GAZA STRIP: Fighting raged Monday in and around the besieged Gaza Strip’s largest hospital complex where Israel said its forces killed and arrested Hamas militants, as Palestinians fled by foot under heavy bombardment.
While the army launched the overnight raid at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, the Israeli government sent the head of its Mossad spy agency to Qatar for renewed talks toward a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
The devastating war since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has left roughly half of Gazans — around 1.1 million people — experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, a UN-backed food security assessment warned.
The expert report is “exhibit A for the need for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, decrying an “entirely man-made disaster.”
“We must act now to prevent the unthinkable, the unacceptable and the unjustifiable,” he said.
Gaza’s soaring civilian death toll and large-scale destruction have hardened global opposition to Israel’s military operation and siege, including accusations of deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Israel’s military campaign had turned long-blockaded Gaza from the world’s “greatest open-air prison” into its biggest “open-air graveyard,” and that Israel was using famine as a “weapon of war.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz replied that “Israel allows extensive humanitarian aid into Gaza” and accused Borrell of “attacking Israel.”
In the latest heavy battle, Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa in an operation the army said targeted senior Hamas militants.
Witnesses reported air strikes and tanks near the complex crowded with thousands of Palestinian patients and displaced people.
AFP images showed black smoke engulfing parts of the city after bombardment, with Palestinians fleeing by foot along rubble-strewn roads as others treated the wounded in the street.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said nearby residents had reported dozens of casualties who could not be helped “due to the intensity of gunfire and artillery shelling.”
An AFP journalist witnessed air strikes on buildings in the area around Al-Shifa and reported seeing “hundreds of people, mostly children, women, and the elderly, fleeing their homes.”
The Israeli military, which had asked Gazans to evacuate the area, said 20 militants were killed and dozens of others were detained at the hospital.
The army identified one of the fatalities as Hamas internal security official Fayq Al-Mabhouh, saying that “weapons were located in the room adjacent to where he was eliminated.”
A Gaza police source confirmed his death and said he was a brigadier general in the force. Relatives said he was also the brother of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’s armed wing slain in Dubai in 2010.
Israeli forces previously raided Al-Shifa in November, when ground operations were focused on northern Gaza. In January Israel said it had “completed the dismantling” of Hamas’s command structure in the area.
Israel has repeatedly said the complex housed an underground Hamas control base, which the militants have denied.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “terribly worried” about the renewed fighting around Al-Shifa which was “endangering health workers, patients and civilians.”
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
Israel has carried out a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive that Gaza’s health ministry says has killed at least 31,726 people, most of them women and children.
As the fighting flared around Al-Shifa, elsewhere in Gaza City a massive crowd gathered at a UN food distribution center to collect bags of flour.
“There’s nothing to eat or drink. Children are dying,” said resident Umm Omar Al-Masharwai.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which operates the facility and coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has faced funding cuts since Israel accused about a dozen of its employees of involvement in the October 7 attack.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Monday he intended to visit Gaza but had been denied entry by “Israeli authorities,” a claim Israel did not immediately comment on.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of “starving children to death” in its siege of the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian charity Oxfam said Israel was “systematically and deliberately” blocking aid.
Global concern has focussed on Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians now live, many of them in crowded shelters and tent cities near the Egyptian border.
Repeated Israeli warnings of a looming ground invasion have raised fears of an even worse humanitarian catastrophe.
Responding to concerns voiced by top ally the United States and other governments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated that civilians would be evacuated from Rafah before any ground attack, without detailing where to.
Mediation efforts toward a truce were expected to resume, following a week-long ceasefire in November.
A meeting in Qatar between Israel’s Mossad spy chief, David Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian officials “is expected to take place today,” a source close to the talks said.
It follows the latest proposal submitted by Hamas for a six-week truce, vastly more aid into Gaza and the initial release of about 42 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
During the proposed truce, Israeli forces would withdraw from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza, according to a Hamas official.
Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that Hamas’s new proposal was “unrealistic” but that Israel would send a delegation to Doha.
The White House said US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu spoke on Monday in their first call for over a month, with tensions rising over the war and its impact on civilians.
Battle rages at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital
https://arab.news/m74a6
Battle rages at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital
- Witnesses reported air strikes and tanks near the complex crowded with thousands of Palestinian patients and displaced people
- UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Monday he intended to visit Gaza but had been denied entry by “Israeli authorities”
Asma Assad barred from UK to seek cancer treatment
- UK foreign secretary says she is ‘not welcome’ in Britain
- Former Syrian first lady’s passport expired in 2020
LONDON: Asma Al-Assad is effectively barred from returning to the UK after her British passport expired, The Times newspaper reported.
The wife of former Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad will not be able to return to her birthplace, London, despite reports that she is critically ill with leukemia.
The 49-year-old has been given a 50-50 chance of surviving the illness, according to sources.
The news comes as her father, Fawaz Akhras, a renowned cardiologist, left his work at the privately run Cromwell Hospital in Kensington, west London, to care for his daughter in Moscow, where the Assad family was granted asylum this month.
Asma Assad’s British passport expired in September 2020, and it is unclear whether UK ministers have blocked renewal or if the former first lady simply allowed the document’s validity to lapse.
