GAZA STRIP: Israel hammered the Gaza Strip from the air, sea and land Monday as the war in the Palestinian territory showed no sign of abating, with Hamas saying it was pulling out of truce talks.
Shells rained down on the neighborhoods of Tal Al-Hawa, Sheikh Ajlin and Al-Sabra in Gaza City, AFP correspondents reported, while eyewitnesses said the Israeli army had shelled the Al-Mughraqa area and the northern outskirts of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent said they had retrieved the bodies of five people, including three children, after Israeli air strikes in the Al-Maghazi camp, also in the central Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses reported Israeli gunship fire east of Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, and shelling and Apache helicopter attacks in western areas of the southernmost city of Rafah.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it was continuing its activity throughout the coastal territory, and said it had conducted raids in Rafah and central Gaza that killed “a number of” militants, as well as air strikes throughout the strip over the past day.
It also said its naval forces had been firing at targets in Gaza.
The relentless bombardments came as prospects dwindled for a truce and hostage release deal being secured any time soon.
Hamas said on Sunday it was withdrawing from ceasefire talks.
The decision followed an Israeli strike targeting the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, which the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said killed 92 people.
Deif’s fate remains unknown, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying there was “no certainty” he was dead while a senior Hamas official told AFP that Deif was “well and directly overseeing” operations.
Speaking after the strike on Al-Mawasi, a second senior official from the militant group cited Israeli “massacres” and its attitude to negotiations as a reason for suspending negotiations.
But according to the official, Haniyeh told international mediators Hamas was “ready to resume negotiations” when Israel’s government “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal.”
Last week, US President Joe Biden had suggested a deal might be close, saying at a NATO summit that both sides had agreed to a framework he had set out in late May.
Hamas on Monday lashed out at the US, accusing it of supporting “genocide” by supplying Israel with “internationally banned” weapons.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the... American disdain for the blood of the children and women of our Palestinian people... by providing all types of prohibited weapons to the ‘Israeli’ occupation,” a statement from the Hamas government media office said.
Talks between the warring parties have been mediated by Qatar and Egypt, with US support, but months of negotiations have failed to bring a breakthrough.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s surprise 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 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza including 42 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,584 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Gaza health ministry.
The war and accompanying siege have devastated the Palestinian territory, destroying much of its infrastructure, leaving the majority of its 2.4 million residents displaced and causing a dire shortage of food, medicines and other basic goods.
Among the devastated facilities have been multiple schools. On Sunday, Israeli forces struck a UN-run school in Nuseirat camp that was being used as a shelter for displaced people but which the military said “served as a hideout” for militants.
The civil defense agency in Gaza said 15 people were killed in the strike, the fifth attack in just over a week to hit a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians.
Israel hits Gaza from land, sea and air as Hamas halts talks
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Israel hits Gaza from land, sea and air as Hamas halts talks
- Eyewitnesses said the Israeli army had shelled the Al-Mughraqa area and the northern outskirts of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza
- Hamas said on Sunday it was withdrawing from ceasefire talks
Jordanian military shoots down narcotics drone on southern border
A Jordanian military official reported on Monday that the Southern Military Region intercepted a drone carrying illegal drugs across the southern border.
The drone was shot down in Jordanian territory. The confiscated drugs cargo was handed over to the appropriate authorities.
“The Jordanian Armed Forces are fully committed and utilizing all resources to prevent infiltration and smuggling efforts, ensuring the security and stability of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” the official said.
Morocco pardons nearly 5,000 cannabis farming convicts
- Morocco is a major cannabis producer and has allowed the cultivation, export and use of the drug for medicine
RABAT: Morocco’s king has pardoned nearly 5,000 people convicted or wanted on charges linked to illegal cannabis cultivation, the justice ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Morocco is a major cannabis producer and has allowed the cultivation, export and use of the drug for medicine or in industry since 2021, but it does not allow it to be used for recreational purposes.
The pardon by King Mohammed VI would encourage farmers “to engage in the legal process of cannabis cultivation to improve their revenue and living conditions,” Mohammed El Guerrouj, head of Moroccan cannabis regulator ANRAC, told Reuters.
Morocco’s first legal cannabis harvest was 294 metric tons in 2023, according to official figures. Legal exports since 2023 so far stood at 225 kilograms, Guerrouj said.
This year it is expected to be higher as the number of farming permits increases and ANRAC allows the cultivation of the local strain known as Beldia.
Nearly a million people live in areas of northern Morocco where cannabis is the main economic activity. It has been publicly grown and smoked there for generations, mixed with tobacco in traditional long-stemmed pipes with clay bowls.
The 2021 legalization was intended to improve farmers’ incomes and protect them from drug traffickers who dominate the cannabis trade and export it illegally.
Morocco is also seeking to tap into a growing global market for legal cannabis, and awarded 54 export permits last year.
