KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: The bodies of dozens of unidentified people were buried on Wednesday in a mass grave at a cemetery in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Wrapped in blue tarpaulin, the bodies were lowered on stretchers, some of them stained with blood, into a sandy pit that was gradually enlarged by a digger. Some were the size of children.
“As these martyrs had no one to say goodbye to, we dug a mass grave to bury them. They are unknown martyrs,” Bassem Dababesh of the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry told AFP.
The remains, which bore only numbers, had come from the Indonesian and Al-Shifa hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, according to members of the committee at the burial site.
The Indonesian hospital on the edge of the Jabalia refugee camp, which had been hit by Israeli air strikes, was partly evacuated on Monday, said Ashraf Al-Qudra, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
“There were bodies everywhere. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it,” said Umm Mohammed Al-Ran, a woman evacuated from the Indonesian hospital toward Rafah in the south.
“Wounded people died in front of us as they bled out,” she told AFP.
“The stench of death was everywhere in the hospital. The wounded were crying out for painkillers, but the doctors didn’t have any to give them.”
She held up her phone to show a video she had taken. It showed worms crawling from the infected wound on a patient’s leg.
It’s a similar situation at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the territory’s largest.
On November 14, that hospital’s director Mohammad Abu Salmiya said 179 bodies had been buried in a mass grave inside the complex.
Among them were seven premature babies who died because there was no electricity to power their incubators.
The bodies that arrived at Khan Yunis on Wednesday would have been “detained” by Israel before being released after representations from “third countries and the United Nations,” according to the emergency committee at the religious affairs ministry.
Khalil Siam, director of a transport company, told AFP that the bodies had arrived the night before, and it was not known “if they’re decomposing or not.”
AFP contacted the Israeli military and several UN agencies operating in Gaza, but no reply had been received late Wednesday.
There are thousands of dead in the Gaza Strip, and the question of burials has shocked many Gazans.
Since the war began, war dead have been buried hastily in private plots of land and even a football field, when cemeteries are full or inaccessible because of the fighting.
A week after the war began, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said there was a shortage of body bags.
“Every story coming out of Gaza is about survival, despair and loss,” he said.
The war began on October 7 after Hamas launched the worst attack in Israel’s history that left around 1,200 people dead, most of them civilians, according to the Israeli government.
Hamas also seized 240 hostages.
Israel launched a major bombing campaign and then a ground offensive in Gaza which, according to the Hamas government, has killed 14,100 people, thousands of them children.
Thousands of dead are also believed to be buried under the rubble.
In Gaza, dozens of unidentified bodies buried in ‘mass grave’
https://arab.news/jeb73
In Gaza, dozens of unidentified bodies buried in ‘mass grave’
- Since the war began, war dead have been buried hastily in private plots of land and even a football field, when cemeteries are full or inaccessible because of the fighting
Israeli strike on Gaza hospital kills wounded journalist, Hamas says
The strike, which Hamas said happened at dawn, ended a brief pause in fighting to allow the release of a US-Israeli hostage.
The military said in a Telegram post that “significant Hamas terrorists” had been “operating from within a command and control center” at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city.
“The compound was used by the terrorists to plan and execute terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF (army) troops,” it said.
In a statement, Hamas said the strike killed a journalist and wounded a number of civilians.
“The Israeli army bombed the surgeries building at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis at dawn on Tuesday, killing journalist Hassan Aslih,” said Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
Aslih, head of the Alam24 news outlet, had been at the hospital for treatment after being wounded in a strike on April 7, he told AFP.
Two other journalists, Ahmed Mansur and Hilmi Al-Faqaawi, were killed in that bombing, according to reports at the time.
The Israeli military said the April strike had targeted Aslih, alleging he operated for Hamas “under the guise of a journalist.”
It said Aslih had “infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the murderous massacre carried out by the Hamas terrorist organization” on October 7, 2023.
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the strike.
It said Aslih had worked for international media outlets until 2023, when the pro-Israeli watchdog HonestReporting published a photo of him being kissed by then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
The CPJ says at least 178 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Israel and Lebanon since the start of the war.
Israel had paused military operations in Gaza to allow for the release of Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old US-Israeli soldier who had been held hostage since October 2023.
