shortfall comes at a time when Ukraine’s biggest military supplier, Washington, has run out of money to send more weapons to Kiev. US President Joe Biden’s plan to provide $61.4 billion in additional aid for Ukraine as part of a $106 billion emergency spending bill has stalled in the Congress amid rising opposition from Republican lawmakers. Meanwhile, a €50 billion ($54.6 billion) EU aid package was derailed at least temporarily by a Hungarian veto in December.

Kiev is pinning its hopes for near-term help on NATO’s council of Ukraine backers, which is scheduled to meet on Wednesday in Brussels. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said he hopes the meeting will be followed by “prompt commitments” to help beef up Kiev’s air defenses amid the Russian onslaught.

“First and foremost, we expect the meeting to expedite critical decisions on further strengthening Ukraine's air defense capabilities, both in terms of modern systems and their ammunition,” Kuleba said in a statement. He added that supplying missiles for Ukraine’s Patriot, IRIS-T and NASAMS air defense systems is a “top priority that must be completed today, not tomorrow.”

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

One killed in Ukrainian shelling of Russia's Kursk region, drones hit fuel complex

A woman was killed in Ukrainian shelling of Russia's Kursk region and drones struck a fuel facility in the neighbouring region of Oryol, the two regions' governors said on Tuesday, amid an escalation of cross-border attacks.

In a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app, Kursk region governor Roman Starovoit said a woman had been killed by shelling in the village of Gornal, near the border with Ukraine.

At least five drones were shot down over the Kursk region on Tuesday, Starovoit and Russia's defence ministry said.

The governor of Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov, said two drones had hit a fuel facility, injuring three and causing a fire that was later extinguished. He said three drones had been shot shown.

In a statement posted on Telegram, Klychkov called the events "an enemy attack".

Later the governor of the nearby Bryansk region, Alexander Bogomaz, and the defence ministry reported the destruction of another drone, without providing any details.

Russian border regions have repeatedly come under fire from Ukraine in recent months. On Dec. 30, at least 20 people were killed in a missile strike on the city of Belgorod, 40 km (25 miles) from Ukraine, Russian media said.

Russia has also recently fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities, including some far behind the frontline, Ukrainian officials have said.

In the latest strike this week, Russia fired 51 missiles of various types, killing at least four people and hitting civilian infrastructure, they said.

RT/Reuters