Marissa Newman is The Times of Israel political correspondent.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Sunday’s developments as they unfolded.
Israeli parents of newborn surrogate-born children in Nepal warn that their water supply will soon run out.
“The water supply is stuck,” singer Ohad Hitman says, according to Channel 2. “We have bottles of mineral water that will last for the children at most, one day, maybe 12 hours. We are afraid the rescue teams won’t come.”
Alon Michaeli Molian, another new father, says none of the newborns slept last night.
“The situation is very difficult. We don’t know when it will shake again.”
The Justice Ministry approves a plan to airlift Nepalese surrogate mothers for Israeli couples, who are in the advanced stages of pregnancy, to Israel.
The plan was introduced by Likud MK Gilad Erdan.
The first group of survivors from an earthquake-triggered avalanche that swept through the Mount Everest base camp are flown to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu on Sunday and taken to hospitals. None appear to have life-threatening injuries.
At least 17 people were killed when Saturday’s avalanche, set off by the massive earthquake that struck Nepal, obliterated part of the rocky village of nylon tents, where dozens of teams were training and acclimatizing themselves to higher altitudes as they prepared to make summit attempts in the next few weeks.
Twenty-two of the most seriously injured had already been taken by helicopter for treatment in the village of Pheriche, the location of the nearest medical facility. But bad weather and communications were hampering more helicopter flights, says Ang Tshering of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.
— AP
The Nepalese air force managed to rescue four Israeli hikers trapped in the Lantang trek, but was forced to stop due to bad weather, Channel 2 reports.
“The food and water are running out, the situation is not good,” says Omer Zakai, whose sister Shahar is stuck, along with a dozen other Israelis and many other foreign tourists. “The army managed to save some of them, but in the current situation, the weather isn’t allowing for continued rescue efforts. They are in an open area and the weather conditions are really difficult.”
One Israeli hiker left behind has a head wound, the report says, and is in need of medical care.
“He’s okay, but he must be evacuated as quickly as possible,” a relative says.
Senate proponents of a bill empowering Congress to review and potentially reject any Iran nuclear deal must first win a battle with some colleagues determined to change the legislation in ways that could sink it.
“Anybody who monkeys with this bill is going to run into a buzz saw,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warns ahead of this week’s debate.
Also trying to discourage any changes, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey urges senators to stick with the plan as it emerged from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Backers of the bill are trying to keep lawmakers focused on how it would give Congress a say on a critical national security issue. They say the measure is not meant to be about how Iran increasingly is wielding influence in the Middle East, its support of terrorist groups or human rights violations. They worry that adding too many divisive amendments would cause Democrats to drop their support.
Even so, some senators are proposing amendments to pressure Iran to end its support of such groups, stop threatening to destroy Israel and recognize its right to exist, and release US citizens held in Iran.
Other amendments would prevent sanctions relief if Iran cooperates with nuclear-armed North Korea or until international nuclear inspectors are guaranteed access to Iranian military sites.
— AP
Aid groups and governments worldwide intensify efforts to help earthquake-hit Nepal, but blocked roads, downed power lines and overcrowded hospitals pose formidable challenges in an already poor country.
As the death toll in the Himalayan nation surpasses 2,300, the US together with European and Asian nations send emergency crews to reinforce those scrambling to find survivors in the devastated capital Kathmandu and in cut-off rural areas.
“Tragically, more bodies are being pulled from collapsed buildings every hour,” the Australian Red Cross says in a statement.
“Communication is down in many areas. Widespread destruction, rubble and landslides are preventing access to provide aid in many villages.”
Mike Bruce, regional communications manager for the Plan International aid organization, says many areas — both rural and in some of the larger towns — had suffered landslides and roads were blocked.
Although mobile networks appeared to be being restored by mid-afternoon on Sunday, he says, coverage remained sporadic.
“People are sleeping on the streets and cooking outside for the most part. And we are talking about very, very poor areas of Nepal — areas that are already suffering a great deal,” says Bruce.
— AFP
Croatia commemorates the tens of thousands of victims, mostly Serbs and Jews, killed by the country’s pro-Nazi World War II regime at a notorious concentration camp dismantled 70 years ago.
