RAFAH, Gaza Strip: Explosions and shootings shook the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital and surrounding neighborhoods as Israeli forces stormed through the facility for a second day Tuesday. The military said it had killed 50 Hamas militants in the hospital, but it could not be independently confirmed that the dead were combatants.
The raid was a new blow to the Shifa medical complex, which had only partially resumed operations after a destructive Israeli raid in November. Thousands of Palestinian patients, medical staff and displaced people were trapped inside the sprawling complex Tuesday, as heavy fighting between troops and Hamas fighters raged in nearby districts. Details were scarce, with communications from inside the hospital nearly impossible.
“It’s very hard right now. There’s heavy bombardment in the area of Shifa, and buildings are being hit. The sound of tank and artillery fire is continuous,” Emy Shaheen, who lives near the hospital, said in a voice message with repeated booms of shelling audible in the background. She said a large fire had been raging for hours near the hospital.
The Israeli military said it raided Shifa early Monday because Hamas fighters had grouped in the hospital and were directing attacks from inside.
The claim could not be confirmed, and the Hamas media office said all those killed in the assault were civilians. But the surge in fighting in Gaza City underscored Hamas’ continued presence in northern Gaza months after Israeli ground troops claimed they largely had control over the area.
Israel launched its offensive in Gaza vowing to destroy Hamas after the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. More than 31,800 Palestinians have been killed in the bombardment and offensive since. Much of northern Gaza has been leveled, and an international authority on hunger crises warned on Monday that 70 percent of people there were experiencing catastrophic hunger and that famine was imminent.
The mayhem in the north came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his determination to invade Gaza’s southernmost town, Rafah – one of the last major towns not targeted by a ground assault.
A day earlier, in their first phone call in a month, US President Joe Biden urged Netanyahu not to carry out a Rafah operation, urging “an alternative approach” to more precisely target Hamas fighters there.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has expressed concern over attacking Rafah because some 1.4 million people from across Gaza have crowded into the area. UN officials have warned of a massive death toll and the potential collapse of the humanitarian aid effort if troops moved into Rafah.
Netanyahu agreed to send a team of Israeli officials to Washington to discuss Rafah with Biden administration officials.
But on Tuesday, he told a parliamentary committee that while he would listen to US proposals “out of respect” to Biden, “we are determined to complete the elimination of these (Hamas) battalions in Rafah, and there is no way to do this without a ground incursion.”
Airstrikes in Rafah overnight destroyed an apartment and several houses, killing at least 15 people, including six women and children, hospital officials said.
NEW SHIFA SIEGE
The army last raided Shifa Hospital in November after claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command center within and beneath the facility. The military revealed a tunnel leading to some underground rooms, as well as weapons it said were found inside the hospital. However, the evidence fell short of the earlier claims, and critics accused the army of recklessly endangering the lives of civilians.
The hospital, which is the heart of Gaza’s health system, was severely damaged in the assault and has only been able to resume limited operations since. Gaza officials say some 30,000 displaced people were taking refuge in the compound when the new Israeli assault began.
The raid came before dawn Monday when tanks surrounded the facility and troops stormed into multiple buildings.
The military on Tuesday said two of its soldiers had been killed in the operation. It said troops on Monday killed Faiq Mabhouh, a senior officer in Gaza’s police force, which is under the Hamas-led government but distinct from the militant group’s armed fighting wing. The military said he was hiding in Shifa with weapons, but the Gaza government said he was in charge of protecting aid distribution in the north.
The raid prompted heavy fighting for blocks around Shifa. Hamas’ military wing said it struck two Israeli armored vehicles and a group of soldiers with rockets in the vicinity of the hospital.
Emergency services received multiple calls for help from people whose buildings had been bombed in the streets around Shifa, but rescue teams could not go to the scene because of the fighting, said Mahmoud Bassal, civil defense spokesperson.
Kareem Al-Shawwa, a Palestinian living about a kilometer from the hospital, said the past 24 hours had been “terrifying,” with explosions and heavy exchanges of fire. He said Israeli troops had told residents to evacuate the area, but he and his family were too afraid of getting caught in the fighting to leave their home.
“Either we’re forced to evacuate and they (Israeli soldiers) will detain men, or we’ll die,” he said, referring to the military’s mass roundups of men from among people evacuating.
Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian facilities to shield its fighters, and the Israeli military has raided several hospitals since the start of the war.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Monday that at least 31,726 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count, but it says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead.
Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel that triggered the war and took another 250 people hostage. Hamas is still believed to be holding about 100 captives, as well as the remains of 30 others, after most of the rest were freed during a ceasefire last year.
Heavy fighting rages around Gaza’s biggest hospital as Israel raids it for a second day
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Heavy fighting rages around Gaza’s biggest hospital as Israel raids it for a second day
- The raid was a new blow to the Shifa medical complex
- Thousands of Palestinian patients, medical staff and displaced people were trapped inside the sprawling complex Tuesday, as heavy fighting between troops and Hamas fighters raged
Yemen’s government shuts down unlicensed exchange firms to stop riyal devaluation
- Local money traders and media said that the riyal was trading at 2050 against the dollar
- Yemeni government closed dozens of exchange firms in Aden, Yemen’s interim capital, Hadramout, Shabwa, and Mahra that lack or have expired licenses
AL-MUKALLA: The Yemeni riyal stabilized on Monday near its all-time low of 2050 against the dollar in government-controlled areas, as the Yemeni government launched a campaign targeting unlicensed exchange firms.
Local money traders and media said that the riyal was trading at 2050 against the dollar, maintaining the same record low, days after breaking the historic low of 2000 against the dollar. In early 2015, the Yemeni riyal was worth 215 per dollar.
This comes as the Yemeni government closed dozens of exchange firms in Aden, Yemen’s interim capital, Hadramout, Shabwa, and Mahra that lack or have expired licenses.
Local officials, escorted by armed policemen, were seen in the streets of Aden, Al-Mukalla in Hadramout, Attaq in Shabwa, and Al-Ghaydah in Mahra province, inspecting exchange firms and shops’ licenses and closing the doors of unlicensed firms to slow the devaluation of the Yemeni riyal.
The Yemeni government has long accused local money traders of engaging in currency speculation, which resulted in the Yemeni riyal’s rapid devaluation.
Another reason for the devaluation, according to the Yemeni government, is the Houthis’ attacks on oil terminals in Hadramout and Shabwa in late 2022, which resulted in a complete halt to oil exports.
Saleh Fadaeq, the head of the central bank branch in Shabwa, said on Monday that the campaign against unauthorized exchange firms would continue to stop the Yemeni riyal’s devaluation, end currency speculation, and combat money laundering, according to the official news agency SABA.
The Presidential Leadership Council and the Yemeni government have recently requested financial assistance from international donors to help stabilize the Yemeni riyal, pay employees, and fund critical projects.
Yemenis across the political and social spectrum have warned of a major humanitarian crisis in Yemen, as the rapid devaluation of the riyal has driven up the prices of food, fuel, and other essential commodities, pushing people deeper into poverty.
Ismael Al-Sharabi wrote on Facebook that the riyal’s depreciation is causing “a humanitarian crisis,” with the prices for basic food items reaching unprecedented highs. He urged the Yemeni government to quickly bring under control the riyal’s fall.
“A tomato now costs 1,000 riyals. This is a humanitarian disaster and a historical curse that has befallen these people, who are now fighting death to survive, swallowing all burdens, high prices, and extreme poverty,” Al-Sharabi said.
High prices caused by the riyal’s devaluation have sparked violent protests in Aden and Al-Mukalla, as well as other Yemeni cities under government control, over the last several years.
Mustafa Nasr, director of the Studies and Economic Media Center, said the government’s campaign against unlicensed exchange firms did not lead to the riyal’s recovery as it only targeted small firms and not the large exchange firms that control the market, calling for stricter government measures to prevent the riyal’s fall.
“The exchange sector has become disorganized, bloated, and has sufficient liquidity to influence the exchange market,” Nasr told Arab News.
In its most recent report on the Yemeni economy, released late last month, the World Bank depicted a bleak economy in 2025, saying that Yemen’s gross domestic product is expected to fall by 1 percent in 2024, compared to a 2 percent drop last year.
Sixty percent of Yemenis have insufficient access to food due to an unprecedented level of insecurity brought about by the war, and the Houthis’ attacks on oil terminals slashed 42 percent of the government’s revenues, making it difficult for it to provide public services and devaluing the Yemeni riyal, according to the World Bank.
Syrian state media reports Israeli strike south of Damascus
- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported at least three strikes in the area
DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported Israeli strikes on Monday near the Sayyeda Zeinab area south of Damascus, home to an important Shiite sanctuary and guarded by pro-Iranian groups, including Hezbollah.
