Israeli troops raid Gaza as Arab ministers condemn bombardment

Palestinians search for survivors and the bodies in the rubble of buildings destroyed during Israeli bombardment, in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 26, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 27 October 2023
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Israeli troops raid Gaza as Arab ministers condemn bombardment

  • Western leaders fear that ground invasion with high death toll among Palestinian civilians could spark wider war
  • Israel said Hamas is holding 224 hostages

GAZA: Israeli ground forces carried out a big raid into Gaza overnight against Hamas targets amid growing anger in the Arab world over Israel’s relentless bombardment of the besieged Palestinian territory.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said Israeli troops were still preparing for a full ground invasion, while the US and other countries urged Israel to delay such action, fearing it could ignite hostilities on other Middle East fronts.
The UN agency providing aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza said it may have to shut down operations very soon if no fuel reaches the Hamas-ruled territory amid a desperate need for shelter, water, food and medical services.
Israel has for nearly three weeks bombarded the densely populated Gaza Strip following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli communities. Israel says Hamas killed some 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostage.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday that 7,028 Palestinians had been killed in the retaliatory air strikes, including 2,913 children.
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden cast doubt on the Palestinian casualty figures, which an Israeli military spokesman said could not be trusted.
The military has not provided any assessment of its own and Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra rejected the statements questioning the figures.
The ministry on Thursday published a document which it said contains the names of all the victims identified and their ID numbers.
Israeli army radio said the military had overnight staged its biggest incursion into northern Gaza of the current war. Armored vehicles crossed the fortified border and blew up buildings, a military video showed.
“Tanks and infantry struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts,” it said.
Palestinians said Israeli air strikes pounded the territory again overnight and people in central Gaza reported intensive tank shelling all night.
ARAB CRITICISM
With no sign of a let-up in Gaza, the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates condemned what they called the targeting of civilians and violations of international law.
Their joint statement said Israel’s right to self-defense did not justify breaking the law and neglecting Palestinians’ rights. The Arab ministers condemned forced displacement and collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.
They also criticized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian areas and called for more efforts to implement a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict — an idea at the heart of long-moribund peacemaking.
“The absence of a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has led to repeated acts of violence and suffering for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples and the peoples of the region,” it said.
Support for Israel came from European governments.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Friday will send a clear signal of backing for Israel.
“We can be certain that the Israeli army will respect the rules that arise from international law in everything it does,” Scholz said.
But in words reflecting divisions within the bloc, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned Israel against starving Gaza.
Israel had a right to take action and to prevent future attacks, he said.
“But that is never an excuse for blocking a whole region, for blocking humanitarian aid. It cannot be an excuse to starve a population.”
 


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HOSTAGES
Concern also grew over the fate of more than 200 hostages seized by Hamas in the Oct. 7 assault and taken to Gaza.
A spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said on Thursday about 50 captives had been killed in Gaza due to Israeli strikes. He gave no further details and Reuters was unable to verify the numbers.
Israel says there are 224 hostages, whose presence complicates any Israeli ground invasion. This includes a number of foreign passport holders. Hamas has freed four captives since Friday.
A Qatari negotiator told Sky News that a pause in fighting could help get more hostages released in coming days.
Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al Khulaifi said: “It’s a very, very difficult negotiation ... With the bombing continuing every day, our task becomes more difficult. But despite that we remain hopeful.”
MORE DEATHS
In Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, an Israeli air strike hit a house, killing a mother, her three daughters and a baby boy, whose father held his body in hospital.
“Did he kill? Did he wound someone? Did he capture someone? They were innocent children inside their house,” he said.
The director of the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, Nahed Abu Taaema, said the bodies of 77 people killed in airstrikes had been brought in overnight, most of them women and children, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa radio station reported.
Around midday on Thursday, Nasser hospital officials said, Israel bombed an area not far from an UNRWA shelter for displaced people, killing at least 18 people.
Israel said its forces had struck a Hamas missile launch post in the Khan Younis area that was next to a mosque and kindergarten. It was unclear whether the two sides were referring to the same incident.
Many Palestinians are sheltering in Khan Younis hospitals, schools, homes and refugee camps and on the street after Israel warned them to leave their homes in the north.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it urgently needed fuel to maintain life-saving humanitarian operations in Gaza. Israel has refused to let in fuel with aid shipments, saying it could be seized by Hamas.
More than 613,000 people made homeless by the war are sheltering in 150 UNRWA facilities across the shattered territory.
Humanitarian supplies are critically low but world powers failed at the United Nations to agree on how to call for a lull to the fighting to deliver significant amounts of aid.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, speaking at the UN, said that if Israel’s offensive against Hamas did not stop, the United States will “not be spared from this fire.”


