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
Iran’s Quds Force chief out of contact since Beirut strikes, Iranian officials say
- Qaani had traveled to Lebanon after the killing of Nasrallah
DAMASCUS: The top commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, is in “good health,” the force’s deputy commander Iraj Masjedi said on Monday, after two Iranian security sources told Reuters he had been out of contact since strikes on Beirut last week.
“He is in good health and is carrying out his activities. Some ask us to issue a statement... there is no need for this,” Masjedi was quoted as saying by Iranian state media in reference to Qaani.
The Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that a message from Qaani was conveyed to a conference in solidarity with Palestinian children held on Monday in Tehran, adding that the commander could not attend “due to his being in another important meeting.”
One of the security officials told Reuters that Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs, known as the Dahiyeh, during a strike last week that was reported to have targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine. The official said he was not meeting Safieddine.
Israel has been hitting multiple targets in Dahiyeh as it pursues a campaign against Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Tehran named Qaani the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ overseas military-intelligence service after the United States assassinated his powerful predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.
The Quds Force heavily influences its allied armed groups across the Middle East.
HRW: Israeli strikes endanger civilians on Lebanon-Syria border
- Human Rights Watch said the strikes were "impeding civilians trying to flee and disrupting humanitarian operations"
Beirut, Lebanon: Human Rights Watch on Monday said Israeli strikes near the main Lebanon-Syria border crossing were putting civilians at "grave risk" as they prevented them from fleeing and hampered humanitarian operations.
The Israeli military said Friday its fighter jets struck Hezbollah positions near the Masnaa border crossing in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley.
Syrian transport ministry official Sleiman Khalil told AFP on Monday that the road was still "completely cut off to vehicle traffic", but people could still cross on foot.
Human Rights Watch said the strikes were "impeding civilians trying to flee and disrupting humanitarian operations", adding "the situation places civilians at grave risk."
"An Israeli attack on a legitimate military target may still be unlawful if it can be expected to cause immediate civilian harm disproportionate to the anticipated military gain," it said in a statement.
If Hezbollah used the crossing to transfer weapons, the Iran-backed group too "may be failing to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians under their control", HRW added.
The Israeli military said it "struck an underground tunnel" crossing the border that "enables the transfer and storage of large quantities of weapons underground".
"The tunnel's operations were led by the 4400 Unit, the unit responsible for the transportation of weapons from Iran and its proxies to Hezbollah in Lebanon," the military added.
On Friday, an AFP photographer saw people carrying bags and children as they walked around a crater where a strike had hit.
The head of the United Nations refugee agency Filippo Grandi warned Sunday that the bombing of the road "has de facto blocked many people from seeking safety in Syria".
Lebanese authorities said Friday that more than 370,000 people had crossed from Lebanon into Syria since September 23, most of them Syrian nationals.
More than 774,000 Syrian refugees were registered with the UN in Lebanon before the latest escalation, though the tiny country said that it hosted some two million of them -- the world's highest ratio of refugees per capita.
HRW's Lama Fakih said that "by making a border crossing inaccessible at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing fighting and many others are in need of aid, the Israeli military threatens considerable civilian harm."
Even if the crossing were used for military purposes, "Israel would need to take into account the expected civilian harm compared to the anticipated military gain", she added in the statement.
Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian boy in West Bank confrontations, health ministry says
- Video from the area of Qalandia showed youths blocking a road with burning tires, with Israeli army vehicles and ambulances at the scene
- Violence has surged across the West Bank since last October
QALANDIA, West Bank: A 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed in confrontations between youths and Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it was checking the report.
Video from the area of Qalandia showed youths blocking a road with burning tires, with Israeli army vehicles and ambulances at the scene.
Monday marked the first anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel, which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip and set off the worst bloodletting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Violence has surged across the West Bank since last October. Hundreds of Palestinians — including armed fighters, stone-throwing youths and civilian bystanders — have been killed in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian street attacks over the past year.
Israel said it was on high alert for attacks on Monday. Movement in the West Bank was further restricted as many checkpoints shut down, residents said and some Palestinians with entry permits received notices on their mobile phones saying they will not be allowed into Israel.
Erdogan says on Gaza war anniversary that Israel will pay price for ‘genocide’
- A vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause, including Hamas, Erdogan has often attacked Israel
Istanbul: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday vowed that Israel would pay a price for the “genocide” in Gaza as he marked the first anniversary of the war in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas.
