KHAN YUNIS: Palestinians fled southern Gaza’s main city on Sunday as Israel warned of a new military operation, a day after one of the deadliest reported strikes in more than 10 months of war.
The fighting in the besieged Gaza Strip between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack has sent tensions soaring across the region, including in the occupied West Bank where medics said an Israeli man was killed Sunday in a shooting.
Intense diplomacy in recent days sought to avert a wider war in the Middle East following the killings of Iran-aligned militant leaders, while international mediators invited Israel and Hamas to resume stalled talks toward a long-sought Gaza truce and hostage-release deal.
AFP journalists said hundreds of Palestinians fled northern neighborhoods of Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city already ravaged by months of bombardment and battles, after Israel issued fresh evacuation orders in the early morning.
The military dropped leaflets and sent mobile phone messages warning of “dangerous combat” in Al-Jalaa district and telling Palestinian residents to leave the area, which until Sunday was designated a humanitarian safe zone.
Similar evacuation orders have preceded major military incursions, often forcing Palestinians displaced numerous times by the war to pack up and leave for safety.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that “just in the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza.” The entire territory has a population of about 2.4 million people.
The military said in a statement its forces were “about to operate against the terrorist organizations in the area,” calling on “the remaining population left in the Al-Jalaa neighborhood to temporarily evacuate.”
Families gathered their meagre belongings as crowds of people left Al-Jalaa, some loading mattresses, clothing and cooking utensils into pick-up trucks. Others took to the road on foot.
Umm Sami Shahada, a 55-year-old displaced Palestinian, said she had “fled Gaza City at the start of the war for Khan Yunis,” hoping to find shelter.
“My daughter was killed in bombardment, so we went to Rafah, then we came back here, and now with this new evacuation order we don’t know where to go,” she said.
In northern Gaza, an Israeli air strike on Friday killed at least 93 people at a religious school housing displaced Palestinians, according to civil defense rescuers, sparking international condemnation.
Israel said it targeted militants operating out of Gaza City’s Al-Tabieen school and mosque with “precise munitions,” declaring that “at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were eliminated.”
The death toll, which AFP could not independently verify, would be one of the largest from a single strike since the war began.
Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defense agency in Hamas-run Gaza, said on Sunday that identifying the victims could take at least two days as “we have many bodies torn into pieces” and “shredded or burnt by the bombs.”
Hamas in a statement called Arab and Muslim nations to “take effective decisions” to stop the war and demanded an urgent UN Security Council meeting to force Israel “to stop the aggression and genocide.”
The Palestinian group, which has named its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar to succeed slain political leader Ismail Haniyeh, has yet to respond to an invitation from US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators for truce negotiations on August 15. Israel has accepted.
Haniyeh was killed during a visit to Tehran on July 31, an attack blamed on Israel which has not claimed responsibility. But hours earlier it the military chief of Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah in a strike on Beirut.
Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other regional allies have vowed retaliation, spurring fears of a wider conflagration.
US President Joe Biden, asked what his message was to Iran, responded: “Don’t.”
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,790 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not provide details on civilian and militant deaths.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call on Sunday that “an end to the war in Gaza would be a decisive step toward a regional de-escalation.”
Hamas officials, some analysts and critics in Israel have said Netanyahu has sought to prolong the fighting for political gain.
Witnesses told AFP that Israel carried out a strike on Khan Yunis, wounding several people.
“Civilians... were shopping in the market when a missile hit,” said resident Awad Barbakh.
The military said its air forces hit militants in Rafah, further south, and “struck approximately 30 Hamas terror targets” across Gaza over the past day.
In the northern West Bank, emergency services said an Israeli man was shot dead and another wounded in what the military described as a “terrorist” attack.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 when it also seized the Gaza Strip, from which it withdrew in 2005, but later imposed a crippling blockade followed by a siege shortly after October 7.
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmud Abbas is due to visit Moscow next week to discuss the Gaza war with Russian President Vladimir Putin, official Russian media said citing the Palestinian ambassador.
Gazans flee as Israel broadens evacuation order, pushes into Khan Yunis
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Gazans flee as Israel broadens evacuation order, pushes into Khan Yunis
- Military dropped leaflets and sent mobile phone messages warning of “dangerous combat”
- Intense diplomacy in recent days sought to avert wider war in Middle East
UNRWA chief vows to continue aid to Palestinians despite Israeli ban
OSLO: The UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will continue to provide aid to people in the Palestinian territories despite an Israeli ban due to be implemented by the end of January, its director said Wednesday.
“We will ... stay and deliver,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini told a conference in Oslo. “UNRWA’s local staff will remain and continue to provide emergency assistance and where possible, education and primary health care,” he said.
