CAIRO: Residents of Gaza City were trapped in houses and bodies lay uncollected in the streets under an intense new Israeli assault on Thursday, even as Washington pushed for a peace deal at talks in Egypt and Qatar.
Hamas militants say a massive Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could wreck efforts to finally end the war just as negotiations have entered the home stretch.
Home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s residents before the war, Gaza City was destroyed during the first weeks of fighting last year, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to homes in the ruins. They have now once again been ordered out by the Israeli military.
The Gaza health ministry said it had reports of people trapped and others killed inside their houses in the Tel Al-Hawa and Sabra districts of Gaza City, and rescuers could not reach them.
The Civil Emergency Service said it estimated that at least 30 people had been killed in the Tel Al-Hawa and Rimal areas and it could not recover bodies from the streets there.
Despite army instructions on Wednesday to residents of Gaza City that they can use two “safe routes” to head south, many residents refused to heed the order. Some posted a hashtag on social media: “We are not leaving.”
“We will die but not leave to the south. We have tolerated starvation and bombs for nine months and we are ready to die as martyrs here,” said Mohammad Ali, 30, reached by text message.
Ali, whose family has relocated several times within the city, said they had been running short of food, water and medicine.
“The occupation bombs Gaza City as if the war was restarting. We hope there will be a ceasefire soon, but if not then is God’s will.”
FIGHTING IN RAFAH
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip last year after Hamas-led militants stormed across the border fence into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s assault has killed more than 38,000 according to medical authorities in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said Israeli forces had quit the Shejaia suburb east of Gaza after over two weeks of a new military invasion, in which dozens of people were killed and residential districts were destroyed.
At the southern edge of the enclave in Rafah near the border with Egypt, where tanks have been operating in most of the city since May, residents said the army continued to blow up houses in the western and central areas, amid fighting with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other smaller factions.
Palestinian health officials said four people were killed, including a child, in an Israeli air strike in Tel Al-Sultan in western Rafah.
The Israeli military said earlier on Thursday around five rockets fired from the Rafah area were successfully intercepted.
The negotiations in Qatar and Egypt follow important concessions last week from Hamas, which agreed that a truce could begin and some hostages released without Israel first agreeing to end the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces opposition within his rightwing cabinet to any deal that would halt the war until Hamas is vanquished, says a deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until it meets all its objectives.
Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters had no immediate comment on the content of the ongoing talks, led by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States.
“There will be a meeting today between Hamas and the mediators to check on what responses they have received from the occupation,” said one Palestinian official close to the mediation, without elaboration.
Bodies trapped in Gaza City under Israeli assault as mediators push for truce
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Bodies trapped in Gaza City under Israeli assault as mediators push for truce
- Home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s residents before the war, Gaza City was destroyed during the first weeks of fighting last year
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.
France shifts Western Sahara stance, seeking closer ties with Morocco
- France, as the former colonial power in the region, has walked a diplomatic tightrope between Rabat and Algiers on the issue
RABAT, Morocco: France has thrown its support behind Morocco’s autonomy plan for the disputed Western Sahara, shifting a decades-old position and adding itself to a growing list of countries to align with Morocco as a United Nations-mediated peace process remains stalled.
In a letter to King Mohammed VI, France’s President Emmanuel Macron called the plan that Morocco proposed in 2007 to offer the region limited autonomy under its sovereignty the “only basis” to solve the conflict. The shift deals a blow to the pro-independence Polisario Front, which has for decades claimed to be the legitimate representative of the indigenous Sahrawi people.
“The present and future of Western Sahara fall within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty,” Macron wrote in a letter made public on Tuesday. “France intends to act consistently with this position at both national and international level.”
Macron’s move is unlikely to change the key tenets of the territorial dispute but could deepen France ties with Morocco, which has long blamed it for drawing the colonial borders it sees as the root of the conflict. France signaled earlier this year that it was open to investing in Moroccan projects in the disputed territory.
The move could strain diplomatic relations in North Africa, further alienating both France and Morocco from Algeria, which supports the Polisario Front’s claims and allows it to operate as a self-declared government in exile from refugee camps within its borders.
It follows similar shifts from the United States, Israel, Spain and a growing list of African nations that have established consulates in the territory.
In a statement, Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s Royal Cabinet called France’s shift “a significant development.” A high-ranking Moroccan official who spoke on the condition of anonymity noted France’s role as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and called it “a game-changer” amid an international shift toward Morocco’s position.
The move was preemptively rebuked by both Algeria and the Polisario Front in the days leading up to the publication of letter, which Algeria said it was made aware of by France in the days prior.
The Polisario’s Mohamed Sidati accused France of acting at odds with international law and backing Moroccan expansionism as its influence wanes throughout Africa.
“Whatever hardships Morocco tries to impose on us with the support of France, the Sahrawi people will continue to stubbornly defend their rights until they obtain the definitive departure of the Moroccan aggressor from their territory and general recognition of the legitimacy of their struggle for self-determination and independence,” Sidati, the Foreign Minister of the self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, said in a statement on Monday.
Algeria called Morocco and France “colonial powers, new and old” and announced it would withdraw its ambassador from Paris.
“The French decision is clearly the result of a dubious political calculation, a morally questionable judgment and legal interpretations that are neither supported nor justified,” Algeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement last week.
Western Sahara is roughly the size of Colorado, encompassing a stretch of desert rich in phosphates and sitting along an Atlantic coastline rich in fish. Morocco annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975, sparking a regional conflict and putting it at odds with the pro-independence Polisario Front over the region that the United Nations considers a “non-self-governing territory.”
Morocco quickly moved to occupy the majority of the land, fighting off guerilla warfare from the Polisario until the UN brokered a 1991 ceasefire and established a peacekeeping mission to monitor the truce and help prepare a referendum on the territory’s future. Disagreements over who is eligible to vote prevented the referendum from taking place.
Morocco has long sought political recognition of its claim from its other nations, while the Polisario has prioritized fighting legal battles to assert the people of the region’s right to self-determination.
Sporadic violence has ensued since the Polisario renewed armed conflict in 2020, ending a 29-year truce. Morocco has since embarked on expansive economic development efforts, constructing ports, highways and hotels.
