DEIR AL-BALAH: At least 70 people were killed in Gaza in one of the deadliest strikes of the war, health officials said Sunday, while the number of Israeli soldiers killed in combat over the weekend rose to 15.
Associated Press journalists at a nearby hospital watched frantic Palestinians carry the dead, including a baby, and wounded following the strike on the Maghazi refugee camp east of Deir al-Balah. One bloodied young girl looked stunned while her body was checked for broken bones.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said the toll was likely to rise. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
“We were all targeted,” said Ahmad Turokmani, who lost several family members including his daughter and grandson. “There is no safe place in Gaza anyway.”
As Christmas Eve fell, smoke rose over the besieged territory, while in the West Bank Bethlehem was hushed, its holiday celebrations called off. In neighboring Egypt, tentative efforts continued on a deal for another exchange of hostages for Palestinians held by Israel.
The war has devastated parts of Gaza, killed roughly 20,400 Palestinians and displaced almost all of the territory’s 2.3 million people.
The mounting death toll among Israeli troops — 154 since the ground offensive began — could erode public support for the war, which was sparked when Hamas-led militants stormed communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostage.
Israelis still largely stand behind the country’s stated goals of crushing Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and releasing the remaining 129 captives. That's despite rising international pressure against Israel’s offensive, and the soaring death toll and unprecedented suffering among Palestinians.
HAMAS EXACTS A PRICE
“The war exacts a very heavy price from us, but we have no choice but to continue fighting,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
In a nationally televised speech, Israeli President Isaac Herzog appealed for the country to remain united. “This moment is a test. We will not break nor blink,” he said.
There has been widespread anger against his government, which many criticize for failing to protect civilians on Oct. 7 and promoting policies that allowed Hamas to gain strength over the years. Netanyahu has avoided accepting responsibility for the military and policy failures.
“Over time, the public will find it hard to ignore the heavy price paid, as well as the suspicion that the aims that were loudly heralded are still far from being attained, and that Hamas is showing no signs of capitulating in the near future," wrote Amos Harel, military affairs commentator for the Haaretz newspaper.
The Israeli military said it had completed the dismantling of Hamas’ underground headquarters in northern Gaza, part of an operation to take down the vast tunnel network and kill off top commanders that Israeli leaders have said could take months.
Efforts toward negotiations continued. The head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, arrived in Egypt for talks. The militant group, which also took part in the Oct. 7 attack, said it was prepared to consider releasing hostages only after fighting ends. Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh traveled to Cairo for talks days earlier.
INSIDE GAZA
Israel’s offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than two-thirds of the 20,000 Palestinians killed have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Israeli drone attack while inside al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, a part of Gaza where Israel's military believes Hamas leaders are hiding.
An Israeli strike overnight hit a house in a refugee camp west of the city of Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt. At least two men were killed, according to Associated Press journalists in the hospital where the bodies were taken.
At least two people were killed and six others wounded when a missile stuck a building in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
And Palestinians reported heavy Israeli bombardment and gunfire in Jabaliya, an area north of Gaza City that Israel had claimed to control. Hamas’ military arm said its fighters shelled Israeli troops in Jabaliya and Jabaliya refugee camp.
Israel faces international criticism for the civilian death toll but it blames Hamas, citing the militants’ use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel has launched thousands of airstrikes since Oct. 7. It says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, without presenting evidence.
Israel also faces allegations of mistreating Palestinian men and teenage boys detained in homes, shelters, hospitals and elsewhere during the offensive. It has denied abuse allegations and said those without links to militants are quickly released.
Speaking to the AP from a hospital bed in Rafah after his release, Khamis al-Burdainy of Gaza City said Israeli forces detained him after tanks and bulldozers partly destroyed his home. He said men were handcuffed and blindfolded.
“We didn’t sleep. We didn’t get food and water,” he said, crying and covering his face.
Another released detainee, Mohammed Salem, from the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah, said Israeli troops beat them. “We were humiliated,” he said. “A female soldier would come and beat an old man, aged 72 years old.”
INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE
The United Nations Security Council has passed a watered-down resolution calling for the speedy delivery of humanitarian aid for hungry and desperate Palestinians and the release of all the hostages, but not for a cease-fire.
But it was not immediately clear how and when deliveries of food, medical supplies and other aid, far below the daily average of 500 before the war, would accelerate. Trucks enter through two crossings: Rafah, and Kerem Shalom on the border with Israel. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 123 aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday,
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterated U.N. calls for a humanitarian cease-fire, adding on social media that “the decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy.”
Amid concerns about a wider regional conflict, the US Central Command said a patrol ship in the Red Sea on Saturday shot down four drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, a while two Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles were fired into international shipping lanes.
The Iran-backed Houthis say their attacks are aimed at Israel-linked ships in an effort to stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
At least 70 are killed in central Gaza, in one of the war’s deadliest strikes
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At least 70 are killed in central Gaza, in one of the war’s deadliest strikes
- Israeli strikes target Maghazi refugee camp east of Deir al-Balah in Gaza
- The war has devastated parts of Gaza, killed roughly 20,400 Palestinians
Pact for $4.5m signed to aid 4,400 stranded Gazans in West Bank
- “Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation,” UNRWA Commissioner-General said
CAIRO: The Qatar Red Crescent and the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) signed an agreement on Sunday, with $4.5 million from a Qatari state development fund, to aid more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza in the West Bank.