"At approximately 5:18 pm (14:15 GMT), the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights, targeting a number of civilian sites south of Damascus, which led to some material losses," the official SANA news agency said, citing a military source.
Mehdi Mahfouz, a 34-year-old resident of the area, said he "heard three successive explosions, one of which was very strong."
"Then I saw a large black cloud of smoke rising," Mahfouz added.
The blasts were heard in the neighbouring Jaramana suburb of Damascus, according to an AFP photographer, as ambulances headed to the area.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported at least three strikes in the area.
The targets include a house "used by members of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," the monitor added, saying it is located in a farm in the Sayyeda Zeinab area.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids
- The war has unleashed hunger across the country, erased most signs of a functioning state in RSF-held areas, and prompted fears of fragmentation
NEW HALFA: Salwa Abdallah was recuperating from a caesarean section and tending to her one-month old baby when soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces barged into her home in Sudan’s eastern El Gezira state late last month.
They accused her of loyalty to the army and its allies, their rivals in an 18-month war. “They said ‘You killed us, so today we’ll kill you and rape your girls,’” she told Reuters, sheltering under a makeshift sheet in the town of New Halfa, where she arrived after walking for days on foot with her elderly mother and children.
She said the soldiers chased them out of their village with whips and later shot at them on motorcycles, which two other victims of the attack also mentioned.
Reuters spoke to 13 victims of a series of intense, violent raids in eastern Gezira over the past two weeks, which affected at least 65 villages and towns according to activists.
The UN says some 135,000 people have been displaced, largely to Kassala, Gedaref, and River Nile states, which are already packed with many of the more than 11 million internally displaced by the devastating war that broke out in April 2023.
“I am shocked and deeply appalled that human rights violations of the kind witnessed in Darfur last year ... are being repeated in El Gezira State. These are atrocious crimes,” said the UN’s top official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, referring to attacks last year that prompted accusations of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity from the United States and others.
The war has unleashed hunger across the country, erased most signs of a functioning state in RSF-held areas, and prompted fears of fragmentation.
Both sides are accused of hindering much needed international assistance.
Spokespersons from the RSF and Sudanese army did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
REVENGE ATTACKS
Though El Gezira state has been subject to a violent looting campaign since the RSF took control in December, the defection of its chief in the state unleashed a series of revenge attacks.
The Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, named 169 people killed since the violence began on Oct. 20, though in a statement it said there were hundreds more.
The UN’s human rights office said last week that there were at least 25 cases of sexual violence, including an 11 year-old girl who died as a result. The office also said that the RSF had confiscated Internet devices in at least 30 villages, and cited reports they had burnt fields of crops.
The worst incident was in Al-Sireha, where the committee said 124 people were killed on Oct. 25.
Video verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers lining up men, many of them elderly, and some in blood-splattered clothes, taunting them and forcing them to bleat.
Another video verified by Reuters showed dozens of bodies wrapped up in sheets for burial.
The RSF has denied ordering both attacks, and said the attacks in Gezira were the result of the army arming local communities.
The army has responded by emphasising popular resistance campaigns, though there has been little evidence of widescale arming of civilians in Gezira.
The Sudanese Human Rights Monitor warned the army against “leaving civilians ... exposed to direct and disproportionate confrontations with the RSF,” which it criticized for not fulfilling promises to protect civilians.
Hashim Bashir, a man disabled after his leg was amputated prior to the war, said RSF soldiers threw him out of his home in Al-Nayb village.
“They are very vicious... If you survive their gunshots, they hit you in your head. If you survive that, they beat you with a whip,” he said, showing scars on his functioning leg.
His niece, Faiza Mohammed, said the RSF soldiers allowed them to take nothing with them, even identifying documents.
“I hid under the bed, but they got me, beat me, and pulled my earring straight off my ear,” she said.
‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season
- Agricultural regions in Lebanon have been caught in the crossfire since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up in October last year, a full-scale war breaking out on September 23
BEIRUT: Lebanese farmer Abu Taleb briefly returned to his orchard last month to salvage an avocado harvest but ran away empty handed as soon as Israeli air raids began.
“The war broke out just before the first harvest season,” said Abu Taleb, displaced from the village of Tayr Debba near the southern city Tyre.
“When I went back in mid-October, it was deserted... it was scary,” said the father of two, who is now sheltering in Tripoli more than 160 kilometers to the north and asked to be identified by a pseudonym because of security concerns.
