At least 70 are killed in central Gaza, in one of the war’s deadliest strikes

People flee following Israeli air strikes on a neighbourhood in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. (File/AFP)
People flee following Israeli air strikes on a neighbourhood in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. (File/AFP)
Short Url
Updated 25 December 2023
Follow

At least 70 are killed in central Gaza, in one of the war’s deadliest strikes

People flee following Israeli air strikes on a neighbourhood in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. (File/AFP
  • A reporter on the scene watched bodies and wounded being carried into a nearby hospital

DEIR AL-BALAH: At least 70 people were killed in Gaza in one of the deadliest strikes of the war, health officials said Sunday, while the number of Israeli soldiers killed in combat over the weekend rose to 15.
Associated Press journalists at a nearby hospital watched frantic Palestinians carry the dead, including a baby, and wounded following the strike on the Maghazi refugee camp east of Deir al-Balah. One bloodied young girl looked stunned while her body was checked for broken bones.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra said the toll was likely to rise. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
“We were all targeted,” said Ahmad Turokmani, who lost several family members including his daughter and grandson. “There is no safe place in Gaza anyway.”
As Christmas Eve fell, smoke rose over the besieged territory, while in the West Bank Bethlehem was hushed, its holiday celebrations called off. In neighboring Egypt, tentative efforts continued on a deal for another exchange of hostages for Palestinians held by Israel.
The war has devastated parts of Gaza, killed roughly 20,400 Palestinians and displaced almost all of the territory’s 2.3 million people.
The mounting death toll among Israeli troops — 154 since the ground offensive began — could erode public 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.
Israelis still largely stand behind the country’s stated goals of crushing Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and releasing the remaining 129 captives. That's despite rising international pressure against Israel’s offensive, and the soaring death toll and unprecedented suffering among Palestinians.
HAMAS EXACTS A PRICE
“The war exacts a very heavy price from us, but we have no choice but to continue fighting,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
In a nationally televised speech, Israeli President Isaac Herzog appealed for the country to remain united. “This moment is a test. We will not break nor blink,” he said.
There has been widespread anger against his 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.
“Over time, the public will find it hard to ignore the heavy price paid, as well as the suspicion that the aims that were loudly heralded are still far from being attained, and that Hamas is showing no signs of capitulating in the near future," wrote Amos Harel, military affairs commentator for the Haaretz newspaper.
The Israeli military said it had completed the dismantling of Hamas’ underground headquarters in northern Gaza, part of an operation to take down the vast tunnel network and kill off top commanders that Israeli leaders have said could take months.
Efforts toward negotiations continued. The head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad al-Nakhalah, arrived in Egypt for talks. The militant group, which also took part in the Oct. 7 attack, said it was prepared to consider releasing hostages only after fighting ends. Hamas’ top leader Ismail Haniyeh traveled to Cairo for talks days earlier.
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 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.
At least two people were killed and six others wounded when a missile stuck a building in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
And Palestinians reported heavy Israeli bombardment and gunfire 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.
Israel faces 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. It says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, without presenting evidence.
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.”
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 deliveries of food, medical supplies and other aid, far below the daily average of 500 before the war, would accelerate. Trucks enter through two crossings: Rafah, and Kerem Shalom on the border with Israel. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 123 aid trucks entered Gaza on Sunday,
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reiterated U.N. calls for a humanitarian cease-fire, adding on social media that “the decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy.”
Amid concerns about a wider regional conflict, the US Central Command said a patrol ship in the Red Sea on Saturday shot down four drones launched from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, a while two Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles were fired into international shipping lanes.
The Iran-backed Houthis say their attacks are aimed at Israel-linked ships in an effort to stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza.


Gaza in anarchy, says UN

Gaza in anarchy, says UN
Updated 6 sec ago
Follow

Gaza in anarchy, says UN

Gaza in anarchy, says UN
Palestinians are suffering “on a scale that has to be seen to be truly grasped,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said
“This time I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a media briefing in Geneva

