US court bars Israeli spyware firm from targeting WhatsApp users

Afghanistan accuses Pakistan of breaking truce as 10 killed in air attacks

At least 10 people have died in Pakistan’s air attacks inside Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials, breaking a ceasefire that had brought two days of affluent period of relative calm to the border.

Nearly a week of bloody border clashes that left dozens of soldiers and civilians dead on both sides were put on hold as a result of the 48-hour truce.

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A senior Taliban official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, reported to the AFP news agency that Pakistan had violated the ceasefire and bombed three locations in Paktika province late on Friday. “Afghanistan will retaliate.”

A provincial hospital official who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said that two children were among the dead and that 12 others had been hurt in the attacks.

An Afghan government spokesman said Afghan government representatives would hold peace talks in Doha on Saturday following the attacks.

According to a statement from Zabihullah Mujahid, “as promised, negotiations with the Pakistani side will take place today in Doha.”

Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, the minister of defense, led a high-ranking Afghan delegation that has since left for Doha, he claimed.

Meanwhile, General Asim Malik, the intelligence chief, and Defense Minister Khawaja Asif are scheduled to visit Doha on Saturday for talks with the Afghan Taliban, according to Pakistani state TV.

The Afghanistan Cricket Board announced earlier on Saturday that five other people were killed in the most recent air strikes, along with five others, in a “cowardly attack carried out by the Pakistani regime,” and that seven others were hurt.

When the cricketers returned home after playing a friendly cricket match in Sharana, the capital of Paktika province, the ACB claimed in a post on social media on Saturday that they were “targeted during a gathering.”

The ACB said, “This is a terrible loss for Afghanistan’s sports community, its athletes, and the cricketing family.”

Additionally, it stated that it would not participate in the upcoming Tri-Nation T20I Series involving Pakistan, which is scheduled for the following month.

A senior security official in Pakistan claimed that Afghani forces had “conducted precision aerial strikes” on the Hafiz Gul Bahadur Group, a local rival of the Pakistan Taliban (TTP), in Pakistan.

Seven Pakistani paramilitary troops were killed in a suicide bombing and gun attack at a military camp in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas district, according to Islamabad, which the same organization had been a part of.

The tensions are fueled by security concerns, which Kabul refutes by accusing Afghanistan of house armed groups led by the Pakistan Taliban, known as TTP, on its soil.

The Taliban’s foreign minister made an unprecedented visit to India, Pakistan’s long-distance rival, just as the violence had escalated dramatically since last Saturday, days after explosions rocked the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The Taliban then launched an offensive along Pakistan’s southern border, prompting Islamabad to declare that it would launch a strong own response.

Islamabad stated the ceasefire would last 48 hours when it first broke out at 13:00 GMT on Wednesday, but Kabul claimed it would continue until Pakistan violated it.

On the Afghan side of the border, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission, 37 people were killed and 425 were hurt, urging both parties to put an end to hostilities.

On Thursday, hundreds of people in Spin Boldak, the site of bloody battles, paid tribute to the victims of the brutal fighting.

Nematullah, 42, told AFP that “people have varying feelings.” They worry that the conflict will return, but they continue to live in their homes and conduct business.

However, residents earlier on Friday described normalcy scenes.

Nani, a 35-year-old woman, told AFP, “Everything is fine, everything is open.”

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What we know about the torture, abuse of Palestinian prisoners by Israel

The Palestinians’ bodies, which Israel released, have the highest number of unidentified remains.

Families of Palestinians who had gone missing had to search through pictures and videos of the bodies, hoping to find their loved ones, but they were sent back to Gaza with numbers instead of their names.

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These bodies, and some of them still have blindfolds and handcuffs, all have the following evidence: they had been tortured before they died, possibly executed.

Palestinian detainees who were alive by Israel as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, which also saw the release of Israeli prisoners from Gaza, confirmed the torture.

Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, reports that Israel tortures Palestinian prisoners have grown in frequency. Some Israeli politicians even support the practice.

Since October 7, 2023, at least 75 Palestinian detainees have passed away in Israeli prisons, according to the UN.

A Palestinian prisoner was gang raped by guards last year at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility in Israel, a particularly noteworthy documented instance of abuse. According to Israeli media reports, a video shows Israeli prison guards raping the victim who was unable to walk while using their shields to conceal themselves from the camera.

Abuse can be found on bodies of death.

The bodies that Israel shipped to Gaza are horrifying in what condition.

According to medical sources, the bodies showed signs of physical abuse, according to the forensic teams that examined them.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza on Wednesday, some of the bodies appeared to have been burned, while others appeared to have been.

The bodies of Gaza’s prisoners were returned with their bodies bound like animals and showing signs of severe torture and burning, according to Dr. Munir al-Bursh, director-general of the Health Ministry, on social media.

They were restrained, which is a war crime that calls for an urgent international investigation and prosecution of the killers.

Experts claim that the bodies showed signs of abuse, which is consistent with what al-Bursh claimed in their images.

One of the bodies even had a rope around his neck, according to Sameh Hamad, a member of the commission that received the bodies at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital.

Raed Mohammad Amer, a member of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, claimed his organization discovered that Israel had executed numerous Palestinians in an interview with Al Jazeera. In some cases, Israel has promised to look into some cases, but many are still unsolved.

Physicians for Human Rights Israel’s director of the prisoners and detainees department, Naji Abbas, claimed that his organization was “not surprised” by the bodies’ condition.

