AL-ARISH: His right leg heavily bandaged because of a gunshot wound, Palestinian Tamer Ossama Salem Al-Hafy lies in an Egyptian hospital recalling his ordeal in Gaza, where Israel accused him of being a terrorist.
A paramedic at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, 40-year-old Al-Hafy said he was shot below the knee by Israeli forces as he helped the injured onto stretchers after an Israeli airstrike last November.
He briefly became a patient at the same hospital before fleeing on Nov. 20 when it came under attack. His father, Ossama, had to carry him over his back as they headed for another medical center in southern Gaza.
At an Israeli military checkpoint, Al-Hafy said, soldiers accused him of being a “terrorist” and took him to a detention facility where he was blindfolded.
He said he was held for 35 days and released without charge. While in detention, he was cuffed by his arms and legs to a bed inside a tent, he added.
Reuters could not independently verify Al-Hafy’s account. Israeli authorities did not respond to a request for comment on his account.
Al-Hafy said he was blindfolded except during interrogations and received only “liquid vitamins” through a straw every three or four days as nourishment.
“I was in a prison. I had no idea where it was located,” he told Reuters at a makeshift hospital aboard a cargo ship docked in Al-Arish, an Egyptian city in the Sinai Peninsula near Gaza.
“They would uncover my eyes and put it (the blindfold) back after. I didn’t see the sun until I was released,” he said.
Al-Hafy said he was beaten and humiliated and did not receive medical care while in detention, and believes his job as a paramedic made him a target.
“The words ‘medical personnel’ and working at a hospital, that was enough for them to treat you as a suspect,” he said.
Medical groups, including the World Health Organization, have called for a halt to attacks on Gaza health care workers during Israel’s offensive, launched after Palestinian gunmen led by the Islamist militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Israel’s military has accused fighters from Hamas and its ally, Islamic Jihad, of hiding in hospitals and using human shields, allegations they deny. The military also says it has captured fighters in medical facilities.
Rights groups concerned
Al-Hafy’s account of being blindfolded, restrained and beaten is consistent with comments by other Palestinians who have been detained by Israel, and with statements by human rights groups on alleged abuse and mistreatment.
The UN rapporteur on torture voiced concern in May, saying she was concerned about alleged emerging patterns of violations against Palestinian detainees and an absence of accountability.
Israel’s military has said detainees are treated in accordance with international law and that allegations of abuse against Palestinian detainees were being investigated.
The military advocate-general said in May that allegations were treated seriously and that military police investigations had been opened where there was suspicion of criminal offenses.
Some 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attack and about 250 were taken as hostages back to Hamas-governed Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel has killed more than 38,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and has destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure including thousands of homes in its military response, which it says is intended to eliminate Hamas.
Al-Hafy said he was “dumped” in southern Gaza after being released from detention and, still unable to walk, had to crawl for 3.5 km (2.2 miles). Over the next few months, he was treated in four different hospitals in Gaza, suffered from a blood clot in his lung and fell into a coma, he said.
When he awoke some 25 days later, he had lost his sight in his right eye, he said. He was eventually medically evacuated to receive care in Egypt.
He is now being treated in an Emirati-funded and operated makeshift hospital aboard a cargo ship in Egypt near Gaza. Many of the patients at the “floating hospital” are children from Gaza, some with amputated limbs.
“They (medical staff), may God bless them, have tried everything with me but God hasn’t permitted my healing yet,” Al-Hafy said.
Gazan paramedic recounts alleged mistreatment in Israeli detention
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Gazan paramedic recounts alleged mistreatment in Israeli detention
- He says Israel held him in detention for 35 days, blindfolded, restrained and beaten
- His account is consistent with those of other detainees
Destruction of Gaza water wells deepens Palestinian misery
- Israel has killed more than 39,000 people and bombed much of Gaza, where functioning hospitals are scarce, into rubble, Gaza health authorities say
GAZA: Israel’s military blew up more than 30 water wells in Gaza this month, a municipality official and residents said, adding to the trauma of airstrikes that have turned much of the Palestinian enclave into a wasteland ravaged by a humanitarian crisis.
Salama Shourab, head of the water networks at Khan Younis municipality, said the wells were destroyed by Israeli forces between July 18-27 in the southern towns of Rafah and Khan Younis.
The Israeli military did not respond to the allegations that its soldiers destroyed the wells.
It is not only ever-present danger from Israeli bombardment or ground fighting that makes life a trial for Gaza’s Palestinian civilians. It is also the daily slog to find bare necessities such as water, to drink or cook or wash with.
People have dug wells in bleak areas near the sea where the bombing has pushed them, or rely on salty tap water from Gaza’s only aquifer, now contaminated with seawater and sewage.
