In his traditional Christmas Day message, Pope Francis also called for more aid to Gaza in order to solve a “desperate humanitarian situation”.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians, Pope Francis said in his Christmas message.

In his Christmas Day “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and world) address on Monday, the head of the Catholic Church also called the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas “abominable” and again appealed for the release of about 100 hostages still being held in Gaza, as he appealed for an end to hostilities.

Speaking from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica to thousands of people in the square below, the 87-year-old Francis called for an end to conflicts, political, social or military, in places including Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and he defended the rights of migrants around the world.

“How, many innocents are being slaughtered in our world! In their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war. They are the little Jesuses of today,” he said.

He gave particular attention to the Holy Land, including Gaza. Overnight on Christmas Eve, Israeli air raids killed at least 78 people in one of the besieged enclave’s deadliest nights of Israel’s 11-week-old battle with Hamas, according to Palestinian health officials.

“May it [peace] come in Israel and Palestine, where war is devastating the lives of those peoples. I embrace them all, particularly the Christian communities of Gaza and the entire Holy Land,” Francis said.

‘Puppet strings of war’

“I plead for an end to the military operations with their appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims, and call for a solution to the desperate humanitarian situation by an opening to the provision of humanitarian aid,” he said.

Last week, a United Nations-backed body said in a report that the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza was facing crisis levels of hunger and that the risk of famine was increasing every day.

The Vatican, which has diplomatic relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, believes a two-state solution is the only answer to the long-running conflict. Francis called for “persevering dialogue between the parties, sustained by strong political will and the support of the international community”.

Dedicating an entire paragraph of his message to the weapons trade, Francis said: “And how can we even speak of peace, when arms production, sales and trade are on the rise?”

He called for more investigation of the armaments trade.

“It should be talked about and written about, so as to bring to light the interests and the profits that move the puppet strings of war,” he said.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since the cross-border attack by Hamas on October 7, killing at least 20,424 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 54,036 others, according to local health authorities.

About 1,140 people were killed in Israel in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with half of the coastal territory’s housing damaged or destroyed and nearly two million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid shortages of food, clean water and medicines.

World Opinions + Agencies

L’article Pope decries ‘appalling harvest’ of civilian deaths in Gaza.. Video est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.

A battering winter storm has left 1.7 million homes and businesses without power across the United States, as millions of people worry how the prospect of further outages will affect holiday and travel plans.

More than 200 million people were under weather warnings on Saturday, as wind chills sent temperatures down as low as minus 48 Celsius (minus 55 Fahrenheit), according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

The blinding blizzards, freezing rain and frigid cold that enveloped much of the country knocked out power from Maine to Seattle, while a major electricity grid operator warned the 65 million people it serves across the eastern US that rolling blackouts might be required.

Across the country, officials have attributed at least a dozen deaths to exposure, car crashes on icy and snow-covered roads and other effects of the storm, including two people who died in their homes outside Buffalo, New York, when emergency crews could not reach them amid historic blizzard conditions.

More than 200 million people under weather warnings as thousands of flights cancelled and at least a dozen dead.

The storm that arrived earlier in the week downed power lines, littered highways with piles of cars in deadly accidents and led to more than 1,000 flights already cancelled so far on Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

On Friday, the number of cancelled flights hit nearly 5,700 and Thursday had already seen 2,700 cancellations.

Heavy snow and howling winds have taken hold of much of the nation, including normally temperate southern states.

The storm was nearly unprecedented in its scope, stretching from the Great Lakes near Canada to the Rio Grande along the border with Mexico.

Freezing rain coated much of the Pacific Northwest in a layer of ice, while people in the Northeast faced the threat of coastal and inland flooding.

Highways in the Midwest faced lengthy delays due to snowy weather or crashes and authorities in parts of Indiana, Michigan, New York and Ohio urged motorists to avoid nonessential travel.

Passenger railroad Amtrak has cancelled dozens of trains through Christmas, disrupting holiday travel for thousands.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed ground stops or delays for de-icing at a number of US airports because of winter weather.

‘Enormous strain’

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told the CNN media network that the US aviation system “is operating under enormous strain” with two different storms and high winds affecting airports around the country. About 10 percent of US flights were cancelled on Thursday, Buttigieg said.

Another 10,400 US flights were delayed on Friday – including more than 40 percent of those operated by American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines – in addition to the 11,300 flights that were delayed on Thursday.

Southwest cancelled 1,238 flights on Friday, 29 percent of all its scheduled flights, while Alaska Airlines cancelled 507, or 64 percent, of its flights.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had 357 flights, or 63 percent of departures, cancelled on Friday. The FAA lifted a ground stop there, in place due to snow and ice, but late on Friday, delays were still averaging nearly three hours.

Nearly half of departing flights at Detroit Metro were cancelled, along with 70 percent at Portland, 38 percent at New York’s LaGuardia, 29 percent at Chicago O’Hare and 27 percent at Boston.

World Opinions – Agencies

L’article Deadly US storm disrupts Christmas plans, downs power lines est apparu en premier sur زوايا ميادين | Mayadin Columns.