Israeli forces kill 22 people in Gaza, force new displacement in the north

Palestinians carry bodies after an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, on Nov. 13, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 13 November 2024
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Israeli forces kill 22 people in Gaza, force new displacement in the north

  • Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said
  • “The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 22 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into Beit Hanoun town in the north, forcing most remaining residents to leave.
Residents said Israeli forces besieged shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, which some estimated at a few thousand, ordering them to head south through a checkpoint separating two towns and a refugee camp in the north from Gaza City.
Men were held for questioning, while women and children were allowed to continue toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian medics said.
Israel’s campaign in the north of Gaza, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area, has fueled claims from Palestinians that it is clearing the area for use as a buffer zone and potentially for a return of Jewish settlers.
“The scenes of the 1948 catastrophe are being repeated. Israel is repeating its massacres, displacement and destruction,” said Saed, 48, a resident of Beit Lahiya, who arrived in Gaza City on Wednesday.
“North Gaza is being turned into a large buffer zone, Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing under the sight and hearing of the impotent world,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Saed was referring to the 1948 Middle East Arab-Israeli war which gave birth to the state of Israel and saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their home towns and villages in what is now Israel.

NO PLANS FOR SETTLERS’ RETURN
The Israeli military has denied any such intention, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from Gaza. Hard-liners in his government have talked openly about going back.
It said forces have killed hundreds of Hamas militants in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun during its new military offensive, which began more than a month ago. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed killing several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.
Efforts by Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have so far failed to end the war in Gaza, with Hamas and Israel trading the blame for the lack of progress.
Speaking on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel “has accomplished the goals that it set for itself” by taking out Hamas’ leadership and ensuring the group is unable to launch another massive attack. “This should be a time to end the war,” he said.
“We also need to make sure we have a plan for what follows,” he said, “so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan so that Israel can get out of Gaza and we make sure that Hamas is not going back in.”
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Blinken’s comments showed: “We are facing one enemy and that the US enmity against the Palestinian people is no less than that of the occupation.”
On Tuesday, the United States stressed at the United Nations that “there must be no forcible displacement, nor policy of starvation in Gaza” by Israel, warning such policies would have grave implications under US and international law.
Medics said five people were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people outside Kamal Adwan Hospital near Beit Lahiya, while five others were killed in two separate strikes in Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip where the army began a limited raid two days ago.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, one man was killed and several others were wounded in an Israeli airstrike, while three Palestinians were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes in Shejaia suburb of Gaza City, medics added.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli strike on a house in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip killed eight people, medics said.
Hamas-led gunmen attacked Israel last October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
More than 43,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past year, Palestinian health officials say, and Gaza has been reduced to a wasteland of wrecked buildings and piles of rubble, where more than 2 million Gazans are seeking shelter in makeshift tents and facing shortages of food and medicines.


Sudan war deaths are likely much higher than recorded, researchers say

Updated 8 sec ago
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Sudan war deaths are likely much higher than recorded, researchers say

CAIRO/OMDURMAN: More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, with evidence suggesting the toll from the devastating conflict is significantly higher than previously recorded, according to a new report by researchers in Britain and Sudan.
The estimate includes some 26,000 people who suffered violent deaths, a higher figure than one currently used by the United Nations for the entire country.
The preprint study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Sudan Research Group, released on Wednesday before peer review, suggested that starvation and disease are increasingly becoming the leading causes of death reported across Sudan.
The estimated deaths from all causes in Khartoum state were at a rate 50 percent higher than the national average before the conflict between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted in April 2023, researchers said. The UN says the conflict has driven 11 million people from their homes and unleashed the world’s biggest hunger crisis. Nearly 25 million people — half of Sudan’s population — need aid as famine has taken hold in at least one displacement camp.
But counting the dead has been challenging.
Even in peace time, many deaths are not registered in Sudan, researchers say. As fighting intensified, people were cut off from places that record deaths, including hospitals, morgues and cemeteries. Repeated disruptions to Internet services and telecommunications left millions unable to contact the outside world. The study “tried to capture that invisibility” using a sampling technique known as “capture-recapture”, said lead author Maysoon Dahab, an infectious disease epidemiologist and co-director of the Sudan Research Group.
Originally designed for ecological research, the technique has been used in published studies to estimate the number of people killed during pro-democracy protests in Sudan in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was not possible to carry out full counts, she said.
Using data from at least two independent sources, researchers look for individuals who appear on multiple lists. The less overlap there is between the lists, the higher the chances that deaths have gone unrecorded, information that can be used to estimate the full number of deaths.
In this case, researchers compiled three lists of the dead. One was based on a public survey circulated via social media platforms between November 2023 and June 2024. The second used community activists and other “study ambassadors” to distribute the survey privately within their networks. And the third was compiled from obituaries posted on social media, a common practice in the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri, which together make up the greater capital.
“Our findings suggest that deaths have largely gone undetected,” the researchers wrote.

