GAZA: Israeli warplanes struck parts of the Gaza Strip in relentless bombardment Saturday, hitting some of the dwindling bits of land it had told Palestinians to evacuate to in the territory’s south.
The strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, despite its wide support. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining.
“Attacks from air, land and sea are intense, continuous and widespread,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the council before the vote. Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival.”
Gaza was at a “breaking point” with the humanitarian support system at risk of collapse, and Guterres said he feared “the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region.”
Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving 2.3 million Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory 25 miles (40 kilometers) long by some 7 miles (11 kilometers) wide.
With the war now in its third month, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,400, the majority women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory, whose counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received the bodies of a total of 133 people from Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said midday Saturday.
Israel holds the Hamas militants responsible for civilian casualties, accusing them of using civilians as human shields, and says it has made considerable efforts with evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way. It says 93 Israeli soldiers have died in the ground offensive after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid in Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostage.
Hamas said Saturday it continued its rocket fire into Israel.
In Gaza, residents reported airstrikes and shelling in the north and south, including the city of Rafah near the Egyptian border — one area where the Israeli army had ordered civilians to evacuate to. In a colorful classroom there, knee-high children’s tables were strewn with rubble.
“We now live in the Gaza Strip and are governed by the American law of the jungle. America has killed human rights,” said Rafah resident Abu Yasser Al-Khatib. “The Palestinian people will not leave and do not want to leave.”
Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold on northern Gaza despite heavy resistance from Hamas. Tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain despite evacuation orders, six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in.
The Israeli military said Saturday its forces fought and killed Hamas militants and found weapons inside a school in Shijaia in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City. It said soldiers discovered a tunnel shaft in the same neighborhood where they found an elevator, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from an UN-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.
More than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed since the Dec. 1 collapse of a weeklong truce, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The truce saw hostages and Palestinian prisoners released, but more than 130 hostages are believed to remain in Gaza.
On Saturday, a kibbutz that came under attack on Oct. 7 said 25-year-old hostage Sahar Baruch had died in captivity. His captors said Baruch was killed during a failed rescue mission by Israeli forces Friday. The Israeli military only confirmed that two soldiers were seriously wounded in an attempted hostage rescue and that no hostages were freed.
With no further cease-fire in sight and a trickle of humanitarian aid reaching just a few parts of Gaza, residents reported severe food shortages.
“I am very hungry,” said Mustafa Al-Najjar, sheltering in a UN-run school in the devastated Jabaliya refugee camp in the north. “We are living on canned food and biscuits and this is not sufficient.”
While adults can cope with hunger, “it’s extremely difficult and painful when you see your young son or daughter crying because there are hungry and you are not able to do anything,” he said.
Despite growing international pressure, the Biden administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel. Officials have expressed misgivings in recent days about the civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis but have not pushed publicly for Israel to wind down the war.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza and signalling terror groups everywhere.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and elsewhere as frustration grew with the US stance. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said the US veto of the Security Council resolution showed Washington’s isolation.
“From now on, humanity won’t think the USA. supports the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech on Saturday.
Fidan and the Palestinian, Saudi, Qatari, Nigerian, Indonesian, Egyptian and Jordanian ministers met with Blinken to press for an end to the fighting, and the group was to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday.
Despite restrictions on demonstrations, protesters at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai called for a cease-fire.
Israel has expanded its blistering air and ground campaign into southern Gaza, sending tens of thousands fleeing.
“It was a night of heavy gunfire and shelling as every night,” Taha Abdel-Rahman, a resident of Khan Younis, said by phone Saturday.
Airstrikes were reported overnight in the Nuseirat refugee camp, where resident Omar Abu Moghazi said a family home was hit, causing casualties.
Israel has designated a narrow patch of barren coastline in the south, Muwasi, as a safe zone. But Palestinians there described desperately overcrowded conditions with scant shelter and poor hygiene facilities.
“We are living here in a tough cold. There are no bathrooms,” said Soad Qarmoot, who was forced to leave her home in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
“I am a cancer patient,” Qarmoot said as children huddled around a wood fire. “There is no mattress for me to sleep on. I am sleeping on the sand. It’s freezing.”
Imad Al-Talateeny, who fled Gaza City, said Muwasi lacks basic services to accommodate the growing number of displaced families.
“I lack everything to feel a human,” he said.
