GAZA CITY: Palestinians resumed their fiery protests at Gaza's border with Israel on Friday as a U.N. human rights body criticized Israel for the "disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force" that killed at least 59 Palestinians earlier this week.
Friday's Gaza protests — the eighth in as many weeks — drew Israeli gunfire and tear gas, with at least 23 people wounded, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Israel's military said they were transferred to Jordan for medical treatment.
The leader of Gaza's ruling movement Hamas attended the fresh protest held on the first Friday of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, taking part in prayers along the border before sunset and then participating in a demonstration.
Ismail Haniyeh gave the V-for-victory salute and waved the Palestinian flag a few hundred metres (yards) from the fence along the border with Israel.
The Israeli army said around 1,000 "rioters" gathered in five spots along the border.
Speaking at a Gaza City mosque earlier on Friday, Haniyeh denied a deal had been made to end seven weeks of border protests, vowing they would continue.
"The marches will not stop until the siege is lifted completely from the Gaza Strip."
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced late Thursday at the start of Ramadan that his country's border with Gaza would be open throughout the holy month of fasting to "alleviate the suffering" of Gazans.
Palestinian media have speculated a deal has been struck for Egypt, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, to open the border in exchange for Hamas ending the protests.
Haniyeh welcomed Sisi's decision but denied any such agreement.
"There is a rumour that Hamas made a deal with Egypt to end the marches. This is baseless," he said.
Organizers of the protests say they are meant in large part to break the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt and to pressure Israel to ease its restrictions. Since the demonstrations began March 30, more than 110 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,500 wounded by live fire, according to the Health Ministry. Palestinian officials say most of the casualties have been unarmed protesters. One Israeli soldier has been wounded.
The weekly protests peaked Monday when about 40,000 Gazans descended on the border. As in previous demonstrations, the protesters burned tires and hurled firebombs and stones toward Israeli troops, and tried to attack the border fence. Israeli snipers opened fire in response, killing 59 Palestinians and wounding hundreds in the deadliest day of cross-border violence in Gaza since a 2014 war between Israel and Hamas.
Friday's protests began later than in recent weeks and drew a smaller turnout, apparently due to the Ramadan fast. Most of participants gathered in tent camps a safe distance from the border, but dozens still got close to the fence.
In Geneva, the U.N. Human Rights Council voted to set up a commission of inquiry to look into the Israeli actions.
Meeting in a special session, the council voted 29-2 with 14 abstentions to back a resolution that also condemned "the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinian civilians."
The "independent, international commission of inquiry" mandated by the council will be asked to produce a final report in March 2019.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein backed calls for an international inquiry and questioned Israel's assertion that its security forces tried to minimize casualties.
"There is little evidence of any attempt to minimize casualties on Monday," he said.
Some demonstrators threw firebombs, used slingshots, flew burning kites into Israel to set fields ablaze and tried to use wire-cutters on the border fences, but "these actions alone do not appear to constitute the imminent threat to life or deadly injury which could justify the use of lethal force," said Zeid, a Jordanian prince.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the resolution, which was put forward by countries including Pakistan, as "nothing new under the sun."
"An organization that calls itself the Human Rights Council once again proves that it is hypocritical and biased and that its purpose is to harm Israel and support terror. But mostly it has proven that it is irrelevant," Netanyahu said.
"Israel completely rejects the resolution that was adopted by an automatic anti-Israel majority whose results were known from the start," he said. "Israel will continue to defend its citizens and soldiers as it has the right to defend itself."
Israeli ambassador Aviva Raz Schechter said "the unfortunate outcome of Monday's riots can only be attributed to Hamas' cynical exploitation of its own population in a violent campaign against Israel."
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in a statement that "the U.N.'s so-called Human Rights Council has decided to launch an investigation into a democratic country's legitimate defense of its own border against terrorist attacks. It is another shameful day for human rights."
In an apparent attempt to ease the crisis, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi announced the opening of the Rafah crossing on Thursday night for what would be the longest uninterrupted period since 2013. He wrote on his official Twitter account that it would "alleviate the burdens of the brothers in the Gaza Strip."
Egypt and Israel have imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007, heavily restricting movement in and out of the densely populated and impoverished territory.
Over the years, Egypt has opened the crossing for a few days every two to three months, the only way for most Gazans to reach the outside world.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the opening was the result of talks Sunday in Cairo with Egyptian officials.
"We are witnessing the outcome through steps Egypt has taken, and we hope they continue, develop and increase," he said at a Friday prayer sermon in Gaza City. But he added that the weekly Hamas-led protests will continue.
The crossing has been open since May 12, so el-Sissi's announcement was technically an extension. Egyptian authorities said 510 people crossed Wednesday, with most going from Gaza to Egypt. On Thursday, 541 people passed into Gaza along with dozens of trucks carrying cement, steel, power engines and medical and food aid from the Red Crescent, the officials said.
