RAMALLAH: The Israeli army killed a Palestinian and arrested 30 in the West Bank on Thursday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Ghazi Shehab, 66, succumbed to injuries in the evening after being shot earlier in the day when Israeli forces stormed Nur Shams camp near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
It brought the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army and settlers to 141 — 26 in Gaza — since the beginning of the year.
More than 200 armed soldiers stormed the Nur Shams camp from all sides. They vandalized and destroyed contents and furniture in several houses and smashed 10 vehicles in a four-hour operation.
Taha Irani, head of the camp services council, said that such an incursion was not rare, adding that forces had recently intensified campaigns against the camp, coinciding with the forthcoming 75th anniversary of the Nakba, which is also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe.
The Israeli army also launched a massive arrest campaign in the West Bank at dawn on Thursday, arresting 30 citizens.
An Israeli settler attacked Palestinian vehicles with stones on the same day near the town of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron, while a 19-year-old woman sustained bruises after being hit by a car driven by a settler near Al-Aroub refugee camp.
Ghassan Daglas, an official in charge of settlement affairs in the northern West Bank, said settler bulldozers had been working since Thursday morning to destroy the land between the towns of Asira Al-Qibliya and Urif, which is planted with olive trees.
Meanwhile, Israeli authorities have announced the suspension of work on extending a water facility for agriculture in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of depriving citizens in those areas of essential services as part of a policy aimed at displacing residents from their land to help the settlement expansion.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was taking advantage of a “double standard” of the international community “to cover up his crimes against the Palestinian people.”
It said global silence on the Israeli aggression and the biased position of some countries served as a “green light” for Israel to continue its actions against Palestinians.
It added that Netanyahu had bragged about using military force against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, while countries ignored the crimes committed by Israel in killing Palestinian civilians, including women and children, “in the sight of the international community.”
It criticized countries that justified his crimes under the pretext of “self-defense,” while lamenting the interpretation of international humanitarian law “according to the identity of the executioner and the victim.”
Palestinians have accused Israel of enforcing apartheid in the West Bank by erecting 650 iron gates to separate Palestinian villages, as well as demolishing buildings and depriving refugees of their right to work.
Ibrahim Melhem, a spokesman for the Palestinian government, told Arab News that the Israeli army was waging an open war in all areas, towns and camps in the West Bank in an attempt by Israel’s right-wing leadership to win the conflict.
He said: “The Israeli army now considers every Palestinian a target, either by killing, wounding, or arresting, because of the terrorist mentality that shapes the behavior of those killers.”
No letup in deadly Israeli raids against Palestinians
https://arab.news/wvf3x
No letup in deadly Israeli raids against Palestinians
- The Palestinian Health Ministry said Ghazi Shehab, 66, succumbed to injuries in the evening after being shot earlier in the day when Israeli forces stormed Nur Shams camp near Tulkarm
- It brought the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army and settlers to 141 — 26 in Gaza — since the beginning of the year
24 killed as pro-Ankara factions clash with Syria’s Kurdish-led SDF
- The latest bout of fighting was sparked by attacks by the Turkiye-backed fighters on two towns south of Manbij, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
- Swathes of northern Syria are controlled by the US-backed SDF, which spearheaded the fight that helped oust the Daesh group from its last territory in Syria in 2019
BEIRUT: At least 24 fighters, mostly from Turkish-backed groups, were killed in clashes with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the northern Manbij district, a war monitor said on Thursday.
The violence killed 23 Turkish-backed fighters and one member of the SDF-affiliated Manbij Military Council, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Britain-based war monitor said the latest bout of fighting was sparked by attacks by the Ankara-backed fighters on two towns south of Manbij.
Swathes of northern Syria are controlled by a Kurdish-led administration whose de facto army, the US-backed SDF, spearheaded the fight that helped oust the Daesh group from its last territory in Syria in 2019.
Turkiye accuses the main component of the SDF, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), of being affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which both Washington and Ankara blacklist as a terrorist group.
Fighting has raged around the Arab-majority city of Manbij, controlled by the Manbij Military Council, a group of local fighters operating under the SDF.
According to the Observatory, “clashes continued south and east of Manbij, while Turkish forces bombarded the area with drones and heavy artillery.”
The SDF said it repelled attacks by Turkiye-backed groups south and east of Manbij.
“This morning, with the support of five Turkish drones, tanks and modern armored vehicles, the mercenary groups launched violent attacks” on several villages in the Manbij area, the SDF said in a statement.
“Our fighters succeeded in repelling all the attacks, killing dozens of mercenaries and destroying six armored vehicles, including a tank.”
Turkiye has mounted multiple operations against the SDF since 2016, and Ankara-backed groups have captured several Kurdish-held towns in northern Syria in recent weeks.
The fighting has continued since rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad on December 8.
King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation
- Donation will fund healthcare, protect children, provide emergency cash
LONDON: King Charles III has helped pay for urgent humanitarian aid needed in Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.
Charles made an undisclosed donation to International Rescue Committee UK to fund healthcare, protect children and provide emergency cash.
The king is the patron of the charity, which says Syria is facing profound humanitarian needs despite the defeat of the Assad regime by opposition forces.
Khusbu Patel, IRC UK’s acting executive director, said: “His Majesty’s contribution underscores his deep commitment to addressing urgent global challenges, and helping people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.
“We are immensely grateful to His Majesty The King for his donation supporting our work in Syria. This assistance will enable us to provide essential services, including healthcare, child protection and emergency cash, to those people most in need.”
The charity said it was scaling-up its efforts in northern Syria to evaluate the urgent needs of communities. Towns and villages have become accessible to aid groups for the first time in years now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the country.
The charity said Syria ranks fourth on its emergency watchlist for 2025 and a recent assessment found that people in the northeast of the country were facing unsafe childbirth conditions, cold-related illnesses, water contamination, and shortages of medical supplies.
Charles last month said he would be “praying for Syria” as he attended a church service in London attended by various faiths.
The king met Syrian nun Sister Annie Demerjian at the event, who described the situation in her homeland after the regime had been swept from power.
Israel strikes Syrian army positions near Aleppo: monitor
- Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes targeted defense and research facilities
BEIRUT: Israel bombed Syrian army positions south of Aleppo on Thursday, the latest such strikes since the overthrow of longtime strongman Bashar Assad, a war monitor and local residents said.
Residents reported hearing huge explosions in the area, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes targeted defense and research facilities.
The observatory said that “at least seven massive explosions were heard, resulting from an Israeli airstrike on defense factories... south of Aleppo.”
There was no immediate information on whether the strikes caused any casualties.
Syrian state TV also reported about an Israeli strike in Aleppo without providing details.
A resident of the Al-Safira area told AFP on condition of anonymity: “They hit defense factories, five strikes... The strikes were very strong. It made the ground shake, doors and windows opened — the strongest strikes I ever heard... It turned the night into day.”
Since opposition forces overthrew Assad in early December, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes on Syrian military assets, saying they are aimed at preventing military weapons from falling into hostile hands.
After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM’s three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.
The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.
It was the Ocalan’s first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.
The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the “right to hope” in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.
Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye’s concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.
During Saturday’s meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had “the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.”
Onder and Buldan then “began a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties” and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.
Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links
SULAIMANIYAH: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organizations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party, activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as “political.”
The four organizations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO center for press freedoms which organized a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticize the decision.
PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents.
Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, a terrorist organization.
Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency toward PKK activities.
But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.
Col. Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups.
