Shehbaz Sharif is Pakistan's 23rd Prime Minister

Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat on Friday joined the Congress ahead of the upcoming Haryana Assembly polls and will be the candidate from Julana. Along with Phogat, Bajrang Punia also joined the party.

Meanwhile, Former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief and BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh took a jibe at the wrestlers saying, "God has punished them for cheating."

"Haryana is the crown of India in the field of sports. And they stopped the wrestling activities for almost 2.5 years. Is it not true that Bajrang went to the Asian Games without trials? I want to ask those who are experts in wrestling. I want to ask Vinesh Phogat whether a player can give trials in 2 weight categories in a day? Can the trials be stopped for 5 hours after the weigh-in?... You did not win the wrestling, you went there by cheating. God has punished you for the same, " Brij Bhushan said, as reported by ANI.

Additionally he also called out Congress leader Bhupinder Hooda.

"I am not guilty of disrespecting daughters. If anyone is guilty of disrespecting daughters, it is Bajrang and Vinesh. And the one who wrote the script, Bhupinder Hooda is responsible for that. If they (BJP) will ask me (to campaign in the Haryana polls), I can go. One day Congress will have to regret it...," he said.

Both Phogat and Punia met Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge at his residence before officially joining the party at an event at headquarters in the presence of General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal.

Vinesh Phogat, who defied several odds to make the final of the women’s freestyle 50 kg event of the Paris Olympics, was disqualified after being overweight by a few grams.

Now, Olympians Phogat and Bajrang Punia, who were at the forefront of the wrestlers' protest against former WFI chief and BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh last year, entered the political arena on Friday by joining the Congress with a vow of "not being scared or backing off".

Hours after joining the Congress, Punia was appointed as the working chairman of the All India Kisan Congress. It seems unlikely now that he would be fielded in the polls.

The 90-member Haryana Assembly is scheduled to go to polls on October 5 and the counting of votes will be undertaken on October 8.

The Israeli regime is recruiting African asylum seekers to kill Palestinians in the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in exchange for permanent residency status, according to a report.

The report, ran by the Israeli paper Haaretz on Sunday, revealed that the project is conducted in an organized manner, with the guidance of military establishment legal advisers.  

In Gaza, the death toll passes 41,200 with close to 100,000 more injured in almost a year since the Israeli regime forces launched their genocidal war. However, the continued violence is prompting some Jewish Israelis to leave the occupied Palestinian land.

To make up for the loss, Tel Aviv is offering the incentive of permanent residency status to asylum seekers who agree to join the Israeli regime forces ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Haaretz has learned that some people have expressed objections to the practice, arguing that it exploits people who have fled their countries due to war. However, according to those sources, these voices have been silenced.

“This is a very problematic matter,” one source was quoted as saying by Haaretz.

According to the report, there are currently some 30,000 African asylum seekers living in the occupied territories, most of them young men. Around 3,500 are Sudanese citizens with temporary status granted by the court because the regime has not processed and ruled on their applications.

Unnamed sources who spoke with Haaretz also revealed that while there were some inquiries about granting status to asylum seekers who assisted in the genocidal war in Gaza, none were actually given status.

Haaretz also learned that the Interior Ministry explored the possibility of drafting the children of asylum seekers, who were educated in schools in the occupied territories, into the Israeli military.

In the past, the regime allowed the children of foreign workers to serve in the military in exchange for granting status to their immediate family members.

African refugees, who came to the occupied territories seeking asylum, were previously kept in internment camps and deported without their own consent.

The Israeli regime has attacked displaced Palestinians in the southern part of the Gaza Strip with US-provided 2,000-pound bombs, killing at least 40 civilians, mostly women and children.

As many as 60 others were injured in the attack that targeted an area previously declared by the Israeli military as a “humanitarian zone” at the al-Mawasi refugee camp in the city of Khan Younis on Tuesday.

The military alleged that it had struck members of the Hamas resistance movement, who were “operating a command and control center” inside the targeted area, a claim that was rejected by the group as a “blatant lie.”

“The resistance has repeatedly confirmed the absence of any of its members among civilian gatherings or the use of such areas for military purposes,” Hamas said.

The bloodletting took place as part of the regime’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, which began on October 7 in response to a retaliatory operation staged by the territory’s resistance groups.

So far, close to 41,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 94,800 others wounded in the brutal military onslaught.

The Tuesday massacre came after the refugee camp witnessed an influx of homeless Palestinians, who had fled there from the death and destruction spree caused by the war elsewhere across the coastal sliver. Between 30,000 and 34,000 people were living upon each square kilometer of the camp at the time of the attack, the United Nations estimates show.

The weapons deployed during the massacre have been identified as American-made MK-84 bombs, which carry 900 pounds of explosives. 

The payload can create a crater about 15 meters wide and over 10 meters deep, besides being capable of causing deadly damage around it within a radius of approximately 73 meters. 

This is not the first time when the regime deploys the ammunition against civilian targets during the war. 

More than 70 Palestinians were killed after it struck the refugee camp with the same bombs in July.

As part of its unbridled military support for the regime, the United States has armed it with as many as 14,000 of the bombs since the onset of the war.

Hamas also called the US “complicit” in such massacres that “are being deliberately carried out without regard for international law, humanitarian law, or resolutions calling for an end to the aggression.”