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All cargo offloaded from first aid ship to reach Gaza: NGO

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World Central Kitchen, the US charity working with Open Arms, said it was readying another boat with supplies of beans, canned meat, flour, rice and dates in the Cypriot port of Larnaca. (Israel Defense Forces via Reuters)
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Updated 16 March 2024
AFP
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All cargo offloaded from first aid ship to reach Gaza: NGO

  • 200 tons of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war
Updated 16 March 2024
AFP

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: A US charity said Saturday its team in war-ravaged Gaza had finished unloading the first maritime aid shipment to reach the besieged territory.

“All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza,” World Central Kitchen said in a statement, noting that the aid was “almost 200 tons of food.”

Earlier footage showed the Open Arms, which set sail from Cyprus on Tuesday, towing a barge that the Spanish charity of the same name says is loaded with 200 tons of food for Gazans threatened with famine after more than five months of war.

World Central Kitchen it was readying another boat with supplies of beans, canned meat, flour, rice and dates in the Cypriot port of Larnaca but stressed the need for more road access to bring aid into Gaza.

“Our ambition is having a highway of aid going into Gaza,” the group’s Juan Camilo Jimenez said in a video posted on social media platform X.

 


The Israeli military said it had deployed troops to “secure the area” around the jetty while the cargo of aid was unloaded. The “vessel underwent a comprehensive security inspection,” it said.
A spokesman for the Hamas-ruled territory’s health ministry said early on Saturday that 123 people had been killed across Gaza in the past 24 hours, including 36 people in a strike on a house sheltering displaced people in central Nuseirat.
Witnesses reported air strikes and fighting in the southern Gaza Strip’s main city Khan Yunis as well as areas of the north where humanitarian conditions have been particularly dire.
As Muslim worshippers marked the first Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, thousands attended prayers in the revered Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, amid a heavy security presence and restrictions on entry.
“It’s the first year I see so many forces (police), and their eyes... Two years ago, I could argue with them, but now... they’re giving us no chance,” said Amjad Ghalib, a 44-year-old carpenter.
In southern Gaza’s Rafah, the last major population center yet to be subjected to a ground assault, AFPTV footage showed worshippers praying by the rubble of a destroyed mosque.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday he had approved the military’s plan for an operation in Rafah, where most of the Gaza Strip’s population has sought refuge, without providing details or a timeline.
The White House, which has said an assault on Rafah would be a “red line” without credible civilian protection plans, said it had not seen the plan approved by Netanyahu.
“We certainly would welcome the opportunity to see it,” National Security Council (NSC) spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the United States could not support any plan without “credible” proposals to shelter more than one million Gazans.
In negotiations aimed at securing a new truce and hostage deal, Hamas has put forward a new proposal for a six-week ceasefire and the exchange of several dozen Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, an official from the militant group told AFP.
Hamas would want this to lead to “a complete (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a permanent ceasefire,” the official said.
The proposal would involve the release of some 42 hostages, who would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners at a ratio of between 20 and 50 prisoners per hostage, the official said, down from a previous proposal of roughly 100 to one.
Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages during the Hamas attack of October 7, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 captives remain in Gaza, including 32 presumed dead.
Israel said it was sending a delegation to Qatar for a new round of negotiations.
The White House said it was “cautiously optimistic” about the chances for a ceasefire but stressed that talks were far from over.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that things are moving in the right direction,” Kirby said, adding that the Hamas proposal was “within the bounds” of what negotiators had been discussing in recent months.
The United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars in military assistance, has grown increasingly critical of Netanyahu over his handling of the war.
US Senate leader Chuck Schumer called for a snap Israeli election, describing Netanyahu as one of several “major obstacles” to peace in a speech praised by US President Joe Biden.
“I think he expressed serious concern shared not only by him, but by many Americans,” Biden said.
Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party retorted that Israel was “not a banana republic but an independent and proud democracy.”
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine, with only a fraction of the supplies needed to sustain Gaza’s 2.4 million people being let in.
With fewer aid trucks entering by road, efforts have multiplied to get relief in by air and sea.
Cyprus, the nearest European Union member country to Gaza, has also said a second, bigger aid vessel is being prepared.
“God willing, they will bring food for the children, that’s all we ask for,” displaced Gazan Abu Issa Ibrahim Filfil told AFPTV.
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.
The ministry on Thursday accused Israeli troops of opening fire from “tanks and helicopters” as Palestinians waited for aid at a roundabout in Gaza City, killing 20 people and wounding dozens.
The Israeli military denied firing on the crowd.
“Armed Palestinians opened fire while Gazan civilians were awaiting the arrival of the aid convoy,” and then “continued to shoot as the crowd of Gazans began looting the trucks,” a military statement said.

