GAZA: Children poke at rubble with their feet after an air strike and pick up household items from the debris. Families queue for sacks of flour distributed by UN workers. Volunteers cook lentil soup to warm up displaced people drenched by rain.
Life was grinding on across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, in the seventh week of the war between Israel and Hamas, with a new normal defined by destruction, displacement and the daily hardship of looking for food and trying to stay dry.
In Khan Younis, the town in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of residents of the north have fled to escape intensive Israeli bombardment, neighbors said an overnight strike on an apartment had killed seven people, mostly children.
“Flesh is on the walls and in the streets here. What’s the guilt of those children?” said Younis Abd Al-Hady, a local resident who was among several surveying the wreckage.
Around him, children were picking at the rubble strewn on the street below the targeted building, which was still standing but with one floor almost entirely gone, its only remaining fragments of walls blackened.
Israel says its strikes are aimed at Hamas infrastructure, based on intelligence. It blames Hamas for civilian casualties, saying the Islamist group it has vowed to destroy uses them as human shields.
But that argument held no sway with Al-Hady, who raged at Israel, which he blamed for the deaths and misery.
“We are all targeted, wherever we go we are targeted. Child, man, elderly, all are targeted. In Gaza City or in any other place they are after us. They are asking people to leave and then strike them on the road, hundreds of people,” he said.
The war was triggered by Hamas fighters rampaging through southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israelis and abducting 240, according to Israel, which has responded with a military assault that has killed some 13,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled enclave.
In Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip and in Rafah in the south, Tuesday morning brought tragically familiar scenes of adults and children wounded in bombardments being rushed into overcrowded hospitals.
FLOUR AND LENTILS
In Rafah, an aid truck full of sacks of flour was being unloaded by UN workers in distinctive blue vests. People were carrying them away on bicycles, donkey carts or on their backs.
Life-saving for hundreds of thousands of Gazans, the food aid coming through the Rafah border crossing is nevertheless insufficient to feed everyone adequately.
“We are 13 people. These three or four bags (of flour) they’re giving us are not enough for us. We used to take eight, 10 bags. This is not nearly enough,” said Taghreed Jaber, a woman displaced from Beit Hanoun in the north of the strip.
Jaber said her family were living in tents and were unable to stay dry when it rained. She said the children were too cold sleeping on the floor, and they needed blankets. Before the arrival of the flour, they had been eating only rice for days.
“Flour can’t be found anywhere. I came from the north 20 days ago and haven’t been able to find any flour. I bought some rice and we’re surviving on rice,” she said.
Back in Khan Younis, a group of volunteers had banded together to cook large pots of lentil soup for displaced people in one of the tent cities that have sprung up, with donors providing money or ingredients to make the project possible.
Men, women and children lined up with empty bowls and plastic food containers, waiting for their share of the fragrant soup simmering in three large metal pots, as men stirred it with a ladle and a long plank of wood.
“Lentil soup used to be an ordinary dish that no one cared about, but for us now it’s better than lamb meat. We are thankful that the lentil soup is now available to us, thanks to these volunteers,” said displaced woman Mounira Al-Masry.
Hussein Abu Ramadan, also displaced, was organizing the cooking of the soup, which was taking place on small fires built on damp sandy ground, with tarpaulin tents all around.
“Lentil soup is a traditional dish for Palestinians,” he said.
“When it rained no one was safe in their tent. The rain and cold have reached everyone, especially those with children. Because of this, volunteers started to think about serving lentil soup, the winter dish that can warm people.”
While the soup was enough to bring a measure of comfort, even children could not forget the desperate situation.
“It’s not a life that we are living now. No life, no food, no drink, nothing. Even the rain is pouring on us. We can’t sleep because of it,” said Maram Al-Tarabeesh, a young girl with braided hair.
Air strikes and lentil soup: life grinds on in wartime Gaza
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Air strikes and lentil soup: life grinds on in wartime Gaza
- Gazans face aftermath of latest air strikes, volunteers cook lentil soup to warm up displaced people drenched by rain
- Men, women and children lined up with empty bowls and plastic food containers, waiting for their share of the fragrant soup
Hamas official says group cannot be eliminated, does not confirm Sinwar’s death
“Hamas is a liberation movement led by people looking for freedom and dignity, and this cannot be eliminated,” Basem Naim, senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP.
In a statement, he listed several Hamas leaders killed in the past, and said their deaths had boosted the group’s popularity.
“It seems that Israel believes that killing our leaders means the end of our movement and the struggle of the Palestinian people,” Naim said.
“Hamas each time became stronger and more popular, and these leaders became an icon for future generations to continue the journey toward a free Palestine.”
What we know about the killing of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar
- Sinwar met his end at the hands of a routine patrol on Wednesday
Jerusalem: The Israeli military announced the death of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the October 7 attack, after a group of soldiers killed him in a surprise firefight in southern Gaza’s Rafah.
His death represents a massive blow to the Palestinian militant movement that has waged a war with Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip for more than a year now.
Here is what we know about the killing of Israel’s most wanted man.
According to the Israeli military, Sinwar met his end at the hands of a routine patrol on Wednesday.
It said a group of soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) was moving through the city of Rafah when it came across three Palestinian militants.
Israeli media and military officials said there was no prior intelligence pointing to Sinwar’s presence in the area.
“Sinwar hid in places that our forces have explored over a long period of time,” military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a briefing Thursday.
“The forces identified three terrorists who were going from home to home on the run,” Hagari said.
As the soldiers chased them, Sinwar split from the other two, public broadcaster Kan reported.