Several hundred people, including survivors of the Jasenovac camp, victims’ relatives, officials, religious leaders and foreign diplomats gather for a multi-denominational service and wreath-laying ceremony at the camp site.
“The horrors of Jasenovac warn us… not to allow discrimination and persecution based on national, religious, ideological or gender differences ever again,” parliamentary speaker Josip Leko says.
Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic says the country, which has been independent since 1991, had distanced itself in its constitution from the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime which set up the camp in 1941.
A man looks at the World War II Jasenovac memorial camp model on April 26, 2015, during a ceremony to remember the tens of thousands who were killed by the country’s pro-Nazi regime. (photo credit: AFP PHOTO / STRINGER)
Underlining the role of Croatian anti-fascist partisans during WWII, he adds: “There was only one Croatian army during World War II and these were Croatian partisans.”
The total number of people killed there — mostly Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians — remains disputed, varying from 70,000 to 700,000, according to Serbian figures.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 people were murdered there.
— AFP
A representative from the Nepalese army arrives at the Israeli embassy in Kathmandu to coordinate rescue efforts of Israeli tourists, Israel Radio reports.
According to the report, some 150 Israelis remain unaccounted for.
Representatives of major Jewish groups in Russia urge Western coreligionists to lobby for peeling back sanctions against Moscow.
The call is made in a document that carries signatures of Crimean Jews and executives from the Chabad-affiliated Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, as well as the Congress of the Jewish Religious Organizations and Associations in Russia, which is not affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the news site Lenta.ru reported Saturday.
In the letter seen by Lenta, the co-signatories ask Western Jews “to prepare public opinion in their countries [for] starting a dialogue with their governments to lift sanctions against Russia and Crimea.” It is signed by Rabbi Ariel Triger, who is in charge of regional development at the Chabad-affiliated federation, and by the congress’s vice president, Zinovy Kogan.
— JTA
US officials tell ABC News that the National Counterterrorism Center is set to recommend to the White House that families who negotiate with terrorists abroad for the release of their relatives, or raise money for ransom, should not be prosecuted.
“There will be absolutely zero chance of any family member of an American held hostage overseas ever facing jail themselves, or even the threat of prosecution, for trying to free their loved ones,” says one official.
French President Francois Hollande is holding a moment of remembrance inside a former gas chamber to honor Jews, Gypsies and French resistance fighters killed in the only Nazi concentration camp on French soil.
The ceremony scheduled Sunday afternoon at the Natzweiler-Struthof camp in Alsace is among events marking 70 years since the last Nazi camps were liberated by Allied troops in World War II.
Fighters resisting the Nazi occupation of France made up most of the around 50,000 inmates of the Natzweiler-Struthof camp. Nearly half the inmates died.
The Nazis also built and tested one of their first gas chambers at the camp. Hollande and European Parliament President Martin Schultz will visit the chamber and unveil plaques in memory of the Jews and Gypsies killed there.
— AP
Three babies born from Nepalese surrogate mothers, and eight other Israelis are en route to Israel, the Walla news website reports.
Masked Palestinian assailants are hurling rocks at Border Police in the neighborhood of A-Tur in East Jerusalem, according to police. No injuries are reported.
Rioters also throw rocks at the Light Rail, causing damage but no injuries.
Aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition battling Shiite rebels in Yemen struck targets in several cities on Sunday, including the capital, security officials say, as fighting raged across the country.
The continued airstrikes and combat between rival factions on the ground underline how a negotiated peace remains elusive in the Arab world’s poorest country. They also come despite a Saudi announcement last week saying coalition operations would scale down and shift to focus on diplomacy, humanitarian and counter-terrorism issues.
The Sunday airstrikes began just after midnight, officials say, hitting a military base known to be an arms depot on the outskirts of Sanaa, as well as sites near the presidential palace where weapons were being moved. Fierce street battles in the central city of Taiz killed some 20 civilians and wounded dozens, they add, with mortar rounds fired indiscriminately and landing near a hospital at one point.
In the southern port city of Aden, they say air raids targeted the rebels, known as Houthis, as street fighting between them and forces loyal to embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi continued. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief journalists.
