Sofia, July 5 (IANS) One man was killed and two others wounded in a shooting here, the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior confirmed.

“According to initial information, a fight broke out between several men, after which shots were fired,” the ministry said, adding that authorities were alerted at around 3 p.m. local time.

A 48-year-old man died at the scene, and two others, 22 and 41 years old, were wounded, reports Xinhua news agency, citing the ministry.

Dimitar Kangaldzhiev, Secretary General of the Ministry of Interior, told reporters at the scene later on that the conflict occurred at a pawn shop when three men attacked it. Three employees of the pawn shop were there, he said.

One of the attackers was killed and another wounded, Kangaldzhiev said. The other who was wounded was an employee of the pawn shop, he said.

Two guns were found at the scene, he said, noting that an investigation is underway.

–IANS

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London, July 5 (IANS) Keir Starmer, who pulled the Labour Party back from the brink of radicalism and led it to victory ending the party’s 14 years in the political wilderness, is now set to become Britain’s 58th prime minister.

“I’ve changed the Labour Party. We are back in service of working people,” he said of his mission as the leader of the party and the opposition in the House of Commons.

Uniquely qualified for the task, he has been both a human rights lawyer and the nation’s top prosecutor.

“We stand here on the eve of the election as a changed Labour Party, a Labour Party that has pushed protest to one side and returned our party to the service of working people and proudly says country first, party second,” he said on the eve of the election.

After his election from a constituency in London, he said, “The change begins right here because this is your democracy, your community and your future. You have voted and now it is time for us to deliver.”

Unlike many leaders, especially of his Labour Party, who have outsize flamboyant personalities Starmer, 61, has a low profile.

In marked contrast to defeated Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, he comes from a modest family: His father worked at a factory as a toolmaker and his mother a nurse and were Labour Party supporters. In his victory speech here on Friday, he said they provided a “sense of security with comfort from believing that Britain would always be better for their children”.

“I hope the working class families like mine could build their lives around the hope,” he said.

That hope “may not burn brightly in Britain at the moment, but we have earned the mandate to relight the fire”, he said. “That is the purpose of this party”, he said.

His mother suffered from severe chronic disease, a form of arthritis-linked ailment, and he wrote on his website, “I spent my childhood seeing her go into hospital, where my father would always be at her side.”

His politics showed an improbable swing from the left to a moderate line as the Labour Party leader.

He started with the Young Socialists of the Labour Party when he was 16 and moved on to editing ‘Social Alternatives’, a magazine linked to the Trotskyist International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency group.

He got his law degree from Leeds University, only going to Oxford for an advanced degree.

After becoming a barrister, he worked as a legal officer for the National Council for Civil Liberties.

An anti-death penalty activist, he defended people sentenced to the death penalty in several Caribbean countries.

He moved from his private law practice specialising in human rights to working for law enforcement, joining the Northern Ireland Policing Board as a human rights adviser.

Starmer’s next step up was as the director of public prosecutions, the third highest law position in the country.

“It was quite the shift to go from running small teams to running the Crown Prosecution Service and leading its thousands of employees,” he said taking over the national prosecutorial agency.

One of the major prosecutions he launched was against three Labour members of Parliament and a Conservative member of the House of Lords who were all found guilty in the scandal of parliamentarians presenting expense reports.

He was knighted in 2014 for his services in the legal field.

From the legal field, he jumped to politics in 2014 and was elected to parliament the next year.

He opposed the Labour leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn and ran on a leftist platform for that position in 2020 and won with the support of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

But as the leader of the opposition, he moderated the party’s leftward lunge.

He put a stronger emphasis on strengthening the economy and getting tougher on crime.

He also dropped his policies on nationalising water and energy and ending college tuition in the centre-wards shift.

Labour will be returning to power after its defeat in 2010 under Gordon Brown ending the party’s 13-year streak in power that had begun under Tony Blair in 2007.

