Attacks in Israel, Regional Reaction, Ukraine Aid
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Israeli prime minister says the country is at war .

that after a series of attacks and calls from hamas for support throughout the region.

Jn, known yet how many people are injured or dead?

I'm Scott sim. I'm I shara KO. And this is up first from in P. R. news.

Could be the time .

has come to draw the line for the enemy to understand their time is .

up and they can't keep going without sequa for milk .

are in the region and more age ukraine .

is held up as household licence struggle to find a new speaker. How's that affecting the ukrainian resistance?

So please stay with us. We've got the news. You need to charge weekend.

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israel and violence filling the air there. There have been barges of missiles from gaza towards central and southern israel and israeli strikes. In response.

militants have also been spotted on parag lighters, as well as infiltrating to the mediterannean driving trucks on land. And paris journalists, and join us now from television. Danel, thank you for being. I'm told you're moving into a bomb shelter now.

Yeah, I I may be able to speak you from A A reinforced room here if we do hear air IDE sions. But for now, things are quiet here until you have.

well, tell us what it's like in israel and throughout, well, I mean.

for hours we've just been shocking scenes that have shocked israelis and palestinians who have spoken with. And this is still unfolding. And IT started this morning early when heavily armed palestinian militants in gaza a flew across the border on paragliders.

They swam through the military ian sea. They drove over land with pickup trucks through israel's fortified border fence, and they infiltrated several israeli military and at least five israeli communities near gaza, where there are gun battles now with israeli forces. That's including the town of the road, which h we're hearing from israeli public broadcasting.

There are at least ten bodies now covered on the ground. A N, P, R spoke with a social worker in that town, the ron shop tea. He was speaking from his family's reinforced shelter room.

They were. He was there with his wife and his baby. They said they ran out a formula for the baby. They turned off all the lights in the house here.

He said that the situation there are, there are here fighting. Everyone know what. They defection out the food, stay home, not, not, not open the window.

And so at the very same time, you have this other kind of attack, which is thousands of rockets fired from gaza toward southern central israel, toward ju salem, toward television. And here's what I recorded this morning in television.

So israeli prime minister Benjamin eta has said, we are at war. Israel has launched strikes on gaza, but the things that we are seeing from homos videos that npr has not independently verified, but IT appears to show soldiers killed, israeli soldiers taken hostage. That's what hamas is claiming. It's it's a severe kind of attack that is really striking for people here.

And any thinking, Daniel, is to why the strike has been launched now and how is IT that israel was called by .

the surprise, IT is a major question. How could israel be underwear this way? I mean, it's happening on a major jewish holiday today, and i'm hearing a lot of comparisons here to what happened fifty years ago.

And a day ago on another jewish holiday, Young y poor, the Young key poor war broke out fifty years ago. Also a surprise attack on israel. So we're hearing a lot of comparisons to that.

And we're also hearing from a top hamas militant commander who says these attacks were in response to israeli, quote, desertion of the alexa mosque in jerusalem ism, a major contentious religious sight holy to muslims, also revealed by jews as the temple mountain. This week we've seen a lot of jewish religious ultra nationalists visit that site. So this is not coming out of of a vacuum with we've seen recent weeks of violent clashes along the gaza border and and also violence in the west bank.

To thanks so much.

You welcome time.

Egypt in turkey are urging restraint this weekend as violence ridge's in israel, in gaza.

the conflicts, which have been a surprise and are unprecedented in their scale, have put the entire region higher. T and b ra batte is in dubai and join us now. Air, what can you tell us about how governments in the region of responding basically cautiously?

We haven't seen immediate statements from heavy weight like the united erb emerge, which has close ties now with israel. But we have seen saudi abi a quickly issue a statement just now saying they are closely following these developments. They're calling unprecedented. They're calling for an on immediate halt, the escalation and the protection of civilians, and saying that, you know, look, the saudi abby as reminding everyone that they have been given repeated of the dangers of the situation, is explosive.

Egypt, which borders gaza and has had a long standing role as a mediator in these conflicts, says its forer minister has already been working the phones to bring an end to the escalation, but that might be in vain given the gravity of the situation and the current israel government. That would be expected to respond pretty fast and hard to this. And we've also seen no response immediately from iran, but the iranian back leganez hezbollah roup um congratulated the palestinians for their quote, c factions. Therefore, this Operation and the turkish president type are on called for restraint from all parties. So yeah, there's been a cautious approach so far, thinking a lot of statements.

And how do you imagine the stunning images from this morning in israel's response are going to be received in the region?

I mean, this is major news. I mean, all the arabic satellite channels are Carrying the just insane, stunning images out of israel. A lot of these are social media videos.

We don't know how many of these are real, but or have been verified. But you know, every time a war weeks OPPO e israel, gaza images are horrifying here in the region. You know, look, comments as saying that this is in response to thousands of extremist settings violating the sanctify of the oxide mosque of the most, the holy us.

