Hamas officials say Gaza war deaths top 24,000

Relatives mourn over one body during the funeral of Ahmed and Jalal Jabarin, who were shot dead by Israeli troops when their car broke through a checkpoint near the city of Hebron, in the southern West Bank village of Sair, east of Hebron, on January 15, 2024. (AFP)
Relatives mourn over one body during the funeral of Ahmed and Jalal Jabarin, who were shot dead by Israeli troops when their car broke through a checkpoint near the city of Hebron, in the southern West Bank village of Sair, east of Hebron, on January 15, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 15 January 2024
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Hamas officials say Gaza war deaths top 24,000

Hamas officials say Gaza war deaths top 24,000
  • A missile struck a US-owned cargo ship off Yemen on Monday, a British security agency and maritime risk company said, a day after the Houthis fired a cruise missile at an American destroyer
  • United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres again called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, “to ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza reported on Monday more than 24,000 deaths in the war with Israel which has rocked the region, and militants released a video announcing the death of two Israeli hostages.
Deadly violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, exchanges of fire over Israel’s border with Lebanon, and strikes by United States forces and Iran-backed Yemeni rebels in the Red Sea, have all raised fears of an escalation beyond the Gaza Strip.
The war, sparked by unprecedented Hamas attacks on Israel, has created a humanitarian catastrophe for the 2.4 million people in the besieged strip, the United Nations and aid groups warn, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
The health ministry in Gaza, ruled by Hamas since 2007, reported more than 60 “martyrs” overnight, in what the group’s media office described as “intense” Israeli bombardment.
The Hamas government media office said two hospitals, a girls’ school and “dozens” of homes were hit.
In a statement released with the video, Hamas’s armed wing the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades blamed “the Zionist army’s bombing” for the death of two male hostages.
The video showed a woman hostage, speaking under duress, revealing that two men she was held captive with had been killed in captivity.
Hospitals in Gaza have been hit repeatedly since the war erupted, and the World Health Organization (WHO) says most of them are no longer functioning.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas militants of operating out of civilian facilities or from tunnels under them, a charge the Islamist group denies.
AFPTV footage showed smoke billowing over Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, as explosions could be heard from nearby Rafah, on the territory’s southern border with Egypt.
Israel’s army said it had struck “two terrorists loading weapons into a vehicle” in Khan Yunis, raided “a Hamas command center” there and seized weapons.
In central Israel, which has been largely spared the current violence, a suspected car ramming attack on Monday killed one woman and injured 17 other people, medics said, and police arrested two Palestinian suspects.

Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack that triggered the war resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 132 of whom Israel says remain in Gaza, including at least 25 believed to have been killed.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a relentless military campaign that has killed at least 24,100 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The UN says more than three months of fighting have displaced roughly 85 percent of Gaza’s population, crowded into shelters and struggling to get food, water, fuel and medical care.
As temperatures plunge, families living in makeshift tents in Rafah have resorted to burning plastic to ward off the chill, despite the noxious fumes.
“At night, I feel like we’re going to die from the cold,” said Haneen Adwan, 31, a mother of six children who was forced to flee from central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres again called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, “to ensure sufficient aid gets to where it is needed. To facilitate the release of the hostages. To tamp down the flames of wider war,” he said.
Echoing earlier warnings of a fast-approaching famine, UN agencies earlier called on Israel to allow access to its Ashdod port, north of Gaza, for critical aid deliveries.
They sought “a fundamental step change in the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” arguing current levels are far below what is needed.
On Sunday, thousands of Palestinians swamped two aid trucks delivering flour and tinned food to warehouses in Gaza City, an AFP correspondent said.
“We are only eating rice, but rice is not enough for a human being,” said 53-year-old Omar Al-Shandogi.
Israel has faced international pressure over surging civilian casualties in Gaza, with King Abdullah II of neighboring Jordan warning on Monday that continuing Israeli attacks could cause the conflict to expand across the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under intense domestic pressure to return the hostages and account for political and security failings surrounding the October 7 attacks.
Hagit Chen said it was “hard to live, to sleep, to breathe, to eat” because she has heard nothing from her son Itay, 19, since Hamas took him captive on October 7.
“The hostages have no time. Everyone is ill and injured,” she said in Berlin, where hostage relatives met German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday.
Violence involving regional allies of Iran-backed Hamas — considered a “terrorist” group by the United States and the European Union — has surged since the war began.
Attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who say they act in solidarity with Gaza, have disrupted shipping in the vital Red Sea maritime trade route, triggering strikes on scores of rebel targets last Friday by US and British forces.
A missile struck a US-owned cargo ship off Yemen on Monday, a British security agency and maritime risk company said, a day after the Houthis fired a cruise missile at an American destroyer. US warplanes shot that missile down.
Since October, violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where three Palestinians were killed Monday in separate clashes with the Israeli army, the Palestinian health ministry said.
International efforts to avoid escalation will see Australia’s top diplomat Penny Wong in the region this week to support “diplomatic efforts toward a durable peace in the Middle East,” her office said.
In Turkiye, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, authorities have accused Israeli footballer Sagiv Jehezkel of “incitement to hate and hostility” over a goal celebration.
Jehezkel, who left the country on Monday after being sacked by his Turkish team, showed a message written on a wrist bandage, which read “100 days. 07/10” along with a Star of David.
In a testimony to the police, Jehezkel said he wanted to call attention to the hostages taken by Hamas.
 