Children walk long distances to line up at makeshift water collection points. Often not strong enough to carry the filled containers, they drag them home on wooden boards.
Gaza City has lost nearly all its water production capacity, with 88 percent of its water wells and 100 percent of its desalination plants damaged or destroyed, Oxfam said in a recent report.
Palestinians were already facing a severe water crisis as well as shortages of food, fuel and medicine before the destruction of the wells, which has deepened the anguish brought on by the Gaza war, now in its 10th month.
ISRAEL SAYS WORKING ON REPAIRS
COGAT, the branch of the Israeli military that manages humanitarian activities, told Reuters it has coordinated water line repairs with international organizations and “dozens” were done in the last month including one to the northern Gaza Strip.
Other work including power repairs at a desalination plant and construction of additional lines was under way.
Hamas and other militants “have been known to attack civilian infrastructures and humanitarian aid routes, adding to the complexity and danger of delivering much-needed humanitarian aid to the region,” COGAT said.
All Gazans can do is wait in long lines to collect water since US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have failed to secure a ceasefire from Israel and its arch-foe Hamas. Not only is there a shortage of water, much of it is also contaminated.
“We stand in the sun, my eye hurts because of the sun, because we stand for long (hours) to (secure) water,” said Youssef El-Shenawy, a Gaza resident.
“This is our struggle with non-potable water, and then there is our struggle with drinking water, which we take another queue for, that’s if it is available.”
The war started on Oct. 7 when Hamas, the Palestinian militant group ruling Gaza, killed 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli tallies, and took another 250 or so to hold as hostages in Gaza, one of the most crowded places on earth.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 39,000 people and bombed much of Gaza, where functioning hospitals are scarce, into rubble, Gaza health authorities say.
Fayez Abu Toh observed fellow Gazans standing in line in the heat eager to get their hands on water. Like many Palestinians he wonders why Israel strikes targets that pose no threat to its military.
“Whoever has a bit of a sense of humanity has to look at these people, care for them and try to (impose) a ceasefire and end this war. We are fed up; we are all dead and tired. The people have nothing left,” he said.
“Does this well affect the strength of the (Israeli) Defense Force? This is a destruction of the infrastructure of the Palestinian people to further worsen the situation, and to pressure these people that have no one, but God.”
Who is the Hezbollah commander targeted by Israel in Beirut?
- Two security sources in Lebanon earlier named the target as Shukr, describing him as head of Hezbollah’s operations center
BEIRUT: Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander whom Israel believes it killed in an airstrike in Beirut on Tuesday, has been one of the group’s leading military figures since it was established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards more than four decades ago.
Part of the generation of Lebanese Shiites who founded Hezbollah during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Shukr was a friend of the group’s late military commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008, Hezbollah sources said.
The United States says Shukr, believed to be in his 60s, played a central role in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US military personnel, and had put a bounty of up to $5 million on his head, according to the US government’s Rewards for Justice website.
He was hit in what the Israeli army has said was a targeted strike against the Hezbollah commander responsible for an attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teenagers at the weekend. Hezbollah denied any role.
An Israel broadcast report said the commander was killed.
Two security sources in Lebanon earlier named the target as Shukr, describing him as head of Hezbollah’s operations center. They said he was critically injured in the attack around Hezbollah’s Shoura Council in the Haret Hreik neighborhood.
Also known as Al-Hajj Mohsin, Hezbollah sources said Shukr is a special adviser to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and a member of the Shoura Council, a decision-making body.
The sources said he became more prominent in Hezbollah after the assassination of Mughniyeh — a shadowy figure remembered in Hezbollah as a military mastermind who was on the US list of most wanted terrorists, accused of plotting attacks on Western interests including the Marines barracks.
Referring to those attacks and hostage-taking in Lebanon in the 1980s, Hezbollah leader Nasrallah said in a 2022 interview with an Arabic broadcaster they were carried out by small groups not linked to Hezbollah.
The Hezbollah sources said Shukr fought Israeli troops during Israel’s 1982 invasion alongside both Mughniyeh and Mustafa Badreddine, another of Hezbollah’s veteran commanders who was killed in Syria in 2016.
Announcing the bounty on his head in 2017, the US Rewards for Justice program said he was a senior Hezbollah military commander of the group’s forces in southern Lebanon and a member of Hezbollah’s highest military body, the Jihad Council.
It also said he played a key role in its military operations in Syria, where Hezbollah deployed fighters in support of President Bashar Assad in the early years of the Syrian civil war.
Hezbollah at the time dismissed the accusations against Shukr and another Hezbollah operative for whom a bounty was offered, Talal Hamiyah, saying they were “rejected and void.”
