DEIR AL-BALAH: An Israeli airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in southern Gaza killed at least 25 Palestinians on Tuesday, as heavy bombardment in the north forced the closure of medical facilities in Gaza City and sent thousands fleeing in search of increasingly elusive refuge.
Israel’s new ground assault in Gaza’s largest city is its latest effort to battle Hamas militants regrouping in areas the army previously said had been largely cleared.
Large parts of Gaza City and urban areas around it have been flattened or left a shattered landscape after nine months of fighting. Much of the population fled earlier in the war, but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in the north.
“The fighting has been intense,” said Hakeem Abdel-Bar, who fled Gaza City’s Tuffah district to the home of relatives in another part of the city. He said Israeli warplanes and drones were “striking anything moving” and that tanks had moved into central districts.
The strike at the entrance to the school killed at least 25 people, according to an Associated Press reporter who counted the bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. Hospital spokesperson Weam Fares said the dead included at least seven women and children and that the toll was likely to rise.
Earlier airstrikes in central Gaza killed at least 14 people, including a woman and four children, according to two hospitals that received the bodies. Israel has repeatedly struck what it says are militant targets across Gaza since the start of the war nine months ago.
The military blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants fight in dense, urban areas, but the army rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. The Israeli army said the airstrike near the school and reports of civilian casualties were under review, and claimed the strike targeted a Hamas militant who took part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
There was also no immediate word on casualties in Gaza City. Families whose relatives were wounded or trapped were calling for ambulances, but first responders could not reach most of the affected districts because of the Israeli operations, said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent.
“It’s a dangerous zone,” she said.
After Israel on Monday called for an evacuation from eastern and central parts of Gaza City, staff at two hospitals — Al-Ahli and the Patients Friends Association Hospital — rushed to move patients and shut down, the United Nations said. Farsakh said all three medical facilities run by the Red Crescent in Gaza City had closed.
Scores of patients were transferred to the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, which itself was the scene of heavy fighting earlier in the war. “We do not know where to go. There is no treatment and no necessities for life,” said Mohammad Abu Naser, who was being treated there. “We are dying slowly.”
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it told hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza City they did not need to evacuate. But hospitals in Gaza have often shut down and moved patients at any sign of possible Israeli military action, fearing raids.
The Episcopal Church in the Middle East, which operates Al-Ahli, said the hospital was “compelled to close by the Israeli army” after the evacuation orders and a wave of nearby drone strikes on Sunday.
In the past nine months, Israeli troops have occupied at least eight hospitals, causing the deaths of patients and medical workers along with massive destruction to facilities and equipment. Israel has claimed Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, though it has provided only limited evidence.
Only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and those only partially, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian office.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed or wounded more than 5 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Nearly the entire population has been driven from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.
The UN humanitarian office said the exodus in Gaza City was “dangerously chaotic,” with people instructed to flee through neighborhoods where fighting was underway.
“People have been observed fleeing in multiple directions, not knowing which way may be safest,” the agency said in a statement. It said the largest UN bakery in the city was forced to close, and that the fighting had blocked aid groups from accessing warehouses.
Maha Mahfouz, a mother of two, said she fled twice in the past 24 hours. She first rushed from her home in Gaza City to a relative’s house in another neighborhood. When that became dangerous, she fled Monday night to Shati, a decades-old refugee camp that has grown into an urban district where Israel has carried out repeated raids.
She described vast destruction in the areas targeted in the latest raids. “The buildings were destroyed. The roads were destroyed. All has become rubble,” she said.
The Israeli military has said it had intelligence showing that militants from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were regrouping in central Gaza City. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen weeks of fighting, the military said it had destroyed 6 kilometers of Hamas tunnels.
Hamas has warned that the latest raids in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal.
Israel and Hamas had appeared to narrow the gaps in recent days, with the US, Egypt and Qatar mediating.
CIA Director William Burns met Tuesday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo to discuss the negotiations, El-Sisi’s office said. More talks were to be held Wednesday in Qatar, where Hamas maintains a political office.
But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to relent on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a permanent ceasefire.
Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact. Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations,” including the operations in Gaza City.
Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity, with about a third said to be dead.
Israel’s bombardment and offensives in Gaza have killed more than 38,200 people and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Airstrike kills 25 in southern Gaza as Israeli assault on Gaza City shuts down medical facilities
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Airstrike kills 25 in southern Gaza as Israeli assault on Gaza City shuts down medical facilities
- Heavy bombardment in the north meanwhile forced the closure of medical facilities in Gaza City and sent thousands fleeing in search of increasingly elusive refuge
- Large parts of Gaza City and urban areas around it have been flattened or left a shattered landscape after nine months of fighting
UK must drop legal challenge against ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu: HRW
- ‘Absolutely critical’ that new govt ‘lives up to rhetoric,’ says organization’s UK director
- Court is seeking arrests of Israeli prime minister, defense minister
LONDON: The UK’s new government must drop the country’s legal challenge against the International Criminal Court’s seeking of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, Human Rights Watch has said.