‘We must help them’: Morocco students get peers back in school

Updated 28 June 2025
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‘We must help them’: Morocco students get peers back in school

  • “We must help them come back,” said Rifai, who goes to middle school in Tiflet
  • Moroccan authorities offer dropouts a chance back in with support from fellow students

TIFLET, Morocco: Moroccan student Said Rifai, 15, is on a mission to help his peers pursue education in a country where an estimated 270,000 children drop out of school each year.

“We must help them come back,” said Rifai, who goes to middle school in Tiflet, a town east of the capital Rabat, and has already helped several of his friends back to school as part of a national youth-led effort.

To tackle the problem, which educators and officials warn exacerbates social inequalities and drives poverty, Moroccan authorities offer dropouts a chance back in with support from fellow students.

One of Rifai’s classmates, Doha El Ghazouli, who is also 15, said that together they had helped several friends return to school “before they abandoned their future.”

Huda Enebcha, 16, told AFP how she and her friend Ghazouli managed to convince a neighbor to resume her studies.

“We helped her review the most difficult subjects, and we showed her videos of some school activities,” said Enebcha.

“She finally agreed after a lot of effort.”

To ease the transition back into the education system, the “second chance school” scheme offers some teenagers vocational training alongside remedial classes, with an emphasis on giving former dropouts agency and choice.

Hssain Oujour, who leads the national program, said 70 percent of the teenagers enrolled in it have taken up vocational training that could help them enter the labor force, with another 20 percent returning to the traditional school system.

Across Morocco, a country of 37 million people, classrooms are often overcrowded, and the public education system is generally viewed as inferior to private institutions, which charge fees that can be prohibitive for many families.

Around 250 million children worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and in Morocco, nearly one in four inhabitants — around nine million people — are illiterate, according to the UN children’s agency UNICEF.

Dropout rates tend to be higher in rural and impoverished areas, said Said Tamouh, the principal of the Jawhara School in Tiflet that the students interviewed by AFP attend.

An NGO-run “second chance school” nearby has some 110 students, who can sign up for art classes, hairdressing training or classical Arabic language courses.

Sanae Sami, 17, who took up a make-up class, said she was “truly” given another shot at pursuing education.

“When you leave school, there’s nothing for you,” she said.

“That’s why I decided to come back, especially thanks to the teachers at this center.”

Hafida El Fakir, who heads the Salam association which runs the school, said that “support and guidance” were key in helping students “succeed and go far.”

Amine Othmane, a student who had re-entered the system last year with encouragement from his friends, is now helping others.

To convince dropouts, he said, “they first have to regret leaving and want to return.”

Back in school, 18-year-old Aya Benzaki now hopes to achieve her dream of graduating with a diploma, and Jihane Errafii, 17, said she was grateful for the friends who had supported her journey.

“I just needed someone to lend me a hand.”


Israeli strike on south Lebanon kills one: ministry

Updated 28 June 2025
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Israeli strike on south Lebanon kills one: ministry

  • The health ministry said that an “Israeli enemy” drone strike on a car in Kunin, south Lebanon, killed one man in a preliminary toll
  • The attack comes a day after Israel killed a woman and wounded 25 other people

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on southern Lebanon killed one person on Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said, the latest attack despite a ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah.