 

Topics: US Open Arms War on Gaza Cyprus Food

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Gazans resort to turtle meat in hunt for food

Updated 3 sec ago
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Gazans resort to turtle meat in hunt for food

Updated 3 sec ago
Once the shell has been removed, the meat is cut up, boiled and cooked in a mix of onion, pepper, tomato and spices
“The children were afraid of the turtle, and we told them it tasted as delicious as veal,” said Majida Qanan

KHAN YUNIS, Palestinian Territories: With food scarce in the besieged and war-battered Gaza Strip, some desperate families have turned to eating sea turtles as a rare source of protein.
Once the shell has been removed, the meat is cut up, boiled and cooked in a mix of onion, pepper, tomato and spices.
“The children were afraid of the turtle, and we told them it tasted as delicious as veal,” said Majida Qanan, keeping an eye on the chunks of red meat simmering in a pot over a wood fire.
“Some of them ate it, but others refused.”
For lack of a better alternative, this is the third time 61-year-old Qanan has prepared a turtle-based meal for her family who were displaced and now live in a tent in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza largest city.
After 18 months of devastating war and an Israeli blockade on aid since March 2, the United Nations has warned of a dire humanitarian situation for the 2.4 million inhabitants of the Palestinian territory.
Israel has accused Hamas of diverting aid, which the Palestinian militant group denies.
The heads of 12 major aid organizations warned on Thursday that “famine is not just a risk, but likely rapidly unfolding in almost all parts” of the territory.
“There are no open crossings and there is nothing in the market,” said Qanan.
“When I buy two small bags (of vegetables) for 80 shekels ($22), there is no meat,” she added.
Sea turtles are internationally protected as an endangered species, but those caught in Gaza fishermen’s nets are used for food.
Qanan mixes the meat with flour and vinegar to wash it, before rinsing and boiling it in an old metal pot.
“We never expected to eat a turtle,” fisherman Abdel Halim Qanan said.
“When the war started, there was a food shortage. There is no food. So (turtle meat) is an alternative for other sources of protein. There is no meat, poultry or vegetables.”
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has warned that Gaza is facing its most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began on October 7, 2023, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Fighting has raged in Gaza since then, pausing only twice — recently during a two-month ceasefire between January 19 and March 17, and in a previous one-week halt in late November 2023.
The World Health Organization’s regional chief Hanan Balkhy said in June that some Gazans were so desperate that they were eating animal food, grass, and drinking sewage water.
Hamas on Thursday accused Israel of using “starvation as a weapon” against Gazans by blocking aid supplies.
Fisherman Qanan said the turtles were killed in the “halal” method, in accordance with Islamic rites.
“If there was no famine, we would not eat it and leave it, but we want to compensate for the lack of protein,” he said.

Israeli strikes on Gaza kill more than 90 people in the last 48 hours, Palestinians say

Updated 19 April 2025
AP
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Israeli strikes on Gaza kill more than 90 people in the last 48 hours, Palestinians say

  • Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 90 people have been killed by Israeli strikes in the last 48 hours.
  • The dead include at least 15 people killed overnight, among them women and children, some of who were sheltering in a designated humanitarian zone, according to hospital staff
Updated 19 April 2025
AP

