Israeli troops, warplanes strike north Gaza

Smoke billows from an area targeted by Israeli bombardment in the Gaza City district of Shujaiya on June 28, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 28 June 2024
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Israeli troops, warplanes strike north Gaza

  • The Al-Quds Brigades said Friday it was fighting in northern Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiya

GAZA: Israel’s military on Friday said it was conducting raids backed by air strikes in northern Gaza, killing “dozens” of militants in an area where it had declared the command structure of Hamas dismantled months ago.
The operation in Shujaiya, on the edge of Gaza City, caused numerous casualties, witnesses and medics said on Thursday when it began.
Renewed fighting in Gaza’s north followed comments on Sunday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he said the “intense phase” of the war was winding down after almost nine months.
Experts say they foresee a potentially prolonged next phase.
Omer Dostri, a military expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said he expects the army to reduce its ground presence and to increasingly use drones and fighter jets “to further dismantle Hamas.”
On Friday in the Shujaiya area, an AFP correspondent witnessed an air strike and saw smoke rising. Artillery fire boomed.
In a statement, Israel’s military said that, overnight Thursday, troops “started to conduct targeted raids” in the Shujaiya area as part of an operation that began earlier in the day.
Intelligence had indicated “the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the area of Shujaiya,” the military said, in its first details of the operation.
As troops went in, warplanes struck dozens of Hamas targets, it said, following other “significant” strikes that killed “dozens” of militants in the north.
The Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, said on Friday it was fighting in the northern Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiya and had targeted Israeli troops with mortar shells.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces had targeted the agency’s headquarters while advancing in western Rafah.
Multiple agency staff were wounded, while two fire engines, an ambulance and an excavator used for rescuing people from under rubble were damaged, one of the agency’s officials Mohammad Al-Mughair told AFP.

On Thursday, a military spokesman told residents and displaced Gazans in a social media message to leave “for your safety.”
They were asked to head south, to a declared “humanitarian zone” about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away.
An AFP photographer saw many Palestinians leaving on foot, carrying their belongings through rubble-strewn streets.
Hamas said Israeli forces were “starting a ground incursion,” reporting “several” dead as “thousands flee under relentless bombing.”
The war started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 42 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,765 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
On Friday the military announced the death of another soldier, aged 19, during combat in southern Gaza. This brings to 314 the number killed since ground operations began in the territory.
Elsewhere in the coastal strip, paramedics on Friday reported three people killed in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza.
AFP images showed the municipal building had been destroyed.
Colleagues prayed over the bodies of four civil defense volunteers killed during bombardment of the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp, other AFP images showed.
Orange work vests lay on top of their white-shrouded bodies.
Witnesses on Friday reported artillery fire in Nuseirat.
Fighting in Gaza comes alongside growing fears of a wider regional conflagration involving Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The two sides have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war in Gaza began.
Such exchanges have escalated this month.
US officials have voiced hope a Gaza ceasefire could also lead to a reduction in hostilities on Israel’s northern border, but months of on-off mediation, also involving Egypt and Qatar, have not brought a deal.
On Thursday, Hezbollah said it fired “dozens” of rockets at a military base in northern Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Lebanon.
Hezbollah said four of its fighters had been killed. Israel’s military said air strikes killed three Hezbollah operatives.
In Gaza, most of the population has been uprooted and much of the territory’s infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving residents struggling to survive.
A UN-backed assessment this week said almost half a million people in Gaza are still experiencing “catastrophic” hunger.
An Israeli government spokesman dismissed the report, partly because “it’s based upon data from Hamas’s own health institutions.”
But the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, on its website, says it was created “precisely to supersede potential political interferences through technical neutrality,” and that its parameters are based on international standards.
Netanyahu’s announcement that intense fighting is winding down comes with his right-wing coalition under a range of pressures.
Thousands of protesters again gathered in front of his Jerusalem residence on Thursday to call for a hostage release deal, an AFP reporter said.
In the Tel Aviv area, mounted police dispersed ultra-Orthodox men protesting a Supreme Court ruling that they must be drafted for military service.


‘Many more’ Conservative MPs back UK govt stance on Israel: MP

Updated 24 May 2025
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‘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

Updated 24 May 2025
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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

Updated 24 May 2025
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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

Updated 24 May 2025
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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

Updated 24 May 2025
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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.