����ֱ��

LONDON: Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney has for the first time described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide,” becoming the second UK national leader to do so after Northern Ireland’s Michelle O’Neill, it was reported on Saturday.

Speaking at an Edinburgh Fringe event that was repeatedly interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, Swinney told reporters: “It’s quite clear that there is a genocide in Palestine, it can’t be disputed. I have seen reports of terrible atrocities which have the character of being genocide. I’ve expressed that and obviously it’s not reached all those individuals, but that’s my feeling.”

Swinney made his remarks following a disrupted appearance at the Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh, where protesters stood up holding letters spelling “GENOCIDE” and chanted slogans including “Call it genocide.”

Security staff prevented demonstrators from approaching the stage as interruptions became increasingly forceful throughout the event.

His comments, , come amid mounting pro-Palestinian pressure from within the governing Scottish National Party, including from elected representatives in both Holyrood and Westminster.

Stephen Flynn, leader of the SNP’s nine MPs in the House of Commons in Westminster, recently urged the UK government to recognize the situation in Gaza as a genocide during a parliamentary exchange.

Israel has consistently denied committing genocide, maintaining that its military operations in Gaza are acts of self-defense in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks led by Hamas that left almost 1,200 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, and more than 250 kidnapped.

About 50 of those hostages remain in Gaza, with only 20 believed to be alive.

More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent military action by Israel against Hamas, with a further 1,350 queuing for aid killed by Israeli troops since May, according to UN data published this week.

On Friday, at least 91 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in Gaza ahead of a visit by US envoy Steve Witkoff to Israel.

Two leading Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, have also accused Israel of committing genocide, asserting that western allies have a legal and moral duty to act.

Swinney’s statement follows similar language used last month by Northern Ireland First Minister O’Neill, who said: “It is inhumanity, it is genocide, it is wrong.” She also described Israel’s actions as “state terrorism.”

The Scottish government has previously faced criticism over public money being used to support apprenticeships at firms involved in weapons manufacturing, though it does not directly fund the production of munitions.

Defending that policy, Swinney said Scottish Enterprise, the government’s commercial investment body, applies “the strictest assessments imaginable about the purpose and the use of public expenditure in companies who may be related to defense industries.”

Pressed on funding staff who could end up building munitions, he added: “We are trying to enable companies to diversify their activities, that’s the purpose. That’s why the due diligence checks are applied and they are applied unreservedly.”

KYIV: Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies said on Saturday they had uncovered a major graft scheme that procured military drones and signal jamming systems at inflated prices, two days after the agencies’ independence was restored following major protests.

The independence of Ukraine’s anti-graft investigators and prosecutors, NABU and SAPO, was reinstated by parliament on Thursday after a move to take it away resulted in the country’s biggest demonstrations since Russia’s invasion in 2022.

In a statement published by both agencies on social media, NABU and SAPO said they had caught a sitting lawmaker, two local officials and an unspecified number of national guard personnel taking bribes. None of them were identified in the statement.

“The essence of the scheme was to conclude state contracts with supplier companies at deliberately inflated prices,” it said, adding that the offenders had received kickbacks of up to 30 percent of a contract’s cost. Four people had been arrested.

“There can only be zero tolerance for corruption, clear teamwork to expose corruption and, as a result, a just sentence,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.

Zelensky, who has far-reaching wartime presidential powers and still enjoys broad approval among Ukrainians, was forced into a rare political about-face when his attempt to bring NABU and SAPO under the control of his prosecutor-general sparked the first nationwide protests of the war.

Zelensky subsequently said that he had heard the people’s anger, and submitted a bill restoring the agencies’ former independence, which was voted through by parliament on Thursday.

Ukraine’s European allies praised the move, having voiced concerns about the original stripping of the agencies’ status.

Top European officials had told Zelensky that Ukraine was jeopardizing its bid for European Union membership by curbing the powers of its anti-graft authorities.

“It is important that anti-corruption institutions operate independently, and the law adopted on Thursday guarantees them every opportunity for a real fight against corruption,” Zelensky wrote on Saturday after meeting the heads of the agencies, who briefed him on the latest investigation.