Last month, Hamas' Interior Ministry said more than 20,000 people were on waiting lists to exit. An average of 500 travelers a day moved through the border this week, mostly leaving.
The Rafah crossing has only been open sporadically since the 2013 ouster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, a high-ranking member of Hamas' parent group, The Muslim Brotherhood. While Egypt has been struggling with an Islamic insurgency for decades, militant attacks increased after Morsi's ouster, leading Egyptian authorities to tighten movement to and from Gaza.
Travel through Rafah has mostly been restricted to humanitarian cases, with priority given to medical patients, students admitted to outside universities and Palestinians with residency permits in third countries about to expire. Palestinian-Egyptians and dual nationals are also eligible to apply.
Travelers moved slowly toward the border Friday. A bus arrived about every hour with people whose names appeared on lists provided by Hamas officials.
Hamas forcibly wrested control of Gaza in 2007 after winning legislative elections, triggering the Israeli-Egyptian blockade that has severely restricted the movement of most of Gaza's 2 million inhabitants.
After more than a decade of Hamas rule, conditions for most inhabitants are dire. Unemployment is over 40 percent, tap water is undrinkable and Gazans receive only a few hours of electricity a day. Hospitals face constant shortages from the blockade, and parts of the territory are still waiting to be rebuilt after a 2014 war with Israel.
The measures were meant to create a buffer zone as part of Egypt's efforts to purge northeastern Sinai of Islamic militants following the 2014 bombings by an Islamic State group affiliate that killed dozens of soldiers.
Egypt imposed a state of emergency and curfew in northeastern Sinai, including Rafah, which means travelers arriving at the crossing after 7 p.m. must wait until the next morning to leave.
Gaza border protests resume as UN calls for inquiry
Gaza border protests resume as UN calls for inquiry
- Hundreds joined by Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at protest on Gaza-Israel border on the first Friday of the month of Ramadan
- Haniyeh said the marches will not stop until the siege is lifted completely from the Gaza Strip
Gaza rescuers say Israeli air strikes kill 25
- The overall death toll in the Gaza war has reached 51,201
- Israel resumed its aerial and ground assault on Gaza on March 18
GAZA:: Gaza’s civil defense agency reported that Israeli air strikes since dawn on Sunday have killed at least 25 people across the Gaza Strip, including women and children.
Israel resumed its aerial and ground assault on Gaza on March 18, reigniting fighting after a two-month ceasefire that had paused more than 15 months of war in the coastal territory.
“Since dawn today, the occupation’s air strikes have killed 20 people and injured dozens more, including children and women across the Gaza Strip,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defense agency told AFP.
In a separate statement later, the agency reported that five people were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians in eastern Rafah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday vowed to continue the war and bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza without yielding to Hamas’s demands.
“We are at a critical stage of the campaign, and at this point, we need patience and determination to win,” Netanyahu said in a statement, rejecting calls from the militants to end the war and withdraw troops from Gaza.
Since Israel resumed its offensive last month, at least 1,827 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The overall death toll in the Gaza war has reached 51,201, the majority of them civilians, according to the ministry, figures the UN considers reliable.
The war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
During that attack, Palestinian militants abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held hostage in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.
Syrian Airlines announces resumption of direct flights to the UAE
- Syrian Airlines said that it is working to expand its network as quickly as possible
DUBAI: Syrian Airlines on Sunday officially announced the resumption of direct flights between Syria and the UAE, the Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
The initial phase will include exceptional flights to Dubai and Sharjah.
According to a statement on the airline’s official Facebook page, four weekly flights will operate between Damascus and Dubai on Saturdays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with plans to expand to daily services soon.
Flights to Sharjah will run on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays, with efforts underway to increase them to daily flights.
Damascus-Abu Dhabi routes will operate on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Syrian Airlines said that it is working to expand its network as quickly as possible, pending the necessary approvals from relevant authorities.
Travelers are encouraged to contact the airline’s offices inside or outside Syria for more information.
Yemen’s Houthis say two killed in US stikes on Sanaa area
- The Iran-backed group reported two deaths and 11 injured in the “US aggression on Sanaa”
SANAA: At least two people were killed in overnight US strikes in and around Yemen’s capital Sanaa, media controlled by the Houthi militants reported Sunday, in the latest such air raid.
The Iran-backed group’s Al-Masirah channel, citing the militants’ health ministry, reported two deaths and 11 injured in the “US aggression on Sanaa, the capital, and the governorate.”
The channel earlier said one person was killed in an air strike on the governorate’s Bani Matar area, where a deadly US raid was reported a week ago.
Beyond Sanaa, the Houthis said Sunday that air strikes also hit Yemen’s Marib and Amran provinces.
Earlier this week, the group said that US strikes on the fuel port of Ras Issa killed at least 80 people and wounded 150 in the deadliest attack of Washington’s 15-month campaign against the Houthis.
