War, breaking news. Netanyahu orders plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah. Denmark, Moscow could attack a Nato country within 3-5 years

A Russian patrol boat destroyed an unmanned vessel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the southwestern part of the Black Sea. The Russian Defence Ministry made this known in a statement, as reported by Ria Novosti. "At about 20:30 Moscow time, an unmanned craft of the Ukrainian Navy was detected in the southwestern part of the Black Sea waters, heading towards the Crimean peninsula," the statement read, "the detected target was destroyed by the armament of a Black Sea Fleet patrol boat."

Republicans who oppose new aid to Ukraine are 'almost criminal' and 'outrageous'. President Joe Biden said this in the brief exchange in the Oval Office before his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

US President Joe Biden is once again calling on the US Congress to approve further aid for Ukraine and, in a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, called it 'scandalous' that House Republicans are resisting approval of the new funds.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.3 was registered on the island of Hawaii. No tsunami warning has been issued at the moment. The tremors were also felt in Honolulu. This was announced by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Médecins Sans Frontières (Msf) calls on the Israeli government to immediately stop the offensive on Rafah. "It would be catastrophic, it must not continue," said Meinie Nicolai, Msf's director-general, who appealed to the international community to take concrete action to achieve a complete and lasting ceasefire. 'Political rhetoric is not enough,' Nicolai added. As aerial bombardment of the area continues, more than one million people, many living in tents and makeshift shelters, now face a dramatic escalation of the conflict. "We are witnessing a massacre. Nowhere in Gaza is safe and repeated forced displacement has pushed people to Rafah, where they are trapped in a small patch of land with no alternative," Nicolai stressed. Since 7 October 2023, Msf teams, as well as their patients, have been forced to evacuate 9 different health facilities in the Gaza Strip, after being subjected to air strikes, artillery strikes, or being attacked by tanks and snipers, or because they were hit by an evacuation order. Medical staff and patients were arrested, mistreated and killed. "All this has happened before the eyes of world leaders. Now it has become almost impossible to work in Gaza, all our attempts to provide life-saving care to Palestinians have been scaled down because of Israel's way of conducting the war. The needs are enormous and the situation requires a secure humanitarian response on a much larger scale,' Msf concluded.

"Palestinians in Gaza are at serious risk of genocide. The international community has an obligation to act to prevent it,' said Amnest International director Agnes Callamard. Regarding the possible evacuation of Rafah 'But where? There is nowhere to go,' Callamard said in a social media post.

The UN "does not want to see any forced mass displacement" in Rafah. This was stated by UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"In this investigation on Joe Biden's part there has been full cooperation, he has never attempted to obstruct justice, he has been questioned for two days in the midst of an international crisis," White House legal spokesman Ian Sams said, criticising special prosecutor Robert Hur for making "gratuitous and inappropriate" comments in the final report on the classified documents case.

"1.4 million Palestinians are currently in Rafah without a safe place to go, risking starvation. Reports of an Israeli military offensive on Rafah are alarming. It would have catastrophic consequences, exacerbating the already disastrous humanitarian situation and the unbearable toll on civilians". Thus on social media the EU High Representative for Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, after the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who asked the army for a plan to evacuate Rafah and continue the ground offensive in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Benyamin Netanyahu instructed the army to prepare to evacuate the city of Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. A plan that, according to the prime minister, must take place in two stages: first the evacuation of the population and then the elimination of Hamas battalions in the area. "It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war to eliminate Hamas by leaving four battalions in Rafah," Netanyahu's office said. In Rafah, on the border with Egypt, an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians have fled the ongoing fighting in other parts of the Strip. According to Unicef, 600,000 children have also taken refuge in the area. The executive director, Catherine Russell, said that military escalation in Rafah would mark "another devastating turn" in the conflict. Netanyahu therefore decided not to listen to US President Joe Biden's words that the "conduct of the response" implemented by the Jewish state in Gaza after the 7 October attacks was "exaggerated". Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant informed US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin of the progress of the ongoing operations. The Saudi newspaper Al-Arabiya reported that the US is also working with Qatar on a joint plan to expel Hamas leaders from Doha, starting with the political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and ending with senior officials Moussa Abu Marzuk and Khaled Mashal. Tensions also remain high on the northern front on the border with Lebanon, where Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian visited. The head of Tehran's diplomacy stated that Iran will continue with its "strong support" for the Hezbollah militiamen, because the security of Lebanon affects that of Iran and the entire region.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Igor Klymenko said a Russian attack in the northeastern Sumy region killed three people and injured four others. "Three dead and four injured: the aftermath of a Russian airstrike in the Sumy region," Klymenko wrote on Telegram, adding that the victims were in a "workshop of a farm" that was hit.