According to Abbas, “we have documented hundreds of instances of torture and deaths in the Israeli prison system, as well as dozens of Palestinians who have been killed, beaten, or who have died after receiving treatment for months.”

Eight months after the person’s death, according to him, one autopsy that the organization examined revealed signs of violence on the body.

These detainees’ bodies have clear indications of torture and have been brutally restrained before being executed, according to Abbas, who denies that it is on any television or print media.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which coordinates the release of Palestinian and Israeli prisoners, is available for comment.

The ICRC did not make any comments about the bodies’ condition, but it stated that its staff’s priority was “the dignified transfer of remains of the deceased.”

A request for comment was not received by the Israeli military and prison service.

Detainees claim they were subjected to abuse and torture.

As part of the ceasefire agreement, Israel released nearly 2, 000 Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank this week.

Many of them had been seized by Israel in significant roundups, leaving behind families unsure whether their loved one had been murdered or vanished.

The family members were shocked by their appearances and the stories they told despite not knowing whether their loved ones had been missing since their disappearance.

Some people were taken straight from the bus to a hospital for medical care because they were so severely injured and frail.

Mahmoud Abu Foul, a released detainee, claimed that Israeli torture had caused him to lose vision. Abu Foul claimed that after receiving multiple beatings, he lost vision and was paralyzed for hours.

Many detainees emerged bruised or emaciated.

Kamal Abu Shanab, a detainee who was released, reported a weight loss of 127 kilograms. His niece Farah, who was present when she saw him, sobbed as she broke down in disbelief.

Salem Eid, a different freed detainee, claimed he can’t lie on his back because of the beatings and sleeps while sitting.

Israeli prisons have long been the subject of abuse reports.

In a report released last August, the Israeli prison system was described as a “network of torture camps” by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, who stated that there were “frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence, sexual assault, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation, forced unhygienic conditions, sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship, confiscation of all communal and personal belongings, and denial of adequate medical treatment.

The psychological torture follows. One man who was released this week claimed that Israeli soldiers had informed him that his family was dead, only to discover that Israel had also killed his wife and other children. Another man, who had made a bracelet for his two-year-old daughter, later claimed that she had been discovered by Israel.

aiming at Barghouti

About 9, 000 Palestinian detainees are still being held in Israeli custody, including one of the most prominent Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, whom Israel has refused to release.

Israel in 2004 found Barghouti guilty of attacking Israelis, and he is currently serving a number of life sentences.

He supports nonviolent resistance as well as a two-state solution and rejects the Israeli court system’s jurisdiction.

Barghouti has frequently been compared to the anti-apartheid leader and former South African President Nelson Mandela in polls as the most popular leader in the country.

Arab, Barghouti’s son, claimed this week that Israel had targeted his father for a severe beating that left him unconscious in September.

Mohammad al-Ardah, a released prisoner, claimed that Barghouti had been ribbed three times by Israeli forces.

Israel has not supported its claim with evidence, but it has disputed Barghouti and other Palestinian prisoners’ unfair treatment.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, threatened Barghouti in an August video. He is the one in charge of Israel’s prison system, according to Wikipedia.

Ben-Gvir showed his father an electric chair, according to Arab Barghouti, and he informed him of this fate.

China expels top military commanders in latest anticorruption purge

According to the Chinese Defense Ministry, two of the country’s highest-ranking officers and seven other senior military personnel have been fired from the country’s ruling Communist Party and military on suspicion of grave misconduct related to corruption.

The latest senior military officials to be targeted in a corruption campaign in the People’s Liberation Army are He Weidong, the country’s second-highest-ranking general, and navy admiral Miao Hua, the former leader of the Chinese military.

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Since the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, General He has been removed as the Central Military Commission’s sitting commander.

Since March, he hasn’t been seen in public, and Chinese authorities haven’t previously made any public inquiries into his activities.

General He, Admiral Miao, and the other seven senior military officers were charged with “seriously violating Party discipline and are suspected of serious duty-related crimes involving an extremely large amount of money” in the announcement of their expulsion on Friday.

Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, stated in a statement that the alleged crimes were “of a grave nature, with extremely harmful consequences” and praised the purge as a “significant achievement in the Party and military’s anticorruption campaign.

He, 68, was removed from the military because he was also a member of the Politburo, the second-highest echelon of the ruling Communist Party, which was made up of members of the group.

He was the third-powerful commander in the People’s Liberation Army and was regarded as a close friend of Xi Jinping, the army’s commander-in-chief. He was one of only two vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission.

Admiral Miao was previously fired from the commission in June after being the subject of a “grave violation of discipline” investigation.

The Communist Party’s Central Committee, an elite body of 200 or more senior officials, is scheduled to hold its Fourth Plenum in Beijing just days before the announcement of the expulsions.

The meeting, which will begin on Monday, is anticipated to formalize more personnel decisions, including those regarding the expulsion and replacement of Central Committee members.

He Hongjun, a former senior official at the PLA Political Work Department, Wang Xiubin of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Operations Command Centre, former Eastern Theatre Command commander Lin Xiangyang, and two former PLA Army and Navy political commissars, are the other military personnel named with He and Miao.

Several of these officials have been hidden from the public eye for several months, according to observers.

Wang Chunning, a former leader of the People’s Armed Police, was removed from the country’s legislature last month along with three other PLA generals.

This “type of shake-up” in the Chinese military leadership has now happened so frequently, according to Ja Ian Chong, associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

According to Chong, “it seems to be a part of the Xi Jinping’s rule’s progression,”