GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday urged Hamas to free all hostages, saying their captivity provided Israel with “excuses” to attack Gaza, as rescuers recovered charred bodies from an Israeli strike.
Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people across the besieged territory, while Germany, France and Britain urged Israel to end its blockade on aid entering.
Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on March 18, ending the ceasefire that had largely paused hostilities and resulted in the release of 33 hostages from Gaza and approximately 1,800 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Talks on a new ceasefire have so far failed to produce any breakthroughs, and a Hamas delegation is currently in Cairo for renewed negotiations with Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
“Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said in Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“I’m the one paying the price, our people are paying the price, not Israel. My brother, just hand them over.”
“Every day there are deaths. Why? Because they (Hamas) refuse to hand over the American hostage,” Abbas said of Edan Alexander, who was reportedly on a list of hostages Israel had asked to be freed in a proposal that was recently rejected by Hamas.
“You sons of dogs, hand over what you have and get us out of this” ordeal, he added, levelling a harsh Arabic epithet at Hamas.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim called Abbas’s remarks “insulting.”
“Abbas repeatedly and suspiciously lays the blame for the crimes of the occupation and its ongoing aggression on our people,” he said.
Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades later issued footage it said was of an Israeli hostage alive in a Gaza tunnel. He identified himself as 48-year-old Omri Miran.
Ties between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas have been tense, with deep political and ideological divisions for nearly two decades.
Abbas and the PA have often accused Hamas of undermining Palestinian unity, while Hamas has criticized the former for collaborating with Israel and cracking down on dissent in the West Bank.
Israel continued to pound Gaza on Wednesday, with rescuers saying at least 25 people had been killed since dawn, including 11 in a strike on a school-turned-shelter.
“The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, describing the attack on Yaffa school in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffa neighborhood.
An AFP journalist reported seeing several bodies in white shrouds at Al-Shifa hospital’s morgue, where women wept over the body of a child.
“We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world,” said Khan Yunis resident Walid Al-Najjar.
“We are a people who are poor, devastated — our lives are lost.”
Since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans have sought refuge in schools.
Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once.
“We lack the necessary tools and equipment to carry out effective rescue operations or recover the bodies of martyrs,” Bassal said.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it had targeted approximately 40 “engineering vehicles,” alleging they were used for “terror purposes.”
Elsewhere in Gaza, further fatalities were reported Wednesday, including four killed in Israeli shelling of homes in eastern Gaza City, Bassal said.
The military did not immediately comment on the latest strikes.
Since Israel’s campaign resumed, at least 1,928 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,305, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Hamas’s attack on Israel that ignited the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Germany, France, and Britain on Wednesday called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death.”
“We urge Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement.
Abbas urges Hamas to free Gaza hostages as Israeli strikes kill 25
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Abbas urges Hamas to free Gaza hostages as Israeli strikes kill 25
- “Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said
- “Every day there are deaths. Why? Because they (Hamas) refuse to hand over the American hostage,” Abbas said of Edan Alexander
Israel strikes south Lebanon, army says Hezbollah fighter killed
The “urgent warning” was accompanied by a map showing a structure and the 500-meter radius around it marked in red
BEIRUT: Lebanese state media said an Israeli air strike hit a building in southern Lebanon on Thursday after Israel’s military issued an evacuation call warning of imminent action against Hezbollah militants.
Israel has kept up its air strikes in neighboring Lebanon despite a November truce aimed at halting more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah that included two months of full-blown war.
Without confirming the reported attack on the southern town of Toul, the Israeli military said its forces had carried out several strikes targeting Hezbollah sites and killed one militant.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said that “the Israeli enemy” struck a building in Toul, where the army had warned residents to evacuate the area around a building it said was used by Hezbollah militants.
The “urgent warning” was accompanied by a map showing a structure and the 500-meter (0.3-mile) radius around it marked in red.
“You are located near facilities belonging to the terrorist (group) Hezbollah,” the statement said in Arabic, urging people “to evacuate these buildings immediately and move away from them.”
There were no immediate reports of casualties in Toul.
In a separate statement, the military said it had “struck and eliminated a Hezbollah Radwan Force terrorist in the area of Rab El Thalathine,” about 17 kilometers (10 miles) to the southeast.
The NNA reported a “martyr” in an air strike in the same area, without identifying them.
The Israeli military said its forces also “struck a Hezbollah military site containing rocket launchers and weapons” in the Bekaa Valley as well as “terrorist infrastructure sites and rocket launchers belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization... in southern Lebanon.”
A military statement said that “the presence of weapons in the area and Hezbollah activities at the site constitute blatant violations of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon” under the November ceasefire agreement.
Israel will “continue to operate to remove any threat... and will prevent any attempt by Hezbollah to re-establish its terror capabilities,” it said.
Under the ceasefire, Hezbollah fighters were to pull back north of the Litani River and dismantle military infrastructure south of it.
Israel was to withdraw all forces from Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five areas that it deems “strategic.”