Yvette Cooper, the UK home secretary, said that Assad will be prevented from entering the UK to seek treatment.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said that the former investment banker is “not welcome” in Britain.
Asma Assad became Syria’s first lady in 2000 after marrying the country’s new president.
Leaked emails show that she ordered luxury goods in London and Paris during the civil war in her country, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
She played a key role in supporting her husband’s brutal crackdown on opposition protests during the Arab Spring in 2011.
Asma Assad reportedly fled to Moscow weeks before her husband this month during a lighting offensive by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
Her three children, Hafez, 23, Zein, 21, and Karim, 19, are also in Moscow, where the family own luxury properties.
Sources told The Telegraph last week that the former first lady was being kept in isolation during medical treatment.
“Asma is dying. She can’t be in the same room as anyone,” one source said.
Her father and his wife, Sahar, 75, were placed under US sanctions along with Asma’s younger brothers in 2020, although none of her family has been blacklisted by the UK.
Gaza health officials say baby dies from ‘severe cold’
- Jumaa Al-Batran died from the cold, while his twin brother remains in the intensive care unit at a local hospital
- The vast majority of the territory’s residents have been displaced since the Israeli offensive
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza health officials said that a 20-day-old baby died on Sunday from “severe cold” as the war-ravaged Palestinian territory grapples with winter weather.
Jumaa Al-Batran died from the cold, while his twin brother remains in the intensive care unit at a local hospital, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in a statement.
Marwan Al-Hamas, head of field hospitals in Gaza, confirmed the death. He said it brought to five the total number of children “who have died due to severe cold” in recent weeks.
“There is no electricity. The water is cold and there is no gas, heating or food,” said Yahya Al-Batran, the father of the child.
“My children are dying in front of my eyes and nobody cares. Jumaa has died and I fear that his brother Ali may follow.”
Yahya Al-Batran said he and his wife were living in a tattered tent in the city of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are crammed into unsuitable tents, most of which were hastily set up in Deir el-Balah and in the southern areas of Khan Yunis and Rafah.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October last year, Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have endured severe shortages of electricity, drinkable water, food and medical services.
The vast majority of the territory’s residents have been displaced at least once since the war broke out with Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
One tourist killed, another injured in shark attack in Egypt’s Marsa Alam
CAIRO: One tourist was killed and another was injured in a shark attack in Egypt’s Marsa Alam resort, according to a statement from the environment ministry on Sunday.
The nationalities of the tourists were not disclosed.
Sudan government rejects UN-backed famine declaration
- War between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had created famine conditions
- Both the Sudanese army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war
CAIRO: The Sudanese government rejected on Sunday a report backed by the United Nations which determined that famine had spread to five areas of the war-torn country.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review, which UN agencies use, said last week that the war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had created famine conditions for 638,000 people, with a further 8.1 million on the brink of mass starvation.
The army-aligned government “categorically rejects the IPC’s description of the situation in Sudan as a famine,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The statement called the report “essentially speculative” and accused the IPC of procedural and transparency failings.
They said the team did not have access to updated field data and had not consulted with the government’s technical team on the final version before publication.
The IPC did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The Sudanese government, loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has been based in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan since the capital Khartoum became a warzone in April 2023.
It has repeatedly been accused of stonewalling international efforts to assess the food security situation in the war-torn country.
The authorities have also been accused of creating bureaucratic hurdles to humanitarian work and blocking visas for foreign teams.
The International Rescue Committee said the army was “leveraging its status as the internationally recognized government (and blocking) the UN and other agencies from reaching RSF-controlled areas.”
Both the army and the RSF have been accused of using starvation as a weapon of war.
The war in Sudan has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted over 12 million people, including millions who face dire food insecurity in army-controlled areas.
Across the country, more than 24.6 million people — around half the population — face high levels of acute food insecurity.
Egypt tests new extension of the Suez Canal
- Two ships used the new extension on Saturday, a statement from the Suez Canal Authority said
- The new extension is set to boost the canal’s capacity by six to eight vessels a day
CAIRO: Egypt has tested a new 10-kilometer extension to the Suez Canal as it tries to minimize the impact of currents on shipping and increase the key waterway’s capacity.
Two ships used the new extension on Saturday, a statement from the Suez Canal Authority said.
Authority chief Osama Rabie said the development in the canal’s southern region will “enhance navigational safety and reduce the effects of water and air currents on passing ships.”
Vessels navigating the waterway have at times run aground, mostly because of strong winds and sandstorms.
In 2021, giant container ship Ever Given became wedged diagonally in the canal, blocking trade for nearly a week and resulting in delays that cost billions of dollars.
The new extension is set to boost the canal’s capacity by six to eight vessels a day, Rabie said, and it will open after new navigational maps are issued.
In 2015, Egypt undertook an $8-billion expansion to the waterway, followed by several smaller development projects.
The Suez Canal has long been a vital source of foreign currency for Egypt that has been undergoing its worst ever economic crisis.
According to the International Monetary Fund, revenue from the canal has been slashed by up to 70 percent since last year because of attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on shipping in the Red Sea.
Before the attacks pushed companies to change routes, the vital passage accounted for around 10 percent of global maritime trade.
