ROME (AP) — An Israeli airstrike last month demolished the top floor of a guest house in Gaza where World Food Program international staff were staying, the U.N. agency’s director said Thursday, calling the situation “impossibly dangerous” for aid workers trying to feed the Palestinian population.
The previously undisclosed incident occurred Aug. 31 in the Nuseirat refugee camp, just days after WFP temporarily stopped aid deliveries to northern Gaza and halted staff movements when its team came under fire near an Israel checkpoint.
“It was always dangerous before. It’s become impossibly dangerous now,’’ McCain said.
The World Food Program is in touch with the Israeli Defense Force over the strike on the house where 11 U.N. employees, including 10 WFP staff, were staying. None was injured and they have been evacuated to Jordan, where McCain met with them this week.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McCain said she has a simple message for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Cease-fire, please. Cease fire! Stop! We need to feed these people,'' she said. “It’s not just food. ... It’s water and sanitation also.”
While she and staff remain committed to their mission in Gaza, “We’re right on the edge as to whether we even stay in there,’’ McCain said. “I want to stay in there. I’m not suggesting we’re going to pull out. But I have to take a look at what I am asking my people to do.”
She emphasized the difficulty of operating in a so-called deconflicted zone that was supposed to be safe for humanitarian workers to operate.
Israel forces "are hitting places where we’ve been told it was safe, we have been told have been deconflicted and that refugees were safe. And it’s not the case. It’s not,” she said.
FILE - Palestinians line up to receive meals at Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Essa, File)
FILE - Boxes from Jordan wait in an inspection area for trucks carrying humanitarian aid supplies bound for the Gaza Strip, on the Palestinian side of the Erez crossing between southern Israel and Gaza, May 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)
A Palestinian woman sits next to sacks of flour outside the UN Relief and Works Agency, (UNRWA) aid distribution station in Gaza City, June 20, 2007. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, file)
HONG KONG (AP) — The first person convicted under a tough new Hong Kong national security law was sentenced on Thursday to 14 months in prison for wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan.
Chu Kai-pong, 27, wore a shirt on June 12 reading “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” a slogan chanted during anti-government protests in 2019. That day was the fifth anniversary of a demonstration in which thousands of people surrounded the city's legislative council complex to protest a now-withdrawn extradition bill. Months of often-violent protests followed as demonstrators expanded their demands to call for greater police accountability and democracy.
Authorities have said the protest slogan could imply the separation of Hong Kong from China — a red line for Beijing.
Chu pleaded guilty in court on Monday to the charge of carrying out an act or acts with a seditious intent.
The city's new security law, which critics say further stifles freedom of expression, took effect in March and imposes stiffer punishments for sedition offenses. Offenders face up to seven years in prison, up from the previous maximum sentence of two years for a first offense and three years for a subsequent offense.
Colluding with an external force to carry out such activities is now punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
In handing down the sentence on Thursday, Chief Magistrate Victor So said June 12 is viewed as a symbolic date among protesters and Chu's case was not minor. He noted that Chu had already been jailed for sedition earlier this year and his subsequent act showed the deterrent effect of his previous sentence was insufficient.
He said Chu was “evidently unwilling to reform,” but reduced the prison term by one-third because of Chu's guilty plea.
In January, So sentenced Chu to three months in jail under a colonial-era law before the security law took effect. In that case, Chu was arrested for wearing a similar T-shirt at the airport and possessing publications deemed seditious by authorities.
The court heard on Monday that Chu had told police that he wore the T-shirt in June to remind people of the 2019 protest movement. Chu also wore a mask printed with “FDNOL,” an abbreviation of another protest slogan, “Five demands, not one less."
The prosecution accused Chu of attempting to cause hatred, contempt or disaffection toward the country's fundamental system and the city's constitutional order. It said his acts could incite others to use illegal means to change what the authorities have decided on.
The 2019 protest movement was the most concerted challenge to the Hong Kong government since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. It waned because of massive arrests, the exile of democracy activists, the COVID-19 pandemic and the imposition of an earlier 2020 security law by Beijing.
FILE - A protestor holds a flag that reads: "Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times" at a rally in Hong Kong, on Dec. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
