Strike on mosque kills 19 as Israel bombards northern Gaza and southern Beirut
Deir Al-Balah, Oct 6: An Israeli strike on a mosque in the Gaza Strip early Sunday killed at least 19 people, Palestinian officials said, as Israel intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza and southern Beirut in a widening war with Iran-allied groups across the region.
Displaced people were sheltering at the mosque that was struck near the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. A further four people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people near the town.
The Israeli military said both strikes targeted Hamas group, without providing evidence.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue. Hospital records showed that the dead from the strike on the mosque were all men.
Israel is still battling Hamas in Gaza a year after the group's attack on Israel, and has opened a new front in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has been trading fire with Israel along the border since the war in Gaza began. Israel has also vowed to strike Iran itself after Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel last week.
The widening conflict risks drawing in the United States, which has provided crucial military and diplomatic support to Israel, as well as US-allied Arab countries that host American forces. Iran-allied groups in Syria, Iraq and Yemen have already joined in with long-distance strikes on Israel.
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'MCC-Modi's Code of Campaigning': Cong's dig at EC
New Delhi (PTI): Ahead of the assembly polls schedule announcement by the Election Commission, the Congress on Sunday took a swipe, saying since 2014 the MCC has come to stand for "Modi's Code of Campaigning which will be full of defamation, abuses, intimidation, fear-mongering, and spreading the virus of lies."
The opposition party also claimed that the poll schedule announcement "would have been given the go-ahead by the G2, since G1 would have completed this round of inaugurations, ribbon-cuttings, flag-offs, and launches".
The Congress frequently uses the term 'G2' to take swipes at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, who are both from Gujarat.
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In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "The Election Commission will announce the schedule for the 2026 assembly elections at 4 PM today. It would have been given the go-ahead by the G2, since G1 would have completed this round of inaugurations, ribbon-cuttings, flag-offs, and launches."
"The Election Commission's Model Code of Conduct (MCC) will soon come into effect. But since 2014 this has come to stand for Modi's Code of Campaigning which will be full of defamation, abuses, intimidation, fear-mongering, and spreading the virus of lies," Ramesh said.
The MCC is a set of conventions agreed upon by all stakeholders during the elections. Its objective is to keep campaigning, polling and counting orderly, clean and peaceful and check any abuse of state machinery and finances by the party in power.
The Election Commission will announce dates for assembly polls in Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry on Sunday evening.
The terms of these legislative assemblies are ending on different dates in May and June.
Final electoral rolls of the four states and the Union territory of Puducherry have been published as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters' list.
