📹 Heavy rains in the Indian state of Kerala have triggered landslides that have killed at least 50 people, according to Indian media.

The footage shows a rescue operation taking place.

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🤔 Boxers Iman Khelif from Algeria and Lin Yuting from Taiwan have been allowed to participate in the women's competition at the Olympic Games in Paris.

According to the Guardian, they failed a gender test during the 2023 World Championships in New Delhi.

The head of the International Boxing Association, Umar Kremlev, reported at the time that some athletes at the world championship in India tried to pass themselves off as women, but genetic tests showed that they had XY chromosomes.

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🌪 A powerful tornado has hit the airport in the Russian city of Nizhnekamsk

The total amount of damage is still being determined. The airport's press service said that all flights are operating on schedule despite the natural disaster.

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Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed in his residence in Tehran, following his participation in the inauguration ceremony for Iran's President Pezeshkian, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement.

"With condolences to the heroic nation of Palestine and the Islamic nation and the combatants of the Resistance Front and the noble nation of Iran, this morning (Wednesday) the residence of Mr. Dr. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political office of the Islamic Resistance of Hamas, was hit in Tehran, and following this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred," the statement by IRGC read.

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Hamas Politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh killed. What is known so far?

▪️Palestinian movement Hamas said that its Politburo head Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli attack at his residence in Tehran on Wednesday.

▪️Ismail Haniyeh was killed as a result of a "direct rocket hit" at the house in Tehran where he was staying, Arab media sources said.

▪️ Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a statement that Haniyeh and his bodyguard were “martyred.”

▪️ Earlier, Haniyeh took part in the inauguration ceremony of Iran's newly elected president, Hamas said.

▪️ Iranian authorities are investigating the cause of the attack.

▪️ The White House is aware of the reports on Haniyeh’s death, CNN says.

▪️ Israeli army has declined to comment on the situation, explaining that IDF “do not respond to reports in the foreign media”, CNN reported.

▪️Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas strongly condemned the assassination of the head of the Hamas politburo and considered this murder a "cowardly act."

▪️Turkiye condemns the assassination of the leader of the Hamas politburo in Tehran, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said, adding that Israel does not seek peace, and that it is necessary to stop Tel Aviv before the conflict becomes regional.

▪️The death of the Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, will strengthen the link between Iran, Palestine and the resistance forces, the Iranian Foreign Ministry stressed.

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‘Israelis will pay a price’ for Haniyeh’s death’ – pundit

The death of Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, is “a new crime by [an Israeli] regime that's famous for its criminal acts,” Foad Izadi, associate professor at the Department of American Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, told Sputnik.  

“They're killing dozens of women and children on a daily basis for the last nine months. And this type of terrorism is something that Israelis are famous for. They have killed previous Hamas leaders. The reason Ismail Haniyeh became a Hamas leader was because of that fact,” Izadi pointed out. 

He suggested that the Palestinian militant group “has a large pool of leaders” to replace Haniyeh and that when it comes to Iran, the Islamic Republic “will have a serious response to what has happened.”

“The timing of that will be chosen by Iranian leaders. But I think the Israelis will pay a price for engaging in these types of activities,” the pundit concluded.

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An emergency meeting of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran is taking place at the residence of the country's supreme leader after the assassination of the head of the Hamas politburo, media reported.

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❗️The death of the head of the Hamas politburo is an absolutely unacceptable political assassination - Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister told Sputnik. 

"The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh will lead to a further escalation of tensions in the region," he added.

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Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the Hamas Politburo, called Haniyeh's murder a "cowardly act" and said it would not go unanswered, al-Aqsa TV channel reports.

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Who was Ismail Haniyeh?  

🔹 Haniyeh was born in a refugee camp near Gaza City in 1962, joining Hamas in the late 1980s during the First Intifada, or uprising.

🔹 The 62-year-old served as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority between 2006 and 2007, after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian legislative elections at the time. 

🔹 After the establishment of a Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip, as a result of Hamas’ spat with rival Fatah faction, Haniyeh served as the leader of the de facto government in Gaza in 2007-2014.  

🔹 In 2017, he was selected to replace Khaled Meshaal as Hamas’s political bureau chief. 

🔹 Haniyeh left Gaza in December 2019, living in Turkiye and Qatar, and building up his authority to represent Hamas abroad. 

🔹 His most notable previous visits included the funeral of Qassem Soleimani, a top commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed by a US drone strike in 2020, and the inauguration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in 2021.

🔹 In April of this year, Israeli airstrikes killed three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren, with Haniyeh making clear at the time that their deaths would not affect the ceasefire, and the hostage talks that were under way back then.

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Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, was in the building hit by an Israeli strike in the south of Beirut, the Lebanese organization said in a statement. 

The communique, in particular, notes that civil defense brigades are still dismantling the rubble, and that the Shiite movement is awaiting completion of this operation to determine Shukr's fate.

Fuad Shukr was a senior military adviser to Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who was responsible for projects in developing the movement's missile weapons.

According to the latest data from the Lebanese Ministry of Health, as a result of the aggression in the Dahiya area, four people were killed, including a woman and two children; over 70 people were injured.

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📹🇷🇺Third stage of Russian non-strategic nuclear exercises begins

Units of the Southern Military District and the Central Military District will work out combat training tasks, on obtaining special training ammunition, for the Iskander-M complexes.

The exercise stage is aimed at maintaining the readiness of personnel and equipment, of combat units of non-strategic nuclear weapons of Russia, to perform combat missions, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

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❗️In the Kharkov region, the Russian troops struck against militants from the Ukrainian Nazi battalion Kraken,* including foreigners, coordinator of the Nikolayev underground Sergei Lebedev told Sputnik.

*Kraken battalion a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia.

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‘Blatant' assassination of Haniyeh ‘may have been crossing a red line’ – ex-CIA officer 

The assassination of Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, "clearly had the support and foreknowledge of the United States and the United Kingdom", retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson insisted in an interview with Sputnik.

“I say that because we also have news reports now coming in that the US and UK warships are headed into the Mediterranean. On one of the US ships is probably a Marine Expeditionary Unit,” Johnson said. 

So the situation “has now escalated tensions in the region beyond what they were, even after the attack on the Iranian consul in April in Beirut,” according to him.  

Responding to that attack, Iran “sent a very clear message to Israel that in the future, any further provocations like this would be met with force, and now both Hezbollah and Iran have been incited to respond and Israel is calculating that it can withstand the blows,” the former CIA intelligence officer added.

“This is extremely dangerous. […] This attack [on Haniyeh] was so blatant that I don't think there will be any restraint on the part of Iran or Hezbollah. I think that this may in fact have been crossing a red line. It is extremely worrisome because this has the hallmarks of being able to spin out of control. And it is, we're now in a situation of wait and see,” Johnson stressed.

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🔸Hamas Politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh killed – what’s known so far?

🔸Looking back at Haniyeh’s life and role in Hamas

🔸Why will Israel ‘pay a heavy price’ for the death of Haniyeh?

🔸The assassination of Haniyeh "clearly had the support and foreknowledge of the US and the UK" - retired CIA intelligence officer Johnson

🔸Hezbollah has confirmed its commander Fuad Shukr was in the building hit by an Israeli strike in Lebanon

🔸IDF’s strike on Lebanon: what’s known so far

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Haniyeh's murder will entail retaliatory measures against Israel and will not affect the leadership of Hamas, the movement's representative told Sputnik.

Meanwhile, the Houthi leadership called Haniyeh's murder a terrorist crime.

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💬The United States will help protect Israel in the event of an attack on it, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin said during a press conference in the Philippines.

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