Brazil president withdraws his country's ambassador to Israel after criticising the war in Gaza
Rio De Janeiro, May 29: Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva withdrew his ambassador to Israel on Wednesday after months of tensions between the two countries over the war in Gaza.
The move was announced in Brazil's official gazette. There was no immediate response from Israel.
Lula has been a frequent critic of Israel's offensive in Gaza, which he compared to the Holocaust earlier this year. That led Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz to summon the Brazilian ambassador to the national Holocaust museum in Jerusalem for a public reprimand.
At the time, Lula called Brazil's Ambassador Frederico Meyer home. Wednesday's action represented an escalation — a diplomatic downgrade, with the Brazilian Embassy in Israel still there but without an ambassador in the post.
According to a person at Brazil's foreign ministry, the official removal comes was in response to Meyer's humiliation by Israel's top diplomat. The person, who has knowledge of the situation, spoke on condition of anonymity as he wasn't authorised to speak publicly.
Meyer has been transferred to Geneva and will join Brazil's permanent mission to the United Nations and other international organizations.
The latest war in Gaza, now in its eighth month, began when the Palestinian Hamas group burst into southern Israel in a surprise attack on October 7, killing some 1,200 civilians and taking around 250 hostage.
Israel's offensive in response to that attack has killed at least 36,096 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count. Israel says it has killed 13,000 Hamas group members.
In February, Brazil's Lula said that “what is happening in the Gaza Strip and to the Palestinian people hasn't been seen in any other moment in history. Actually, it did when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Israel says its war in Gaza is a defensive action triggered by Hamas' unprecedented assault and rejects any comparisons of its offensive to the Holocaust.
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UP: Misled by GPS navigation, car falls into river from partially constructed bridge, 3 dead
Bareilly (UP), Nov 24: Three people died when their car fell into the Ramganga river from a partially constructed bridge here on Sunday, police said, adding that they suspect the driver was misled by its navigation system into taking the unsafe route.
The accident occurred around 10 am on the Khalpur-Dataganj road when the victims were travelling from Bareilly to Dataganj in the Badaun district, they said.
"Earlier this year, floods had caused the front portion of the bridge to collapse into the river, but this change had not been updated in the system," Circle Officer Ashutosh Shivam said.
The driver was using a navigation system and did not realise that the bridge was unsafe, driving the car off the damaged section, the police said.
There were no safety barriers or warning signs on the approach to the damaged bridge, leading to the fatal accident, Shivam said.
Upon receiving information, police teams from Faridpur, Bareilly and Dataganj police station rushed to the spot. They recovered the vehicle and the bodies from the river, Shivam added.
The circle officer said that bodies had been sent for post-mortem. Further investigation into the matter is underway.
— Bareilly Police (@bareillypolice) November 24, 2024
