Israel ‘intensifying’ Gaza fighting as Hamas says strikes kill dozens

Smoke billows over Khan Yunis during Israeli bombardment from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on December 25, 2023, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 26 December 2023
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Israel ‘intensifying’ Gaza fighting as Hamas says strikes kill dozens

  • Almost 21,000 killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct.7 — health ministry

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israel on Monday said it was “intensifying the fighting” against Hamas in Gaza, where relentless strikes across the Palestinian territory exacerbated the dire conditions for civilians in the war’s 12th week.

20,915 people have been killed and 54,918 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry added that 241 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours and 382 were injured.
The conflict has heightened tensions across the Middle East where Iran — which supports Hamas — on Monday accused Israel of killing a senior Revolutionary Guards general in Syria and vowed revenge.
Pope Francis decried the “desperate humanitarian situation” in Gaza. During his traditional Christmas message he called for an immediate cease-fire and the freeing of hostages.
As war raged, festivities in Bethlehem, which Christians consider to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ, were effectively scrapped in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The city’s usually vibrant streets had only a handful of worshippers and tourists.
The war erupted when Palestinian militants broke through Gaza’s militarised border and attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages, Israel says.
Israel vowed to crush Hamas and launched a retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, including extensive aerial bombardment and siege. The campaign has killed at least 20,674 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Four major Israeli strikes since Sunday killed more than 100 people, the ministry said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Monday after visiting Gaza, “We’re not stopping,” according to a statement from his Likud party.
“We’re intensifying the fighting in the coming days,” he told party members.
Palestinian militants launched rockets toward Israel during the day, most of which were intercepted by Israeli air defenses.
In Gaza, the health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed at least 70 people on Christmas Eve at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
AFP was unable to independently verify the toll.
Rows of victims’ bodies, shrouded in white bags, lined the ground at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, ahead of a mass funeral.
The army said it was “reviewing the incident,” adding it was “committed to international law including taking feasible steps to minimize harm to civilians.”
Israel has been under increasing pressure from its allies to protect civilians during its military campaign.
Speaking with Netanyahu on Saturday, US President Joe Biden “emphasised the critical need” for such protection, the White House said.
Zeyad Awad, a resident of Al-Maghazi, said there was no evacuation warning before the strike that caused “extensive, enormous destruction and panic in the hearts of my children.”
The health ministry said 10 members of one family were killed in an Israeli strike in Jabalia camp, northern Gaza, and 18 people died in an overnight bombardment of Khan Yunis in the south.
Monday brought no respite, with the army saying it continued ground, air and sea operations and struck several Hamas targets, including commanders.
Before dawn, an Israeli strike “targeting a house” in central Gaza’s Al-Zuwaida area, near Al-Mughazi, killed at least 12 people, mostly women and children, the Gaza health ministry said.
Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.4 million people are enduring dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.
Grasping empty containers, dozens of Gazans waited on a street in Rafah, in southern Gaza, for food to be distributed.
“Now there is real hunger. My children are dying of hunger,” said one of them, Nour Ismail.
An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many fleeing south and crowded into shelters or makeshift tents in the winter cold.
“A humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza is the only way forward,” said the head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi.
The World Health Organization said it led missions to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza at the weekend. It described growing desperation and starving people stripping an aid truck of supplies.
“Everyone we speak to is hungry,” said Sean Casey, a WHO emergency coordinator, warning of a “risk of famine.”
Israel lashed out at the UN on Monday over its response to the war. Foreign Minister Eli Cohen accused the world body of “hypocrisy” and said its chief Antonio Guterres “legitimized war crimes.”
“We will stop working with those who cooperate with the Hamas terrorist organization’s propaganda,” Cohen said on X, adding his ministry would not extend one UN employee’s entry visa, and would refuse entry for another.
Netanyahu addressed parliament on Monday during a special session about the 129 hostages Israel says remain in Gaza. He was booed by families awaiting their loved ones’ return after 80 days in captivity.
“Now! Now!” relatives chanted as Netanyahu said Israeli forces needed “more time” to increase military pressure on Hamas, which he argued would help to secure the captives’ release.
Later, protesters gathered near the defense ministry headquarters in central Tel Aviv ahead of a war cabinet meeting, holding posters demanding: “Free our hostages now — at any cost!“
The premier on Sunday said the war was exacting a “very heavy price” on Israel’s military, 156 of whose soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
Fears of regional escalation only increased Monday.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said an Israeli air strike in Syria had killed Razi Moussavi, who state media described as “one of the most experienced advisers” of the military force’s foreign arm.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has intensified strikes on targets in Syria since the Israel-Hamas war began.
Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement said in a statement: “We consider this assassination a flagrant attack that crosses the limits.” The group added that Moussavi had supported it for decades.
Cross-border fire has erupted almost daily between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, also Iran-backed, have fired at cargo vessels in the Red Sea, leading the United States to build a naval taskforce to deter the missile and drone strikes.
And in Iraq, where attacks against Israel-allied US forces have surged, a drone strike on Monday targeted a military base used by US and anti-jihadist coalition forces, according to US and Iraqi officials. 


Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza

Updated 3 sec ago
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Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza

Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed
The woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger

GAZA: Hamas’s armed wing said Saturday an Israeli woman taken hostage during the October 2023 attack had been killed in a combat zone in northern Gaza and the Israeli military said it was investigating.
Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said contact had been restored with the woman’s captors after a break of several weeks and it was established that the hostage had been killed in an area of north Gaza where the Israeli army has been operating.
Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed.
The Israeli army told AFP it was looking into the claim.
Abu Obeida said that the woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger.
During last year’s Hamas attack which triggered the Gaza war, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army says are dead.
Ten female hostages, including five soldiers, were believed to remain alive in custody before Abu Obeida’s statement, according to an AFP tally.
During a one-week truce in November last year, 105 hostages were freed, including 80 Israelis who were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli government has come under immense public pressure to agree a new deal to bring the remaining hostages home while they are still alive.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group did not wish to comment on Saturday’s claim.
“Nothing is known other than what Hamas is saying. Our only reliable source is the Israeli army,” the group told AFP.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 44,176 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media

Updated 36 min ago
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Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media

  • Israel was “attempting to control the town” as it was “a strategic gateway for a rapid ground incursion,” the NNA said
  • It said Israeli troops had dynamited houses and were “trying to surround (Khiam) from all sides using extensive air and ground cover“

BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops engaged in fierce clashes Saturday at the key south Lebanon town of Khiam and in the coastal Bayada area several kilometers north of the border.
The official National News Agency (NNA) reported intense air and artillery bombardment of Khiam, about six kilometers (nearly four miles) from the frontier.
Israel was “attempting to control the town” as it was “a strategic gateway for a rapid ground incursion,” the NNA said.
It said Israeli troops had dynamited houses and were “trying to surround (Khiam) from all sides using extensive air and ground cover.”
Over the past two days, Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked Israeli troops about 20 times in and around the large town.
On September 23, Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon, mainly targeting Hezbollah bastions in the south and east and in south Beirut.
A week later it sent ground troops across the border.
The NNA said Saturday that on the south coast, “the areas of Bayada and Wadi Hamoul are witnessing violent clashes,” and also reported air strikes and shelling.
It said Israeli troops tried to penetrate the area in order to encircle the town of Naqura via Bayada — “a strategic location” on the coast between Naqura and Tyre, 20 kilometers from the border.
Israeli tanks have been operating east of Khiam for more than three weeks, with the NNA reporting on Tuesday that the tanks had moved north of the town.
On October 29, the NNA said Israeli tanks entered Khiam’s outskirts in their deepest incursion yet into south Lebanon.
Khiam has symbolic significance. It was the site of a notorious prison run by the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli proxy militia, during its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from the region in 2000.
The NNA also reported intense Israeli bombardment along the border, including around 70 shells pounding the town of Bint Jbeil alone.
All-out war erupted in September after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of Hamas, following its Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
The health ministry in Beirut says that more than 3,650 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, with most deaths recorded since September this year.


Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8

Updated 23 November 2024
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Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8

  • The Israeli enemy strike on Shmostar killed eight people, including four children

BEIRUT: Lebanon said eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday in the east, with state media reporting the attack on a house killed a mother and her children.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Shmostar killed eight people, including four children, and nine others were injured, including four in critical condition,” a ministry statement said, giving a preliminary toll.
The official National Nwes Agency earlier said the attack “killed a family including a mother and her four children.”


Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician

Updated 23 November 2024
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Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician

  • Dr. Firat Sari is one of 47 people on trial accused of transferring newborn babies to neonatal units of private hospitals
  • “Patients were referred to me because people trusted me. We did not accept patients by bribing anyone from 112,” Sari said