Rishi Sunak, the former UK prime minister, had challenged the court’s issuing of warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant earlier this year.
Karim Khan, the ICC’s top prosecutor, said there was a credible case that the two leaders could bear responsibility for crimes against humanity, The Guardian reported on Friday.
The UK director of HRW, Yasmine Ahmed, said it is “absolutely critical” that the country’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer withdraws the legal challenge against the ICC.
The Guardian reported two weeks ago that the new government was expected to drop the case.
However, senior British diplomats later disputed the rumors, saying the decision “remained under review.”
The new UK government has until July 26 to decide whether to carry on with the legal challenge, under ICC guidelines.
Ahmed told The Guardian that the Labour government must pursue “progressive realism,” an ideology proposed by the new Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
She asked: “Will the UK government be principled and mature enough and adhere to its own statements of complying with and acting consistently with international law and supporting the rules-based order by withdrawing its application to intervene in the case of the ICC? It will be now for us to see where the rubber will hit the road.
“It is an incredibly complex world that they are addressing. We’re seeing a number of crises on a level I don’t know we’ve seen in decades.”
Ahmed praised Labour’s decision this week to resume British funding of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
That decision leaves the US as the only country yet to resume funding to UNRWA following the controversial boycott of the agency that began earlier this year.
“We cannot promote and be seen to be, or in fact be, promoting a rules-based order in international law if we’re not also replicating that domestically,” said Ahmed. “We need to give (the government) an opportunity to live up to their rhetoric.”
As Paris Olympics kick off, Gazans seek refuge in soccer
- Palestinian youths play soccer against each other at school sheltering the displaced in rare distraction from devastating Israeli bombings
- Gaza has always had to contend with poor sports facilities and the war has demolished everything from boxing rings to soccer pitches
GAZA: Inspired by the Olympics worlds away in Paris, some Palestinian youths played soccer against each other at a school sheltering the displaced in the war-torn Gaza Strip — a rare distraction from devastating Israeli bombardment.
With the world’s gaze on competitions in France, there is no glory or prize for the winning team in the tiny enclave that has been decimated by an Israeli offensive launched in October last year.
The players found a trophy they were looking for — something to give them even a small sense of accomplishment in the chaos of war — under the rubble.
It was a painful reminder that Gaza could take years to recover from the bloodshed.
“The whole world is watching it (the Olympics) and excited about it. And I wish for the world to look at us, in the Gaza Strip,” said Abu Seif, one of the organizers of the Gaza soccer games where players in red or black compete.
“Nothing is left but (it) was bombed by the Israeli occupation,” read a banner held by children standing nearby.
“All our stadiums were destroyed; all our clubs were destroyed. You see the football that we are playing with, a very old ball in the shelter,” Abu Seif said.
HEAVY TOLL ON SPORTS
Impoverished Gaza has always had to contend with poor sports facilities and the war has demolished everything from boxing rings to rough, dusty soccer pitches.
But the spirit of athletes has not been broken even as the death toll of Palestinians hammered by the Israel military campaign has exceeded 39,000, according to Gaza authorities.
“We are trying to hold sports activities in this school. We are trying to change the reality of life that we are in and entertain people and children as much as possible,” said Mustafa Abu Hashish, who is taking part in the tournament.
The world has been focused on the fighting in Gaza since Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Aside from trying to find a safe place to hide from the bombing, Palestinians also face a humanitarian crisis with shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine inflicting suffering every day.
Gaza’s 2.3 million people live in one of the world’s most densely populated places. Palestinians who have moved up and down Gaza in fear say there is nowhere to hide from Israeli airstrikes.
For now, the Gaza soccer players may be distracted from the airstrikes, shelling and ground invasion. This brief respite may not last if Egyptian, US and Qatari mediators fail to secure a ceasefire after many attempts.
On July 10, an Israeli missile slammed into a tent encampment in southern Gaza just as displaced people had gathered there to watch a football match at a school, eyewitnesses said. Israel says it goes out of its way to avoid killing civilians.
UAE calls for temporary international mission in post-war Gaza
- She stressed on the US significant role in the mission success
- The mission would pave the way to reunite Gaza and the occupied West Bank under a single, legitimate Palestinian Authority
ABU DHABI: The UAE has called for a temporary international mission to lay the foundation for a new governance in Gaza after the war ends.
In a statement posted by the UAE state news agency on Thursday, Reem bint Ebrahim Al-Hashimy, the country’s minister of state for international cooperation, said the mission would help establish law and order and respond to the humanitarian crisis in post-war Gaza.