“It should not be forgotten that Israel will sooner or later pay the price for this genocide that it has been carrying out for a year and is still continuing,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.
A vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause, including Hamas, Erdogan has often attacked Israel, branding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and comparing him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network will be stopped in the same way,” Erdogan said.
“A world in which no account is held for the Gaza genocide will never find peace.”
The Turkish leader, who often lauded Hamas as freedom fighters, said what has been massacred before the eyes of the entire world for exactly one year “is actually all of humanity, and all of humanity’s hopes for the future.”
Erdogan also criticized the international system’s failure to stop the conflict in Gaza and now in Lebanon and said: “Israel’s long-standing policy of genocide, occupation and invasion must now come to an end.”
US spends a record $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since last Oct. 7
- An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up US military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks
WASHINGTON: The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project, released Monday on the anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up US military operations in the region since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, researchers said in findings first provided to The Associated Press. That includes the costs of a Navy-led campaign to quell strikes on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Houthis, who are carrying them out in solidarity with the fellow Iranian-backed group Hamas.
The report — completed before Israel opened a second front, this one against Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, in late September — is one of the first tallies of estimated US costs as the Biden administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iran-allied armed groups in the region.
The financial toll is on top of the cost in human lives: Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people in Israel a year ago and took others hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
At least 1,400 people in Lebanon, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed since Israel greatly expanded its strikes in that country in late September.
The financial costs were calculated by Linda J. Bilmes, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has assessed the full costs of US wars since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and fellow researchers William D. Hartung and Stephen Semler.
Here’s a look at where some of the US taxpayer money went:
Record military aid to Israel
Israel — a protege of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of US military aid in history, getting $251.2 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1959, the report says.
Even so, the $17.9 billion spent since Oct. 7, 2023, in inflation-adjusted dollars, is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The US committed to providing billions in military assistance to Israel and Egypt each year when they signed their 1979 US-brokered peace treaty, and an agreement since the Obama administration set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
The US aid since the Gaza war started includes military financing, arms sales, at least $4.4 billion in drawdowns from US stockpiles and hand-me-downs of used equipment.
Much of the US weapons delivered in the year were munitions, from artillery shells to 2,000-pound bunker-busters and precision-guided bombs.
Expenditures range from $4 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems to cash for rifles and jet fuel, the study says.
Unlike the United States’ publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the US has shipped Israel since last Oct. 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.
They cited Biden administration “efforts to hide the full amounts of aid and types of systems through bureaucratic maneuvering.”
Funding for the key US ally during a war that has exacted a heavy toll on civilians has divided Americans during the presidential campaign. But support for Israel has long carried weight in US politics, and Biden said Friday that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”
US military operations in the Middle East
The Biden administration has bolstered its military strength in the region since the war in Gaza started, aiming to deter and respond to any attacks on Israeli and American forces.
Those additional operations cost at least $4.86 billion, the report said, not including beefed-up US military aid to Egypt and other partners in the region.
The US had 34,000 forces in the Middle East the day that Hamas broke through Israeli barricades around Gaza to attack. That number rose to about 50,000 in August when two aircraft carriers were in the region, aiming to discourage retaliation after a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. The total is now around 43,000.
The number of US vessels and aircraft deployed — aircraft carrier strike groups, an amphibious ready group, fighter squadrons, and air defense batteries — in the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has varied during the year.
The Pentagon has said another aircraft carrier strike group is headed to Europe very soon and that could increase the troop total again if two carriers are again in the region at the same time.
The fight against the Houthis
The US military has deployed since the start of the war to try to counter escalated strikes by the Houthis, an armed faction that controls Yemen’s capital and northern areas, and has been firing on merchant ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza. The researchers called the $4.86 billion cost to the US an “unexpectedly complicated and asymmetrically expensive challenge.”
Houthis have kept launching attacks on ships traversing the critical trade route, drawing US strikes on launch sites and other targets. The campaign has become the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II.
“The US has deployed multiple aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers and expensive multimillion-dollar missiles against cheap Iranian-made Houthi drones that cost $2,000,” the authors said.
Just Friday, the US military struck more than a dozen Houthi targets in Yemen, going after weapons systems, bases and other equipment, officials said.
The researchers’ calculations included at least $55 million in additional combat pay from the intensified operations in the region.