A tank fired at a building in which two of the militants hid, while Sinwar took cover in another house, it said.
“Sinwar ran away alone into one of the buildings and our forces scanned the area with a drone,” Hagari said.
Drone footage released by the military showed Sinwar covered in dust sitting in an armchair staring down a drone as the device entered the house devastated by strikes.
The grainy footage showed Sinwar alone with one hand severely injured and his head covered in a traditional scarf, throwing a stick at the approaching drone during his final moments.
“We identified him as a terrorist inside a building and we shot into the building and we entered to scan the area. We found him with a gun and 40 thousand shekels ($10,750),” said Hagari.
Unverified images circulating online showed Israeli soldiers circled around the mangled corpse of a man resembling Sinwar who appeared to have suffered a severe head wound.
The man was wearing a chunky watch and surrounded by rubble.
The military conducted immediate DNA testing along with dental examinations and other forensic enquiries that helped confirm Sinwar’s identity.
Later on Thursday, Sinwar’s body was brought to a laboratory in Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The initial findings described Sinwar’s physical condition as “good even though he had spent a long time in tunnels,” Kan reported.
Sinwar had not been seen in public since the war erupted with the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The Israeli military and media regularly claimed he was hiding deep in the warren of tunnels under Gaza, while images released by the army showed CCTV footage of a man exiting from a tunnel it claimed was Sinwar.
There were also reports that Sinwar had surrounded himself with several hostages who were seized by militants during the October 7 onslaught.
But when Sinwar was finally cornered and killed, there were no captives by his side.
“In the building where the terrorists were eliminated, there were no signs of the presence of hostages in the area,” a military statement said on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the killing of Sinwar and said his death could be the “beginning of the end” to the conflict.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant remained defiant in the wake of the killing, saying Israel would “pursue every terrorist and eliminate them” and bring back the hostages still held in Gaza.
Families of hostages, however, expressed concern over the fate of their loved ones as they called for a deal to secure their release.
At a Tel Aviv rally just hours after Sinwar’s death was announced, El-Sisil, 60, who gave only her first name, told AFP the killing presented a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for “a hostage deal to end the war.”
Hamas, meanwhile, has not confirmed its leader’s death.
Experts say it the group may bid its time before acknowledging his death, while his body remains with the Israeli military.
His killing so soon after the death of his predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, in July also begs the question of who might succeed him.
UNIFIL vows to stay in Lebanon despite several ‘deliberate’ Israeli attacks
- UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti: ‘We need to stay, they asked us to move’
GENEVA: A United Nations’ UNIFIL peacekeeping mission spokesperson on Friday said that the 10,000-strong mission would remain in Lebanon despite several direct attacks by Israeli forces in recent days which he described as deliberate.
“We need to stay, they asked us to move,” said UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti by video link from Beirut. “The devastation and destruction of many villages along the Blue Line, and even beyond, is shocking,” he said, referring to a UN-mapped line separating Lebanon from Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Asked about the downing of a drone near its ship off the Lebanese coast on Thursday, he said: “The drone was coming from the south but circling around the ship and getting very, very close, a few meters away from the ship.”
Israeli military kill two attackers crossing from Jordan’s Dead Sea area
- Two of them were killed after they opened fire on Israeli forces
DUBAI: The Israeli military identified what it called “a number of terrorists” crossing from Jordan into Israel south of the Dead Sea region and neutralized two of them after they opened fire on Israeli forces, the IDF said in a statement on Friday.
“IDF troops were dispatched to the scene and two terrorists who opened fire toward the troops were neutralized by the forces,” the military said.
“Additional forces have been dispatched to reinforce the area and are conducting searches on the ground and air for an additional terrorist who likely fled the scene.”
The latest incident follows a separate attack on Sept. 8 when a gunman from Jordan killed three Israeli civilians at the Allenby Bridge border crossing in the occupied West Bank before security forces shot him dead.
Anti-Israeli sentiment runs high in Jordan and the Allenby Bridge attack was the first of its kind along the border with Jordan since Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas carried out an assault on southern Israel, sparking the war in Gaza that has escalated throughout the region.
Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 and have close security ties.
Dozens of trucks cross daily from Jordan, with goods from Jordan and the Gulf that supply both the West Bank and Israeli markets.
Lebanon issues rare rebuke to Iran over ‘interference’
- Speaker of Iran’s parliament said Tehran was ready to negotiate with France on implementing a UN resolution concerning southern Lebanon
- Prime Minister Najib Mikati: ‘We are surprised by this position, which constitutes a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs’
BEIRU: Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister on Friday made a rare rebuke to Iran and said Tehran’s envoy should be summoned over reported comments by a top Iranian official that it would be ready to help “negotiate” to implement a UN resolution on Lebanon.
Criticism of Iran by top Lebanese officials is unusual, particularly given Tehran’s sponsorship of powerful Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which is currently locked in battles against Israeli troops along Lebanon’s southern border.
In an interview published in France’s Le Figaro on Thursday, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf was quoted as saying his country would be ready to “negotiate” with France to implement United Nations Resolution 1701.
That resolution, which ended the last round of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, calls for southern Lebanon to be free of any troops or weapons other than those of the Lebanese state.
Lebanese PM Najib Mikati said on Friday that he was “surprised” by the comments, calling them “a blatant interference in Lebanese affairs and an attempt to establish a rejected guardianship over Lebanon.”
Mikati said such a negotiation was the prerogative of the Lebanese state, and asked Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib to summon the Chargé d’Affaires of the Iranian embassy in Beirut over Ghalibaf’s comments.