— AP
At least 25 people were killed on Sunday in Syrian government airstrikes on the rebel-held town of Darkush in northwestern Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor says.
The Britain-based group says women and children were among the dead in the strikes, which came a day after the regime lost control of a key strategic town elsewhere in the province.
— AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is updated on Israel’s Nepal relief efforts.
Col. Yoram Laredo, who is heading the Israeli delegation, tells the prime minister in a telephone conversation that the Israeli team will set up a field hospital to treat those wounded in the earthquake, as well as work to locate Israelis.
“You are being sent on an important mission,” Netanyahu says. “This is the real face of Israel — a state that comes to assist those far away at moments like these. Good luck, we are counting on you.”
An IDF medical delegation left Sunday with 95 tons of equipment to set up a field hospital including a laboratory, X-ray machines, operating rooms, children’s treatment rooms and birthing facilities.
Some 260 people were to staff the facilities, among them IDF medical personnel, Home Front Command search and rescue units, and three dog handlers with rescue dogs. The flight was to follow an earlier detachment of seven IDF search and rescue experts who rushed out to Nepal overnight Saturday.
The Kathmandu-based National Emergency Operation Center puts the toll in Nepal at 2,430 while around 6,000 more people were injured.
Officials in India say the toll there now stood at 67, while Chinese state media say 18 people had been killed in the Tibet region.
“We have deployed all our resources for search and rescues,” police spokesman Kamal Singh Bam tells AFP. “Helicopters have been sent to remote areas. We are sifting through the rubble where buildings have collapsed to see if we can find anyone.”
Powerful aftershocks trigger new avalanches at Everest base camp, as mass cremations are held in the devastated capital Kathmandu.
At overstretched hospitals, where medics are also treating patients in hastily erected tents, staff are forced to flee buildings for fear of further collapses.
“Electricity has been cut off, communication systems are congested and hospitals are crowded and are running out of room for storing dead bodies,” Oxfam Australia chief executive Helen Szoke tells AFP.
— AFP
After the earthquake, the Viber application will not charge for calls placed to Nepalese numbers, or calls within Nepal.
“We hope this initiative helps those trying to reach their friends and relatives in Nepal,” it says in a statement.
The chief Palestinian negotiator expresses skepticism about peace prospects with the next Israeli government following comments made by Netanyahu during the recent campaign.
In the final days of the campaign, Netanyahu said that he would not allow the establishment of a Palestinian state on his watch, saying that regional turmoil made this impossible.
Speaking to international reporters Sunday, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat says Netanyahu’s comments were irresponsible and would cause despair among Palestinians.
Erekat asks: “What do I talk to him about?”
— AP
The Turkish coastguard has rounded up 350 mainly Syrian migrants in an operation against a ship planning to take them to Europe, the official Anatolia news agency says.
Coastguard personnel overnight Saturday to Sunday raided the Mongolian-flagged “Ole” vessel after a tip-off that migrants were being carried on board.
The coastguard picked up 71 migrants on board the ship off the southeastern Turkish city of Mersin and captured 279 others waiting their turn at the port to board the vessel, announces Anatolia.
It says the migrants, including women and children, were seeking to reach European Union countries, in particular Italy.
Police detained 10 crewmen and seized the inflatable boats used to transfer the migrants to the ship.
— AFP
Before and after photos of Nepal’s ancient landmarks, partially or completely demolished in the earthquake, circulate on social media.
Four Before/After photos from #NepalEarthquake that destroyed historic/ancient structures killed +1500 #NepalQuake pic.twitter.com/xokplG5HrK
— JigmeUgen (@JigmeUgen) April 26, 2015
President Reuven Rivlin praises the IDF’s Home Front Command delegation, as it departs Ben Gurion Airport for Nepal to assist the relief efforts.
“My blessings go to all the team undertaking this brave and humanitarian mission. I am proud of you and your staff for their speedy and impressive enlistment at such a time of need. This delegation of ‘messenger angels’ represents the universal values, in the spirit of our people and our country, and through you, I wish to thank each and every one of them,” the president says.