UNCOUNTED TOLL
Deaths captured in the three lists made up just 5 percent of the estimated total for Khartoum state and 7 percent of those attributed to “intentional injury.” The findings suggest that other war-affected parts of the country could have experienced similar or worse tolls, the study said.
The researchers noted that their estimate of violent deaths in Khartoum state surpassed the 20,178 killings recorded across the country over the same period by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project (ACLED), a US-based crisis monitoring group.
ACLED’s data, which is based on reports from sources including news organizations, human rights groups and local authorities, has been cited by UN officials and other humanitarian workers.
Dahab said the researchers did not have sufficient data to estimate mortality levels in other parts of the country or determine how many deaths in all could be linked to the war.
The study also notes other limitations. The methodology used assumes that every death has an equal chance of showing up in the data, for example. However, well-known individuals and those who suffered violent deaths may have been more likely to be reported, the researchers said.
Paul Spiegel, who heads the Center for Humanitarian Health at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was not involved in the study, said there were issues with all three sources of data that could skew the estimates. But he said the researchers had factored such limitations into their methodology and analysis.
“While it is difficult to know how the various biases in this capture-recapture methodology could affect the overall numbers, it is a novel and important attempt to estimate the number of deaths and bring attention to this horrific war in Sudan,” he said.
An official with the Sudanese American Physicians Association, an organization that offers free health care across the country, said the findings appeared credible.
“The number might even be more,” its program manager, Abdulazim Awadalla, told Reuters, saying weakened immunity from malnutrition was making people more susceptible to infection.
“Simple diseases are killing people,” he said.
The study was funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

“WE BURIED HIM HERE“
Among the war’s many victims was Khalid Sanhouri, a musician whose death in Omdurman’s Mulazmeen neighborhood was announced on social media in July last year.
A neighbor, Mohammed Omar, told Reuters that friends and relatives were unable to get medical care for Sanhouri after he fell ill due to the intensity of the fighting at the time.
“There were no hospitals or pharmacies where we could get medicine, not even markets to buy food,” Omar said.
They couldn’t even reach the nearest graveyard.
“So, we buried him here,” Omar said, pointing to a grave just beyond the bullet-pocked wall surrounding the musician’s home.
Hundreds of graves have popped up next to homes across greater Khartoum since last year, residents say. With the return of the army to some neighborhoods, they have started relocating the bodies to Omdurman’s main cemetery.
There are as many as 50 burials a day there, undertaker Abdin Khidir told Reuters. The cemetery has expanded into an adjoining football field.
Still, the bodies keep coming, Khidir said.
The warring sides have traded blame for the growing toll.
Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Nabil Abdallah referred questions about the study’s estimates to the Ministry of Health but said: “The main cause of all this suffering is the terrorist Rapid Support militia (RSF), which has not hesitated from the first moment to target civilians.”
The health ministry said in a statement to Reuters that it has observed far fewer deaths than the estimates in the study. Its tally of war-related deaths stands at 5,565, it said.
The RSF did not dispute the study’s estimates, blaming the deaths in the capital on “deliberate air strikes on populated areas, in addition to artillery shelling and drone strikes.”
“It is known that the army is the only one with [such weapons],” it said in a statement to Reuters.
The war erupted from a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the RSF ahead of a planned transition to civilian rule. The RSF quickly took over most of the capital and has now spread into at least half the country, though the military regained control of some neighborhoods in Omdurman and Bahri in recent months. Both sides have committed abuses that may amount to war crimes, including attacking civilians, a UN fact-finding mission said in September. The war has also produced ethnically driven violence in the western Darfur region blamed largely on the RSF.
However, the new report highlighted the significant and likely growing toll taken by the war’s indirect impacts, including hunger, disease and the collapse of health care.
Sick patients lined the hallways at Al-Shuhada hospital in Bahri, which has seen a spike in cases of malnutrition and diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue fever.
Fresh fruits, vegetables and meat were hard to come by until the arrival of the army opened up supply routes, said hospital manager Hadeel Malek.
“As we all know, malnutrition leads to weak immunity in general,” she said. “This is one factor ... which led to many deaths, especially among pregnant women and children.”
Both sides deny impeding aid and commercial deliveries.