Israel’s targeted killings in Lebanon since Gaza war began
- Israeli strikes have killed around 350 Hezbollah fighters in total since
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital on Tuesday killed Fuad Shukr, identified by the Israeli military as Lebanese armed group Hezbollah’s most senior commander.
It was the latest in a string of targeted Israeli killings in Lebanon since October, when hostilities broke out between Hezbollah and Israel’s military in parallel with the Gaza war.
Israeli strikes have killed around 350 Hezbollah fighters in total since. The following is a list of the senior figures among those targeted.
FUAD SHUKR
Shukr has been one of Hezbollah’s leading military figures since it was established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards more than four decades ago.
The United States accused Shukr of playing a central role in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US military personnel, and had put a bounty of up to $5 million on his head, according to the US government’s Rewards for Justice website.
He was sanctioned by the US in 2015 over Hezbollah’s role in helping Syria’s army. Israel said he was the right-hand man of Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and that he was responsible for an attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that killed 12 youths. Hezbollah denied any role.
MOHAMMED NASSER
Nasser, a senior commander in Hezbollah, was responsible for a section of Hezbollah’s operations at the frontier, according to senior security sources in Lebanon.
He was killed in an Israeli airstrike on July 3. Israel claimed responsibility, saying he headed a unit responsible for firing from southwestern Lebanon at Israel.
TALEB ABDALLAH
Senior Hezbollah field commander Abdallah was killed on June 12 in a strike claimed by Israel, which said it had hit a command and control center in southern Lebanon.
Security sources in Lebanon said he was Hezbollah’s commander for the central region of the southern border strip and was of the same rank as Nasser.
His killing prompted the group to fire a massive barrage of rockets across the border at Israel.
WISSAM TAWIL
Tawil, a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, was the first senior Hezbollah officer to be killed by Israel in the latest round of fighting.
He had been deployed with Hezbollah in Syria and Iraq, according to a senior source, and played a leading role in directing the group’s operations in the south since October.
Tawil and another Hezbollah fighter were killed on Jan. 8 when the car they were in was struck in a southern village. Israel later took responsibility for the strike.
SALEH AROURI
Arouri, the deputy chief of Palestinian armed group Hamas, was killed in a targeted strike on a Hamas office in the southern suburb of Beirut on Jan. 2.
It was the only other targeted killing on the edges of the capital since the exchanges of fire began in October.
While Lebanon’s prime minister, Hezbollah and other officials accused Israel, the Israeli military neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in his killing.
US carries out strike in Iraq as regional tensions worsen
- The 150,000-strong Popular Mobilization Forces, a state-sanctioned grouping of Iraqi paramilitaries, is dominated by heavily armed and battle-hardened groups loyal to Iran and with close ties to its Revolutionary Guards
- The officials added that the strike targeted militants that the US deemed were looking to launch drones and posed a threat to US and coalition forces
BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday carried out a strike in Iraq in self defense, US officials told Reuters, as regional tensions rose after an Israeli airstrike in Beirut that Israel said killed Hezbollah’s most senior commander.
Iraqi police and medical sources said the strike inside a base south of Baghdad used by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) killed four members of the group that contains several Iran-aligned armed militias, and wounded four others.
In a statement after the blasts, the Popular Mobilization Forces made no accusation about who was responsible.
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States carried out an airstrike in Musayib, located in Babil province, but did not provide more details on the location.
The officials added that the strike targeted militants that the US deemed were looking to launch drones and posed a threat to US and coalition forces.
The officials did not comment on any casualties.
“This action underscores the United States’ commitment to the safety and security of our personnel,” one of the officials said.
Multiple rockets were launched toward Iraq’s Ain Al-Asad air base housing US-led forces last week, US and Iraqi sources said, with no damage or casualties reported. US officials said none of the rockets hit the base.
Tuesday’s action was the first known US strike in Iraq since February, when the US military launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Iran-aligned militias.
The 150,000-strong Popular Mobilization Forces, a state-sanctioned grouping of Iraqi paramilitaries, is dominated by heavily armed and battle-hardened groups loyal to Iran and with close ties to its Revolutionary Guards.
Iraq, a rare ally of both the US and Iran which hosts 2,500 US troops and has Iran-backed militias linked to its security forces, has witnessed escalating tit-for-tat attacks since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October.
Iraq wants troops from the US-led military coalition to begin withdrawing in September and to formally end the coalition’s work by September 2025, Iraqi sources have said, with some US forces likely to remain in a newly negotiated advisory capacity.
The issue is highly politicized, with mainly Iran-aligned Iraqi political factions looking to show that they are again pushing out the country’s one-time occupier, while US officials want to avoid giving Iran and its allies a win.
US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, toppled former leader Saddam Hussein and then withdrew in 2011, only to return in 2014 to fight Daesh at the head of a coalition.