The mission should be deployed at the invitation of the Palestinian government, led by “a credible and independent new prime minister” to address the needs of the Palestinian people and rebuild Gaza, Al-Hashimy said.
It would pave the way to reunite Gaza and the occupied West Bank under a single, legitimate Palestinian Authority.
Al-Hashimy said that a return to the status quo before Oct. 7 would not achieve sustainable peace in Gaza, which is imperative for regional stability.
She urged the US to lead international efforts to rebuild Gaza, reach the two-state solution, and facilitate Palestinian reforms, all of which would contribute to the success of the international mission.
Israel, she said, must also do its part in following international humanitarian law.
“Gaza cannot recover if it continues to live under a blockade, or if the legitimate Palestinian Authority is not allowed to take on its responsibilities and to stop withholding its financing,” she said, highlighting the need to halt the construction of illegal Israeli settlements and end the violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Al-Hashimy reaffirmed the UAE’s support for international efforts to achieve the two-state solution.
“The outcome we endeavor to achieve extends beyond the Gaza Strip and necessitates comprehensive cooperation. Moreover, establishing peace is to everyone’s advantage on a broader scale, benefiting the entire Middle East and the global community,” she said.
UN puts 4th century Gaza monastery on endagered site list
- UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities
PARIS: The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza, the body said Friday.
UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the “imminent threats” it faced.
“It’s the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context,” Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Center, told AFP, referring to the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
In December, the UNESCO Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant “provisional enhanced protection” — the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention — to the site.
UNESCO had then said it was “already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before October 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture” in Gaza.
The Hamas attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
Ancient secrets unearthed in vast Turkish cave city
- Historian traces the city’s ancient beginnings to the reign of King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 883 to 859 BC
- The region where the cave city is located was once known as Mesopotamia, recognized as the cradle of some of the earliest civilizations in the world
Midyat: Through a basement door in southeastern Turkiye lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century before Jesus Christ.
Archaeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020.
Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120 meters of tunnel carved out of the rock.
But that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000-square-meter area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkiye’s southern Anatolia region.
“Maybe even in the world,” said Midyat conservation director Mervan Yavuz who oversaw the excavation.
“To protect themselves from the climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in these caves which they turned into an actual city,” Yavuz added.
The art historian traces the city’s ancient beginnings to the reign of King Ashurnasirpal II, who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 883 to 859 BC.
At its height in the seventh century BC, the empire stretched from The Gulf in the east to Egypt in the west.
Referred to as Matiate in that period, the city’s original entrance required people to bend in half and squeeze themselves into a circular opening.
It was this entrance that first gave the Midyat municipality an inkling of its subterranean counterpart’s existence.
“We actually suspected that it existed,” Yavuz recounted as he walked through the cave’s gloom.
“In the 1970s, the ground collapsed and a construction machine fell down. But at the time we didn’t try to find out more, we just strengthened and closed up the hole.”
The region where the cave city is located was once known as Mesopotamia, recognized as the cradle of some of the earliest civilizations in the world.
Many major empires conquered or passed through these lands, which may have given those living around Matiate a reason to take refuge underground.
“Before the arrival of the Arabs, these lands were fiercely disputed by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Romans and then the Byzantines,” said Ekrem Akman, a historian at the nearby University of Mardin.
Yavuz noted that “Christians from the Hatay region, fleeing from the persecution of the Roman Empire... built monasteries in the mountains to avoid their attacks.”
He suspects that Jews and Christians may have used Matiate as a hiding place to practice their then-banned religions underground.
He pointed to the inscrutable stylized carvings — a horse, an eight-point star, a hand, trees — which adorn the walls, as well as a stone slab on the floor of one room that may have been used for celebrations or for sacrifices.
As a result of the city’s long continuous occupation, he said it was “difficult to pinpoint” exactly what at the site can be attributed to which period or group.
But “pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate,” Yavuz said.
Even after the threat of centuries of invasions had passed, the caves stayed in use, said curator Gani Tarkan.
He used to work as a director at the Mardin Museum, where household items, bronzes and potteries recovered from the caves are on display.
“People continued to use this place as a living space,” Tarkan said.
“Some rooms were used as catacombs, others as storage space,” he added.
Excavation leader Yavuz pointed to a series of round holes dug to hold wine-filled amphorae vessels in the gloomy cool, out of the glaring sunlight above.
To this day, the Mardin region’s Orthodox Christian community maintains that old tradition of wine production.
Turkiye is also famous for its ancient cave villages in Cappadocia in the center of the country.
But while Cappadocia’s underground cities are built with rooms vertically stacked on top of each other, Matiate spreads out horizontally, Tarkan explained.
The municipality of Midyat, which funds the works, plans to continue the excavation until the site can be opened to the public.
It hopes the site will prove a popular tourist attraction and attract visitors to the city of 120,000.