 

 


Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again

Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again
Updated 7 sec ago
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Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again

Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again
  • Bombardment is pounding around three hospitals as Israel wages new offensive against Hamas
  • All three medical facilities were besieged and raided by Israeli troops some 10 months ago

JERUSALEM: They were built to be places of healing. But once again, three hospitals in northern Gaza are encircled by Israeli troops and under fire.
Bombardment is pounding around them as Israel wages a new offensive against Hamas fighters that it says have regrouped nearby. As staff scramble to treat waves of wounded, they remain haunted by a war that has seen hospitals targeted with an intensity and overtness rarely seen in modern warfare.
All three were besieged and raided by Israeli troops some 10 months ago. The Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals still have not recovered from the damage, yet are the only hospitals even partially operational in the area.
Medical facilities often come under fire in wars, but combatants usually depict such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals enjoy special protection under international law. In its yearlong campaign in Gaza, Israel has stood out by carrying out an open campaign on hospitals, besieging and raiding at least 10 of them across the Gaza Strip, some several times, as well as hitting multiple others in strikes.
It has said this is a military necessity in its aim to destroy Hamas after the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. It claims Hamas uses hospitals as “command and control bases” to plan attacks, to shelter fighters and to hide hostages. It argues that nullifies the protections for hospitals.
“If we intend to take down the military infrastructure in the north, we have to take down the philosophy of (using) the hospitals,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said of Hamas during an interview with The Associated Press in January after the first round of hospital raids.
Most prominently, Israel twice raided Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the biggest medical facility in the strip, producing a video animation depicting it as a major Hamas base, though the evidence it presented remains disputed.
But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed raids on other facilities. The AP spent months gathering accounts of the raids on Al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses and medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.
It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific events.
Al-Awda Hospital: ‘A death sentence’
The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at Al-Awda. When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital last year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.
In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed once again, with Israeli troops fighting in nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies entering areas of northern Gaza. Its director Mohammed Salha said last month that the facility was surrounded by troops and was unable to evacuate six critical patients. Staff were down to eating one meal a day, usually just a flat bread or a bit of rice, he said.
As war-wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons were struggling to treat them. No vascular surgeons or neurosurgeons remain north of Gaza City, so the doctors often resort to amputating shrapnel-shattered limbs to save lives.
“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December of last year, but worse,” Salha said. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors and less hope that anything will be done to stop this.”
The military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on Al-Awda hospital, says it takes all possible precautions to prevent civilian casualties.
Last year, fighting was raging around Al-Awda when, on Nov. 21, a shell exploded in the facility’s operating room. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, two other doctors and a patient’s uncle died almost instantly, according to international charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had informed the Israeli military of its coordinates.
Dr. Mohammed Obeid, Abu Nujaila’s colleague, recalled dodging shellfire inside the hospital complex. Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two janitors and wounded a surgeon, hospital officials said.
By Dec. 5, Al-Awda was surrounded. For 18 days, coming or going became “a death sentence,” Obeid said.
Survivors and hospital administrators recounted at least four occasions when Israeli drones or snipers killed or badly wounded Palestinians trying to enter. Two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death in the street, staff said. Salha, the administrator, watched gunfire kill his cousin, Souma, and her 6-year-old son as she brought the boy for treatment of wounds.
Shaza Al-Shouraim said labor pains left her no choice but to walk an hour to Al-Awda to give birth. She, her mother-in-law and 16-year-old brother-in-law raised flags made of white blouses. “Civilians!” her mother-in-law, Khatam Sharir, kept shouting. Just outside the gate, a burst of gunfire answered, killing Sharir.