DEIR AL-BALAH: Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed more than 90 people in the last 48 hours, Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday, as Israeli troops ramp up attacks to pressure Hamas to release its hostages and disarm.
The dead include 15 people who were killed overnight, among them women and children, some of who were sheltering in a designated humanitarian zone, according to hospital staff.
At least 11 people were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis, several of them in a tent in the Mwasi area where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are living, hospital worker said. Israel has designated it as a humanitarian zone.
Four other people were killed in separate strikes in Rafah city, including a mother and her daughter, according to the European Hospital, where the bodies were brought.
Israel has vowed to intensify attacks across Gaza and occupy large “security zones” inside the strip. For six weeks Israel also has blockaded Gaza, barring the entry of food and other goods.
This week, aid groups raised alarm saying that thousands of children have become malnourished, and most people are barely eating one meal a day as stocks dwindle, according to the United Nations.
On Friday, Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the head of the World Health Organization’s eastern Mediterranean office, urged the new US ambassador in Israel, Mike Huckabee, to push the country to lift Gaza’s blockade so medicines and other aid can enter the strip.
“I would wish for him to go in and see the situation firsthand,” she said.
In his first appearance as ambassador on Friday, Huckabee visited the Western Wall, the holiest Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem’s Old City. He inserted a prayer into the wall, which he said was handwritten by US President Donald Trump. Huckabee said every effort was being made to bring home the remaining hostages held by Hamas.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have since been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s offensive has since killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war has destroyed vast parts of Gaza and most of its food production capabilities. The war has displaced around 90 percent of the population, with hundreds of thousands of people living in tent camps and bombed-out buildings.

Topics: War on Gaza

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Syria president hosts Republican US congressman in Damascus

Updated 19 April 2025
AFP
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Syria president hosts Republican US congressman in Damascus

  • Al-Sharaa meets with US Congressman Cory Mills in Damascus
  • Washington has already eased some sanctions on Syria affecting essential services
Updated 19 April 2025
AFP

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa has met with a US congressman, the Syrian presidency said on Saturday, the first such visit by an American lawmaker since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shaibani was also present at the meeting with Republican Cory Mills at the presidential palace in Damascus, a presidency statement said.
Mills arrived in Syria on Friday along with Marlin Stutzman, another politician from the Republican party of US President Donald Trump.
In late December, less than two weeks after a coalition spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham toppled Assad, Washington scrapped a long-standing reward for the arrest of the new leader.
The decision to drop the bounty for Sharaa followed “positive messages” from a first meeting with the new authorities, a senior US diplomat said at the time.
The new government, dominated by Sharaa loyalists, has been pushing for Assad-era sanctions to be lifted to revive Syria’s economy and support reconstruction after nearly 14 years of war.
Washington has already eased some sanctions on Syria affecting essential services, although it is a temporary measure as the United States and other governments wait to see how the new authorities exercise their power before enacting wider exemptions.
The United States, which has welcomed the formation of an interim government, has demanded progress on issues such as the fight against terrorism.
Nevertheless, Washington announced on Friday that it would halve the number of US troops deployed to the country to fight the Daesh group, bringing their number to fewer than 1,000.
International sanctions have weighed heavily on the Syrian economy, with around 90 percent of people living in poverty, according to UN figures.
Next week, Syrian ministers and the country’s central bank chief are due to attend the International Monetary Fund and World Bank’s spring meetings in Washington, sources with knowledge of the meetings told AFP.
The congressmen’s visit came as Washington warned on Friday of “imminent attacks” in Syria and particularly in “locations frequented by tourists,” according to an alert posted on the US embassy’s website.
The embassy’s operations in Damascus have been suspended since 2012, the year after the brutal repression of anti-government protests under Assad sparked civil war.

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria US REPUBLICAN

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Earthquake of magnitude 5.8 strikes Afghanistan-Tajikistan border, GFZ says

Updated 19 April 2025
Reuters
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Earthquake of magnitude 5.8 strikes Afghanistan-Tajikistan border, GFZ says

  • The quake was at a depth of 92 km
Updated 19 April 2025
Reuters

DUBAI: An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 struck the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border on Saturday, German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said. The quake was at a depth of 92 km (57 miles), GFZ said.

