US President Donald Trump said on Friday that the United States can end the war with Iran quickly, but he wondered whether Washington should seek to end it quickly or let the conflict gradually fade away.
“We can end it very quickly,” Trump added, according to Reuters. The question is: Do we want to resolve it or let it fade away?
The US President stressed: “We can seize all the oil in Iran.”
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard threatened to target American forces in the region if they continued to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, warning against expanding the confrontation.
3 workers were killed and 5 others were injured, two of them seriously, in a methane gas explosion that occurred on Friday in a coal mine belonging to a private company in the Kilimli area of the city of Zonguldak in the western Black Sea in northern Turkey.
Teams from the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management (AFAD) and medical and firefighting teams were sent to the site, and the workers with serious injuries and burns were transferred to hospitals in the capital, Ankara, after receiving initial treatment at the Zonguldak Ataturk Governmental Hospital.
The governor of Zonguldak, Osman Haci Bektasoglu, said that 8 workers were in the mine at the time of the explosion, and 3 of the injured were in good condition, while two seriously injured workers were placed on artificial respirators.
Justice Minister Akin Gorlik announced, through his account in “X,” that the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office in Zonguldak had begun an investigation into the explosion, and assigned the Deputy Chief Public Prosecutor and two public prosecutors to investigate the incident.
The city of Zonguldak, known for its mining activity, has witnessed a series of accidents over the past years in which dozens of miners were killed, due to explosions resulting from the accumulation of methane gas, most of which were the result of the negligence of the companies operating the mines.
The city of Manisa (western Turkey) also witnessed one of the largest disasters in 2014, where 301 workers lost their lives as a result of suffocation by carbon dioxide gas, and dozens were injured. Then 5 workers were killed in a collapse in the roof of the same mine, and two others were injured in early October of this year.
During the past few months, miners in Manisa and Zonguldam carried out marches to the capital, Ankara, and went on hunger strikes due to the companies’ delay in paying their salaries for many months.
The leader of the Turkish opposition, head of the “New Party,” Ozgur Ozil, who attaches great importance to the rights of miners, and who is also from the city of Manisa, confirmed that his party “will continue the struggle for the miners to obtain their rights.”
In a statement on his X account, Ozil offered his condolences to the families of the workers who lost their lives, saying: “We have lost many lives in the mines, and many families have been affected. We want to get rid of being a ‘country of easy death’, where avoidable accidents and work-related deaths, which have been surpassed by developed countries, still occur.”
He pledged to continue the fight for a Türkiye in which miners' safety is guaranteed and their hard work is fairly rewarded.
On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a “complete closure” on the occupied West Bank after a shooting there that injured five people, a few days before the general elections on October 27.
Netanyahu said, according to a statement issued by his office, that Israel prevented a “large-scale attack” in the West Bank, explaining that he ordered the imposition of an immediate closure on the city of Hebron, which is close to the site of the attack, in addition to a “complete closure” of the West Bank.
Netanyahu also ordered his Likud party to cancel all its electoral activities scheduled for Friday morning, following the shooting in the West Bank. Likud reported, in a statement, that Netanyahu “issued instructions to cancel all political activities that the party intended to organize this morning, following the serious attack at the Judea Junction.”
In a related context, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called on Friday for the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority after the shooting in the West Bank. The far-right minister said in a statement: “We should not wait for another October 7 to happen (in the West Bank). There the next war will break out,” he added, “We must take action before it is too late.” The Palestinian Authority must be dismantled and disarmed, and its terrorist infrastructure must be completely eliminated.”
