GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Hamas warned Israel on Sunday that a ground offensive in Rafah, crowded with displaced Gazans, would imperil future hostage releases, while US President Joe Biden urged the protection of civilians in the besieged territory.
Foreign governments, including Israel’s key ally the United States, and aid groups have voiced deep concern over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to extend operations into the far-southern Gaza city.
Rafah, on the border with Egypt, has remained the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip in its four-month war against Hamas, triggered by the group’s October 7 attack.
“Any attack by the occupation army on the city of Rafah would torpedo the exchange negotiations,” a Hamas leader told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Netanyahu has told troops to prepare to enter the city which now hosts more than half of Gaza’s total population, spurring concern about the impact on displaced civilians.
Biden spoke to Netanyahu on the phone Sunday and told him the Gaza advance should not go ahead in the absence of a “credible” plan to ensure “the safety” of people sheltering there, the White House said.
Some 1.4 million Palestinians have crowded into Rafah, with many living in tents while food, water and medicine are becoming increasingly scarce.
Netanyahu had told US broadcaster ABC News the Rafah operation would go ahead until Hamas is eliminated, adding he would provide “safe passage” to civilians wishing to leave.
When pressed about where they could go, Netanyahu said: “You know, the areas that we’ve cleared north of Rafah, plenty of areas there. But, we are working out a detailed plan.”
Mediators held new talks in Cairo for a pause in the fighting and the release of some of the 132 hostages Israel says are still in Gaza, including 29 thought to be dead.
Hamas seized some 250 hostages on October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures. Dozens were released during a one-week truce in November.
Hamas’s military wing on Sunday said two hostages had been killed and eight others seriously wounded in Israeli bombardment in recent days, a claim AFP is unable to independently verify.
Netanyahu has faced calls for early elections and mounting protests over his administration’s failure to bring home the hostages.
Israeli strikes have long hit targets in Rafah, and combat on Sunday seemed intense several kilometers (miles) to the north in Khan Yunis city. AFP correspondents heard repeated explosions and saw plumes of black smoke.
Israel’s military said troops were conducting “targeted raids” in the west of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, while Hamas reported violent clashes and said air strikes also hit Rafah.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel has responded with a relentless offensive in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip that the territory’s health ministry says has killed at least 28,176 people, mostly women and children.
Hamas said dozens of bodies had been found in Gaza City, in the coastal strip’s north, after Israeli ground troops withdrew from the area.
Most of them “were martyred by bullets of snipers,” the group said in a statement.
Hossam Al-Sharqawi of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told reporters that “every day our ambulance guys (in Gaza) are martyred or injured.”
“This is unacceptable, this madness must stop.”
During a visit to a military base Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel aims for “the demilitarization of Gaza.”
“This requires our security control... over the entire area west of Jordan, including the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) were some of the latest to raise the alarm over the plan for Rafah, Gaza’s last major population center that Israeli troops have yet to enter.
“The OIC strongly warned that the continuation and expansion of the Israeli military aggression is part of rejected attempts to forcibly expel the Palestinian people from their land,” the 57-nation Jeddah-based bloc said on social media.
It stressed “that such acts fall under genocide and would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe and collective massacre.”
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also rejected “forced” displacement of people from Rafah, evoking the trauma of Palestinians’ mass exodus and forced displacement around the time of Israel’s creation in 1948.
Riyadh called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting, while Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the priority “must be an immediate pause in the fighting to get aid in and hostages out.”
Denouncing a “genocide” in Gaza, thousands rallied Sunday in Morocco’s capital Rabat and called on their government to undo a 2020 normalization pact with Israel.
Gazans, driven further and further south, have repeatedly said they can find no safe refuge from the fighting and bombing.
Farah Muhammad, 39, a mother of five displaced to Rafah from northern Gaza, said she felt helpless.
“There is no place to escape.”
Hamas warns Israeli invasion of Rafah will ‘torpedo’ hostage talks
https://arab.news/g8nbc
Hamas warns Israeli invasion of Rafah will ‘torpedo’ hostage talks
- Rafah, on the border with Egypt, has remained the last refuge for Palestinians fleeing Israel’s relentless bombardment elsewhere in the Gaza Strip in its four-month war against Hamas
‘Many more’ Conservative MPs back UK govt stance on Israel: MP
- Mark Pritchard: PM ‘on right side of history’ after joint statement condemning Gaza war
- Britain must recognize Palestinian state in ‘huge symbol of support’
LONDON: “Many more” Conservative MPs in the UK privately support calls by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and British allies for Israel to end its Gaza war, a Conservative MP has said.
Mark Pritchard told LBC that Starmer is on the “right side of history” and “humanity,” The Independent reported on Saturday.
However, Pritchard refused to criticize Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who questioned new British sanctions on Israeli settlers and a joint UK-France-Canada statement on Gaza this week.
The leaders of the three countries condemned “egregious” Israeli actions in Gaza and threatened to take “concrete actions” if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fails to change course.
In response, Netanyahu accused the UK, France and Canada of being on the “wrong side of justice.”
Pritchard, who describes himself as strongly pro-Israel, told LBC: “Half the population of Gaza are children. They are being literally bombed to bits every single day. They are being slowly starved.
“It’s absolutely right the UK prime minister, who so happens to be a Labour prime minister right now, would stand up on the right side.
“I push it back to the Israeli prime minister. I think Keir Starmer and those standing up for the children of Gaza are on the right side of history, the right side of humanity and are making the right moral judgment.”
Pritchard said he now believes in the necessity of Britain recognizing a Palestinian state. “It may be symbolic, but I think it will be a huge symbol of support both for the Israelis that want to see that and also for the Palestinians. But the key point at the moment is the Israeli government need to be held to account,” he added.
