Udupi, June 11: Karnataka Minister for Women and Child Development Laxmi Hebbalkar visited the famous Sri Krishna Mutt in Udupi on Sunday.
Hebbalkar, who has been appointed as the Udupi district-in-charge minister, offered prayers at the temple during special rituals.
The minister was in Udupi to inaugurate the district-level programme in connection with the launch of Shakti scheme providing free bus travel for women.
The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.
The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.
It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.
The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”
“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.
Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.
The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.
The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.
At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.
The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.
As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.
They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.
Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.
Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.
The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."
On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.
The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."
The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.
"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."
The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.
In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.
It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.
The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.
Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.
“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.
Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.
As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.
The Manipur Kuki MLAs have released a statement calling out Solicitor General Tushar Mehta's 'lies' in the Supreme Court. In a joint statement, the MLAs, including those from the Bharatiya Janata Party, said they had not had any meeting with the Chief Minister since May 3, 2023, nor did they intend to meet him in the future as “he was the mastermind behind the violence”.
As per the MLAs, the SG lied about state CM N Biren Singh speaking to Kuki MLAs to control the situation there, in order to halt a Supreme Court probe into the leaked tapes which allege that Singh has been complicit in the violence that broke out between Kukis and Meitis there.
"We...clarify that we have never had any meeting with Chief Minister, Shri N. Biren Singh since May 3, 2023, nor have any intention to meet him in future as he is the mastermind behind the violence and ethnic cleansing of our people from the Imphal valley, which is continuing till today, the latest being the brutal killing and burning of Mrs Zosangkim Hmar on November 7, 2024," the letter read, while condemning the recent 'barbaric' killing of the woman there, and noting the SG's assertion is 'tantamount' to misleading the top court.
“We, the undersigned ten MLAs, have come to know that during the Supreme Court hearing held on November 8, 2024, the Solicitor General of India submitted that ‘CM is meeting all Kuki MLAs and trying to bring the situation down to get peace’. In this connection, we hereby categorically state that this submission is a blatant lie and tantamount to misleading the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India,” the statement said.
The Supreme Court, while hearing a petition by a Kuki organisation, asked that it submit audio tapes to substantiate its claim that the Chief Minister was instrumental in inciting and organising violence in the northeastern State.
Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta orally informed the court that the Chief Minister was meeting all the Kuki-Zo MLAs and that peace in the State had come at a huge cost.
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