Gaza food blogger serves ‘hope on a plate’ to war-weary kids

Palestinians gather to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen, amid shortages of aid supplies, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 19, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 03 August 2024
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Gaza food blogger serves ‘hope on a plate’ to war-weary kids

  • Shaqoura’s cuisine includes beef tacos, “Gazan style,” pizza wraps, and a deep-fried “golden sandwich,” which he films as he cooks and offers to the tent camp’s hungry children

JERUSALEM: Sitting in a tent in southern Gaza, Palestinian food blogger Hamada Shaqoura surveys cans of beans and tinned meat and longs for something that could conjure a sense of home.
Before the war, before his house was destroyed and his family uprooted three times, the 32-year-old was a YouTuber reviewing Gaza City’s buzziest burger, pizza, and noodle spots.
To satisfy his craving for comfort food on a war-rations diet, he taught himself to cook using food aid packages and whatever fresh vegetable he can scrounge up.
“I had an idea to turn this canned food we have been eating for months into something new, to make delicious food for kids,” he tells AFP in a video call from Khan Younis.




Hamada Shaqoura. (Photo/Social media)

Shaqoura’s cuisine includes beef tacos, “Gazan style,” pizza wraps, and a deep-fried “golden sandwich,” which he films as he cooks and offers to the tent camp’s hungry children.
“Zakee (delicious)!” a boy beams in a video after biting into a sweet “fettuccine crepe” — strips of fried batter mixed with apples and chocolate sauce.
Despite patchy internet, Shaqoura offers a different side of the conflict to document what he calls “resilience and persistence” amidst the rubble of war-devastated Gaza.
He is known as Hamada Shoo online, and his blogs have attracted nearly half a million followers on Instagram and donations from his fans.
“I want to feed as many mouths as possible,” he said.
Barefoot children toting empty pots and bowls run through the ruins of Khan Younis to his tent, where the war chef cooks up pea stew in huge pots over an open-pit fire.
While the UN has not officially declared famine in Gaza, experts say hunger is rampant in the Israeli-besieged territory, with little food aid reaching the 2.4 million population.
More than 30 Palestinians have died from malnutrition since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel set off the war that has devastated infrastructure across Gaza. Palestinians have told AFP of being forced to skip meals and having to boil weeds for
their children to survive.
“There is real famine” in northern Gaza, says Shaqoura, who fled from there in March and had little to go around in the south of the battered territory.
He says he is determined to help feed children. “That is my motivation.”
Shaqoura, who had just married when the war erupted and planned to work in the food industry, is one of several Gaza food bloggers.
He says Their goal is to provide “dignity and a sense of liberation” through food to beleaguered Gazans, not just comfort.
Cooking something that people can identify with is part of the “everyday struggle to stay human and retain your dignity in the face of a brutal occupation intended to strip you of that humanity year after year,” says Laila El-Haddad.
Gaza developed a “distinct” cuisine, with its spirit of innovation forged by two decades of Israeli blockades and sieges, said the food expert.
Shaqoura says he serves “hope on a plate” as an antidote to the deprivations and grief overwhelming Gaza.
During the El-Adha feast, he prepared donuts for the children to help them feel that “there is something worth celebrating.”
On hot days, he offers them refreshing lemon granitas.
He says his videos are meant to show the world that Gazans “are persistent, strong people.”
“We do our best to keep existing.”

 


Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

Updated 4 sec ago
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Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister

PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army-backed government on Tuesday accused neighboring Chad of supplying arms to rebel militias, likely referring to the paramilitary forces it is battling.
The northeast African country has been engulfed by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the regular army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Justice minister Muawiya Osman said Burhan’s administration had lodged the complaint against Chad at the African Union.
Speaking to reporters, including AFP, Osman said the government demanded compensation and accused Chad of “supplying arms to rebel militias” and causing “harm to Sudanese citizens.”
“We will present evidence to the relevant authorities,” he added from Port Sudan, where Burhan relocated after fighting spread to the capital, Khartoum.
Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF.
“We do not support any of the factions that are fighting on Sudanese territory — we are in favor of peace,” foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said at the time.
The United Nations has been using the Adre border crossing between the two countries to deliver humanitarian aid.
Sudan had initially agreed to keep the crossing open for three months, a period set to expire on November 15. Authorities in Khartoum have yet to decide whether to extend the arrangement.
The Sudanese war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders.

Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

Updated 17 min 22 sec ago
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Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12

  • The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations

ANKARA: An explosion at an oil refinery in northwestern Turkiye on Tuesday left at least 12 employees slightly injured, the company said. A fire at the facility was quickly brought under control.
The Turkish Petroleum Refineries company, TUPRAS, said a fire broke out at its facilities in Izmit, in Kocaeli province, during maintenance work on a compressor. The company’s emergency teams responded immediately to the incident, it said in a statement.
The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations, the company said.
The company said the unit where the incident occurred “was deactivated in a controlled manner” and that other operations at the refinery were “continuing as normal.”
Earlier, Tahir Buyukakin, the mayor for Kocaeli told private NTV television that the blast occurred during a drill. The fire was quickly brought under control by the company’s own crews and no request for help was made, he said.
Video footage from the site showed smoke rising from the refinery, which is one of Turkiye’s largest. Izmit is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The Borsa Istanbul stock exchange temporarily halted trading of TUPRAS shares, until the company provides a detailed explanation of the incident.


Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

Updated 30 min 33 sec ago
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Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region

BEIRUT: At least one Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in a beach town south of Beirut on Tuesday, Lebanese state media said, as other deadly strikes hit scattered locations across the country and armed group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel.
The attack on the beach town of Jiyyeh left a massive smoke column billowing out of an apartment building. It was not immediately clear if the strike was an assassination attempt, and no evacuation warning was given before it was carried out.
The Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war, but hostilities have escalated over the last six weeks. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them since late September, according to health authorities.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday also killed five people near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, including two killed in a strike on a car, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Lebanon’s state news agency said on Tuesday that it estimated Israeli air strikes and widespread detonation of homes had destroyed more than 40,000 housing units in the country’s border region.


Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan

Updated 05 November 2024
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Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan

  • Militants from the Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid in Sistan-Baluchistan province on October 26
  • Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces

TEHRAN: Iran’s military has killed eight militants in an operation in the restive southeast since a deadly attack last month on a police station, state media reported Tuesday.
Militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid on October 26 in Sistan-Baluchistan province — one of the deadliest attacks in the region in recent months.
Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces.
It has long been a flashpoint for cross-border attacks by separatists and extremists, opposed to the authorities in Iran.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Shafahi said “a total of eight terrorists have been killed” since the beginning of operations in the province, according to the official IRNA news agency on Tuesday.
“Fourteen other terrorists have been arrested,” including key figures involved in the attack, he said, adding security forces seized weapons and ammunition.
Shortly after the attack in Taftan county, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran, a report on the Tasnim news agency said four militants had been killed and four others arrested.
Late on Monday, IRNA quoted Guards ground forces commander Mohammad Pakpour as saying the attackers “were not Iranian,” though he did not specify their nationalities.
In early October, at least six people including police officers were killed in two separate attacks in the province.
Jaish Al-Adl said on Telegram they had carried out the attacks.
Formed in 2012 by Baluch separatists, the group is proscribed as a “terrorist organization” by both Iran and the United States.
 
 


Over 100 patients to be evacuated from Gaza, WHO says

Updated 05 November 2024
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Over 100 patients to be evacuated from Gaza, WHO says

  • The patients will travel in a large convoy on Wednesday via the Kerem Shalom crossing

GENEVA: More than 100 patients including children suffering from trauma injuries and chronic diseases will be evacuated from Gaza on Wednesday in a rare transfer out of the war-ravaged enclave, a World Health Organization official said.
“These are ad hoc measures. What we have requested repeatedly is a sustained medevac (medical evacuation) outside of Gaza,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, adding that 12,000 people were awaiting transfer.
The patients will travel in a large convoy on Wednesday via the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel before flying to the United Arab Emirates, he added, and then a portion will travel to Romania.