The US military has hammered the Yemeni Houthis with near-daily air strikes for the past month in a bid to stamp out their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Claiming solidarity with Palestinians, the rebels began attacking the key maritime route and Israeli territory after the Gaza war began in October 2023.
The US strikes began in January 2024 but have multiplied under President Donald Trump, starting with an offensive that killed 53 people on March 15.
Houthi attacks on the Red Sea shipping route, which normally carries about 12 percent of global trade, have forced many companies into costly detours around the tip of southern Africa.
Lebanese authorities detain people they say were planning rockets attacks on Israel
- Aoun said Sunday that disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah group was a “delicate” matter
- The army said on Sunday that its forces had confiscated rockets and launchers in south Lebanon’s Sidon-Zahrani
BEIRUT: Lebanese authorities have detained several people who they say were planning to launch rockets into Israel and confiscated the weapons they were intending to use, the military said Sunday.
The army said in a statement that the arrests are linked to other detentions announced earlier this week. It added that as military intelligence was investigating that case they got information that a new rocket attack was being planned.
The army said troops raided an apartment near the southern port city of Sidon and confiscated some of the rockets and the launchers and “detained several people who were involved in the operation.” it said the detainees were referred to judicial authorities.
On Sunday, Lebanon's health ministry said an "Israeli enemy strike on a vehicle in Kaouthariyet al-Saiyad", located inland between the southern cities of Sidon and Tyre, killed "one person" and wounded two others.
It later said a separate "Israeli enemy" strike "on a house in Hula", near the border, killed one person.
The Israeli military did not immediately release any official statement on the strikes.
Disarming Hezbollah
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said Sunday that disarming the Iran-backed Hezbollah group was a “delicate” matter whose implementation required the right circumstances, warning that forcing the issue could lead the country to ruin.
Restricting the bearing of arms to the state is “a sensitive, delicate issue that is fundamental to preserving civil peace” and requires due “consideration and responsibility,” Aoun told reporters.
“We will implement” a state monopoly on bearing arms “but we have to wait for the circumstances” to allow this, he said, adding that “nobody is speaking to me about timing or pressure.”
“Any controversial domestic issue in Lebanon can only be approached through conciliatory, non-confrontational dialogue and communication. If not, we will lead Lebanon to ruin,” he added.
Hezbollah, long a dominant force in Lebanon, was left weakened by more than a year of hostilities with Israel, sparked by the Gaza war, including an Israeli ground incursion and two months of heavy bombardment that decimated the group’s leadership.
On Friday, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said the group “will not let anyone disarm” it, as Washington presses Beirut to compel the movement to hand over its weapons.
Qassem said his group was ready for dialogue on a “defense strategy,” “but not under the pressure of occupation” by Israel.
Israel has continued to conduct regular strikes in Lebanon despite a November 27 ceasefire and still holds five positions in south Lebanon that it deems “strategic.”
'I thought I'd died.' How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria
- Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8
- Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard
IDLIB: Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.
The trio suddenly noticed a visible mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance, but Khalil, 21, thought they had abandoned him.
“I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded,” Khalil told The Associated Press. “At first, I thought I’d died. I didn’t think I would survive this.”
Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, while his right leg was blown off from above the knee in the second. He used his shirt to tourniquet the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed for his aid.
“There were days I didn’t want to live anymore,” Khalil said, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth four months after the incident. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.
While the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of Bashar Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Contamination from land mines and explosive remnants has killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured another 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization which coordinates safety for aid workers.
Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies, and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which only became accessible after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
‘It will take ages to clear them all’
Prior to Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war also frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.
“Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods, and land will be injured and killed,” said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW.
Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions like rural Idlib.
“We don’t even have an exact number,” said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria’s defense ministry. “It will take ages to clear them all.”
Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarrat Al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible anti-personnel mine nestled in dry soil.
“This one can take off a leg,” he said. “We have to detonate it manually.”
Psychological trauma and broader harm
Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farm workers, Jomaa said. “Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers,” he said.
Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the previous government was ousted. But their work comes at a steep cost.
“We’ve had 15 to 20 (deminers) lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job,” he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried or improvised devices, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are still visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.
Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property, and reduced access to essential services, HRW says.
The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS) to streamline and expand demining efforts.
Syria’s military under the Assad government laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.
‘Every day someone is dying’
Standing before his brother’s grave, Salah Sweid holds up a photo on his phone of Mohammad, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. “My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going,” Salah said. “But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’”
Mohammad was 39 when he died on Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition during the uprising, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.
He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwest Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated. After Assad’s ouster, mines littered his village in rural Idlib. He had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.
For every mine cleared by people like Mohammad, many more remain.
In a nearby village, Jalal Al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.
He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, “but there’s nothing so far,” he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. “As you can see, I can’t walk.” The cost of a prosthetic limb is in excess of $3,000 and far beyond his means.