In a statement, the health ministry said that an “Israeli enemy” drone strike on a car in Kunin, south Lebanon, killed one man in a preliminary toll.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the incident.

The attack comes a day after Israel killed a woman and wounded 25 other people in strikes across the country’s south.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that the woman was killed in an Israeli drone strike on an apartment in the city of Nabatiyeh.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee said on social media that the army “did not target any civilian building.”

The Friday attacks included a “wave of successive heavy strikes” in the Nabatiyeh region which injured seven people, according to the NNA.

The Israeli military said it “identified rehabilitation attempts made by Hezbollah beforehand and struck terror infrastructure sites in the area.”

Adraee said the civilian building “was hit by a rocket that was inside the (fire and defense array) site and launched and exploded as a result of the strike.”

Israel has repeatedly bombed its northern neighbor despite the November ceasefire that aimed to end over a year of hostilities with Hezbollah.

Under the ceasefire deal, Hezbollah was to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the region.

Israel was required to fully withdraw its troops from the country but has kept them in five locations in south Lebanon that it deems strategic.


Six Israelis detained for attacking soldiers in West Bank: military

Updated 28 June 2025
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Six Israelis detained for attacking soldiers in West Bank: military

JERUSALEM: Six Israelis were detained for assaulting soldiers near a town in the occupied West Bank where clashes with Palestinians erupted earlier this week, the military said on Saturday.
Soldiers went to disperse a gathering of Israelis near the central West Bank town of Kafr Malik overnight Friday to Saturday, the military said in a statement.
“Upon the arrival of the security forces, dozens of Israeli civilians hurled stones toward them and physically and verbally assaulted the soldiers, including the Battalion Commander,” it said.
“In addition, the civilians vandalized and damaged security forces’ vehicles, and attempted to ram the security forces,” it added.
“The security forces dispersed the gathering, and six Israeli civilians were apprehended and transferred to the Israel Police for further processing.”
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military declined to say whether those arrested were residents of Israeli settlements in the territory, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967.
The military referred the query to the Israeli police, which was not available to comment.
In a separate incident on Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry said three men died in Kafr Malik in an attack by settlers.
AFP journalists saw several hundred people gather for the three men’s funerals on Thursday.
The Palestinian foreign ministry alleged “official complicity” by Israel in Wednesday’s attack, in a message on X.
“Israeli occupation forces prevented ambulance crews from reaching the wounded and obstructed civil defense teams from entering the village for several hours, allowing fires ignited by the settlers to spread and destroy dozens of homes,” it said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request by AFP to comment on those claims.
A military spokesman told AFP its forces intervened on Wednesday after “dozens of Israeli civilians set fire to property in Kafr Malik” and a “confrontation” involving “mutual rock-hurling” broke out between Israelis and Palestinians.
Referring to action by the Palestinians, the spokesman said: “Several terrorists fired from within Kafr Malik and hurled rocks at the forces, who opened fire toward the source of fire and the rock-hurlers.”
Five Israelis were arrested, the military added.


Driven to starvation, Sudanese people eat weeds and plants to survive as war rages

Updated 28 June 2025
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Driven to starvation, Sudanese people eat weeds and plants to survive as war rages

  • Sudan plunged into war in April 2023 when tensions between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary the RSF escalated to fighting and spread across the country, killing over 20,000 people and pushing many to the brink of famine