LIVE on #Periscope: Going to the departure Hall at Ben Gurion Airport for the IDF mission to Nepal https://t.co/LWvfDngTAE
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) April 26, 2015
A Jewish Google executive, Dan Fredinburg, was killed in an avalanche triggered on Mount Everest by the earthquake in Nepal.
Fredinburg, the head of privacy for Google X, the company’s ideas lab, suffered a major head injury in the avalanche and died, his younger sister Megan reported in a post on his Instagram account. He was 33.
The post read: “This is Dan’s little sister Megan. I regret to inform all who loved him that during the avalanche on Everest early this morning our Dan suffered from a major head injury and didn’t make it. We appreciate all of the love that has been sent our way thus far and know his soul and his spirit will live on in so many of us. All our love and thanks to those who shared this life with our favorite hilarious strong-willed man. He was and is everything to us. Thank you.”
Fredinburg, who was Jewish, had been scaling Everest for the past three weeks with an expedition team arranged by a UK-based tour company. Two other Google employees on the expedition and their guides survived the avalanche.
Fredinburg had worked at Google since 2007. He was cofounder of Google Adventure, which was designed to bring Google Street View to exotic locations, including Mount Everest.
Sophia Bush (left), and Dan Fredinburg arriving at the Do Something Awards at the Avalon in Los Angeles, July 31, 2013. (photo credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
— JTA
Authorities in Egypt have hanged five people convicted of murder and theft, the interior ministry says.
They were executed in a prison in the southern province of Assiut after the appeals process had been exhausted, a ministry statement says.
No more details were supplied about the individual cases.
— AFP
A Palestinian teenager is detained after he tries to snatch the gun of a security guard near the West Bank settlement of Eli.
According to police, the 19-year-old is a resident of Nablus.
A court in southern Russia sentences one teenager to 15 days in jail and two young women to 10 days for twerking next to a World War II memorial.
Russia celebrates the 70th anniversary of the Allies’ victory in World War II next month, an emotionally charged holiday the Kremlin has been using for propaganda purposes.
The sentencing in Novorossiysk district court of a 19-year-old and two women in their 20s comes after prosecutors launched a probe into a video showing a group of woman twerking next to the memorial on the Black Sea.
Prosecutors said in a statement Saturday that five women were found guilty of “hooliganism” and two of them were spared jail because of poor health.
— AP
The European Commission releases three million euros ($3.25 million) in emergency aid for Nepal, where over 2,500 people died in a massive earthquake.
The aid is in addition to assistance offered by individual EU nations and the deployment of European Commission humanitarian aid and civil protection experts to the crisis area.
“The commission’s emergency aid will go towards the most urgent needs in the worst affected areas, including clean water, medicine, emergency shelter and telecommunications,” the EU’s executive arm says in a statement.
“I have mobilized all our means for emergency response to help the survivors and authorities in the aftermath of this tragedy. What is needed most are medical teams and relief supplies. I call on all EU member states to join the coordinated European response,” says EU Commissioner for Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides.
— AFP
The army delegation to Nepal, which was set to depart this evening, is delayed by 12 hours, the Foreign Ministry says.
The decision came in light of the ongoing aftershocks, the ministry says.
According to the IDF spokesman, the two Boeing 747s cannot land on the Nepal runway in its current condition.
#Breaking: Following today's #NepalEarthquake aftershock the 747s can not land. We are postponing the mission by 12 hours. I'll update ASAP
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) April 26, 2015
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon says Israel will not permit Hezbollah to continue smuggling weapons along its border, in the first tacit admission that Israel was behind an airstrike over the weekend in Syria.
“We will not allow the transfer of advanced weaponry to terror groups, with Hezbollah in the lead, and we will know how to get to it and its senders any time, any place. We will not allow Iran and Hezbollah to set up a terror infrastructure on our border with Syria, and we will fight those who threaten Israeli citizens, along its borders or far away from them,” he says, according to Walla.
Iran and Hezbollah are well aware of Israel’s “red lines,” he continues, and “know that we have no intention of compromising on them.”
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (photo credit: Alex Kolomoisky/Flash90, Pool)
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