Strike hits south Beirut after Israel evacuation warning

Updated 37 min 52 sec ago
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Strike hits south Beirut after Israel evacuation warning

  • Israel carried out two strikes on Ghobeiry and a large one on Shouaifat Al-Omrousiya
  • Repeated Israeli air strikes on south Beirut have led to a mass exodus of civilians

BEIRUT: Air strikes hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Thursday after an Israeli warning to evacuate parts of the Hezbollah bastion, AFPTV images showed.
A plume of grey smoke rose over the area after the latest strike since Israel sharply intensified its campaign against the Iran-backed militant group in September.
Shortly before the strike, Israel had issued a warning to residents to evacuate their homes.
“You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests against which the (Israeli military) will operate in the near future,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee said.
His post on X included a map identifying buildings in the Shouaifat Al-Omrousiya and Ghobeiry areas.
Israel carried out two strikes on Ghobeiry and a large one on Shouaifat Al-Omrousiya, which lies on the southern outskirts of Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Repeated Israeli air strikes on south Beirut have led to a mass exodus of civilians, although some return during the day to check on their homes and businesses.
NNA also reported heavy Israeli bombardment of the southern town of Bint Jbeil on Thursday.
Several blocks of flats in the town barely three kilometers (two miles) from the Israeli border were destroyed by air strikes or shelling, it said.


Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of war crimes over Gaza displacements

Updated 14 November 2024
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Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of war crimes over Gaza displacements

  • The law of armed conflict forbids the forcible displacement of civilian populations from occupied territory, unless necessary for the security of civilians or imperative military reasons

JERUSALEM: Israeli authorities have caused a forced displacement of Palestinian people in Gaza to an extent that constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Thursday.
The report is the latest in a series from aid groups and international bodies warning about the dire humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave.
“Human Rights Watch found that forced displacement has been widespread, and the evidence shows it has been systematic and part of a state policy. Such acts also constitute crimes against humanity,” the report said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or foreign ministry but Israeli authorities have previously rejected such accusations, and say their forces operate in compliance with international law.
The law of armed conflict forbids the forcible displacement of civilian populations from occupied territory, unless necessary for the security of civilians or imperative military reasons.
Since then, the Israeli campaign has killed more than 43,500 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure, forcing most of the 2.3 million population to move several times.
For the past month, Israeli troops have moved tens of thousands of people from areas in the north of the enclave as they have sought to destroy Hamas forces the military says have been reforming around the towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun.
Human Rights Watch said the displacement of Palestinians “is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors,” an action it said would amount to “ethnic cleansing.”
The Israeli military has denied seeking to create permanent buffer zones and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday that Palestinians displaced from their homes in northern Gaza would be allowed to return at the end of the war.


Israeli airstrikes alter landscape of Beirut’s southern suburbs

Updated 14 November 2024
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Israeli airstrikes alter landscape of Beirut’s southern suburbs

  • ‘Current priority is to achieve ceasefire and halt Israeli aggression,’ Egyptian foreign minister says
  • Tayouneh roundabout, marking border between Beirut and Shiyah, has become impromptu refugee camp

BEIRUT: The Israeli army expanded its airstrikes on neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Wednesday, as part of a relentless campaign that has continued day and night over the past 48 hours.

Israel’s policy of maximum pressure against Hezbollah, targeting displaced individuals from the south and the Bekaa Valley, has increasingly resulted in mass fatalities.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdel Atti, said during a visit to Beirut on Wednesday that “the current priority is to achieve a ceasefire and halt the Israeli aggression.”

He stressed “the importance of preserving Lebanese state institutions, particularly the presidency, and the necessity of selecting a consensus president for Lebanon, one who is supported by all Lebanese sects and the entire Lebanese populace.”

The office of president has been vacant since Michel Aoun’s term ended in October 2022, as rival political factions have been unable to agree on a successor.

Abdel Atti said: “The resolution of the presidential vacancy should not be a precondition for the cessation of hostilities. It must be a national issue (dealt with by) the Lebanese people.”

During his visit, the minister held long talks with Lebanese officials, the commander of the Lebanese Army, and the grand mufti.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on the suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday night and throughout the day on Wednesday caused significant damage that reportedly altered the very landscape of several neighborhoods.

The most recent attacks struck several suburban areas of the city, including Ghobeiry, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, and Lailaki. A medical center in Haret Hreik that contained clinics and laboratories was among the buildings completely destroyed. Even cemeteries serving both the Sunni and Shiite communities have been hit, and the Musharrafieh area was targeted for the first time.