On Dec. 23, troops stormed the hospital, ordering men ages 15 to 65 to strip and undergo interrogation in the yard. Mazen Khalidi, whose infected right leg had been amputated, said nurses pleaded with soldiers to let him rest rather than join the blindfolded and handcuffed men outside. They refused, and he hobbled downstairs, his stump bleeding.
“The humiliation scared me more than death,” Khalidi said.
The hospital’s director, Ahmed Muhanna, was seized by Israeli troops; his whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s leading doctors, orthopedist Adnan Al-Bursh, was also detained during the raid and died in Israeli custody in May.
In the wreckage from the November shelling, staff found a message that Abu Nujaila had written on a whiteboard in the previous weeks.
“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story,” it read in English. “We did what we could. Remember us.”
Indonesian Hospital: ‘Patients dying before your eyes’
Several blocks away, on Oct. 18, artillery hit the upper floors of Indonesian Hospital, staff said. People fled for their lives. They’d already been surrounded by Israeli troops, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food, water and supplies.
“The bombing around us has increased. They’ve paralyzed us,” said Edi Wahyudi, an Indonesian volunteer.
Two patients died because of a power outage and lack of supplies, said Muhannad Hadi, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories.
Tamer Al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said around 44 patients and only two doctors remain. He said he was so dehydrated he was starting to hallucinate. “People come to me to save them. … I can’t do that by myself, with two doctors,” he said in a voice message, his voice weak. “I’m tired.”
On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had facilitated the evacuation of 29 patients from Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals.
The Indonesian is Northern Gaza’s largest hospital. Today its top floors are charred, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel, its gates strewn with piled-up rubble — all the legacy of Israel’s siege in the autumn of 2023.
Before the assault, the Israeli army claimed an underground command-and-control center lay beneath the hospital. It released blurry satellite images of what it said was a tunnel entrance in the yard and a rocket launchpad nearby, outside the hospital compound.
The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital denied any Hamas presence. “If there’s a tunnel, we would know. We know this building because we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous,” Arief Rachman, a hospital manager from the Indonesia-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee, told the AP last month.
After besieging and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show evidence of the underground facility or tunnels it had earlier claimed. When asked if any tunnels were found, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.
It released images of two vehicles found in the compound — a pickup truck with military vests and a bloodstained car belonging to an abducted Israeli, suggesting he had been brought to the hospital on Oct. 7. Hamas has said it brought wounded hostages to hospitals for treatment.
During the siege, Israeli shelling crept closer and closer until, on Nov. 20, it hit the Indonesian’s second floor, killing 12 people and wounding dozens, according to staff. Israel said troops responded to “enemy fire” from the hospital but denied using shells.
Gunfire over the next days hit walls and whizzed through intensive care. Explosions sparked fires outside the hospital courtyard where some 1,000 displaced Palestinians sheltered, according to staff. The Israeli military denied targeting the hospital, although it acknowledged nearby bombardment may have damaged it.
For three weeks, wounded poured in — up to 500 a day to a facility with capacity for 200. Supplies hadn’t entered in weeks. Bloodstained linens piled up. Doctors, some working 24-hour shifts, ate a few dates a day. The discovery of moldy flour on Nov. 23 was almost thrilling.
Without medicines or ventilators, there was little doctors could do. Wounds became infected. Doctors said they performed dozens of amputations on infected limbs. Medics estimated a fifth of incoming patients died. At least 60 corpses lay in the courtyard. Others were buried beneath a nearby playground.
“To see patients dying before your eyes because you don’t have the ability to help them, you have to ask yourself: ‘Where is humanity?’” asked Dergham Abu Ibrahim, a volunteer.
Kamal Adwan: ‘This makes no sense’
Kamal Adwan Hospital, once a linchpin of northern Gaza’s health system, was burning on Thursday of last week.
Israeli shells crashed into the third floor, igniting a fire that destroyed medical supplies, according to the World Health Organization, which had delivered the equipment just days before. The artillery hit water tanks and damaged the dialysis unit, badly burning four medics who tried to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital’s director, Hossam Abu Safiya.
In videos pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safiya had fought to maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last weekend, there were tears in his eyes.
