A weekend of combat in Gaza kills 14 Israeli soldiers as public support for the war is tested

A weekend of combat in Gaza kills 14 Israeli soldiers as public support for the war is tested
Mourners attend the funeral of Israeli soldier Staff sergeant David Bogdanovskyi, who was killed in the Gaza Strip during the Israeli army's ongoing ground operation amid the conflict with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at a cemetery in Haifa, Israel, December 24, 2023. (Reuters)
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Updated 24 December 2023
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A weekend of combat in Gaza kills 14 Israeli soldiers as public support for the war is tested

A weekend of combat in Gaza kills 14 Israeli soldiers as public support for the war is tested
  • Soldiers’ deaths are a sensitive topic in Israel, which has compulsory military service for most Jews

TEL AVIV: Fourteen Israeli soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza over the weekend, the Israeli military said Sunday, in some of the bloodiest days of battle since the ground offensive began and a sign that Hamas is still putting up a fight despite weeks of brutal war.
The mounting death toll among Israeli troops is likely an important factor in Israeli support for the war, which was sparked when Hamas-led militants stormed communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostage. The war has devastated parts of Gaza , killed roughly 20,400 Palestinians and displaced nearly 85 percent of the besieged territory’s 2.3 million people.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said 166 people were killed in the coastal enclave over the past day.
Israelis still stand behind the country’s stated goals of crushing Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and releasing the remaining 129 captives. That support has stayed mostly steady despite rising international pressure against Israel’s offensive and the soaring death toll and unprecedented suffering among Palestinians.
But the growing number of dead soldiers — 153 since the ground offensive began — could undermine that support. Soldiers’ deaths are a sensitive topic in Israel, which has compulsory military service for most Jews. The names of fallen soldiers are announced at the top of hourly newscasts.
As Christmas Eve fell, smoke still rose over Gaza from the fighting while Bethlehem in the West Bank was hushed, its holiday celebrations called off.
Hamas exacts a price
The 14 Israeli soldiers killed on Friday and Saturday died in central and southern Gaza, a sign of how Hamas still puts up tough resistance even as Israel claims to have dealt a serious blow to the militant group.
According to Israeli Army Radio, four soldiers were killed when their vehicle was struck by an anti-tank missile. The others were killed in separate fighting. Another soldier was killed in northern Israel by fire from the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has kept up low-level fighting, raising fears of a wider regional conflict.
“The war exacts a very heavy price from us but we have no choice but to continue fighting,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Cabinet meeting Sunday.
There has been widespread anger against Netanyahu’s government, which many criticize for failing to protect civilians on Oct. 7 and promoting policies that allowed Hamas to gain strength over the years. Netanyahu has avoided accepting responsibility for the military and policy failures.
On Saturday night, thousands of people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, chanting “Bibi, Bibi, we don’t want you anymore,” referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
Inside Gaza
Israel’s offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history. More than two-thirds of the 20,000 Palestinians killed have been women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Sunday morning that a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed in an Israeli drone attack while inside Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, a part of Gaza where Israel’s military believes Hamas leaders are hiding.
An Israeli strike overnight hit a house in a refugee camp west of the city of Rafah, on Gaza’s border with Egypt. At least two men were killed, according to Associated Press journalists in the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Palestinians reported heavy Israeli bombardment and gunfire Sunday morning in Jabaliya, an area north of Gaza City that Israel had claimed to control. Hamas’ military arm said its fighters shelled Israeli troops in Jabaliya and Jabaliya refugee camp.
“Sounds of explosions and gunfire never stopped,” said Assad Radwan, a fisherman from Jabaliya.
Israel has come under heavy international criticism for the civilian death toll but it blames Hamas, citing the militants’ use of crowded residential areas and tunnels. Israel has launched thousands of airstrikes since Oct. 7, and has largely refrained from commenting on specific attacks.
Israel also faces allegations of mistreating Palestinian men and teenage boys detained in homes, shelters, hospitals and elsewhere during the offensive. It has denied abuse allegations and said those without links to militants are quickly released.
Speaking to the AP from a hospital bed in Rafah after his release, Khamis Al-Burdainy of Gaza City said Israeli forces detained him after tanks and bulldozers partly destroyed his home. He said men were handcuffed and blindfolded.
“We didn’t sleep. We didn’t get food and water,” he said, crying and covering his face.
Another released detainee, Mohammed Salem, from the Gaza City neighborhood of Shijaiyah, said Israeli troops beat them. “We were humiliated,” he said. “A female soldier would come and beat an old man, aged 72 years old.”
Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, without presenting evidence, and says it is dismantling Hamas’ vast tunnel network and killing off top commanders — an operation that leaders have said could take months.
International pressure 
The United Nations Security Council has passed a watered-down resolution calling for the speedy delivery of humanitarian aid for hungry and desperate Palestinians and the release of all the hostages, but not for a cease-fire.
But it was not immediately clear how and when aid deliveries, far below the daily average of 500 before the war, would accelerate. Trucks enter through two crossings — Rafah on the border with Egypt and Kerem Shalom on the border with Israel. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 93 aid trucks entered Gaza through Rafah on Saturday.
Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, reiterated UN calls for a humanitarian cease-fire.
“For aid to reach people in need, hostages to be released, more displacement to be avoided and above all the devastating loss of lives to stop a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza is the only way forward,” he wrote on X.
Israel’s allies in Europe have stepped up calls for a stop to the fighting. But the US, Israel’s top ally, appeared to remain firmly behind Israel despite intensifying its calls for greater protection for civilians.
US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu on Saturday, a day after Washington shielded Israel from a harsher UN resolution. Biden said he did not ask for a cease-fire, while Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister “made clear that Israel would continue the war until achieving all its goals.”


Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza

Updated 10 sec ago
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Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza

Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza
The man identified himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza

JERUSALEM: The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In the video, whose date cannot be verified, a man addresses US President-elect Donald Trump in English and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hebrew.


The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. (AFP/File)

Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike

Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike
Updated 30 November 2024
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Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike

Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike
  • The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen
  • The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment

GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said three aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Hamas-run territory on Saturday but the Israeli army said it killed a “terrorist.”
The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen. The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The Israeli army said it had “struck a vehicle with a terrorist that took part in the murderous October 7 massacre,” referring to militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel last year.
“The claim that the terrorist was simultaneously a WCK worker is being examined,” it added in a statement.
Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the bodies of “at least five dead were transported (to hospital), including (those of) the three employees of World Central Kitchen.”
“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
The Israeli army insisted its strike in the main southern city hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli air strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.


Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says

Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says
Updated 30 November 2024
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Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says

Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says
  • Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya
  • The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility

CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a car wounded three people, including a seven-year-old child, on Saturday in the south Lebanon village of Majdal Zoun, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement.
Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya, which lies near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility in Sidon that housed rocket launchers for the armed group.
It added that it had also hit a vehicle in southern Lebanon loaded with rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and military equipment as part of its actions against ceasefire violations.
A truce came into effect on Wednesday, but both sides have accused each other of breaching a ceasefire that aims to halt over a year of fighting.


West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
Updated 30 November 2024
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West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
  • MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
  • ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’

LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.

Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.

Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”

Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”

In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.

In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.


Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
Updated 30 November 2024
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Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
  • Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City

The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.