CAIRO: With Sudan in the grips of war and millions struggling to find enough to eat, many are turning to weeds and wild plants to quiet their pangs of hunger. They boil the plants in water with salt because, simply, there is nothing else.
Grateful for the lifeline it offered, a 60-year-old retired school teacher penned a love poem about a plant called Khadija Koro. It was “a balm for us that spread through the spaces of fear,” he wrote, and kept him and many others from starving.
A.H, who spoke on the condition his full name not be used, because he feared retribution from the warring parties for speaking to the press, is one of 24.6 million people in Sudan facing acute food insecurity — nearly half the population, according to the I ntegrated Food Security Phase Classification. Aid workers say the war spiked market prices, limited aid delivery, and shrunk agricultural lands in a country that was once a breadbasket of the world.
Sudan plunged into war in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and its rival paramilitary the Rapid Support Forces escalated to fighting in the capital Khartoum and spread across the country, killing over 20,000 people, displacing nearly 13 million people, and pushing many to the brink of famine in what aid workers deemed the world’s largest hunger crisis.
Food insecurity is especially bad in areas in the Kordofan region, the Nuba Mountains, and Darfur, where El Fasher and Zamzam camp are inaccessible to the Norwegian Refugee Council, said Mathilde Vu, an aid worker with the group based in Port Sudan. Some people survive on just one meal a day, which is mainly millet porridge. In North Darfur, some people even sucked on coal to ease their hunger.
On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Sudanese military leader Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and asked him for a week-long ceasefire in El Fasher to allow aid delivery. Burhan agreed to that request, according to an army statement, but it’s unknown whether the RSF would agree to that truce.
A.H. said aid distribution often provided slight relief. His wife in children live in Obeid and also struggle to secure enough food due to high prices in the market.
His poem continued: “You were a world that sends love into the barren time. You were a woman woven from threads of the sun. You were the sandalwood and the jasmine and a revelation of green, glowing and longing.”
Fighting restricted travel, worsening food insecurity
Sudanese agricultural minister Abu Bakr Al-Bashari told Al-Hadath news channel in April that there are no indicators of famine in the country, but there is shortage of food supplies in areas controlled by the paramilitary forces, known as RSF.
However, Leni Kinzli, World Food Programme Sudan spokesperson, said 17 areas in Gezeira, most of the Darfur region, and Khartoum, including Jebel Aulia are at risk of famine. Each month, over 4 million people receive assistance from the group, including 1.7 million in areas facing famine or at risk, Kinzli said.
The state is suffering from two conflicts: one between the Rapid Support Forces and the army, and another with the People’s Liberation Movement-North, who are fighting against the army and have ties with the RSF, making it nearly impossible to access food, clean water, or medicine.
He can’t travel to Obeid in North Kordofan to be with his family, as the Rapid Support Forces blocked roads. Violence and looting have made travel unsafe, forcing residents to stay in their neighborhoods, limiting their access to food, aid workers said.
A.H. is supposed to get a retirement pension from the government, but the process is slow, so he doesn’t have a steady income. He can only transfer around $35 weekly to his family out of temporary training jobs, which he says is not enough.
Hassan, another South Kordofan resident in Kadugli said that the state has turned into a “large prison for innocent citizens” due to the lack of food, water, shelter, income, and primary health services caused by the RSF siege.
International and grassroots organizations in the area where he lives were banned by the local government, according to Hassan, who asked to be identified only by his first name in fear of retribution for speaking publicly while being based in an area often engulfed with fighting.
So residents ate the plants out of desperation.
“You would groan to give life an antidote when darkness appeared to us through the window of fear.,” A.H. wrote in his poem. “You were the light, and when our tears filled up our in the eyes, you were the nectar.
Food affordability
Vu warned that food affordability is another ongoing challenge as prices rise in the markets. A physical cash shortage prompted the Norwegian Refugee Council to replace cash assistance with vouchers. Meanwhile, authorities monopolize some markets and essential foods such as corn, wheat flour, sugar and salt are only sold through security approvals, according to Hassan.
Meanwhile, in southwest Sudan, residents of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, rely on growing crops, but agricultural lands are shrinking due to fighting and lack of farming resources.
Hawaa Hussein, a woman who has been displaced in El Serif camp since 2004, told the AP that they benefit from the rainy season but they’re lacking essential farming resources such as seeds and tractors to grow beans, peanuts, sesame, wheat, and weika — dried powdered okra.
Hussein, a grandmother living with eight family members, said her family receives a food parcel every two months, containing lentils, salt, oil, and biscuits. Sometimes she buys items from the market with the help of community leaders.
“There are many families in the camp, mine alone has five children, and so aid is not enough for everyone … you also can’t eat while your neighbor is hungry and in need,” she said.
El Serif camp is sheltering nearly 49,000 displaced people, the camp’s civic leader Abdalrahman Idris told the AP. Since the war began in 2023, the camp has taken in over 5,000 new arrivals, with a recent surge coming from the greater Khartoum region, which is the Sudanese military said it took full control of in May.
“The food that reaches the camp makes up only 5 percent of the total need. Some people need jobs and income. People now only eat two meals, and some people can’t feed their children,” he said.
In North Darfur, south of El Fasher, lies Zamzam camp, one of the worst areas struck by famine and recent escalating violence. An aid worker with the Emergency Response Rooms previously based in the camp who asked not to be identified in fear of retribution for speaking with the press, told the AP that the recent wave of violence killed some and left others homeless.
Barely anyone was able to afford food from the market as a pound of sugar costs 20,000 Sudanese pounds ($33) and a soap bar 10,000 Sudanese pounds ($17).
The recent attacks in Zamzam worsened the humanitarian situation and he had to flee to a safer area. Some elderly men, pregnant women, and children have died of starvation and the lack of medical treatment, according to an aid worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he’s fearful of retribution for speaking publicly while living in an area controlled by one of the warring parties. He didn’t provide the exact number of those deaths.
He said the situation in Zamzam camp is dire— “as if people were on death row.”
Yet A.H. finished his poem with hope:
“When people clashed and death filled the city squares” A.H. wrote “you, Koro, were a symbol of life and a title of loyalty.”