“Everything we have built, they have burned,” he said, his voice cracking. “They burned our hearts. They killed my son.”
On Oct. 25, Israeli troops stormed the hospital after what an Israeli military official described as an intense fight with militants nearby. During the battle, Israeli fire targeted the hospital’s oxygen tanks because they “can be booby traps,” the official said.
Israeli forces withdrew after three days, during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all of Kamal Adwan’s medical workers were detained, an Israeli drone killed at least one doctor and two children in intensive care died when generators stopped working.
Days later, a drone struck Abu Safiya’s son in nearby Jabalia. The 21-year-old had been wounded by Israeli snipers during the first military raid on Kamal Adwan last December. Now he is buried in the yard of the hospital, where just Abu Safiya and one other doctor remain to treat the dozens of wounded pouring in each day from new strikes in Jabalia.
The Israeli military said troops detained 100 people, some who were “posing as medical staff.” Soldiers stripped the men to check for weapons, the military said, before those deemed militants were sent to detention camps. The military claimed that the hospital was “fully operational, with all departments continuing to treat patients.” It released footage of several guns and an RPG launcher with several rounds it said it found inside the hospital.
Kamal Adwan staff say more than 30 medical personnel remain detained, including the head of nursing, who is employed by MedGlobal, an American organization that sends medical teams to disaster regions, and Dr. Mohammed Obeid, the surgeon employed by Doctors without Borders who previously worked at Al-Awda Hospital and had moved to Kamal Adwan.
The turmoil echoed Israel’s nine-day siege of Kamal Adwan last December. On Dec. 12, soldiers entered and allowed police dogs to attack staff, patients and others, multiple witnesses said. Ahmed Atbail, a 36-year-old who had sought refuge at the hospital, said he saw a dog bite off one man’s finger.
Witnesses said the troops ordered boys and men, ranging from their mid-teens to 60, to line up outside crouched in the cold, blindfolded and nearly naked for hours of interrogation. “Every time someone lifted their heads, they were beaten,” said Mohammed Al-Masri, a lawyer who was detained.
The military later published footage of men exiting the hospital. Al-Masri identified himself in the footage. He said soldiers staged the images, ordering men to lay down rifles belonging to the hospital guards as if they were militants surrendering. Israel said all photos released are authentic and that it apprehended dozens of suspected militants.
As they released some of the men after interrogation, soldiers fired on them as they tried to reenter the hospital, wounding five, three detainees said. Ahmed Abu Hajjaj recalled hearing bursts of gunfire as he made his way back in the dark. “I thought, this makes no sense — who would they be shooting at?”
Witnesses also said a bulldozer lumbered into the hospital compound, plowing into buildings. Abu Safiya, Abu Hajjaj and Al-Masri described being held by soldiers inside the hospital as they heard people screaming outside.
After the soldiers withdrew, the men saw the bulldozer had crushed tents that previously sheltered some 2,500 people. Most of the displaced had evacuated, but Abu Safiya said he found bodies of four people crushed, with splints from recent treatment in the hospital still on their limbs.
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military spokesman’s office said: “Lies were spread on social media” about troops’ activities at the hospital. It said bodies were discovered that had been buried previously, unrelated to the military’s activities.
Later, the military said Hamas used the hospital as a command center but produced no evidence. It said soldiers uncovered weapons, but it showed footage only of a single pistol.
The hospital’s director, Dr. Ahmed Al-Kahlout, remains in Israeli custody. The military released footage of him under interrogation saying he was a Hamas agent and that militants were based in the hospital. His colleagues said he spoke under duress.
The fallout
Hagari, the military spokesperson, said hospitals “provide a life of their own ... to the (Hamas) war system.” He said hospitals were linked to tunnels allowing fighters movement. “And when you take it, they have no way to move. Not from the south to the north.”
Despite often suggesting hospitals are linked to Hamas’ underground networks, the military has shown only one tunnel shaft from all the hospitals it raided — one leading to Shifa’s grounds.
In a report last month, a UN investigation commission determined that “Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza.” It described Israeli actions at hospitals as “collective punishment against the Palestinians in Gaza.”
Some patients now fear hospitals, refusing to go to them or leaving before treatment is complete. “They are places of death,” Ahmed Al-Qamar, a 35-year-old economist in Jabalia refugee camp, said of his fear of taking his children to the hospital. “You can feel it.”
Zaher Sahloul, the president of MedGlobal who has also worked in Gaza during the war, said the sense of safety that should surround hospitals has been destroyed.
“This war has become a scar in the minds of every doctor and nurse.”