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Survivors describe executions, arson in attack on Sudan’s Zamzam camp

Updated 19 April 2025
Reuters
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Survivors describe executions, arson in attack on Sudan’s Zamzam camp

  • UN reports 400,000 fled Zamzam, 300-400 killed in attack
  • RSF aims to consolidate control in Darfur by defeating army
Updated 19 April 2025
Reuters

Sitting in a crowd of mothers and children under the harsh sun, Najlaa Ahmed described the moment the Rapid Support Forces men poured into Darfur’s Zamzam displacement camp, looting and burning homes as shells rained down and drones flew overhead.
She lost track of most of her family as she fled. “I don’t know what’s become of them, my mother, father, siblings, my grandmother, I came here with strangers,” she said — one of six survivors who told Reuters of arson and executions in the raid.
The Rapid Support Forces — two years into their conflict with Sudan’s army — seized the massive camp in North Darfur a week ago in an attack that the United Nations says left at least 300 people dead and forced 400,000 to flee.
The RSF did not respond to a request for comment, but has denied accusations of atrocities and said the camp was being used base being used as a base by forces loyal to the army. Humanitarian groups have denounced the raid as a targeted attack on civilians already facing famine.
Najlaa Ahmed managed to get her children to safety in Tawila — a town 60 km (40 miles) from Zamzam controlled by a neutral rebel group — the third time, she said, she had been forced to flee the RSF in a matter of months.
She said she watched seven people die of hunger and thirst, and others succumb to their injuries on her latest journey.
The RSF has posted videos of its second-in-command, Abdelrahim Dagalo, promising to provide displaced people with food and shelter in the camp where famine was determined in August.

BODIES FOUND
More than 280,000 people have sought refuge in Tawila according to the General Coordination for Displaced People and Refugees, an advocacy group, on top of the half a million that have arrived since the war broke out in April 2023.
Speaking from Al-Fashir — the capital of North Darfur 15 km north of Zamzam which the RSF is trying to take from the army — one man who asked not to be named said he had found the bodies of 24 people killed in an attack on a religious school, some of them lined up.
“They started entering people’s houses, looting... they killed some people ... After this people fled, running in different directions. There were fires. They had soldiers burning buildings to create more terror.”
Another man, an elder in the camp, said the RSF had killed 14 people at close range in a mosque near his home.
“People who are scared always go to the mosque to seek refuge, but they went into every mosque and shot them,” he said.
Reuters could not independently verify the reports.
One video verified by Reuters showed soldiers yelling at a group of older men and young men outside a mosque, interrogating them about a supposed military base.
Other videos verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers shooting an unarmed man as others lay on the ground, calling them dogs. One showed armed men celebrating as they stood around a group of dead bodies.
The RSF has said such videos are fake.

FIGHT FOR DARFUR
The capture of Zamzam comes as the RSF tries to consolidate its control of the Darfur region. Victory in Al-Fashir would boost the RSF’s efforts to set up a parallel government to the one controlled by the army which has been on the upswing lately, retaking control of the capital Khartoum.
The war between the Sudanese army — which has also been accused of atrocities, charges it denies — and the RSF broke out in April 2023 over plans to integrate the two forces. The RSF’s roots lie in Darfur’s Janjaweed militias, whose attacks in the early 2000s led to the creation of Zamzam and other displacement camps across Darfur.
Researchers from the Yale School of Public Health said in a report on Wednesday that more than 1.7 square km of the camp, including the main market, had been burned, and that fires had continued every day since Friday.
The researchers also saw checkpoints around the camp, and witnesses told Reuters that some people were being prevented from leaving.
In Tawila, Medical aid agency MSF received 154 injured people, the youngest of them seven months old, almost all with gunshot wounds, emergency field coordinator Marion Ramstein told Reuters.
Supplies of food, water and shelter were already low before the new arrivals.
“The lucky ones are the ones who find a tree to sit under,” Ramstein said.
Ahmed Mohamed, who arrived in Tawila this week, said he was robbed of all his possessions by soldiers on the road, and was now sleeping on the bare ground.
“We are in need of everything a human being would need,” he said.

Topics: Sudan

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