International
At least 45 dead in an Israeli attack on a camp for displaced people in Rafah
At least 45 people have been killed in a bombing of a refugee camp in Rafah (south of Gaza) last night, according to the Ministry of Health of the enclave, controlled by Hamas.
The attack confirmed by the Israeli Army was perpetrated in a “safe zone” of Rafah, three days after the International Court of Justice ordered the end of the Israeli Army’s military offensive in that city in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip in the face of the risk of genocide.
Of the 45 deaths counted in the massacre, twenty-three are women, children or the elderly.
“Another atrocious massacre was committed by Israeli forces in Rafah, which has so far claimed the lives of fifty martyrs and dozens of wounded, most of them children and women,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Health of Gaza, controlled by Hamas.
For its part, the Israeli Army confirmed the attack of its aviation in the Tal al Sultan area, “based on precise intelligence” and directed against two senior officials of the Islamist Hamas group. Specifically, the commander of his division for the West Bank, Yassin Rabia; and another high command of that same division, Khaled Nagar.
“The Hamas wing in Judea and Samaria (occupied West Bank) is responsible for the planning, financing and execution of terrorist attacks throughout Judea and Samaria and within Israel,” said a military statement about that attack in Tal al Sultan, a Rafah neighborhood that Israeli forces had not yet ordered to be evacuated and that welcomed hundreds of displaced people.
An hour later, the chief prosecutor of the Israeli Army, Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, acknowledged that the bombing of the evacuee camp in Rafah was “very serious.”
In an intervention before Israel’s lawyers, Yerushalmi announced that the armed forces are carrying out an investigation.
“Naturally, in a war of such scope and intensity, complex incidents also occur,” he said. “Some of the incidents, such as last night in Rafah, are very serious.”
Images disseminated on Palestinian social networks show a large fire caused by the aerial bombardment of the provisional tents in Tal al Sultan.
“Never before in history have such a large number of mass killing tools been used in front of the world as is happening now in Gaza, where the population is deprived of water, food, medicines, electricity and fuel, crushing the infrastructure and destroying all institutions,” denounced the Ministry of Health of Gaza.
According to their data, the deaths in Gaza reached 36,050 on Monday, after 66 people died from Israeli fire in the last 24 hours, 45 of them in the bombing in Rafah.
This attack was recorded hours after Hamas launched from that point in the Strip, according to the Army, eight rockets into central Israel, including Tel Aviv, for the first time in about four months, which did not cause serious damage or injuries.
The spokesman for the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Nabil Abu Rudeina, condemned this “deliberate attack by the occupying army” on tents of displaced people in Rafah, causing a “massacre that has exceeded all limits and requires urgent intervention to immediately stop these crimes against the Palestinian people.”
In the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinians have taken to the streets in various cities, including in hot spots such as Yenin or Tulkarem, in protest against this attack.
Numerous countries and international organizations have condemned the attack against a “safe zone” of Rafah that the Israeli Army had not yet ordered to evacuate.
Iran has described it as a war crime, while Egypt and Qatar, key mediators for a truce in Gaza, have expressed their concern about the possibility that it “complicates efforts” for a humanitarian pause.
For their part, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) have denounced that it has been “a bloody night” and “terrifying.”
In Brussels, representatives of humanitarian organizations placed a red ribbon on Monday in front of the community institutions in Brussels, where the Council of Foreign Ministers of the European Union is held today, to represent the “red lines” crossed by Israel in its offensive in Gaza and to ask for sanctions from European leaders.
Before that meeting, the High Representative of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security, Josep Borrell, revealed to the press that today he will propose to the Twenty-seven to relaunch the community border assistance mission in Rafah.
The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, has warned Israel that it will not achieve its safety “if people are burned in tents.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that the death of civilians last night in an Israeli attack on a camp for displaced persons in Rafah, in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip, is a “tragic mishap.”
“We are investigating the case, that is our policy. For us, every damage to uninvolved civilians is a tragedy,” Netanyahu said at an audience in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) with families of hostages about the war in the Strip, which adds up to more than 36,000 deaths, more than 70% civilians.
The Egyptian Army confirmed on Monday that a person died during an exchange of fire with Israeli forces at the Rafah border crossing, which connects the Egyptian Sinai with the Gaza Strip, an unusual incident that the authorities of both countries say they are investigating.
“The Egyptian Armed Forces are investigating, through the competent authorities, the incident with shooting at the border line in Rafah, which caused the martyrdom of a member in charge of security,” the Egyptian Army said in a brief statement without providing further details.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) previously reported in another brief statement about a “shooting on the border with Egypt” that is being “the subject of an investigation,” while indicating that the Israeli authorities are “maintaining a dialogue with the Egyptian side.”
Eyewitnesses at the Rafah crossing at the time of the incident informed EFE that the Israeli shots reached the Egyptian side of the land crossing, taken by Israeli forces weeks ago in the midst of operations against the Palestinian town of the same name, where a large part of the displaced by the war are overcrowded.
Two Egyptian military and security sources also confirmed to EFE that after the “exchange of fire between Egyptian and Israeli soldiers,” whose details did not transcend, the security forces cordoned off the vicinity of the crossing.
“Egyptian soldiers fired at members of the Israeli army, without causing casualties. But the forces of the occupying army (Israel) responded by firing as a warning,” added the military source, who asked not to be identified.
In his account, the Egyptian security source indicated that the Israeli troops “fled after the shooting” and that the exchange “has not continued.”
“All Israeli forces withdrew from the confrontation zone at the Rafah border crossing in the Palestinian part,” they added.
The source added that this exchange of fire “is due to the tension between Tel Aviv and Cairo” for this morning’s attack on a camp for displaced people in Rafah, where about fifty people died in a fire that broke out after the bombing, according to Israel’s first investigations.
At least 135 trucks loaded only with food entered from Egypt into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom border crossing, after a first convoy of 125 vehicles entered yesterday, which did include fuel and medical supplies, Egyptian Red Crescent sources reported.
This is the second shipment with hundreds of tons of food that enters for the second consecutive day from Egyptian territory to the corridor that leads to Kerem Shalom, where they are inspected by Israel before accessing the Palestinian enclave.
Yesterday, Egypt sent for the first time 125 trucks loaded with food and medical supplies, as well as fuel, to Gaza through this point since Israel took the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing twenty days ago, in the south of the enclave and bordering the Sinai peninsula.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links
A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
International
Miyazaki’s style goes viral with AI but at what cost?
This week, you may have noticed that everything—from historical photos and classic movie scenes to internet memes and recent political moments—has been reimagined on social media as Studio Ghibli-style portraits. The trend quickly went viral thanks to ChatGPT and the latest update of OpenAI’s chatbot, released on Tuesday, March 25.
The newest addition to GPT-4o has allowed users to replicate the distinctive artistic style of the legendary Japanese filmmaker and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away). “Today is a great day on the internet,” one user declared while sharing popular memes in Ghibli format.
While the trend has captivated users worldwide, it has also highlighted ethical concerns about AI tools trained on copyrighted creative works—and what this means for the livelihoods of human artists.
Not that this concerns OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which has actively encouraged the “Ghiblification”experiments. Its CEO, Sam Altman, even changed his profile picture on the social media platform X to a Ghibli-style portrait.
Miyazaki, now 84 years old, is known for his hand-drawn animation approach and whimsical storytelling. He has long expressed skepticism about AI’s role in animation. His past remarks on AI-generated animation have resurfaced and gone viral again, particularly when he once said he was “utterly disgusted” by an AI demonstration.
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