Sites for muslims and for juice. But we also saw ramadan, you know, the a oxon osca Brown pers inside being beaten. And so it's been very sensitive year.

It's been a very unsettling time. And we seen rates in the west bank and close to two hundred and fifty palestine ans killed this year by israeli forces. So emotions on the street have been high, and any conflict could just make that .

even you know more. What is another war mean for israel's new allies in the region like the ae and and for that matter, the by administration efforts to put together some kind of deal that would see saud arabia has to abide ze with israel.

when we talked about popular sentiment. But politically, among the political leadership in the region, particular the gulf in egypt, haas is not popular. The U.

A E, egypt's sadi ababa, they see the hamster and islamist offshoot of the muslim brotherhood group, and they see IT as as as a faction and entity that's backed by iran. So I think statements will be cautious, but the reality of arabia has a much bigger agenda with Normal nizing ties with israel. That goes far beyond anything that could just be another cycle. Unfortunately, these these wars do happen every two to three years and has become almost inevitable. I think, given the saudi statement said, like this is a result of the continued occupation and they are calling for a credible priest process that can lead to a two state solution, I don't think this will derail the talks, but is certainly .

complicates an already very difficult negotiation.

Thank you. I.

And now another conflict, the one in ukraine, U. S. Money and weapons are mounting to tens of billions of dollars, have flowed there since last year.

That assistance is running out fast and turn oil among house republicans need uncertain future for a president.

Bindings request for more in P, R. National security correspondent greg mirai has been looking into how this could affect the war, and he's here now. Thank you for joining us. greg.

Hey, good to be here. issue.

So greg, let's start with the money. How much money has the us. Spent on ukraine since the full scale russian invasion began last year?

It's now more than seventy five billion dollars. More than half of this is military assistance. The rest is gone for humAnitary arian aid and defund the ukrainy government.

So I can do things like pay government salaries. Now this is far more money than the U. S.

Is given to any other country over this period. By comparison, roughly ten times with the us. Has provided to israel the second leading recipient of us assistance. But another way to look at IT is how critical this has been for ukraine's war effort and how much damage ukrainy is inflicted on the russian military. Here's Jason crow, a democratic congressman from colorado.

We have spent about five percent of our annual defense budget, and with that money, the ukrainians have destroyed over sixty percent of the russian military. Now that's not a good bargain for american taxpayer. I don't know what is also.

he notes, there's not a single U. S. Soldier who's actually fighting in ukraine as of today.

Can the biden administration still send assistance to ukraine?

Yes, I can. But it's a rapidly dowling figures. It's about five billion dollars left that's been authorized but hasn't been 那 john corby， the spokesman for the national security council, was pressed on how much longer the U. S. Could keep sending aid.

But sixty eight more weeks of decent weather here, uh, of good fighting weather. And we want to make sure that the ukrainians can succeed. But absent additional funding by congress, actually, you run into a hard stop fair.

So what is president by then asking for?

He wants another twenty four billion dollars. And little over half of this would be for military that's designed to last until the end of the year and realistically shouldn't be a problem. With some recent votes in congress that showed about seventy percent of health members and close to eighty senators.

I still support a to ukraine. E, yet the squabble in my house republicans has prevented in the action, and it's not clear how one I will take to get this resolved. Now, congressman co.

Is a former army ranger who served in iraq in afghanistan, these weary of another open ended conflict overseas, even if that doesn't involve s troops. But he thinks the battle in ukraine is too important for the U. S. To stand on the sidelines.

Well, I can. I war weary last twenty years could not be classified as a success by most measures. And yet i'm a huge support of ukraine.

What about ur pean support for ukraine? Like is IT doing enough? Could IT do more if USA staff well.

you know, asia, european countries, collectively have provided more overall assistance, military, economic, humAnitarian. Then the U. S.

Actually, this includes countries like poland, which is taken in millions of ukraine, inie and refugees. But it's important to remember this has been a genuine multi national effort with the U. S.

Playing the lead role. Defense secretary loyd Austin convinced more than fifty countries on a near monthly basis to coordinate all this assistance for ukraine. Uh, one country may provide tanks, another ammunition.

A third may say that IT has some spare fighter jets, but if U. S. Assistance is interpreted, IT could become harder to keep all these countries working in concert.

So how are ukraine in russia? Viewing these developments .

have been a lot of time in ukraine in the last year. In the big ukrainian fear, you hear time and again is that western aid will dry up the ukraine ans are always saying, we're not asking the west to come and fight. We're just asking for weapons so we can fight the russians.

And when IT comes to russia, there's a widespread view that russian leader latte mir putin believes he can outlast ukraine in a war attrition. He thinks the west will tire of eating ukraine, and ukraine will get worn down, and events will eventually turn in russia's s. favor.

Now we haven't seen that yet, but the current term oil in the U. S. Congress shows how just such a scenario could play .

out that in pr. s. greg? Mary, thank you, greg.

Sure thing. I.

And that's at first for saturday, october seven, twenty twenty three .

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