Alexander, believed to be the last surviving hostage with US citizenship, was released Monday ahead of a Middle East visit by US President Donald Trump.
Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18 after a two-month truce in its war against Hamas, which was triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack.
The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday at least 2,749 people have been killed since Israel resumed its campaign, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,862.
‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town
TAWILA: Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge — the only food her family have had for days.
“No organization has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Idris told AFP, her voice brittle with fatigue.
Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.
“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometer (37-mile) desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.
The few aid organizations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.
“Humanitarian organizations were simply not prepared to receive this scale of displacement,” said Thibault Fendler, who works with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tawila.
Since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and rival paramilitaries, the town has received waves of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere.
“We are working to scale up our capacities, but the needs are simply enormous,” Fendler told AFP.
Tawila, nestled between mountains and seasonal farmland, was once a quiet rural outpost.
But the two-year war pitting the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has buffeted the already-scarred Darfur region.
Entire displacement camps have been besieged and razed, while the armed group that controls the area around Tawila — a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdelwahid Al-Nur — has vowed to protect those fleeing the violence.
The town’s schools, mosques and markets are crammed with people sleeping side by side, on concrete floors, under trees or in huts of straw and plastic, exposed to temperatures that can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Beyond the town center, a patchwork of makeshift shelters fans out across the horizon.
Inside, families keep what little they managed to bring with them: worn bags, cooking pots or clothes folded carefully on mats laid over dry earth.
Some weary children play silently in the dirt — many malnourished, some dressed in oversized hand-me-downs, others in the clothes they had fled in.
Nearby, dozens of women line up with empty jerrycans, waiting by a lone water tank.
More queues snake around soup kitchens, with women carrying pots in hand and children on their hips, hoping to get a meal before they run out.
“When we arrived, the thirst had nearly killed us, we had nothing,” said Hawaa Hassan Mohamed, a mother who fled from North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher.
“People shared what little they had,” she told AFP.
The war has created the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine already declared in several parts of North Darfur state where the UN estimates that more than a million people are on the brink of starvation.
The RSF and the army continue to battle for control of territory, particularly in and around El-Fasher — the last army stronghold in Darfur — crippling humanitarian access.
“It takes a long time to get aid here. The roads are full of checkpoints. Some are completely cut off,” Noah Taylor, head of operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP from Tawila.
“There are so many gaps in every sector, from food to shelter to sanitation. The financial and in-kind resources we have are simply not sufficient,” he said.
Organizations are scrambling to get food, clean water and health assistance to desperate families, but Taylor said these efforts are just scratching the surface.
“We are not there yet in terms of what people need,” he said.
“We’re doing what we can, but the global response has not kept pace with the scale of this disaster.”
Leni Kinzli, head of communications at the World Food Programme, said that a one-time delivery of “1,600 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies” for 335,000 people had reached Tawila last month.
But it took two weeks to reach the town, navigating multiple checkpoints and unsafe roads, she told AFP.
Aid workers warn that without urgent funding and secure access, these deliveries will even be harder, especially with the rainy season approaching.
Fierce clashes erupt in Libyan capital
- Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries
- Residents urged to stay indoors
TRIPOLI: Violent clashes between rival armed groups erupted Monday night in the Libyan capital Tripoli, prompting the interior ministry to urge residents to stay indoors.
Heavy arms fire and explosions were heard in several areas of the capital from 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT), AFP journalists in the city said.
Officials released no information on potential casualties or injuries.
The interior ministry of the national unity government in Tripoli in a statement urged “all citizens to stay at home for their safety.”
Local media said clashes broke out in the southern suburbs between armed groups from Tripoli and rivals from Misrata, a major port city 200 km (125 miles) east of the capital.
Libya is struggling to recover from years of unrest following a 2011 revolt that led to the fall of the late dictator Muammar Qaddafi.
It is currently divided between a UN-recognized government in Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, controlled by the Haftar family.
Despite relative calm in recent years, clashes periodically break out between armed groups vying for territory.
In August 2023, fighting between two powerful armed groups in Tripoli left 55 dead.
Several districts of the capital and its suburbs announced that schools would be closed on Tuesday until further notice.
Earlier Monday, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and the United States Embassy in Tripoli called for calm.
They urged “all parties to de-escalate” and “refrain from any provocation, to resolve disputes through dialogue.”
