United Nations, March 25: India has told Pakistan to vacate the illegally occupied territory in Jammu and Kashmir and stop justifying state-sponsored terrorism.

Replying to a Pakistan attempt to raise Kashmir for the umpteenth time in the Security Council, India’s Permanent Representative P. Harish said on Monday, “Such repeated references neither validate their illegal claims nor justify their state-sponsored cross-border terrorism.”

“Pakistan continues to illegally occupy the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which it must vacate,” he said, adding “That would be in keeping with Security Council Resolution 47 adopted on April 21, 1948, that requires Pakistan to withdraw its forces and infiltrators from Kashmir.”

“Jammu and Kashmir was, is, and will always be an integral part of India,” Harish declared.

He added, “We would advise Pakistan not to try to divert the attention of this forum to drive their parochial and divisive agenda.”

Earlier during the debate on the new realities facing peacekeeping, Syed Tariq Fatemi, Pakistan’s junior foreign affairs minister, said the Council should enforce its resolution on a plebiscite for Kashmir.

However, that resolution made it a point to demand that Pakistan “secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not normally resident therein who have entered the State for the purpose of fighting”. The resolution also orders Pakistan to stop aiding militants or infiltrating. It demanded that Islamabad “prevent any intrusion into the State of such elements and any furnishing of material aid to those fighting in the State”.

A plebiscite could not be held when the Council resolution was passed because Pakistan sabotaged it by refusing to abide by the precondition of its withdrawal from Kashmir. India maintains that a plebiscite is now irrelevant because the people of Kashmir have made clear their allegiance to India by participating in elections and by electing the leaders of the territories.

Fatemi brought up the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) that was set up in 1949 to monitor the ceasefire along the Line of Control. India barely tolerates the UNMOGIP’s presence in India considering it a relic of history made irrelevant by the 1972 Shimla agreement between the leaders of the two countries declaring the Kashmir dispute a bilateral issue with no room for third parties. India has ousted UNMOGIP from the government-provided building in New Delhi.

Jerusalem, March 25: The Israeli military acknowledged that it mistakenly struck a building belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Gaza due to misidentification.

Israeli military forces operating in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza, fired at the building after “identifying suspects inside who they perceived as a threat,” a military statement said.

A subsequent inspection revealed the identification was incorrect, and the troops “were unaware of the building’s affiliation” with the ICRC at the time of the shooting, Xinhua news agency reported quoting the military statement.

Earlier on Monday, the ICRC said in a statement that its office in Rafah “was damaged by an explosive projectile despite being clearly marked and notified to all parties.”

“Fortunately, no staff were injured in this incident, but this has a direct impact on the ICRC’s ability to operate. The ICRC strongly decries the attack against its premises,” said the ICRC, which runs a field hospital in Rafah and other facilities in the Palestinian enclave to treat mass casualties from Israeli strikes.

In the statement, the ICRC also said that it lost contact on Sunday with emergency medical technicians from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, and that humanitarian workers in Gaza were killed and injured last week.

Israel ended a two-month ceasefire with Hamas on Tuesday by resuming air and ground attacks in the Palestinian enclave, which have so far killed more than 730 Palestinians. In response, Hamas also made several rocket launches targeting Israeli territory, most of which Israel said have been intercepted.

Gaza/Jerusalem, March 24: The Israeli army has killed Ismail Barhoum, a member of Hamas’ politburo, and at least four other Palestinians in an airstrike on the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian medical sources and eyewitnesses.

Local sources and eyewitnesses told Xinhua news agency on Sunday that an Israeli drone targeted the second floor of the emergency building in the complex, where the surgery department is located, with at least one missile, causing a large fire.

Medics confirmed to Xinhua that medical workers immediately recovered the bodies of five people, including Barhoum, along with a number of injured persons, some in critical condition.

“The Israeli army targeted the surgery building inside the Nasser Medical Complex a short while ago, which housed many patients and wounded, and a large fire broke out there,” Gaza-based health authorities said in a statement in the evening.

Later, Hamas confirmed the death of Barhoum, saying he was receiving treatment in a hospital ward when the attack happened, Xinhua news agency reported.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces said Sunday night that they launched an attack on the Nasser Hospital compound in southern Gaza, claiming they targeted a Hamas official.

In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet domestic security agency described the official as a “key” Hamas militant, who was “operating inside the Nasser Hospital compound” in Khan Younis, without providing the official’s name and identity.

They added that “the strike was conducted following an extensive intelligence-gathering process and with precise munitions, in order to mitigate harm to the surrounding environment as much as possible”.

The strike comes after Israeli operations intensified in southern Gaza, with the military saying earlier on Sunday that it had encircled an entire district and ordered evacuations.

he Israeli military resumed air and ground operations in Gaza earlier this week, blamed on Hamas for refusing to agree to revised terms on extending the first phase of the ceasefire. Gaza health officials meanwhile said the toll from the fighting since October 7, 2023, has passed 50,000.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz in a statement hailed the killing of Barhoum, saying he was “the new Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza, who replaced Issam Da’alis, the previous Prime Minister who was eliminated a few days ago”.

He was at least the fourth member of Hamas’s political bureau killed since last Tuesday, when Israel resumed airstrikes in the territory after an impasse over continuing a ceasefire. Earlier Sunday, an Israeli airstrike near Khan Younis killed Salah al-Bardawil, another senior member of its political bureau.

Barhoum was a member of Hamas’s political wing and had been involved in financial activities for the terror group, according to the European Union, which placed sanctions on him last year. He was also reported to have dealt with Hamas’s finances.

Out of the 20 members of Hamas’s political bureau elected in 2021, 11 have been assassinated during the war in Gaza. Seven are either certain or highly likely to be outside the Gaza Strip.

In a separate announcement on Sunday, the IDF and Shin Bet security agency said two senior Hamas military wing commanders had been killed in recent airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.

Nasser Medical Complex is the second-largest hospital in Gaza and has been subjected to several Israeli attacks since the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023.