Lebanon says 3 killed in Israeli strike near Sidon city

A man stands amid the destruction following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Saida neighbourhood in Lebanon.
A man stands amid the destruction following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Saida neighbourhood in Lebanon.
Updated 20 min 12 sec ago
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Lebanon says 3 killed in Israeli strike near Sidon city

A man stands amid the destruction following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Saida neighbourhood in Lebanon.
  • Also on Sunday, an Israeli strike hit the town of Ghaziyeh, south of Sidon, the official National News Agency (NNA) said

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said three people were killed and nine others wounded in an Israeli strike Sunday on Haret Saida, a densely populated area near the southern city of Sidon.
“The Israeli enemy’s raid on Haret Saida resulted in an initial death toll of three people killed and nine others injured,” the ministry said. The strike was not preceded by an Israeli evacuation warning.
Also on Sunday, an Israeli strike hit the town of Ghaziyeh, south of Sidon, the official National News Agency (NNA) said.
That strike hit a residential building, according to an AFP correspondent, who said a child was rescued from beneath the rubble.
The health ministry did not provide a death toll.
Several Israeli strikes also hit near a governmental hospital in Tebnin, a town in the south Lebanon district of Bint Jbeil.
Strikes have previously been reported in the Bint Jbeil area since war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah began more than a month ago.
The latest strikes caused significant damage to the hospital facility, according to Tebnin mayor Nabil Fawaz.
Fawaz told AFP that the hospital may be put of service as a result of the damage but an official decision has yet to be taken.
Sunday’s raids on south Lebanon came without an evacuation warning.
The Israeli army on Sunday had called for the evacuation of the eastern Baalbek region ahead of expected strikes there.
Israel escalated its air raids on Hezbollah strongholds in south Lebanon, Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley from September 23, after a year of cross-border fire. A week later it sent in ground troops to southern Lebanon.
The war has killed more than 1,930 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, though the real toll may be higher due to gaps in the data.


Israel army issues new evacuation call for Lebanon’s Baalbek region

Israel army issues new evacuation call for Lebanon’s Baalbek region
Updated 03 November 2024
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Israel army issues new evacuation call for Lebanon’s Baalbek region

Israel army issues new evacuation call for Lebanon’s Baalbek region
  • The latest evacuation call came as the military’s Home Front Command activated sirens at regular intervals along the border
  • Israel and the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah have been locked in a deadly war since September 23 that has killed more than 1,900

Jerusalem: The Israeli military on Sunday called for the evacuation of the Baalbek area in eastern Lebanon, warning that it was ready to strike Hezbollah targets there and in nearby Douris.
The latest evacuation call came as the military’s Home Front Command activated sirens at regular intervals along the border as dozens of projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory since Sunday morning.
“You are currently located near the facilities and assets associated with Hezbollah, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will be targeting in the near future,” the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a post on X addressed to residents of Baalbek and Douris.
The Israeli air force intercepted several projectiles that were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory, while some fell in open areas, the military said in a statement.
On Thursday, rocket fire from Lebanon killed seven people in the town of Metula in northern Israel, including four Thai farmers.
Israel and the Lebanese armed movement Hezbollah have been locked in a deadly war since September 23 that has killed more than 1,900 people in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
Israel’s military says 38 soldiers have been killed in the Lebanon campaign since it began ground operations on September 30.
Clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants first erupted on October 8 last year when the Lebanese group began firing rockets into Israel in support of its ally Hamas, a day after the Palestinian militant group launched an unprecedented attack on Israel from Gaza.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s sweeping military response against Hamas has led to the deaths of 43,314 Palestinians in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations consider to be reliable.


