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Israeli rescuers say a foreign worker was killed and several others wounded by an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon.
The Magen David Adom rescue service said Monday it was treating seven people, including two in serious condition. Associated Press reporters saw the Israeli army transporting several Thai workers, some limping and bleeding, to ambulances near the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona.
According to to the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli advocacy group, the man who was killed was from India. It said Israel was not doing enough to protect migrant workers hired for agricultural work in border areas under fire.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group have traded fire nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, says it is trying to pin down Israeli forces in the north to aid the Palestinian group.
The Lebanese group said in statements Monday that it had stopped two attempts by Israeli forces to cross into Lebanese territory overnight and that it had launched an artillery attack on an Israeli barracks.
The near daily clashes between Hezbollah and Israeli forces have killed more than 200 Hezbollah fighters and at least 37 civilians in Lebanon. Around 20 people have been killed on the Israeli side, including civilians and soldiers.
Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have been forced to flee their homes because of the ongoing fighting. Israel has vowed to continue attacking Hezbollah, even if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, in order to push its fighters away from the border.
At the same time the Arab League Council continues to discuss the crisis in Gaza, in Cairo, and called for aid to be sent to Gaza. Statements come at a time when attempts are being made to reach a new ceasefire agreement that would allow the release of some of the 130 or so hostages still held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for a break in the war.
On the ground, the attacks continue. In Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip, Israeli air strikes hit two residential blocks on Sunday, killing at least 13 people (including four women and four children). In another attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian enclave on Sunday night, at least 12 people were killed.
On Monday, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the war in Gaza a "powder keg" with the potential to ignite a wider conflict that could have serious consequences for both the Middle East and the world.
He made his comments in an address to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, where he also said it is crucial to avoid escalation of the conflict and specifically escalation between Israel and Hezbollah and other armed groups in Lebanon.
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The German government on Monday vehemently rejected allegations that Russia's leak of a conversation by high-ranking German military officers was an indication that Berlin was preparing for war against Russia.
At the same time, the government sought to contain the domestic fallout from the leak and promised a quick investigation into how it was possible that a conversation by top German military personnel could be intercepted and published.
“It is absolutely clear that such claims that this conversation would prove, that Germany is preparing a war against Russia, that this is absurdly infamous Russian propaganda,” a spokesman for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters in Berlin.
Government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner said the leak was part of Russia’s “information war” against the West, and that the aim was to create discord within Germany.
Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russian state-funded TV channel RT, posted the leaked audio on social media on Friday, the same day that late opposition politician Alexei Navalny was laid to rest after his still-unexplained death two weeks ago in an Arctic penal colony.
In the 38-minute recording, military officers can be heard discussing how Taurus long-range cruise missiles could be used by Kyiv against invading Russian forces.
It comes as Germany continues to debate whether to supply the missiles to Ukraine as Kyiv faces battlefield setbacks, and while military aid from the United States is held up in Congress.
German authorities on Saturday said they were investigating the recording.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was in Rome on Saturday, called it a “very serious matter” and said that German authorities were working to clarify the matter “very carefully, very intensively and very quickly.”
Germany investigates Ukraine aid military recording leak in Russia
His comments were carried by Germany’s DPA news agency.
Germany is now the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States and is further stepping up its support this year.
But Scholz has stalled for months on Ukraine’s desire for Taurus missiles, which have a range of up to 500 kilometres and could in theory be used against targets far into Russian territory.
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Four people died and at least 21 were injured after a fire broke out during the night between Sunday and Monday at a retirement home in western Germany.
The incident - first reported by the German news agency dpa - took place in Bedburg-Hau in North Rhine-Westphalia.
It wrote that 46 other residents were evacuated and needed medical examination for possible injuries.
A firefighter and police officer were also injured and taken to a hospital, according to police.
A caregiver holds a daffodil in front of a stretcher on which a deceased person is being carried outside a retirement home after a fire broke out during the night. Christoph Reichwein/dpa via AP
The fire has since been put out, but firefighters are still reportedly working at the scene.
The cause of the fire is being investigated.
The identity of the victims has not yet been disclosed to the public.