Hezbollah says fired ‘intense rocket barrages’ at Israeli positions
- Israeli military confirmed that around 55 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanese territory
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it launched several rocket salvos at Israeli army positions in the annexed Golan Heights on Tuesday “in response” to Israeli strikes on eastern Lebanon the previous day.
Hezbollah fighters launched “intense rocket barrages” at two Israeli army positions in the occupied Golan Heights “in response to the Israeli enemy’s attack on the Bekaa” Valley — which a source close to Hezbollah said targeted weapons depots in the eastern region.
The Israeli military confirmed that around 55 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanese territory.
“Some of the projectiles were intercepted, and the rest fell in open areas. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement, adding that some of the rockets had ignited fires.
The military said its forces struck one of the launchers from which the rockets were launched.
The latest salvos from the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement came after Israel struck weapons depots deep inside eastern Lebanon on Monday.
That Israeli strike came after a soldier in northern Israel was killed by Hezbollah fire, the latest death in 10 months of cross-border exchanges between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israeli forces.
The violence has killed 585 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.
Fears of an escalation have mounted since Hezbollah and Iran vowed to respond after an Israeli strike on Beirut last month killed a top Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, shortly before an attack in Tehran blamed on Israel killed Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Israel community announces death of 79-year-old hostage in Gaza
- Palestinian militants had abducted Munder, his wife, daughter and grandson during the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel
Jerusalem: An Israeli community announced on Tuesday the death of hostage Avraham Munder in the Gaza Strip, saying he was “physically and mentally tortured” in captivity.
“Kibbutz Nir Oz announces with great sadness the murder of the late Avraham Munder, 79, in captivity in Gaza after suffering physical and mental torture for months,” the community said in a statement.
Palestinian militants had abducted Munder, his wife, daughter and grandson during the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel.
The other family members were released during the single, week-long truce of the war last November, while his son was killed on the day of the attack.
The Israeli military said in a statement Tuesday that its forces recovered the bodies of six hostage in an overnight operation in southern Gaza. It identified the hostages as Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, and Haim Perry, without saying when or how they died.
The attack led by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 40 the military and Israeli officials say are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 40,139 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details of civilian and militant deaths.
Blinken arrives in Egypt for Gaza truce talks
- Afterwards, he will head to a meeting with Qatar’s emir in Doha, the scene of ceasefire talks last week
- Both Egypt and Qatar are working alongside the United States to broker a truce in the 10-month Gaza conflict
El AlAMEIN, Egypt: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Egypt on Tuesday as part of his latest Middle East tour to push forward talks aiming to end the 10-month Gaza war.
Blinken is set to hold talks with the Egyptian president and foreign minister in the coastal city of El Alamein following a visit to Israel, where he met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken, on his ninth visit to the Middle East since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack triggered the war with Israel, was scheduled to fly from Tel Aviv to El Alamein, the Mediterranean city famous for a World War II battle in 1942, to speak to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi at his summer palace.
Afterwards, he will head to a meeting with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, in Doha, the scene of ceasefire talks last week.
Both Egypt and Qatar are working alongside the United States to broker a truce in the 10-month Gaza conflict.
Washington put forward the latest proposal last week after the talks in Doha.
Blinken said Monday he had “a very constructive meeting” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal.”
Ahead of those talks, Hamas called on the mediators to implement the framework set out by US President Joe Biden in late May, rather than hold more negotiations.
The movement said on Sunday that the current US proposal “responds to Netanyahu’s conditions” and leaves him “fully responsible for thwarting the efforts of the mediators.”
Earlier on Monday, the US secretary of state had said: “This is a decisive moment — probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security.”
Months of on-off negotiations with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have failed to produce an agreement.
Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for delays in reaching an accord that diplomats say would help avert a wider conflagration in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“There is, I think, a real sense of urgency here, across the region, on the need to get this over the finish line and to do it as soon as possible,” Blinken said.
The Biden administration is under domestic pressure over Gaza, with pro-Palestinian protests taking place outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday.
Biden said in his farewell speech to the convention that the protesters “have a point,” adding that “a lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides.”
Israel and Hamas have traded blame for delays in reaching a truce deal.
Hamas insisted on “a permanent ceasefire and a comprehensive (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza Strip,” saying Netanyahu wanted to keep Israeli forces at several strategic locations within the territory.
Western ally Jordan, hostage supporters who protested in Tel Aviv during Blinken’s visit, and Hamas itself have called for pressure on Netanyahu in order for an agreement to be reached.
Far-right members crucial to the prime minister’s governing coalition oppose any truce.
The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 40,139 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
The Biden framework would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks while Israeli hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid enters Gaza.
Netanyahu said on Monday that negotiators were aiming to “release a maximum number of living hostages” in the first phase of any ceasefire.