The Speaker of the Knesset, i.e. the Israeli parliament, Amir Ohana announced that he had decided to cancel the meeting he was supposed to hold today in New York with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. "The cancellation of the meeting did not happen in a vacuum. I had intended to try to convince him, but yesterday he again called on the State of Israel to stop fighting, criticising it 'even if Hamas uses human shields'," Ohana said in a statement, as reported by the Times of Israel. Ohana then called Guterres a 'lost cause'.

Local sources and eyewitnesses revealed that new Egyptian security forces have arrived at the Rafah crossing with the Gaza Strip to further protect the border, where, only a couple of kilometres away, nearly two million Palestinians are amassed, pushed south by Israeli shelling, which has barely reached the border. The sources added that some 40 police and security vehicles moved from Al-Arish to Rafah to protect the border, raise the fence separating Gaza and reinforce it with barbed wire to prevent any attempt at trespassing.

Some Republicans have called for the procedure to be explored to remove Joe Biden under the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, introduced after the assassination of John F. Kennedy to replace the US president in the event of his death, removal, resignation or incapacity. It is the same amendment that has been aired several times to remove Donald Trump during his term in office. This is reported in the US media.

"It is not possible to achieve the goals of the war to eliminate Hamas and at the same time leave four of its battalions in Rafah." Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said this, according to his office, adding that "it is clear that a powerful operation in Rafah forces the evacuation of civilians from the combat zones". We need - he explained - a "double plan": one for the elimination of Hamas battalions, the other for the evacuation of the civilian population.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has ordered the defence apparatus to prepare plans to evacuate civilians from the Rafah area in the south of the Strip. This was announced by the premier's office, quoted by the media

Denmark should accelerate its defence investments as Russia is re-arming faster than expected and could attack a NATO country within three to five years, Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said in an interview with the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. This was reported by the international media. 'It cannot be excluded that within three to five years Russia will test the strength of Article 5 and Nato's solidarity,' the minister said. 'This was not Nato's assessment in 2023. This is new knowledge that is emerging now'. Poulsen noted that there is no direct threat to Denmark, but that the Alliance could face hybrid attacks aimed at destabilising the situation in one of Nato's member states.

Ukraine faces a critical shortage of artillery ammunition from the West needed to resist Russian attacks, officials have warned, as US assistance runs out and Europe fails to meet its targets for increasing arms production. The Financial Times writes.

Kiev has already struggled to hold back Russian troops along an active 1,500 km front line, with Ukrainian forces rationing supplies and firing only about a third of the number of shots they need each day to hold their position.

Israeli forces stormed the Al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. The hospital houses several dozen people displaced by the conflict, as well as patients and medical staff. Khan Younis has been at the centre of the Israeli ground offensive in recent weeks. Earlier this week, the Crescent stated that 8,000 evacuees had been evacuated from its Khan Younis site and the Al-Amal hospital, and that only 40 evacuees, about 80 patients and 100 staff remained in the medical centre. The aid organisation did not provide further details on today's raid.

"Any conversation/interview with the Putin entity is an unquestionable attempt to legalise the 'rules of the Russian cannibal' (mass murder, demonstrative violence, seizure/theft of other people's property, destruction) in the Western political tradition. Why? Because it is a business built on pure blood and nothing else. The Putin entity's attempt to justify the genocide of Ukrainians does nothing but war itself, and certainly does not bring Russia back to civilisation'. Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak writes this on X, commenting on the Russian president's interview with Tucker Carlson.

The Crew Dragon Freedom shuttle carrying Walter Villadei, an Air Force colonel and the eighth Italian to have been in orbit, has returned to Earth. 47 hours after its separation from the International Space Station, the shuttle of the Ax-3 mission, the third private one to reach the ISS, ditched as planned at 14.29 Italian time in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off Daytona Beach in Florida, bringing the crew back to Earth after 21 days, consisting of Commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, Swede Marcus Wandt of the European Space Agency, Turk Alper Gezeravci and Villadei as pilot.

Il colonnello dell'Aeronautica Militare Walter Villadei a bordo della ISS per la missione Axiom Space 3 (Ax-3). (ANSA/ FRAME YOUTUBE)

The Israeli army continues to operate in the Khan Yunis area in the south of the Strip with "targeted raids on terrorist facilities" and fighting with Hamas militiamen. A military spokesman said this, according to which "soldiers have located launching pads located next to a kindergarten and a mosque". "The launching pads, loaded and destined for Israeli territory," the same source continued, "have been destroyed". Also discovered was 'the entrance to a tunnel' that extended inside 'a civilian water facility'.