At least 60 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as ceasefire prospects inch closer

Updated 28 June 2025
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At least 60 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as ceasefire prospects inch closer

  • More than 20 bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, according to health officials
  • A strike midday Saturday killed 11 people on a street in eastern Gaza City

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: At least 60 people were killed across Gaza by Israeli strikes, health workers said Saturday, as Palestinians face a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and ceasefire prospects inch closer.

The strikes began late Friday and continued into Saturday morning, among others killing 12 people near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, and eight more living in apartments, according to staff at Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were brought.

More than 20 bodies were taken to Nasser Hospital, according to health officials. A strike midday Saturday killed 11 people on a street in eastern Gaza City, and their bodies were taken to Al-Ahli Hospital.

The strikes come as US President Donald Trump says there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office Friday, the president said, “we’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.”

An official with knowledge of the situation told The Associated Press that Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer will arrive in Washington next week for talks on Gaza’s ceasefire, Iran and other subjects.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Talks have been on again off again since Israel broke the latest ceasefire in March, continuing its military campaign in Gaza and furthering the Strip’s dire humanitarian crisis. Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, fewer than half of them believed to still be alive.

They were part of some 250 hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, sparking the 21-month-long war.

The war has killed over 56,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It says more than half of the dead were women and children.

There is hope among hostage families that Trump’s involvement in securing the recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran might exert more pressure for a deal in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is riding a wave of public support for the Iran war and its achievements, and he could feel he has more space to move toward ending the war in Gaza, something his far-right governing partners oppose.

Hamas has repeatedly said it is prepared to free all the hostages in exchange for an end to the war in Gaza. Netanyahu says he will only end the war once Hamas is disarmed and exiled, something the group has rejected.

Meanwhile hungry Palestinians are enduring a catastrophic situation in Gaza. After blocking all food for 2 1/2 months, Israel has allowed only a trickle of supplies into the territory since mid-May.

Efforts by the United Nations to distribute the food have been plagued by armed gangs looting trucks and by crowds of desperate people offloading supplies from convoys.

Palestinians have also been shot and wounded while on their way to get food at newly formed aid sites, run by the American and Israeli backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, according to Gaza’s health officials and witnesses.

Palestinian witnesses say Israeli troops have opened fire at crowds on the roads heading toward the sites. Israel’s military said it was investigating incidents in which civilians had been harmed while approaching the sites.