"Any issues between Pakistan and India, we believe can be and should be resolved peacefully through meaningful mutual engagement," said a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday led calls for India and Pakistan to "exercise maximum restraint" as the nuclear-armed neighbors took tit-for-tat measures against each other in the wake of Tuesday's massacre of 26 people in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
Pakistan
warned India that it was committing an "act of war" by suspending the landmark Indus Waters Treaty, which allows both countries to share the vital river system's flow. Pakistan announced the suspension of trade and closed its airspace to Indian flights. Both countries closed border ports of entry, canceled visas, and took other measures against each other.
India said it was downgrading relations with Pakistan, whom it blamed for supporting "cross-border terrorism" after gunmen
killed 25 Indians and one Nepali and wounded at least 17 others at a popular vacation spot in Pahalgam, Kashmir on Tuesday.
"May sanity prevail between both nations."
A front group of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed mostly tourists.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif
countered that his country's government believes "very strongly" that the attack "was a false flag operation."
Speaking Thursday, Stephane Dujarric, Guterres' spokesperson,
said that "we very much appeal to both the governments of Pakistan and India to exercise maximum restraint, and to ensure that the situation and the developments we've seen do not deteriorate any further."
"Any issues between Pakistan and India, we believe can be and should be resolved peacefully through meaningful mutual engagement," he added.
Progressives from both sides of the border echoed calls for restraint.
"We, the people of Kashmir, have already suffered so much over the years—and now, more than ever, we want peace to prevail in our homeland," Kashmiri social activist Jasib Shabir Bhat
said on social media Wednesday. "We stand united for peace, for humanity, and for a better future for all."
Pakistani authori and activist Ehtesham Hassan wrote that "as a Pakistani who visited India and received immense love, I am devastated by the news from Pahalgam."
"I wish peace for the common people of India and Pakistan regardless of religion," Hassan added. "May sanity prevail between both nations."
Scores of civilians have reportedly been killed or wounded by U.S. airstrikes on Yemen—including at an oil port and market—since late last week as the Trump administration continues its monthlong intensification of strikes targeting Houthi rebels, who vowed to carry out more operations against enablers of Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
The Houthis
said Monday that U.S. airstrikes on the Yemeni capital Sanaa killed dozens, including a strike on the popular Farwah market in the Shuub neighborhood that killed 12 people and wounded 30 others.
As the Houthis did not disclose victims' combatant status and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) refused to answer questions about civilians killed in the strikes, it is unclear how many noncombatants were among the dead and wounded.
Video footage recorded in the strike's aftermath shows rescue workers uncovering the body of a small child found amid the rubble while a woman shrieks, "Let it be a dream!"
— (@)
In what were likely the deadliest U.S. attacks on Yemen since U.S. President Donald Trumplaunched the current bombing campaign last month, at least 80 people including dozens of workers were killed and more than 150 others wounded in a series of Thursday airstrikes on the Ras Isa oil port on the Red Sea north of Hodeidah, according to the Hodeidah Health Office.
Al Jazeerareported that the first four U.S. strikes on the port happened while people were still working. Officials said first responders including paramedics and rescue workers who rushed to the scene were killed in subsequent strikes, known as "double taps" in military parlance.
"They targeted a civilian side over there; as you can see, the casualties are all civilians who had worked at this facility," one first responder
toldSky News as he gestured toward flaming ruins.
— (@)
Officials also raised concerns over possible oil leaks into the Red Sea.
CENTCOM
said Thursday that ships have continued to supply fuel to the Houthis via the port of Ras Isa—which is the terminus for Yemen's main oil pipeline—despite the group, whose official name is Ansar Allah, being designated a terrorist organization by the Trump administration in March.
"U.S. forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years," CENTCOM said, adding that "this strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen."
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres "is gravely concerned about the airstrikes conducted by the United States over the course of April 17th and 18th in and around Yemen's port of Ras Isa, which reportedly resulted in scores of civilian casualties, including five humanitarian workers injured," spokesman Stephane Dujarric
said on Saturday.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor
said Friday that "the use of heavy ordnance against a known civilian facility suggests a deliberate disregard for the risk of mass casualties, explaining the high death toll and raising serious suspicions of a blatant violation of the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution under international humanitarian law."
"The targeted facility was civilian, and the civilian harm caused is grossly disproportionate to the declared military advantage of weakening the Houthis' economic base," the group added. "The use of force against such infrastructure, especially without clear necessity, inflicted severe harm on civilians and further debilitated Yemen's fuel import capabilities."
U.S. forces have been bombing Yemen since the administration of George W. Bush, who launched the open-ended War on Terror in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. There have also been occasional U.S. ground raids in Yemen, including one in January 2017 that
killed Nawar al-Awlaki, an 8-year-old American girl whose father and brother were killed in separate U.S. drone strikes during the Obama administration.
According to the U.K.-based monitor Airwars, U.S. forces have killed hundreds of Yemeni civilians in 181 declared actions since 2002. Overall, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have died during the civil war that began in 2014, with international experts attributing more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to U.S.-backed, Saudi-led bombing and blockade.
The Pentagon only acknowledges 13 civilian deaths caused by U.S. military action in Yemen. The Trump administration has been particularly tight-lipped about civilian casualties resulting from its operations, a stance some critics have called ironic given that top administration officials
shared highly sensitive plans for attacking Yemen on a Signal group chat in which a journalist was inadvertently included. Calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's resignation grew following Sunday's revelation that he shared Yemen war plans in a second Signal chat group that included his relatives and personal attorney.
On Saturday, Houthi spokesperson and senior political officer Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti
vowed that "our military operations will continue as long as the genocide in Gaza persists and the siege on its people remains."