AFP

Change to win. This seems to be the motto of the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, who said in his first speech after assuming office that ''only changes and constant improvement of the means and methods of conducting military operations will enable success on the road'' to ''victory in our war of liberation''. Thanking the Ukrainian soldiers, Syrsky praised the military's ''professionalism, dedication to the defence of the homeland and perseverance in carrying out combat tasks'', which ''are the foundation of the stability of our defence and do not allow the enemy to exploit its aggression''.

The new commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces also explained that ''clear and detailed planning of the actions of all organs, associations, links and units of the military administration is a priority, taking into account the needs of the front with the latest weapons from the international allies''. Sirsky added that ''protecting the lives and health of the military is fundamental and has always been a key value of the Ukrainian military''.

Il nuovo comandante in capo delle forze armate ucraine Oleksandr Syrskyi in una foto dell’ottobre 2020. EPA/VITALII NOSACH

The majority of Gaza's displaced population, more than 1.3 million people including more than 610,000 children, are trapped in Rafah in an area amounting to less than a fifth of the total area of the enclave, with no possibility of escape, while Israeli attacks intensify. This is according to Save the Children, the organisation that has been fighting for more than 100 years to save children at risk and ensure their future. Earlier this week came the UN's warning that the indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas could constitute a war crime, a statement from the organisation recalls. In the four months since the start of the Israeli military escalation in Gaza following the 7 October attacks on Israel, more than half of Gaza's population has fled to Rafah, fleeing operations in northern and central Gaza and following 'evacuation orders' issued by Israel. These families are now crammed into an area of just 62 square kilometres - less than a fifth of Gaza's total area of 365 square kilometres, already one of the most densely populated areas in the world - and the majority are sleeping in makeshift tents or in the open air because the existing shelters are not sufficient. Families are increasingly desperate for food, water and medical care, according to Save the Children.

Un bimbo va a riempire taniche di acqua a Rafah, ne sud della Striscia di Gaza. (Mohammed ABED / AFP)

"Vladimir Putin said nothing new in his interview with Tucker Carlson. He repeated old lies about Ukraine, dangerous lies that have caused enormous suffering to Ukrainians, and showed great hostility towards the West. This is not new here either'. A spokeswoman for the European Commission said that. "Putin has shown once again that he is not intent on peace, if he really wanted to he could withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine's internationally recognised borders," she added.

Il presidente russo Vladimir Putin e il giornalista Usa Tucker Carlson durante l’intervista. (EPA/GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called Russian President Vladimir Putin's claim that the war in Ukraine was the result of NATO expansion 'clearly ridiculous'. "Russia has conducted an illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. I am proud that the UK has strongly supported Ukraine from the beginning," Sunak said, commenting on what Putin said during an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson. "We are working closely, not only with the US but with allies around the world, to give Ukraine the support it needs for as long as it needs to repel the Russian invasion," Sunak added, quoted by British media.

Il primo ministro britannico Rishi Sunak. (JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP)

Polish farmers blocked the border crossings with tractors with Ukraine. This was reported by Ukraiska Pravda. Traffic through the Medika-Shegini, Hrebenne-Rawa-Russkaya and Dorogusk-Yagodin border crossings is difficult. In particular at the Medika checkpoint, traffic is blocked by about 100 people and about 50 tractors. The protesters have announced that they will pass one truck, one bus and one car every hour.

Agricoltori con trattori bloccano l’accesso al valico di frontiera polacco-ucraino a Dorohusk, nella Polonia orientale. (Wojtek Radwanski/AFP)

As was evident from the animated, at times openly angry, responses he gave to reporters during a press conference last night, Joe Biden is furious at Special Prosecutor Robert Hur's report which, while exonerating him for the top-secret documents affair, describes him as 'an old man with memory problems' (read below, ed.). Sources in the Washington Post report that, in private, the 81-year-old president vented his anger even more powerfully, especially over the prosecutor's mention that, during the five-hour interview he had with Biden last October, just in the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, the president had failed to remember the date of his son Beau's death.

"How the hell can I forget the day my son died? Of course I remember everything,' Biden blurted out during a private meeting with some Democrats in Virginia, sources still report. And he also returned to the matter in the press conference, which the White House was forced to hastily convene last night after it realised the explosive mine hidden in the report that at first appeared to be a positive breakthrough for Biden. "There's even a reference to the fact that I don't remember when my son died, how the hell dare he talk about that? - said Biden, who always gets emotional talking about his son who died at 46 from cancer- frankly, when he asked me the question, I thought those weren't his damn business, I don't need anybody to remind me when my son left."