The Lebanese army has deployed in the south and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
The truce was based on a UN Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only people to bear arms in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Egyptian president, UK prime minister discuss Gaza ceasefire, humanitarian aid
- Leaders discussed Egyptian, Qatari, and US efforts to enforce ceasefire in the Palestinian coastal enclave
- Abdul Fatah El-Sisi praised ‘positive’ UK position on Gaza, agreed with Sir Keir Starmer on continuing coordination
LONDON: Egyptian President Abdul Fatah El-Sisi praised the UK’s “positive position” on developments in Gaza during a phone call with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Thursday.
The Egyptian Presidency said El-Sisi and Sir Keir discussed strengthening cooperation in the economic, trade, and investment sectors while continuing political consultations on various topics.
Ambassador Mohamed El-Shennawy, the presidential spokesman, said the two leaders discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip and Egyptian, Qatari, and US efforts to enforce a ceasefire in the Palestinian coastal enclave and ensure the flow of humanitarian aid.
The Egyptian president emphasized Cairo’s rejection of displacing Palestinians and expressed support for the Arab-Islamic plan to rebuild Gaza following a ceasefire.
El-Sisi praised the “positive” UK position regarding the situation in Gaza and agreed with the prime minister on continuing coordination to address regional and international developments.
The UK announced on Tuesday that it will stop free-trade negotiations with Israel and has summoned the Israeli ambassador to the Foreign Office in response to Tel Aviv’s expansion of military operations in Gaza.
Settler attacks push Palestinians to abandon West Bank village, residents say
- The West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians
- The Israeli military said it was “looking into” the legality of the outpost at Maghayer Al-Deir
MAGHAYER AL-DEIR, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian residents of Maghayer Al-Deir in the occupied West Bank told AFP on Thursday that they had begun packing their belonging and preparing to leave the village following repeated attacks by Israeli settlers.
Yusef Malihat, a resident of the tiny village east of Ramallah, told AFP his community had decided to leave because its members felt powerless in the face of the settler violence.
“No one provides us with protection at all,” he said, a keffiyeh scarf protecting his head from the sun as he loaded a pickup truck with chain-link fencing previously used to pen up sheep and goats.
“They demolished the houses and threatened us with expulsion and killing,” he said, as a group of settlers looked on from a new outpost a few hundred meters away.
The West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians, but also some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.
Settlement outposts, built informally and sometimes overnight, are considered illegal under Israeli law too, although enforcement is relatively rare.
The Israeli military told AFP it was “looking into” the legality of the outpost at Maghayer Al-Deir.
“It’s very sad, what’s happening now... even for an outpost,” said Itamar Greenberg, an Israeli peace activist present at Maghayer Al-Deir on Thursday.
“It’s a new outpost 60 meters from the last house of the community, and on Sunday one settler told me that in one month, the Bedouins will not be here, but it (happened much) more quickly,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission denounced Maghayer Al-Deir’s displacement, describing it as being the result of the “terrorism of the settler militias.”
It said in a statement that a similar fate had befallen 29 other Bedouin communities, whose small size and isolation in rural areas make them more vulnerable.
In the area east of Ramallah, where hills slope down toward the Jordan Valley, Maghayer Al-Deir was one of the last remaining communities after the residents of several others were recently displaced.
Its 124 residents will now be dispersed to other nearby areas.
Malihat told AFP some would go to the Christian village of Taybeh just over 10 kilometers (six miles) away, and others to Ramallah.
Uncertain they would be able to return, the families loaded all they could fit in their trucks, including furniture, irrigation pipes and bales of hay.
WFP says ‘handful of bakeries’ making bread again in Gaza
- “A handful of bakeries in south and central Gaza have resumed bread production,” WFP said
ROME: The UN’s World Food Programme said Thursday a “handful of bakeries” in Gaza had begun making and distributing bread again after Israel allowed aid trucks into the Strip.
“A handful of bakeries in south and central Gaza... have resumed bread production after dozens of trucks were finally able to collect cargo from the Kerem Shalom border crossing and deliver it overnight,” the WFP said in a statement.
“These bakeries are now operational distributing bread via hot meal kitchens,” it said.
Morocco to spend $670m to replenish livestock up to 2026
- Six years of drought reduced the cattle and sheep herds by 38 percent this year
- The government also includes aid to farmers
RABAT: Morocco plans to spend 6.2 billion dirhams ($670 mln) on a 2025-2026 program to replenish its livestock herd, which has been reduced following years of prolonged drought, agriculture minister Ahmed El Bouari said on Thursday.
Six years of drought caused mass job losses in the farming sector and reduced the cattle and sheep herds by 38 percent this year, compared to the last census nine years ago.
Under the recovery program, 3 billion dirhams will be allocated in 2025 and 3.2 billion next year to measures including debt relief and restructuring for livestock farmers, as well as feed subsidies, Bouari told reporters.
The government also includes aid to farmers who retain breeding female livestock, along with veterinary campaigns, genetic improvement and artificial insemination, he said.
In February, authorities asked citizens to forgo the ritual of slaughtering sheep on the Eid Adha this year, to help restore the sheep herd.