Israel’s West Bank land registration is a tool for annexation, NGO says
RAMALLAH: An Israeli rights group has denounced a government decision to launch extensive land registration for parts of the occupied West Bank, saying it could help advance annexation of the Palestinian territory.
“It is a tool for annexation,” said Yonatan Mizrachi of the Settlement Watch project at Israeli nongovernmental organization Peace Now.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has no comprehensive land registry, with some areas unregistered or residents holding deeds from before the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli security Cabinet on Sunday decided to initiate a land registration process in the West Bank’s Area C, which covers more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli control.
Though the process would likely take “years” according to Mizrachi, he said that Palestinians in Area C could lose land if Israeli authorities do not accept their claim to it.
This might lead to “a massive land theft,” Peace Now said, adding that the process could result “in the transfer of ownership of the vast majority of Area C to the (Israeli) state.”
“The Palestinians will have no practical way to realize their ownership rights,” the anti-settlement group said.
Some Israeli ministers have advocated the annexation of the West Bank, home to around 3 million Palestinians as well as some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right politician who lives in a settlement, has said that 2025 would be the year Israel extends its sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.
To Mizrachi, the government’s decision was primarily “about ... the places where they want to expand settlements,” including in areas considered state land.
He mentioned remarks by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who praised the move in the official statement announcing it.
Katz said that launching land registration “is a revolutionary decision that brings justice to Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name that the Israeli government uses to refer to the West Bank.
The process will lead to the “strengthening, establishment and expansion” of settlements, Katz was quoted as saying.
He also said it would block “attempts to seize land” by the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank but not Area C.
Mohammed Abu Al-Rob, director of the Palestinian Authority’s communication center, said that the decision was “a dangerous escalation of Israel’s illegal policies aimed at entrenching its occupation and advancing de facto annexation.”
Area C is “an inseparable part” of the rest of the Palestinian territories, he said.
Abu Al-Rob called on the international community to “reject this unlawful decision and to take immediate, concrete action to thwart its implementation.”
Syria warns Kurds against delay in integrating into state
- Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani emphasizes that ‘our goal is not dominance but unification’
ANKARA: Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani has warned that postponing the implementation of an agreement between Syria’s new administration and Kurdish-led forces in the northeast would “prolong the chaos” in the country.
His remarks came as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, announced it was disbanding, an announcement the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which control swaths of north and northeast Syria, have not yet commented on.
The PKK’s move is “a pivotal moment” for regional stability, Al-Shaibani told a news conference in Ankara with his Turkish and Jordanian counterparts.
Syria is “implementing the national accord with the Syrian Democratic Forces and incorporating all areas under central state control,” he said.
In March, Syria’s President Ahmad Al-Sharaa and SDF chief Mazloum Abdi signed an agreement to integrate the civil and military institutions of the autonomous Kurdish administration in the northeast into the national government.
The deal, agreed three months after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, is expected to be implemented by the end of the year.
“This process is complicated and sensitive, but it is necessary,” Al-Shaibani said, adding that “delaying the implementation of this agreement will prolong the chaos, open the door to foreign interference, and fuel separatist tendencies.”
“Our goal is not dominance but unification,” he said.
“We are keen on implementing this agreement, and we hope that the other side is seriously committed to implementing this agreement,” he added.
The SDF, the Kurdish administration’s de facto army, controls most of the oil and gas fields in Syria. The force maintains that it is independent from the PKK, but it is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Ankara views as a PKK offshoot.
After years of marginalization and repression under the Assad dynasty, the Kurds took advantage of the government forces’ withdrawal during the civil war, which erupted in 2011, to establish a semi-autonomous administration.
With US backing, the SDF played a key role in the fight against Daesh, which was defeated in its last Syrian territorial stronghold in 2019.
Al-Shaibani emphasized that “the unity of Syrian territory is non-negotiable, as Syria is an indivisible, unified state, sovereign over its land and will remain so.”
“The rights of Kurdish citizens will be preserved and guaranteed on an equal footing with the rest of the Syrian people,” he added.
Syria’s Kurds have criticized a temporary constitutional declaration announced in March and said the new government failed to reflect the country’s diversity.
In February, Abdi said an initial call for the PKK to lay down weapons and disband did not concern his forces.