Il presidente Usa Joe Biden. EPA/SAMUEL CORUM / POOL

The torpedoing of the commander-in-chief of the Kiev Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, announced by President Volodymyr Zelensky, is likely to penalise the Ukrainian leader and have negative repercussions on the conflict against Russia. This is written by the British weekly Economist, according to which the general played a 'crucial role against all odds' in repelling Moscow's forces in the first days of the invasion and thus gained great popularity among his troops and Ukrainian civilians. But, more importantly, the decision to replace the army's top leader marks the beginning of a new phase in the war, in which the Ukrainian leader's choice 'may turn out to be wrong', the paper points out. "The most important question is whether Zelensky will be able to take advantage of General Zaluzhny's torpedoing to reorient his vision of the war," continues the weekly, which casts some doubts on the choice of the replacement, General Oleksandr Syrsky, as he has the reputation of a commander ready to bear high costs in terms of men and means in order to face the enemy. The Economist notes that, despite Zelensky's intentions, 'unless something completely unexpected changes, a war defined by territory is one that Ukraine cannot win'. Therefore, a fully cooperative relationship between political and military leadership with clear and shared goals, as well as a greater ability to produce weapons domestically through and less dependence on foreign aid, becomes crucial.

For further reading: Why the removal of General Zaluzhny is a risky move for Zelensky

Israel informed the US "of the planning of targeted operations in other areas of Gaza". This was made known by the Israeli defence ministry, giving an account of a conversation last night between Minister Yoav Gallant and his counterpart Lloyd Austin. Gallant reiterated the will to achieve 'the goals of the war, the destruction of Hamas, the release of hostages'. He outlined to Austin 'the developments in the war' against Hamas and the IDF operations above and below ground, with the main efforts in southern Gaza'. The US called the Rafah operation a 'disaster', explaining that it was not familiar with this plan.

The change at the top of the Ukrainian armed forces, with the replacement of General Valery Zaluzhny, "will not change the course" of the conflict in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency.

The US military conducted new air strikes against Yemen's Houthi rebels. The US destroyed four explosive-laden marine drones and seven anti-ship missile launchers that could hit ships in the Red Sea, US Army Central Command said. "They posed an imminent threat to US Navy ships and merchant vessels in the region," said Central Command, "These actions will protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer for the US Navy and merchant ships."

Israel has examined more than 350 bodies taken from Gaza to make sure they were not those of hostages kidnapped by Hamas and of which more than 130 are still in the Strip. This was claimed by Kan TV, adding that the examination - using DNA - took place at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv. Once the tests were completed, which gave no positive indications, Israel returned the bodies to Gaza for burial.

Biden disclosed classified material when he was a private citizen, but should not be indicted because it would be difficult to convince a jury to convict him: that is the conclusion of Special Prosecutor Hur, who nevertheless harshly criticises the US president's handling of the documents, portraying him as a forgetful old man. "My memory is fine," says Biden at a press conference at the White House.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is back to threatening South Korea, reiterating that the North would annihilate its rival if provoked, according to state media reports. During a visit to North Korea's defence ministry, Kim said his recent moves to cut ties with South Korea allow his military to take a more aggressive stance, to 'strike and destroy'

Vladimir Putin addressed the US Congress during a two-hour interview with former Fox anchor Tucker Carlson. "I want to say to the US leadership: if you really want the war to end, stop supplying arms to Ukraine," the Kremlin leader said.

Russia will never be defeated in Ukraine and NATO 'must accept Moscow's territorial conquests', Putin said in an interview with former Fox News anchor Carlson. 'If you want the war to end, stop supplying weapons' to Kiev, the Russian president said addressing the US Congress. Yesterday the US Senate gave the first green light to new aid for Ukraine.

Biden criticised Netanyahu's response to the 7 October Hamas attacks, calling the scale of the military operation in the Gaza Strip 'exaggerated'. And attacking Rafah would be 'disastrous', according to the US.

Donald Trump has won the Nevada caucuses, adding more delegates in his seemingly unstoppable march towards the US Republican Party's presidential nomination. The former president was the only major GOP candidate in the southwestern US state and far outspent one of his long-time challengers, a Texas businessman. Nevada held a Republican primary on Tuesday, which Nikki Haley failed to win. Voters cast the majority of votes by marking 'none of these candidates', considered a preference for Trump, who did not participate in this election.

Among the dead are at least three children, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. The death toll in the Gaza Strip since 7 October is at least 27,840 dead and over 67,300 injured, according to the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Russia said it neutralised 19 Ukrainian drones tonight in four different regions and on the Black Sea. "An attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack with 19 aerial drones against sites on Russian territory was foiled," Moscow's defence ministry said in a note. According to local authorities, the attack mainly targeted energy infrastructure.