“I support the UK prime minister and many more, by the way, in the British Conservative Party, are coming up to me privately at the moment.”
On Friday, Badenoch said the government’s new actions targeting Israeli settlers and trade relations with the country are not the “right way” to resolve differences with Netanyahu.
Pritchard told LBC: “I’m coming on to support Kemi on the comments on antisemitism and supporting the prime minister on his strong stand, finally, on what’s going on in Gaza.”
UAE hits record May temperature of 51.6C
- The highest temperature recorded over the country was 51.6C in Sweihan (Al Ain)
- Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates breached its May temperature record for the second day in a row, hitting 51.6 degrees Celsius on Saturday, according to the National Center of Meteorology.
“The highest temperature recorded over the country today is 51.6C in Sweihan (Al Ain) at 13:45 UAE local time (0945 GMT),” the office said in a post on X, 1.2C hotter than the temperature recorded on Friday in the Abu Dhabi area.
Both those temperatures exceeded a previous record for the month of 50.2 Celsius recorded in May 2009, according to the meteorology office.
The desert nation lies in one of the planet’s hottest regions and one which is particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming and that these heatwaves are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense.
The number of extremely hot days has nearly doubled globally in the past three decades.
According to a 2022 Greenpeace study, the Middle East is at high risk of water and food scarcity as well as severe heat waves as a result of climate change.
The report, which focused on six countries, found the region was warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, making its food and water supplies “extremely vulnerable” to climate change.
Nine of Gazan doctor’s 10 children killed in Israeli air strike
- Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar also saw her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, critically injured
- Couple’s only surviving child, 11-year-old boy, was severely wounded
LONDON: A pediatrician working in southern Gaza has lost nine of her 10 children in an Israeli air strike that hit her family home, in what fellow medics have described as an “unimaginable” tragedy.
Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, who was on duty at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis at the time of the strike, also saw her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, critically injured.
The couple’s only surviving child, an 11-year-old boy, was severely wounded and underwent emergency surgery on Friday, according to reports.
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” said Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. “In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted, Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Graphic footage shared by Palestinian Civil Defense, and verified by media outlets including the BBC, showed the remains of small children being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building near a petrol station in Khan Younis.
British surgeon Dr. Graeme Groom, who is volunteering at Nasser hospital, said Dr Al-Najjar’s surviving son was his final patient of the day.
“He was very badly injured and seemed much younger as we lifted him onto the operating table,” he said in a video posted to social media.
Groom added that the child’s father, also a physician at the same hospital, had “no political and no military connections and doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media,” calling the strike “a particularly sad day.”
He continued: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here… and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
Relative Youssef Al-Najjar, speaking to AFP, made an emotional plea: “Enough. Have mercy on us. We plead to all countries, the international community, the people, Hamas, and all factions to have mercy on us. We are exhausted from the displacement and the hunger.”
Dr. Victoria Rose, another British doctor at the hospital, said the family had lived near a petrol station and speculated that the strike may have caused or been worsened by a large explosion. “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza,” she said.
The Israel Defence Forces did not comment directly on the strike, but in a general statement said it had hit more than 100 targets across Gaza in a 24-hour period.
The Hamas-run health ministry reported at least 74 Palestinian deaths in that time frame alone.
The UN has warned that Gaza may be entering its “cruelest phase” of the war, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denouncing Israel’s restrictions on aid as exacerbating a humanitarian catastrophe.
Although Israel partially lifted its blockade this week, allowing limited aid to enter, the UN says the deliveries fall far short of the 500–600 trucks of supplies needed daily to meet basic needs for the territory’s 2.1 million people.
Since Israel launched its offensive after Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251 others, on Oct. 7, 2023, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which includes women and children in its total but does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul
- Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa
- The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was holding talks with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Istanbul on Saturday, news channel CNN Turk and state media said, broadcasting video of the two leaders greeting each other.
The visit comes the day after US President Donald Trump’s administration issued orders that it said would effectively lift sanctions on Syria. Trump had pledged to unwind the measures to help the country rebuild after its devastating civil war.
Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa as he emerged from his car at the Dolmabahce Palace on the shores of the Bosphorus Strait in Turkiye’s largest city.
The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks, as well as Turkiye’s defense minister and the head of the Turkish MIT intelligence agency, according to Turkiye’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.
The Syrian delegation also included Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.
MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin and Sharaa this week held talks in Syria on the Syrian Kurdish YPG militant group laying down its weapons and integrating into Syrian security forces, a Turkish security source said previously.
US strike on Yemen kills Al-Qaeda members: Yemeni security sources
- “Five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan
- Washington once regarded the group as the militant network’s most dangerous branch
DUBAI: Five Al-Qaeda members have been killed in a strike blamed on the United States in southern Yemen, two Yemeni security sources told AFP on Saturday.
“Residents of the area informed us of the US strike... five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan province, which borders the seat of Yemen’s internationally-recognized government in Aden.
“The US strike on Friday evening north of Khabar Al-Maraqsha killed five,” said a second source, referring to a mountainous area known to be used by Al-Qaeda.
The second security source added that, though the names of those killed in the strike were not known, it was believed one of Al-Qaeda’s local leaders was among the dead.
Washington once regarded the group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the militant network’s most dangerous branch.
Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of Yemen’s war, which since 2015 has pitted the Iran-backed Houthi militants against a Saudi-led coalition backing the government.
Earlier this month, the United States agreed a ceasefire with the Houthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, ending weeks of intense American strikes on militant-held areas of the country.
The Houthis began firing at shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, prompting military strikes by the US and Britain beginning in January 2024.
The conflict in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, although fighting decreased significantly after a UN-negotiated six-month truce in 2022.
