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N.Korea fires two missiles in latest testing frenzy

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(Last Updated On: January 27, 2022)

Nuclear-armed North Korea fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea off its east coast on Thursday, South Korea’s military said, in the sixth round of missile tests this month, Reuters reported.

It is among the most missiles ever launched by North Korea in a month, analysts said, as it began 2022 with a display of a dizzying array of new and operational weapons.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had detected the launch of what it presumed were two ballistic missiles at about 8 a.m. from near Hamhung, on North Korea’s east coast. They travelled for about 190 km to a maximum altitude of 20 km, JCS said.

The suspected missiles appeared to have landed outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Japanese Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi told reporters.

According to Reuters Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the government was gathering details on the launches but any tests of ballistic missiles were “deeply regrettable” and violated U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The U.S. government condemned the missile tests, a Department of State spokesperson said in a written statement, calling the launches a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

North Korea said this month it would bolster its defences against the United States and consider resuming “all temporally suspended activities”, an apparent reference to a self-imposed moratorium on tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

On Tuesday, North Korea fired two cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast, South Korea’s military said, amid rising tension over its series of weapons tests, Reuters reported.

Earlier in the month, North Korea tested tactical guided missiles, two “hypersonic missiles” capable of high speed and manoeuvring after lift-off, and a railway-borne missile system.

“The (Kim Jong Un) regime is developing an impressive diversity of offensive weapons despite limited resources and serious economic challenges,” said Leif-Eric Easley, an international affairs professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

Certain tests aim to develop new capabilities, especially for evading missile defences, while other launches are intended to demonstrate the readiness and versatility of missile forces that North Korea has already deployed, he added.

“Some observers have suggested that the Kim regime’s frequent launches are a cry for attention, but Pyongyang is running hard in what it perceives as an arms race with Seoul,” Easley said.

In a speech to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, North Korea’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Han Tae Song, accused the United States of staging hundreds of “joint war drills” while shipping high-tech offensive military equipment into South Korea and nuclear strategic weapons into the region, read the report.

“(This) is seriously threatening the security of our state,” Han said.

The series of missile tests has drawn condemnation from governments in the United States and Japan and sparked meetings of the United Nations Security Council, which has sanctioned North Korea for violating resolutions that ban ballistic missile tests, Reuters reported.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration sanctioned several North Korean and Russian individuals and entities this month on accusations they were helping North Korea’s weapons programmes, but China and Russia delayed a U.S. bid to impose U.N. sanctions on five North Koreans.

On Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Mark Lambert said that Washington has “no reservations” about talking with North Korea and is willing to meet anywhere and talk about anything.

“We have to have a serious discussion about the denuclearisation of North Korea, and if North Korea is willing to do that, all sorts of promising things can happen,” he said during a webinar hosted by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

North Korea has defended its missile tests as its sovereign right for self defence, and said the U.S. sanctions proved that even as Washington proposes talks, it maintains a “hostile” policy toward Pyongyang.

“The recent test-firing of new types of weapons was part of activities for carrying out a medium- and long-term plan for development of national science,” Han said in his speech on Tuesday. “And it does not pose any threat or damage to the security of neighbouring countries and the region.”

According to Reuters North Korea has not launched long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or tested nuclear weapons since 2017, but began testing a slew of shorter-range missiles after denuclearisation talks stalled following a failed summit with the United States in 2019.

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Russia says evidence links attackers to ‘Ukrainian nationalists’

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Russian investigators said on Thursday they had uncovered evidence that the gunmen who killed more than 140 people in an attack on a concert hall near Moscow last week were linked to “Ukrainian nationalists”.

Russia has said from the outset that it is pursuing a Ukrainian link to the attack, even though Kyiv has denied it and the militant group Islamic State (Daesh) has claimed responsibility.

In a statement, the state Investigative Committee said for the first time that it had uncovered evidence of a Ukrainian link, Reuters reported.

“As a result of working with detained terrorists, studying the technical devices seized from them, and analyzing information about financial transactions, evidence was obtained of their connection with Ukrainian nationalists,” the statement said.

However, the White House has described Russia’s allegation that Ukraine was involved in the attack as “nonsense”.

National security spokesman John Kirby said it was clear that ISIS was “solely responsible.”

He added the US passed a written warning of an extremist attack to Russian security services, one of many provided in advance to Moscow.

Russia says however it is suspicious that Washington was able to name the alleged perpetrator of the attack so soon after it took place.

The head of Russia’s FSB security service said earlier this week, again without providing evidence, that he believed Ukraine, along with the U.S. and Britain, were involved.

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Spain air drops 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza

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(Last Updated On: March 28, 2024)

Spanish military planes air dropped 26 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Madrid called on Israel to open land border crossings to prevent a famine, the Foreign Ministry said.

The operation, carried out in coordination with Jordan and co-financed by the European Union, dropped more than 11,000 food rations to alleviate the “catastrophic levels of food insecurity” faced by up to 1.1 million people in Gaza, the ministry said in a statement.

“Spain insists on the opening of the land crossings as an indispensable measure to avoid a famine situation,” it added.

Other Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have also resorted to air drops to deliver aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza after nearly six months of war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants, Reuters reported.

Aid agencies say deliveries into Gaza, much of which has been laid to waste by Israeli bombardments, have been held up by bureaucratic obstacles and insecurity since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last week, a U.N.-backed report said a famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July.

The Spanish foreign ministry also reaffirmed its commitment to supporting UNRWA, the United Nations humanitarian agency for Palestinians, and to its continued existence.

In January, major donors to UNRWA, including the U.S. and Germany, suspended funding following allegations that around 12 of its tens of thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the attacks on Israel by Hamas which triggered the war.

Israel says it puts no limit on the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza and blames problems in it reaching civilians there on U.N. agencies, which it says are inefficient, read the report.

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UN expert says Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, calls for arms embargo

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(Last Updated On: March 27, 2024)

A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo, Reuters reported.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the U.N. rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies, read the report.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Gulf nations such as Qatar, as well as African countries including Algeria and Mauritania, voiced support for Albanese’s findings and alarm at the humanitarian situation, Reuters reported.

The seats for Israel’s ally the United States were left empty. Washington has previously accused the council of a chronic anti-Israel bias.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

In the past, her comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict have drawn scrutiny, including from a U.S. ambassador in Geneva who said she has a history of using “antisemitic tropes”.

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