GENEVA: The Gaza Strip has descended into anarchy, with hunger soaring, looting rampant and rising numbers of rapes in shelters as public order falls apart, the United Nations said on Friday.
Palestinians are suffering “on a scale that has to be seen to be truly grasped,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said after concluding his latest visit to the devastated Palestinian territory.
“This time I was particularly alarmed by the prevalence of hunger,” Sunghay told a media briefing in Geneva, via video-link from Amman.
“The breakdown of public order and safety is exacerbating the situation with rampant looting and fighting over scarce resources.
“The anarchy in Gaza we warned about months ago is here,” he said, calling the situation entirely predictable, foreseeable and preventable.
Sunghay said young women, many displaced multiple times, had stressed the lack of any safe spaces or privacy in their makeshift tents.
“Others said that cases of gender-based violence and rape, abuse of children and other violence within the community has increased in shelters as a consequence of the war and the breakdown of law enforcement and public order,” he said.
Sunghay described the situation in Gaza City as “horrendous,” with thousands of displaced people sheltering in “inhumane conditions with severe food shortages and terrible sanitary conditions.”
He recounted seeing, for the first time, dozens of women and children in the beseiged enclave now scavenging in giant landfills.
The level of destruction in Gaza “just gets worse and worse,” he added.
“The common plea by everyone I met was for this to stop. To bring this to an end. Enough.”
He said the UN was being blocked from taking any aid to the 70,000 people still thought to be living in northern Gaza, due to “repeated impediments or rejections of humanitarian convoys by the Israeli authorities.”
“It is so obvious that massive humanitarian aid needs to come in — and it is not.”
UN Human Rights Office spokesman Jeremy Laurence called for an immediate ceasefire.
“The killing must end,” he said.
“The hostages must be released immediately and unconditionally. Those arbitrarily detained must be released,” he added.
“And every effort must be made to urgently provide the full quantities of food, medicine and other vital assistance desperately needed in Gaza.”
Fighters from Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack in Israel on October 7, 2023, that 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 44,363 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

Israeli rescuers say eight hurt in bus shooting

Israeli rescuers say eight hurt in bus shooting
Updated 33 min 18 sec ago
Follow

Israeli rescuers say eight hurt in bus shooting

Israeli rescuers say eight hurt in bus shooting
  • The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, claimed responsibility for the attack, which left more than a dozen bullet holes in the windshield of the bus
  • The attack occurred at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.

SALFIT, Palestinian Territories: A shooting at a bus near an Israeli settlement injured at least eight people on Friday in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rescue service said.
Violence in the West Bank has surged since the start of the Gaza war sparked by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, claimed responsibility for the attack, which left more than a dozen bullet holes in the windshield of the bus.
The attack occurred at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.
It added that a “terrorist was neutralized on the spot.”
Four people suffered bullet wounds, three of them serious, and four others were lightly injured by shards of glass, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.
Three of the injured were lying near the bus, conscious, when the rescuers arrived, a spokesman for MDA said, adding that those most seriously hurt were taken to hospital in a “stable condition.”
“In this operation, one of our heroic fighters ambushed a number of Israeli soldiers and settlers inside a bus,” Hamas’s armed wing said in a statement, identifying the attacker as 46-year-old Samer Hussein, from a village near Nablus.
At least 24 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during military operations in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, Israeli official figures show.
During the same period, at least 778 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP count based on Palestinian official figures.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law.


Israel extends Palestinian banks’ lifeline for one year

Israel extends Palestinian banks’ lifeline for one year
Updated 42 min 24 sec ago
Follow

Israel extends Palestinian banks’ lifeline for one year

Israel extends Palestinian banks’ lifeline for one year
  • Smotrich had threatened in May to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank
  • Smotrich had told PM Benjamin Netanyahu that he “did not intend to extend” Israel’s annual guarantees to banks in the West Bank

JERUSALEM: Israel extended for one year a waiver allowing Israeli banks to work with Palestinian ones just days before it was due to expire, threatening to paralyze Palestinians financial institutions.
The extension was approved Thursday during a security cabinet meeting ahead of expiration of the waiver at the end of the month, a spokesman for far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told AFP.
Smotrich had threatened in May to cut the vital connection between Israel and Palestinian banks in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for the recognition of the State of Palestine by three European countries.
Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement and advocates for the full annexation of the territory occupied by Israel since 1967, had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he “did not intend to extend” Israel’s annual guarantees to banks in the West Bank.
In exchange for trade-offs on the development of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Smotrich later agreed to extend the guarantee, but only for a few months.
Since June 30, the waiver was renewed on several occasions for different lengths of time, the last of which was to last a month until November 30.
Until then, Smotrich had raised concerns over the financing of armed groups via Palestinian banks to justify the short extension renewals.
The Palestinian financial and banking system is dependent on the regular renewal of the Israeli waiver.
It protects Israeli banks from potential legal action relating to transactions with their Palestinian counterparts, for instance in relation to financing terror.
The waiver had previously been renewed annually, until Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack sparked the war in Gaza.
In July, G7 countries urged Israel to “take necessary action” to ensure the continuity of Palestinian financial systems.
It came after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that “to cut Palestinian banks from the Israeli counterparts would create a humanitarian crisis.”
The overwhelming majority of exchanges in the West Bank are in shekels, Israel’s national currency, because the Palestinian Authority does not have a central bank that would allow it to print its own currency.


Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive

Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive
Updated 29 November 2024
Follow

Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive

Syria militants, allies shell Aleppo in shock offensive
  • The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor
  • Militants cut highway linking Aleppo to capital Damascus on Thursday

BEIRUT: Militants and their Turkish-backed allies shelled Syria’s second city Aleppo on Friday, in a major offensive against government troops that has sparked some of the deadliest fighting the country has seen in years.

The violence has killed 242 people, according to a Syrian war monitor, most of them combatants on both sides but also including civilians, including 24 dead, most of them in Russian air strikes.

The offensive began at a sensitive time for Syria and the region, with a fragile ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel taking effect earlier this week in neighboring Lebanon.

Syria’s civil war began when President Bashar Assad’s forces cracked down in 2011 on pro-democracy protests.

Since then, it has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.

Over the years, the conflict has morphed into a complex war drawing in militants and foreign powers, including Assad allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

While the army regained control over most of the territory that it lost earlier in the war, the area where the militants and their allies are based has been subject to a truce since 2020.

This week, militants and factions backed by Turkiye, which neighbors Syria and supported the anti-Assad rebellion, launched a major surprise offensive against government forces.

On Friday, they shelled a university student residence in government-held Aleppo, northern Syria’s main city, according to state media, which reported four civilian deaths in the latest attack.

By Friday, they had wrested more than 50 towns and villages in northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the biggest advances that anti-government factions had made in years.

The fighters had on Thursday cut the highway linking Aleppo to Syria’s capital Damascus, according to the Britain-based Observatory.

“The highway has now been put out of service, after it was reopened by regime forces years ago,” said the monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said “more than 14,000 people — nearly half are children — have been displaced” by the violence.

At a press conference earlier this week, Mohamed Bashir of the militant Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) said: “This operation aims to repel the sources of fire of the criminal enemy from the frontlines.”

HTS, led by Al-Qaeda’s former Syria branch, controls swathes of the northwest Idlib region as well as small parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire, repeatedly violated but which had largely been holding, brokered by Turkiye and Russia after a Syrian government offensive in March 2020.

An AFP correspondent based in rebel-held areas said there were intense exchanges of fire in an area just seven kilometers (four miles) from the city of Aleppo.

HTS has close ties with Turkish-backed factions, and analyst Nick Heras of the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy said the fighters were “trying to preempt the possibility of a Syrian military campaign in the region of Aleppo.”

According to Heras, the Syrian government and its key backer Russia had been preparing for such a campaign.

Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015, turning the momentum of the conflict in favor of the president, whose forces at the time had lost control of most of country.

Turkiye, Heras said, may be “sending a message to both Damascus and Moscow to back down from their military efforts in northwest Syria.”

Other interests are also at stake.

As well as Russia, Assad has been propped up by Iran and allied militant groups, including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah.

Anti-government forces are, according to Heras, “in a better position to take and seize villages than Russian-backed Syrian government forces, while the Iranians are focused on Lebanon.”

A general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was killed in Syria on Thursday during the fighting, an Iranian news agency reported.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the deadly offensive was “part of a plan by the diabolical regime (Israel) and the US” and called for “firm and coordinated action to prevent the spread of terrorism in the region.”

During its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel intensified its strikes on Iran-backed groups in Syria including Hezbollah.

Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Observatory, said Assad’s forces “were totally unprepared” for the attack.

“It is strange to see regime forces being dealt such big blows despite Russian air cover and early signs that HTS was going to launch this operation,” Abdel Rahman said.

“Were they depending on Hezbollah, which is now busy in Lebanon?”


Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed

Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed
Updated 29 November 2024
Follow

Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed

Israeli tanks retreat from central Gaza camp, medics say 30 killed
  • Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp
  • Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians overnight in the Gaza Strip, most of them in the Nuseirat camp at the center of the enclave, medics said on Friday after some tanks pulled back from an area they had raided.
Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in the northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave's eight long-standing refugee camps.
Some tanks remained active in the western area of the camp and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped inside their houses.
The rest were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added. There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military on Friday, but on Thursday it said its forces were continuing to "strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip".
Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities released around 30 Palestinians whom it had detained during the ongoing offensive in Gaza in the past months. The released people arrived at a hospital in southern Gaza for medical checkups, medics said.
Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture in Israeli detention after they were released. Israel denies torture.
Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.
A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and had overshadowed the Gaza conflict.
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,200 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins.
The Hamas-led militants who attacked southern Israeli communities 13 months ago, triggering the war, killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages, Israel has said.