Israel bombards Gaza, including evacuation areas for Palestinians
https://arab.news/59qc4
Israel bombards Gaza, including evacuation areas for Palestinians
- Israeli strike on Khan Yunis killed six people, while five others died in separate attack in Rafah
- Hamas, Palestinian Authority condemned US veto as death toll in Gaza reaches 17,487
Hezbollah says rockets fired at Israeli town after attack kills Lebanon rescuers
- The Israeli military said Saturday that it had identified “projectiles” crossing from Lebanon and intercepting some of them, adding “a number of UAVs (drones) were identified crossing from Lebanese territory”
BEIRUT, Lebanon: Hezbollah announced retaliatory rocket fire targeting a town in northern Israel early Sunday, hours after Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli attack killed three civil defense personnel in the country’s south.
The Iran-backed Lebanese movement has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah said it had bombarded “Kiryat Shmona with a volley of Falaq rockets” early Sunday “in response to the enemy attacks... and particularly the attack” that killed the emergency workers in the Lebanese village of Froun.
Hezbollah usually says it targets military positions in northern Israel, while Israel has said it targets Hezbollah infrastructure and fighters in south and east Lebanon.
On Saturday, Lebanon’s health ministry said the “Israeli enemy targeting of a Lebanese civil defense team that was putting out fires sparked by the recent Israeli strikes in the village of Froun led to the martyrdom of three emergency responders.”
Two others were wounded, one of them critically, the ministry added.
Lebanon’s civil defense said in a statement that three of its employees were killed in “an Israeli strike that targeted a firefighting vehicle after they had finished a firefighting mission.”
The health ministry statement condemned the “blatant Israeli attack that targeted a team from an official body of the Lebanese state.”
Hezbollah ally the Amal movement said two of its members were among the dead in Saturday’s strike. It said they were killed “while carrying out their humanitarian and national duty defending Lebanon and the south.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack on the emergency workers, saying in a statement that “this new aggression against Lebanon is a blatant violation of international laws... and human values.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said the attack was “the second of its kind against an emergency team in less than 12 hours.”
Earlier Saturday, the ministry said two emergency personnel from the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee were wounded when “the Israeli enemy deliberately targeted” near a fire they were heading to extinguish in south Lebanon’s Qabrikha, causing their vehicle to swerve.
Several militant groups operate health centers and emergency response operations in south Lebanon.
Hezbollah had announced a string of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border on Saturday, including with Katyusha rockets and “explosives-laden drones,” some in a stated response to “Israeli enemy attacks” on south Lebanon.
The Israeli military said Saturday that it had identified “projectiles” crossing from Lebanon and intercepting some of them, adding “a number of UAVs (drones) were identified crossing from Lebanese territory.”
It said the air force struck “Hezbollah military infrastructure and a launcher” in the Qabrikha area, while its artillery targeted several other areas of south Lebanon.
The cross-border violence has killed some 614 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 138 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, authorities have announced the deaths of at least 24 soldiers and 26 civilians.
A statement from Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said that “due to the (Israeli) aggression,” 27 emergency personnel and health workers have been killed and 94 others wounded since October.
Two hospitals and 21 health centers have been “targeted,” while 32 fire or ambulance vehicles have been “put out of service or partially damaged,” the statement said, urging an end to the “repeated and deliberate targeting of health workers and civilians.”
Yemen’s Houthis say they shot down US MQ-9 drone over Marib governorate
- The drone shootdown comes as the Houthis launch attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, demanding Israel ends the war in Gaza
CAIRO: Yemen’s Houthis said they shot down a US MQ-9 drone that was conducting hostile acts over the airspace of Marib governorate, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesman Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
Israelis surge into the streets again in protest as the toll in Gaza grows
- Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Huge numbers of Israelis again poured into the streets to protest the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, while hospital and local authorities said Israeli air raids in the territory killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday.
The new protest came a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war following the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza, and after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against pressure for a ceasefire deal and declared that “no one will preach to me.”
“I think even those who were maybe reluctant to go out, who are not used to protest, who are sad but prefer to be in private space within their sadness, understood our voice must join together to one huge scream: Bring the hostages with a deal. Do not risk their lives,” said one protester in Tel Aviv, Efrat Machikawa, niece of hostage Gadi Moses.
Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a ceasefire deal, but Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.
