Israel's latest airstrikes in Gaza kill at least 15 including children
Deir Al-Balah (Gaza Strip), Jul 21: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 15 people including women and children overnight in Gaza, according to hospital officials and a body count by an Associated Press journalist on Sunday.
The latest strikes occurred as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepared to leave Monday for the United States, where he is expected to meet with President Joe Biden and address Congress to make his case for the nine-month war against Hamas while cease-fire negotiations continue.
The already precarious humanitarian conditions inside besieged Gaza have worsened with the discovery of the polio virus as water and sanitation services have suffered for the territory's population of 2.3 million, most of it displaced.
Traces of the virus were found in sewage samples in Gaza. The World Health Organisation has said no one has been treated for symptoms caused by infection.
Israel's military said solders would be vaccinated, and it would work with organisations to bring in vaccines for Palestinians.
Israel's latest airstrikes were in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where nine people including two children were killed, and the southern city of Khan Younis, where at least six people were killed including two girls. Men and women wept and embraced the small bodies in white shrouds.
“Unknown body of five-month baby” was written on one.
Smoke also rose from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, but there was no immediate word on casualties.
The war in Gaza has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war began with an assault by Hamas group on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain held, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.
Netanyahu has vowed to wipe out Hamas' military and governing capabilities and secure the return of the remaining hostages. Families of hostages and thousands of other Israelis have rallied in weekly demonstrations urging the prime minister to reach a cease-fire deal that would bring loved ones home.
Mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States continue to push Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would stop the fighting and free the hostages.
Concerns about a wider regional conflict continue. Israel on Saturday struck the port of Hodeida in Yemen in the first known Israeli strikes there since the war in Gaza began. The strikes, in response to a deadly Houthi drone strike in Tel Aviv, threatened to open a new front as Israel battles Iranian proxies in the region including Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen as the Houthis vowed “impactful strikes".
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Former railway minister Mukul Roy dies at 71
Kolkata (PTI): Former railway minister Mukul Roy, once regarded as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's most trusted lieutenant and the TMC's principal strategist, died of cardiac arrest at a private hospital here early on Monday.
He was 71, and is survived by his son, Subhranshu Roy.
He breathed his last around 1.30 am at the hospital in Salt Lake, Subhranshu Roy said.
He had been suffering from multiple ailments and was in and out of the hospital over the past two years. Family members said he had also been diagnosed with dementia and had recently gone into a coma.
His body will be taken to his residence before the last rites are performed later in the day, they said.
A former Union minister and two-time Rajya Sabha member from West Bengal, Roy's four-decade-long political journey saw his stints in the Congress, TMC and the BJP.
His political career began with the Youth Congress, before he joined hands with Banerjee when she broke away from the grand old party to form the Trinamool Congress in 1998.
As a founding member, he quickly emerged as one of the key organisational pillars of the fledgling party and went on to serve as its general secretary.
He was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2006 and became the party's leader in the Upper House in 2009, turning into TMC's principal troubleshooter in Delhi. In the UPA-2 government, when the TMC was a constituent, Roy first served as Minister of State for Shipping before taking over as the railway minister in 2012.
In West Bengal's political circles, Roy earned a reputation as a backroom operator deft in organisational work. Following the TMC's historic victory in 2011 that ended 34 years of the Left Front rule, he played a significant role in consolidating the party's hold in several districts, overseeing defections from the CPI(M) and the Congress, strengthening the new regime's political base.
However, his career was not without controversy. His name had surfaced in the Saradha chit fund case and the Narada sting operation.
By 2017, relations between Roy and the TMC leadership had deteriorated. In November that year, he joined the BJP in a move that altered the state's political equations. Tasked with strengthening the BJP's organisation in West Bengal, Roy was credited by party leaders with helping engineer defections from the TMC and expanding the saffron party's base ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, in which the BJP won 18 of the state's 42 seats.
He was elected as a BJP MLA from the Krishnanagar Uttar constituency in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections. Within months, however, he returned to the TMC, triggering legal and political wrangling. Subsequently, a court disqualified him as an MLA under the anti-defection law for switching parties after being elected on a BJP ticket.
Though he rejoined the TMC, Roy never regained the political centrality he once enjoyed. As his health declined, he gradually withdrew from active politics.
Often described as the 'Chanakya' of West Bengal politics during his prime, Roy remained a pivotal figure in the state's turbulent political landscape -- a strategist who operated as comfortably in Delhi's power corridors as in the backrooms of Kolkata's party offices.
Leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, condoled Roy's death.
In an X post, he wrote, "Deeply disheartened to learn about the sad demise of senior politician, Shri Mukul Roy. My sincere condolences to his family. Praying that his soul attains eternal peace. Om Shanti."