Now, Starmer has the momentous task of steering the country through the economic and administrative morass.

But a difficult task looms ahead in dealing with illegal immigration, an issue of major concern which contributed to the Conservative poor performance because of the surprising showing by the upstart Reform Party, a reincarnation of the Brexit Party now with an anti-immigration platform.

The popular sentiment against illegal immigration is at odds with many in the Labour Party.

Another contentious issue he faces is Palestine on which a sizeable part of his party is anti-Israel.

–IANS

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Beirut, July 5 (IANS) A Hezbollah member was killed, and seven civilians were injured in Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling in southern Lebanon, Lebanese military sources said.

The military sources, who spoke anonymously, told Xinhua news agency that Israel carried out 12 airstrikes targeting nine towns and villages, and its artillery bombed 17 border towns and villages, killing a Hezbollah member and injuring seven civilians on Thursday.

The sources noted that the Hezbollah member was killed, and three civilians were injured in an Israeli raid targeting a house in the village of Houla.

In another Israeli strike in the village of Kfarchouba, a shell falling on a house wounded two civilians, while two others were injured in a bombing on the southeastern town of Shebaa, the sources added.

They specifically noted that four members of the Civil Defence sustained minor injuries and suffered suffocation while extinguishing a fire in the municipality of Kounine.

The sources indicated that the Israeli bombing destroyed 17 homes, damaged 35 others, and led to nine fires in the border area.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah announced that it attacked several Israeli military sites in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of its senior military commander, Mohammad Naameh Nasser, a day earlier.

Tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border escalated on October 8, 2023, following a barrage of rockets launched by the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah toward Israel in solidarity with Hamas’ attack on Israel the day before. Israel then retaliated by firing heavy artillery toward southeastern Lebanon.

The level of tension between Hezbollah and the Israeli army has escalated recently, as the Israeli military announced “its approval of operational plans for an attack on Lebanon.”

Meanwhile, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned that no place in Israel “will be safe” from his party’s missiles in the event of the outbreak of a war.

–IANS

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Khartoum, July 5 (IANS) At least 25 people drowned while fleeing the ongoing military clashes in the Sinnar State in central Sudan after their wooden boat capsized, local resistance committees announced.

“As the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) entered the area, at least 25 citizens, most of them women and children, died in a boat sinking accident east of Abu Hujar city, between the Al-Dibaiba and Luni villages,” the resistance committees in Sinnar said in a statement on Thursday.

The victims included entire families from the Al-Dibaiba village, reports Xinhua news agency, citing the statement, Xinhua news agency reported.

Over 55,400 people have fled Singa, the capital city of Sinnar state, since the clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary RSF expanded in June, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The Sudan conflict, which broke out in mid-April 2023, has led to at least 16,650 deaths, reported the OCHA in a June report.

Over 7.7 million people have been displaced internally within Sudan since the outbreak of the conflict, while about 2.2 million others have crossed borders into neighbouring countries, according to the figures released on June 25 by the UN International Organization for Migration.

–IANS

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Jerusalem, July 5 (IANS) An Israeli regulatory body has approved plans for building 5,295 new settler homes throughout the occupied West Bank, a settlement monitoring group said.

Peace Now, an Israeli-based settlement watchdog, stated in a press release that the Higher Planning Council of the Civil Administration approved the new construction during a two-day discussion on Wednesday and Thursday, reported Xinhua news agency.

The building plans include the expansion of settlements deep within the West Bank and the retroactive legalisation of three outposts, which were originally built by settlers without official Israeli permits.

As part of their legalisation, the statement said the three outposts, namely Mahane Gadi, Givat Hanan, and Kedem Arava, were declared “neighbourhoods” of existing settlements.

The approval of the new settler housing units came a day after Israeli authorities approved the appropriation of 12.7 square km of land in the West Bank, marking the largest single appropriation in about three decades.

Israel took control of the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war and has expanded settlements there ever since.

–IANS

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