Inside Gaza, health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak. The drive, launched after the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed the health care system. The third phase of vaccinations will be in the north.
Israel kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza’s urban refugee camp of Nuseirat, Al-Awda Hospital said it received the bodies of nine people killed in two air raids. One hit a residential building, killing four people and wounding at least 10, while five people were killed in a strike on a house in western Nuseirat.
Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said a woman and her two children were killed in a strike on a house in the nearby urban refugee camp of Bureij.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.
The war began when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people, primarily civilians. Hamas is believed to still be holding more than 100 hostages. Israeli authorities estimate about a third are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count. The ministry says more than 94,000 people have been wounded.
Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank. A dayslong military operation in Jenin left dozens of dead.
A day after an American protester was shot and killed in the West Bank, her family urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation, saying that “given the circumstances of (her) killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate.” Their statement called the 26-year-old recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who also holds Turkish nationality, was shot in the head, two Palestinian doctors said. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.
The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity.”
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Israeli raids, attacks by Palestinian militants on Israelis and attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians have left more than 690 Palestinians dead since the Israel-Hamas war began in October, according to Palestinian health officials.
In Gaza, Hamas has accused Israel of dragging out ceasefire negotiations by issuing new demands. Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.
Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continued between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. The blaze was sparked by a previous Israeli strike, the statement said. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel’s military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel in several barrages, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in the area of Qabrikha in southern Lebanon.
Iraq’s Kurdish authorities extradite activist to Iran: group
- Khosrawi “asked to return to the Islamic Republic of Iran” and signed a document stating this, the Asayesh added in a statement
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq: An Iranian Kurdish activist was extradited from Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region back to Iran, the opposition group he belongs to said on Saturday, an account disputed by local authorities.
Behzad Khosrawi was arrested last week by security forces in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and handed over to “Iranian intelligence,” said the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), one of several Iranian Kurdish groups exiled for decades in northern Iraq.
“He is a member of an opposition political party... and enjoys the right to asylum as a political refugee,” said the group, condemning his extradition.
Local security forces, called Asayesh, said Khosrawi was arrested “because he did not have residency” in the Kurdish region, denying he had any connection to “political activism.”
Khosrawi “asked to return to the Islamic Republic of Iran” and signed a document stating this, the Asayesh added in a statement.
The KDPI said Khosrawi, a member of their party, “had been living with his mother and sister in Sulaimaniyah for more than 10 years... and their residency was in order.”
He had been given refugee status by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the KDPI said.
Iran considers the KDPI a “terrorist” organization.
Iranian Kurdish groups, whose members are made up of Iran’s long-marginalized Kurdish minority, have trained to use weapons from their outposts in northern Iraq for decades.
After several Iranian strikes on the groups, Iraqi authorities in late 2023 pledged to disarm these factions and move them from bases near the Iranian border to camps.
Tehran has accused the Kurdish opposition groups of inciting mass protest in Iran in 2022, after the death of Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police.
No spying took place by employees of Iraqi prime minister’s office, adviser says
- The reports have caused a stir in Iraq, which has seen a period of relative stability since Sudani was brought to power in late 2022 as part of an agreement between ruling factions ending a year-long political stalemate
BAGHDAD: A political adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani has rejected recent allegations that employees at the premier’s office have been spying on and wire-tapping senior officials and politicians.
Since late August, Iraqi local media outlets and lawmakers have alleged that employees at Sudani’s office had been arrested on charges of spying on senior officials.
“This is an inflated lie,” said Fadi Al-Shammari in an interview with an Iraqi broadcaster published late on Friday, the most explicit denial by a senior member of the prime minister’s team.
He said the allegations were aimed at undermining Sudani ahead of parliamentary polls expected to be held next year.
“Everything that has happened in the last two weeks consists of media exaggeration contrary to reality and the truth.”
The reports have caused a stir in Iraq, which has seen a period of relative stability since Sudani was brought to power in late 2022 as part of an agreement between ruling factions ending a year-long political stalemate.
While there had been one arrest at the prime minister’s office in August, it had nothing to do with spying or wire-tapping, Shammari said. The employee in question was detained after contacting lawmakers and other politicians while posing as a different person, he said.
“(He) talked to lawmakers using different numbers and fake names and asked them for a number of different files,” he added, without providing details.
“There was no spying, no wiretapping.”