Turkiye seeks deeper Africa ties at summit

Turkiye seeks deeper Africa ties at summit
Updated 03 November 2024
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Turkiye seeks deeper Africa ties at summit

Turkiye seeks deeper Africa ties at summit
  • Fourteen African countries attended the latest ministerial meeting in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti
  • Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who presided over the summit, said trade with the continent surpassed $35 billion last year

Nairobi: Turkiye on Sunday said it was committed to deepening relations with Africa, which it and called on to back diplomatic support for Palestinians, as it held its latest African summit in Djibouti.
Turkiye has invested heavily across Africa in recent years, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan carrying out 50 visits to 31 countries during his two decades in power.
Fourteen African countries attended the latest ministerial meeting in the tiny Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti this weekend.
They included Angola, Chad, Comoros, Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, South Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who presided over the summit, said trade with the continent surpassed $35 billion last year and Turkiye’s direct investments now totalled $7 billion.
“Turkiye is employing a comprehensive and holistic approach in terms of enhancing our trade and economic partnership with the continent,” Fidan said in a speech.
Turkiye has become the fourth largest arms supplier to sub-Saharan Africa and helped train armed forces in many countries.
In recent months, it has attempted to mediate a feud between Ethiopia and Somalia, and struck a mining deal with Niger.
Fidan reiterated support for the African Union to become a permanent member of the G20, and for reform of the United Nations Security Council.
“We should continue our efforts to make the UN more relevant and capable of confronting the complex challenges of the century. Security Council reform is critical in this sense,” he said.
Fidan also called for greater African involvement in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“We believe that Africa can play an instrumental role in supporting the Palestinian cause and in stopping Israel,” he said.
“We appreciate the African countries that stand with Palestine,” he added, highlighting South Africa’s recent move to file evidence of “genocide” committed by Israel to the International Criminal Court.
The next Turkiye-Africa Summit is due to be held in 2026.


Palestinians say Israel struck a Gaza clinic during a polio campaign. The army denies it

Palestinians say Israel struck a Gaza clinic during a polio campaign. The army denies it
Updated 03 November 2024
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Palestinians say Israel struck a Gaza clinic during a polio campaign. The army denies it

Palestinians say Israel struck a Gaza clinic during a polio campaign. The army denies it
  • The alleged strike occurred Saturday in northern Gaza, which has been encircled by Israeli forces and largely isolated for the past year
  • Israel has been carrying out another offensive there in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands

CAIRO: Palestinian officials say an Israeli drone strike on a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio wounded six people, including four children. The Israeli military denied responsibility.
The alleged strike occurred Saturday in northern Gaza, which has been encircled by Israeli forces and largely isolated for the past year. Israel has been carrying out another offensive there in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
It was not possible to resolve the conflicting accounts. Israeli forces have repeatedly raided hospitals in Gaza over the course of the war, saying Hamas uses them for militant purposes, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials.
Dr. Munir Al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, told The Associated Press that a quadcopter struck the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City early Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes after a United Nations delegation left the facility.
The World Health Organization and the UN children’s agency, known as UNICEF, which are jointly carrying out the polio vaccination campaign, expressed concern over the reported strike.
“The reports of this attack are even more disturbing as the Sheikh Radwan Clinic is one of the health points where parents can get their children vaccinated,” said Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for UNICEF.
“Today’s attack occurred while the humanitarian pause was still in effect, despite assurances given that the pause would be respected from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m.”
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said that “contrary to the claims, an initial review determined that the (Israeli military) did not strike in the area at the specified time.”
A scaled-down campaign to administer a second dose of the polio vaccine began Saturday in parts of northern Gaza. It had been postponed from Oct. 23 due to lack of access, Israeli bombings and mass evacuation orders, and the lack of assurances for humanitarian pauses, a UN statement said.
The administration of the first dose was carried out in September across the Gaza Strip, including areas of northern Gaza that are now completely sealed off. Health officials said the campaign’s first round, and the administration of the second dose across central and southern Gaza, were successful.
At least 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate from areas of north Gaza toward Gaza City in the past few weeks, but around 15,000 children under the age of 10 remain in northern towns, including Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, which are inaccessible, according to the UN
The final phase of the polio vaccination campaign had aimed to reach an estimated 119,000 children in the north with a second dose of oral polio vaccine, the agencies said, but “achieving this target is now unlikely due to access constraints.”
They say 90 percent of children in every community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.
The campaign was launched after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization said the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.
The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.