“Cash assistance will represent vital support for those displaced who have not been able to return to the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Strip last October,” a statement from the Qatar’s state news agency said.
“Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation, stranded from their loved ones and livelihoods,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said.
Since Israel’s blockade of Gaza began in 2007, movement in and out of the Strip has been heavily restricted, forcing individuals to seek medical care, education, or jobs in the West Bank, while escalating violence often closes borders, trapping those in need of essential services.
Egypt condemns killing of activist by Israeli forces in the West Bank
- Ministry extends condolences to government of Turkiye and its people
CAIRO: Egypt condemned the killing of US-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, condemned the killing of Eygi, which occurred south of Nablus.
In a statement issued by the ministry, Abu Zeid extended his condolences to the Turkish government and people and offered his sympathies to the family of the deceased.
He said the death is a further example of the daily Israeli violations against Palestinian civilians and their supporters, adding to the various forms of violence and disregard for human rights they face in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He also condemned the moral crisis faced by the international community due to the atrocities committed against civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories over decades.
Eygi, 26, was shot and killed on Friday in the village of Beita, near Nablus, during a nonviolent protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and escalating settler violence against Palestinian homes and landowners.
Eight-year-old found dead in Turkiye after national search effort
- “Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu
ANKARA: The body of an eight-year-old girl who had been missing in Turkiye for 19 days has been found after an enormous manhunt, the interior minister said on Sunday.
The body of Narin Guran was found in a bag in a river in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, around one kilometer from the village where she lived with her family, Diyarbakir governor Murat Zorluoglu told reporters.
“Unfortunately, the lifeless body of Narin, who went missing in the village of Tavsantepe... has been found,” Turkish interior minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
She disappeared on August 21, sparking a huge search effort in Turkiye, with a number of well-known figures joining a social media campaign called “Find Narin.”
“Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu.
“Based on the first observations, she was put into a bag after she was killed. The bag was then placed in the river, hidden under branches and rocks so as not to raise suspicion,” he added.
Diyarbakir prosecutors have detained 21 people, said Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc.
The girl’s uncle was arrested last week on suspicion of murder and “deprivation of liberty.”
“Our president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is following the case closely to guarantee that the ongoing investigation continues thoroughly and that those who took Narin’s life answer before the law,” the president’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said on X.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish party DEM has called for a march to take place in Diyarbakir on Sunday evening.
“Narin was killed in an organized manner. Those responsible for this murder, which has saddened us all, must be revealed and held accountable before an impartial and independent justice system,” DEM wrote on X.
Tunc said on X that “those responsible for Narin’s death will be brought to justice.”
Sudan rejects UN call for ‘impartial’ force to protect civilians
PORT SUDAN: Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an “independent and impartial force” to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.
The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered “harrowing” violations by both sides, “which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
They called for “an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians” to be deployed “without delay.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry, which is loyal to the army under General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said in a statement late Saturday that “the Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission.”
It called the UN Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding mission last year, “a political and illegal body,” and the panel’s recommendations “a flagrant violation of their mandate.”
The UN experts said eight million civilians have been displaced and another two million people have fled to neighboring countries.
More than 25 million people — upwards of half the country’s population — face acute food shortages.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on a visit to Sudan on Sunday, said: “The scale of the emergency is shocking, as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict and respond to the suffering it is causing.”
In Port Sudan, where government offices and the United Nations have relocated to due to the intense fighting in the capital Khartoum, Tedros called on the “world to wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry statement accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, of “systematically targeting civilians and civilian institutions.”
“The protection of civilians remains an absolute priority for the Sudanese government,” it said.
The statement added that the UN Human Rights Council’s role should be “to support the national process, rather than seek to impose a different exterior mechanism.”
It also rejected the experts’ call for an arms embargo.
Iran’s president to visit Iraq on first foreign trip
- Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials
TEHRAN: Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighboring Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July.
Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials.
The visit comes at the invitation of Iraq’s premier, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying.
The two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating.
He said the agreements were to have been signed during a planned visit to Iraq by Iran’s late president, Ebrahim Raisi.
But Raisi was killed in May along with the then foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, when their helicopter crashed on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran.
Since taking office, Pezeshkian has vowed to “prioritize” strengthening ties with the Islamic republic’s neighbors.
Relations between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer over the past two decades.
Tehran is one of Iraq’s leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad where its Iraqi allies dominate parliament and the current government.
In March 2023 the two countries signed a security agreement covering their common border, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq’s north.
They have since agreed to disarm Iranian Kurdish rebel groups and remove them from border areas.
Tehran accuses the groups of importing arms from Iraq and of fomenting 2022 protests that erupted after the death in custody of Iranian-Kurd woman Mahsa Amini.
In January, Iran launched a deadly strike in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, saying it had targeted a site used by “spies of the Zionist regime (Mossad).”
On Saturday, an exiled Iranian Kurdish group said one of its activists, Behzad Khosrawi, had been arrested in Iraq’s northern city of Sulaimaniyah and handed over to “Iranian intelligence.”
Local Asayesh security forces said Khosrawi was arrested “because he did not have residency” in the Kurdish region, and denied he had any connection to “political activism.”