The Tayouneh roundabout, marking the border between Beirut and Shiyah, has become an impromptu refugee camp. Residents gather there after being forced from homes they had only recently reluctantly returned to after previous Israeli attacks. Many have exhausted their life savings on temporary accommodation after finding government shelters filled to capacity.

Throughout the day on Wednesday, evacuation warnings issued by Israeli military spokesperson Avichai Adraei sent families fleeing. The realities of the escalating humanitarian crisis were revealed in the resulting scenes: mothers pushing young children in strollers to safety; young men carrying disabled siblings; and entire families seeking refuge in grassy areas where the Lebanese Civil Defense has established emergency shelters.

People endure hours of waiting in fear as the ground and buildings shake from airstrikes, and the pressure waves caused by the explosions spread panic. There have also been reports of strange chemical odors causing respiratory distress.

“Although the Israeli maps (for military action) do not include my house or its vicinity, who can trust the enemy’s plans?” said Fatima, who fled her home in Shiyah and went to the roundabout camp with elderly neighbors.

“Staying home under these Israeli missiles, which exceed human endurance, is madness.”

This feeling of distrust in Israeli evacuation orders appears justified, as some strikes reportedly hit areas considered safe, including locations outside the southern suburbs, with no warning.

A dawn raid on Wednesday struck Aramoun in Aley district, a densely populated area in which numerous displaced families were sheltering. The attack, which destroyed the first and second floors of a residential building, left eight people dead and 18 wounded, some of them critically. Civil Defense and Red Cross teams worked throughout the day to rescue survivors and recover the remains of the dead from the rubble and a nearby valley. Several children were reported missing.

Earlier, an airstrike on a residential building in Joun, in Chouf region, killed 16 civilians, including eight women and four children, and injured 12. Civil Defense teams later recovered a child’s body and the unidentifiable remains of two other people from the rubble.

Israeli raids also targeted several towns in the deep south of Lebanon, destroying houses, shops and other buildings, and the surrounding areas. Meanwhile, Hezbollah continues to target Israeli settlements in northern Israel.

Humanitarian flights carrying aid from Arab nations for displaced people continue to arrive at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport. They included the 23rd delivery of aid from Saudi Arabia, which contained food and medical supplies. A similar cargo arrived on an Egyptian plane, which also brought the country’s foreign minister, Abdel Atti, for his meetings with officials in the capital.

The Israeli army said on Wednesday it had intercepted “two drones that infiltrated into northern Israel from Lebanon.”

Israeli media reported “a tragedy in Lebanon, as seven soldiers of the Golani Brigade were killed following the collapse of a building in a village in southern Lebanon.”


UN Security Council condemns attacks on peacekeeping forces in Lebanon

Updated 14 November 2024
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UN Security Council condemns attacks on peacekeeping forces in Lebanon

  • Several UN peacekeepers have been injured in southern Lebanon since a year of skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into fierce clashes in the past month
  • Council members say peacekeepers must never be the target of attacks and urge all involved in the conflict to respect their safety and security

NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Wednesday condemned attacks in southern Lebanon in recent weeks in which several UN peacekeeping troops have been injured.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon continues to monitor hostilities in the south of the country along the demarcation line separating it from Israel. A year of skirmishes between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters in border areas have escalated into fierce clashes in the past month.

Israel accuses the UN peacekeeping forces of providing cover for Hezbollah and has told UNIFIL to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon for their own safety. The international force has refused to comply, instead vowing to remain and carry out its mandate along the Blue Line of demarcation between the two countries, which was established by the UN in June 2000. It has issued several warnings that the Israeli army’s “deliberate and direct destruction of clearly identifiable UNIFIL property is a flagrant violation of international law” and UN resolutions.

Without mentioning Israel by name, the 15 members of the UN Security Council on Wednesday urged all parties involved in the conflict to take all possible steps to respect the safety and security of UNIFIL personnel and facilities, and said peacekeepers must never be the target of attacks.

The council reiterated its “full support” for UNIFIL, underscored “its role in supporting regional stability,” and expressed “deep appreciation” to the countries that contribute troops to the force.

Council members also expressed “deep concern for civilian casualties and suffering, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, the damage to cultural heritage sites in Lebanon, and endangerment of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Baalbeck and Tyre, and the rising number of internally displaced people.”

They called on “all parties” to abide by international humanitarian law and fully implement Security Council resolutions.