Three killed, several injured in two UAE restaurant blasts

News Network

August 31, 2020

Dubai, Aug 31: Three people were killed and several others were injured on Monday in two separate explosions in the United Arab Emirates’ capital Abu Dhabi and its tourism hub Dubai, the police and local media said.

The Abu Dhabi government media office said two people were killed in the blast in the capital, which the National daily reported had hit the KFC and Hardees restaurants on the city’s Rashid bin Saeed Street.

The street is also known as a main road to the airport, where top aides to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to land later on Monday, in a historic trip between Israel and another Arab country.

The police said the Abu Dhabi incident also caused several minor and moderate injuries, and residents of the building and surrounding areas were evacuated. The Abu Dhabi government media office said the blast was caused by a “misalignment in the gas container fittings following refuelling”.

Photos published on social and local media showed extensive damage to the two restaurants with a white plume of smoke rising from the ground floor of the building.

In Dubai, one person was killed when a gas cylinder exploded in a restaurant early on Monday, local media reported.

Abu Dhabi-owned The National newspaper, quoting a Dubai Civil Defence spokesperson, said the blast in Dubai had caused a blaze that damaged the ground floor of the building. The fire was controlled within 33 minutes, it added.

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Israel abducted 108 Palestinian journalists including women in violent raids amidst genocidal war

News Network

October 8,2024

A Palestinian prisoners’ rights group says Israeli forces have abducted a total of 108 journalists during violent raids across the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip ever since the regime’s onslaught on the besieged coastal territory started more than a year ago.

The Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, which is also known as Addameer, said in a statement on Monday that at least 58 journalists remain in Israeli custody, including six female journalists and 22 journalists from Gaza whose identities have been confirmed.

Addameer added that at least 16 of the journalists are being held under administrative detention.

An overwhelming majority of Palestinian prisoners are arrested under a quasi-judicial process known as administrative detention, under which Palestinians are initially jailed for six months. Their detentions can then be repeatedly extended for an indefinite period without charge or trial.

Neither the administrative detainees, who include women and children, nor their lawyers are allowed to see the “secret evidence” that Israeli forces say form the basis for their arrests.

Addameer noted that more than 9,000 orders of administrative detention have been issued since October 7 last year, ranging between new orders and renewals, including orders against children and women.

The report comes as another Palestinian journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip on Sunday, bringing the total death toll of journalists killed since October 7 last year to 175.

The government media office in the Gaza Strip in a statement identified the victim as Hassan Hamad, without giving details about the circumstances of his death.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation,” it said.

The media office also called on the international community and international organizations to “deter the occupation and prosecute it in international courts for its ongoing crimes.”

Journalists operating in the Palestinian territory are faced with increased dangers as they report on the conflict amidst Israeli ground assaults and airstrikes, disrupted communications, supply shortages, and power outages.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 last year, after Palestinian resistance groups carried out a surprise retaliatory operation into the occupied territories.

So far, the Israeli war on Gaza has killed at least 41,909 Palestinians, most of them women, children, and adolescents, and injured 97,303 others.

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