Erdogan says Turkiye can ‘crush’ all terrorists in Syria
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday urged all countries to “take their hands off” Syria and said Turkiye had the capacity and ability to crush all terrorist organizations in the country, including Kurdish militia and Islamic State.
Speaking in parliament, Erdogan said the Kurdish YPG militia was the biggest problem in Syria now after the ousting of former President Bashar Assad, and added that the group would not be able to escape its inevitable end unless it lays down its arms.
World must keep pressure on Israel after Gaza truce: Palestinian PM
OSLO: The international community will have to maintain pressure on Israel after an hoped-for ceasefire in Gaza so it accepts the creation of a Palestinian state, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa said on Wednesday.
A ceasefire agreement appears close following a recent round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying late Tuesday that a deal to end the 15-month war was “on the brink.”
“The ceasefire we’re talking about ... came about primarily because of international pressure. So pressure does pay off,” Mustafa said before a conference in Oslo.
Israel must “be shown what’s right and what’s wrong, and that the veto power on peace and statehood for Palestinians will not be accepted and tolerated any longer,” he told reporters.
He was speaking at the start of the third meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, gathering representatives from some 80 states and organizations in Oslo.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, the host of the meeting, said a “ceasefire is the prerequisite for peace, but it is not peace.”
“We need to move forward now toward a two-state solution. And since one of the two states exists, which is Israel, we need to build the other state, which is Palestine,” he added.
According to analysts, the two-state solution appears more remote than ever.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, firmly supported by US President-elect Donald Trump, is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state.
Israel is not represented at the Oslo meeting.
Norway angered Israel when it recognized the Palestinian state, together with Spain and Ireland, last May, a move later followed by Slovenia.
In a nod to history, Wednesday’s meeting was held in the Oslo City Hall, where Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
The then-head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Israeli prime minister and his foreign minister were honored for signing the Oslo accords a year earlier, which laid the foundation for Palestinian autonomy with the goal of an independent state.
Syrians in uproar after volunteers paint over prison walls
DAMASCUS: Families of missing persons have urged Syria’s new authorities to protect evidence of crimes under president Bashar Assad, after outrage over volunteers painting over etchings on walls inside a former jail.
Thousands poured out of prisons after Islamist-led rebels toppled Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of tens of thousands of relatives and friends who went missing.
In the chaos following his ouster, with journalists and families rushing to detention centers, official documents have been left unprotected, with some even looted or destroyed.
Rights groups have stressed the urgent need to preserve “evidence of atrocities,” which includes writings left by detainees on the walls of their cells.
But a video appearing to show young volunteers paint over such writings at an unnamed detention center with white paint and adorning its walls with the new Syrian flag, the depiction of a fireplace or broken chains has circulated on social media in recent days, angering activists.
“Painting the walls of security branches is disgraceful, especially before the start of new investigations into human rights violations” there, said Diab Serriya, a co-founder of Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP).
It is “an attempt to destroy the signs of torture or enforced disappearance and hampers efforts to... gather evidence,” he said.
Jomana Hasan Shtiwy, a Syrian held in three different facilities under Assad, often changing cells, said the writings on the walls held invaluable information.
“On the walls are names and telephone numbers to contact relatives and inform them about the fate of their children,” she said on Facebook.
In each new cell, “we would write a memory so that those who followed could remember us,” she said.
A petition appeared on Tuesday calling for the new Syrian authorities to better protect evidence, and give investigating the fate of those forcibly disappeared under Assad “the highest priority.”
It slammed what it called “the insensitive treatment of the sanctity” of former detention centers.
“Some have gone as far as to paint cells, obscuring their features, which for us represents... a great wronging of detainees,” said signatories, including ADMSP.
The president of the International Committee for the Red Cross said last week determining the fate of those who went missing during Syria’s civil war would be a “huge challenge.”
Mirjana Spoljaric said the ICRC was following 43,000 cases, but that was probably just a fraction of the missing.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, says more than 100,000 people have died in detention from torture or dire health conditions across Syria since 2011.
Iran’s navy unveils its first signals intelligence ship
DUBAI: Iran’s navy received its first signals intelligence ship on Wednesday, semi-official Tasnim news organization reported, a few days after the country’s army took delivery of 1,000 new drones.
The Zagros is a new category of military vessel equipped with electronic sensors and the ability to intercept cyber-operations and conduct intelligence monitoring, Tasnim said.
“The Zagros signals intelligence ship will be the watchful eye of Iran’s navy in the seas and oceans,” Navy Commander Shahram Irani said.
Earlier this month, Iran started two-month-long military exercises which have already included war games in which the elite Revolutionary Guards defended key nuclear installations in Natanz against mock attacks by missiles and drones.
The military drills and procurement come at a time of high tensions with arch-enemy Israel and the United States under incoming US president Donald Trump.
In October, the spokesperson of Iran’s government said the country plans to raise its military budget by around 200 percent to face growing threats.