Since October 2023, Houthi forces have launched at least scores of mostly unsuccessful missile attacks on Israel-linked shipping, U.S. warships, and Israel itself in solidarity with Gaza.
Israel's 563-day war on Gaza, which is the subject of an International Court of Justice
genocide case and is the impetus behind International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—has left more than 182,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, and sickened, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said that "the U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip," which would be emptied of Palestinians.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the United States will "take over" Gaza after emptying the embattled enclave of nearly all its native Palestinians, sparking a firestorm of criticism that included allegations of intent to commit ethnic cleansing.
Speaking during a press conference with fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump told reporters, "The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too."
"We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings—level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area," Trump continued.
"We're going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something that the entire Middle East could be very proud of," he said, evoking the proposals of varying seriousness to build Jewish-only beachfront communities over the ruins of Gaza.
Trump said that U.S. developers will "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal enclave.
Doubling down on his January
call for the removal of most of Gaza's population to Egypt and Jordan—both of which vehemently rejected the proposal—Trump said that "it would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where [Palestinians] wouldn't want to return."
"Why would they want to return?" asked Trump. "The place has been hell."
Asked how many Palestinians should leave Gaza, Trump replied, "all of them," citing a figure of 1.7-1.8 million Palestinians out of an estimated population of approximately 2.3 million people.
The forced transfer of a population by an occupying power is a war crime, according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—under which Israel's settler colonies in the occupied West Bank are also illegal.
"I don't think people should be going back to Gaza," Trump continued. "Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative. If they had an alternative, they'd much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that's safe."
Asked if he would deploy U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump said that "we'll do what's necessary. If it's necessary, we'll do that."
Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N. Riyad Mansour responded by affirming that "our country and our home is the Gaza Strip."
"It's part of Palestine," he stressed. "Our homeland is our homeland."
— (@)
Responding to Trump's remarks, Netanyahu praised his ally's "willingness to puncture conventional thinking" and stand behind Israel.
"[Trump] sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism, so many attacks against us, so many trials and so many tribulations," Netanyahu told reporters as he stood beside the U.S. leader. "He has a different idea, and I think it's worth paying attention to this. We're talking about it. He's exploring it with his people, with his staff."
"I think it's something that could change history," Netanyahu added, "and it's worthwhile really pursuing this avenue."
There is currently a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, where more than 15 months of Israeli bombardment, invasion, and siege have left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and more than 2 million others forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened, according to local and international officials and agencies.
Numerous Israeli leaders have
advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza and the Jewish recolonization of the coastal enclave, most of whose inhabitants are the descendants of Palestinians forcibly expelled from other parts of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in the late 1940s. Palestinians ethnically cleansed during what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, have since been denied their U.N.-guaranteed right of return to their homeland.
Last November, former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon
acknowledged that the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza was underway. Other Israeli political and military leaders have said that the so-called "Generals' Plan"—a strategy to starve and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from northern Gaza—was effectively in progress.
Palestinian-American journalist Ramzy Baroud responded to Trump's remarks in a video posted on social media Tuesday.
"Now, you would say, 'Wait a minute, Trump seems to be really, really determined, his heart is set on ethnically cleansing Palestinians, and this subject is back on the table,'" Baroud said. "The question is, whose table? It's not on the table of the Palestinian people."
— (@)
Earlier Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and continuing the freeze on funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which Israel has baselessly
accused of being a terrorist organization.
In a fact sheet
viewed by multiple media outlets, the White House asserted that UNHRC "has not fulfilled its purpose and continues to be used as a protective body for countries committing horrific human rights violations."
"The UNHRC has demonstrated consistent bias against Israel, focusing on it unfairly and disproportionately in council proceedings," the White House continued. "In 2018, the year President Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in his first administration, the organization passed more resolutions condemning Israel than Syria, Iran, and North Korea combined."
UNHRC spokesperson Pascal Sim
noted Tuesday that the U.S. has been an observer state, not a UNHRC member, since January 1, and according to U.N. rules, it cannot "technically withdraw from an intergovernmental body that is no longer part of."
The UNRWA funding pause is based on Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the agency's more than 13,000 workers in Gaza were involved in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. These claims prompted numerous nations including the United States to cut off funding for UNRWA last year. The U.S. had been UNRWA's biggest benefactor, providing $300-400 million annually to the lifesaving organization.
— (@)
UNRWA
fired nine employees in response to Israel's claim, even as the agency admitted there was no evidence linking the staffers to October 7. Faced with this lack of evidence, the European Union and countries including Japan, Germany, Canada, and Australia reinstated funding for UNRWA. Last March, then-U.S. President Joe Biden signed a bill prohibiting American funding for the agency.
Israeli lawmakers have also
banned UNRWA from operating in Israel, severely hampering the agency's ability to carry out its mission throughout Palestine, including in Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
According to the most recent
UNRWA situation report, at least 272 of the agency's workers have been killed by Israeli forces, which since October 2023 have bombed numerous schools, shelters, and other facilities used by the agency.
William Deere, the director of UNRWA's Washington, D.C. office,
toldPBS earlier this week that "there is no alternative to UNRWA."
"UNRWA performs a unique function in the U.N. system," Deere explained. "We are a direct service provider. We run... a healthcare network, we run an education system, we provide relief and social services."
As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres
said last month, "UNRWA has been carrying out activities in the occupied Palestinian territory for more than 70 years... and has thus accumulated unparalleled experience in providing assistance that is tailored to the specific needs of Palestine refugees."
— (@)
Trump's executive order preceded his meeting with Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court after it
issued arrest warrants for him and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The tribunal also issued a warrant for Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
The U.S. president's directives also followed his January
freeze on foreign aid to countries except for Israel and Egypt, and his plan to shut down the United States Agency for International Development.
This article and its headline have been updated to include Trump's call for U.S. ownership of Gaza.