Abu Taleb said his harvesting attempt was interrupted by an Israeli raid on the neighboring town of Markaba.
He was forced back to Tripoli without the avocados he usually exports every year.
Agricultural regions in Lebanon have been caught in the crossfire since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up in October last year, a full-scale war breaking out on September 23.
The UN’s agriculture agency, FAO, said more than 1,909 hectares of farmland in south Lebanon had been damaged or left unharvested between October last year and September 28.
The conflict has also displaced more than half a million people, including farmers who abandoned their crops just when they were ready to harvest.
Hani Saad had to abandon 120 hectares of farmland in the southern region of Nabatiyeh, which is rich in citrus and avocado plantations.
“If the ceasefire takes place within a month, I can save the harvest, otherwise, the whole season is ruined,” said Saad who has been displaced to the coastal city of Jounieh, north of Beirut.
When an Israeli strike sparked a fire in one of Saad’s orchards, he had to pay out of his own pocket for the fuel of the fire engine that extinguished the blaze.
His employees, meanwhile, have fled. Of 32 workers, 28 have left, mainly to neighboring Syria.
Israeli strikes have put at least two land crossings with Syria out of service, blocking a key export route for produce and crops.
Airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon as insurance costs soar.
This has dealt a deadly blow to agricultural exports, most of which are destined for Gulf Arab states.
Fruit exporter Chadi Kaadan said exports to the Gulf have dropped by more than 50 percent.
The supply surplus in the local market has caused prices to plummet at home, he added.
“In the end, it is the farmer who loses,” said Saad who used to earn $5000 a day before the war started.
Today, he barely manages $300.
While avocados can stay on the tree for months, they are starting to run out of water following Israeli strikes on irrigation channels, Saad said.
Citrus fruits and cherimoyas have already started to fall.
“The war has ruined me. I spend my time in front of the TV waiting for a ceasefire so I can return to my livelihood,” Saad told AFP.
Gaby Hage, a resident of the Christian town of Rmeish, on the border with Israel, is one of the few farmers who decided to stay in south Lebanon.
He has only been able to harvest 100 of his 350 olive trees, which were left untended for a year because of cross-border strikes.
“I took advantage of a slight lull in the fighting to pick what I could,” he told AFP.
Hage said agriculture was a lifeline for the inhabitants of his town, which has been cut off by the war.
Ibrahim Tarchichi, president of the farmers’ union in the Bekaa Valley, which was hit hard by the strikes, believes that agriculture in Lebanon is going through the “worst phase” of its recent history.
“I have experienced four wars, it has never been this serious,” he said.
Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack
- Governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh Laila Ghannam: ‘Attacks are increasing because of impunity’ for attackers
- Some 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank
AL-BIREH: Israeli settlers torched nearly 20 cars early Monday in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence and an Israeli security source.
An AFP journalist saw several cars completely charred, and the blackened facade of the five-story building outside which they were parked.
An alert rang “at 3:30am (0130 GMT) signalling that settlers entered the area and committed acts of vandalism,” said Rami Omar, head of the local civil defense office.
An Israeli security official told AFP notification of the incident came at 4:00 am and soldiers were sent who arrived on site after the settlers had gone.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said 19 vehicles had been burned by settlers.
Israeli police, soldiers and Shin Bet security agency officers collected evidence in Al-Bireh for the investigation, the official added.
Israeli authorities did not yet know where the settlers came from and what their motives were.
Ihab Al-Zabin, a resident of the damaged building, told AFP he saw the arsonists run away toward the nearby Israeli settlement of Beit El.
Zabin said he saw around 10 people he identified as settlers “pouring liquids on vehicles in front of the building and then setting them on fire.”
“I yelled from my apartment, and at that moment they ran away,” he said. “When I went down with my neighbors to put out the fire, settlers shot toward us.”
Abdullah Abu Rahmah from the Palestinian Commission against Settlements told AFP that the attackers belong to a group of arsonists who have attacked other nearby villages in the past.
Laila Ghannam, governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, told journalists at the scene “there could have been a massacre in this building,” which residents say housed more than 60 people.
“Attacks are increasing because of impunity” for attackers, she said.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
The UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said in August: “Between 1 and 28 October, OCHA documented nearly 270 settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians and their property.”
Some 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
The territory is home to three million Palestinians.