ISTANBUL: The Turkish doctor at the center of an alleged fraud scheme that led to the deaths of 10 babies told an Istanbul court Saturday that he was a “trusted” physician.
Dr. Firat Sari is one of 47 people on trial accused of transferring newborn babies to neonatal units of private hospitals, where they were allegedly kept for prolonged and sometimes unnecessary treatments in order to receive social security payments.
“Patients were referred to me because people trusted me. We did not accept patients by bribing anyone from 112,” Sari said, referring to Turkiye’s emergency medical phone line.
Sari, said to be the plot’s ringleader, operated the neonatal intensive care units of several private hospitals in Istanbul. He is facing a sentence of up to 583 years in prison in a case where doctors, nurses, hospital managers and other health staff are accused of putting financial gain before newborns’ wellbeing.
The case, which emerged last month, has sparked public outrage and calls for greater oversight of the health care system. Authorities have since revoked the licenses and closed 10 of the 19 hospitals that were implicated in the scandal.
“I want to tell everything so that the events can be revealed,” Sari, the owner of Medisense Health Services, told the court. “I love my profession very much. I love being a doctor very much.”
Although the defendants are charged with the negligent homicide of 10 infants since January 2023, an investigative report cited by the state-run Anadolu news agency said they caused the deaths of “hundreds” of babies over a much longer time period.
Over 350 families have petitioned prosecutors or other state institutions seeking investigations into the deaths of their children, according to state media.
Prosecutors at the trial, which opened on Monday, say the defendants also falsified reports to make the babies’ condition appear more serious so as to obtain more money from the state as well as from families.
The main defendants have denied any wrongdoing, insisting they made the best possible decisions and are now facing punishment for unavoidable, unwanted outcomes.
Sari is charged with establishing an organization with the aim of committing a crime, defrauding public institutions, forgery of official documents and homicide by negligence.
During questioning by prosecutors before the trial, Sari denied accusations that the babies were not given the proper care, that the neonatal units were understaffed or that his employees were not appropriately qualified, according to a 1,400-page indictment.
“Everything is in accordance with procedures,” he told prosecutors in a statement.
The hearings at Bakirkoy courthouse, on Istanbul’s European side, have seen protests outside calling for private hospitals to be shut down and “baby killers” to be held accountable.
The case has also led to calls for the resignation of Health Minister Kemal Memisoglu, who was the Istanbul provincial health director at the time some of the deaths occurred. Ozgur Ozel, the main opposition party leader, has called for all hospitals involved to be nationalized.
In a Saturday interview with the A Haber TV channel, Memisoglu characterized the defendants as “bad apples” who had been “weeded out.”
“Our health system is one of the best health systems in the world,” he said. “This is a very exceptional, very organized criminal organization. It is a mistake to evaluate this in the health system as a whole.”
Memisoglu also denied the claim that he shut down an investigation into the claims in 2016, when he was Istanbul’s health director, calling it “a lie and slander.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that those responsible for the deaths would be severely punished but warned against placing all the blame on the country’s health care system.
“We will not allow our health care community to be battered because of a few rotten apples,” he said.


Fear in central Beirut district hit by Israeli strikes

Updated 23 November 2024
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Fear in central Beirut district hit by Israeli strikes

  • “The strike was so strong it felt like the building was about to fall on our heads,” said Samir
  • There had been no evacuation warning issued by the Israeli military for the Basta area

BEIRUT: When Lebanese carpenter Samir awoke in a panic Saturday to the sound of explosions and screams, he thought his own building in central Beirut had been hit by an air raid.
As it turned out, the early morning air strike — which killed at least 11 people and injured 63, according to authorities — had actually brought down an eight-story building nearby, in the second such attack on the working-class neighborhood of Basta in as many months.
A Lebanese security source told AFP the target had been a senior Hezbollah figure, without naming him.
“The strike was so strong it felt like the building was about to fall on our heads,” said Samir, 60, who lives with his family in a building facing the one that was hit.
“It felt like they had targeted my house,” he said, asking to be identified by only his first name because of security concerns.
There had been no evacuation warning issued by the Israeli military for the Basta area.
After the strike, Samir fled his home in the middle of the night with his wife and two children, aged 14 and just three.
On Saturday morning, dumbstruck residents watched as an excavator cleared the wreckage of the razed building and rescue efforts continued, with nearby buildings also damaged in the attack, AFP journalists reported.
The densely packed district has welcomed people displaced from traditional Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon’s east, south and southern Beirut, after Israel intensified its air campaign on September 23, later sending in ground troops.
“We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more,” Samir told AFP, reporting minor damage to his home.
Since last Sunday, four deadly Israeli strikes have hit central Beirut, including one that killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.
Residents across the city and its outskirts awoke at 0400 (0200 GMT) on Saturday to loud explosions and the smell of gunpowder in the air.
“It was the first time I’ve woken up screaming in terror,” said Salah, a 35-year-old father of two who lives in the same street as the building that was targeted.
“Words can’t express the fear that gripped me,” he said.
Saturday’s strikes were the second time the Basta district had been targeted since war broke out, after deadly twin strikes early in October hit the area and the Nweiri neighborhood.
Last month’s attacks killed 22 people and had targeted Hezbollah security chief Wafiq Safa, who made it out alive, a source close to the group told AFP.
Salah said his wife and children had been in the northern city of Tripoli, about 70 kilometers away (45 miles), but that he had to stay in the capital because of work.
His family had been due to return this weekend because their school reopens on Monday, but now he has decided against it following the attack.
“I miss them. Every day they ask me: ‘Dad, when are we coming home?’” he said.
Lebanon’s health ministry says that more than 3,650 people have been killed since October 2023, after Hezbollah initiated exchanges of fire with Israel in solidarity with its Iran-backed ally Hamas over the Gaza war.
However, most of the deaths in Lebanon have been since September this year.
Despite the trauma caused by Saturday’s strike, Samir said he and his family had no choice but to return home.
“Where else would I go?” he asked.
“All my relatives and siblings have been displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs and from the south.”